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Three Years After the UN’s Universal Periodic Review, RSF and NGO Coalition Denounce China’s Hypocrisy on Human Rights

Credit: Front Line Defenders
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Reporters Without Borders

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and a NGO coalition denounce the Chinese regime’s hypocrisy, as it keeps trampling on press freedom despite promising improvements before the United Nations three years ago.

In a joint assessment published on 1st December 2021, Reporters Without Borders (RSF), along with International Service of Human Rights (ISHR), Front Line Defenders, Safeguard Defenders, and The 29 Principles, denounced China’s obvious unwillingness to improve human rights, including freedom of the press and the right to information, despite the commitments it made following the 2018 United Nations Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process. On the contrary, the regime has further increased its control over the media and intensified the persecution of journalists and press freedom defenders, at least 127 of whom are detained according to RSF’s last count. 

“President Xi Jinping’s refusal to implement the human rights commitments he made before the United Nations not only denotes a rare hypocrisy, but also a total disrespect towards the institution”, says RSF East Asia bureau head, Cédric Alviani, who calls on the international community to “build up pressure on the Chinese regime to deter it from continuing its repressive policies and to secure the immediate release of all detained journalists and press freedom defenders”.

Following the UPR, the Chinese government accepted 284 recommendations, including to “protect and guarantee respect for freedom of information and expression, in particular by journalists”, to “guarantee freedom of opinion and expression, enhancing efforts to create an environment in which journalists [..] can freely operate in accordance with international standards”, to “ensure a safe environment for journalists”, and to “remove restrictions on freedom of expression and press freedom, including on the Internet”.

In a report titled The Great Leap Backwards of Journalism in China, to be published in December 2021, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) investigates in detail the system of censorship and information control put in place by the Beijing regime and the threat it poses to press freedom and democracy in the world.

In their report, RSF and the NGO coalition denounced: “In November 2018, the Government of the People’s Republic of China underwent its 3rd Universal Periodic Review (UPR), a UN-hosted peer review of countries’ human rights records. China received a number of recommendations from other States to stop arbitrarily detaining human rights defenders, lawyers and journalists.
Though they rejected some of these recommendations, the Chinese government accepted a majority and identified them as ‘already implemented’.”

Credit: Reporters Without Borders’report

In the 4th chapter of this report, called “Ruling by law’: the disbarment of human rights lawyers”, it is mentioned that Chinese authorities have taken legal and practical measures to restrict lawyers’ rights to practice. Local Judicial Bureaus, a local extension of the Executive branch, are empowered to suspend, cancel or revoke the license of lawyers and law firms (Lawyers, Articles 23-4, 53; Law Firms, Article 64).

Additionally, it is said in the report, “the regulations strengthen supervision of lawyers by their law firms, including taking responsibility for monitoring lawyers’ exercise of fundamental freedoms.”
“This also includes ‘denying the nature of state-determined evil cults’, targeting lawyers defending Falun Gong practitioners (Law Firms, Article 50-5; Lawyers, Article 39-3).The regulations allow for the revocation of law firms’ license if they do not take action to sanction lawyers in contravention with the regulations (Law Firms, Article 39).

The People’s Republic of China ranks 177th out of 180 in the 2021 RSF World Press Freedom Index.

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