The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) co-hosted an event in Liberia on Tuesday with the Communist Party of China on the “right to development” – less than a week after the head of the office, Commissioner Michelle Bachelet, absolved China of years of accusations of genocide at home.
Bachelet conducted a visit to China last week that included guided visits to sites in East Turkistan, the western occupied region China refers to as Xinjiang, which is home to the vast majority of the Uyghur population. Extensive evidence — including satellite photos, eyewitness testimonies, police documents, and internal speeches by Communist Party officials — has revealed years of genocidal policies implemented against Uyghurs and other Muslim populations in East Turkistan.
Paramount in human rights investigators’ evidence leading to the conclusion that China is committing genocide in the region is the documented existence of upwards of 1,200 concentration camps for Uyghurs and mass sterilization campaigns used to ensure that non-Han populations do not grow.
Bachelet did not address sterilization or other accusations against China, such as the use of gang rape to torture concentration camp victims or accusations of live organ harvesting. During her remarks at the conclusion of her visit on Saturday, she mentioned the concentration camps but referred to them with the Chinese Communist Party’s euphemism — “vocational and educational training centers” — and claimed they had all been “dismantled.”
The high commissioner’s visit outraged Uyghur leaders and human rights activists around the world, who are calling for her resignation.
On Monday, Bachelet’s office opened a two-day conference alongside the Chinese communist regime in Monrovia, Liberia, dedicated to “development.”
“The conference is aimed at assessing progress made in the implementation of the United Nations Universal Declaration on the right to development and articulate challenges and opportunities and provide recommendations to address the challenges outlined at the end of the meeting,” Liberia’s New Dawn newspaper reported. “The meeting which was convened at a local hotel in Paynesville, Montserrado County, was jointly organized by the Chinese Embassy and OHCHR.”
Chinese Ambassador to Liberia Ren Yisheng used the conference to promote China’s predatory Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a global infrastructure plan that offers risky loans to weak economic states meant to be used to pay China to build roads, ports, and other major projects. Liberia is a member of the BRI. Ren cited the BRI as a way that China is helping protect the “right to development.”
“In 2006, China has been elected as a member of the UNHRC [Human Rights Council] five times, contributing Chinese wisdom and strength to the mainstreaming of the RTD [right to development],” Ren boasted. “China supports the actions of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in promoting the RTD around the world. This conference is co-hosted by the Chinese Embassy in Liberia and the UN OHCHR.”
Ren also falsely claimed that in his country, “civil and political rights are effectively guaranteed, and the level of people’s participation in, contributing to, and sharing in the political development process is increasing.”
The New Dawn report indicated that the United Nations Human Rights Office did not challenge China’s claims to respecting human rights in any way at the conference. Instead, the OHCHR representative at the event echoed Ren, stating “the right to development is recognizing that development is a comprehensive economic, social, cultural and political process which aims at constant improvement of the wellbeing of the entire population.”
On Wednesday, New Dawn reported that the Chinese government had already moved to exploit the Liberian economy using the themes of the U.N. co-hosted conference. Ren issued statements asserting that China sought “to expand cooperation in the fields of agricultural modernization, industrialization development, digital economy, green economy, smart city and telecommunication, electricity, and roads,” according to the newspaper.
“We are ready to work with the Liberian side to build China-Liberia win-win cooperation into a demonstration zone for BRI International [Belt and Road International] cooperation in West Africa,” he added. “Liberia is rich in resources with hard-working people and has great potential for development. In particular, as Africa’s oldest black republic, Liberia has actively supported the national liberation movement on the African continent and made great contributions to defending the human rights of the African people.”
Chinese “cooperation” with African states has been marred by exploitation, racism, and violence in many Belt and Road partner nations. Zimbabwe, Kenya, and Nigeria have documented extensive abuses in relation to the BRI enterprise, including environmental threats, racist policies likened to apartheid on construction sites, and Chinese citizens physically assaulting African workers on projects. Africans have also complained of China importing its nationals to take jobs it had promised locals and using immigration fraud to get around visa work limitations.
The OHCHR’s uncritical cooperation with China in Africa will likely do little to dim the chorus of voices calling for Bachelet’s resignation after her visit to China. In Guangzhou, her last stop in China, Bachelet asserted last weekend that the Communist Party had made “tremendous achievements” in human rights while expressing only vague “concerns” about the Uyghur genocide, which she referred to only as a “counter-terrorism” operation.
Bachelet insisted her visit was “not an investigation” and intended only to promote cooperation between her office and the Communist Party.
The Chinese government proclaimed Bachelet’s visit to have definitively erased all evidence of the Uyghur genocide and has since used it to demand that Bachelet visit America and investigate “shootings” as one overarching human rights abuse.