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Six of world’s most repressive regimes on UN panel

GENEVA: Six of the world’s most repressive regimes are on the United Nations panel that is supposed to uphold human rights, the US campaign group Freedom House said on Thursday.

China, Cuba, Eritrea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Zimbabwe, which have “dire human rights situations,” work in concert to prevent the 53-nation UN Human Rights Commission from combatting abuses, said a statement by the private group, which is based in Washington.

Other members of the commission include countries that Freedom House classifies as “not free,” including Pakistan, Bhutan, Egypt, Guinea, Mauritania, Qatar, Russia, Swaziland and Togo.

The report was released in Geneva during the annual six-week meeting of the commission. “Rather than serving as the proper international forum for identifying and publicly censuring the world’s most egregious human rights violators, the (commission) instead protects abusers, enabling them to sit in judgment on democratic states that honor and respect the rule of law,” said Jennifer Windsor, Freedom House’s executive director. Windsor welcomed UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s proposal to create a body consisting of members with the highest human rights standards. ap

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