Over the last several years, the world has seen China taking on more responsibility and power in international institutions. China’s growing ‘activism’ has provided a glimpse into its ambitions to assert a greater role for itself on matters of global governance. China’s growing activism also has raised key questions about the scale of Beijing’s ambitions and the tools it would be willing to use to advance them. On September 21, Foreign Policyat Brookings hosted a webinar to address these and other questions concerning China’s evolving approach to international institutions, rules, and norms. The event launched the next tranche of Brookings papers released as part of its series “Global China: Assessing China’s Growing Role in the World.” From human rights to energy to trade, these papers present a range of arguments for observers of China and policymakers to consider as they evaluate China’s role on the international stage.
In Newsweek of 21 September 2020 Basit Mahmood did an interview with Kenneth Roth who has spent 27 years as the executive director of Human Rights Watch (HRW) in which he warns that China poses a threat to the global human rights system, that U.S. is no longer to be relied on as a supporter of human rights and how this has left a void, emboldening autocrats who have used the pandemic to undermine democratic societies.
“China and the threat it poses to human rights both at home and around the world is a huge issue,” he says, identifying the current period as the darkest in China’s history when it comes to human rights since the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. More than a million Uighur Muslims have been put in internment camps in the country’s Xinjiang province, According to the United Nations (U.N.). China says the camps serve as “re-education” centers designed to combat extremism, but those who have managed to escape share stories of forced labor, torture, medical experiments and rape. Roth says: “The Uighurs are the most severe example of worsening repression under Xi Jinping (China’s prime minister). It’s quite clear that this is the darkest moment in China in human rights terms since the massacre of Tiananmen Square protesters in 1989, the Uyghurs have been the most grievous sufferers of that where a million or more have been detained essentially to force them to abandon Islam and their culture.” The worsening repression doesn’t just extend to minorities, it’s something Roth says we can see also occurring in Hong Kong and Tibet as well as against China’s own population more widely.
“There is no independent civil society,” he says. “There is no independent media, human rights defenders are routinely imprisoned. There is a complete lockdown on any organized public dissent and that is just across the board, not just minority population areas. China’s also building this so-called social credit system which is designed to condition access to various governmental benefits on one’s social reliability. So it’s using high-tech tools to control the population.“…
….
On the human rights challenges facing Europe, Roth expresses particular concern about the situation in Belarus, where the man dubbed “Europe’s last dictator“, Alexander Lukashenko, is facing widespread protests over a disputed election. Lukashenko has been in power since 1994, with the government frequently accused of repressing the opposition….
Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch
He also thinks India‘s Prime Minister Modi has got away with what he calls his systematic discrimination against the country’s 172 million Muslims because of the West’s desire to tap into Indian markets and use it as a counterweight against China, which Newsweek will be reporting on in the coming days.
Roth is highly critical of the Trump administration, accusing the president’s foreign policy of being driven by the guiding principle of “self-glorification” and only speaking out in defense of human rights when the offending country is a perceived adversary.
“Trump is utterly uninterested in calling out any human rights violation by anybody other than a handful of perceived adversaries, China, Venezuela, Iran, Nicaragua and Cuba and that’s about it, which is a completely unprincipled approach to human rights which does not attract any adherence and greatly weakens the force of US intervention,” he says. “Human Rights Watch has been living with Trump for four years now and we have already stopped relying on the U.S. as anything like a principled supporter of human rights.”
With the U.S. increasingly withdrawing from the world stage and with the European Union not really filling the void, as he says, is there a new approach to the defense of human rights emerging?
On 17 September 2020 the Human Rights Foundation announced the three recipients of the 2020 Václav Havel International Prize for Creative Dissent.
The 2020 Havel laureates are Chinese visual artist Badiucao, Saudi political satirist Omar Abdulaziz, and the late Rwandan gospel musician and peace and reconciliation activist Kizito Mihigo, who is the first posthumous recipient since the inception of the prize in 2012. This year’s laureates will receive their awards at 11:45 a.m. EDT on Friday, 25 September, during the 2020 Oslo Freedom Forum.
