China Wants U.N. to Shelve Xinjiang Report

Reuters has a scoop on China’s efforts to prevent the U.N. from publishing its report on the Chinese Communist Party’s human-rights violations in Xinjiang:

China is asking the United Nations human rights chief to bury a highly-anticipated report on human rights violations in Xinjiang, according to a Chinese letter seen by Reuters and confirmed by diplomats from three countries who received it.

United Nations High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet has faced severe criticism from civil society for being too soft on China during a May visit and has since said she will refrain from seeking a second term for personal reasons.

But before she leaves at the end of August, she has pledged to publish a report into the western Chinese region of Xinjiang. Rights groups accuse Beijing of abuses against Xinjiang’s Uyghur inhabitants, including the mass use of forced labour in internment camps. China has vigorously denied the allegations.

Human Rights Watch’s Sophie Richardson posted an image of the reported letter, which Chinese diplomats are asking other countries’ envoys to sign, on Twitter. According to that screencapture, the letter says that the Chinese government hopes that Bachelet’s office continues “constructive exchanges and cooperation with China,” adding that, “Xinjiang-related issues are China’s internal affairs.”

That’s pretty standard language, as far as Beijing’s mass-atrocity denialism goes. What’s more interesting is the attempt to directly lobby Bachelet. Reuters said that two diplomats characterized such direct lobbying as “rare.”

Given Bachelet’s obsequious compliance with Beijing’s terms for her trip to Xinjiang in May, and her subsequent decision to announce that she will step down at the end of her term, she might not be willing to further tarnish her already severely compromised legacy by so blatantly caving to this lobbying effort. On the other hand, she has already demonstrated a willingness to placate Beijing and suffer the ensuing reputational damage, and a China-authored letter signed by numerous other countries might give her the diplomatic cover that she needs.

Whatever Bachelet ultimately decides to do about the report, however, there will be widespread public knowledge of China’s efforts to influence that decision. Either way, there’s little doubt about who’s calling the shots at the U.N. offices in Geneva, considering that Bachelet has withheld the report for so long.