UN civil society channels are being exploited by China’s influence campaign

“China Targets” is the title of the new probe, which involves 42 media outlets and explores the different strategies Beijing employs to stifle critics outside of its boundaries. China’s growing onslaught at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva is the subject of one section of the investigation released by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

It focuses specifically on the increasing number of government-organized, pro-China non-governmental organizations, or “Gongos,” at the council. These organizations swarm council meetings to extol China and give positive reports of its policies, which are mostly in conflict with the UN and expert reports of pervasive repression and abuses of human rights.

For example, a shocking report released in 2022 by former UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet mentioned potential “crimes against humanity” committed against the Uyghur minority in western Xinjiang, China. The targeting of democratic activists in Hong Kong and the removal of Tibetan children from their families have been brought to light in other stories. However, the ICIJ stated that Gongos frequently try to interrupt the meetings and silence the testimony of respectable NGOs when they bring up such matters before the council.

According to an ICIJ investigation of 106 UN-registered NGOs from mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, 59 of them have strong ties to the Chinese Communist Party or the Beijing government.

Last year, when the AFP attended a regular assessment of China’s rights record before the council, pro-government organizations made up more than half of the NGOs given a speaking time. “It corrodes. According to the article, Michele Taylor, the US ambassador to the Human Rights Council from 2022 until January of this year, said, “It’s dishonest.”

“To obfuscate their own human rights violations and reshape the narrative” is what she called Beijing’s larger attempt. According to the research, Beijing-controlled organizations are increasingly being utilized to spy on and threaten people who are about to speak about suspected violations.

Fifteen attorneys and activists who were concerned with Chinese rights problems “described being surveilled or harassed by people suspected to be proxies for the Chinese government,” according to the ICIJ and its allies. These instances happened in Geneva outside the UN as well.

According to the article, a handful of Chinese activists and dissidents refused to enter the UN facilities in March of last year because they were so terrified of Beijing’s growing influence in the council.

The article stated that “instead, they gathered for a secret meeting on the top floor of a nondescript office building nearby” with Volker Turk, the head of the UN’s human rights office. However, four individuals who claimed to be from the Guangdong Human Rights Association unexpectedly arrived and inquired about the meeting, even though they had not been invited. The meeting’s facilitators, International Service for Human Rights (ISHR) staff, denied it was happening.

After the four departed, two Uyghur participants went outside for a smoke and said that they were photographed by someone in a black car with tinted windows before individuals who fit the Guangdong group’s description got inside, and the car drove off. The World Uyghur Congress’s vice president, Zumretay Arkin, told ICIJ she thought the Guangdong organization was communicating from Beijing: “We’re monitoring you… You can’t get away from us.”

There was cause for concern among the campaigners. Cao Shunli, an activist, was arrested more than ten years ago as she tried to go to Geneva for a UN review of China’s human rights record. She became seriously ill and passed away on March 14, 2014, after being detained for several months without being charged.

Her passing “stood out as a powerful warning shot,” according to ICIJ, which concluded that the “deadly reprisal” had deterred other activists from interacting with the UN. According to the analysis, the number of Chinese rights advocates taking part in UN operations has dropped to a historic low ten years later. It further stated that since 2018, the number of Chinese NGOs registered with the UN has almost doubled.