The Chinese Communist Party reacted angrily this week to a pledge from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to investigate its treatment of the Uighur people.

Speaking last Friday, Bachelet said that the situation in Xinjiang was one of concern, and that her office is attempting to negotiate access to the province. China wasn’t happy with her words.

Snapping back against Bachelet on Tuesday, China’s delegate to the Human Rights Council complained that she had made “unsubstantiated accusations against China based on misinformation and political pressure.” The delegate claimed that “the door to Xinjiang is always open… but the aim of the visit [should be] to provide exchanges and cooperation rather than… so-called investigation….”

Even for the Communists, who live to lie and love doing so, this is pretty absurd stuff.

When it comes to legitimating Bachelet’s stated concerns, the evidence is abundant. In recent years, more than two million Uighurs have been forced into a vast network of concentration camps in Xinjiang. Once there, they have been pressured into abandoning their sacred cultural and religious values, and used for forced slave-like labor and sex slavery. The United States and the Canadian parliament have rightly recognized what is happening in Xinjiang constitutes a genocide.

What’s shocking about Bachelet’s comments is not what she actually said, but rather that it has taken her this long to speak out!

Still, the Communist delegate’s reaction to Bachelet is telling. His alarmed complaint evinces Beijing’s belief that the UN might be coming out from under its thumb. That matters because Xi and his minions have believed that by treating UN officials well and providing significant sums to the UN’s various projects, they could ensure the UN stayed silent on difficult issues. Issues, that is, such as Xi’s Uighur genocide, his imperial thievery of international waters in the South China Sea, his repression on the mainland, and his war on Hong Kong human rights. Xi would never admit it, but he knows that the international community is firmly opposed to his actions in each of these areas. In turn, he has banked on paying off international organizations like the UN and World Health Organization so that they don’t challenge him on these difficult issues.

Bachelet has now disrupted that understanding and Beijing doesn’t quite know how to respond.

We see this confusion in the utterly unoriginal response Xi’s delegate gave to the Human Rights Council. Declaring that Bachelet had been distracted by “misinformation and political pressure,” and asserting that “Xinjiang is always open,” the delegate offered only proof of Beijing’s penchant for arrogant deception.

But the lies behind the arrogance are easily disproved with two words. BBC News.

In recent months, BBC News has published a number of investigative reports into the dystopia that is the Uighur concentration camp network. With skilled journalism and personal courage, BBC reporters have illuminated the genocide that Xi’s regime is conducting against its own people. And contrary to their claim that “Xinjiang is always open,” the Communists have responded to the BBC’s reporting by banning the news outlet from China. Only the Communists could claim with a straight face that Xinjiang is open to visitors and journalists, while just a few weeks ago proving the exact opposite to be true! The Communists do not seem to have realized that this expulsion has only lent further credibility to the BBC’s reporting.

The truth of the matter is that Beijing only tolerates visitors to Xinjiang who are either bought and paid for with Communist gold, or coerced into selling a false narrative as to what is actually happening in the camps. But Bachelet’s words, limited as they are, have clearly shaken Beijing. Let’s hope the UN official follows through with a public demand for immediate access to Xinjiang.

(Tom Rogan, Washington Examiner foreign policy writer)

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