The policy of providing names of human rights advocates probably did start in 2006 as an isolated act of misconduct by a single individual, the Chief of the Human Rights Council Branch. Only a relatively small number of people knew the policy existed until I found out about it and started reporting it in 2013.
However, the cover-up since 2013 goes right to the top, with the personal involvement of António Guterres himself.
Managers at Assistant Secretary-General level and above are political appointees. I am therefore naming and shaming them for their role in the cover-up.
I reported the dangerous and exceptional policy of handing names of human rights advocates to the Chinese government to UN senior managers to such a degree that the UN lawyers’ primary argument in court was that because every single senior manager was aware and did not act, I must be unreasonable to report it.
The reaction from every one of these managers can be summed up in four words: They do not care. They do not care about the ongoing endangerment of human rights advocates, and they do not care about vicious retaliation against me for reporting it. They only care about stopping it becoming a scandal by any means necessary. I list their individual reactions below.
- UN Secretary-General, António Guterres
- UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet
- Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights, Ilze Brands Kehris
- Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, Nada al Nashif
- Catherine Pollard, Under Secretary-General for Management Strategy, Policy and Compliance
- Former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Prince Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein
UN Secretary-General, António Guterres
I have repeatedly asked Mr. Guterres to order investigation of the policy of handing names of human rights advocates to the Chinese government. I have appealed to his sense of justice, to the UN Charter, and even laid out the precise reasons for which the UN could be criminally liable for this policy under international law, and the consular and political issue of the UN actively passing names of citizens of, for example, the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Germany, Sweden, Norway and Switzerland to the Chinese government (here). I pointed out the constantly changing public story of OHCHR (here). I begged him to avoid creating a legal precedent in UN courts that politics override human rights, the rule of law and the UN Charter (here). Mr. Guterres simply ignored all of my appeals.
Mr. Guterres has been personally involved in my case since April 2018. When an Ethics Officer issued recommendations in my case, he had his Chef de Cabinet write to the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Prince Zeid, instructing him to implement the recommendations for a transfer and mediation. The former High Commissioner simply lied in his response, claiming that I had refused a transfer and mediation when in fact OHCHR had refused to even contemplate either. The independent judge who heard my case noted from the bench that, in addition to being false, the OHCHR response “seem[ed] to [him] to put a spin on what has occurred such that the Applicant is being portrayed as an unreasonable person, and that concern[ed him]… it goes much further than it should have.”
Mr. Guterres was apparently falsely informed by the very people I was accusing of leading retaliation against me that I had been protected, and did not have the curiosity to check if that was true. In December 2019, he even claimed in a public staff meeting that both I and another OHCHR whistleblower, Miranda Brown, had been protected. Listen to his claims here:
The reality, of course, was that Ms Brown had lost her job four years earlier in retaliation for her reports of child rape, and I had been deprived of all functions only two months earlier. Mr. Guterres knew this at the time of his public statement falsely claiming that we had been protected.
Shortly after that meeting, I was given the direct email address of Mr. Guterres and arranged to meet him at the diplomatic lounge of the Geneva airport in February 2020, along with Ms Brown. He declined to respond as to whether he would investigate the issue of handing names to the Chinese delegation, or even whether he would reinstate the judge who heard my cases to allow him to issue his ruling. To his credit, he openly admitted that he knew we were being retaliated against – much to the surprise of the senior UN staff accompanying him – but claimed resolution of our cases would be “difficult.” His reasoning was that he was being criticised in the press by some of the same people who had led retaliation against us, so any action to protect us or investigate our reports could be construed as a response to that criticism. The reference was to this article. That is the actual level of commitment of Mr. Guterres to whistleblower protection. To avoid further criticism in the press that he simply gives in to powerful member states and views human rights as an impediment to rather than an integral part of the UN’s mission, he was happy to throw me under the bus and leave in place a policy of giving in to Beijing’s demands.
