UN chief Antonio Guterres raised ‘situation in Xinjiang’ in talks with Xi Jinping

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres raised the plight of an estimated 1 million Uygurs incarcerated in re-education camps in China during a recent meeting with the country’s president, Xi Jinping, the United Nations said on Monday.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the UN chief told the Chinese leader that “human rights must be fully respected in the fight against terrorism and in the prevention of violent extremism”.

Criticism has grown over China’s internment of Uygurs as well as members of other predominantly Muslim ethnic groups – and Guterres has been criticised by human rights groups and some governments for his behind-the-scenes approach and failure to address their plight publicly.

Last week, Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth wrote a harsh op-ed in The Washington Post saying halfway through his five-year term Guterres “is becoming defined by his silence on human rights – even as serious rights abuses proliferate” including against the Uygurs.

Roth said numerous governments had voiced concerns about China’s detention of Uygurs “for forced indoctrination”, but “Guterres has not said a word about it in public. Instead, he praises China’s development prowess and rolls out the red carpet for President Xi Jinping.”

Dujarric had been pressed about whether the secretary general would raise the Uygur issue – and whether he did raise it – with Xi during his trip to Beijing from April 25 to 27 to attend a forum on China’s multibillion-dollar belt and road infrastructure-building initiative.

For the first time, the UN spokesman confirmed on Monday that Guterres discussed “the situation in Xinjiang” – where the sweeping crackdown against the Uygurs has taken place – with Xi, adding that “this follows several other contacts in the recent past on this same issue that he’s had with Chinese authorities”.

Dujarric called Guterres’ discussions with Xi “very cordial” and “frank”.

“The secretary general’s position on this has always been the same in private as it is in public, and those are based on three indivisible principles,” he said.

They are respect for China’s unity and territorial integrity, condemnation of terrorist attacks, “and that human rights must be fully respected in the fight against terrorism and in the prevention of violent extremism”, Dujarric said. “Each community must feel that its identity is respected and that it fully belongs to the nation as a whole.”

He said Guterres told the Chinese “that he fully stands by the initiatives” of UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet, who has been trying to send a fact-finding mission to Xinjiang since December. She complained last month that she still has not received approval from Beijing.

Asked whether Guterres was satisfied with his response from the Chinese, Dujarric said “this is part of a dialogue that the secretary general has had with Chinese authorities in the past and that he will continue to have”.