The Swiss non-governmental human rights group United Nations Watch announced today that Chinese human rights activist Zhang Baocheng, a leader of the New Citizens’ Movement, has won a UN ruling that international law mandates his immediate release.
The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, a quasi-judicial panel of five experts, upheld in full a petition filed by UN Watch in cooperation with Citizen Power Initiatives for China, a Washington-based organization headed by former political prisoner Yang Jianli.
The UN panel determined that China is “arbitrarily detaining” dissident Zhang Baocheng, who has been imprisoned by the regime since May 27, 2019 for criticizing the Chinese government’s crimes against the Uighurs in Xinjiang, and for his providing aid to another dissident.
In its Opinion no. 54/2021, the Working Group found that China arrested Mr. Zhang without a legal basis. The UN panel called on China to immediately release Mr. Zhang and grant him reparations, and to conduct a full and independent investigation of the circumstances that led to Mr. Zhang’s arbitrary detention.
The Working Group found that “the deprivation of liberty of Mr. Zhang is arbitrary,” noting specifically that it contravened the Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantees on the right to be free from arbitrary arrest, the right to a fair trial, the right to presumption of innocence, freedom expression, and freedom of association.
An independent and impartial UN body, the Working Group consists of experts from Australia, Latvia, Ecuador, Zambia and Malaysia.
China submitted its response two months after the deadline, failing to file a simple request for an extension. The UN Working Group therefore refused to accept it.
In reaching its decision, the Working Group upheld in full the legal arguments made by UN Watch, and rejected all of China’s prior justifications for its imprisonment of Zhang.
Comment By UN Watch
“This is an important ruling for jailed human rights activist Zhang Baocheng coming from a central mechanism of the UN Human Rights Council,” said UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer. “As a member of the council, China is duty-bound to respect and implement its rulings.”
“We now call on Michelle Bachelet, the UN high commissioner for human rights, to raise the case of Mr. Zhang ahead of her trip next month to China and to demand his immediate release.”
“Bachelet should urge the Chinese government to stop its systematic suppression of freedom and put an end to punishing political dissent with arbitrary arrests, beatings and harassment of activists and their families,” said Neuer.
“Now that the Working Group has found that China’s treatment of dissident Zhang Baocheng violated his basic human rights under international law, we call on Chinese authorities to honor the UN ruling and to immediately release Mr. Zhang.”
