The UN Human Rights Commissioner’s visit to China: Disappointment or unrealistic expectations?

8 June 2022

The first visit of a UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to China in 17 years has prompted significant criticism and disappointment. Expectations were high as the last few years have seen a growing number of countries and NGOs calling upon China to grant Michelle Bachelet “meaningful and unfettered access” to Xinjiang. China has a long history of organising fully orchestrated visits to the region, with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs advertising that “Since the end of 2018, more than 1,200 officials from international organisations, diplomats, journalists and religious leaders from over 100 countries and regions have visited Xinjiang”. But this time was supposed to be different. Hopes were that Bachelet would be granted what nobody before her had ever obtained: unfettered access.

While Bachelet mentioned her intention to go as early as 2018, it was only after years of stalemate that a breakthrough surfaced with her announcement in March 2022 that a visit would take place in May. Despite the event’s historical dimension, Bachelet only offered mild criticism of China’s crackdown on predominantly Muslim minorities in Xinjiang, the very reason the visit was so highly anticipated. Mass detention of Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim groups in indoctrination camps has been labelled a genocide by the US and other lawmakers in Western countries. However, the UN Human Rights Commissioner endorsed China’s language on Xinjiang, speaking of “vocational education and training centers” and “counter-terrorism” during the press conference closing the visit.

Chances of unfettered access have always been low

Following indications that expectations of unfettered access might have been unrealistic, Bachelet’s press conference was the final in the coffin. Beijing planned a closed-loop visit, resorting to a well-established strategy of using COVID-19 restrictions to limit access to sensitive regions. The government also declared that it welcomed a “friendly visit” but nothing like “an investigation”, language Bachelet later reiterated during the press conference concluding her visit. Before her trip, the lack of clarity around the terms Bachelet accepted and the failure to release her report on Xinjiang, whose publication has been postponed for months, were criticised. Some NGOs and governments that had previously pressed China to grant her unfettered access pressed Bachelet to cancel the visit because they feared it could lead to endorsement rather than scrutiny. After her press conference, the blame shifted from China to Bachelet as some human rights and Uyghur groups urged the High Commissioner to resign.

Such a failure is not only problematic for the credibility of the High Commissioner but also touches upon the coherence of some Western countries’ human rights policies.

It is indeed worrying that Bachelet has revealed so little, that her comments have been largely non confrontational, and that her report has still not been published. But she probably would not have gotten any access at all had she been more vocal beforehand. Her predecessor Zeid al-Hussein was never granted access and renounced a second mandate to avoid having to “bend the knee in supplication” before the Security Council’s members, including China, which he had criticised for its poor human rights record. Beijing has only granted limited access to a few UN independent human rights experts, all with mandates in line with its own interests, such as extreme poverty.

It was also predictable that Bachelet’s visit would be instrumentalised by Chinese state media, as with the picture where she accepts the book “Excerpts from Xi Jinping on Respecting and Protecting human rights” and with the misrepresentation of her opening remarks. These tactics are not new in how China handles criticism of its human rights record. As the Secretary General of Amnesty International Agnes Callamard stated: “The High Commissioner’s visit has been characterised by photo opportunities with senior government officials and manipulation of her statements by Chinese state media, leaving an impression that she has walked straight into a highly predictable propaganda exercise for the Chinese government”.

Bachelet’s failure is a shared one

Considering the predictability that the visit would be instrumentalised and that unfettered access would not be granted, why have dozens of governments in the last few years called for Bachelet to visit China? Of course, this call was under the condition of “meaningful and unfettered access”. But the unlikeliness of this request being fulfilled was clear from the very start. Pushing Bachelet to go despite all the predictions that such a visit would be reduced to a propaganda exercise might have been an easy call to make for some governments, easier than ensuring the coherence of their own human rights policy. Indeed, one of the visit’s results is a reminder that Western countries have not dealt with the difficulties Bachelet has been facing regarding China any more successfully. Take the establishment of an “annual senior strategic meeting”. For years, NGOs have pointed to the ineffectiveness of this type of bilateral dialogue between China and some Western countries. The dialogues have not led to any concrete results for the victims nor any public accountability, and they have been instrumentalised by China to avoid public criticism. However, countries such as Switzerland, the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, and the EU have decided to maintain this fig leaf diplomacy, which now the High Commissioner also embraces.

Another difficulty that some Western countries seem to expect Bachelet to handle better than themselves is precisely how to deal with high-level visits in sensitive areas. Indeed, as illustrated by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ figure of 1,200 official visits in Xinjiang since 2018, government officials are regularly invited to visit sensitive areas in fully orchestrated tours. Despite the impossibility of securing unfettered access, some high-level representatives regularly participate in these Potemkin visits, including Western ambassadors. Just like Bachelet, Western ambassadors’ attempts to engage with China and better understand the situation thanks to these visits should not be dismissed. However, these officials generally fail to publicly communicate on the visits, shielding themselves from any kind of accountability while also taking the risk of being instrumentalised. Considering the insistent calls for Bachelet to visit China, not going would have also damaged the credibility of her office. As Bachelet herself declared during a meeting with Beijing-based diplomats, she is “a grown woman” who can “read between the lines”. Hopes that Bachelet would finally challenge the Chinese government during the press conference are now gone. The visit will be under the spotlight at the next Human Rights Council session in June when we should also know whether Bachelet aims at a second mandate. The visit report could well be her last chance to challenge the Chinese government on the lack of unfettered access and to counteract Chinese propaganda.

The former Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty, Philip Alston, has already opened the path to this kind of reporting following his 2015 visit to China. While access was not unfettered, he was able to confront China on its methods and shed light on tactics of monitoring, surveillance and intimidation. But Bachelet has not shown any sign that she intends to follow that path. The possibility that Bachelet’s visit ends up just adding to the near 1,200 officials who visited Xinjiang without significantly challenging the Chinese government is real. Such a failure is not only problematic for the credibility of the High Commissioner but also touches upon the coherence of some Western countries’ human rights policies.

DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.

Author biography

Christelle Genoud is a Research Associate at King's College London, where she works on the project Academic freedom, globalised scholarship and the rise of authoritarian China. Previously, she served as Human Security Advisor at the Embassy of Switzerland in Beijing, where she was in charge of the human rights portfolio. She has worked on human rights for the United Nations, NGOs and academia, at headquarters and in the field in Colombia, Palestine and Honduras. She holds a PhD in finance and human rights from the University of Lausanne and a Master's in Asian Studies from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. Image credit: Flickr/UN Geneva.