China To Help Lead WHO Despite Controversy

By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News

GENEVA (Worthy News) – There was mounting concern Wednesday that the World Health Organization (WHO) wouldn’t be able to tackle future pandemics after China joined its executive.

Critics said that any lingering hope the WHO might become an organization fit to be trusted with global heath concerns has evaporated with the election.

China was allowed to become one of the 12 members of the WHO Executive Board over the weekend ahead of crucial decisions this week and beyond.

The election came despite misgivings even within the WHO about reports that the COVID-19 pandemic originated in Chinese laboratory experiments. That research aimed at tackling coronaviruses likely entered the population through a laboratory leak, according to several investigators, charges Beijing denies.

China rejected U.S. President Joe Biden’s call to redouble efforts to determine the origins of the coronavirus and said suggestions it may have leaked from a laboratory in its city of Wuhan were a “conspiracy.”

Beijing has accused the U.S. of politicizing the pandemic and stressed that international experts “repeatedly praised China’s open and transparent attitude” to COVID-19’s origins.

HUMAN RIGHTS

The Communist-run nation, which the West has accused of massive human rights violations against its people, will, however, now be part of WHO’s decision-making process.

U.N. Watch, an independent group monitoring the performance of the United Nations, expressed outrage about China receiving an executive seat at the WHO. Hillel Neuer, U.N. Watch’s executive director, called China “the regime that crushed those in Wuhan like Dr. Li Wenliang who courageously tried to warn the world about the coronavirus.”

Dr. Li was silenced by the Chinese Communist Party when he tried to warn other doctors about a SARS-like respiratory disease spreading rapidly through his city. His death at the age of 34 in February 2020, purportedly from a Chinese coronavirus infection, sparked outrage across China and worldwide.

Neuer noted that the past month had not been a triumph for the United Nations. Besides China’s ascension to the WHO Executive Board, “terrorist-supporting countries” forced the WHO World Health Assembly to condemn Israel as a unique health risk, he said.

He also noted that during the past week, U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Michelle Bachelet did not investigate or condemn the reported Uyghur genocide in China’s Xinjiang region.

The top U.N. human rights official claimed she “raised concerns” with Chinese officials about the impact of “counterterrorism and deradicalization” measures on Uyghurs and other mainly Muslim groups.

And China’s neighboring nuclear rogue state North Korea became chair of the U.N. Conference on Disarmament.

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