We continued to follow up by email, seeking at least a stable working environment and retraction of false statements about us. Mr. Guterres said he would have “the people in charge” look into our cases, email here. That response begs the question – who precisely is in charge of the UN Secretariat? The Secretary-General clearly does not think it is him.
Mr. Guterres soon stopped replying to my follow-up emails, though he does still read them. He now actively participates in the retaliation. It is Mr. Guterres himself, acting through his Chef de Cabinet, who refused the latest recommendations for my protection, issued in July 2020, when I was finally found to be a whistleblower. The whistleblower policy Mr. Guterres claimed to be so proud of requires my protection against further retaliation, and investigation of the retaliation against me. Mr. Guterres himself has refused to respect a finding by his own Ethics Office that UN investigators have a conflict of interest, and there should be external investigation. And it is Mr. Guterres who is currently ensuring that no investigation whatsoever takes place. Now, when asked about my case, Mr. Guterres disputes the finding itself, claiming that I am somehow not a whistleblower, as in the video below, in which he notably refuses to comment on whether or not he will act to stop me being fired for the act of whistleblowing.
UPDATE: Now, in response to my candidacy for Secretary-General and this website, Mr. Guterres has gone still further, seeking to have the determination that I am a whistleblower removed, despite no provision in any UN policy that would allow this and the alleged independence of Ethics Offices (see breaking news tab). Mr. Guterres continues to take no action on the lies of his own spokesperson about the policy, despite clear breaches of the UN rules he is supposed to uphold (here and here). All evidence points to him now personally leading the cover-up.
The conclusion must be that Mr. Guterres agrees with the earlier Ethics Officers’ finding that human rights, rule of law, the UN Charter and the principle of “do no harm” are all subservient to the mere possibility of a better political relationship with Beijing and, in his case, their vote for his second term as Secretary-General.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet
Ms Bachelet has run the UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR) since September 2018. I asked to meet her before she even took office (my letter here). She has simply ignored me. It is true that she is, notoriously, only very rarely in Geneva, much preferring to spend her time in her home country of Chile, but I would have been happy to meet virtually.
When I was given and discovered evidence that names continued to be given to Beijing, I reported it to Ms Bachelet. She simply ignored me. When the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs confirmed he would correct the parliamentary record to remove the lies OHCHR had told about me, I informed Ms Bachelet and again asked to meet. She simply ignored me. When she finally held a staff meeting, I asked her in person to commit to meet me. She pretended not to have seen the evidence, even as my voice broke with the stress of yet more vicious, public defamation. After this, Ms Bachelet simply stopped holding staff meetings. Listen for yourself:
Ms Bachelet, of course, did not follow up. OHCHR has around 900 staff. Precisely one of those is a recognised whistleblower. I am told many meetings are held about me, but almost none are held with me. That is not an exaggeration; I have had a total of four meetings in eight years outside my initial reports, at which senior managers consistently told me they simply did not know whether or not names of human rights advocates are still handed to the Chinese government. The Chief of Human Resources referred to by the High Commissioner as having met with me quite simply had not. She, too, simply ignores my requests to meet. She was willing to commit perjury (my complaint here), so it is possible she deceived Ms Bachelet on this point, but a senior UN official earning at minimum US $ 30,755 per month of public money (free of tax, and before addition of significant benefits) should be capable of verifying the most basic facts.
Ms Bachelet’s response to my reports has been, quite simply, to ignore them completely. Her own spokesperson stated how dangerous a policy of handing names to Beijing would be, falsely claiming that no such policy existed (see UN cover-up tab). Ms Bachelet remained incurious, simply ignoring the blatant lies of her own spokesperson, against UN rules (here). Her inaction, since before she even took office, shows she simply does not care if names are being handed to Beijing or not. As a former President of Chile, she was extremely active in the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative, so her complete lack of curiosity as to whether Chinese dissidents are being actively endangered by her own Office raises legitimate questions about how she now prioritises her duties as the UN’s highest official on human rights versus her national political legacy of much closer relations with Beijing.
