Nikki Haley: U.N. Official’s Xinjiang Trip an ‘Insult to Every Victim of Genocide’

N ikki Haley called a U.N. official’s recent visit to China’s Xinjiang region and meetings with top Chinese Communist Party officials a “total Communist propaganda victory lap,” as human-rights advocates excoriated the trip for lending cover to Chinese abuses. Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. during the Trump administration, also criticized President Biden for re-engaging with the U.N. human-rights apparatus that the official oversees.

U.N. high commissioner for human rights Michelle Bachelet visited Xinjiang last week, on the Chinese government’s terms, amid new revelations about Beijing’s mass detention of hundreds of thousands of ethnic minorities on spurious charges.

The latest disclosures included the leak of files from the region’s police force — including the photos of thousands of Uyghur prisoners, including some as young as 15.

In a statement to National Review, Haley assailed Bachelet for making the trip despite U.S. warnings that Beijing would use it to promote its propaganda narratives.

“Bachelet’s visit to China was a total Communist propaganda victory lap and an insult to every victim of genocide,” she said.

For months, Bachelet, a former socialist president of Chile, has delayed the release of a U.N. report on China’s atrocities against ethnic minorities in Xinjiang. The U.S. and several other countries have labeled the abuses — which include mass detention, forced labor, forced sterilizations, and other egregious acts — genocide and crimes against humanity.

She said she would release the report, which is said to have been completed, after visiting the region to judge the situation for herself.

Chinese officials agreed to the visit earlier this year, stipulating that Bachelet make a “friendly” trip, rather than an investigation, and she agreed to those terms. During remarks at the end of her trip, she emphasized that “this visit was not an investigation.”

Even before Bachelet’s trip began, the State Department said it was “deeply concerned” about the terms under which she agreed to make the trip. The Chinese authorities have strictly controlled the movements of outside visitors to Xinjiang, where intense surveillance and security checkpoints have been used previously to track foreign journalists.

In early May, 220 human-rights groups urged Bachelet to postpone her trip until after the release of her Xinjiang report and until she scheduled meetings with human-rights advocates.

“Proceeding with the visit under such ill-negotiated terms and without adequate briefing from those affected by China’s human rights violations” would, they wrote in a statement, grant “Beijing yet another opportunity to whitewash its repression.”

Bachelet proved them right, holding meetings only with Chinese officials, including a virtual discussion with Xi, and a number of academics and civil-society leaders handpicked by the Chinese government.

Chinese officials took the opportunity to use the visit to their advantage.

Bachelet met with Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi, who gave her a copy of Xi Jinping’s propaganda tome on human rights. Chinese officials soon after blasted out a picture of the two on social media.

During a press conference at the end of her trip, Bachelet parroted Chinese Communist Party terminology, referring to the Xinjiang prison camps as “vocational education and training centers,” and spoke at unusual length on school shootings in the United States.

Chinese officials quickly put out a statement claiming that Bachelet had expressed admiration of China’s human-rights record and commended the country’s role in protecting multilateralism. Her office later quibbled with the Chinese government’s framing of her remarks — but still confirmed that she commended Beijing’s poverty-eradication effort and said that “China has a crucial role to play within multilateral institutions.”

Haley has long harbored doubts about Bachelet’s stewardship of the U.N.’s human-rights apparatus.

During Haley’s time as U.N. ambassador, her team reportedly lobbied U.N. secretary-general António Guterres not to appoint her. Haley later attacked Bachelet for singling out the U.S. and Israel while ignoring dictatorships during her inaugural address to the U.N. Human Rights Council.

“With serious human-rights crises across the globe, it is highly regrettable that the new High Commissioner is following the same biased path of her predecessors, choosing to bash Israel and the United States,” Haley said at the time.

In her remarks to NR this week, Haley also linked Bachelet’s trip to the Biden administration’s decision to rejoin the U.N. Human Rights Council. Haley spearheaded the U.S. withdrawal from the body in 2018.

“It’s a shame President Biden justifies American participation in the farce known as the U.N. Human Rights Council.”

Bachelet’s trip also followed revelations that China earmarked a $200,000 contribution to a U.N. human-rights rapporteur who has endorsed Chinese propaganda narratives on Xinjiang.

Bachelet’s trip is raising new doubts about the U.N.’s integrity — even among the people who designed its human-rights system. One of the legal experts who played a role in creating the post that Bachelet now occupies told Axios this week that the position is “badly compromised.”

Haley, with her Trump-era misgivings about the U.N. official, was an early skeptic.