(Deutsche Welle Chinese website) After learning that Navanethem Pillay won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2026, Trump posted on social platforms that "I know nothing about this woman, and neither does anyone else." He also said, "I should have won the Nobel Peace Prize eight times, not just one." This giant-baby behavior of throwing around and rolling around when there is no candy made some subsequent questions about Pillai's award seem embarrassing.
Despite this, I still believe that the two criticisms or accusations related to human rights in China deserve to be taken seriously and are issues that international human rights institutions and relevant individuals cannot avoid. First, according to whistleblowers and leaked emails, when Pillay served as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (2008 to 2014), her office confirmed with the Chinese government the list of activists who would attend United Nations human rights conferences; second, in 2010, she failed to attend Liu Xiaobo's Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony.
The pursuit of these two questions is particularly necessary in today's human rights reality in China.
List of human rights activists requested by Chinese government
Emma Reilly, a human rights lawyer who once worked under Pillay, reported that the names of more than 50 dissidents were notified to China during Pillay's tenure. Their families have testified under oath in court, saying that their families were intimidated, arbitrarily detained, tortured, forcibly disappeared, and even killed in concentration camps. Riley accused Pillay of "complicity in the Uyghur genocide."
In response to Riley's accusations, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has responded seriously. In a press release published on February 2, 2017 and available on the United Nations website, the OHCHR "categorically denied" the accusations. The press release, however, doesn't hold up to close reading.
One paragraph reads: “Chinese authorities and others often ask OHCHR days or weeks before Human Rights Council meetings whether representatives of specific non-governmental organizations will attend. The Office never confirms such information until the accreditation process is formally initiated and it is satisfied that there are no obvious security risks.”
The information disclosed in this paragraph includes: first, the Chinese authorities "frequently" inquire; second, "this office" does not actually "never confirm such information", but may confirm it after meeting conditions. Connecting these two points, one could even conjecture that, in fact, the Chinese authorities are often confirmed.
Leaked emails confirmed this suspicion. At least two planned attendees were informed in advance by the Chinese delegation in Geneva and asked to undergo identity checks. One of them is Dolkun Isa, chairman of the Uyghur Center for Democracy and Human Rights and former chairman of the World Uyghur Congress, and the other is Geng He, a human rights activist and the wife of Gao Zhisheng, a human rights lawyer who was tortured many times in China and later disappeared.
In 2020, a United Nations official admitted to Radio Free Asia that the names of participants would be confirmed to the governments of the countries concerned "occasionally under limited circumstances"; in 2021, a spokesperson for the High Commissioner's Office said that this "limited practice" had stopped since 2015; later, Rolando Gomez, spokesman for the United Nations Human Rights Council, also stated in a media interview that the OHCHR had not leaked the names of human rights defenders "under any circumstances."
Behind these contradictory and doubtful information is the well-known fact that the United Nations has long appeased and condoned the Chinese Communist regime’s human rights suppression, and even embraced it, actively cooperating with the Chinese government’s control and manipulation.
A fig leaf for the deterioration of human rights in China
Not directly acknowledging the pressure from the Chinese government, but finding various excuses to cover it up, is exactly the result of this pressure, and in turn becomes its helper. This is also another question people have about Pillai: in December 2010, not only did she or her representatives fail to appear at Liu Xiaobo's Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony, but they also used various reasons to justify the obvious pressure from the Chinese government.
Likewise, these reasons can easily be inconsistent: Her spokesman, Rupert Colville, explained that she was hosting a Human Rights Day event in Geneva that day and "it's not something you can just put down," meaning she might otherwise go; three days later, Pillay herself used a different reason, telling reporters that she had never received a formal invitation from the Nobel committee.
I once pointed out that the United Nations has become a fig leaf for the deterioration of human rights in China.
Moreover, appeasement and corruption are twin brothers, they complement each other and work together. In October 2015, former United Nations General Assembly President John Ashe was arrested on suspicion of accepting bribes from multiple Chinese businessmen (the case was later ended when he was hit in the neck with a barbell and suffocated while on bail).
Then-UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed shock at the case. I said in the article that he should not be surprised if he really understands the relationship between the institution he leads and China.
In today’s United Nations, China’s influence and control continues unabated. Can the OHCHR stand up and clarify that the practice of confirming the names of participants in human rights meetings to the Chinese government has "ceased" and categorically reject the Chinese government's interference in these meetings? How many other UN agencies are whitewashing China’s human rights suppression?
The death of Cao Shunli is a shame to the United Nations
In this press release, the UN Human Rights Office also responded to accusations of responsibility for the death of Chinese human rights activist Cao Shunli. The press release stated: "The inference linking the UN Human Rights Office to the detention and tragic death of Cao Shunli six months later is malicious and defamatory and is not supported by any evidence. Ms. Cao lived in China and was detained on her way to attend an NGO event in Geneva. Neither Ms. Cao nor the Chinese authorities contacted the UN Human Rights Office about her plans to participate in the event, and the office had no knowledge of it. There was no communication between the office and the Chinese authorities before her detention."
We tentatively believe the authenticity of this statement, but it does not deny the fact that we should face: Cao Shunli may not be on the list of participants sent to the Chinese government by the UN Human Rights Office under Pillai, but she is on the list of Chinese government suppressing human rights activists.
On September 14, 2013, Cao Shunli was stopped at Beijing Capital Airport. She is going to Geneva to attend human rights training to prepare for the United Nations' Universal Periodic Review of China in a month's time. She died in custody and mistreatment on March 14, 2014, after being denied timely medical treatment.
A week later, the United Nations Human Rights Council approved China's review results. The International Service for Human Rights (ISHR) requested a minute's silence for Cao Shunli. The Chinese delegation raised a procedural objection. The Council voted 20 to 13 to refuse to allow the president to postpone the ruling, and the silence was interrupted.
A Chinese human rights activist was detained on her way to participate in a United Nations human rights event and was subsequently tortured to death. She was not even allowed to observe a moment of silence at the United Nations human rights conference she planned to attend. This is a shame for the United Nations. This case of persecution of human rights activists has not yet been investigated. This is a shame for the United Nations and the entire international human rights cause.
Pillay was also once "on the list"
The significance of the controversy over Pillay's award is that the reason for her award was "for her efforts to promote peace and international law," that is, to promote universal human rights concepts and actions.
Pillay was born in Durban, South Africa, in 1941. His father was a bus driver. In 1967, she became the first black woman to open her own law firm in Natal. In 1971, while her husband was being held incommunicado under the Terrorism Act, she applied to the Supreme Court to ban police torture interrogations and won, the first successful challenge to the law. She took petitions from Robben Island political prisoners off the island, informed Amnesty International about conditions in prison, and for the first time the prisoners had libraries and lawyers.
In 1997, South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission uncovered a list of "politically sensitive" activists compiled by the apartheid regime's National Security Council. Pillai was on the list, so he couldn't get a passport for many years, and the couple was under surveillance for a long time.
Lists, passports, surveillance, appeals to the international community for assistance - all that Pillai experienced back then is the situation of Cao Shunli and others in China today. Improving these situations through the efforts of the international community is also Pillai's lifelong goal. However, the establishment of the concept of universal human rights, the legitimacy of its value goals, and the possibility of ultimate realization are all inseparable from the courage to face the behemoth monster of the Chinese government.
