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China  / East Asia  / United Nations
Michelle Bachelet’s Spectacular Fall From Grace
Posted On August 31, 2022
Michelle Bachelet came to the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights with an impressive political and personal résumé. Her father, Chilean Air Force Gen. Alberto Bachelet, was arrested by the notorious dictator Augusto Pinochet, and was tortured and died behind bars for opposing the coup that brought an end to the presidency of Salvador Allende. Bachelet and her mother were also arrested when she was 23, and endured torture herself at the hands of the regime. Returning from exile, she rose to the top of the Socialist Party in Chile and positioned herself as a key member of a coalition that governed the country for almost two decades after the end of the Pinochet era.
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China  / East Asia  / Hong Kong  / United Nations
China: Failed UN Visit Comes at Heavy Cost
June 7, 2022

For UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet, a visit to China has been in the works for years, and with it comes high stakes. Responding to reports that in the western Chinese province of Xinjiang, more than one million Uyghur Muslims had been subject to torture as well as imprisoned in so-called re-education camps, the United Nations requested direct access to Chinese facilities as early as 2018. Despite the fact that information has been slow to trickle out of authoritarian China due to strict control over national media, international researchers and human rights activists gathered convincing evidence, calling out the deplorable conditions facing the Uyghur Muslim population, from prolonged detainment, mass surveillance, forced sterilization, to the accusation of cultural genocide. A trove of data recently obtained by hackers includes 2,800 photographs, hundreds of spreadsheets, and speeches that link Chinese President Xi Jinping directly with abusive policies aimed at the Uyghur population.


China  / East Asia  / Hong Kong  / Southeast Asia
Imperial Overstretch: Has Xi Jinping’s China Gone Too Far?
June 3, 2022

If Deng Xiaoping were alive today, he would neither be pleased nor surprised. The pro-market reforms that launched China into a global power are being undone under Xi Jinping, curtailing growth for the sake of concentrating political power, spending far too much political capital on crushing dissent and punishing the last vestiges of democratic ambitions, and overextending China militarily in the Indo-Pacific. Deng’s critical reforms were based on two fundamental beliefs, first, that communism in China could be saved by creating a vibrant economy and improving people’s lives, and second, without the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in charge, China would descend into chaos. When Wei Jingsheng went on trial in 1979 on charges of being a counter-revolutionary, the first sign was visible that the gaps between economic and political reform and the need for a Fifth Modernization, democracy, would not and could not be resolved.


Central Asia  / China  / Pakistan
The silence on Uighurs
July 19, 2021

During a recent interview with Axios, an American news organisation, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan deflected questions and refused to acknowledge widespread repression and human rights abuses of the minority Uighur Muslims in the Xinjiang region of Western China. Human rights groups have long accused Chinese authorities of detaining, torturing, and forcibly sterilising more than a million Uighurs being held in camps across the region.