“It’s like putting Dracula in charge of the blood bank,” said Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of UN Watch. “Electing repressive regimes like China, Russia and Turkey to a key UN council, which has the power to expel human rights groups from the UN, is a moral outrage, and shame on our democracies who were complicit.”

Neuer called on UN chief Antonio Guterres, UN rights chief Volker Türk and EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas to condemn the election of dictatorships to ECOSOC.

“Today’s election diminishes the credibility of the United Nations human rights system and casts a shadow upon the reputation of the organization as a whole,” Neuer said.

Russia won 115 votes, or 61% of those voting in the UN General Assembly ballot yesterday. Turkey won 174 votes (92%); China won 180 votes (95%); Chad won 183 votes (96%); Burundi won 184 votes (97%). Another 13 countries were also elected, including Lebanon, Mozambique and Norway.

UN Watch criticized the EU’s 27 member states, many of whom voted for China, Turkey, Burundi and Chad.

While the UN ballot was secret, the results show that only 9 of 189 UN states voting in the UN General Assembly declined to vote for China. “Consequently, at least 18 EU countries voted for Xi Jinping’s oppressive regime, which has a million Uighur Muslims locked up in camps.”

Likewise, only 15 countries declined to vote for Turkey, meaning at least 12 EU states voted for the Erdogan regime that has imprisoned opposition leaders and severely curtailed civil liberties. The EU even congratulated the Erdogan regime on its election.

A majority of at least 21 EU states voted for serial abusers Burundi and Chad.

ECOSOC is Key UN Organ Overseeing Human Rights Bodies

ECOSOC is the sole principal organ under the UN Charter mandated to adopt resolutions for the purpose of “promoting respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all.”

The body accredits and oversees human rights groups at the UN, deciding which of them can participate at the UN Human Rights Council.

“This UN vote gives non-democracies malign influence at the world body. World leaders who failed to prevent it must now speak out for basic decency and morality in UN bodies,” said Neuer.

Importantly, ECOSOC decides which nations will sit on the UN Commission on the Status of Women, and the and the Executive Board of UN Women. As a result, it is more likely that misogynistic regimes like the Islamic Republic of Iran will be elected again to the UN’s top bodies for the empowerment of women and gender equality.

As ECOSOC member, China, Russia and Turkey will also be voting for who gets to sit on the UN’s Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Executive Board of the United Nations Children’s Fund, and the UN Commission for Social Development.

The post China, Russia, Turkey Win Seats On UN Organ Overseeing Human Rights appeared first on UN Watch.

The post China, Russia, Nicaragua, Bangladesh Win Seats On UN Organ Overseeing Human Rights appeared first on UN Watch.

Above: Bangladesh police crush student protests 

Bangladesh’s bid for a seat on the UN’s top human rights body should be rejected, as it fails to meet the basic membership criteria. The election of 18 new countries to the Human Rights Council will be held at the UN in New York tomorrow, October 12, 2018. See our full report on all candidates, and press release.
Bangladesh’s Human Rights Record
Bangladesh commits serious human rights violations, including:

• Extrajudicial killings
• Torture
• Arbitrary detention
• Forced disappearances by government forces
• Restrictions on freedom of the speech and the press
• Restrictions on NGOs
• Lack of freedom to participate in the political process
• Corruption
• Violence and discrimination against women
• Violence and discrimination against LGBT
• Violence and discrimination based on religion, caste, or tribe
• Trafficking in persons
• Child labor and other violations of worker’s rights
• Widespread impunity for security forces