Ms Bachelet continued her predecessor’s retaliation against me without question, even as she realised her initial Deputy High Commissioner, Kate Gilmore, to whom responsibility for my case was assigned, had lied about something as basic as her qualifications. Ms Bachelet, like her predecessor, simply ignored the direct instructions of the Secretary-General for my protection (2018) just as she ignored the recommendations of the former UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression (2017), two successive Ethics Officers (2018 and 2020) and UN medical services (since 2014 – it is of note that Ms Bachelet is a medical doctor herself).
Ms Bachelet has responded to my reports precisely once, to deny any conflict of interest after she gave a positive review to a book authored by the Chief of the Human Rights Council Branch, at a time when he was under “investigation” for his role in the false and defamatory press release. You can read that email here. Ms Bachelet clearly knew the “investigators,” who destroyed all evidence of their investigation by deliberately deleting tapes of interviews, would find no wrongdoing. In May 2020, she expressly stated that she had no conflict of interest whatsoever in dealing with my case. But, despite no intervening circumstance that could generate a conflict if none existed, in January 2021, to provide ex-post-facto coverage for an illegal investigation into me for the act of whistleblowing (my email here), she magically decided that she now did in fact had a conflict of interest. This was the only way to ensure the investigation could reach its pre-determined outcome that I should be fired. Of course, Ms Bachelet has simply ignored my detailed questions about when this conflict arose and why I was not informed (here). How very convenient.
Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights, Ilze Brands Kehris
Ms Brands Kheris is one of the very, very rare senior managers in the UN Human Rights Office with an actual human rights background, so I had high hopes when she was appointed in January 2020. She heads the New York Office of OHCHR and, more importantly in this context, she is the UN’s system-wide focal point on reprisals and intimidation against human rights advocates who engage with UN human rights mechanisms. Surely she would finally take this seriously and insist on an end to the criminal, life-endangering policy of actively telling Beijing in advance who planned to speak out? Surely she would use her mandate to insist on investigation?
On the OHCHR website, it lists some of the increasing acts of intimidation and reprisal against human rights advocates, including travel bans, threats and harassment, including by officials, smear campaigns, surveillance, introduction of restrictive legislation, physical attacks, arbitrary arrest and detention, torture and ill-treatment, including sexual violence or denial of access to medical attention, and killings. Every single one of those reprisals has been visited on victims of the dangerous OHCHR policy or their families. Every one. I sent her the witness statement of Dolkun Isa detailing some of the retaliation faced by him and his relatives for his advocacy. I sent her evidence that the policy continues, including tapes of the UN’s own lawyers in court.
The OHCHR website correctly states “The freedom to engage with the UN is a basic exercise of fundamental freedoms and human rights of all, and must be respected and protected. When those engaging with the UN face intimidation, threats, imprisonment and worse for doing so, we all lose, and the credibility of the UN is damaged.” Judging from her complete failure to even acknowledge my repeated emails (here), let alone bother to order investigation, Ms Brands Kehris would rather allow the credibility of the UN to continue to be damaged than to do her literal job and act to prevent reprisals (tax-free monthly salary minimum US $ 26,287 of public money).
Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, Nada al Nashif
Ms al Nashif has been Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights since January 2020. Her appointment was somewhat unusual. With the exception of some posts consistently dominated by the permanent five members of the Security Council, senior UN appointments usually rotate among people of different nationalities, following campaigning by their countries of nationality. Ms al Nashif was appointed just over a year after Prince Zeid of Jordan left his role as High Commissioner, which an independent panel found he used to retaliate against whistleblowers with “single-minded determination.” Ms al Nashif also holds Jordanian nationality.
