China's crackdown on Muslim minorities in the remote region of Xinjiang will return to the spotlight next week when Beijing hosts the United Nations human rights chief for the first time in nearly two decades.

The highly scrutinised six-day trip by High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet will begin Monday, with stops in the cities of Urumqi and Kashgar in Xinjiang, as well as Guangzhou in southern China, the UN announced Friday.

Bachelet will meet "a number of high-level officials", her office said, adding that she would "also meet with civil society organisations, business representatives, academics, and deliver a lecture to students at Guangzhou University".

But hopes of a thorough investigation into rights abuses have given way to concern among rights advocates that the ruling Communist Party will use the visit to whitewash its alleged atrocities.

China is accused of incarcerating one million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in detention camps in the far-western region in a years-long security crackdown that the United States and other countries have called a "genocide".

Beijing has vociferously denied genocide allegations, calling them the "lie of the century" and arguing that its policies have countered extremism and improved livelihoods.

Bachelet will meet virtually with heads of foreign missions on Monday before visiting Xinjiang on Tuesday and Wednesday, according to diplomatic sources in Beijing.

The visit to China is the first by the UN's top human rights official since 2005, when Beijing was keen to soften its global image as it prepared to host the 2008 Olympics.

Since 2018, UN officials have been locked in negotiations with the Chinese government to secure "unfettered, meaningful access" to Xinjiang before the trip was announced in March.

Instead, campaigners fear that Bachelet will get a stage-managed tour that sidelines key issues.

- Lack of access -

With hundreds of thousands in detention and many mosques closed or destroyed, authorities in Xinjiang appear to have pivoted in recent years to focusing on economic development, according to scholars and Uyghurs based outside China.

"Now there's not much visible evidence of repression," said Peter Irwin of the Uyghur Human Rights Project.

Rights groups have warned that pervasive state surveillance and fear of retaliation will prevent Uyghurs on the ground from speaking freely to the UN team.

"We fear the visit will be manipulated by the Chinese government to whitewash the severe abuses in Xinjiang," said Maya Wang, senior China researcher at Human Rights Watch.

Campaigners have questioned why Bachelet -- a former president of Chile and a torture survivor -- has not been more outspoken about Xinjiang.

The United States warned Friday that Bachelet's "continued silence in the face of indisputable evidence of atrocities in Xinjiang" was "deeply concerning".

Her reluctance to criticise may reflect Beijing's powerful influence at the UN, which puts officials "under a lot of constraints", Irwin said.

- Last hope -

Rights groups have been dismayed by the stalled release of Bachelet's long-awaited report on Xinjiang, believed to have been completed in September.

Once published, the report could provide "political cover" for countries normally afraid to criticise China's rights record, added Irwin.

A spokeswoman for Bachelet said Tuesday that it would not be released before her trip and there was no clear timing for making it public.

Hundreds of overseas Uyghurs and Kazakhs -- another Muslim minority in Xinjiang -- have staged rallies in recent weeks to urge Bachelet to visit detained relatives.

Tursan Can Heyit, 31, joined a demonstration in Istanbul after unsuccessfully petitioning Chinese authorities for years for information about his parents and sister, who vanished in 2017 and 2018.

The Uyghur PhD student has since learned that his sister was sent to a "re-education" camp in 2018, but his parents' whereabouts remain unknown.

"The UN must raise the concerns of relatives of Uyghur concentration camp victims in meetings with high-level Chinese officials," he told AFP from Istanbul.

"I've tried asking through all the available channels, but now I'm increasingly disappointed."

US leads criticism of UN rights chief for China trip
Geneva (AFP) May 20, 2022 - The UN rights chief came under fire Friday for announcing a visit next week to China's Xinjiang, with the United States saying she was failing to stand up for the region's Uyghur community.

After years of requesting "meaningful and unfettered" access to far-western Xinjiang, Michelle Bachelet will finally lead a six-day mission to China starting Monday, her office said.

The visit, at the invitation of Beijing, marks the first trip to China by a UN rights chief since Louise Arbour went there in 2005.

The United States, in forceful criticism, said it was "deeply concerned" that Bachelet, a former president of Chile, was going ahead without guarantees on what she can see.

"We have no expectation that the PRC will grant the necessary access required to conduct a complete, unmanipulated assessment of the human rights environment in Xinjiang," State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters, using the acronym for the People's Republic of China.

Price also voiced alarm that Bachelet has not released a long-anticipated report on Xinjiang, where the United States and several other Western nations say Beijing is carrying out "genocide" against the Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim, Turkic-speaking people.

"Despite frequent assurances by her office that the report would be released in short order, it remains unavailable to us and we call on the high commissioner to release the report without delay and not to wait for the visit," Price said.

Her "continued silence in the face of indisputable evidence of atrocities in Xinjiang and other human rights violations and abuses throughout the PRC is deeply concerning," he said, saying Bachelet should be a leading voice on human rights.

- Meeting officials, students -

Bachelet herself has been demanding access to all regions of China since she took office in 2018.

She has repeatedly voiced concern about allegations of widespread abuses in Xinjiang but has been criticised for not taking a strong enough stance.

Rights campaigners accuse the ruling Communist Party of widespread abuses in the name of security, saying at least one million mostly Muslim people have been incarcerated in "re-education camps" in a bid to forcibly integrate them into China's Han majority.

