According to this global group of NGOs, which included international
NGOs such as Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, as well as regional and national NGOs like the Asian Forum for Human Rights (Forum Asia) and the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, state delegations at the Council are carrying out what appears to be a coordinated effort to intimidate human rights experts, individually and collectively.
Such attacks at the ongoing 11th session of the Council have focused in particular on the current Special Rapporteurs on freedom of expression and on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. These Rapporteurs were subjected to threats of disciplinary action because they offered their expert analysis and recommendations on important human rights issues that they brought to the attention of this Council.
The group of NGOs contend that these political attacks are fundamentally an attack on and threat to the Council itself, and go on to appeal, in the strongest terms for states at the HRC to refrain from undermining the independence of UN human rights experts, and ensure that the long term integrity and credibility of the Human Rights Council itself are not sacrificed to political expedience.
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