I gave Ms al Nashif the benefit of the doubt that she was not simply appointed to preserve a very flawed legacy, and reported to her the policy of secretly handing names of human rights advocates to Beijing on 18 February 2020, email here. Aware that the Chief of the Human Rights Council Branch would tell whatever story he felt would spare him from accountability, I attached evidence of the policy, pointed out that the Dutch Foreign Minister was obliged to correct the parliamentary record when he repeated OHCHR lies, linked to a well-researched article summarising events, and asked to meet Ms al Nashif directly. I pointed out that managers had simply not met with me, and so heard only the story of the person whose wrongdoing I had reported. I noted “OHCHR can do better than this – all it actually needs to do is stop facilitating identification of victims for torture and genocide, correct the public record, apologise, and transfer me to a mutually agreeable post. These are not unreasonable requests.”
While she claimed she would consider “appropriate next steps,” Ms al Nashif then fell silent for four months. In June 2020, having taken no action whatsoever on my reports, Ms al Nashif decided the time had come to bully and intimidate me into silence. She required my presence for a telephone call in which she simply read from a prepared script and made absolutely clear that she did not care in the slightest either about OHCHR actively endangering human rights advocates, or even about whether a single word she was reading was true. Her sole and unique priority was to ensure that the public and member states did not find out about the OHCHR policy of endangering human rights activists. By that point, I was used to the harassment of senior officials and legally recorded the call. You can listen for yourself, and a transcript is here:
Ms al Nashif appears not to be aware of the rules of the Human Rights Council, and explicitly stated that OHCHR considers that it retains an absolute right to hand the name of any human rights activist to any repressive government at any time, without their knowledge or consent. This is an extraordinarily dangerous position. It is also against the explicit rules set by member states.
During the call, Ms al Nashif became the only official to ever claim to me internally that the policy had changed. I pointed out to her that this is the opposite of the OHCHR court position, and asked that, if this was indeed true, she change the court position.
Ms al Nashif, who has been with the UN in various roles for more than 30 years, appears not to believe it is possible for a UN staff member to prioritise concern for the lives and safety of individuals over absolute and unquestioning obedience to superiors. She followed up by email on 5 November 2020, saying “you are not authorized to engage in any and all public communications with regard to your claims and… you shall cease and desist from all such activities.” I responded, pointing out just some of the inconsistencies in Ms al Nashif’s position:
“Mr. Tistounet made very sure to include in the false statement he wrote for you to read that, after you allege it stopped, choosing whether or not to secretly hand names to China would be in his entire, individual discretion. Have you considered why he might have done that, given that I pointed out that China’s lists since 2016 bear a remarkable resemblance to who applies for accreditation? Apart from assurances from the person who pretended when I discovered and objected to the practice in 2013 that it was the first such request received by China, do you have any evidence whatsoever that this stopped? If so, why did you not submit it to the Tribunal as I requested?
It is indeed embarrassing for OHCHR to have so many different on-the-record stories, and to have lied to Member States about this. Staff regulation 1.2(b) has guidance on honesty and integrity that could perhaps assist. I did my best to seek internal solutions, notably a verifiable end to the practice, since 2013. OHCHR managers refused every recommendation from every mechanism in favour of a strategy of intimidation best exemplified by your threatening phone call of 18 June, which confirmed without doubt that OHCHR management does not remotely care about the truth, but only about silencing me. I, on the other hand, do care about the endangerment of human rights defenders by an Organisation mandated to protect them. I’m sorry to tell you that your call had the precise opposite effect, and firmly convinced me that the only manner to fulfill my obligations as a staff member is through external reports… I would note that the number of people whose names were handed over publicly pointing to the danger, and confirming that OHCHR took no protective measures is increasing. That alone supports the urgent need for investigation.
As the PR victory is clearly all that concerns OHCHR, I reiterate that nobody would be more delighted than I if my reports led to this stopping. OHCHR admitted it continued in a February 2017 press release. The story of it having stopped more than a year earlier only emerged for the first time in August 2017. Announcing an independent, credible investigation may be a better strategy than a position that directly contradicts the position you took in every court filing and hearing.”
