UN rights chief speaks with Xi

CHINESE President Xi Jinping spoke yesterday via video link with UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet, who is on a visit that has drawn criticism from rights groups and which the US has called a “mistake”.

While Bachelet’s six-day trip included a visit to the western region of Xinjiang, where her office said last year it believed mostly Muslim ethnic Uyghur people had been unlawfully detained, mistreated and forced to work, there was no mention of it in either side’s public remarks.

Xi told Bachelet that China’s development of human rights “suits its own national conditions”, and that among the various types of human rights, the rights to subsistence and development were primary for developing countries, according to China’s official Xinhua news agency.

“Deviating from reality and copying wholesale the institutional model of other countries will not only fit badly with the local conditions, but also bring disastrous consequences,” Xinhua quoted Xi as saying.

Bachelet said her meetings with Xi and other officials had been a valuable opportunity to speak directly about human rights issues.

She has called for unfettered access in Xinjiang, but China has said her visit would be conducted in a “closed loop”, referring to a way of isolating people within a “bubble” to prevent the spread of Covid-19.

German Economy Minister Robert Habeck this week said his country would give higher priority to human rights issues in dealing with China, following new media reports on mass detention of Uyghurs between January and July 2018.

Foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said China opposed the use of “false information” to smear it and said economic co-operation between China and Germany was mutually beneficial.

“I hope that the German government and politicians will look at it correctly and will not mislead the public to the detriment of their own interests,” Wang said.

Bachelet has told Beijing-based diplomats that her Xinjiang trip was “not an investigation” into China’s rights record but about longer-term engagement with Chinese authorities, three Western diplomats said.

Bachelet explained that although her access was limited because of Covid-19, she had set up some meetings with people independently of Chinese authorities.