MEDIA RELEASE: Australia must push for reform of UN Human Rights Council
Mainstream Australians will not wear the hypocrisy of the United Nations Human Rights Council continuing to appoint human rights abusers to monitor human rights abuses, according to Advance Australia.
Spokesman Will Jefferies called on the Morrison Government to pressure the UN to clean up its act.
This follows the likely election today of some of the globe’s worst abusers in China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Pakistan and Cuba to seats on the Council.
“It is unacceptable for some of the world’s worst human-rights abusers to be entrusted with investigating violations of human rights,” Mr Jefferies said.
“The Foreign Minister Marise Payne must register Australia’s protest at this latest outrage from the UN if mainstream Australians are expected to take the world body seriously.
“An authoritarian one-party nation like Communist China with almost 1600 political prisoners and one million ethnic Uighurs in government internment camps has no place in an institution with the stated aim of ‘strengthening the promotion and protection of human rights,’” Mr Jefferies said.
“As UN Watch said, allowing countries like China on the council ‘is like making a gang of arsonists into the fire brigade’.”
Mr Jefferies said it was sadly unsurprising to see the UN permit these appointments.
“Only months ago, we saw the Director General of the World Health Organisation praise China’s ‘transparency’ during the outbreak of COVID-19, even though China deliberately suppressed information about its source and extent.
“And with previous members of the Human Rights Council including Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Venezuela, it appears China, Cuba and Russia will fit right in.
“Mainstream Australians are fed up with being held to a higher standard than those who are supposedly setting it on the global stage. The UN Human Rights Council was created to ensure the protection and promotion of human rights for all – not to empower the world’s worst abusers.”
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