The visit of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, to China is scrutinized.
During a tete-a-tete Monday in Guangzhou (south), the Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs, Wang Yi, "expressed the hope that this visit will help to strengthen understanding and cooperation and clarify disinformation", according to a report from his ministry sent Tuesday, May 24 to AFP.
Michelle Bachelet, who is to investigate the repression targeting the Uyghurs, Muslim minorities in Xinjiang, is due to visit this region on Tuesday.
Western studies accuse China of having interned at least a million Uyghurs and members of other Muslim minorities in re-education camps and prisons, and even of imposing forced labor.
The Chinese power disputes this figure and assures that it is about "vocational training centers" intended to keep the Uyghurs away from separatism and Islamism, in a region hit in the past by attacks.
Fear that the visit will be instrumentalized
Michelle Bachelet is the first UN human rights official to visit China since 2005. After several years of tough negotiations with the Chinese authorities, the former Chilean president is expected to stay six days in the country, until Saturday.
She must go in particular to Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, as well as Kashgar, a city in the south of the region where the Uighur population is particularly large.
Human rights organizations fear that she will not be able to see for herself the situation in this region and that her visit will be used for propaganda purposes by the communist regime.
With AFP
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