Michelle Bachelet, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights (OHCHR), committed in 2021 to issue a report on rights violations in China’s far-western Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, where up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities have been held in a vast network of internment camps operated by the Chinese government under the guise of preventing religious extremism and terrorism among the mostly Muslim groups.
Various Western legislative bodies have accused China of committing a genocide against Uyghurs in Xinjiang.
Among the rights organizations that signed the open letter to Bachelet were Human Rights Watch (HRW), Amnesty International, World Uyghur Congress (WUC), Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP), and Campaign for Uyghurs (CFU) — groups that have repeatedly raised alarm to Bachelet’s office about extreme measures taken by Chinese authorities since 2017 to eradicate the religion, culture and languages of Xinjiang’s ethnic groups.
