A United Nations employee, who was fired last week for accusing the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) of providing the names of Chinese government opponents and activists to the Chinese government, has called for an external investigation of the body.
Emma Reilly, an employee at the OHCHR and a human rights lawyer, revealed that sharing the names of dissidents with the Chinese government has proved to be life-threatening. She spoke to Radio Free Asia's Uyghur Service about her allegations and called for an independent investigation.
On asking about the names of Uyghurs given to the Chinese, Reilly said, "I know that it's people who applied to attend the Human Rights Council [and] some of the treaty bodies. I have evidence that a few, [such as] the Committee on Economic Social and Cultural Rights, gave names to China the last time. I've given people private email addresses of the members of those bodies when I've had them to stop them from going via the UN and to get to the members directly. ... Frankly, nobody knows, apart from the people who are handing over names, and that's the problem. I knew that names for the Human Rights Council were handed over at least in 2020. I don't know if the fact that I've gone so public in 2021 means that it has stopped," reported Radio Free Asia.
She stated, "China wants to make sure that the Uyghur genocide is never discussed anywhere in the UN."
"The OHCHR said it stopped the practice in 2015, although a 2017 press release stated that Chinese authorities in Geneva regularly asked the office to confirm whether certain people were attending Human Rights Council meetings," reported Radio Free Asia.
Reilly was fired the last week for telling people about the UN policy of disclosing names over to the Chinese government.
She further claimed that the Chinese government asks about specific 20 to 25 people. The UN then sends Chinese police to their homes arrest them and put their families in concentration camps. They disappear people. They torture people, reported Radio Free Asia. She also claimed that more than 50 to 70 names have been handed over to the Chinese government.
( With inputs from ANI )
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