Keep the human rights abusers off U.N. council

Keep the human rights abusers off U.N. council
By Editorial Board, Published: November 10

IN RECENT WEEKS, an imprisoned Cuban human rights activist and rapper,
Angel Yunier Remón, known as "El Critico," has been on a hunger strike
against his incarceration, and is reported to be near death. An
innovative artist with an underground following among impoverished Cuban
youth, he was jailed March 26 after an altercation at his home staged by
Castro's goons, a gambit to coerce him into silence. But instead he has
been resolute, and fought back.

Recently, friends and supporters organized a campaign in social media to
call attention to his plight. But the pace of repression in Cuba is not
slowing. The Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National
Reconciliation reports 909 political arrests in October, the highest in
months. Many of those detained have been part of the "Ladies in White"
movement, wives and mothers of political prisoners who are arrested on
Sundays as they walk to and from Mass.

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In an expression of rank hypocrisy, Cuba is seeking a seat on the
47-member United Nations Human Rights Council. The General Assembly
votes Nov. 12 for 14 new members . Recently, Rosa Maria Payá, daughter
of the Cuban dissident Oswaldo Payá, who died in a suspicious car wreck
last year, appealed to the body to reject Cuba, noting that death
threats, arbitrary arrests and violence are routinely used to repress
dissent.

According to a General Assembly resolution, candidates for the council
are supposed to be countries that "uphold the highest standards in the
promotion and protection of human rights." Cuba does not meet that
criterion. Other regimes that resort to brutality and violence because
they lack genuine political legitimacy are also bidding for seats.
Admittedly, the council is not the most effective force, but why bestow
membership on those who brazenly violate basic principles of human dignity?

Should China, which brooks no challenge to the ruling party's monopoly
on power and maintains a gulag of political prisoners and the largest
Internet censorship operation in the world, be sitting in judgment about
human rights? Many are reluctant to speak out because of China's vast
economic power. This is shameful. Russia, too, wants a place. Its
qualifications? Two young women of Pussy Riot, the girl band, remain
imprisoned for staging a protest in a cathedral; a dozen people face
arbitrary prosecution for participating in the Bolotnaya square
demonstrations; oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky is entering his 10th
year behind bars; a regressive wave of legislation in recent months has
further suffocated civil society.

Also seeking a seat is Vietnam, which has been rounding up human rights
defenders, political dissidents, lawyers, journalists, bloggers,
democracy advocates, religious activists and others. Saudi Arabia wants
to be on the council, even though it has routinely thrown people into
prison without charge or trial, and refuses to allow women to drive on
their own.

If these countries are given seats, what message does it send to the
rest of the world? To those like El Critico, bravely standing up to
repression?

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