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Comment by xanthor | Hacker News Reader

I agree it was reported this way, but do we have evidence it was actually prepared and published by her at that time? The report conspicuously does not mention the viewpoint and concerns of the High Commissioner as other OHCHR reports do nor does it reference Bachelet's findings from her May 2021 visit to Xinjiang.

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So you don't have any evidence it was published the next day? You just made that up out of whole cloth?

The internet archive lists the first time they archived the document as August 31 22:23 GMT, which was August 31 23:23 in Geneva. That matches the reporting from NYT and Guardian from the next morning. Both of those reports are also available on the internet archive.

https://web.archive.org/web/20220701000000*/https://www.ohch...

Geneva was in UTC+2 (CEST) on August 31. So will you admit I am correct and you got sanctimonious for no reason?

Yep missed that. The internet archive did indeed fist scrape that document 23 minutes after midnight Geneva time.

However it is unlikely that the internet archive web scraper would have picked up a relatively obscure document within 23 minutes of its release.

The NYT and Gaurdian articles published that morning (verified by the internet archive) said that the article was published 11 minutes before midnight Geneva time. That lines up with the internet archive scraping it about 30 minutes later.

So unless they were both wrong or in on it, it was released before midnight Geneva time.

What evidence do you have to support that the UN was lying, and that the NYT and the Guardian were wrong about the time?

The Internet Archive recorded an error page for that URL just four minutes prior. So we know that the document was not available before September 1, after Bachelet's term had ended.

Why would the internet archive even be aware of the existence of that url unless someone had already added it to the sitemap?

Someone could have manually tried to archive it on September 1.

I also would like to know where the confusion came from the publication date. What is that based on?

The fact that Geneva was in UTC+2 (CEST) at the time the report was published. So what I said was correct.

So your evidence is that the internet archive didn’t scrape the document until 23 minutes after midnight? And the most likely explanation isn’t that it took the IA scraper a few minutes to pick it up? The most likely explanation is that the NYT and the Guardian were wrong or lying and that the UN was lying?

Did you even know about the time on the internet archive before I brought it up? You said “within hours” so I assume you didn’t? Where did you hear that it as published on September 1st?

You chose the Internet Archive as authoritative evidence, not me. Your back-pedaling "most likely explanation" is again disproven by your own source as the Internet Archive recorded an error page for that URL just four minutes prior. So we know that the document was not available before September 1, after Bachelet's term had ended.

Where has the UN asserted that Bachelet prepared this report? Please share if you are aware of any such assertion.

Again, the report does not make any reference to the High Commissioner's inquiries as other reports do. Your "most likely explanation" fails to account for this.

Yes, media outlets lie and make errors all the time. Sorry to be the one to break this to you.

Bachelet made numerous public statements in the weeks leading up to the release that she was gonna to release a report before she left.

A report from as released.

https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/08/un-human-rig...

The UN press release is dated 8/31 Geneva time. The document is as well.

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/outgoing-un-human-rights...

Numerous newspapers and NGOs who received the press release have stated that it was released on her last day in office. Many of them complained that by doing this she was attempting to avoid the fallout.

Bachelet made no statements even hinting that it wasn’t the report she prepared.

If she was worried that someone would release a report once she left, she could have released her version before she left to prevent that.

Reuters quotes the Chinese Ambassador thusly “If I read her mind correctly, I don't think she's on board with the report and that's why it was released in the last minute,"

Notice he made no mention of “the report was backdated”. He says “last minute”.

I can find no evidence of any official Chinese position that the report was backdated. Surely the Chinese government would have complained if this had taken place.

This whole thing is just some nonsense internet speculation with zero evidence that proposes a version of the facts that not even the Chinese government agrees with.

Her statements reflect uncertainty on whether the report would be published as there was intense political pressure in both directions.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/8/25/un-rights-chief-und...

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