Members of the UN Commission on Human Rights arrived in China to plan Michelle Bachelet's visit

A team from the United Nations Office for Human Rights arrived in China on Monday to prepare the visit next May of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said today.

The purpose of the visit is to “promote exchanges and cooperation,” said Wang, adding that China “opposes the use of this visit for political manipulation.”

In March, Bachelet announced an agreement with Xi Jinping's regime to visit the Asian country, a trip that would include the Xinjiang region (northwest), where hundreds of thousands of Uighur Muslims have been held in internment camps since 2017.

“My office and the Government of China have begun concrete work for the visit, which is expected to take place next May,” Bachelet then stressed in her speech to the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Human rights groups and numerous governments have condemned China's practices against Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang, where over the past five years it is believed that hundreds of thousands of people may have been held in what Beijing calls “vocational training centres”.

The Xi Jinping regime defends its actions as part of a socio-economic improvement plan in Xinjiang, a region hit in the last decade by several jihadist terrorist attacks.

Bachelet also referred in March to the situation of some human rights activists in the Asian country: “Some of them have suffered restrictions on their movements, for example through house arrest, and in some cases have received prison sentences,” the former Chilean president denounced.

A recent report by Amnesty International stated that the human rights situation throughout China “has continued to deteriorate”.

(With information from EFE)

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