Human rights body: UN special rapporteur received "$200,000 in aid from China"

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

The news, which was first reported on Tuesday in a tweet by Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, was published in detail in a report on the organization's website on Thursday.

The Geneva-based non-profit organization says documents filed with the United Nations show that Ms. Doohan received the money and asked her to return $200,000 to the Chinese government while covering up the ethnic cleansing of Uyghurs in China.

Alena Dohan, a professor of international law at the Belarusian State University, was introduced two years ago as an independent human rights expert on unilateral sanctions, and her reports are not considered the official position of the United Nations.

Ms. Doohan's visit to Iran comes at a time when the Islamic Republic is preventing the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights from visiting. Accordingly, the visit has been criticized by, among others, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi and Prince Reza Pahlavi, who have called for attention to the human rights situation in Iran.

Human rights activist Hossein Ronaghi also wrote in a note published in the Wall Street Journal at the same time as Doohan was in Iran: “If the US removes the Revolutionary Guard Corps from the list of terrorist organizations, it will sacrifice both its national security and betray the Iranian people.” He also tweeted: “This is our message from inside Iran: Do not empower our torturers, do not surrender to those who have taken us captive. Otherwise, you will sacrifice your national security and betray the Iranian people.”

Five civil society activists in Iran also wrote to her in a letter that the Islamic Republic and its representatives with whom Ms. Doohan is talking do not represent the majority of the Iranian people, and that "the undemocratic structure, systematic corruption, and inefficiency of the government have led to the fact that, more than unilateral coercive sanctions, it is the government of the Islamic Republic itself and its institutions that have caused economic pressure on the people and blatant and gross violations of human rights in Iran."