On Wednesday, minutes before the midnight end of her four-year appointment as UN high commissioner for human rights, Michelle Bachelet’s office at last published her long-delayed report into the continuing human rights abuses in the Xinjiang region of China. That it would do so remained uncertain to the last. Just the day before, it was being reported that her term would come to an end with the issue unresolved, despite numerous demands at Tuesday’s meeting of the human rights council – including from Britain’s ambassador to it, Rita French – that the report be released.
For scholars of Xinjiang, the uncertainty was nothing new. Despite the commissioner’s assurances that the report would be published, there had been reasons to doubt her willingness to challenge Beijing. In May, after the first visit of a high commissioner to China for nearly two decades, she released an official statement that was couched in the language of the Chinese state, and failed to mention nearly all of the concerns that had been raised about the mistreatment of the Uyghurs and other inhabitants of the region.
