© Front Line Defenders
In newly published report, ISHR and four partner organisations assess China's lack of implementation of human rights commitments from its 2018 Universal Periodic Review (UPR). The report details the government's diverse strategies to silence and repress human rights defenders, lawyers, and journalists.
In November 2018, the Government of the People’s Republic of China underwent its third UN human rights peer-review (known as the Universal Periodic Review, or UPR), where it received a number of recommendations from other governments to stop arbitrarily detaining human rights defenders (HRDs), lawyers, and journalists, and to amend laws and practices that unduly restrict fundamental freedoms and close space for civil society. The Chinese government actively accepted the majority of these recommendations, identifying most as ‘already implemented’.
Yet, research conducted by ISHR, Front Line Defenders, Safeguard Defenders, Reporters Without Borders, and The 29 Principles, points to a radically different conclusion: the Chinese government continues to misuse legislation and implement policies that criminalise any form of dissent, and persecute those exercising their basic rights to protect the rights of others.
The report, titled Strategies of Silence: Repression of Chinese Human Rights Defenders, Lawyers and Journalists, draws attention to China’s widespread use of national security and other legal provisions to impose lengthy prison sentences, and forcibly disappear defenders, lawyers and journalists, under ‘Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location.’ Looking at the implementation of relevant UPR recommendations over the past three years, the report points to laws and practices used to disbar human rights lawyers, restrict defenders’ freedom of movement, bypass due process, and censor information, de facto depriving them from any possibility to engage in human rights work.
Meaningful human rights change in China will not happen without defenders, lawyers and journalists: governments committed to promoting basic rights need to understand this, and step up support to Chinese human rights defenders, at the UN and beyond.Raphael Viana David, Acting Asia Programme Manager
In early 2019, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet addressed a letter to Foreign Minister Wang Yi identifying priority issues for implementation, including the need for China to create an enabling environment for civil society. She further encouraged China to submit a mid-term UPR report in 2021, which the government has so far disregarded.
In this context, ISHR recommends the following:
On 17 October 2024, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, Mary Lawlor, presented her latest report in an interactive dialogue with United Nations member States during the 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly in the Third Committee.
Civil society calls for the immediate release of human rights defender Hoda Abdelmonem, arbitrarily detained for six years in Egypt.
Following the presentation of the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders’ Intersessional Report, ISHR delivered a statement calling on his mandate to release his long-awaited report on reprisals and remind States of their obligations to ensure a safe environment for defenders to conduct their activities.
