Murderous and brutal dictatorships — including multiple mass-murdering communist and Islamist tyrannies — were selected this week to serve on the controversial United Nations Human Rights Council. That is despite many of those regimes being deemed “unqualified” to serve on the increasingly discredited UN “human rights” body, based on the UN’s own standards. Among the governments selected were those enslaving Cuba and China, as well as the regimes ruling Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and Nepal. Critics expressed outrage. But as regular readers know well, the situation is hardly new when it comes to the UN.
In this week’s elections, held on Tuesday, October 13, at the dictator-dominated UN General Assembly, an array of corrupt and totalitarian regimes were elected or re-elected by fellow governments to serve on the UN human rights body. Winners include the governments of China, Russia, Cuba, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Nepal, the Ivory Coast, Malawi, Gabon, Senegal, Ukraine, Mexico, Britain, France, and Bolivia. The great majority of those governments are known as corrupt at best — and savagely oppressive at worst. Communist China is almost universally recognized as among the worst human-rights abusers on the planet.
The regime in Beijing, which has murdered more people than any government in history, celebrated its victory. According to Communist Chinese “Foreign Ministry” spokesman Zhao Lijian, the decision by UN member states to appoint Beijing to the Human Rights Council was proof of the “high recognition” of the regime’s human-rights record by the “international community.” The spokesman blasted criticism by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as “very absurd.” The brutal dictatorship also vowed to work with other UN member regimes to “advance the Council’s work of promoting and protecting human rights.”
Critics were outraged. “Today is a black day for human rights,” complained UN Watch chief Hillel Neuer, whose Geneva-based non-governmental organization monitors the UN and its actions on human rights. “Electing these dictatorships as UN judges on human rights is like making a gang of arsonists into the fire brigade…. It is an insult to their political prisoners and many other victims — and a defeat for the global cause of human rights — when the UN helps gross abusers act as champions and global judges of human rights. When the UN’s highest human rights body becomes a case of the foxes guarding the henhouse, the world’s victims suffer.”
Speaking of the mass-murdering regime in China, which has herded over one million Uighurs into camps while brutalizing COVID whistleblowers and freedom activists in Hong Kong, Neuer called it “logically absurd and morally obscene” to select such a government for the UN’s top human-rights body. Communist Cuba, which was also selected to serve on the UN council, is a “police state,” added Neuer. Pakistani authorities continue to persecute Christians while disappearing dissidents. And that is just the start.
Indeed, of the 15 governments and dictatorships selected for seats on the 47-member council, UN Watch and other human-rights experts rated just two as “qualified” under the UN’s own criteria for the body. All except one of the “unqualified” candidates — Saudi Arabia — were appointed to the UN Council anyway, earning fierce condemnation from around the world. The new crop of rights abusers join the many already on the Council, including the murderous communist and Islamist regimes enslaving Venezuela, Sudan, and more.
UN Watch brought together a number of victims of the regimes just selected to serve on the UN Human Rights Council for an online press conference. Former Chinese political prisoner Yang Jianli, who now serves as the president of Initiatives for China, blasted the regime in Beijing and the UN’s decision to give it a seat on the UN body. Cuban human-rights activist Rosa Maria Paya, daughter of late dissident Oswaldo Paya, slammed the regime in Havana. Free Russia Foundation chief Vladimir Kara-Murza spoke out against Moscow, while award-winning Pakistani journalist Taha Siddiqui highlighted abuses by the Islamist Pakistani regime.
The UN “human rights” body, which includes almost 50 governments and dictatorships, has long been plagued by scandal — especially in light of the fact that brutal mass-murderers and corrupt regimes typically hold the majority of the seats on the council. That is despite the fact that under the resolution that created the UN council, member governments are expected to uphold the “highest standards” in the promotion and protection of human rights. The previous iteration of the UN scheme, known as the UN Human Rights Commission, was shut down after mass-murdering dictator Moammar Ghadafi of Libya was selected to lead it.
Citing the totalitarian governments on the council and the anti-Israel bias, the Trump administration officially ended U.S. participation in the council years ago. On the way out, then-U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley ridiculed the body as “a protector of human rights abusers and a cesspool of political bias.” President Trump has also ordered an American withdrawal from various other disgraced UN bodies including the UN World Health Organization (WHO), the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the UN Paris Agreement on “global warming,” and several other key organizations and agreements.
