China Retaliates Against UN Engagers, Attempts To Silence Critics: Reports

According to a report by Sophie Richardson, a human rights expert on China, Voice of America has highlighted that China is among the countries that retaliate against individuals who engage with the United Nations and aggressively attempts to silence its critics.

“These [UN] mechanisms are some of the only ones available to people inside China, at least on paper, to provide any modicum of redress or justice for the human rights abuses either they’ve endured or the communities they work with have endured,” Richardson said.

“That’s why you see the Chinese government go to extraordinary lengths to silence people who are simply trying to take reports to some of these human rights experts or bodies,” he added. Richardson is a former China director at Human Rights Watch, and is currently a visiting scholar at Stanford University. The annual report highlights government retaliation against people for engaging with the UN.

“In my perfect world, governments that get referenced in these reprisals reports shouldn’t be members of the Human Rights Council,” said Richardson, who is based in Washington. China is a current member of the council in Geneva. A major incident included in the report’s China section is harassment against two members of the international legal team supporting Jimmy Lai, a pro-democracy publisher, VOA reported. Lai is on trial in Hong Kong on national security charges that are widely viewed as ‘politically motivated.’ The 76-year-old is in prison following convictions in other cases that supporters also view as “sham cases.” According to the report, the members of Lai’s legal team have faced death and rape threats, as well as attempts by unknown sources to hack their email and bank accounts. Sebastien Lai thanked the UN for shedding light on his father’s case.

“These intimidation tactics will not succeed. I will not rest until my father is freed,” he said in a statement. Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC, a barrister leading Jimmy’s international legal team, also condemned the attacks, as reported by the VOA.

The reprisals “are personally unpleasant and distressing,” Gallagher said in a statement. “But they are also an attack on the legal profession and on the international human rights system.” The reprisals make it harder for Jimmy Lai to use UN mechanisms to achieve justice in his case, he further said. Hong Kong’s government has tried to argue that the legal team interfered in Hong Kong’s judicial process by bringing his case to UN human rights mechanisms, the report added. “It’s just so nakedly in tension with its obligations under international law,” Richardson said.

Earlier this week, Lai’s international legal team submitted an urgent appeal to the UN special rapporteur on torture. The appeal raised several concerns, including that the elderly publisher has been in solitary confinement since late 2020 and that the British national has been denied access to independent medical care, according to a statement from his legal team, as reported by VOA. Lai’s trial began in December 2023. It was initially expected to last around 80 days but now is expected to resume in November.

Several press freedom groups have called the trial a sham, and the US and British governments have called for his immediate release. However, Hong Kong officials, have claimed he will receive a fair trial. Other incidents cited in the UN report include the case of Cao Shunli, a Beijing-based human rights defender who was arrested following an attempt to engage in a universal periodic review of China’s human rights record at the Human Rights Council. Cao died in custody in 2014. Another case is that of the Beijing-based activists, Li Wenzu and Wang Quanzhang, who are married. The couple have faced significant retaliation, including police surveillance and evictions, and their son is unable to enrol in school due to pressure from state authorities, the report said. “If one reads these cases, you get a sense of what risks, what unbelievable risks people are taking to do this kind of work,” Richardson said.

The report doesn’t mention specific incidents involving Uyghurs or Tibetans, but Richardson says their absence underscores how difficult it is for some groups to access UN mechanisms in the first place, as well as how some people may be too scared to report such incidents to the UN, VOA reported. The Chinese government has engaged in severe human rights abuses against both ethnic groups, according to myriad reports. Multiple governments and international human rights organizations have accused Beijing of committing genocide and crimes against humanity against the Uyghurs, which the Chinese government rejects. 

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