'China’s rights record must be called out at the UN', Benedict Rogers

Member states should put forward their own ‘ten making-clears’ to Xi's regime during Universal Periodic Review

The spotlight will be on China’s human rights record as it faces its Universal Periodic Review (UPR) at the Palais des Nations in Geneva on Jan. 23.

I hope as many member states as possible will seize this valuable opportunity to call out the litany of grave human rights violations perpetrated by Xi Jinping’s Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime and demand change.

The UPR is a unique process at the United Nations (UN) whereby every single member state is scrutinized for its human rights record every four to five years. Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) are invited to make submissions, detailing issues and recommendations, and can advocate to member states to encourage them to raise them.

In the UPR session itself, time will be absurdly limited — depending on how many member states wish to contribute, they could find their speaking time is just 50 seconds. Nevertheless, it is an important and valuable opportunity to shine a light on the way a country treats its citizens in full view of the international community.

In China’s case, there will be a lot to say. China’s last UPR was in 2018, and a lot has happened in the years since then.

Academics Steve Tsang and Olivia Cheung in their book titled The Political Thought of Xi Jinping, detail the guiding principles of “Xi Thought” now inscribed in the CCP’s constitution alongside Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory.

Stemming from the “eight making-clears” that Xi put forward at the CCP’s 19th Party Congress in October 2017, these were later expanded to the “ten making-clears” at the sixth plenum of the 19th Central Committee in 2021.

Well, I hope that as many member states as possible — and certainly all those that care about democracy and human rights — will put forward their own “ten making-clears” to Xi Jinping and his regime in China.

What should those “ten making-clears” be?

Number one, they should make it clear that the genocide of the Uyghurs must stop. The treatment of the predominantly Muslim Uyghurs of the Xinjiang region in western China has been recognized as a genocide by both the previous and current United States administrations, several Parliaments around the world and by the independent Uyghur Tribunal chaired by the British barrister Sir Geoffrey Nice, KC who had previously prosecuted Slobodan Milosevic.

The UN’s own Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has concluded that the violations perpetrated against the Uyghurs may “constitute crimes against humanity.”

The incarceration of at least a million Uyghurs in prison camps, along with campaigns of forced sterilization, forced abortion, forced labor and severe religious persecution, as well as horrific torture and other atrocity crimes, cannot be swept under the carpet. They demand accountability.

Number two, the intensifying atrocities in Tibet, including the separation of a million children from their parents by coercing them into colonial boarding schools where they are cut off from their language, religion, culture, and community, must be highlighted. This policy of forced assimilation — and, effectively, a cultural genocide — was highlighted by UN experts a year ago and must be addressed in the UPR.

Number three, the continued persecution of Falun Gong practitioners and the barbaric practice of forced organ harvesting should be raised. The judgment of the independent China Tribunal in 2019, again chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice, KC, which concluded “beyond reasonable doubt” that this was continuing and that it amounts to a crime against humanity, should be examined.

Number four, member states should make it clear that the continuing persecution of Christians, the arrest and imprisonment of both Protestant and Catholic clergy, and Xi Jinping’s campaign of “Sinicization” of religion — which means coercion and co-option of religious bodies into the CCP’s apparatus — is not forgotten.

The plight of Pastor Wang Yi of Early Rain Covenant Church in Chengdu, sentenced to nine years imprisonment on Dec. 30  2019, and the arrest and disappearance, of the Catholic Bishop of Wenzhou, Bishop Peter Shao Zhumin, just two weeks ago, are just two of the cases that should be raised.

The destruction of crosses and churches, the installation of surveillance cameras in State-approved churches, and the display of CCP propaganda and Xi Jinping portraits in churches alongside or sometimes instead of religious imagery should all be mentioned.

Number five, the persecution of China’s human rights lawyers should be addressed. The whereabouts and well-being of Gao Zhisheng, who has been missing since 2017 and was described by Amnesty International in 2019 as "the bravest lawyer in China," must be raised.

