Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of United Nations Watch, on behalf of 30 co-sponsoring NGOs, delivered the welcome address at the 18th Annual Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy on February 18th, 2025.
Full Prepared Remarks:
Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, dear friends,
Welcome to the 18th annual Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy.
This year’s theme is simple — and urgent: Unite Against Tyranny. Rise for Freedom.
Next week, right across the street from here, the United Nations will open its annual session of the Human Rights Council.
Members will include regimes such as Qatar, Cuba, Egypt, Pakistan and Vietnam and Iraq.
Regimes that jail journalists, crush women, torture dissidents, and erase minorities will sit as judges of the world on human rights.
But we are here first. We are here to restore moral clarity.
We are here to give the microphone not to regimes — but to those they persecute. Those who have the courage to rise up against them in the name of freedom, democracy, and human dignity,
Let us begin with Hong Kong. Beijing promised autonomy. Instead, it delivered arrests, repression, and exile. It imposed the infamous National Security Law. Dissent became a crime.
They tried to extinguish democracy but Chloe Chung joined the democracy movement at age 14. Today, at just 20 years old, she lives in exile — with the Chinese authorities placing a bounty on her head of one million Hong Kong dollars.
Imagine: a superpower, hunting a young student. But in Chloe we see a campaign where Chloe continues to campaign for political prisoners, and to expose transnational repression which targets Hong Kongers all over the world.
From Hong Kong to Vietnam. We have Hue Nue, a teacher in public school for many years. For the crime of peacefully protesting corruption, she was abducted, assaulted, and sentenced to 39 months in prison. When regimes fear teachers, my friends, corruption runs deep. Today she speaks for prisoners who cannot. Vietnam will be sitting at the human rights council next week, but here, we hear from the dissidents.
In Zimbabwe, the journalist Blessed Mhlanga reported on corruption and political dissent. For the crime of covering a press conference that was critical of the president, he was charged with incitement to violence, detained for 73 days, and denied bail three times. We were told things would get better after the dictator Mugabe. But we see the opposite is true, authoritarianism is only getting worse.
From Zimbabwe, we move to the most closed dictatorship on earth: North Korea.
Kim Yumi grew up in a coastal military zone under relentless surveillance and propaganda. In 2023, she and eight members of her family escaped by boat in the middle of the night. Now living in Seoul, in South Korea, she works to expose the truth about life inside the regime, and to fight for the freedom of her people.
Now in Venezuela, we know that it’s a country that forced some seven eight million to flee. First Chavez, then Maduro destroyed the country, and persecuted anyone who spoke out. Leopoldo López, former mayor and opposition leader, was sentenced to 14 years in prison after leading peaceful protests. He had to endure four years in a military prison, solitary confinement, a year and a half in house arrest and another year and a half sheltering in the Spanish embassy in Caracas under political asylum, before escaping into exile. Today, he works to unite democratic movements worldwide through the World Liberty Congress.
Recently, we were all inspired to see the Nobel Peace Prize going to Venezuelan position leader Maria Corina Machado. Senior advisor is here with us today, Pedro Urruchurtu Noselli. They came for him under false charges. He had to take shelter, was trapped for over 400 days inside the Argentine embassy in Caracas under siege conditions: constant surveillance by political police. Yet, from inside that embassy, he continued coordinating international diplomacy for the democratic opposition. Dictators may control territory but, democrats build alliances.
In Sudan, we’ve had killings, tens of thousands of people killed, millions starving. Today no one is speaking of Sudan sadly, at the United Nations it’s being ignored. But we’re going to hear from Mutasim Ali, one of the leading human rights activists from Sudan. He founded a grassroots student movement opposing the regime’s persecution, the genocide, of Darfurians. He was imprisonedI in Sudan three times, enduring severe torture, and forced into exile. Today he is a legal scholar. As war devastates the country once again, he demands accountability.
In Afghanistan, the Taliban continue to erase the faces and the voices of women. But with us here today is Marzieh Hamidi. She is an Afghan taekwondo athlete who fled Kabul after the Taliban takeover. She now trains in France. She’s a fighter not only in the ring, but against the Taliban persecution and bigotry against women. Because of death threats she has to live under 24/7 police protection due to death threats. Through sport and advocacy, she stands for every girl who is told she must disappear and she will be receiving today our 2026 International Women’s Rights award.
