Human Rights & Wrongs

November 12^th is the date of elections to the UN Council on Human Rights. Amongst this year’s candidates are such luminaries of liberty as Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria and China.

That is the Council set up to replace the previous UN Commission on Human Rights, which had lost credibility by extending membership to countries with poor human rights records, so it will be an interesting election.

To be fair, everybody’s new best friend and trading partner, China, has claimed unremitting efforts for promotion of Human Rights, although judging by their continuing repression of Tibet, Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang, they are being a wee bit selective in just which humans they mean. Their policy in Tibet continues to be particularly vicious, and this is an auspicious time to sign (and circulate) a petition to add to the pressure for them to back off.