China, Russia and Pakistan set to join UN human rights council
- 4 years ago
China, Russia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Nepal and Uzbekistan are among the candidates vying for four seats on the UN human rights council on Tuesday.
If the countries get elected, the move is bound to leave human right campaigners in the countries aghast and they might plead to European Union States as a last resort.
"The situation is equivalent of allowing five convicted arsonists to join the fire brigade," said NGO UN Watch.
With the seats grouped into five regions, the UN has 15 three-year term vacancies. However, due to secretive back room deals, the only regional group in which the seats are being contested are in the Pacific and Asia.
A country gets defeated if it gets the votes of less than 97 countries in a secret ballot at the UN general assembly in New York.
A briefing was organised by UN Watch before the voting took place. Human right campaigners of the candidates spoke out against the atrocities they have been subjected to.
“China was involved in the annihilation of political freedom in Hong Kong. By any standards China has grossly abused the UN human rights founding principles," said Yang Jianli, the president of Citizen Power Initiatives for China and a former political prisoner.
"If this were an election for a UN human rights abusers council, it would be more than proper to vote for China, since it leads the world in violating human rights.”
"Regimes in Libya, Sudan and in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had in the past been elected to the council," said Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian dissident who was twice poisoned.
“Yet we still find it astonishing that Russia is considered a legitimate candidate let alone that it is likely to be elected,” he said.
He also pointed out that “It has … been confirmed … that [the Russian opposition leader] Alexei Navalny has been poisoned by a highly controlled military grade nerve agent produced by the Russian state that has been used for years by the Russian security services, leaving no doubt who was behind this attack.”
US President Donald Trump had withdrawn from the council two years ago. Campaigners believe that it has strengthened the authoritarian view that human rights should be measured not only on the criteria on economics but also on the grounds of personal freedom.
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