Badiucao is an exiled Chinese dissident artist based in Australia. His political artwork has unmasked the lies of the Chinese regime, raised awareness for pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, and exposed the Chinese Communist Party’s censorship of the coronavirus pandemic. Badiucao is the creator of the Lennon Flag, which became a powerful protest symbol that inspired and mobilized the global community to stand in solidarity with Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement. The Chinese regime has tried to silence Badiucao by intimidating his family in China.
Omar Abdulaziz is an exiled Saudi political satirist and activist based in Canada. His satirical news show on YouTube has uncovered the lies of the Saudi regime. His activism has raised awareness about ongoing repression and human rights abuses in the kingdom, where freedom of expression is nonexistent and political satire is a crime. The Saudi regime has tried to silence his activism by intimidating his family, offering bribes, and making him a target of surveillance.
Kizito Mihigo was a Rwandan catholic gospel singer, songwriter, organist, and the founder of the Kizito Mihigo Peace Foundation, which promoted peace, reconciliation, and nonviolence in schools and prisons through concerts, plays, and poetry. An ethnic Tutsi, he showed tremendous courage in a 2014 song in which he called for compassion for all civilians killed by Paul Kagame’s Tutsi-dominated ruling Rwandan Patriotric Front forces after Rwanda’s 1994 genocide. The regime quickly banned the song as it contradicted its official narrative, which presents ethnic Tutsis as the sole victims of Rwanda’s tragedy. Mihigo released the song with full knowledge that it would lead to terrible consequences. “The message is sometimes more important than the messenger,” he said. He was detained in order to be paraded as a conspirator in a violent anti-government plot and sentenced to 10 years in prison. He was released on pardon after serving three years, but he was arrested again while attempting to leave the country and died in police custody in February 2020. The regime claimed it was a suicide, but Mihigo told friends weeks before his death that he had been under government harassment and pressure to provide false testimony against political opponents.
In an open letter published Wednesday 9 September 2020 the groups say they are seeking greater scrutiny of and response to violations in places like Hong Kong, Tibet and Xinjiang, as well as beyond — such as through censorship, development that hurts the environment and the targeting of rights defenders.
The call for the creation of an “independent international mechanism” to focus on China’s rights violations adds to recent international pressure on Beijing over its handling of issues like protests in Hong Kong and detention centers — what the government calls vocational or training centers — for Uighur Muslims and others in western Xinjiang region.
“China has systematically persecuted rights defenders in reprisal for their cooperation with U.N. human rights operations — torture, enforced disappearance, imprisonment, and stripping licenses from lawyers,” said Renee Xia, director of Chinese Human Rights Defenders, in a statement. “The U.N. system should no longer tolerate such treatment.”
The move follows a call by independent experts who work with the United Nations for a special session of the Human Rights Council focusing on the array of issues around China’s rights record. Advocates insist that no country — no matter how large or powerful — should escape extra scrutiny of their rights records when warranted. [see also https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2020/06/27/un-experts-address-3-big-ones-usa-china-and-india/]
The groups also want U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, to “take responsibility for publicly addressing China’s sweeping rights violations,” Human Rights Watch said in a statement.
At a news conference Wednesday in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian sought to brush off the groups’ appeal, saying: “I think the statements made by these organizations are groundless and not worth refuting.”
The appeal comes before the start of the 47-member-state Human Rights Council’s fall session on Monday. In its summer session, the council held an urgent debate on a rise of police violence against Black people and repression of protests in the United States.
Kunal Gaurav in Republic World of 29 August 2020 illustrates again how extremely sensitive China remains with regard to human rights awards, unwittingly underlining the strong symbolic value they can have.
China has warned Norway against awarding Nobel Peace Prize to pro-democracy activists of Hong Kong, saying it doesn’t want to see the politicisation of the award. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi was on a rare visit to Norway as the country prepares to take up the rotational seat of United Nations Security Council, of which China is a permanent member, for 2021-22.
“I would only say one thing: In the past, today, and in future, China will firmly reject any attempt by anyone to use the Nobel Peace Prize to interfere in China’s internal affairs,” Wang told reporters when asked about the possibility.
The decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to Dalai Lama, head monk of Tibetan Buddhism, for his willingness to compromise and seek reconciliation despite brutal violations had irked China. Later, the Nobel Foundation awarded the prize to Lui Xiaobo for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China. The decision immediately froze diplomatic relations between Norway and China, which resumed in December 2016.
Hong Kong has been the epicentre of pro-democracy protests and China enforced a controversial security law which has allegedly undermined the autonomy of the region. Several countries have revoked the extradition treaty with the semi-autonomous region, calling the draconian law as a flagrant violation of Sino-British agreement after which the city returned to Chinese rule.
According to a Hong Kong daily, the foreign minister said that the Chinese government doesn’t want to see anyone politicise the Nobel Peace Prize. Calling on Norway to cherish the current relationship, Wang said that the bilateral relationship can continue to develop in a sustained and sound manner if both parties can “continue to respect each other and treat each other as equals.”
At a press briefing on August 28, Norwegian Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Søreide said that the leaders had an extensive discussion ranging from COVID-19 response to international trade and the free-trade agreement. She said that they also had extensive discussions on human rights, an issue of international concern given China’s history and ongoing crackdown in Xinjiang.
Hong Kong’s chief executive Carrie Lam on giant screens remotely addressing the opening of the UN Human Rights Council’s 44th session on in Geneva, Switzerland, 30 June 2020, FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images
The 44th session of the UN Human Rights Council began with China’s imposition of legislation severely undermining rights and freedoms in Hong Kong. Within days, there were reports of hundreds of arrests, some for crimes that didn’t even exist previously. We welcome efforts during this session by a growing number of States to collectively address China’s sweeping rights abuses, but more is needed. An unprecedented 50 Special Procedures recently expressed concerns at China’s mass violations in Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Tibet, suppression of information in the context of COVID-19, and the targeting of human rights defenders across the country. The Council should heed the call of these UN experts to hold a Special Session and create a mechanism to monitor and document rights violations in the country. No state is beyond international scrutiny. China’s turn has come.
The 44th session also marked an important opportunity to enable those affected directly by human rights violations to speak to the Council through NGO video statements.
Amnesty’s Laith Abu Zeyad addressed the Council remotely from the occupied West Bank where he has been trapped by a punitive travel ban imposed by Israel since October 2019. We call on the Israeli authorities to end all punitive or arbitrary travel bans.
During the interactive dialogue with the Commission of Inquiry on Syria, victims’ associations and families of victims highlighted the human rights violations occurring in detention centers in Syria. We welcome the efforts by some States to underline their demands and welcome the adoption of the Syria resolution on detainees and urge the Syrian government to take all feasible measures to release detainees and provide truth to the families, noting the important pressure needed by Member States to further call for accountability measures for crimes committed in Syria.
Collette Flanagan, Founder of Mothers against Police Brutality, also delivered a powerful video statement at the Council explaining the reality of racist policing in the United States of America. We fully support victims’ families’ appeals to the Council for accountability.
We hope that the High Commissioner’s report on systemic racism, police violence and government responses to antiracism peaceful protests will be the first step in a series of meaningful international accountability measures to fully and independently investigate police killings, to protect and facilitate Black Lives Matter and other protests, and to provide effective remedy and compensation to victims and their families in the United States of America and around the world.
We appreciate the efforts made by the Council Presidency and OHCHR to overcome the challenges of resuming the Council’s work while taking seriously health risks associated with COVID-19, including by increasing remote and online participation. We recommend that remote civil society participation continue and be strengthened for all future sessions of the Council.
Despite these efforts, delays in finalising the session dates and modalities, and subsequent changes in the programme of work, reduced the time CSOs had to prepare and engage meaningfully. This has a disproportionate impact on CSOs not based in Geneva, those based in different time zones and those with less capacity to monitor the live proceedings. Other barriers to civil society participation this session included difficulties to meet the strict technical requirements for uploading video statements, to access resolution drafts and follow informal negotiations remotely, especially from other time zones, as well as a decrease in the overall number of speaking slots available for NGO statements due to the cancellation of general debates this session as an ‘efficiency measure.’