Email from Emma Reilly to Nada al Nashif, 6 November 2020
The full email exchange is here. Ms al Nashif has yet to respond. I pointed out the seriousness of lying to the Tribunal. The OHCHR court position, now dictated by Ms al Nashif, is unchanged. OHCHR admits in court that it continues to provide Beijing with the names of human rights advocates on request, without their knowledge or consent. There is no consequence for Ms al Nashif lying to me, to member states, or to the public, but there could be severe consequences for her personally if she lied to the Tribunal.
Ms al Nashif earns a minimum of US $ 27,917 of public money per month, free of tax, and before significant benefits. Management, including in particular ensuring the dignity of all staff at work, and meeting with staff alleging wrongdoing, is in her job description. The telephone call above is the only meeting we have ever had.
Catherine Pollard, Under Secretary-General for Management Strategy, Policy and Compliance
Ms Pollard is probably the most prolific retaliator against whistleblowers at the UN.
Officially, Ms Pollard’s job is to ensure application of UN rules and policies. In reality, she regularly flouts any and all rules to attain her aims of bullying, intimidation and humiliation of any staff member who dares to cross her. She does so with absolute impunity.
When I realised that the UN had no intention whatsoever of stopping or investigating its policy of handing names to China, I started to make complaints of abuse of authority against the individuals responsible, one by one. In 2019, I made such a complaint against the Chief of the Human Rights Council Branch, addressed to the High Commissioner for Human Rights, here. Apparently the High Commissioner prefers not to know what goes on in the Human Rights Office, so despite UN rules, the complaint was forwarded to Ms Pollard. Most of the complaint concerned exceptionally serious wrongdoing, with the following section titles:
- Provision of names of human rights defenders to the Chinese delegation, exposing them and their families to arbitrary detention, torture and death in custody;
- Repeated public and internal misrepresentation of the practice of providing names of human rights defenders to the Chinese delegation;
- Exceptions to other rules and practices of the Human Rights Council for the benefit of China and to cover up this practice;
- Repeated defamation of my character, creation of a hostile working environment and illegitimate interference in my career progression.
Ms Pollard decided to simply ignore the policy of handing names to Beijing altogether. She told me she had appointed two hand-picked “investigators” to look uniquely into point 4. Except that is not what they did. Instead of investigating retaliation against me, Ms Pollard instructed them to abuse the opportunity of having me under oath to find out exactly which member states I had reported the policy to, and which journalists I was in touch with. So, people who were supposed to spend their time investigating events of 2017 instead focussed primarily on an interview I gave to the press two years later. Ms Pollard, who has no obligation to share the actual findings, then sent a letter saying that there could have been no abuse of authority because OHCHR had never, at any time, denied the policy of handing names to China! This is despite OHCHR having done so every time it has been asked (see UN cover-up tab). Then, despite claiming the UN fully admitted it, she banned me in writing from ever reporting that same policy to member states or the press.
When that threat did not work to silence me, Ms Pollard instructed the Deputy High Commissioner to threaten me in June 2020. When that threat also did not work, Ms Pollard directly threatened me herself in November 2020. The UN is very keen indeed to keep me quiet about a policy it claims internally and in court never to have denied. Interestingly, Ms Pollard accused me of lying, so I asked her what I was supposed to have lied about. She said I was lying about the judge having been removed, here. Think about it – I have been telling the press that all evidence indicates the policy of handing names to China remains in place, and that managers internally admit this. If I were wrong about that, wouldn’t the UN’s head of management mention it? I pointed out that the judge had indeed been removed without notice, and is willing to testify to this, here. I keep asking what lies Ms Pollard accuses me of telling, but she does not respond. The UN court position therefore seems to be truthful – names of human rights advocates are still secretly handed to China without their knowledge or consent, endangering them and their families.
The General Assembly mandated an audit of accountability mechanisms within the UN, which was carried out by OIOS. I was contacted by the auditors and interviewed on 27 July 2020. Following the interview, the auditors said they would use my case as the primary example of the systemic failure of the UN to protect public interest whistleblowers. Ms Pollard discovered this, and, despite knowing full well that interfering in the independence of OIOS is misconduct (as here), she and OHCHR managers pressured OIOS to shut down the review and ensure the General Assembly never got truthful information.
