Human Rights Organization: UN Special Rapporteur Received ‘$200,000 in Aid from China’

“UN Watch,” a non-profit human rights organization, says Alena Douhan, the UN special rapporteur who traveled to Iran to investigate “unilateral sanctions,” received $200,000 in financial assistance from the Chinese government in 2021.

This news, first raised Tuesday in a tweet by Hillel Neuer, executive director of “UN Watch,” was detailed in a report published Thursday on the organization’s website.

The non-profit organization based in Geneva says documents filed at the United Nations show that Ms. Douhan received this sum and demanded that she return the $200,000, which she received simultaneously with the concealment of ethnic cleansing of Uyghurs in China, to that country’s government.

Alena Douhan, a professor of international law at Belarusian State University, has been introduced for the past two years as an independent human rights expert on matters of unilateral sanctions, and her reports do not represent the official position of the United Nations.

Ms. Douhan’s trip to Iran comes as the Islamic Republic prevents the presence of the UN special rapporteur on human rights. On this basis, the visit has faced criticism, including from Shirin Ebadi, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and Prince Reza Pahlavi, who have called for attention to the human rights violations in Iran.

Hussein Ronaghi, a human rights activist, also wrote in a note published in the Wall Street Journal simultaneously with Douhan’s presence in Iran: “If America removes the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from the list of terrorist organizations, it will both sacrifice its own national security and betray the Iranian people.” He also wrote in a tweet: “This is our message from inside Iran: Do not strengthen our torturers, do not surrender to those who have enslaved us. Otherwise, while sacrificing your own national security, you are also betraying the Iranian people.”

Five civil activists in Iran also wrote to her in a letter that the Islamic Republic and its representatives, with whom Ms. Douhan is communicating, do not represent the majority of the Iranian people, and “the non-democratic structure, systematic corruption, and governmental inefficiency have caused that more than forced unilateral sanctions, it is the Islamic Republic government and its institutions themselves that have created economic pressure on the people and blatant and egregious violations of human rights in Iran.”