UNHRC set to blast Israel 7 times, but mum on China’s Muslim imprisonment

Seventeen non-governmental groups this week called on the U.N. Human Rights Council to send a fact-finding mission to the Xinjiang region of China to investigate the situation.

By TOVAH LAZAROFF
Updated: FEBRUARY 6, 2019 02:00
A demonstrator holding a Palestinian flag uses a sling to hurl stones at Israeli troops during a protest at the Israel-Gaza border fence, in the central Gaza Strip January 25, 2019 (photo credit: IBRAHEEM ABU MUSTAFA / REUTERS)
A demonstrator holding a Palestinian flag uses a sling to hurl stones at Israeli troops during a protest at the Israel-Gaza border fence, in the central Gaza Strip January 25, 2019
(photo credit: IBRAHEEM ABU MUSTAFA / REUTERS)
The UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) is set to blast Israel in seven separate reports, including one on Gaza border violence, but has not yet published any plans to release a report on the one million Muslims that China is holding in mass internment camps.
Seventeen NGOs called on the UNHRC this week to send a fact-finding mission to the Xinjiang region of China to investigate the situation.
“The Chinese authorities have detained Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims – outside of any legal process – in ‘political education’ camps for their perceived disloyalty to the government and Chinese Communist Party,” the non-governmental groups said.
“In those camps, they are subjected to forced political indoctrination, renunciation of their faith, mistreatment and, in some cases, torture,” the NGOs stated.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch were among the 17 NGOs that spoke out in advance of the UNHRC’s 40th session, which is set to take place in Geneva from February 25 to March 22.
The UNHRC has already published a list of at least 79 reports that will be dealt with at the meeting, including those on human rights situations in other countries such as Malaysia, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia and Sri Lanka. There are also two reports each on Iran and Syria.
No other country has as many reports against it as does Israel.
The UNHRC has yet to publish a list of the resolutions its 47 member states plan to vote on, including those on Israel. Most of its resolutions are based on reports.
UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer estimates that there would likely be about five resolutions against Israel.
“With an unprecedented amount of seven reports and five resolutions, the UN is planning to attack Israel – more than any other country in the world – at its upcoming 40th Human Rights Council session in March, when it devotes an entire agenda item and day to scapegoating the Jewish state,” said Neuer.

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Among the seven reports is one on the blacklist of companies doing business with areas of Israel over the pre-1967 lines, such as the Golan Heights, east Jerusalem and the West Bank.
The office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights had been expected to publish the database prior to the March session, but no date has been set for its publication.
The UNHRC will also hear a report on the Hamas-led weekly Palestinian riots along the Gaza border, known as the “Great March of Return,” which began on March 30, 2018. More than 220 Palestinians have been killed in those riots as a result of IDF actions.


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