UN rights chief to visit China from Monday, including Xinjiang

TheUNrightschiefwillbeginher long-anticipatedvisittoChinaonMonday, her office said,includingto theXinjiangregion where authorities stand accused of widespread violations.

After years of requesting "meaningful and unfettered" access toChina's far-westernXinjiangregion, Michelle Bachelet will finally be heading there next week.

TheUNHigh Commissioner forHuman Rights"onMondaybegins a six-day official mission toChina, at the invitation of the government," her office said in a statement Friday.

It is the first trip toChinaby aUNrightschiefsince 2005 and Bachelet will meet "a number of high-level officials at the national and local levels".

"The high commissioner will also meet with civil society organisations, business representatives, academics, and deliver a lecture to students at Guangzhou University," the statement added.

An advance team was sent toChinaseveral weeks ago to prepare thevisit, 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, her office said this week.

Watch |Global food security crisis: UN holds special meet, warns that food crisis could last decades

But she will go to Kashgar and Urumqi inXinjiang, it said.

She wraps up the mission on May 28 with a press conference at an as-yet undisclosed location and issue a statement.

There have long been calls for Bachelet tovisitXinjiangand to publish her office's findings on the situation there.

The US government and lawmakers in a number of other Western countries have labelledChina's treatment of the Uyghur minority inXinjiang"genocide" -- a charge Beijing vehemently denies.

Rightsgroups say at least one million mostly Muslim minorities have been incarcerated in "re-education camps" in the region, and face widespread abuses,includingforced sterilisation and forced labour.

Chinasaysit is running vocational training centres in the region designed to counter extremism.

In March, theUNrightsoffice announced an agreement had finally been reached on arranging avisit, although it still remains unclear when Bachelet's team will release its long-delayed report on the situation.

Rightsgroups, diplomats and others have voiced concern Beijing will manipulate hervisitand have stepped up demands for the report's publication.

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

WATCH WION LIVE HERE