Number six, the repression of bloggers, citizen journalists, reporters and publishers cannot be overlooked. In particular, the case of citizen journalist and lawyer Zhang Zhan, jailed for four years in 2020 simply for reporting on the outbreak of Covid-19 in Wuhan. The abduction from Thailand of Chinese-born Swedish national Gui Minhai, who has already spent more than 3,000 days in prison — must be flagged, along with other cases, and their release demanded.

It should be remembered that China is the worst jailer of journalists in the world, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Number seven, the repression and discrimination in Southern Mongolia — which shows signs of developing in a similar way to Tibet and Xinjiang — must not be forgotten.

Number eight, China’s policy of forced repatriation of North Korean refugees, sending them back to certain torture and perhaps death under Kim Jong-un’s brutal regime, in total violation of international humanitarian principles of non-refoulement, should be called out.

Number nine, of course, China’s use of the death penalty must be raised. For years, China has consistently been the world’s biggest executioner, sentencing and executing thousands each year.

And number ten — but by no means least — on my list of “making-clears” is Hong Kong.

Indeed, in many ways, Hong Kong is the most important issue to raise. Since the last UPR, no region of the People’s Republic of China has changed more dramatically, significantly, or rapidly for the worse than Hong Kong.

Since 2018, it has transformed from one of Asia’s most open societies to one of its most repressive police states. It has gone from having a legislature that had a significant number of elected pro-democracy members to a place where many of those legislators are now in jail, the entire pro-democracy camp is completely excluded from contesting any elections, and both the legislature and the district councils are filled with pro-Beijing quislings, making them nothing more than puppet rubber-stamp subsidiaries of the National People’s Congress.

Two major events in the period since the last UPR deserve to be highlighted tomorrow: the shocking police brutality against peaceful protesters in Hong Kong in 2019, perpetrated with absolute impunity, and the draconian National Security Law imposed by Beijing on Hong Kong in 2020.

The National Security Law has torn up Hong Kong’s basic freedoms, resulting in the imprisonment of hundreds of activists, including former legislators, the forced closure of almost all of Hong Kong’s independent media, and complete suppression of freedom of expression, assembly and protest.

In Hong Kong today you can be jailed for what you say, what you write, what you sing, what you listen to, what you like online, whom you have met with in the past, whom you text and what you wear.

The promises made by Beijing under the Sino-British Joint as well as under Hong Kong’s own Basic Law and its obligations under several international covenants have been completely, comprehensively and utterly trashed.

Among the many political prisoners whose cases deserve support, two cases should be highlighted tomorrow as illustrations of the gross injustices in Hong Kong today: Jimmy Lai and Chow Hang-tung.

The trial of the 76-year-old entrepreneur and media tycoon Jimmy Lai, a Catholic and a British citizen whose case I have written about here before, is underway now. The founder and former proprietor and publisher of the Apple Daily newspaper faces the prospect of spending the rest of his life behind bars.

The evidence presented by the prosecution has turned the trial into an Alice in Wonderland farce. The head of his international legal team, Caoilfhionn Gallagher, KC, has said, the real charge against Jimmy Lai is this: the crime of conspiracy to commit journalism, for daring to publish stories and opinions that Beijing dislikes; the crime of conspiracy to talk about politics to politicians; the crime of conspiracy to raise human rights concerns with human rights organizations.

The case of Hong Kong barrister Chow Hang-Tung, now in jail for organizing commemorations of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, also deserves to be mentioned. The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has already determined that her imprisonment is indeed arbitrary.

The challenge for any member will be to do all of the above — and many, many other issues and cases I have not been able to mention — just in under a minute. They won’t be able to. But if between them they can convey these “ten making-clears” and in essence reinforce the message that genocide, crimes against humanity, torture, arbitrary detention, widespread and systematic violations of basic rights such as freedom of expression, association, assembly, and religion or belief, and the total trashing of international UN-registered agreements, are not acceptable and will be held accountable, then they will be doing their job.

I wish them well and hope Xi Jinping’s representatives at the UN in Geneva are made to answer for the criminal outfit they represent.

This article was published in UCA News on 22 January 2024.