The outrageous wrongs of UN human rights Melanie Phillips
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/article4569295.ece
Britain should not be party to a body that has Saudi Arabia making crucial appointments.
George Osborne has been taking considerable flak for doing trade deals with China despite its oppressive authoritarian regime. Yet his critics have been silent on the elevation of one of the world’s most barbaric tyrannies to a key role in promoting global human rights. Saudi Arabia’s envoy to the UN Human Rights Council has been chosen to head its five-member appointments panel.
This recommends applicants for more than 77 positions shaping international human rights standards and reporting on violations around the world. How crazy is this? Saudi Arabia tyrannises women, dissidents, Christians and gays. Some argue that this year it has beheaded more people than Isis.
It sentenced the blogger Raif Badawi to 1,000 lashes and ten years in jail for apostasy and “violating Islamic values and propagating liberal thought”. It is currently preparing to behead and then crucify 21-year-old Ali al-Nimr, whom it arrested aged 17 after taking part in a political protest.
The elevation of Saudi Arabia to this role is akin to making an arsonist head of the fire brigade. This is, however, but the latest instalment in the grisly farce that is the UNHRC. Current members include China, Cuba, Venezuela, Qatar, Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation — human rights abusers all.
Unsurprisingly, therefore, it shows a marked disinclination to expose tyranny. Since its inception in 2006 it has condemned Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, 61 times compared with 55 condemnations of all other nations combined. How many times did it condemn China, Russia, Somalia, Venezuela or Zimbabwe? Zero.
How the West should be dealing with tyrants and despots is a vexed and complex question. There can’t be an absolute block on dealing with them, since much of the world has an attitude to human rights ranging from oppressive to barbaric. There should be in each case an assessment of the balance of benefit and harm to Britain’s national interests, its allies and the security of the free world.
Refusing ever to deal economically with China would hurt Britain for negligible benefit. China does not want to destroy or conquer us. It is driven instead by extreme pragmatism and self-interest.
By these lights, Osborne’s new silk road serves the British national interest. However, his own ruthless pragmatism ignores the potential threat to British security.
China allies itself with regimes that want to harm the West, such as Russia and Iran. And British intelligence agencies say Chinese hackers pose a major threat to British cyber security.
Bringing in Chinese contractors to build Hinkley Point nuclear power station therefore seems a step way too far. The chancellor has displayed an even more reckless disregard by flagging up a similar trade mission to Iran — assuming, he adds, that Iran “honours the nuclear deal and it is properly verified”. Yet this is a regime that has been in a state of self-declared war against the West for more than three decades.
Saudi Arabia also represents a threat to Britain right here and now. It is behind the decades-long programme to export Islamic theocracy to the free world. Apart from financing extremist mosques, it also funds university religion departments which has led some experts to claim that in some cases this has helped to turn the teaching of Islam and Muslim culture into religious propaganda. Yet the Ministry of Justice negotiated a £5.9 million training contract with — of all things — the Saudi prison service. Recently a legal blogger, David Allen Green, revealed that the ministry had admitted it had put out misleading information about this deal.
But it would appear that British officials proposed to help Saudi Arabia to jail, flog, stone, amputate, behead and crucify yet more victims of its barbaric regime even more efficiently and effectively. Ruthless pragmatism — or obscene and amoral cynicism?
Along with the US, Britain is currently a member of the UNHRC. The Saudi appointment was made ahead of its recent June session, yet the UNHRC kept it quiet. It only came to light last week after it was unearthed by the pressure group UN Watch, after which the US said it “welcomed” the Saudi appointment.
The participation of the UK and US on the UNHRC helps validate this bogus rights body and indirectly connives at the human rights abuses perpetrated by many of its members.
It is inconsistent, not to say hypocritical, to single out for opprobrium the chancellor’s proposed trade deals with China while the UK government is embroiled up to its neck with the tyrants of Saudi Arabia along with its unsavoury chums on the UN council of human wrongs.
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