GENEVA: The UN Human Rights Council damaged its credibility by dodging a discussion on Xinjiang, experts say, but campaigners brand it a Pyrrhic victory for China with Beijing’s impunity finally dented.
A bombshell United Nations report into China’s Xinjiang region, published on August 31, found torture allegations were credible and cited possible crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities.
Western countries sought to put the situation before the UN’s top rights body by seeking a debate on the report.
The United States and its allies were testing the water with a first-ever draft council decision targeting China by raising the issue at a low-key level.
But in a moment of high drama in Geneva on Thursday, the stand-off ended in council members voting against debating the report.
Intense Chinese lobbying in the 47-country council saw nations vote 19-17 against discussing the findings, with 11 abstaining — although Ukraine said Friday they meant to vote ‘yes’ rather than abstain.
The sore defeat for Western nations laid bare the strength of China’s diplomatic leverage and the frailties of their own.
While Beijing touted a victory for truth and justice, some said it made a mockery of the council and its core mission to promote and protect human rights worldwide.
Jo Smith Finley, a reader in Chinese studies at Britain’s Newcastle University, branded the council “completely dysfunctional.”
“It operates according to politics and economics (economic dependencies and indebtedness), not the universal values of human rights,” she tweeted.
David Griffiths, a human rights consultant at London’s Chatham House think-tank, called it the council’s “nadir.”
Nonetheless, rights groups and experts said there were plenty of silver linings, with the notion that China can never be challenged shattered.
Olaf Wientzek, director of the Multilateral Dialogue Geneva branch of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation think-tank, said the Xinjiang vote “absolutely hurts the credibility of the council.”
But, he said, the outcome flushed out where everyone stood.
“Every country had to confess its true colors. That alone was worth it,” he said.
Phil Lynch, executive director of the International Service for Human Rights NGO, suggested China had secured only a Pyrrhic victory: a win that comes with losses resembling a defeat.
He said the narrow 19-17 margin could be characterized as the opposite for rights campaigners, calling it a “Pyrrhic loss.”
“We weren’t successful in the vote but the closeness has really galvanized a sense that this is a cause we need to pursue and China cannot continue to enjoy impunity for crimes against humanity,” he explained.
“China mobilized massively and exerted enormous pressure and made various threats and offered inducements to delegations to oppose this text, and that notwithstanding it was only very, very narrowly defeated. We take heart and courage from that.”
“We’ve demonstrated that no state is above scrutiny.”
Lynch said the Xinjiang vote also demolished the common notion that a result should be guaranteed before seeking a vote, which also encouraged impunity.
Western liberal democracies will be doing plenty of head-scratching over the coming months to re-calibrate their approach at the next council session, set to start in February.
“It’s not like this (Xinjiang) report will be thrown in a trash bin of silence. I would be surprised if this issue would not come up again,” said Wientzek.
One major factor is that the council’s membership will be different next time round. On Tuesday, the UN General Assembly in New York will elect 14 new members to serve from 2023 to 2025.
“One or two countries or governments change, and the balance might shift,” Wientzek said.
On Friday, the Human Rights Council adopted its first-ever resolution on Russia’s domestic rights situation, appointing a special rapporteur to monitor abuses.
Seventeen countries voted ‘yes’, six said ‘no’ and 24 abstained.
Experts said the two votes showed the clear difference in diplomatic clout between China and Russia — two of the five permanent members (P5) of the UN Security Council — with Moscow down to a handful of reliable friends following its invasion of Ukraine.
After the disappointment on China, Friday’s Russia vote was “a glimmer of hope that at least, for the first time, there was enough courage to take on a P5 member,” said Wientzek.
UN rights vote Pyrrhic victory for China, say campaigners
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UN rights vote Pyrrhic victory for China, say campaigners
- A bombshell United Nations report into China’s Xinjiang region found torture allegations were credible
Rubio defends US ouster of Venezuela’s Maduro to Caribbean leaders unsettled by Trump policies
BASSETERRE, St. Kitts and Nevis: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday defended the Trump administration’s military operation to capture Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, telling Caribbean leaders, many of whom objected to that move, that the country and the region were better off as a result.
Speaking to leaders from the 15-member Caribbean Community bloc at a summit in the country of St. Kitts and Nevis, Rubio brushed aside concerns about the legality of Maduro’s capture last month that have been raised among Venezuela’s island-state neighbors and others.
