The United Nations Human Rights Council sparked outrage on Wednesday when it announced that two of the seven experts elected to its advisory committee were from Iran and China.
Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of UN Watch, told Fox News Digital, “The U.N. elected Beijing’s and Tehran’s loyal agents as ‘human rights experts’—without a ballot, without shame. These regimes persecute minorities, jail anyone who speaks freely, and rule through fear and censorship.”
Neuer added, “The committee that once drafted the U.N.’s anti-racism convention has now been captured by those who embody racism, repression, and the silencing of truth. It’s an inversion of human rights—and a stain on the United Nations itself.”
According to Kittrie, “The report begins by noting that ‘[g]enocide and crimes against humanity occurred during the year in China against predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang.”’
Lawdan Bazargan, a prominent Iranian-American human rights activist who was imprisoned in Tehran’s infamous Evin penitentiary for political dissent, wrote on X that Iran’s representative is “a long-time representative of the Islamic Republic, to the UN Human Rights Council Advisory Committee. Nadipour is no defender of rights: During the Women, Life, Freedom uprising, she dismissed global support for Iranian women as ‘politically motivated,’ siding with the regime’s crackdown.”
China’s Vice President Han Zheng addresses the 78th United Nations General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York City on Sept. 21, 2023. (Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images)
Bazargan added, “As Iran’s ambassador in Denmark, her embassy pressured Iranian women to accept cleric-imposed divorce terms, even threatening loss of child custody. She has served a regime that forces hijab, allows child marriage, and imprisons women’s rights activists.”
The U.S. government under both Democratic and Republican administrations has classified the Islamic Republic of Iran as a leading state-sponsor of terrorism and issued voluminous reports about widespread human rights violations in the nation.
Fox News Digital reached out to Iran’s U.N. mission and the Chinese embassy in Washington D.C. for comment.
