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posted by martyb on Saturday April 11 2020, @09:42AM   Printer-friendly
from the If-you-can't-beat-'em,-join-'em-and-change-'em? dept.

China Appointed to Influential UN Human Rights Council Panel

Last week, China was appointed to a seat on the Consultative Group of the United Nations Human Rights Council. Jiang Duan, an official at the Chinese Mission in Geneva, was nominated and confirmed by the Asia regional grouping and will hold the seat until March 2021. The appointment places China on an influential panel that oversees candidate recommendations for UN human rights experts and is likely to raise some concerns given China's less than perfect record on human rights issues.

As China has become more integrated in international organizations over the past 40 years or so, particularly within UN bodies and agencies, the scope of issue areas it is willing to not only engage with but also shape has expanded.

[...] The Consultative Group, the body to which China was just appointed, is charged with recommending candidates to fill positions according to the mandates of the Special Procedures, the Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and the Expert Mechanism on the Right of Development. The panel consists of five ambassadors, each representing the five UN regional groups, and facilitates the appointment of experts on issues of freedom of speech and religion; water and sanitation; housing; food; health; poverty; and conditions in countries such as Cambodia, Iran, Myanmar, and North Korea.

[...] In recent years, China has actively submitted proposals to the UNHRC as a member, albeit not without pushback. These resolutions have been challenged for their framing of human rights issues and the right to development within a state-centric approach, privileging the sovereignty of states over groups of people and communities. Experts have been outspoken about the implications of such proposals, raising concern that an overemphasis on dialogue and consensus might dilute the commitments to transparency and accountability. Separately, in July 2019, two coalitions of states sent competing letters to the UNHRC about China's Xinjiang policies — one criticizing China for its massive detention program and the other opposing the "politicization" of human rights issues and supporting Chinese counterterrorism and deradicalization efforts. More recently, there has been heightened international outcry about human rights in China amid the harsh measures Beijing put in place to combat the coronavirus.


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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 11 2020, @03:43PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 11 2020, @03:43PM (#981160)

    Personally I can't see any prison population outperforming a free nation (given similar starting point). Think of the productivity when moral is shit and your hate your bosses versus when you are doing something you are interested in for your own benefit.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Saturday April 11 2020, @04:00PM (3 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday April 11 2020, @04:00PM (#981168) Journal

    I don't see China as a prison, nor, I suspect, do the Chinese. Their culture was vastly different from ours, long before the Communist party came along. It would be nice if some Chinese nationals were to happen along, and tell us how they view things. Unfortunately, the only ones likely to show up are either malcontents, or working for the government. That Great Firewall helps to ensure that.

    • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 11 2020, @06:15PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 11 2020, @06:15PM (#981226)

      Grandparent was referencing the US, you moron, Runaway. Particularly Arkansas.

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by FunkyLich on Sunday April 12 2020, @12:25AM (1 child)

      by FunkyLich (4689) on Sunday April 12 2020, @12:25AM (#981360)

      They actually don't. I have lived there for 4 years, that was 20 years ago. They were very patriotic, proud of their country. Didn't want to speak much of politics, but they all worked a lot for competition about most anything is very high there. They were very good at barter negotiations, you needed to be very careful when buying stuff or you'd end up almost always buying something for a higher than usual price. (But I have seen that happen a lot also in Turkey, Jordan, Kenya, Uganda, Egypt, Greece, Albania, Brazil).
      Their culture IS vastly different from the western culture. They are not very keen to defy tradition and they do follow instructions from a leader much easier than what we, the westerners, do. This is not only a chinese thing, but most of the asian have the same: India, China, Korea(s), Japan, Phillippines, Malaysia.
      It is also the chinese way to just smile and keep on doing whatever they are doing while someone mocks them. For wisdom, all they need to do is look back into their own immense land and history, with so many wars and events happening locally to put half of the entire World to shame. "The wind will always blow, only a food tries to stop it". They'd shake their heads and then keep on working and improving their own country like they have done in these last decades.
      And believe me, the China of today is several times better in everything compared to the China of 2000. Which in turn was orders of magnitude better than the China of 1980.

      • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday April 12 2020, @04:08AM

        by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Sunday April 12 2020, @04:08AM (#981422) Journal

        Have you read Liu Cixin's books? The stories he writes seem to give you pretty decent "atmosphere" of Chinese life. His Three Body Problem relates some of the early Chi-com history. I get the idea that his stories, much like Mark Twain/Samuel Clemens, aren't factual, but almost certainly convey life as it was.

  • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday April 11 2020, @06:12PM

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Saturday April 11 2020, @06:12PM (#981224) Journal

    Are you talking about the US? Prison industries don't need to be more efficient, because they are subsidized.

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