"Diplomats and human rights advocates are stepping up pressure on the United Nations to act over #China’s treatment of the #Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim ethnic groups, ...aljazeera.com/news/2022/9/20…
... as Beijing tries to head off further scrutiny of what is happening in the northwestern region of #Xinjiang."
“Inaction is no longer possible,” Fernand de Varennes, the UN’s special rapporteur on minority rights, said at the forum sponsored by the Atlantic Council and Human Rights Watch. “If we allow this to go unpunished, what kind of message is being propagated?”
Jeffrey Prescott, a deputy US ambassador to the UN, suggested the integrity of the institution was at stake in its response to China.
“How these atrocities are addressed goes ultimately to the credibility of that system, to the credibility of our international system itself."
“How these atrocities are addressed goes ultimately to the credibility of that system, to the credibility of our international system itself."
“It’s deeply disheartening to see a country that has been so central to the creation of the modern UN system, and enjoys its status as a permanent member of the Security Council, so profoundly violating its commitments.”
“China sees the UN as an important forum that it can use to further its strategic interests and goals, and to reform the global order,” said Helena Legarda from the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin.
@KenRoth said Chinese President Xi Jinping is trying to redefine what human rights are, in part by casting economic development as a key criterion.
China, Roth said, “more than any government in the past, is trying to undermine the UN human rights system” — by pressuring UN officials, retaliating against witnesses and trying to bribe governments.
“One of their top priorities right now, maybe after Taiwan, is to avoid condemnation by the Human Rights Council,” Roth said. Beijing claims the self-governing island of Taiwan as its own and has not ruled out the use of force to take control of the territory.
@RayhanAsat urged the world to insist that action be taken, not just against China but companies that profit from its abuses.
“We should not let the Chinese government off the hook by normalising what the state did, because at the end of the day, this is state violence.”
“We should not let the Chinese government off the hook by normalising what the state did, because at the end of the day, this is state violence.”
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