The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights hinted Thursday that her long-awaited report on China's human rights abuses in Xinjiang may not be released during her tenure.

Her mandate ends on Wednesday.

In justification, Michelle Bachelet said during a press conference in Geneva that the Chinese government had submitted "substantial input that we must carefully consider, as we always do with every report and every country".

She had firmly planned to present the report by the end of her mandate.

But now you are in "a situation in which we are trying very hard to do what I promised".

Friederike Böge

Political correspondent for China, North Korea and Mongolia.

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Asked if she had been pressured by China, she said there had been "enormous pressure" from different quarters.

But this will have no impact.

Bachelet confirmed that she had received a letter signed by 40 countries asking her not to publish.

This had been put into circulation by China.

At the same time, she was urged by others in letters and meetings to publish the report.

It sounded as if she equated both camps.

The High Commissioner herself announced a year ago that her report on the situation in Xinjiang was almost complete.

Probably to prevent a publication shortly before the Olympic Winter Games in their own country, Beijing then agreed to Bachelet's trip to Xinjiang.

The publication was then postponed.

Shortly before, Bachelet had stated that there had been no progress in three years of negotiations on a "sensible access".

Then Beijing reportedly agreed, among other things, to their condition of sending an advance team to Xinjiang for preparation.

It was important to her to "prioritize" the trip to China in order to discuss the allegations directly with senior Chinese officials, the former Chilean president said.

Experts have been wondering about Bachelet for a long time

However, as her visit progressed, she drew harsh criticism from Western governments and human rights activists.

In a press conference at the end of her stay in China in May, she spoke more critically and extensively about racism and police violence in the United States than about the situation in Xinjiang.

She also referred to the re-education camps as "education and training centers" in Chinese regime jargon, and embraced the Chinese narrative that they were counter-terrorism measures.

"After my visit to China, the report was further revised and finalized because we also had to consider what we saw in China," she said on Thursday.

The report was then submitted to China for "fact-based commentary," which appeared to be extensive.

No fundamentally new insights are expected from the document.

It is nevertheless considered important to officially confirm the extensively documented human injuries with the UN seal.

If the report were no longer to appear under Bachelet's direction, it would damage the credibility of the Chilean and her office.

It is already inexplicable to expert observers that during her four-year tenure, Bachelet did not comment in detail on the massive human rights violations in Xinjiang,

On the other hand, the UN Special Rapporteur on slavery, Tomoya Obokata, recently expressed himself clearly.

After extensive investigation, he considers it "reasonable to believe" that "forced labor among Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other ethnic minorities has occurred" in Xinjiang's agriculture and manufacturing industries.

This applies to the internment camps and to work transfers as part of poverty reduction programs.

Something similar was also found in Tibet.

Those affected are exposed to excessive surveillance, abusive living and working conditions, and physical and sexual violence during forced labour.