UN head hopes China will ‘take on board’ Xinjiang recommendations

Watchtowers on a high-security facility near what is believed to be a so-called 're-education camp' where mostly Muslim ethnic minorities are detained, on the outskirts of Hotan, in China's northwestern Xinjiang region [File: Greg Baker/AFP]

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres hopes China will “take on board the recommendations” made in a report by the organisation’s Human Rights Office on the situation in its Xinjiang region, a spokesman said.

The report by UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet “confirms what the secretary-general has been saying on Xinjiang for quite some time, that human rights must be respected and that the Uighur community need to be respected,” Guterres’s spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, told reporters on Thursday.