China is aiming to reshape the rules-based international order to reflect its own priorities by taking over multilateral institutions such as the UN, evidence submitted by a UN whistleblower claims. The evidence presented claims Beijing was influencing votes at the UN to squelch discussions on topics sensitive to it and that it even bribed two General Assembly presidents.
In doing so Beijing seeks to de-prioritise the rule of law, democracy and human rights, a former employee of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), British citizen Emma Reilly, has alleged in written evidence submitted to the foreign affairs committee, a panel of MPs which scrutinises the foreign office. It is carrying out an inquiry into international relations in the multilateral system.
In her written evidence, published Tuesday, Reilly exposes how Beijing influences the OHCHR to not raise certain issues and “exerts significant pressure” on senior UN officials and staff to modify their reports to remove negative references to China.
“Reports of both the WHO and the UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) on origins of Covid were edited to reduce referenced to the possibility of a lab leak,” she claims.
She said an OHCHR report on the treatment of Uyghurs contained significant edits from the Chinese govt and claims that UN staff were secretly giving China the names of human rights activists who planned to attend the Human Rights Council to talk about China human rights abuses.
She said these people then found their family members in China were visited by Chinese police, arbitrarily arrested, placed under house arrest, tortured, disappeared or put in concentration camps.
“Beijing’s consistent demand for meetings and apologies following even the mildest criticism have served to ensure even relatively independent UN officials to not publicly criticise China, or even raise human rights concerns privately. This results in a perverse situation where democracies that permit dissent are much more regularly criticised by the UN’s human rights and humanitarian agencies than autocratic regimes,” she said.
Reilly, who was dismissed from her job for blowing the whistle, said Beijing, through development assistance, was influencing votes at the UN to, for example, shut down discussions on Xinjiang. She said, “During the two-year negotiation of the SDGs (2013-2015) Beijing paid bribes to two successive presidents of the General Assembly which had significant influence over the final texts put to the Assembly… such that the content of the final goals and indicators closely aligns with Beijing’s approach — devoid of civil and political rights and freedoms.”
In recent years China has successfully campaigned for its nationals to lead or obtain very senior management posts on a significant number of UN departments programmes and agencies. “No other member state has a strong presence across the most senior management of almost every UN agency,” she said.
The evidence also includes a submission from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) which says that China is working to “shape the multilateral system to align more with a state-centric, authoritarian world view, and to robustly defend itself against criticism.”
In a significant revelation, former Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly has levelled serious accusations against the United Nations, alleging a disturbing nexus between the OHCHR and the Chinese government.
The UK Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee has published written evidence received as part of its inquiry into international relations in the multilateral system.
Reilly, acting as a whistleblower, claimed that the OHCHR has been providing “dangerous ‘favours'” are “being rendered by OHCHR to the Chinese government” and “these favours fall into a broader effort of the Chinese government to instrumentalise the UN to serve its national interests”. Her evidence alleges a “UN cover-up of special favours for the China,” informed UK Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee in a press release.
Reilly alleged that “during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals” that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the General Assembly who ultimately oversaw the process and had significant influence over the final texts put to the Assembly”. Her evidence alleges that the China “imposes a secret conditionality across UN agencies that the monies so provided may not be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan”.
Her written evidence includes allegations that “the Chief of the Human Rights Council Branch in OHCHR, a French national, was secretly providing the China with advance information on which human rights activists planned to attend the Human Rights Council”. It alleges that “UN officials at all levels deliberately lied to member states, including the UK delegation, who enquired about the UN policy of handing names – including of UK citizens and residents – to the PRC without their knowledge or consent,” the release added.
Her evidence alleges that “in cases where the China was provided with names of NGO delegates in advance by the UN Secretariat, the delegates have reported that family members were visited by Chinese police, forced to phone them to tell them to stop their advocacy, arbitrarily arrested, placed under house arrest for the period of the meeting, disappeared, sentenced to long prison terms without cause, tortured, or, as regards Uyghurs, put in concentration camps”.
She alleges that “in some cases, their family members died in detention. In at least one case, a person named on the China’s list, who attended only a side event, later returned to China and died in detention”. She alleges that “in at least one case, the Chinese government issued an Interpol red notice against an NGO delegate,” it also said.
Reilly alleges that “self-censorship extends to the Secretary-General… [who] stated that any resolution of my case would be ‘difficult,’ expressly due to the fact the favours I reported were accorded to the PRC.”
The evidence includes allegations that “reports of both the WHO and [United Nations Environment Programme] UNEP on the origins of covid were edited to reduce references to the possibility of a laboratory leak”.
The evidence also includes a submission from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). The FCDO’s evidence says that China is working to “shape the multilateral system to align more with a state-centric, authoritarian world view,” the release said.
On Russia, the FCDO says that Russia “plays a mostly disruptive role across the multilateral system”. Discussing the engagement of isolated countries with the multilateral system, the FCDO says that “Iran uses its position within the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to disrupt and push back against complying with its legal obligations, and often runs in multilateral elections”.
Organisations such as the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, China Strategic Risks Institute, GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, Hong Kong Watch, the Foreign Policy Centre and the Council on Geostrategy have submitted evidence, as well as individual experts and academics, such as Bill Browder.
At 14:00 today (April 16) the Foreign Affairs Committee held its first evidence session in this inquiry, hearing from whistleblower Reilly and other expert witnesses, including Lord Malloch-Brown.
The Committee’s inquiry into international relations in the multilateral system looks at how a broad range of countries are using multilateral organisations, be that through engaging and influencing, working around them or obstruction.
It follows on from the Committee’s report “In the room: the UK’s role in multilateral diplomacy” which concluded that autocratic states were attempting to aggressively co-opt strategically important multilateral organisations and to fundamentally redefine their founding principles, according to the release.
(With inputs from ANI, Twitter)
