• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer
  • HOME
  • ABOUT CHINA
    • NEWS
    • TESTIMONIES
    • OP-EDS
    • FEATURED
    • GLOSSARY
    • CHINA PERSECUTION MAP
  • FROM THE WORLD
    • NEWS GLOBAL
    • TESTIMONIES GLOBAL
    • OP-EDS GLOBAL
    • FEATURED GLOBAL
  • INTERVIEWS
  • DOCUMENTS AND TRANSLATIONS
    • DOCUMENTS
    • THE TAI JI MEN CASE
    • TRANSLATIONS
    • EVENTS
  • ABOUT
  • EDITORIAL BOARD
  • TOPICS

Bitter Winter

A magazine on religious liberty and human rights

three friends of winter
Home / China / News China

U.N. Human Rights Council: More than 100 Organizations Protest China’s Selection as a Member of the Consultative Group

04/25/2020Marco Respinti |

Along with Venezuela, Pakistan, Eritrea and Qatar, China will serve one year in the exclusive body of five persons who will select United Nations human rights investigators.

by Marco Respinti 

A meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.
A meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva (credits).

On April 1, 2020 Mr. Jiang Duan, Minister Counselor at the Permanent Mission of the People’s Republic of China, was appointed to the Human Rights Council’s Consultative Group. He will serve until March 31, 2021 playing a key role in selecting human rights investigators in various United Nations bodies. The remaining four members are from Venezuela, Pakistan, Eritrea and Qatar. It was April Fool’s Day, but it was no joke.

The Consultative Group will, inter alia, appoint three new members of the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, where high-profile cases are pending against China, including one about two members of The Church of Almighty God, arbitrarily detained for no other reasons than practicing their religion.

Given the miserable record of China in human rights, and in the midst of the storm regarding the systematic Chinese cover-up on the coronavirus pandemic, 82 organizations and associations chiefly from Central and Eastern Europe submitted a joint petition calling for the cancellation of such an appointment and submitted it to the UN General Secretary Mr. António Guterres, the Chair of the General Assembly’s Third Committee Mr. Christian Braun, the President of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) Ms. Elisabeth Tichy-Fisslberger, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Ms. Michelle Bachelet, and each of the 55 member states of the Asia-Pacific regional group which nominated China to the consultative group of the UNHRC.

The signers are overwhelmingly Tibetan and pro-Tibet organizations, and the petition expressly states the specific concern of the Tibetan diaspora, but it makes also clear that the nomination of China at the UNHRC’s Consultative Group “also dampens the spirit of the Chinese Human rights Defenders, the Uyghurs, Southern-Mongolians and the Hong-Kong pro-democracy advocates who are putting their lives at risk for basic rights of their people against the self-serving interests of Chinese Communist Party Government.”

A second petition, signed also by Bitter Winter, has been launched by Jubilee Campaign and promoted by the International Religious Freedom Roundtable, and will be sent to Ms Tichy-Fisslberger at the end of April. Together, the signatories of the two petitions represent more than 100 organizations.

Normally petitions like these receive no answer, and remain suspended in a limbo of semi-existence, but surely, if the Human Rights Council wants to preserve its credibility, it should this time respond adequately.

Tagged With: Human Rights Council

Marco Respinti
Marco Respinti

Marco Respinti is an Italian professional journalist, member of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), essayist, translator, and lecturer. He has contributed and contributes to several journals and magazines both in print and online, both in Italy and abroad. Author of books and chapter in books, he has translated and/or edited works by, among others, Edmund Burke, Charles Dickens, T.S. Eliot, Russell Kirk, J.R.R. Tolkien, Régine Pernoud and Gustave Thibon. A Senior fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal (a non-partisan, non-profit U.S. educational organization based in Mecosta, Michigan), he is also a founding member as well as a member of the Advisory Council of the Center for European Renewal (a non-profit, non-partisan pan-European educational organization based in The Hague, The Netherlands). A member of the Advisory Council of the European Federation for Freedom of Belief, in December 2022, the Universal Peace Federation bestowed on him, among others, the title of Ambassador of Peace. From February 2018 to December 2022, he has been the Editor-in-Chief of International Family News. He serves as Director-in-Charge of the academic publication The Journal of CESNUR and Bitter Winter: A Magazine on Religious Liberty and Human Rights.

Related articles

  • United Nations, Human Rights Council: 37h Session-Written Statement of the NGO CAP-LC on The Church of Almighty God.

    United Nations, Human Rights Council: 37h Session-Written Statement of the NGO CAP-LC on The Church of Almighty God.

  • 日本と統一教会:国連自由権規約人権委員会に対する提訴

    日本と統一教会:国連自由権規約人権委員会に対する提訴

  • A Bitter Winter for Religion in China

    A Bitter Winter for Religion in China

  • Arbitrary Detention of Members of The Church of Almighty God Denounced at the United Nations

    Arbitrary Detention of Members of The Church of Almighty God Denounced at the United Nations

Keep Reading

  • The Axis of Shame, July 2020: The Countries That Supported China on Hong Kong
    The Axis of Shame, July 2020: The Countries That Supported China on Hong Kong

    53 countries (including China) signed a resolution at the United Nations’ Human Rights Council in Geneva praising China for the passing of the Hong Kong National Security Law.

  • FECRIS Denounced at the United Nations’ Human Rights Council
    FECRIS Denounced at the United Nations’ Human Rights Council

    CAP-LC filed a written statement detailing the defamation cases FECRIS and its affiliated organizations lost, and asking France to stop supporting them.

  • The United Nations Vote on Xinjiang, A Uyghur View: What We Have Learned
    The United Nations Vote on Xinjiang, A Uyghur View: What We Have Learned

    The UNHRC’s 19 negative and 11 neutral votes reflect global problems. The Uyghurs were not surprised, and their fight will continue.

  • China Criticized at the United Nations’ Human Rights Council
    China Criticized at the United Nations’ Human Rights Council

    Sources: International Service for Human Rights and direct information Date: May 1, 2018 Every five years, each member state of the United Nations co…

Primary Sidebar

Support Bitter Winter

Learn More

Follow us

Newsletter

Most Read

  • There Are Christian Uyghurs, Too: New Organization Launched in London by Ruth Ingram
  • Hui Muslims Clash with Police Over Mosque’s “Sinicization” by Ma Guangyao
  • Russia: Lunatic Theory that Yellowstone Volcano Caused the War in Ukraine Gains Momentum by Massimo Introvigne
  • Xi Jinping: Beijing’ National Art Museum Is Not Socialist Enough by Hu Zimo
  • Hong-Kong-Style National Security Law Comes to Macau by Gladys Kwok
  • Vandalism Against Catholic Churches on the Rise in Bavaria by PierLuigi Zoccatelli
  • Pakistan: Bishops’ Patience Exhausted After Killings at Catholic School by Daniela Bovolenta

CHINA PERSECUTION MAP -SEARCH NEWS BY REGION

clickable geographical map of china, with regions

Footer

EDITORIAL BOARD

Editor-in-Chief

MASSIMO INTROVIGNE

Director-in-Charge

MARCO RESPINTI

ADDRESS

CESNUR

Via Confienza 19,

10121 Turin, Italy,

Phone: 39-011-541950

E-MAIL

We welcome submission of unpublished contributions, news, and photographs. Each submission implies the authorization for us to edit and publish texts and photographs. We reserve the right to decide which submissions are suitable for publication. Please, write to INFO@BITTERWINTER.ORG Thank you.

Newsletter

LINKS

orlir-logo hrwf-logo cesnur-logo

Copyright © 2023 · Bitter Winter · PRIVACY POLICY· COOKIE POLICY