US turning human rights body polls into a farce: China Daily editorial

The anti-Beijing fulminations by the "Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China" shortly before the elections to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on Tuesday shows the extent to which the Washington- and Taipei-funded group is willing to weaponize human rights issues to help meet the United States' agenda.

The self-proclaimed "international, cross-party alliance of parliamentarians from democratic countries focused on relations with the?People's Republic of China" has been agitatedly lobbying countries to not vote for China and thus reduce its share of votes in the elections to the 15-strong UN human rights body this week.

That the IPAC co-chair Helena Ann Kennedy openly declared that "while it may not be possible to prevent the PRC's election this time, a lower vote share would send a strong signal that the rest of the world has had enough" indicates the IPAC's concern has never been human rights; instead, its goal is to smear China.

With the so-called National Endowment for Democracy, which the US has used as a political tool to trigger "color revolutions" in foreign countries, and the "Taiwan Foundation for Democracy" which pays obeisance to the secessionist-minded Tsai Ing-wen authorities being its major fund providers, the IPAC is again trying to sell the old wine brewed by the NED — "human rights issues" in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong — in a new bottle.

That China has always been able to win a seat in the UN Human Rights Council with high number of votes since it was founded in 2006 shows the international community recognizes its achievements in human rights protection and promotion. Lifting about 800 million people out of abject poverty in just over four decades is China's greatest contribution to the world's human rights cause.

In fact it is the US that should feel ashamed about, and be held accountable for, the series of humanitarian crises it has created around the world by launching wars and triggering unrest in many countries. Afghanistan and Iraq are just two of the examples. Lest we forget, the US withdrew from the UN Human Rights Council in 2018, although it rejoined it in 2021.

But the IPAC — which claims to safeguard the international "rules-based order", protect national integrity, strengthen security, promote trade fairness and uphold human rights but does exactly the opposite — has turned a blind eye to that for obvious reasons.

The founding of the organization in 2020 itself represents an attempt by Washington to divide the world, and pressure countries to jump onto its anti-China bandwagon. Human rights is only a ruse the US uses to cover its real motives.