We welcome the joint statement led by the core group on civil society space and endorsed by cross regional States and civil society, which calls on the High Commissioner to ensure that the essential role of civil society, and States’ efforts to protect and promote civil society space, are reflected in the report on impact of the COVID-19 pandemic presented to the 46th Session of the HRC. We urge all States at this Council to recognise and protect the key role that those who defend human rights play.
We therefore welcome that the resolution “the promotion and protection of human rights in the context of peaceful protests” was adopted by consensus, and that the Council stood strongly against some proposed amendments which would have weakened it. We also welcome the inclusion in the resolution of a panel during the 48th session to discuss such events and how States can strengthen protections. We urge States to ensure full accountability for such human rights violations as an essential element of the protection of human rights in the context of protests. The current context has accelerated the urgency of protecting online assembly, and we welcome that the resolution reaffirms that peaceful assembly rights guaranteed offline are also guaranteed online. In particular, we also commend the resolution for calling on States to refrain from internet shutdowns and website blocking during protests, while incorporating language on the effects of new and emerging technologies, particularly tools such as facial recognition, international mobile subscriber identity-catchers (“stingrays”) and closed-circuit television.
We welcome that the resolution on “freedom of opinion and expression” contains positive language including on obligations surrounding the right to information, emphasising the importance of measures for encryption and anonymity, and strongly condemning the use of internet shutdowns.. Following the High Commissioner’s statement raising alarm at the abuse of ‘false news’ laws to crackdown on free expression during the COVID-19 pandemic, we also welcome that the resolution stresses that responses to the spread of disinformation and misinformation must be grounded in international human rights law, including the principles of lawfulness, legitimacy, necessity and proportionality. At the same time, we are concerned by the last minute addition of language which focuses on restrictions to freedom of expression, detracting from the purpose of the resolution to promote and protect the right. As we look to the future, it is important that the core group builds on commitments contained in the resolution and elaborate on pressing freedom of expression concerns of the day, particularly for the digital age, such as the issue of surveillance or internet intermediary liability, while refocusing elements of the text.
The current context has not only accelerated the urgency of protecting assembly and access to information, but also the global recognition of the right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment. We welcome the timely discussions on ”realizing children’s right to a healthy environment” and the concrete suggestions for action from panelists, States, and civil society. The COVID-19 crisis, brought about by animal-to-human viral transmission, has clarified the interlinkages between the health of the planet and the health of all people. We therefore support the UN Secretary General’s call to action on human rights, as well as the High Commissioner’s statement advocating for the global recognition of the human right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment – already widely reflected at national and regional levels – and ask that the Council adopts a resolution in that sense. We also support the calls made by the Marshall Islands, Climate Vulnerable Forum, and other States of the Pacific particularly affected and threatened by climate change. We now urge the Council to strengthen its role in tackling the climate crisis and its adverse impacts on the realization of human rights by establishing a Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Climate Change, which will help address the urgency of the situation and amplify the voices of affected communities.
The COVID crisis has also exacerbated discrimination against women and girls. We welcome the adoption by the Council of a strong resolution on multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination against women and girls, which are exacerbated in times of a global pandemic. The text, inter alia, reaffirms the rights to sexual and reproductive health and to bodily autonomy, and emphasizes legal obligations of States to review their legislative frameworks through an intersectional approach. We regret that such a timely topic has been questioned by certain States and that several amendments were put forward on previously agreed language.
The Council discussed several country-specific situations, and renewed the mandates in some situations.
We welcome the renewal of the Special Rapporteur’s mandate and ongoing scrutiny on Belarus. The unprecedented crackdown on human rights defenders, journalists, bloggers and members of the political opposition in recent weeks ahead of the Presidential election in August provide a clear justification for the continued focus, and the need to ensure accountability for Belarus’ actions. With concerns that the violations may increase further over the next few weeks, it is essential that the Council members and observers maintain scrutiny and pressure even after the session has finished.
We welcome the extension of the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on Eritrea. We urge the government to engage, in line with its Council membership obligations, as the Special Rapporteur’s ‘benchmarks for progress’ form a road map for human rights reform in the country.
