Human Rights Council makes mockery of UN

But none of them was invited to Geneva by the UN Human Rights Council, the UN's most prominent body that is supposed to deal with human rights, which is meeting here in annual session.

This is the organisation behind the infamous and now discredited Goldstone report on Gaza. This is the organisation that in 2009 praised Sri Lanka's human rights record shortly after that country's military had killed over 40,000 Tamil civilians.

Last Tuesday, I sat in on this year's UNHRC debate, and listened to the Syrian ambassador with a straight face and with no gasps of disapproval from other delegates tell the chamber that it was really Israelis who were behind the ongoing violence in Syria.

And I heard delegates from Cuba, Syria, Belarus, Zimbabwe, Venezuela and elsewhere praise the Iranian government's human rights record. (In fact, Iran carried out the highest number of executions of any country in the world last year, for such "crimes" as being homosexual or a member of the Baha'i faith, though it is true some other countries' delegates did condemn Syria and Iran for other matters.) Last week, the UNHRC also adopted a report praising the Gaddafi regime's human rights record.

The human rights ambassadors engaged in this activity while sitting under the ceiling art of the council chamber - a remarkably unimpressive piece that cost $US23 million - money the UN might have used to, say, feed starving children in Africa. Just outside the entrance to the chamber, two pieces of art from the time before its renovation remain. On one, the plaque reads "A statue of Maat, ancient goddess of truth and justice"; it was donated by Egypt's Mubarak regime. On the other, it says: "A statue of Nemesis, Goddess of justice, donated by the Syrian government."

Just down the road from the UN, another human rights summit took place the following day, one where actual human rights heroes were present. That summit was organised by UN Watch, and a coalition of 20 other human rights groups, from Tibet to Uganda.

Among the speakers were Chinese dissidents Ren Wanding, who during more than 10 years in prison produced a two-volume attack on the Chinese government painstakingly written on toilet paper; and Yang Jianli, who was released from jail in 2007, and who in 2010 was asked by the jailed Liu Xiaobo to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on his behalf.

Also speaking were Joo-il Kim and Song-ju Kim, who endured a living hell in North Korea before risking their lives to escape. And Nestor Rodriguez Lobaina, who survived 20 years in prisons in Castro's Cuba, where he was severely tortured and had his bones broken on many occasions. He was finally released last year and immediately expelled from Cuba. He has taken refuge in Spain.

Then there was Zimbabwean activist Jestina Mukoko, imprisoned and tortured for calling for democracy in her country. And Burmese activist Zoya Phan, a member of the Karen minority, which has undergone virtual genocide. There were other brave campaigners from Vietnam, Tibet, Pakistan and elsewhere.

I chaired the final session, which was on the Middle East. Impassioned speeches were given by Maikel Nabil, a young Egyptian veterinary student released seven weeks ago after enduring 302 days in a Cairo prison. For much of this time, he was held in solitary confinement in a 1m square space; in other periods he was packed into a cell with 50 common criminals who were bribed to beat him.

Maikel's crime? After Mubarak's ousting last year, he dared to ask the Egyptian military to cede power too, and wrote blog posts calling for Egyptian society to treat women, gays and Jews with respect.

In jail he went on a hunger strike for 80 days and almost died. But none of this broke him, and on his release on January 24 he waved a "V for victory" sign to waiting supporters.

Also on the panel was Ebrahim Mehtari who, for opposing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's 2009 presidential bid in his native Iran, was thrown into prison, raped, tortured and left for dead on the side of a road.

His life is still at risk, since he is one of the few who speak out about the widespread use of sexual torture in Iranian prisons.

Finally, there was 20-year-old Syrian Hadeel Kouki, who had been studying English literature in Aleppo. Caught trying to bring medical supplies to children injured in one of her government's barbaric bombardments of civilians, she was imprisoned for eight weeks. She was subjected to electric shocks and repeatedly raped by prison guards. She asked me to tell the world the name of the guard she says was her chief rapist: Abdul Hakeem Abdullatif.

On her release, Hadeel managed to escape across the border to Turkey. She has now been offered political asylum in the West.

I won't say where since Syrian thugs, who see her as a threat because she is a Christian standing up against a regime that Christian leaders are backing, sent her messages last week warning, "we will catch up with you wherever you are and throw acid all over your beautiful face".

US and Canadian embassy staff came to UN Watch's alternative Geneva human rights summit. But where were the other ambassadors? Does the UN care about human rights? Or does it prefer to be in league with the criminals of the world?