04/18/2018

German human rights activist excluded from UN conference

Serious allegations: UN is ignoring its own principles, thus becoming a henchman of China’s unjust regime (Press Release)

Dolkun Isa is a German citizen and president of the World Congress of the Uyghurs. He was supposed to report on continuing repression against Uyghurs in China. Photo: STP

Following the exclusion of a German human rights activist from a UN conference in New York, the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) accused the world organization of ignoring its own principles. “If the UN arbitrarily excludes human rights activists upon request by influential member states, it will lose its credibility,” warned Ulrich Delius, the STP’s director, in Göttingen on Wednesday. The Göttingen-based human rights organization had registered Dolkun Isa, a German citizen of Uyghur descent, as a participant of the “Permanent Forum of Indigenous Peoples”. However, he was not allowed to take part in the UN conference on Monday afternoon – supposedly for “security reasons”. Isa, who lives in Munich, is President of the World Congress of the Uyghurs, the most important umbrella organization of the persecuted Muslim minority in China. At the conference, Isa had planned to talk about the ongoing oppression of the Uyghur people in China.

Last Friday, shortly before the end of the work day, UN staff in New York had informed the STP that Isa’s registration was pending due to security issues. “We contacted the UN immediately, emphasizing that an Interpol ‘Red Notice’ – initiated by China – had recently been canceled, due to an intervention by the German government,” Delius reported. Human Rights Watch and the German UN agency in New York had tried to support Isa as well – but in vain.

“The UN must be able to decide by itself who is to be recognized as a human rights advocate. It is unbelievable how China is able to put pressure on the UN, instrumentalizing the world organization for its own interests,” Delius criticized. “We can not rely on the help of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, which should be responsible here, because it is headed by the former Chinese Ambassador in Geneva, Liu Zhenmin, as Deputy Secretary-General.” The STP had already warned the UN about China’s growing influence at the end of March 2018. Back then, the human rights organization had accused the People’s Republic of deliberately trying to break up structures for the protection of human rights within the world organization by means of budget cuts.

The Uyghur Dolkun Isa had been denied entry to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on the basis of a “Red Notice” before – and the UN had to admit that the information provided by the Chinese security forces had been stored in its computer system without further examination.