Because there is no external oversight, UN managers can simply get away with extreme retaliation against whistleblowers with impunity. Ms Pollard ignores every rule, every provision of the UN Charter, and every ethical principle because she knows that Mr. Guterres will never hold her to account. And she has diplomatic immunity, so I cannot sue her. To their credit, several staff representatives have tried to raise my case with Ms Pollard. Her reactions range from, in their words, “scary” to “terrifying” and “vitriolic.”
The Secretary-General seems happy for Ms Pollard to act with impunity. He has, after all, completely ignored my complaint of abuse of authority against her. He appears to be of the view that senior managers in the UN have the right to lie to the public and member states about the UN policy of handing names to Beijing, to lie to the General Assembly to ensure the immediate removal of a judge about to rule in my favour, to simply ignore court judgements against the Administration, to abuse an expensive investigation in order to retaliate against a whistleblower, to defraud the UN of significant funds, to ignore rules set by member states, to misrepresent UN rules, to interfere in the independence of the judiciary, to interfere in an independent audit, and to ignore direct instructions of the Secretary-General himself. Fuller details of Ms Pollard’s impressive range of acts of misconduct just in my case are here. Other UN whistleblowers report similar actions by Ms Pollard.
In April 2018, the Secretary-General issued instructions that I should be transferred and my case should be mediated. When she took on her current role in 2019, Ms Pollard became responsible for implementing his direct instructions. I am still waiting.
When I was finally determined to be a whistleblower in July 2020 (here), UN policy required that an investigation into the retaliation against me should begin immediately. I named Ms Pollard as the primary retaliator. So far, no investigation has begun. However, despite knowing that she should be under investigation for retaliating against me, Ms Pollard illegally began an investigation into me, for the act of whistleblowing itself, in January 2021. She has no authority whatsoever to place me under investigation, explanatory email here. Nonetheless, she hand-picked an “investigator” who has quite literally been found by the UN tribunals to use investigations for the purpose of retaliation. Her intention is to fire me for daring to point out her own misconduct. And, despite all his rhetoric on protecting whistleblowers, and his direct instructions for my protection, the Secretary-General is doing precisely nothing to stop her.
Ms Pollard, like all autocrats, believes it is the duty of UN staff to show unquestioning loyalty not to the UN Charter, ethical principles or their oath of office, but to her personally. She sees laws as mere impediments, and simply ignores them in asserting her absolute power. Any staff member who dares report misconduct must, in her view, be fired. It may well be Ms Pollard who is now interfering in the independence of the Ethics Panel of the United Nations to try to remove my whistleblower status (see breaking news tab). Any efforts at reform of the UN cannot be successful while Ms Pollard retains absolute control of management.
Former High Commissioner for Human Rights, Prince Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein
Prince Zeid began his tenure as High Commissioner in September 2014, but ignored my requests to meet until 8 July 2015. When I reported that the Human Rights Council Branch was handing names to Beijing, and outlined the danger, his reaction was “the Chinese read our emails anyway.”
I managed to control my urge to point out the immorality of the statement, but did highlight its irrelevance – when I took over the NGO liaison function in early 2013, having already heard from activists that their families had been intimidated prior to sessions of the Human Rights Council, I proposed and implemented a new sign-up system with security similar to that when you enter a credit card number on a website. Previously, the UN Human Rights Office had been using SurveyMonkey, with a single login shared among many staff and interns. It was obviously not remotely secure for the UN to be storing the full, personal data of every single human rights activist coming to the Human Rights Council on external servers with, frankly, a very obvious user id and password. I had persuaded IT managers to take on the project as a matter of urgency specifically because of the previous experiences of human rights activists planning to speak out about China, who had reported reprisals against family members. I was at that point unaware that China had no need to try to hack any system, but was being actively provided with information.
