Thread by @williamnee

My new @Diplomat_APAC op-ed is now out!

At Geneva next week, the Chinese government will try to convince a U.N. committee that it is a paragon of economic, social, and cultural rights.

A quick thread...

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thediplomat.com/2023/02/how-ch… #China

On February 15-16, Beijing will seek to defend its compliance with the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights at a review by the U.N. Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (#CESCR).

This is the first such review since 2014.

And while there certainly has been some progress in the past nine years, the Chinese party-state will seek to present a happy, alternative reality that denies many indisputable facts.

In a submission ahead of the review, the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) pointed out many of Beijing’s misrepresentations and half-truths to the Committee.

nchrd.org/2023/02/chrd-r…

Most notably, while the U.N. has long recognized the key role of human rights defenders in realizing human rights, the Chinese government has instead created a totally hostile environment for them.

Beijing has cracked down on feminists, imprisoned labor rights organizers, and shut down #LGBTQ+ student groups.

Citizen journalists who were documenting information about housing, land, health, and other rights are suffering in prison.

https://twitter.com/CHRDnet/status/1623719122663260160?s=20&t=w8SY-Tx1OOsFFolmNcRi5w

Take #HuangXueqin, a former journalist and feminist. While Beijing tries to convince the international community that it cares about women’s rights, it has held this leader of China’s #MeToo movement in incommunicado detention since September 2021.

nchrd.org/2022/03/huang-…黄雪琴/

Huang was detained with her friend, labor rights advocate #WangJianbing

While China – nominally a socialist state – insists to the world that it cares about labor rights, Wang and Huang are facing the charge of “inciting subversion of state power”

nchrd.org/2022/06/wang-j…王建兵/

Or take the case of Zhang Zhan. a citizen journalist who reported on the early outbreak of #COVID from Wuhan.

She gave the international community access to information about the dire implications of COVID while the government engaged in strict censorship
nchrd.org/2020/09/zhang-…

Zhang urged the Chinese government to protect health rights, but she is serving a four-year prison sentence in 2020 on the charge of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”

Zhang is believed to be just 41 kilograms (90 pounds) in prison

dw.com/en/china-zhang… @WilliamYang120

Even worse, lawyers defending clients whose work involves economic, social, and cultural rights have faced a grim situation.

Starting on July 9, 2015, the Chinese government launched an unprecedented nationwide crackdown on human rights lawyers.

But what is lesser known is that the Chinese government has been stealthily going after human rights lawyers ever since.

In total, China’s government has, without any legitimate basis, forced at least 46 lawyers out of legal practice since 2015.

And yet, the government claimed that there is “no so-called intimidation of human rights lawyers.” 🧐

How can Beijing get away with such an assertion in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary?

Enter the GONGOs.

For the upcoming CESCR review, at least 23 GONGOs or other entities tied to the party-state submitted reports to the Committee as “civil society organizations” – compared with just four such submissions for the 2014 CESCR review.

GONGOs are, paradoxically, “government-organized NGOs.” They are closely affiliated with the Chinese party-state but appear, on the surface, to be NGOs.

Like fake Luis Vuitton bags at a bootleg market, these fake NGOs flood the market and diminish the value of the real products.

Committee members waste valuable time reading their reports, listening to their interventions, and trying to decipher which NGOs are real or fake.

Not only does the Chinese government have multiple opportunities to bombard the CESCR with its “discourse power” using its army of GONGOs, but it also benefits from a Trojan Horse inside: a veteran Chinese diplomat is actually a Committee member.

Harassment, intimidation, and the threat of reprisals are all common tactics used to dissuade Chinese citizens from interacting with U.N. bodies.

The most egregious case was that of #CaoShunli.

Chinese police detained Cao in September 2013 at Beijing Capital International Airport in an effort to prevent her from traveling to Geneva.

She was subsequently denied adequate medical treatment and release on medical bail despite her worsening health, which culminated in her death in police custody in March 2014.

nytimes.com/2014/03/15/wor…

There is a clear message from the government to anyone who might dare to disagree with its reports to the CESCR or its claims of vast human rights progress more generally: “Engage at your peril.”

Like many of the Chinese government’s actions, intimidation and reprisals blatantly challenge almost all of the core principles articulated in the U.N. Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year.

https://twitter.com/MaryLawlorhrds/status/1620794435360665602?s=20&t=w8SY-Tx1OOsFFolmNcRi5w

@MaryLawlorhrds

Why would the Chinese gov. go to such lengths to limit civil society’s interaction with the UN?

The answer is that #XiJinping has repeatedly envisioned an international system with the U.N. “at its core.”

To put it simply: what the U.N. says matters a lot to the 🇨🇳 government

This is why the events taking place this week in Geneva will matter.

The Committee should stand firm in insisting that no government could possibly guarantee the protection of human rights effectively without fully recognizing the vital role of civil society organizations and human rights defenders in realizing human rights.

FIN