Rights Groups Unimpressed With Chinese Communist Party’s UN Photo Exhibition

Chinese Communist Party propagandists organized a photo exhibition at the United Nations.

HARMONY IN TIBET? An image at the exhibit held at the U.N. on International Human Rights Day depicts a Tibetan Buddhist monk viewing a religious ritual. The Communist Party's purpose in displaying such imagery is to depict religious and ethnic harmony in Tibet, where human rights groups and Tibetans say that their religion has been attacked and undermined by the Party for over six decades. UN Watch

On the same day that imprisoned Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in absentia, Chinese Communist Party propagandists organized a photo exhibition at the United Nations, extolling the progress of human rights in China.

Under the headline “Experience China” photographs at the exhibit, held at the U.N.’s European Headquarters in Geneva, on Dec. 10—coinciding with International Human Rights Day—depicted minority groups like Uyghurs and Tibetans smiling in traditional garb, while didactic photo captions explained their gratitude for religious and ethnic freedom under communist rule.

Rights groups were unimpressed, according to Geneva-based U.N. watchdog group U.N. Watch. “It is an outrage that the U.N. is hosting and cosponsoring—with China’s Communist regime—a massive propaganda display designed to cover up the government’s systematic abuses of universal human rights,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of the group, in a press release.

The organization identified with ease and alacrity the contradictions between representation and reality: “Contrary to Beijing’s documented persecution of minorities and their cultures, the exhibit shows colorful photos of ethnic minorities in traditional costumes,” they wrote.