Mr. President, 

I deliver this statement on behalf of Belgium, Luxembourg and the Kingdom of the Netherlands. 

We welcome the report and condemn all acts of reprisals against human rights defenders, especially for engaging with the UN. We want to highlight three cases mentioned in the ASG report:

1.    Li Qiaochu, a woman human rights defender, has completed her arbitrary detention in China. Continued restrictions to her freedoms of movement and expression must stop.
2.    While welcoming the recent royal pardon in Bahrain, the defender Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja is still serving a life sentence in prison. We call for his immediate release.
3.    Five  staff members of Human Rights Center Viasna, are arbitrarily detained by the Belarusian government. The charges must be dropped and those detained released immediately.

We remain also concerned about the following cases of reprisals : 

4.    Pham Doan Trang,  a woman human rights defender, is currently arbitrarily detained for sharing reports with the UN on the human rights situation in Viet Nam. We call for her immediate release.
5.    A valid passport should be immediately returned to Felix Maradiago who was expulsed from Nicaragua and deprived of his nationality due to his presentation to the UN Security Council in 2018.
6.    Similarly, a valid passport should be immediately returned to human rights defender Kadar  Ibrahim from Djibouti whose passport was confiscated after his participation in this Council in 2018.

All States must end all reprisals against human rights defenders.

Thank you.