GENEVA (Reuters) - China has been lobbying non-Western countries to praise its human rights record ahead of a key U.N. meeting where it will face questions and criticism over its actions in Hong Kong and Xinjiang, according to diplomats and documents.
Four diplomats told Reuters that China’s mission at the United Nations in Geneva had been sending memos to envoys in the build-up to the review of Beijing’s record by the U.N. Human Rights Council scheduled for Tuesday.
China’s mission did not respond directly to a request for comment on the reported lobbying. In a statement, it said Beijing “firmly opposes the politicization of human rights” and “promotes a fairer and more just, equitable and inclusive global human rights governance”.
Tuesday’s review will be the first since the U.N.'s top rights official released a report in 2022 saying the detention of Uyghurs and other Muslims in China’s Xinjiang region may constitute crimes against humanity. China denies any abuses.
Doesn’t really need much lobbying wrt Xinjiang given that no Muslim country opposes China’s actions.
Map of countries opposing China’s actions (in blue)
Oddly enough, the map is rather similar to this one showing which countries do not recognize Palestine (in grey)
I’d imagine the lobbying is towards key European powers who have shown recent support for Palestine to be more consistent on the issue, which would also explain why the diplomats went to Reuters to report it.
It really is always the same map isn’t it
It’s always the same map. It’s a reflection of the spread of British (pre-WW2) and later American (post-WW2) ideas around the world, which explains the relative geographic outliers of Japan and South Korea as well as Australia.