Dr Yang Jianli Assails China’s Human Rights Record on the Council
On Thursday, May 19, Initiatives for China in coalition with 4 other human rights groups presented an evaluation report of new candidate countries being considered for membership on the United Nations Human Rights Council. Each candidate country is already a full voting member of the United Nations General Assembly. The report evaluated each candidate’s record of domestic human rights protections and its U.N. voting record based on criteria for UN Human Rights Council membership established by UN General Assembly Resolution 60/251 (2006) *1.
The Report’s analysis found that only 10 out of 17 new candidate countries were qualified. 3 candidates had extremely poor records and were not qualified at all *2, while 4 had questionable records and fell somewhere in between *3.
The Evaluation Report was released on May 19, one day before the U.N. was set to vote on 15 new members of the Human Rights Council. Representatives of the coalition gathered at U.N. headquarters in New York to offer their perspectives and speak compellingly of the need for current and future member states to adhere to the principles, values and regulations of the Council. Initiatives for China attended the proceedings and urged the U.N. not to elect unqualified candidates onto the Council. Dr Yang Jianli, President & Founder of Initiatives for China, spoke out about China and its appalling human rights record which continues to worsen daily despite its own seat on the Council. “With regard to human rights,” he said, China’s “activities, both domestic and international, [are] so outside the norm of civilized nations that its membership in the United Nations Human Rights Council defies logic and reason.” He noted that since China’s election to the UNHRC in 2009, the government has jailed & sentenced its only Nobel Peace Prize Laureate as well as numerous other leading intellectuals and democracy activists, continued its repression of ethnic and religious minorities, sought to increase censorship and control of news media and the internet, and imposed a series of harsh and violent crackdowns on suspected participants of Jasmine Revolution protests. “Is this the type of example we want to set on the Human Rights Council?” he asked. “Certainly, a country that treats its own people harshly cannot be relied on to treat any other country’s people with compassion.”
On June 3, Initiatives for China will present an open letter to U.N. Secretary General Ban-ki Moon. The letter examines the ongoing severity of the Chinese government’s human rights violations against its own citizens and reminds the Secretary General that this is completely inconsistent with the United Nations mandate as a humanitarian organization. To date, the letter contains hundreds of signatures and is available for review and additional signatures through June 2, 2011. Please sign on and add your signature – sign on to give a voice to those whose voices are silenced inside China.
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*1 According to UNGA Resolution 60/251, which established the UN Human Rights Council in 2006, General Assembly members are obliged to elect states to the Council by “tak*ing+ into account the candidates’ contribution to the promotion and protection of human rights and their voluntary pledges and commitments made thereto.” The resolution also provides that consideration ought to be given to whether the candidate can meet the obligations of Council membership, which include (a) “to uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights” and (b) to “fully cooperate with the Council.”
*2 Congo, Nicaragua, Kuwait
*3 Burkina Faso, India, Indonesia, Philippines