BBC News:
This week, the UN Human Rights Council did something unprecedented. It focussed its attention on two permanent members of the UN Security Council: China and Russia.
The Human Rights Council is the world’s top human rights body. Its mandate is to promote human rights everywhere, to condemn violations everywhere, without fear or favour.
The council has done some excellent work. Its commission of inquiry for Syria has produced painstaking, forensic reports several times a year since that long conflict began in 2011. The fact-finding mission for Myanmar reported in graphic detail the suffering of the Rohingya community, and made it clear that Myanmar’s ruling junta were responsible.
Of course, no country, big or small, likes sitting on the council’s naughty step, and they all try to avoid it. But some succeed, and others do not. This week, China succeeded, to the bitter disappointment of human rights groups.
In August, minutes before she left office, the outgoing UN Human Rights Commissioner Michelle Bachelet finally published her report on violations against Uyghur Muslims in China’s Xinjiang province. As many rights activists had predicted, it contained evidence of widespread abuse, from arbitrary detention, to forced labour, to torture. Abuse which could amount, Ms Bachelet said, to crimes against humanity.