“Irrespective of how some of you may have individually felt about our operations and our policy toward Venezuela, I will tell you this, and I will tell you this without any apology or without any apprehension: Venezuela is better off today than it was eight weeks ago,” Rubio told the leaders in a closed-door meeting, according to a transcript of his remarks later distributed by the US State Department.
Rubio said that since Maduro’s ouster and the effective takeover of Venezuela’s oil sector by the United States, the interim authorities in the South American country have made “substantial” progress in improving conditions by doing “things that eight or nine weeks ago would have been unimaginable.”
The Caribbean leaders have gathered to debate pressing issues in a region that President Donald Trump has targeted for a 21st-century incarnation of the Monroe Doctrine meant to ensure Washington’s dominance in the Western Hemisphere. The Republican administration has declared a focus closer to home even as Washington increasingly has been preoccupied by the possibility of a US military attack on Iran.
Rubio downplays antagonism in US regional push
In his remarks to the group, America’s top diplomat tried to play down any antagonistic intent in what Trump has referred to as the “Donroe Doctrine.” Rubio said the administration wants to strengthen ties with the region in the wake of the Venezuela operation and ensure that issues such as crime and economic opportunities are jointly addressed.
“I am very happy to be in an administration that’s giving priority to the Western Hemisphere after largely being ignored for a very long time,” Rubio said. “We share common opportunities, and we share some common challenges. And that’s what we hope to confront.”
He said transnational criminal organizations pose the biggest threat to the Caribbean while recognizing that many are buying weapons from the United States, a problem he said authorities are tackling.
Rubio also said the US and the Caribbean can work together on economic advancement and energy issues, especially because many leaders at the four-day summit have energy resources they seek to explore. “We want to be your partner in that regard,” he said.
Rubio said the US recognizes the need for fair, democratic elections in Venezuela, which lies just miles away from Trinidad and Tobago at the closest point.
“We do believe that a prosperous, free Venezuela who’s governed by a legitimate government who has the interests of their people in mind could also be an extraordinary partner and asset to many of the countries represented here today in terms of energy needs and the like, and also one less source of instability in the region,” he said.
Rubio added: “We view our security, our prosperity, our stability to be intricately tied to yours.”
Trump plays up Maduro’s ouster
Trump, in his State of the Union address Tuesday night, called the operation that spirited Maduro out of Venezuela to face drug trafficking charges in New York “an absolutely colossal victory for the security of the United States.”
The US had built up the largest military presence in the Caribbean Sea in generations before the Jan. 3 raid. That has now been exceeded by the surge of American warships and aircraft to the Middle East as the administration pressures Iran to make a deal over its nuclear program.
In the Caribbean, Trump has stepped up aggressive tactics to combat alleged drug smuggling with a series of strikes on boats that have killed over 150 people and he has tightened pressure on Cuba. Regional leaders have complained about administration demands for nations to accept third-country deportees from the US and to chill relations with China.
One regional leader who has backed the US escalation is Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, whom Rubio thanked for her “public support for US military operations in the South Caribbean Sea,” the State Department said.
Persad-Bissessar told reporters that her conversation with Rubio focused on “Haiti; we talked about Cuba of course; we talked about engagements with Venezuela and the way forward.”
She was asked if she considered the latest US military strikes in Caribbean waters as extrajudicial killings: “I don’t think they are, and if they are, we will find out, but our legal advice is they are not.”
Rubio had other one-on-one meetings with heads of government, including from St. Kitts and Nevis, Haiti, Jamaica and Guyana.
Caribbean leaders point to shifting global order
Trump said during the State of the Union that his administration is “restoring American security and dominance in the Western Hemisphere, acting to secure our national interests and defend our country from violence, drugs, terrorism and foreign interference.”
Terrance Drew, prime minister of St. Kitts and Nevis and chair of the Caribbean Community bloc, said the region “stands at a decisive hour” and that “the global order is shifting.”
Drew and other leaders said Cuba’s humanitarian situation must be addressed.
“It must be clear that a prolonged crisis in Cuba will not remain confined to Cuba,” Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness warned. “It will affect migration, security and economic stability across the Caribbean basin.”
The US Treasury Department on Wednesday slightly eased restrictions on the sale of Venezuelan oil to Cuba, which instituted austere fuel-saving measures in the weeks after the US raid in Venezuela.
That move came hours before Cuba’s government announced that its soldiers killed four people aboard a speedboat registered in Florida that had opened fire on officers in Cuban waters.