Discussion
While Bangladesh is known for receiving large numbers of Rohinyga Muslims fleeing ethnic cleansing in neighboring Burma (Myanmar), its treatment of those refugees and its overall record on human rights are problematic.
In August 2017, some 646,000 Rohingya crossed into Bangladesh, more than doubling the refugee population in the country.[1] The government initially refused the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) access to these new refugees, and for much of the year, restricted UNHCR’s access only to registered refugees, a small fraction of the actual number of Rohingya in the country.[2] While Bangladesh offers the refugees some protection, it does not grant them asylum, and imposes restrictions that limit their ability to develop economically.[3] Furthermore, in November 2017, Burma and Bangladesh announced an agreement to repatriate the refugees, sparking serious concerns that refugees’ rights to non-refoulment would be violated and they would be forcibly returned.[4]
Officially, Bangladesh is a democracy governed by the ruling Awami League (AL) party. However, the main opposition Bangladesh National Party (BNP) has had no representation in the government since it boycotted the 2014 elections to protest election irregularities.[5] The other major opposition party, Jamaat-e-Islami, has been deprived of legal status since 2012 when the Supreme Court canceled its registration.[6] Leaders in both parties are routinely subjected to arrests and harassment.[7]
Several laws limiting free speech are used to prosecute members of the opposition, journalists and civil society.[8] In 2016, BNP opposition leader Khaleda Zia and two journalists were charged with sedition.[9] According to Human Rights Watch, there were at least 30 assaults on journalists in 2017 and one murder of a journalist—Abdul Hakim Shimul in February 2017.[10] Two journalists were detained in September due to their reporting on the Rohingya crisis.[11] In August 2018, UN human rights experts called on the government to release photographer Sahidul Alam, who was arrested and allegedly tortured after critical reporting on a student protest.[12] Dozens of Bangladeshi bloggers are in hiding or exile due to a fear of physical reprisals for their reporting.[13]
The government also restricts the rights of opposition members to freedom of assembly and association.[14]
Bangladesh’s security forces are known to commit extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, and torture. The government frequently justifies extrajudicial killings claiming the suspect died in a “gunfight.” Local human rights agencies estimated that some 160 individuals were killed extrajudicially in 2017. In one case, the family of Mazharul Islam claimed he was tortured to death after being arrested. Hospital records allegedly showed injuries to multiple parts of the victim’s body.[15]
One local human rights group reported 60 cases of enforced disappearance during the year. In August 2016, the sons of three former opposition politicians who had been executed, disappeared. One of them, Humam Quader Chowdhury, resurfaced seven months later, but the other two remain missing.[16] It is suspected that journalist Utpal Das and professor Mubasher Hasan were forcibly disappeared during the year for periods of more than one month.[17]
In February 2017, the UN Working Group on Enforced Disappearances, whose request to visit the country has so far been denied,[18] called on the government to halt the practice of enforced disappearances.[19] In April, Swedish Radio published a secretly recorded interview with a senior member of the security forces who admitted to routine instances of murdering suspects and then disposing of the bodies. In July, a judicial inquiry concluded that enforced disappearances occurred and ordered the police to take action.[20] The government has not responded to a request for a visit from the UN Working Group on Enforced Disappearances.
The resignation of the Chief Justice in July 2017 raises serious questions about the independence of the judiciary in Bangladesh. The Chief Justice claims he was forced to resign for his role in overturning a 2014 constitutional amendment which had given parliament the right to remove judges.[21]
Bangladesh’s UN Voting Record
Negative: At the General Assembly, Bangladesh voted for a resolution denying countries the right to sanction regimes that abuse human rights, and voted to delay the work of the Special Rapporteur on violence against LGBT. While Bangladesh supported the resolution on Myanmar, it failed to support resolutions speaking out for human rights victims in North Korea, Syria and Iran.

New members to be elected on Oct. 12 to UN Human Rights Council include:
• Eritrea
• Bahrain
• Somalia
• Cameroon
• Philippines
• Bangladesh pic.twitter.com/lLpOi7TcSv

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) October 5, 2018

[1] U.S. Dep’t of State, Bureau of Democracy, H.R. and Lab., Country Reports on Human Rights Practices Bangladesh 16-17 (2017) [hereinafter State Department Report on Bangladesh].
[2] Id. at 17.
[3] Id. at 20.
[4] World Report 2018: Events of 2017, Human Rights Watch, 65 (2018) [hereinafter Human Rights Watch Report on Bangladesh 2017],, https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2018/country-chapters/bangladesh; Rohingya crisis: Bangladesh and Myanmar agree repatriation timeframe, BBC (Jan. 16, 2018), https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-42699602.
[5] State Department Report on Bangladesh, supra note 26, at 21; Freedom in the World 2018: Bangladesh, Freedom House (2018), https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2018/bangladesh.
[6] State Department Report on Bangladesh, supra note 26, at 22.
[7] Freedom in the World 2018: Bangladesh, supra note 30.
[8] Id.; State Department Report on Bangladesh, supra note 26, at 12.
[9] State Department Report on Bangladesh, supra note 26, at 12.
[10] Human Rights Watch Report on Bangladesh, supra note 29.
[11] Id.
[12] Bangladesh: UN human rights experts urge immediate release of photographer Shahidul Alam, Office of the High Commissioner (August 13, 2018), https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=23451&LangID=E.
[13] Freedom in the World 2018: Bangladesh, supra note 30.
[14] State Department Report on Bangladesh, supra note 26, at 15-16.
[15] Id. at 2.
[16] Id. at 3.
[17] Id. at 12.
[18] Id. at 3.
[19] UN expert group urges Bangladesh to stop enforced disappearances, Office of the High Commissioner (Feb. 24, 2017), https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=21220&LangID.
[20] State Department Report on Bangladesh, supra note 26, at 4.
[21] Id. at 9; Amnesty International Report 2017/2018, The State of the World’s Human Rights: Bangladesh, Amnesty International, 87 (2018), https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/asia-and-the-pacific/bangladesh/report-bangladesh/.

