“The report will be published by the end of the day,” said Jeremy Laurence, spokesman for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Michelle Bachelet, for whom it is the last day at the head of the High Commission, is thus keeping her promise to publish this highly anticipated document before her departure.
“Better late than never. This will be a decisive moment,” Sophie Richardson, director of the NGO Human Rights Watch for China, told AFP, saying that this will show “that no state is at the above the law”.
More than the content, it is the existence and the publication that is important, in his eyes, because that will oblige the Human Rights Council to take up the case.
“Not prosecuting is not an option,” she stressed.
– Genocide –
The content of the report is a well-kept secret of which nothing has leaked for the moment and whose content, the terms chosen, will be dissected.
The US government accuses Beijing of “genocide” in Xinjiang. In January, the French National Assembly, following in the footsteps of the representation of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and even Canada, had also qualified as “genocide” the treatment of the Uyghurs by China.
Xinjiang and other provinces of China have been hit for several decades, and in particular from 2009 to 2014, by attacks attributed to Islamists or Uyghur separatists.
For several years, the region has been the subject of intense surveillance: ubiquitous cameras, security gates in buildings, armed forces very visible in the streets, restrictions on the issuance of passports…
Western studies, based on interpretations of official documents, testimonies of alleged victims and statistical extrapolations, accuse Beijing of having interned in “camps” at least a million people, mostly Uyghurs, of carrying out sterilizations and abortions “forced” or to impose “forced labour”.
China denies these accusations. She refutes any idea of ”forced sterilization” but concedes to apply in Xinjiang, as everywhere else in the country, her policy of limiting births, for a long time implemented with laxity in the region.
Beijing also presents the “camps” as “vocational training centers” intended to distance the inhabitants from religious extremism and which would now be closed because all the “students” would have “completed their training”.
– Intense pressure –
Last week during her farewell press conference, Ms Bachelet admitted having to face intense pressure both from countries in favor of the publication of the report – including the United States – and from those who are opposed to it and primarily the Chinese authorities.
At a Human Rights Council ceremony to mark the end of Chile’s former president’s term on Tuesday, British human rights ambassador Rita French and human rights organizations the man were alarmed that the report had not yet come out.
“It is essential for all of us that no State be exempted from careful and objective scrutiny of its human rights record, and that no State be allowed to stifle the independent voice of Upper Commissioner,” French said.
On Wednesday, a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry said that “China strongly opposes” the publication of the report “which is a farce orchestrated by the United States and a small number of Western countries”. “We hope the High Commissioner will make the right decision,” he added.