At that point, Prince Zeid took a notebook from his pocket and wrote in it. I gave more details, and also reported two other instances of what the UN formally terms “unsatisfactory conduct”: that the Chief of the Human Rights Council Branch had allowed the Moroccan delegation to pay for his private book launch, to which Prince Zeid’s reaction was “Omar is a hard man to say ‘no’ to”; and that every single recruitment in the Human Rights Council Branch was fixed in advance, to which his reaction was “still waters attract mosquitoes.” I sent the documentary evidence of the endangerment of human rights activists in a follow-up email. I kept following up until the end of Prince Zeid’s term more than three years later. I never heard back from him.
The only independent inquiry ever conducted in the UN into the treatment of a whistleblower examined the conduct of Prince Zeid. It found that, instead of showing concern for the victims of child rape by peacekeepers, Prince Zeid had pursued the whistleblower with “single-minded determination.” He applied similar determination in my case.
After my report to Prince Zeid, I was effectively deprived of functions, blacklisted for any post I applied to, and ostracised. I reported this to him, in case it was a reaction to him conducting enquiries rather than an action he directed. He ignored me.
In early 2017, I was contacted by a journalist who had received what he termed “Ethics Office documents” in my case. Given that they included internal OHCHR emails discussing the policy of handing names to China, it was odd to phrase it that way. I immediately reported this to OHCHR and asked for protection. I was told that I was not permitted to speak to the press, despite UN rules that clearly say I can. I told the journalist not to use my name, and no story was published. However, the documents that were more obviously related to my Ethics case did leak online.
Prince Zeid’s reaction, despite knowing I was telling the truth, was to publicly defame me in a press release, which remains the most strongly worded ever issued by the UN Human Rights Office. No genocide, war crime or dictator has generated the wrath of that Office like I have for telling the truth. The press release admits the policy was ongoing in February 2017, and Prince Zeid re-confirmed this in a memo in March 2017. However, it includes outright lies about alleged protective measures (confirmed by the human rights advocates in a witness statement), and about me and my reports.
Prince Zeid wanted to give the impression he had investigated my reports, and so, in a press release otherwise entirely devoted to the issue of handing names to China, he referred to two completely unrelated investigations. The first was an investigation into the book launch funded by the Moroccan delegation, which did find misconduct. The second was an investigation into abuse of authority by my supervisors who refused to obey rules on performance evaluation, which had resulted in what is termed “managerial action,” i.e. wrongdoing was confirmed, but Prince Zeid decided not to hold his managers accountable. It is clearly a lie to say that those reports were “unsubstantiated,” as is claimed, and Prince Zeid knew that when he, personally, approved increasingly nasty versions of the press release. The easiest way for a person with power and a public profile to cover up wrongdoing is to defame and seek to discredit the unknown person reporting it. Prince Zeid’s spokesperson, who remains in post, confirmed that this was a deliberate tactic to “kill the story.” Prince Zeid apparently still did not care about the victims of abuses perpetrated by UN staff, but only about ensuring nobody heard about it.
On 1 March 2017, I was offered an explicit choice by the third highest ranking official in OHCHR – take a role with no functions, or return to harassment in the Human Rights Council Branch. I called OHCHR’s bluff and chose to return to the Human Rights Council Branch, to my formal functions supporting NGO participation. The Human Rights Council was then underway, so I asked for the list of whose names had been handed to China for that session, so that I could warn them. The OHCHR head of management wrote within an hour of the meeting prohibiting me from ever returning to my functions, and instead requiring that I take a role without functions. I have been without functions ever since.
On 2 April 2018, the UN Secretary-General wrote to Prince Zeid instructing him to transfer me to a mutually agreeable post and mediate my case. On 30 April 2018, Prince Zeid wrote back, and simply lied. He claimed I had been offered and refused another post (not true) and that mediation had been attempted and failed (also not true). It is of note that, between the dates of the two letters, 2 and 30 April 2018, I was on sick leave and had no contact whatsoever with OHCHR.
