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Taiwan banned from UN Human Rights sessions: Where is human rights?
Taiwan banned from UN Human Rights sessions: Where is human rights?
25/6/17
A Taiwanese professor and three students
were barred from visiting the public gallery at the United Nations (UN) human
rights office in Geneva early this week.
Citing new internal guidelines, staff at
the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) told them
that they would not even accept international student cards as proof of
identity – but only documents issued by Beijing.
Professor Liuhuang Li-chuan from National Chung
Cheng University was also barred from attending an International Labour
Organisation (ILO) meeting as a union representative during her visit to
Switzerland.
The incidents took place amid diminishing
international recognition for the island nation owing to
cooling cross-strait relations. Beijing cites the “one China policy” in
demanding that other countries and international organisations do not offer
Taipei recognition. Panama – one of the island’s last allies – switched diplomatic
recognition to Beijing earlier this week.
‘Rudely’ blocked
Liuhuang told HKFP that she and her students applied
successfully to enter the OHCHR’s public gallery before leaving for Geneva.
They went to the office’s registration counter on Monday, where all
visitors must present identification.
However, each member of Liuhuang’s party was
checked by different members of staff, and each encountered different
experiences. Liuhuang’s Taiwanese passport was rejected, but she was
allowed in after she presented her international driver’s licence.
One student was allowed in with his international
student card, but was kicked out again after another staffer rejected the same
card from another student.
“The staffer who rejected the student had a very
rude attitude,” said Liuhuang. “He loudly said: ‘Taiwan is not a country.
Please present an identity document from a country recognised by the UN.'”
One official showed the students a page from
internal UN guidelines provided to frontline staff. The page indicated
that visitors with Taiwanese passports and identity cards could not be
accepted, but visitors with Taiwanese resident cards – documents issued by
Beijing for travel into the mainland – would be accepted.
In previous years, the UN told Taiwanese citizens that they could not enter using
their passports, but could enter using their national identity cards.
After an hour, she and her students decided to
leave. She has yet to receive an explanation from the OHCHR over the
incident.
One China policy
The following day, Liuhuang met director-general
Michael Møller of the UN’s Geneva office, who told her that the situation with
Taiwanese visitors changed because of the “one China policy.”
Whereas Taiwan has traditionally not been
represented in UN events except with permission from Beijing, Liuhuang
claimed that even low-level grassroots exchanges – like the planned visit
with her students – have now been blocked.
“China has been using the ‘rules of the game’ –
using the system – to block Taiwanese people from participating in any
international organisations,” she said.
She said that she would understand if Beijing’s
diplomatic allies did not recognise Taiwanese passports. “But the problem is –
you’re an international organisation.”
“Does this mean that everyone not from a
UN member state… [like] exiles and stateless people, will not have
any chance to seek help? Then what is the point of your OHCHR?” She
added that the new guidelines against Taiwanese contradicted the OHCHR’s
own mandate to help vulnerable populations.
UN policy
contradictions
Earlier, Liuhuang was also told she would be barred
from attending an International Labour Organisation (ILO)
conference during her Geneva visit as an adviser at the Taiwan
Petroleum Workers Union, despite initially receiving an invitation. The ILO is
an agency of the UN, but each UN agency theoretically maintains
independence on membership issues.
The ILO told her that, beginning this year, it would
not permit access to people who only hold identification documents issued
by non-members of the UN – such as Taiwan. But she claimed in an essay published by The Diplomat that there were
contradictions in this policy.
“The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) is not
a United Nations member any more than Taiwan is. However… the ILO promoted its
policy of ‘decent work for all’ through its regional office and conducted a
report on the Palestinian occupation area via its tripartite commission,” she
wrote.
“Every year during the ILO annual conference, Kosovo
workers and employers were able to join the assembly as observers and enter the
ILO conference hall; they were also permitted to speak during the conference,”
she added. “[In the late 1990s] Kosovo had not reached independence, and was
not a United Nations member.”
Liuhuang called on Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen
to take a stronger stance – or at least make a statement – on the issue of
civil society groups and individuals being barred from various UN
organisations. “It’s like [Tsai is]… telling Taiwanese people to fend for
themselves.”
This on top of the decades of imbalanced and
obsessive focus by the old Human Rights Commission on alleged Israeli
violations of human rights while turning a blind eye to so many other regimes.
It became morally bankrupt and an embarrassment to the UN system. To reverse
growing cynicism about the hypocrisy of existing institutions and practices, then-secretary-general
Kofi Annan recommended the creation of a smaller Human Rights Council to
facilitate more focused debate. That "reform" has been implemented,
but progress on substance is far from obvious.
For
this incident, it is clear to see that UNHRC and other UN organizations have
been politicized for power nations’ interests. They have long called for rights
of peoples, indigenous peoples like Montagnard and Khmer people in Vietnam, but
when it comes to Taiwan with the one China policy behind, even UN Human Rights
Commission has looked away. This raises doubtful question about UN’s
objectiveness and true devotion for human rights and democracy. /.
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All comments [ 2 ]
the rejection contradicted the core value of the UN --- to protect and improve all people’s human rights. They should go beyond the nationality.
The biggest and longest-running scandal is the way in which Taiwan has been "banned" from the UN, just like undesirables were banned under South Africa's apartheid regime and thus could not be covered by news reports.
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