An ex-employee of the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has claimed the OHCHR “secretly provided China with advance information (about families)” – as part of a publicly acknowledged policy – about activists attending the Human Rights Council to China.
The whistle-blower has also claimed top UN officials, including Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and two former Presidents of the General Assembly, had received bribes. The latter two – who had significant influence over the final texts – were paid during protracted negotiations for Sustainable Development Goals. It has also been claimed that China imposed a “secret conditionality across UN agencies that the bribes may not be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan.
Emma Reilly, who spoke to NDTV Wednesday, has alleged “in cases where China was provided with names… the delegates have reported family members were visited by Chinese police…arbitrarily arrested (and) placed under house arrest for the period of the meeting… sentenced to long prison terms without cause, tortured, or, as regards Uyghurs, put in concentration camps”.
She has also alleged “in some cases, family members died in detention (and) in at least one case, a person on China’s list, who attended a side event, later returned… and died in detention”.
READ | Whistleblower Alleges UN Cover-Up Of “Special Favours” To China: Report
“Some of them (whose details were leaked without consent) gave evidence in my court case… as to what happened to their families after their names were handed over,” she said.
“The United Nations should be denouncing this… not facilitating it,” Ms Reilly added.
Ms Reilly told NDTV she had been fired “uniquely for speaking out about this policy” and pointed out, when asked if she held a grudge over her sacking, that she was not accused of lying at any point.
“I was employed within the UN for 10 years… from 2013 I started blowing the whistle over influence of the Chinese Communist Party on the UN Secretariat. I was employed at the UN rights office, where you’d expect human rights would be the primary goal. But, in reality, the office was secretly transmitting names of people about to speak out against the Chinese government,” she said.
“This started in 2006… and according to the UN’s position in open court, and in public, it continues to this day,” Ms Reilly told NDTV. “The UN admits this openly in court… these judgements are public.”
Ms Reilly’s whistle-blowing efforts have run into trouble over an internal policy that says employees cannot criticise agency policy. “This is so even if it (the policy) constitutes criminal complicity in torture… criminal complicity in arbitrary detention. The UN says I have no right to speak out…”
The same point, Ms Reilly told NDTV, was raised by the judge who heard her case.
“… she found every single claim I was making – about the UN handing over names to the Chinese government – to be true. Despite this she said there is a rule that says no UN staff member can criticise the policy of the Secretary-General. She said the policy is dangerous, but…”
An inquiry by the Foreign Affairs Committee of the United Kingdom’s Parliament, which has published written evidence, found her evidence alleges a “UN cover-up of special favours for China”.
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