We welcome the High Commissioner report on the human rights situation in the Philippines which concluded, among other things, that the ongoing killings appear to be widespread and systematic and that “the practical obstacles to accessing justice in the country are almost insurmountable.” We regret that even during this Council session, President Duterte signed an Anti Terrorism Law with broad and vague definition of terrorism and terrorists and other problematic provisions for human rights and rule of law, which we fear will be used to stifle and curtail the rights to freedom of opinion and expression, to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association. Also during this session, in a further attack on press freedom, Philippine Congress rejected the franchise renewal of independent media network ABS-CBN, while prominent journalist Maria Ressa and her news website Rappler continue to face court proceedings and attacks from President Duterte after Ressa’s cyber libel conviction in mid-June. We support the call from a group of Special Procedures to the Council to establish an independent, impartial investigation into human rights violations in the Philippines and urge the Council to establish it at the next session.
The two reports presented to the Council on Venezuela this session further document how lack of judicial independence and other factors perpetuate impunity and prevent access to justice for a wide range of violations of civil, cultural, economic, political, and social rights in the country. We also urge the Council to stand ready to extend, enhance and expand the mandate of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission when it reports in September.
We also welcome the report of the Special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967 and reiterate his call for States to ensure Israel puts an end to all forms of collective punishment. We also reiterate his call to ensure that the UN database of businesses involved with Israeli settlements becomes a living tool, through sufficient resourcing and annual updating.
We regret, however, that several States have escaped collective scrutiny this session.
We reiterate the UN Special Rapporteur Agnes Callamard’s call to pressure Saudi Arabia to release prisoners of conscience and women human rights defenders and call on all States to sustain the Council’s scrutiny over the situation at the September session.
As highlighted in a joint statement of Special Procedures, we call on the Indian authorities to immediately release HRDs, who include students, activists and protest leaders, arrested for protesting against changes to India’s citizenship laws. Also eleven prominent HRDs continue to be imprisoned under false charges in the Bhima Koregaon case. These activists face unfounded terror charges under draconian laws such as sedition and under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. While we welcome that Safoora Zargar was granted bail on humanitarian grounds, the others remain at high risk during a COVID-19 pandemic in prisons with not only inadequate sanitary conditions but also limited to no access to legal counsel and family members. A number of activists have tested positive in prison, including Akhil Gogoi and 80-year-old activist Varavara Rao amid a larger wave of infections that have affected many more prisoners across the country. Such charges against protestors, who were exercising their rights to freedom of peaceful assembly must be dropped. We call on this Council to strengthen their demands to the government of India for accountability over the excessive use of force by the police and other State authorities against the demonstrators.
In Algeria, between 30 March and 16 April 2020, the Special rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression, freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, human rights defenders, issued three urgent appeals in relation to cases involving arbitrary and violent arrests, unfair trials and reprisals against human rights defenders and peaceful activists Olaya Saadi, Karim Tabbou and Slimane Hamitouche. Yet, the Council has been silent with no mention of the crackdown on Algerian civil society, including journalists.
To conclude on a positive note, we welcome the progress in the establishment of the OHCHR country office in Sudan, and call on the international community to continue to provide support where needed to the transitional authorities. While also welcoming their latest reform announcements, we urge the transitional authorities to speed up the transitional process, including reforms within the judiciary and security sectors, in order to answer the renewed calls from protesters for the enjoyment of “freedom, peace and justice” of all in Sudan. We call on the Council to ensure continued monitoring and reporting on Sudan.
People wearing masks stand during a rally to show support for Uighurs and their fight for human rights in Hong Kong, Sunday, Dec. 22, 2019. Lee Jin-man / The Associated Press
Marcus Kolga (documentary filmmaker and a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s Center for Advancing Canada’s Interests Abroad) and Yang Jianli (former political prisnoner in China – founder and president of Initiatives for China) wrote an inteteresting piece in the Vancouver Sun of 18 July 2020. Here the piece in full:
In May of this year, the Coalition for Human Rights in China published a report exposing incidents of Chinese government harassment against human rights activists in Canada that have taken place between July 2019 and March 2020. The report described efforts undertaken by the Chinese government to suppress dissidents and mobilize overseas Chinese communities to act as agents of influence.
This civil society report follows one published in March by Canada’s National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP), which explicitly warned that regimes like those in China, Russia and Iran are “harassing human rights defenders in Canada and interfering with freedom of assembly and media,” with the aim being to impose a “chilling effect on human rights activism and freedom of expression.
