“In the same week that thousands of deeply distressing photographs of Uyghur concentration camp detainees were leaked, the UN has refused to provide my people with answers.

As we warned, Michelle Bachelet has clearly not been provided with unfettered access, and she has not given any meaningful assessment or report on the human rights violations taking place in my homeland.

The fact that the UN human rights chief has framed the concentration camps and mass surveillance in the Uyghur region as “counter-terrorism measures” is a particularly bitter pill to swallow. I have spent the past five years translating the testimonies of those that have survived these places – they are not “vocational training centres,” they are sites of torture, sexual violence and genocide.

The UN exists to protect communities like mine; instead we have been betrayed by institutions that were built to defend us.”

Rahima Mahmut, Executive Director

Stop Uyghur Genocide