The United States criticizes the UN Secretary-General for failing to protect the Uyghur community in Xinjiang

*Paromita Das
The US has slammed UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet for failing to advocate for Xinjiang’s Uyghur community.

Bachelet will visit the contentious Chinese region from May 23 to 28, in what will be the first UN High Commissioner for Human Rights trip there since 2005. The US State Department criticized Bachelet for “silence” in the face of atrocities in China’s western Xinjiang region, saying it has “no expectation that the PRC (People’s Republic of China) will grant the necessary access required to conduct a complete, unmanipulated assessment of the human rights environment in Xinjiang.”
“We’re deeply concerned about the upcoming visit,” said US State Department spokesman Ned Price, adding that “despite frequent assurances from Bachelet’s office that the report would be released in short order, it remains unavailable to us.”
“The High Commissioner’s continued silence in the face of undeniable evidence of atrocities in Xinjiang and other human rights violations and abuses throughout the PRC is deeply concerning,” he said, “especially given that she is and should be the leading… voice on human rights.”

Human Rights Watch issued a similar statement, expressing concern that the Chinese Communist Party will “manipulate the visit as a public relations stunt.”

Bachelet’s “friendly visit defies credibility that the Chinese government will allow the high commissioner to see anything they don’t want her to see, or allow human rights defenders, victims, and their families to speak to her safely, unsupervised, and without fear of reprisal,” said Sophie Richardson, China director of Human Rights Watch.

According to Bachelet’s office, she will meet “a number of high-level officials at the national and local levels,” as well as “deliver a lecture to students at Guangzhou University.”

When Bachelet took office in 2018, she demanded “meaningful and unfettered” access to far-western Xinjiang, claiming that at least one million people, mostly Muslims, had been imprisoned in “re-education camps” in an attempt to forcibly integrate them into China’s Han majority.

China has vehemently denied Western allegations of forced labor and genocide against Uyghurs, dubbing them the “lie of the century.”Pegasus case | The Supreme Court extends the deadline for submitting the probe report, and 29 mobile phones are being tested for spyware

In the Pegasus spyware case, the Supreme Court granted the technical committee an extension of time to complete its report by June 20 on May 20.

The committee, led by former Supreme Court Justice R.V. Raveendran, informed the court that at least 29 mobile devices containing suspected malware had been received and are being examined.
Some of the petitioners’ statements have been recorded. The committee is also contacting individuals and agencies for feedback, and it expects to receive its report, as well as Justice Raveendran’s recommendations on privacy and cyber security, by the end of May.

A Special Bench led by Chief Justice of India N.V. Ramana directed the technical committee to submit its findings in the form of a report within four weeks, and urged Justice Raveendran to submit the final report with legal recommendations as soon as possible.
The next hearing has been set for July by the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court was looking into allegations that the government was spying on citizens using Pegasus, an Israeli military-grade software.

According to news reports on the controversy, Pegasus was used to target a diverse range of people, including journalists, activists, parliamentarians, government officials, lawyers, and even court staffers.

The court charged the technical committee with “enquiring, investigating, and determining” whether the “Pegasus suite of spyware was used on phones or other devices of Indian citizens to access stored data, eavesdrop on conversations, intercept information, and/or for any other purpose.”
Other questions for the committee included whether Pegasus was used by the Center, the State, or any of their agencies against their own citizens, and, if so, whether it was authorised and under what law or procedure.

The Supreme Court had requested that the committee look into the first public signs of the alleged use of spyware years ago. The court had asked the committee to investigate the government’s actions “after reports were published in 2019 about hacking of WhatsApp accounts of Indian citizens using the Pegasus suite of spyware.”
The court also requested that the committee use its expertise to put existing surveillance laws and procedures to the test to determine how much they valued and protected citizens’ privacy.