Beijing has vociferously denied genocide allegations, calling them the "lie of the century" and arguing that its policies have countered extremism and improved livelihoods.

In March, the UN rights office announced an agreement had finally been reached on arranging a visit.

Bachelet will meet "a number of high-level officials at the national and local levels", her office said Friday, adding that she would "also meet with civil society organisations, business representatives, academics, and deliver a lecture to students at Guangzhou University."

An advance team was sent to China several weeks ago to prepare the visit, and has completed a lengthy quarantine in the country, currently in the grip of fresh Covid outbreaks.

Bachelet, who will not need to quarantine, is not travelling to Beijing due to Covid restrictions but will go to Kashgar and Urumqi in Xinjiang.

- 'Legacy' at stake -

Despite Bachelet's demands for unfettered access, rights groups noted that the terms of the visit have not been disclosed.

They have voiced concern that Chinese authorities, who have always insisted they were only interested in a "friendly visit", could manipulate the trip.

"It defies credibility that the Chinese government will allow the high commissioner to see anything they don't want her to see, or allow human rights defenders, victims and their families to speak to her safely, unsupervised and without fear of reprisal," Sophie Richardson, the China director of Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.

The trip is not without risk for Bachelet, who is nearing the end of her four-year term and has not indicated whether she will seek a second mandate.

A spokeswoman for Bachelet said Tuesday that the long-delayed report on Xinjiang would not be released before her trip and that there was no clear timing for making it public.

Richardson said: "Bachelet's legacy as high commissioner will be measured by her willingness to hold a powerful state accountable for crimes against humanity committed on her watch."

China's alleged abuses in Xinjiang
Beijing (AFP) May 22, 2022 - China's alleged persecution of its Muslim minorities will surge back up the global agenda when the United Nations' human rights chief visits its troubled Xinjiang region next week.

The May 23 to 28 visit by Michelle Bachelet comes as rights groups pile pressure on her office to release a long-postponed report on the situation in Xinjiang.

Beijing says its prolonged crackdown in the far-western province has stamped out terrorism and reset the economy of one of its poorest regions.

But rights campaigners accuse the ruling Communist Party of widespread abuses.

The United States says China is committing "genocide" against the Uyghur ethnic group -- numbering about 12 million -- and have imposed sanctions in response.

Beijing vociferously denies the allegations, calling them the "lie of the century".

- Mass detentions -

Chinese authorities have detained over one million Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim minorities in a secretive network of detention centres and prisons in Xinjiang, researchers say.

Beijing claims the facilities are vocational training schools that are attended voluntarily.

But former detainees have alleged rape, torture and political indoctrination inside the facilities.

Guards equipped with tear gas, stun guns and spiked clubs keep control in centres ringed with barbed wire and infrared cameras, according to a 2018 review of government documents by AFP.

Further insight has come from a series of government data leaks, notably a 2019 cache known as the "Xinjiang Papers" illuminating the scale of Beijing's internment strategy.

A suspected police database reported by AFP this month detailed the charges of 10,000 imprisoned Uyghurs in southwestern Xinjiang, with many serving years-long sentences for vaguely defined terrorism offences.

Additional papers obtained by Sheffield University scholar David Tobin and seen by AFP show how local officials in the region's northern reaches were marshalled to indiscriminately target Muslims.

One is a study manual issued to rank-and-file personnel in 2016 detailing interrogation techniques and urging them to watch out for "wild" imams, "two-faced" religious adherents and other groups.

- Forced labour -

China also stands accused of forced "labour transfer" programs using Uyghurs to fuel international supply chains, especially in the textile sector.

Beijing claims the initiatives ease poverty by finding well-paid jobs for rural residents with low incomes.

But research suggests authorities have instead coerced tens of thousands of people into fields and factories under a system linked to the detention camps.

Forced Uyghur labour has seeped into major industries ranging from clothing to cars, smartphones to solar panels, according to a 2020 report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), a think tank.

They include companies that supply well-known global brands, the researchers say.

Last year, the US passed a law banning the import of goods made with forced labour in Xinjiang.

In April, China said it had ratified two international conventions against forced labour.

- Population controls -

Scholars and rights advocates say hardline birth control measures in Xinjiang since 2017 -- including quotas on sterilisations and IUD insertions -- are part of a deliberate attempt to slash ethnic minority births.

China has rubbished those claims and asserts that falling birth rates reflect regional economic development and changing social norms.

Population growth in some minority-heavy Xinjiang counties plunged between 2017 and 2019, according to research papers citing local government statistics.

The decline took place even as the central government has urged the mostly Han population nationwide to have more children in a bid to stave off a looming demographic crisis.

Population data is notably absent from Xinjiang's more recent provincial yearbooks.

- Cultural destruction -

China has targeted Uyghur religious, cultural and linguistic practices in recent years.

Some 16,000 mosques in Xinjiang -- around two-thirds of the total -- have been destroyed or damaged due to government policies mostly enacted since 2017, according to ASPI.

During a 2019 trip to the region, AFP reporters visited several holy sites that had been razed or repurposed, and found cities blanketed by cameras and police checkpoints.

Uyghurs also allege they have faced state pressure not to speak their own language and to abandon Islamic customs such as praying, owning holy books or growing long beards.

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