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UN Commissioner Michelle Bachelet with China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Guangzhou
Photo: Deng Hua/AP
Some of those affected have had no contact with their family members in Xinjiang for years: Representatives of the Uyghur ethnic group living abroad have warned the UN human rights commissioner Michelle Bachelet not to allow themselves to be manipulated by the local authorities when traveling to China.
"I urge them to visit victims like my family members and not the sites prepared by the Chinese government," Nursimangul Abdureshid told AFP.
The demands were made even before the Xinjiang Police Files were published by SPIEGEL and other international research partners, who provide insights into the brutal Chinese repression apparatus in the region.
According to AFP, Uyghurs abroad had been holding rallies for weeks to urge Bachelet to visit relatives detained in Xinjiang.
Jevlan Schirememet, for example, says he hasn't spoken to his mother in four years.
He hopes that Bachelet "can also ask the Chinese government about my mother's whereabouts."
According to her own statement, Abdureschid lost contact with her family in the Chinese border region years ago.
"If the UN team doesn't have full access in Xinjiang, I won't accept their so-called reports," she said.
Uyghur officials had also expressed doubts that Bachelet would receive an "unmanipulated" picture of the situation.
Bachelet undertakes a six-day journey through Xinjiang
Bachelet is expected to visit the Xinjiang cities of Urumqi and Kashgar on Tuesday and Wednesday as part of a six-day trip.
The government in Beijing is accused of detaining more than a million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in the far western region of the country in "re-education camps".
Beijing is accused, among other things, of forced sterilization and forced labour.
In addition, the authorities should raze cultural sites to the ground.
The entire region is under strict surveillance.
The research by SPIEGEL and its partners reveals the extent of the systematic suppression.
The leak of Chinese government data contains thousands of prisoner photos, but also secret speeches, training documents from the security authorities and seemingly endless lists of detainees.
The USA, Canada and the Netherlands have long classified the actions of the authorities in Xinjiang as "genocide".
China denies the allegations.
fek/AFP