The balancing act in which Michelle Bachelet engaged on Saturday, after her visit to Xinjiang, did not reassure everyone.

“The United States remains concerned about the visit of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, and her team to the People's Republic of China and her efforts to restrict and manipulate this movement. », Indicates Anthony Blinken, the American Secretary of State.

He said he was "troubled by reports that people in Xinjiang have been warned not to complain or speak openly about conditions in the region."

According to him, the conditions of this visit "did not allow a complete and independent assessment of the human rights situation, including in Xinjiang", in the east of the country.

The foreign press kept away

This Chinese region has long been the scene of bloody attacks targeting civilians and committed, according to the authorities, by Uyghur separatists and Islamists, the main ethnic group in the region.

Xinjiang has thus been the subject of draconian surveillance for several years.

Western studies accuse Beijing of having interned more than a million Uyghurs and members of other Muslim ethnic groups in "re-education camps", even of imposing "forced labor" or "forced sterilizations".

The United States evokes a "genocide".

Michelle Bachelet traveled to Xinjiang in the regional capital, Urumqi, and said she visited a prison in the city of Kashgar, where she saw prisoners in particular, describing its access as "fairly open, fairly transparent".

Details of his visit have not been made public.

The Chilean ex-president, in the name of the epidemic situation in China, was in a health bubble which kept her away from the foreign press.

She had also spared the Chinese authorities in her final press conference, assuring that her visit did not constitute "an investigation".

World

China: UN Says Visit Was Not Investigating Human Rights in Xinjiang

World

China: The plight of the Uyghurs takes center stage with Michelle Bachelet's visit to Xinjiang

  • World

  • UNITED STATES

  • China

  • UN

  • Uighurs

  • Xinjiang