The post Bangladesh set to win seat on UN‘s top human rights body, despite abuses appeared first on UN Watch.

Geneva, June 7, 2007  —  UN Watch released new details (Click here  or see below) confirming that the Bangladeshi government is blocking Ms. Sigma Huda, the UN Human Rights Council’s investigator of human trafficking, from leaving the country to address a scheduled session in Geneva this Monday. The human rights monitoring organization applauded a UN official for heeding UN Watch’s earlier appeal for action but urged others to follow.

UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer today issued the following statement:

We welcome High Commissioner Louise Arbour’s decision to pursue our call to action. We urge other officials—Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Council President Luis Alfonso De Alba and the leaders of the Council’s Asian and Islamic groups—to use their own considerable influence to obtain Ms. Huda’s immediate release.

By preventing her from leaving the country, the government of Bangladesh is in violation of Ms. Huda’s internationally-protected right to freedom of movement and expression.  Bangladesh has no right to deny a UN expert—or any citizen—her right to leave on the reported basis that “she may give statements detrimental” to it.

As one of the 47 members of the Human Rights Council, Bangladesh is obligated “to uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights [and to] fully cooperate with the Council.”  Restricting the right to travel and attempting to muzzle free speech rights, seemingly for political reasons, of a citizen who is also one of the Council’s human rights experts blatantly violates both of these requirements.

If Bangladesh refuses to comply immediately with its international obligations and lift its restrictions against Ms. Huda, the ultimate sanction against a Council member—removal by the General Assembly—should be pursued.

Regrettably, Bangladesh’s use of heavy-handed tactics against a UN expert only underscores the paradox whereby many Council members are themselves the worst violators of human rights, with a majority expected to enact new measures next week to restrict the independence of human rights experts and to outright eliminate those mandated to report on country violations. Tragically, at the Human Rights Council it often seems like the foxes are guarding the chickens.  Click here  for more on next week’s session.

Details on Sigma Huda by Coalition Against Trafficking in Women International (CATW)

UN Watch is releasing the following new details as provided by a fellow NGO that has been in close contact with Ms. Huda.

CONTACT PERSON: Janice Raymond, Co-Executive Director, Coalition Against Trafficking in Women International (CATW).  Email: Jgr@catwinternational   Fax: +1-413-367-9262

The following statement is by Janice Raymond:

“Janice Raymond, Co-Executive Director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, has been in constant contact with UN Special Rapporteur on Trafficking, Sigma Huda.  Raymond states that the government of Bangladesh has recently issued a restraining order preventing Sigma Huda from leaving the country to fulfill her duties as Special Rapporteur and to deliver a key report on trafficking before the Human Rights Council in Geneva on June 11, 2007. She alleges that the government fears that Special Rapporteur Huda will discredit the military-backed government and spotlight its recent human rights abuses in detaining and torturing over 95,000 Bangladeshis. We join UN Watch and other NGOs in calling upon governments and UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, to take action against the Bangladeshi government’s harassment of human rights expert Sigma Huda and the illegal detention, torture and harassment of her family members.”

“The more recent prohibitions against Sigma Huda, including the restraining order against her leaving the country to perform her UN duties, is an outrage and a violation of her right to freedom of movement and freedom of speech. The government’s illegal actions are now being imposed on more and more members of Sigma’s family, including her older daughter.”
Click for Full Details and Timeline

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