Activists denounce crackdown on rights
GENEVA: China is systematically undermining international human rights groups in a bid to silence critics of its crackdown on such rights at home, a watchdog organisation said on Tuesday.
The group also faulted the United Nations for failing to prevent the effort, and at times being complicit in it.
“China’s crackdown on human rights activists is the most severe since the Tiananmen Square democracy movement 25 years ago,” Kenneth Roth, the director of the agency, Human Rights Watch, said in Geneva on Tuesday at the introduction of a report that he described as an international “wake-up call”.
“What’s less appreciated is the lengths to which China goes to prevent criticism of that record of oppression by people outside China, particularly those at the United Nations.
“The stakes are not simply human rights for the one-sixth of the world’s population who live in China but also the survival and effectiveness of the UN human rights system for everyone around the globe.”
The report highlights China’s measures to prevent activists from leaving the country to attend meetings at the United Nations, its harassment of those who do manage to attend and the risk of reprisals when they return or if they interact with UN investigators inside or outside of China.
The report also noted barriers placed by Chinese officials to visits by UN human rights officials. Beijing has not allowed a visit by the agency’s high commissioner for human rights since 2005, and continues to delay 15 requests for visits by special rapporteurs working on political and civil rights issues.
China allowed visits by four rapporteurs since 2005 on issues such as poverty, debt and the status of women. But it carefully choreographed those visits, and contacts not sanctioned by the state posed risks to those involved. The United Nations has expressed concern that the detention of Jiang Tianyong, a prominent human rights lawyer, resulted from a 2016 meeting in Beijing with the UN special rapporteur on poverty, Philip Alston. Mr Jiang disappeared for several months and was later charged with subversion.
The report also documents China’s diplomacy in the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, where the country aligns with an informal collection of states, including Algeria, Cuba, Egypt and Venezuela, that discreetly coordinate their positions to deflect scrutiny of their records and consistently challenge the council’s ability to look into accusations of abuse in other states without their consent.
“It’s becoming a mutual defence society among dictators in which everybody understands the need to deflect criticism of you today because they may criticise us tomorrow,” Mr Roth said. “And China is an active, willing partner in that effort.”
China has withheld information requested by UN bodies that monitor issues such as torture, treatment of the disabled and children’s rights, and has tried to stop the filming and online posting of their proceedings, Human Rights Watch said.