From Chinese Human Right Defenders

Chinese human rights defenders made remarkable strides in promoting and protecting human rights under hostile conditions in drastically shrunken civic space, says CHRD in its 2018 annual report on the situation of human rights defenders, “Defending Rights in a ‘No Rights Zone.’”

In 2018, the Chinese government under Xi Jinping escalated its brutal suppression of rights activists, lawyers, critics of authoritarian rule, repressed religious communities, and ethnic minorities, especially in the Tibetan and Uyghur regions. Xi Jinping, the President of China and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary, continued to hold all the power in his own hands and tightened CCP control over the government, the legislation, the judiciary, the press, religious practices, academia, and other sectors of society.

Under Xi, China’s authoritarian one-party political system has become the most draconian and invasive since the 1980s. The system denies Chinese citizens their human rights to democratic participation, freedom of expression, association, peaceful assembly, and freedom of religion, and it punishes them for promoting and exercising these rights. In 2018, authorities continued to block citizens’ efforts to voice their grievances, including criticizing the government’s failure to protect economic, social and cultural rights, or to seek redress for those grievances.

In international forums, including at the United Nations (UN), the Chinese government has aggressively promoted “human rights with Chinese characteristics,” which emphasizes development without protections for universal human rights and freedoms, as a model for other countries and the global system. As a member on the UN Security Council and Human Rights Council, the Chinese government acted defiantly, contrary to its obligation to uphold universal human rights, and instead intensified its attack on principles enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the human rights treaties that China signed or ratified.

The Chinese government fought fiercely to deny reports of internment camps in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and rejected critical recommendations by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), which reviewed China’s compliance in August, and by other state parties during the Universal Periodic Review in November. The government continued to enjoy impunity for its violations of practically every article in the UN General Assembly’s Declaration on Human Rights Defenders.

Full report found here.