On January 18, 2017, Genova, only one of the gates to the sprawling Palais de Nations (Palace of the United Nations) remained open. There were long lines for security checks. Junior staff at the UN were drafted to escort the 200 members of the Chinese delegation accompanying the Chinese President Xi into the building. The whole palace was extremely quiet, for many of the staff working for the UN were asked to be absent from office that day. Rolando Gomez, U.N. Human Rights Council spokesman, said the office did its best to protect all participants. They were “extremely vigilant” when protecting this human-rights violator, Chinese President Xi.
Outside the UN’s Palace, parking lots closed, and police thwarted the efforts of a few Tibetan activists who tried to unfurl a Tibetan flag. In Beijing, Chinese activists who sought to testify before the UN about repression were detained, arrested, and barred from traveling abroad. The Chinese Communist Party took a “nip it in the bud” strategy and stopped them at the Chinese borders. The Chinese government not only prevented them from traveling, but also forbade them to take pictures or make films to support human rights watchdogs in Geneva.
“What we found is that China is systematically trying to undermine the U.N.’s ability to defend human rights, certainly in China but also globally,” Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, told Reuters. This is exactly why President Xi traveled to Geneva to deliver a rare, invitation-only speech at the UN’s Palace. The transcript of President Xi’s speech can only be found on the website of the Chinese Embassy in Iraq. He started with “human rights with Chinese characteristics” and ended with “working together to build a community of shared future for mankind.”
What a joke! The Chinese government has always complained of being treated with double standards; now President Xi, has just proclaimed his own double standards – Chinese standards and the standards accepted by the rest of the civilized world. “Chinese characteristics” has been used for years by the Chinese government to cover their crimes of jailing and torturing Chinese political dissidents and human rights activists. If the Chinese standards become the international norm of human rights, more people that are innocent would be butchered under the disguise of “each country’s characteristics.”
During the Syrian Civil War, Assad killed over 500 children (by early February 2012), tortured 400 children in prison, and slaughtered 150,960 to 470,000 people. According to President Xi’s standards, that would be human rights with Syrian characteristics. According to the Chinese standards, the Darfur genocide – 480,000 people killed, and over 2.8 million displaced – would be human rights with Sudanese characteristics. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said Beijing was playing an active role in the United Nations’ human rights work. This is abhorrent.
Be alert! “Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). After China’s resolution was quietly adopted, the Geneva-based NGO International Service for Human Rights (ISHR) urged the international community to pay close attention to the lobbying of the Chinese government on the international human rights platform. We, Chinese, know that this evil government bribed and is bribing more countries to vote for those “Chinese standards.” We should all be alert and keep our guard up against the Chinese government’s efforts to replace UN human rights norms with “human rights with Chinese characteristics.”
The 13 countries that voted against the resolution, in addition to the U.S. were Portugal, Slovenia, Switzerland, U.K., Germany, Hungary, Japan, Latvia, Netherlands, Albania, Belgium, and Croatia. Korea, Georgia, and Panama abstained.
(The paragraph above is cited from Andrea Worden, a human rights activist, lawyer, and writer. She has worked on human rights and rule of law issues involving China throughout much of her career. )