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UN human rights chief urged to resist US disinformation, deliver factual Xinjiang judgment - Global Times
As UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet's visit to China's Xinjiang region is coming to an end, overseas scholars, especially those who have visited the region, called on her to resist pressure from the US and anti-China forces' latest round of disinformation campaign against the region. They pointed out that the US' contradictory attitude and attack of Bachelet's visit showed it's freaking out, as the big lie of "Xinjiang genocide" is "absolutely ludicrous" and anyone with no malicious intent will have different views of Xinjiang than the US' smear the minute they step on the region.
At the end of her six-day official visit to China on Saturday, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights is scheduled to hold a news conference and issue a statement, according to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
Detailed information on where Bachelet has or will visit in Urumqi and Kashi Prefecture and who she has and will talk to is yet to be released, but the US, some Western countries and anti-China forces just can't wait to express their "concerns" over whether Bachelet will have necessary access to make a "full assessment of the rights situation" in Xinjiang. The US State Department even called her visit a "mistake."
However, it was the US and anti-China forces that urgently called on the UN mission to visit Xinjiang in the beginning. Such a U-turn attitude of the US government toward the UN human rights chief's visit to China raised the alarm among Chinese and overseas scholars, especially those who had visited the Xinjiang region during the past years. Some scholars from France, the US and Turkey reached by the Global Times said pressuring or attacking Bachelet will not make their lies or the "genocide" smearing on Xinjiang become real, but only exposes their malice.
Jeffrey Sachs, a professor of economics at Columbia University in New York and also a senior UN advisor, wrote in an email to the Global Times that he is "gratified" that Bachelet is taking this trip and "her UN mission should not be attacked or criticized by the United States Government even before the trip takes place!"
Issues of human rights under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights should be addressed through the UN processes and "not used to raise geopolitical tensions," said Sachs, expressing hope to get a thorough report that promotes the wellbeing of the population of the Xinjiang region and enables a discussion of the issues based on facts.
In April 2021, Sachs and William A. Schabas, a professor of international law at Middlesex University in London, released an article to oppose the US government's anti-China rhetoric of claiming a "genocide" in its Xinjiang region, as these allegations are "unjustified" and the inappropriate use of "genocide" devalues the historical memory of genocide such as the Holocaust.
The US is pressuring Bachelet to act like its puppet and neglect what she sees in the region to weave the conclusion of "genocide," analysts said, pointing out that it is the US that started and continued accusing China of "genocide" and has banned all products from Xinjiang, making itself the most radical and highly isolated country in the field.
William Jones, the Washington Bureau Chief for the Executive Intelligence Review and non-resident senior fellow of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China, told the Global Times the "total freakout from the US State Department" about Bachelet's visit indicates its potential significance."Anonymous