Both reports provide clear evidence that the Chinese government is intensifying its clandestine operations to threaten, bully, intimidate and silence activists in Canada when they raise concerns about democracy and civil rights in Hong Kong, Beijing’s systemic mass abuse of Uyghur, Tibetan or Falun Gong human rights, or Chinese government influence operations in Canada.
China’s efforts to mute criticism in Canada is occurring in the shadow of that country’s arbitrary, unlawful detention of Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, who were taken hostage in retaliation for the lawful arrest of Huawei CEO Meng Wanzhou on a United States extradition request.
Amnesty International Canada has stated that Chinese state actors have almost certainly become emboldened by the inadequate response of Canadian officials.
The academic freedom and freedom of expression of university students in Canada speaking out on China has been stifled. Indeed, many fear that the Chinese government is monitoring their speech and activities — a fact that has been confirmed by the NSICOP report, which states that Canada’s intelligence agency “CSIS assesses that the PRC and the Russian Federation are the primary threat actors on Canadian campuses.”
The Canadian Coalition on Human Rights in China has called for a public inquiry into threats at Canadian educational institutions and has recommended setting up a monitoring office to register complaints of harassment and refer such incidents to police. Amnesty International has warned about the rampant hacking of phones, computers and websites on university and college campuses, public rallies, and cultural events in Canada, implicating China for hacking. The individuals behind these threats are often anonymous but can be characterized as state propagandists and foreign influence agents who are supported and often directed by the Chinese government.
Among the threats outlined in the Canadian Coalition on Human Rights for China report are “bullying, racist, bigoted, threats of violence including sexual violence and even death.” It has called for the expelling of Chinese diplomats — of which China has more of in Canada than any other country — and applying Magnitsky sanctions on those responsible for engaging in information warfare and threats against Canadian civil society activists.
On August 17, 2019, at a Toronto rally held in support of civil rights in Hong Kong, more than one hundred protesters blocked the pro-democracy activists, loudly chanting “One China.” They insulted the pro-democracy demonstrators and took photos of them in efforts to intimidate them. When activists sang “O Canada,” the counter protesters booed them and sang China’s national anthem, eventually requiring a police escort for the pro-democracy activists to leave safely.
Mehmet Tohti, a leading Uyghur Canadian activist, says that threatening phone calls are another method by which the Chinese government intimidates those who raise concerns about the over one million Muslim Uyghurs who have been forced into concentration and forced labour camps in Xinjiang and elsewhere. Chinese security officials are making direct phone calls to Uyghur-Canadians demanding that they remain silent with the threat of targeting family members who remain in China with harassment or worse.
Chemi Lhamo, a member of Canada Tibet Committee and Students for a Free Tibet, faced a massive harassment campaign in 2019, when she was elected president of a University of Toronto student union. Among the racist, anti-Tibetan messages she received was one that read: “China is your daddy — you better know this.”
While Canadian Foreign Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne welcomed the Coalition for Human Rights in China report and promised to follow up on its recommendations, no meaningful action was taken. Chinese government harassment against Canadian civil society activists continues to escalate, and the mass human rights abuses committed by Beijing continue unabated, with total impunity.
In order to protect its own citizens and uphold its commitment to protecting human rights, Canada must immediately apply Magnitsky human rights sanctions against Chinese officials responsible for the mass violation of human rights against Uyghurs, Tibetans, the citizens of Hong Kong and in mainland China. According to China expert Jonathan Manthorpe, roughly US$1 trillion has been “spirited out of China by Communist party leaders and their hangers-on” who seek to hide their assets “in stable overseas havens like Canada, the United States, Australia or Europe.”
Canada can help curb China’s barbaric abuse of human rights by threatening to freeze the assets of those who are responsible for them. Minister Champagne signalled last Wednesday, that the government is open to considering the option of Magnitsky sanctions and we urge him to do so in co-ordination with UK Foreign Minister Dominic Raab and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Canada should immediately consider adopting legislation that requires the registration of Canadian citizens acting as agents for foreign governments — similar to Australia’s Foreign Influence Transparency law. Such legislation will introduce serious punitive consequences for anyone who acts against Canada and its citizens on behalf of malign foreign regimes.
