A congressman from the Sunshine State wants China removed from the United Nations (UN) Security Council.
Last week, U.S. Rep. Gus Bilirakis, R-Fla., introduced a resolution “urging the United Nations to take necessary and appropriate procedural actions to remove the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from the UN Security Council,” insisting that such an action is “long overdue given the PRC’s horrible record on human rights and continued bad acts on the world stage.”
This week, the congressman and his office laid out some of the reasons to remove China from the Security Council.
“For more than forty years, the U.S. has tried to engage China as a responsible partner on the international stage by expanding economic engagement,” the congressman’s office noted. “Too often, the United States’ foreign policy has turned a blind eye to China’s bad behavior. This approach has been an utter failure. In the past year alone, China has violated an international treaty and dismantled Hong Kong’s civil liberties, continued its oppression of ethnic and religious minorities (most notably the Uyghurs, Tibetans and Falun Gong practitioners), expanded its military and engaged in aggressive behavior against its regional neighbors, violated other nations’ sovereignty at sea, engaged in fatal skirmishes as part of a land grab on the Indian border and most egregiously silenced medical professionals and concealed vital information from the world about COVID-19. China’s inexcusably poor management and lack of transparency regarding the spread of COVID-19 undoubtedly worsened the spread of this deadly virus which ultimately led to a global pandemic that has resulted in the deaths of more than 2.6 million people and caused catastrophic economic hardship around the globe.
“China has also repeatedly engaged in serious violations of the UN’s core values as stated in the preamble of the charter,” the congressman’s office continued. “The preamble reads, ‘We the peoples of the United Nations determined to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small’ and ‘to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbors.’”
Bilirakis weighed in on the proposal at the start of this week.
“China is not our friend, and indeed, poses the biggest threat to our national security than any other nation. The time has come for a new approach in how we interact with China, and removing this repeated human rights violator from the UN Security Council is a step in the right direction. We must continue to hold China accountable for its bad behavior and take a firm stance that further misconduct will no longer be tolerated,” said Bilirakis.
“Throughout history, humanity has encountered many faces of evil. Our brightest moments as an international community have been those in which we present a united front in our efforts to identify and eradicate its presence. Our darkest moments as a human race have come during times when those who knew better stood silently, making excuses for passivity and allowing injustice and persecution to reign. America must remain a beacon of principled courage, recognizing and promoting the basic human rights of all people. If we remain silent in the face of these transgressions, we neglect that moral imperative and do so at the peril of civil society,” Bilirakis added.
The resolution, which was sent to the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee, has a tough path ahead of it. So far, Bilirakis has not reeled in any co-sponsors for the resolution. There is no companion measure over in the U.S. Senate.
Reach Kevin Derby at kevin.derby@floridadaily.com.
