Ukraine yesterday indicated it had changed its mind on a historic vote that saw the UN Human Rights Council refuse to debate alleged abuses in China’s Xinjiang region.
Western nations suffered a heavy defeat at the UN’s top rights body on Thursday when they failed to get enough votes to pass a first-ever attempted resolution targeting China.
The draft resolution, presented by the US and a number of other Western countries, merely asked the council to debate a UN report, citing possible crimes against humanity against Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in the China’s western Xinjiang region.
Photo: AFP
However, in a moment of knife-edge drama, countries on the 47-member council in Geneva, Switzerland, voted 19 to 17 against holding a debate on human rights in Xinjiang, with 11 nations abstaining.
Following an intense lobbying campaign by Beijing, many of the votes against and abstentions did not come as a huge surprise.
However, the decision by Ukraine, which relies heavily on Western backing as it battles Russia’s invasion, to abstain in the vote caught some off guard.
Ukraine itself appears to have had second thoughts.
In an unusual move, Ukrainian Permanent Representative to the UN Office and other International Organizations in Geneva Yevheniia Filipenko yesterday took the floor asking that the “record of the proceedings reflect our position in favor of the adoption of the mentioned decision.”
Council President Federico Villegas said the UN body would “take note of your statement,” but stressed that “in accordance with the rules and practices the result of the vote ... will remain as it was announced yesterday.”
Even if the result had shifted to reflect the changed vote, the resolution on China would still have failed, by one vote.
Among the council members backing China against the debate were Muslim-majority nations that have been benefactors of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, including Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Indonesia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
Beijing has dismissed allegations of rights abuses, including forced labor, as the “lie of the century,” and conducted tours for international diplomats that sought to emphasize the region’s political stability and economic transformation.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
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