A U.N. human rights attorney who’s worked to expose “heartbreaking” abuses by China says her job at the international body is under threat.
Beijing is to blame — yet the mainstream media has all but ignored the story.
Fox News says attorney Emma Reilly exposed an incident inside her own office that left dissidents open to retaliation by Communist leaders in China.
She said she caught her coworkers handing over the names of dissidents who had been planning to attend a U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC) meeting in Switzerland.
The network said that led to pressure from Beijing on those dissidents.
Some were urged not to make the trip.
Some were arrested.
Some were tortured.
And in one case, according to Reilly, a person reportedly died while in custody.
But the agency, she said, isn’t backing her.
They’re taking China’s side.
“Instead of correcting complicity in human rights violations, OHCHR has doubled down and retaliated against me for telling the truth,” Reilly told U.N. Watch in March. “The stories I have heard are heartbreaking. It is long past time for member states to investigate.”
U.N. officials deny the allegations… while also admitting they did hand over names.
“Contrary to her claims, at no time has any activist been placed at risk by the human rights office’s practices of responding to inquiries from Member States requesting for confirmation of the names of activists accredited to attend the Human Rights Council sessions,” spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric insisted in spring.
Reilly called that claim “laughable.”
“[T]he cover-up is really about the fact that the UN human rights office deliberately placed dissidents and their families at risk, and OHCHR knows it,” she said in a statement cited by U.N. Watch in March.
She also told Fox News in June that at least one ethics officer at the U.N. backed her claim. The retiring officer “found that managers of the U.N. Human Rights Office were concerned only with giving China what it wanted.”
Reilly tweeted last week that some of the names involved are U.S. citizens – and urged both the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Senate Foreign Relations Committee to investigate.
I sent @USAmbUN a 3-page letter and 6 annexes correcting @USUN statement to @FoxNews.
The simplicity of @UN's denials does not make them true.
It is time for @HouseForeign @SenateForeign to insist on independent, external investigation.
US citizens' names handed to Beijing. pic.twitter.com/el7c9QPlWa— Emma Reilly (@EmmaReillyTweet) August 26, 2021
At least one U.S. senator is livid.
“The United Nations is increasingly influenced by authoritarian regimes like Communist China,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn) told Fox News, adding that it was “sadly not surprising to hear that the Chinese Communist Party targeted, silenced and abused dissidents.”
She called on Congress to “root out malign influence at the United Nations, starting with Beijing.”
Instead, however, Reilly said the U.N. is trying to root her out – and Beijing is behind it.
She tweeted some of the retaliation she’s already faced:
.@UN managers have:
– defamed me;
– removed a judge;
– swatted me;
– deprived me of functions;
– shut down an audit;
– removed my whistleblower status;
– fraudulently used disability funds to pay me.Is there any number of victims or broken rules that will make @SecBlinken act?
— Emma Reilly (@EmmaReillyTweet) August 26, 2021
The Whistleblowing International Network and 30 other organizations joined forces this week in a letter to the U.N. calling for “a full and credible investigation into Ms. Reilly’s concerns and for the Secretary General to urgently suspend all detrimental action against her to ensure full and fair mediation.”
Other attorneys are also speaking out.
“If the UN does ultimately fire Ms. Reilly, this will be a test as to whether the U.S. government really means what successive Administrations have claimed about their support for an effective whistleblower protection,” Edward Flaherty, an American lawyer based in Switzerland, told Fox News.
Flaherty told the network he’s represented several U.N. whistleblowers, not including Reilly.
“If the U.S. won’t protect Ms. Reilly for disclosing U.N. complicity in China’s human rights abuses by handing names of dissidents (some of whom were U.S. citizens) to China, what would make them act?” he said.
— Walter W. Murray is a reporter for The Horn News. He is an outspoken conservative and a survival expert.