{"id":2901,"date":"2016-08-24T00:45:22","date_gmt":"2016-08-24T00:45:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.iuhrdf.org\/en\/2016\/08\/24\/chinas-crackdown-dissent-could-lead-unrest-un-adviser-says\/"},"modified":"2016-08-24T00:45:22","modified_gmt":"2016-08-24T00:45:22","slug":"chinas-crackdown-dissent-could-lead-unrest-un-adviser-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/chinas-crackdown-dissent-could-lead-unrest-un-adviser-says\/","title":{"rendered":"China\u2019s Crackdown on Dissent Could Lead to Unrest, U.N. Adviser Says"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An adviser to the United Nations has sharply criticized President Xi Jinping\u2019s crackdown on dissent in China, warning on Tuesday that the Communist Party\u2019s tight grip on civil society was undermining basic rights and risking mass unrest.<\/p>\n<p>By&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/topics.nytimes.com\/top\/reference\/timestopics\/people\/h\/javier_c_hernandez\/index.html\" title=\"More Articles by JAVIER C. HERN\u00c1NDEZ\">JAVIER C. HERN\u00c1NDEZ<\/a><br \/>AUG. 23, 2016<\/p>\n<p>BEIJING \u2014 An adviser to the&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/topics.nytimes.com\/top\/reference\/timestopics\/organizations\/u\/united_nations\/index.html?inline=nyt-org\" title=\"More articles about the United Nations.\">United Nations<\/a>&nbsp;has sharply criticized President&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/topics.nytimes.com\/top\/reference\/timestopics\/people\/x\/xi_jinping\/index.html?inline=nyt-per\" title=\"More articles about Xi Jinping.\">Xi Jinping<\/a>\u2019s crackdown on dissent in&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/topics.nytimes.com\/top\/news\/international\/countriesandterritories\/china\/index.html?inline=nyt-geo\" title=\"More news and information about China.\">China<\/a>, warning on Tuesday that the Communist Party\u2019s tight grip on civil society was undermining basic rights and risking mass unrest.<\/p>\n<p>The adviser,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/its.law.nyu.edu\/facultyprofiles\/index.cfm?fuseaction=profile.overview&amp;personid=19742\">Philip G. Alston<\/a>, said that the party\u2019s dominance of the legal system had left Chinese citizens with few avenues to complain about issues like pollution and inequality. He dismissed the process for filing grievances as \u201cwindow dressing,\u201d and said party officials had suppressed meaningful policy debates.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe government is coming at this from many different directions,\u201d Mr. Alston, a special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights for the United Nations, said in an interview at the organization\u2019s offices in Beijing. \u201cThat is a recipe for serious problems.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"401\" id=\"nyt_video_player\" marginheight=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/video\/players\/offsite\/index.html?videoId=100000004607072\" title=\"New York Times Video - Embed Player\" width=\"600\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Since coming to power in 2012, Mr. Xi has worked to expand the Communist Party\u2019s reach across virtually all aspects of Chinese society,<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/08\/06\/world\/asia\/china-trial-activists-lawyers.html\">sidelining lawyers<\/a>, journalists, academics and activists who stand in the party\u2019s way.<\/p>\n<p>But Mr. Xi has also pledged to improve China\u2019s human rights record, and the government has said it has made&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/11\/19\/world\/asia\/china-insists-to-un-that-its-combating-torture.html\">progress<\/a>in reducing the use of torture and the death penalty. At the same time, officials have&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com\/2015\/06\/26\/china-issues-report-on-u-s-human-rights-record-in-annual-tit-for-tat\/\">deflected criticism<\/a>&nbsp;by highlighting police brutality and other abuses in developed countries like the United States.<\/p>\n<p>Still, China lacks many of the checks needed to ensure justice for its citizens, Mr. Alston said. The authorities announced this week that they had punished more than 2,000 officials for failing to enforce environmental laws. But Mr. Alston, a New York University law professor, said the government should not be the only watchdog.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere must be ways for those whose rights are violated to initiate action,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Alston said Mr. Xi\u2019s government too often promoted party ideology over accountability. He called a series of high-profile trials of human rights activists this month a \u201cmajor mistake,\u201d and he expressed concern about the government\u2019s&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/04\/29\/world\/asia\/china-foreign-ngo-law.html\">efforts<\/a>&nbsp;to limit the activities of foreign nongovernmental organizations.<\/p>\n<p>The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to a faxed request for comment on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Alston, who was wrapping up a nine-day visit to China, also offered praise for the Chinese government, calling its achievements in reducing poverty, one of Mr. Xi\u2019s priorities, admirable.<\/p>\n<p>But he said he was leaving China with mixed feelings. The government took him to Yunnan Province in southern China and offered a highly choreographed tour of a minority village, he said, apparently trying to dispel notions of ethnic tensions.<\/p>\n<p>During his visit, Mr. Alston said, the government prevented him from meeting with several scholars. Everywhere he went, he was followed by a Chinese security detail, he said, and at one point, an activist seeking to meet him was detained by the police outside the front gates of the United Nations offices in Beijing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An adviser to the United Nations has sharply criticized President Xi Jinping\u2019s crackdown on dissent in China, warning on Tuesday that the Communist Party\u2019s tight grip on civil society was undermining basic rights and risking mass unrest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2900,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-2901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2901"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=2901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}