Finally, Canada should consider expelling Chinese diplomats who use their diplomatic cover to engage in information warfare, intimidation and influence operations. Canada’s security agencies are likely aware of which “diplomats” are engaging in such activity. It should be noted that, as of March 2020, China had many more diplomats accredited to Canada than any other nation, with 163 compared to 146 for the United States or 22 for the United Kingdom.
China’s information warfare and influence operations targeting Canada will assuredly only intensify over the coming months. If Canada wishes to protect its citizens against foreign harassment, intimidation and threats, it must act immediately to show Beijing, Moscow and Tehran that their actions have consequences.
The Canadian government speaks loudly of the need to protect international human rights, but it must now back that rhetoric with action if defending the values of human rights, freedom and democracy are truly its aims.
Jon Stone in the Independent of 13 july 2020 wrote about the UK Government being urged to explain £75m exports to countries rated ‘not free’. The British government is providing more than a dozen repressive regimes around the world with wiretaps, spyware and other telecommunications interception equipment they could use to spy on dissidents, public records show. Despite rules saying the UK should not export security goods to countries that might use them for internal repression, ministers have signed off more than £75m in such exports over the past five years to states rated “not free” by the NGO Freedom House.
The 17 countries include China, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, as well as the United Arab Emirates, which was the biggest recipient of licences totalling £11.5m alone since 2015….One such beneficiary of the UK’s exports is Hong Kong, which had a £2m shipment approved last year despite ongoing repression of pro-democracy protests. The Philippines, where police extrajudicial killings are rampant, has also provided steady business for British firms hawking surveillance systems.,,
A government spokesperson said blandly : “The government takes its export responsibilities seriously and assesses all export licences in accordance with strict licensing criteria. We will not issue any export licences where to do so would be inconsistent with these criteria.” But Oliver Feeley-Sprague, Amnesty International UK’s programme director for military, security and police affairs, said the UK did not seem to be undertaking proper risk assessments when selling such equipment and said the government’s controls were becoming “notorious” for their “faulty decision-making”…
“With numerous human rights defenders arrested and jailed in countries like Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Turkey in the past five years, there’s a greater need than ever for the UK to be absolutely scrupulous in assessing the risk of UK telecoms technology being used unlawfully against human rights activists, journalists, and peaceful opposition figures.
“It’s just not clear that the UK is undertaking proper risk assessments when selling this equipment, and it’s not clear whether UK officials are making any effort to track how the equipment is used in one, two or three years’ time.
This week international trade secretary Liz Truss announced the UK would be resuming arms exports to Saudi Arabia, after a court had previously ordered that they were suspended. The government said it had reviewed claims that Saudi forces in Yemen had breached international humanitarian law and said any possible breaches were “isolated incidents” because they had happened in different places and different ways.
Andrew Smith of Campaign Against Arms Trade said the sale of the spying equipment raised “serious questions and concerns”.
On 9 july 2020 the International Service of Human Rights came out with a good overview of what has happened to the Chinese lawyers since the crackdown five year ago [see: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2015/07/29/the-remarkable-crackdown-on-lawyers-in-china-in-july-2015/]. Human rights lawyers are a cornerstone of China’s human rights movement: they represent victims of abuses, promote compliance with international law, and strive for human rights change inside the system.
In the weeks following 9 July 2015, over 300 Chinese weiquan (‘rights defence’) lawyers and legal activists were harassed, detained and disappeared, in a nationwide police sweep that came to be known as the ‘709 Crackdown’. Five years later, these lawyers and their families still face a range of restrictions and rights violations aimed at silencing their efforts for a more just and rights-compliant society.
Disbarment, secret detention, disappearances, harassment of relatives, stigmatisation: the ‘systematic crackdown on lawyers’ denounced by UN experts has changed in form but not in its scale or scope.
Despite the risks, they strive to uphold the fundamental rights of all Chinese citizens, guaranteed under China’s Constitution and international treaties. They represent the most vulnerable and unjustly accused: those who have been evicted from their land or are victims of police abuse; minorities criminalised for their religious belief or ethnicity; human rights defenders and those expressing opinions different from the official Party line.
