GENEVA—Now that the Beijing Winter Olympics is over, U.N. rights chief Michelle Bachelet must release her long-delayed report on alleged violations in China’s Xinjiang region against Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities, Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday.
Ken Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, urged Bachelet to issue her office’s findings before her March 7 speech to the main annual session of the U.N. Human Rights Council which opens next week.
Roth, noting that Bachelet’s spokesperson had said in early December that the report would be released within weeks, told a news briefing in Geneva: “We still don’t have it, we are at a loss as to what is going on ... There is just no longer any excuse for this ongoing, long delay.”
There was no immediate comment from Bachelet’s office.
Diplomats have also voiced dismay at the unexplained delay and fears that the evidence Bachelet’s office may have collected over the past three years may lose their relevance.
Rights groups accuse the Chinese regime of wide-scale abuses against Uyghurs and other minority groups, including the torture, forced labor, and detention of one million people in internment camps.
Bachelet’s office said last month that conversations were underway for a possible trip to the area in northwest China in the first half of the year. The South China Morning Post reported that a visit had been agreed for after the Olympics which ended last Sunday.
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