XINJIANG – The United Nations’ Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner (OHCHR) has published its assessment of human rights concerns in China’s Xinjiang region, where it’s reported that 1.6 million Uyghur Muslims are being held in the largest incarceration since the Holocaust.
The UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, recently visited the region, which produces a fifth of the world’s cotton, whilst the organisation’s report is supplemented by an “extensive body of documentation” and in-depth interviews with 40 people with direct or first-hand knowledge of the situation in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR).
In its conclusions, the report says: “While the available information at this stage does not allow OHCHR to draw firm conclusions regarding the exact extent of such abuses, it is clear that the highly securitised and discriminatory nature of the VETCs (Vocational Education and Training Centres), coupled with limited access to effective remedies or oversight by the authorities, provide fertile ground for such violations to take place on a broad scale.”
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