Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

April 1, 2025 - Epoch Times

09:35

Whistleblower Reveals Shocking United Nations Corruption

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	So, Emma, you were fired from the U.N. for objecting to a secret policy of giving out the names of U.S. and Canadian citizens—I mean, dissidents who are working with the U.N. How is this possible?
	Tell me about how this happened.
	It shouldn't be possible.
	It's very definitely against the rules.
	But basically, the Chinese delegation in Geneva would just write to the UN bureaucrats and say, hey, can you tell us if these dissidents are coming or not?
	All of the UN human rights mechanisms are based in Geneva.
	And China didn't want to have its human rights record criticised.
	So they thought they would ask their friends at the UN for a favour.
	And instead of saying no, Like the UN did for every other country that asked, they simply handed over names.
	And we're talking, as you said, about US citizens, Canadian citizens, UK, Germany.
	And the UN didn't inform any of those countries that this was happening.
	And in fact, when they challenged them about it, they simply lied.
	They claimed it never happened.
	I can't help but notice that the U.S. was at this time and remains the largest funder of the UN.
	How does this work?
	Well, the way it works essentially is that China's number two.
	And when the U.S., Canada and other democracies give money to the UN, they usually do it in what's called on-the-air marked funds.
	So they essentially say, here's a blank check.
	Spend this as you see fit.
	And the UN really encourages this, obviously, because they want to be able to use the money however they want to use it.
	Whereas when countries like China or Iran give money to the UN, it's very tightly stated in those agreements how exactly that's going to be spent.
	So down even to things like when China gives money, it specifies every time that it cannot be spent in any country that has diplomatic relationships with Taiwan.
	So what that means is that in addition to all of the Chinese money depending on having diplomatic relations with China, you also have the UN development funds that are secretly dependent on that, even though it's not actually stated anywhere publicly.
	So all that the democracies see is that the money for small island developing states is fully funded this year by China.
	And what they don't see is that that means that any small island developing state that still has diplomatic relations with Taiwan will be under an enormous pressure.
	I mean, so many absolutely astonishing things you're telling me here.
	So this is official policy, yet it's secret.
	How do we know about it?
	Because I told people.
	In 2012, I sort of thought I'd got my dream job working at the UN.
	And I was working with NGOs that were at the Human Rights Council.
	So I was their liaison in the Human Rights Council.
	And I received one of these emails.
	It was forwarded to me by my predecessor, essentially implying that I should hand over NIMS.
	And I told her that that would not be happening.
	And essentially, a fiction was put on for me.
	This had actually been happening since 2006.
	And this was in 2013 when I first found out about it.
	But, I mean, it was astonishing.
	They basically said, and my direct boss, a man called Eric Thiessen, put it in writing that, you know, it might exacerbate Chinese mistrust if we didn't give them the names.
	I mean, let me reiterate this.
	These are people who are Yeah, essentially.
	We might have to have an awkward meeting at which we said, this is against the rules.
	You can't have the names.
	Now, I was absolutely willing to have that awkward meeting.
	When you look at the sort of the emails that are exchanged back and forth, it's a bureaucratic decision, but it's not bureaucratic for the people's families who are still in China.
	Those people are arrested, they're pressured by the authorities.
	There have been cases of them being tortured.
	They've been imprisoned in concentration camps.
	Some of them have died in concentration camps.
	This is not some kind of anodyne action.
	And this is information being given to China exactly when it feels it needs it, weeks in advance of these people ever actually sort of showing up in Geneva to speak.
	So they have weeks to intimidate their family members still in China.
	And as I said, some of these people are U.S. citizens.
	Others have permanent residency in the U.S. because of their status as dissidents.
	And the UN is deliberately endangering US citizens.
	So, of course, I reported that to the US.
	And what happened next, essentially, was the US delegation in Geneva went to see the very man who was handing over names and asked him, are you doing this now?
	Very obviously, he has an interest in lying at that moment, and that's exactly what he did.
	And in sworn testimony, he admits that he lied to the US government about this policy.
	In all of their court filings, the UN admits this is ongoing policy.
	I wasn't fired for lying.
	I was fired for objecting to a policy of the Secretary General.
	And specifically listed in there was the fact that I had told the US delegation and Congress about it.
	So the UN essentially says that they have a right to lie to the US government, their largest donor, about handing over names of US citizens to the Chinese Communist Party, but that I had to be fired because I told them the truth.
	Just to unpack this further, we're talking about the UN Human Rights Council, whose purpose is to safeguard human rights.
	It's specifically to protect people in exactly these sorts of situations, where they're from a regime that is known to do the most extreme of human rights violations.
	By giving those names out, Those people's family members, if they're in China or friends or something, can be intimidated or harmed or whatnot to basically prevent those people from doing the work they were going to be doing with the U.S. Human Rights Council in the first place.
	So again, explain to me how this is possible.
	I think it's possible because you have a lot of people in the UN who have a very comfortable life and who prioritize their personal comfort over other people's human rights.
	The UN works based on something called the Nobleman Principle, which says that the UN must always be the most attractive place to work.
	So we're paid better than the US equivalent.
	We've got better benefits than the Swedish.
	The UN will cover private education up to the age of 25 for your kids anywhere on earth.
	You can go see any doctor anywhere on earth, anytime.
	It's all covered.
	It's a very comfortable life.
	And I think that a lot of people, unfortunately, will prioritize that.
	I mean, as I said in those emails, I was saying people will be tortured and killed as a result of this if you do this.
	And the response was, we might have to have an awkward conversation with the Chinese ambassador.
	Even when I met directly at one point with António Guterres, the Secretary General, to discuss this issue, to try to get him to act, and he told me it would be difficult because it's China.
	And, you know, for context, some of the money that China gives to the UN goes directly to his office.
	Twenty million dollars a year.
	Ten million dollars of that is And very briefly,
	Emma, The Belt and Road Initiative summed up for our audience?
	It's China's version of development cooperation, which is a lot more favorable to China.
	It's widely viewed as a debt trap, essentially paying for large infrastructure projects in the developing world and charging such large amounts of interest on the repayments for that, that a lot of the structures end up back in the hands of China.

▲