On Tuesday, Pakistan, China, Russia, Uzbekistan and Nepal secured their position on a three- year term to United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in the elections held by General Assembly.
The elected nations will start their term from January 2021. UNHRC is one of the crucial organs of the United Nations to keep a watch and protect Human Rights violations all over the world. It consists of 47 members elected based on equitably distributed five regional division. The General assembly elects the member country who represent at the UNHRC headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.
The elections of the recent nations into the Human Rights Council is a mockery of human rights itself.
On-going Human Rights violation by China:
Uyghur Muslim are a Turkic-speaking minority ethnic group with a cultural association to that of East and Central Asia with the highest population in the autonomous region of Xinjiang, China. Their territory was annexed by Chinese Qing dynasty in the 18th century and later replaced by the Republic of China government.
Since 2014, the Chinese government has imposed harsh social, cultural and religious laws over the region to control “extreme communalism.” Uyghurs cannot grow a beard, have a prayer rug or smoke; the government has installed a camera in the houses of these citizens.
An estimated 1 million Uyghur Muslims are kept in mass detention camps with the name of “political education camps” with a motive to ensure complete adherence to Chinese ideologies. Cases of forced labour, forced sterilization and organ harvesting have been reported from these camps.
Physical and emotional abuse on the men by prison guards and any disobedience observe harassment of the victim’s family. The cases of genocide have also been reported.
The media coverage is almost null in China as Freedom of speech is “not a right but a privilege to few” and these few are connected to the government itself.
What’s more shocking is the world’s attention to the on-going detention wherein only Western government and media brought it on fore-front, and many Islamic nations kept their mouth shut with the example of PM Imran Khan talking about “Islamophobia” all over the world in 75th UN Assembly but was silent on Uyghur Muslims.
Russia isn’t far behind in human rights violations:
A crackdown of Opposition with serious chemical weapons is seen in Russia. Anybody who goes against President Putin has been “coincidentally” died with a special nerve agent ‘Novakovic.’
The chemical scientist who developed the nerve agent defected to the USA. The usage of this chemical weapon has increased in the past few years. This outraged the European continent as their spies and officials have been found with “Novakovic” chemical poison.
The nerve agent is primarily prepared to escape detection by international inspectors, and it has a lifetime impact on the victim’s body by destroying communication between nerves and muscles. The recovery is said to lengthy and very painful.
Alexei Navalny, a Russian opposition politician, was recently diagnosed with Novakovic on his flight from Siberia to Moscow. He has been a long critic of Putin and calls his regime as “the tsar of corruption.” He was sent to jail several times and kept in detention by the government.
Russian authorities allegedly were trying to stall his stay to make any evidence of chemical go away. However, he was funded by Germans and later shifted to Berlin for treatment.
This has changed many Russian- eburnean relations with German chancellor Angela Merkel blaming Russia with “unequivocal proof” and German government may consider to pull out from Nord system gags pipeline project with Russia.
France, USA, Britain have condemned the act and asked Russia to take responsibility.
Pakistan and decades of Human Rights violation:
Every year thousands of young Christian and Hindu girls are forcibly converted to Islam and sometimes married off as per Movement for Solidarity and Peace (MSP) report. The county has about 10 per cent of the non-Muslim population after the systematic ethnic cleansing programme from the 1950s, and that small population also receives violations in terms of human rights.
The blasphemy laws of Pakistan are already famous, which range up to death penalty and anybody opposing this law was killed. Punjab Governor Salman Taseer, a prominent critic of the law, was shot dead in 2011 by Mumtaz Qadri who was hailed as “Hero” by Islamic majority.
Pakistan’s PM Imran Khan vowed to defend the country’s strict blasphemy laws in his election campaign.
Recently, thousands of Baloch nationalist activists have disappeared from Baluchistan. They remain trackless, and the dead bodies of the activists with army clash are not handed over. There is a growing operation of Gwadar Port of Baluchistan by Chinese authorities as per contract awarded by Pakistan.
International outrage:
Mike Pompeo, US Secretary of State, slammed UN for electing authoritarian regimes at UNHRC and called it an embarrassment.
The election of China, Russia, and Cuba to the UN Human Rights Council validates the U.S. decision to withdraw from the Council in 2018 and use other venues to protect and promote universal human rights. At #UNGA this year, we did just that.
— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) October 13, 2020
USA had quit its position from UNHRC in 2018 with Trump Government being a critique of biases of the United Nations itself.
The executive director at Human Rights Watch criticized the results of the elections.
It takes audacity for the Chinese government to think it deserves a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council as it detains more than one million Uighur/Turkic Muslims to force them to abandon Islam and their culture. https://t.co/ggPLOhHa5C pic.twitter.com/s1vgsKokVt
— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) October 11, 2020
India is presently a member of United Nation Human rights council with its tenure ending in 2021.
The elections of tyrant countries of Asia may give them leverage to continue with their exploitation without any responsibility to the forum itself.