This afternoon, we welcome Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya. She entered politics in 2020 after her husband, Sergey Tihanovski, was arrested for announcing his candidacy. She was dismissed as a “housewife” by Lukashenko, she united the opposition in 2020 and inspired the largest peaceful protest movement in Belarus. And according to all independent observers she won the election, but Lukashenko stole. Today she leads the democratic opposition in exile. Autocrats may cling to force but, democratic leaders build institutions.
From Syria, a country that was destroyed in the past decade and a half, the Kurdish people need to be heard, they have been targeted in horrible ways in the past few months under the supposedly improved Syrian leader. We have Aram Aqil. In 2014, while documenting ISIS crimes, he was taken hostage and held for 280 days. After his release, he did not retreat. He became a leading voice defending minority rights and combating extremism. He survived terror. Now he confronts it with testimony.
China is a member of the UNHRC, they will be taking the floor next week. Yet, when it comes to religious freedom they crush Tibetan temples, and they crush any independent Christian Churches that do not belong to the regime. Pastor Ezra Gin, Founder of one of China’s largest underground churches, a church that does not answer to the state but to a higher power, inspired fear in the regime and they took him away in October. He and 27 other church leaders were detained and we’re going to hear from his daughter Grace Jin Drexel, here to fight for her fathers freedom and the freedom for all people in China. One and a half billion people denied any basic freedoms.
Cuba is a member of the UNHRC. Cuba is a police state.
We are going to hear from a playwright who organized peaceful protests. Yúnior García Aguilera. Before a planned march for political change, his home was surrounded for hours by paramilitary forces and Communist Party officials. He was prevented from leaving. Eventually he was able to escape, he was forced into exile. The Havana regime fears artists. When dictators are afraid of poetry, it means the foundations of their regime are already cracking.
Now Russia is very much on the agenda here in Europe. You may remember, shortly after the invasion by Putin of Ukraine in March 2022, we saw this incredible scene on Russian state television. A woman jumped onto the studio as the news was being broadcast with signs. The sign read “no war. Don’t believe the propaganda. They are lying to you.” For six seconds of truth, Marina Ovsyannikova was arrested, placed under house arrest, escaped days before trial, and later sentenced in absentia to eight and a half years in prison. Just six seconds of her courageous act, shattered years of propaganda. She’ll be with us here today.
Finally, Iran. This week, sadly as you know, here in Geneva, Iranian regime officials are walking around as if they are respected diplomats.
Abbas Araghchi was there at the United Nations.
I was there yesterday with our descendants. He was walking around being hosted by the Red Cross, and the IAEA, UN Conference on Disarmament.
And in another room, at the United Nations across the street was Afsaneh Nadipour, a longtime regime official, who was an ambassador of the Iran regime, who defended their crackdown against women. She is now a new member, this week of the UNHRC expert body, the advisory committee. She deals with gender based violence. So an expert on women’s rights is sitting at the United Nations so called “expert” who is a defender of the persecution of women.
Next week, there is going to be another deputy foreign minister’s regime official addressing the Human Rights Council. So this is what’s happening at the United Nations.
But, we here, have brought one of the leading descendants, someone who was on stage here more than a decade ago. When she inspired the women’s freedom movement of Iran, with millions of followers, the name is Masih Alinejad.
And because of her activism, to inspire women to demand their rights in Iran. Which eventually inspired the 2022 women life freedom movement.
The regime is trying to kill her. She lives now in exile in New York. The regime sent multiple criminals, mobsters, to assassinate her.
I was at the trial last year of one of the assassins that tried to kill her. They tried to kidnap her, and yet she continues and perseveres to speak for the people of Iran.
Today we are honored, we are going to give the 2026 Courage Award to the Heroes of Iran and Masih Alinejad will be here to receive it on their behalf and to speak for the true voices in Iran.
Now the regime may have oil wealth, it has militias, prisons. But people have courage.
And history teaches us which in the end endures.
So ladies and gentlemen, please look at the people that will come on the stage from Hong Kong, Vietnam. Zimbabwe, North Korea, Venezuela, Sudan, Afghanistan, Belarus, Syria, China, Cuba, Russia, and Iran.
Different continents. Different cultures.
One shared conviction: Freedom is not granted by dictators.
It is claimed by the brave. By the courageous.
The descendants you will see today.
The regimes across the street at the United Nations may hold gavels.
But they do not hold the moral authority, the moral inspiration, the moral clarity, that fills this room today.
Tyranny depends on silence.
This summit is the opposite of silence.
Today we say unite against tyranny.
Rise for freedom.
Thank you.
18th Annual Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy, U.N. Opening, Tuesday, February 17, 2026
