PERIODISMOSOCIAL

Human Rights Watch argues that the new Council’s membership standards
and election procedures discouraged countries with poor human rights
records from running for election. These included Sudan, Zimbabwe,
Libya, Syria, Vietnam, Nepal, and Egypt, all of whom held seats on the
former Commission. The new Council also discouraged the worst violators
from running, including North Korea, Burma, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan,
Belarus, and Ivory Coast.

Although several countries with poor human rights records, including
China, Russia, and Cuba, were elected on the new Council, others such as
Iran were defeated. In addition, all Council members will be required to
co-operate with U.N. human rights investigators, and will be scrutinised
according to new evaluation procedures under which they can be suspended
for serious rights violations, says Human Rights Watch.  

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has taken a more
cautious approach, welcoming the new Council but noting that some of the
world’s leading abusers of press freedom gained membership.

“The launch of the Human Rights Council is a powerful opportunity to
confront major obstacles to the creation of a global culture of respect
for fundamental rights, but this may be jeopardised when some of the
countries elected this week - China, Cuba, Russia, Saudi Arabia and
Tunisia among them - are states where press freedom is under pressure,”
says IFJ.

Members of the IFEX Tunisia Monitoring Group, a coalition of 15 IFEX
members, expressed concern that Tunisia was voted onto the Council. “The
U.N. Human Rights Council may soon lose its credibility if it is under
the control of autocratic governments like the one in place in Tunisia,
that violate freedom of expression and harass and imprison individuals
for peacefully criticising their rulers,” said Francisco Diasio of the
World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters.

Diasio headed a TMG fact-finding mission to Tunisia in April, which
found numerous incidents of censorship, harassment of journalists and
human rights activists, and Internet filtering.

Prior to the election, the Arabic Network of Human Rights Information
(HRInfo), the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights and the Cairo
Institute for Human Rights Studies had also warned about voting Tunisia
and other Arab states with serious rights records onto the Council.

Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières, RSF) expressed
outrage that 10 countries it considered some of the world’s worst
violators of press freedom were voted onto the Council. It called the
election of Algeria, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, China, Cuba, Nigeria,
Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia a “scandal.” “What a victory
for them, and what a defeat for the United Nations,” said RSF.

Of those countries, China and Cuba are the world’s leading jailers of
journalists, noted RSF.