Commenting on the latest selections, the U.S. government said the decision to pack the Human Rights Council with even more dictatorships was more proof that America was right to leave. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, for instance, said the choices of Cuba and China “only further validate the U.S. decision to withdraw and use other venues and opportunities to protect and promote universal human rights.” UN Ambassador Kelly Craft said it “validates [Trump’s] decision to leave that deeply corrupted body.” “With China, Russia, Cuba and Venezuela as members, the Council makes a mockery of its intended purpose and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” she added.
Even liberals and globalists have expressed disappointment. Speaking to the far-left Al Jazeera, which is funded by an Islamist dictatorship, University of Copenhagen Professor of International Law Kevin Jon Heller said the situation was typical of the UN. “Of course it is regrettable that countries with such terrible human rights records can be elected to the council. But that is the nature of the UN’s messy bureaucracy,” he said. “There is simply no way to avoid the kinds of backroom deals that result in outcomes like this. There is simply no evidence that countries [governments] take human rights records into account when they vote.”
The UN’s bizarre antics — including the appointment of mass-murderers and torturers to the Human Rights Council — makes much more sense when one realizes that the UN has a drastically different understanding of “human rights” than Americans. In America, it was always viewed as a self-evident truth that, as America’s Founding Fathers declared, unalienable rights are endowed upon each individual by God Himself, meaning no government can legitimately infringe on those rights. In fact, the Founders said governments are created to protect those pre-existing rights.
By contrast, the UN holds just the opposite view. In UN jurisprudence and international agreements on rights, it is perfectly clear that governments and international instruments are the source of the UN’s phony “rights” (which are really just privileges). It is also spelled out clearly that those pseudo-rights bestowed by governments and UN agreements can be revoked or limited by governments essentially at will. Indeed, in Article 29, the UN’s “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” states that those supposed “rights” may “in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.”
Aside from the UN Human Rights Council, the other preeminent UN “human rights” organ is the Office of the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights. Current High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet is a notorious communist operative allied with the mass-murdering Castro regime and other Latin American barbarians accused of multiple serious crimes in her home country. In fact, Bachelet defected to the savage police state enslaving East Germany when anti-communists acting at the direction of the Chilean Parliament overthrew Castro acolyte Salvador Allende, who intended to turn Chile into another open-air gulag like Cuba.
Considering the realities of the UN, it is no surprise that brutal totalitarians are celebrated and selected to lead the fraudulent UN human rights bureaucracy, while liberty-minded nations are under relentless attack. Indeed, the UN Human Rights Council and the High Commissioner on “Human Rights” both have long track records of demonizing the United States and other free nations over gun-rights, free speech protections, limited government, pro-family policies, and other key freedoms. Mass-murdering tyrants, though, typically get a pass. Consider that the UN “Council” has spent drastically more time attacking some Western-minded democratic nations than examining the brutal regime enslaving North Korea.
With the UN becoming increasingly discredited, Trump has taken several key actions to rein in the globalist body. However, Deep State globalists have no intention of allowing Trump or the American people to mess up their plans. Instead, global government-promoting organizations such as the Council on Foreign Relations are working overtime to defend the UN, promote “reforms” that further empower it, and stand up new institutions that can help advance the cause of globalism even when the UN is impotent to do so. That means simply defunding or withdrawing from various UN agencies is not enough.
Fortunately for those who value sovereignty and reject UN hypocrisy and globalism, legislation to liberate the United States from the UN and all of its disgraced bureaucracies is already sitting in Congress. Under the American Sovereignty Restoration Act (H.R. 204), the U.S. government would cut all ties with the infamous “dictators club” while evicting its headquarters from American soil and ensuring that U.S. troops can never again serve under UN command. All that is needed now is the political will to push the bill through Congress. A perfect time to do it will be if and when Trump’s second term begins.
Related articles:
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UN Human Rights Council: Is Washington “Redskins” Appropriate?
UN Human Rights Boss, a Socialist, Slams Trump
UN “Human Rights” vs. God-given Rights in US
UN Human Rights Council: A Dictator’s Paradise
With UN Discredited, Globalists Pursue “League of Democracies”
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Congressman Introduces Bill to Get the U.S. Out of the UN
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Furious at Trump, Disgraced UN “Human Rights” Boss to Step Down
