UN Registers Growing Violence Toward Human Rights Activists Cooperating With UN

MOSCOW, September 20 (Sputnik) — An increasing number of UN-backed people engaged in protecting human rights across the world is facing discrimination, persecution and blunt atrocities for cooperation with the international organization, a fresh report regarding the issue, presented by UN Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Andrew Gilmour, said Wednesday.

"The range of reprisals and intimidations has also become broader over the past year, and the means used increasingly blunt," the report said, adding that "people engaging with the United Nations experienced intimidation, harassment, threats online and offline, derogatory media campaigns, travel bans, arbitrary arrests and detention, enforced disappearances, torture and ill-treatment, disbarment, and dismissal from their posts, amongst other measures."

The report covers acts of abuse and intimidation toward the activists, their families and supporters, between June 2016 and May 2017. The discrimination was registered in 29 countries, including China, Egypt, India, Iran, Israel, Mexico, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Venezuela and others.

For instance, the report slams a biased prosecution launched against Indian human rights activist Khurram Parvez. According to the document, Parvez was banned from traveling to the 33th UN Human Rights Council session in Geneva in September 2016, and then arbitrarily detained by local police, which reportedly used numerous intimidation techniques against the activist. The Human Rights Council believes that the unlawful persecution of Parvez was set off over his communicating acts of human rights violations in India's state of Jammu and Kashmir and other areas to the United Nations.

Upon presenting the report, Gilmour said that the document did not reflect the real number of people subjected to ill-treatment over cooperation with the United Nations on human rights, as many of them often feared to face even more severe persecution after reporting personal discrimination.

In conclusion, Gilmour called on the states in question to provide an immediate response to the reported atrocities.

Since 2010, the office of the UN Secretary-General, through specifically appointed officials, annually reports on alleged reprisals for cooperation with the United Nations to the Human Rights Council, providing recommendations on addressing the acts of intimidation.