During her six-day trip that began on Monday, UN HighCommissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet will visit China"s westernXinjiang region, where her office said last year it believes mostly Muslimethnic Uyghurs have been unlawfully detained, mistreated and forced to work.
The United States has labeled their treatment"genocide", but Beijing denies all abuses.
"We have no expectation that the PRC (People"sRepublic of China) will grant the necessary access required to conduct acomplete, unmanipulated assessment of the human rights environment inXinjiang," State Department spokesman Ned Price told a regular newsbriefing.
"We think it was a mistake to agree to a visitunder the circumstances," Price said, adding that Bachelet would not beable to obtain a full picture "of the atrocities, the crimes againsthumanity, and genocide" in the region.
Asked if China"s leader Xi Jinping was responsible forthe abuses, Price said it would be "hard for us to imagine" that thesenior-most levels of the Chinese government were not aware.
He added that media reports on Tuesday of thousands ofleaked photos and documents from public security bureaus in two Xinjiangcounties add to an "already damning body of evidence" of abusesthere.
Bachelet has called for unfettered access in Xinjiang,but China"s foreign ministry has said her visit will be conducted in a"closed loop", referring to a way of isolating people within a"bubble" to prevent the COVID-19 virus from potentially spreading.
China initially denied the existence of any detentioncamps, but then later admitted it had set up "vocational trainingcenters" necessary to curb what it said was terrorism, separatism andreligious radicalism in Xinjiang.