‘Without independent lawyers, there can be no rule of law,’ says Sarah M Brooks, ISHR Asia Advocate.
‘And when the rule of law is weaponised – as we saw last week with the imposition of the National Security Law in Hong Kong – lawyers are on the front lines of defending rights and freedoms. The least we can do – as individuals and as a global community – is to stand with them.’
In a defiant act of reclaiming, 9 July is now recognised by the human rights movement as ‘China Human Rights Lawyers Day’. To highlight this important day, ISHR has produced a bilingual information flyer on the patterns of repression against Chinese human rights lawyers, and action by the international community. The information flyer is available in English and Chinese. 请点击此处下载中文版。 For more information, please contact Raphael Viana David at r.vianadavid@ishr.ch or on Twitter at @vdraphael.
Joint statements by groups of UN experts are becoming more frequent, with at least three this month. When it comes to major powers like the USA, China and India – who are rather sensitive when criticised – there must be safety in numbers:
Addressing the USA after George Floyd..
On 5 June 2020 nearly 30 independent experts appointed by the UN Human Rights Council called for the United States to reform its criminal justice system in the wake of a recent spate of killings of African Americans, including at the hands of the police. In their statement they urged the US authorities to address systemic racism and racial bias, and to conduct independent investigations into cases of excessive use of force by police officers.
The UN human rights experts charged that these killings involved impunity, disregard or depravity toward human life, and the use of public spaces to assert racial control, with each characteristic of a modern-day lynching. “The latest videos to surface showing white men chase, corner, and execute a young man who was out jogging, or showing an officer kneeling with his weight on a man’s neck for eight minutes shock the conscience and evoke the very terror that the lynching regime in the United States was intended to inspire”, they said.
With millions of Americans taking to the streets, the experts also expressed concern about police response to these protests. They said demonstrations have been marked by violence, arbitrary arrest, militarisation and the detention of thousands of protesters. Journalists of colour have also been targeted and detained, some of whom have faced violence and harassment.
UN Experts Urge India To Release Protest Leaders
On 26 June 2020 13 UN experts jointly called on India to immediately release human rights defenders who have been arrested for protesting against changes to the nation’s citizenship laws. “These defenders, many of them students, appear to have been arrested simply because they exercised their right to denounce and protest against the CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act), and their arrest seems clearly designed to send a chilling message to India’s vibrant civil society that criticism of government policies will not be tolerated,” the experts said.
“Authorities should immediately release all human rights defenders who are currently being held in pre-trial detention without sufficient evidence, often simply on the basis of speeches they made criticising the discriminatory nature of the CAA,” they said. (Meeran Haider, Gulfisha Fatima, Safoora Zargar, Asif Iqbal Tanha, Devangana Kalita, Natasha Narwal, Khalid Saifi, Shifa Ur Rehman, Dr. Kafeel Khan, Sharjeel Imam, Akhil Gogoi.)
The experts also highlighted their concern that the authorities’ response to the protests seemed discriminatory. It appears they have not similarly investigated allegations of incitement to hatred and violence made by CAA supporters, some of whom are reported to have chanted “shoot the traitors” at counter-rallies.
UN experts call for decisive measures to protect ‘fundamental freedoms’ in China
On 26 June 2020 almost 50 UN independent experts on Friday to express their continuing alarm, urging the country to “abide by its international legal obligations”.
After having “repeatedly communicated” their concerns, they highlighted the repression of protests and democracy advocacy in the Hong Kong; impunity for excessive use of force by police; the alleged use of chemical agents against protesters; the alleged sexual harassment and assault of women protesters in police stations; together with the alleged harassment of health care workers.
The experts also raised their “grave concerns” on issues ranging from the collective repression of specific communities – “especially religious and ethnic minorities, in Xinjiang and Tibet” – to the detention of lawyers and prosecution – in addition to disappearances – of human rights defenders across the country. .
They urged China to invite civil and political rights monitors to conduct independent missions “in an environment of confidentiality, respect for human rights defenders, and full avoidance of reprisals” and encouraged the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) to urgently monitor Chinese human rights practices.
