It’s not the Accused, It’s the Accuser
The United Nations Human Rights Council holds regular sessions, the 49th is underway right now[1]. There are several events scheduled including thematic areas of concern such as social and civil rights as well as torture and religious freedom and some specific countries of concern will be discussed.
Noticeable by their absence from this list is China; the one country which hits the headlines almost daily due to allegations made mostly by people who’ve never been there and often from exiles who have, shall we say, “a colourful” past involving criminal activity, financial mismanagement or dubious immigration status.
China has long denied any human rights abuses and has been open to visits from the Human Rights Council, something which is now, after years of negotiations set to take place in May this year with a visit from Michelle Bachelet, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights no less.
So, if the United Nations is visiting soon and China has agreed to “unfettered access” which was the stumbling block of previous negotiations, it seems there’s not much to hide there.
Skeptics might say it’s because China has fixed all the problems but if there were problems, surely a skilled investigator, as Ms. Bachelet’s must be, will ask the right questions of the right people to find out.
And, if such abuses were happening, wouldn’t there be some refugees?
There are some aspects to this that most people don’t realise — one is that the United Nations High Commission for Refugees has an office in Beijing and a sub office in Hong Kong. That office has no information whatsoever on its website about Xinjiang or Uyghurs and a search of Muslims reveals four pages of news reports all related to other countries, not one related to China[2].
What’s more, and here’s something that might surprise most people; the United States is not a member of the UN Human Rights Council, their Ambassador under President Trump, Nikki Haley pulled out in 2018 and the Biden administration have not rejoined. The US claimed the Council is a “a group of anti-American and anti-Israeli countries who treat their own citizens like trash”[3]. What the other countries in the Council were, and still are doing, is asking the US to consider its own human rights abuses: incarceration, particularly of ethnic minorities and people of colour; slave labour; the treatment of refugees on Southern borders and its own poverty stricken 11% population[4]. The Council is also critical of Israel’s activities in Palestine which has US support.
China however, is an active member of the Council and very concerned about allegations of human rights abuses. China’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations sponsored an online and offline event in Jinan University with the China Society for Human Rights Studies as well as others including Xinjiang academics and university students who met in a side event to provide information back to the 49th Session of the HRC.
What has been reported and will become a matter of record in the United Nations is that, according to Zuliyati Simayi, the vice-president of Xinjiang University, a Uyghur and holder of a PhD from Peking University[5], “The rights and interests of all ethnic groups are fully respected and safeguarded in Xinjiang,” It was also recorded that the per capita disposable income of the region has increased by 9.4% and that all residents of the region, no matter what ethnicity, have been pulled out of the extreme poverty which has plagued the region for generations. Something else Zuliyati Simayi reported and good news for the residents of Southern Xinjiang, is that the people there can receive 15 years of free education and, in the case of financial hardship, financial support for students.
Finally, we’re starting to see the end of these allegations and, as is often the case where there are unproven allegations, it’s not the accused who’s responsible for the crime: it’s the accuser.
[1] https://gchragd.org/human-rights-council-49th-session/#:~:text=The%20forty-ninth%20session%20of%20the%20UN%20Human%20Rights,Geneva%20from%2028%20February%20to%201%20April%202022.
[2] https://www.unhcr.org/hk/en/page/4?s=Muslim
[3] https://www.pacificpundit.com/2018/06/19/nikki-haley-pulls-out-of-un-human-rights-council/
[4] https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2021/demo/p60-273.html
[5] http://www.china.org.cn/business/2014-06/27/content_32792939.htm
