Topic: Protecting the Human Right to Peaceful Protest
Country: China
Delegate Name: Jessica Dupree
School: Fishers High School
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All China position papers GLIMUN 2013 committees
The People’s Republic of China strongly believes that this is an issue pertaining to national sovereignty. Each individual country has the right to respond to protests in the way that they see fit and a majority of the time it is the protesters that become violent. Each country has the right to respond to any violence that is being acted out toward the police force. China believes that humans do have the right of peaceful protest, as per the Human Rights Charter established by the United Nations, but once these protesters start getting out of hand then it becomes up to each country what the next course of action is in dealing with them. We believe that the United Nations does not have the right to dictate how a specific country reacts to an internal problem, including the issue of violent protestors.
The People’s Republic of China has recently been dealing with the accusations brought against us by Tibet. They are claiming that we do not protect human rights which is an incredible over exaggeration. China simply feels the need to deal with violence being displayed in our country very seriously. For example, China does not condone the Tibetan protestors lighting themselves on fire in protest against our government. This is the kind of protest that is not peaceful and China strongly discourages it. While China has no problem of protecting the right to peaceful protests, we do recognize that a majority of protests that start off peaceful do not necessarily stay that way and become violent. This is the reason China does not want to make the rules any less lax because we do not want to open our country up to more violence that is completely unnecessary.
China does not see how this committee can develop a solution that is not going to infringe upon a country’s national sovereignty. It would completely go against national sovereignty to have specific ways a country must protect this right. The only way it can be guaranteed is if each country agrees to it and it meets within each country’s specific parameters that do not infringe upon any other country’s parameters. This seems to be incredibly unlikely but China is completely open to supporting resolutions that keep the concept of national sovereignty in mind.
The People’s Republic of China strongly encourages the Human Rights Committee to not consider any resolutions that do not guarantee national sovereignty because those resolutions will only hinder the progress this committee has the potential to make regardless of the topic or issue at hand.
