News about Michelle Bachelet

IAN BIRRELL: According to the Chinese government, the primary human right is to have a fulfilling life, and nowhere better reflects its laudable desire to spread a little happiness than the Western province of Xinjiang. Last week, they wrote a letter to the United Nations describing this area, which is home to about 12 million Uighurs, as a "people from both ethnic groups are living a happy life of peace and contentment." Everyone in Xinjiang will 'enjoy social stability, economic growth, cultural flourish, and religious harmony,' they said. If only this picture was true. These were, however, the gross words of a regime that appears to have adopted George Orwell's 1984 as a textbook for its twisted reign based on violence, surveillance, and spreading lies. Beijing's letter was attached to a historic United Nations study in which, amid all its hesitance and vulnerability, it eventually condemned China for "serious human rights abuses" against Muslim minorities in Xinjiang, which could have been crimes against humanity.

According to a hard-hitting United Nations study that condemns China's treatment of Uyghur Muslims detained in Xinjiang's internment camps could result in a criminal probe in the Hague. According to a British barrister prosecuting the investigation, the findings may lead to the first International Criminal Court inquiry into the suspected crimes. The UN's finding that China's persecution of Uyghurs constituted "crimes against humanity," Rodney Dixon QC said, was a potent weapon in a potential lawsuit. The United Nations findings are crucial in initiating an ICC probe into the international offences over which the court has jurisdiction,' he said. The 46-page paper found "credible evidence" that prisoners were strapped into torture chairs, beat with electric batons, raped and forcibly administered medications, and carried on in camps in the northwest region of Xinjiang's northwest province.

After a bombshell UN report outlined the communist superpower's treatment of Uyghurs and other Muslims in the Xinjiang region, Foreign Minister blasted Beijing. In the far-western Xinjiang region, China has been accused of detaining more than one million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities. And Michelle Bachelet's four-year tenure as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Australian government condemned China's actions against Uyghurs, according to Ms Wong.

The paper, which has been in the works for about a year, was released in Geneva at 11:47 p.m. (9.47 p.m. in the United Kingdom), just 13 minutes before Michelle Bachelet's four-year term as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights ended. Despite severe pressure from an outraged Beijing, the former Chilean president, who has been chastised by several diplomats and human rights organizations for being too soft on China, has said she was determined to ensure the study saw the light of day. In the far-western Xinjiang region, China has been accused of detaining more than a million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities for years. Human rights organisations suspect Beijing of violence against the Uyghurs, a majority Muslim ethnic group with a population of around ten million in the western region of Xinjiang, which includes the heavy use of slave labour in internment camps. Beijing has vehemently denied the allegations, insisting that it is running vocational training centers in Xinjiang designed to combat extremism.