Mum on China ‘Genocide,’ UN Human Rights Chief Hears Assange Pleas

The outgoing United Nations human rights commissioner, Michelle Bachelet, is leaving with a bang, hosting critics of America’s justice system after declining comment on Communist China’s genocidal record. Ms. Bachelet, whose tenure in the UN system ends next week, today invited Julian Assange’s wife and his lawyers to her office at Geneva’s Palais Wilson, to hear their complaints against America.Specifically, they railed against Britain’s extradition order that would send the Australian-born WikiLeaks founder to Washington to face charges of violating the espionage act. They also criticized the American justice system. Even as she nodded sympathetically to such arguments, the Chilean Ms. Bachelet is refusing to make a commitment to publicly release her office’s long-anticipated report on Beijing’s treatment of China’s Uyghur minority at Xinjiang before leaving office.The commissioner told reporters today that she is trying to complete the report on the Chinese province, but due to “tremendous pressures” from all sides its details are yet to be worked out. Late-emerging information could alter the final text before, and if, it is published.The state department last year concluded that Beijing is committing “genocide” against the Uighurs at Xinjiang. Ms. Bachelet visited the province in May, flanked by government minders. While there she declined to criticize the Communist government. Afterward, during a Beijing news conference, Ms. Bachelet praised what she said was President Xi’s commitment to improving human rights. During her China tour, Ms. Bachelet was unable to speak to any of Beijing’s victims due to mass arrests in the province and beyond on the eve of her trip. She heard nothing of mass executions, saw no incarcerations at labor camps and reeducation centers, and seemingly was unaware that a Muslim minority is widely under prosecution. Ms. Bachelet today, though, found time to address another allegedly “shocking” injustice: the travails of Mr. Assange. In February an independent UN human rights torture investigator, Nils Melzer, told reporters that the governments of Britain, Sweden, Ecuador, and America “refused to engage in a constructive dialogue” with him after he accused them of “a concerted effort, trying to set an example of Julian Assange to deter other journalists.”A purported expert on torture, Mr. Melzer, who wrote a book describing a “shocking” treatment of Mr. Assange by the four governments, was aghast that even Ms. Bachelet declined to meet with him. “On several occasions I’ve asked, writing for a meeting, and she delegated it to a level where, again, it’s not helpful,” he told reporters. Mr. Assange is wanted in America for his role in publishing stolen top-secret documents. Making the material public allegedly endangers the lives of American agents and threatens to expose clandestine methods. Separately, Sweden accused Mr. Assange of sexual misconduct while he was there. London ordered his extradition to Sweden, where charges against him were later dropped. After Britain issued a similar extradition order for America, Ecuador ended Mr. Assange’s asylum status in its London embassy. If at first, as Mr. Melzer alleges, Ms. Bachelet was indifferent, she surely was attuned today during an hour-long meeting with Mr. Assange’s lawyers. The attorneys, Baltasar Garzón and Aitor Martínez, bombarded the commissioner with their complaints against Britain’s latest extradition order that, pending an appeal, would finally send him to Washington. The lawyers told Ms. Bachelet of horrors such as an allegation that a former CIA chief, Michael Pompeo, once ordered agents to kidnap Mr. Assange from his hideout at the London embassy of Ecuador. Stella Assange described her husband’s current frail health and said that further incarceration could lead to his death. Extradition, she added, could drive him to suicide. By hosting the Assange entourage at her posh Geneva office, Ms. Bachelet probably could now tell critics that she does not neglect rights violations committed by some of the world’s top democracies.That Ms. Bachelet is unable to bring herself to similarly raise even a peep about that much more egregious Commnist-led human catastrophe is yet one more indication of the UN human rights council’s depravity and its chief’s myopic world view.

Mum on China ‘Genocide,’ UN Human Rights Chief Hears Assange Pleas

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