China
Xinjiang Report Published + Hong Kong Film City + Beijing on Gorbachev
Dear reader,
What do journalists, students, and the UN Human Rights Commissioner have in common? They frequently hand in their required work only at the last minute. Michelle Bachelet made it particularly exciting. The outgoing UN Commissioner for Human Rights wanted to submit the report on the human rights situation in Xinjiang by August 31. At 11:52 p.m. on Wednesday night, the report went online eight minutes before the deadline.
Marcel Grzanna has taken a look at the paper. For the first time, the United Nations speak of "grave human rights violations" in the report. The Bachelet report lists what China did in Xinjiang: Set up camps and forced their inmates to work in factories, suppressed the Uighur birth rate with forced sterilizations, set up total surveillance, pushed back Islam, and destroyed mosques.
The Chilean politician thus surpassed the low expectations that civil rights groups had placed on her. Bachelet is considered China-friendly. Many observers had expected a smoothed report. Indeed she does not follow the reading of "cultural genocide," but she names numerous crimes. She does so against the explicit protest from Beijing.
