China, Russia win seats on UN rights council; Saudis lose
UNITED NATIONS — China, Russia and Cuba won seats on the U.N.’s premier human rights body Tuesday despite opposition from activist groups over their abysmal human rights records, but another target, Saudi Arabia, lost.
Russia and Cuba were running unopposed, but China and Saudi Arabia were in a five-way race in the only contested race for seats on the Human Rights Council.
In secret-ballot voting in the 193-member U.N. General Assembly on that race, Pakistan received 169 votes, Uzbekistan 164, Nepal 150, China 139 and Saudi Arabia just 90 votes.
Despite announced reform plans by Saudi Arabia, Human Rights Watch and others strongly opposed its candidacy, saying the Middle East nation continues to target human rights defenders, dissidents and women’ s rights activists and has demonstrated little accountability for past abuses, including the killing of Washington Post columnist and Saudi critic Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul two years ago.
Under the Human Rights Council’s rules, seats are allocated to regions to ensure geographical representation.
Except for the Asia-Pacific contest, the election of 15 members to the 47member Human Rights Council was all but decided in advance because all the other regional groups had uncontested slates.
Four countries won four Africa seats: Ivory Coast, Malawi, Gabon and Senegal. Russia and Ukraine won the two East European seats. Inthe Latin American and Caribbean group, Mexico, Cuba and Bolivia won the three open seats. And Britain and France won the two seats for the Western European and others group.
“Saudi Arabia’s failure to win a seat on the Human Rights Council is a welcome reminder of the need for more competition in U.N. elections,” Human Rights Watch’s U. N. director, Louis Charbonneau, said after the results were announced.
“Had there been additional candidates, China, Cuba and Russia might have lost too,” he said. “But the addition of these undeserving countries won’t prevent the council from shining a light on abuses and speaking up for victims.”
The United States announced its withdrawal from the council in June 2018 partly because it considered the body a forum for hypocrisy about human rights, though also because Washington says the council is anti-Israel.
Early voting in Georgia:
More than 128,000 Georgians went to the polls Monday, a record for the first day of early voting in the state, according to the secretary of state’s office.
The high turnout surpassed the nearly 91,000 votes cast on the first day of early voting in 2016 and left eager voters waiting in hourslong lines across the state to cast their ballots. Election officials and advocacy groups have been pushing people to vote early, either in person or by absentee ballot, in anticipation of record turnout and concerns about coronavirus exposure.
But some would-be voters turned up Monday only to find their county offices closed for the Columbus Day holiday.
The secretary of state’s office said it received no votes Monday from 49 of the state’s 159 counties, but it wasn’t clear how many of those were closed for the holiday, spokesman Walter Jones said.
People can continue to vote early in person through Oct. 30. While voters must vote at their assigned polling place on Election Day, they can vote at any open polling place in the county where they live during early voting.
Testing in China:
Authorities in the eastern Chinese port city of Qingdao said Tuesday that they have completed coronavirus tests on more than 3 million people following the country’s first reported local outbreak in nearly two months.
The city’s health department said no new cases have been found among the more than 1.1 million test results returned thus far. The city said it had a total of 12 cases, six with symptoms and six without, since the new outbreak was first spotted over theweekend at a hospital.
The National Health Commission, however, said Tuesday that at least six new cases of the virus were found in Qingdao in the past 24 hours.
The reason for the discrepancy was not immediately clear. China’s methods for logging and reporting of virus numbers has been questioned since the pandemic first began late last year in its city of Wuhan.
Armenian-Azerbaijan conflict:
Death and injury tolls rose Tuesday as fighting between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces raged for a third week over the separatist territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, and the United States urged both sides to adhere to a Russia-brokered cease-fire reached over the weekend.
Nagorno-Karabakh military officials said 16 servicemen were killed, bringing the total-numberof dead among troops to 532 since Sept. 27, when the latest outburst of fighting flared up in the decades-old conflict.
Azerbaijan hasn’t disclosed its military losses, and the overall toll is likely to be much higher with both sides regularly claiming to have inflicted significant military casualties.
The deadly clashes marked the biggest escalation of the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, which lies in Azerbaijan but has been under control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since the end of a separatist war in 1994.
Murder of an American:
A28-year-old manwas convicted inGreece on-Tuesday of raping and murdering American scientist Suzanne Eaton, who was killed on the island of Crete while attending a conference last year.
A court in the Cretan town of Rethymno sentenced the man to life imprisonment.
Eaton, 59, disappeared on July 2, 2019, near the port city of Chania. Her body was found six days later in an abandoned underground storage site used during World War II. Relatives said Eaton had gone for a hike when shewas attacked.
The defendant, a Greek man from Crete, appeared in court wearing a bulletproof police vest. Greek media identified the man as Ioanis Paraskakis.
Kilimanjaro fire:
Tanzanian authorities say 500 volunteers have been trying to put out a fire on Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa’s tallest peak. The flames can be seen from miles away.
A Tanzania National Parks statement said Tuesday that the volunteers have managed to limit the fire’s spread. Spokesman Pascal Shelutete said the area still burning is known as Kifunika Hill. He said the cause of the fire has yet to be established.