China assures that it has nothing to "hide" from Bachelet in Xinjiang

MADRID, 24 May. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Chinese authorities have defended this Tuesday that they have nothing to "hide" from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, who is visiting the country and plans to travel to the Xinjiang region, in the northwest.

"It is impossible to imitate a stable and peaceful situation in Xinjiang, we don't need to hide anything," said the region's government spokesman, Xu Guixiang, who stressed that the Asian giant is an "open, sincere and transparent" country.

Thus, it has guaranteed that "a genocide has never occurred" and has ruled out the existence of concentration camps in which to intern the Uyghur Muslim ethnic minority, as international organizations have denounced.

On Monday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with Bachelet and said he was confident that the visit would help dispel "lies and rumors about the human rights situation in China," according to information from the CGTN television network. . Bachelet is in the country for a visit that will last until May 28 and in which he plans to meet with senior officials and representatives of civil society.

In this regard, he stressed that the country "gives priority to the right to subsistence" and recalled that the country feeds "almost a fifth of the global population." In addition, he has emphasized that the country has the largest social security system in the world.

The trip to Xinjiang is one of Bachelet's priorities, given that the region is a recurring source of criticism against the Chinese government in the international arena. In late August 2018, the UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination reported that up to a million ethnic Uighurs could be held in "re-education camps" in Xinjiang.