The judge who heard evidence in my court case was shocked by OHCHR’s attempts to hide these important documents (exactly how many relatively junior UN staff are the subject of exchanges of letters between the Secretary-General and High Commissioner?), and by the lies in Prince Zeid’s signed response. Even the UN lawyers admitted in their closing statement that they could not resolve the “ambiguity,” to which the honourable judge replied that it spoke for itself. Listen here:
Of course, the UN’s preferred judge, who claims to have based her ruling on listening to the audio of the hearings, failed to even mention that the UN had actively hidden these documents from the court, and magically found that the instructions had been followed, despite the UN’s own lawyers and the UN’s own witness admitting in court that they had not. It is a significant advantage for the UN to be able to remove a judge between hearing and judgment when that judge was very obviously going to rule against the UN.
Unusually, Prince Zeid’s retaliation did not end with the end of his term as High Commissioner – he truly is single-minded in his determination to retaliate against whistleblowers, as the independent inquiry found. Before working hours on his very first working day out of office, he had already defamed me on Twitter:
The Human Rights Tulip is an annual award given by the Dutch government. Another OHCHR whistleblower, Miranda Brown, had written to the Dutch government objecting to them giving this prize to Prince Zeid on two grounds: that UN staff are not permitted to accept money from governments for doing their jobs, yet the award was explicitly for Prince Zeid’s work as High Commissioner; and that his time as High Commissioner was characterised by his vicious retaliation against three OHCHR whistleblowers, Anders Kompass, Miranda Brown and me. These concerns were backed up by the Government Accountability Project, and reported by UN Watch, which is why Prince Zeid directs his wrath at these NGOs. Both Mr. Kompass and I were copied on Ms Brown’s letter, but Prince Zeid nonetheless could not resist a dig at me in his tweet, perhaps sparing Mr. Kompass because he was by then an Ambassador of Sweden to Guatemala.
On his claims, I fully admit to being a “self-appointed” whistleblower. Some of the comments after the tweet were rather amusing, pointing out that it is characteristic of blowing the whistle that you do so without seeking the formal permission of the individuals whose actions you plan to report. The UN does not exactly hold meetings nominating staff who will blow the whistle on child sex abuse, endangerment of human rights advocates, or fraud. Prince Zeid had, by this point, deprived me of functions for three years, with only a few very brief temporary posts that had actual terms of reference. He knew full well I had not been promoted, as he falsely claimed. This lie was included in an effort to pretend that he had not retaliated against me. I joined Twitter in order to respond. Having failed to do anything about the policy of handing names to China and directed the retaliation against me for years, Prince Zeid, unsurprisingly, blocked me the same day to avoid having to deal with the inconvenience of the truth.
As well as defaming me on Twitter, Prince Zeid had, just prior to leaving office, arranged for me to be defamed to the Dutch Foreign Minister, who was awarding him the prize. OHCHR staff falsely claimed that no names had been handed to China, and that I had not suffered retaliation. These lies were repeated by the Dutch Foreign Minister to parliament, and by the former Dutch Ambassador to the UN on Twitter. Because government officials, unlike UN officials, are subject to laws, I was able to exercise my legal rights. The parliamentary record was corrected in January 2019 (here and here) and, after I took the Foreign Minister to court and won, the tweet was corrected on 12 March 2021.
Prince Zeid did not make a single statement against the Uyghur genocide during his time as High Commissioner. He occasionally commented on the arrest of individual human rights lawyers, but omitted to mention that information on some of them had in fact been secretly provided by his Office to China.
Prince Zeid is now vice-chair of the board of Human Rights Watch (he became notorious in OHCHR for appointing former Human Rights Watch staff to posts far above the level their experience would justify), a member of the Elders, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and president of the International Peace Institute. He is also Chair of the International Olympic Committee’s Advisory Committee on Human Rights, presumably advising that body on whether or not to act on the Uyghur genocide.
More soon…