China’s Rights Crackdown Is Called ‘Most Severe’ Since Tiananmen Square
Kenneth Roth said that China’s crackdown on human rights activists is the most severe since the Tiananmen Square democracy movement 25 years ago,
The effect of China’s behavior on human rights is like "death by a thousand cuts," Mr. Roth said,
but he also pointed to the dangers of "a thousand acts of acquiescence" by the United Nations and states that support human rights.
Human Rights Watch presented a copy of its report to the United Nations secretary general, Antonio Guterres, Mr. Roth said,
but Mr. Guterres’s response did not mention China by name.
China said that And China is an active, willing partner in that effort.
The United Nations has expressed concern that the detention of Jiang Tianyong, a prominent human rights lawyer,
resulted from a 2016 meeting in Beijing with the United Nations special rapporteur on poverty, Philip Alston.
The report also documents China’s diplomacy in the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, where the country aligns with an informal collection of states, including Algeria, Cuba, Egypt and Venezuela,
that discretely coordinate their positions to deflect scrutiny of their records and consistently challenge the council’s ability to look into accusations of abuse in other states without their consent.