UN rights chief visits China’s Xinjiang region

High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet’s six-day visit coincides with the release of a leaked report that revealed mugshots of more than 2,800 detainees and other images from inside Chinese detention camps. China has denied holding an estimated 1 million Uyghur and other Muslim minorities in the camps in northwestern Xinjiang. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said the countries pushed for the United Nations fact-finding mission with a “presumption of guilt.” Bachelet’s trip marks the first by a UN high commissioner to China since 2005. Both China and the United Nations barred foreign media from joining the visit.

What do the images show? They provide evidence of the mass incarceration of young and old. One photo shows a prisoner shackled to a chair. In another, guards tower over a row of men sitting side-by-side on a bench with their hands on their knees, their heads turned to watch a Chinese official giving a speech on TV. As guards patrol, they peer down through low windows and grates into cells that appear sunken beneath the ground. “It’s one thing to know it, and another thing to see it,” Adrian Zenz, the researcher who obtained the classified files, told the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

Dig deeper: Read Esther Eaton’s report on Uyghurs sharing their stories in the United States.