The United Nations has been accused of undermining judicial independence and staging a legal “coup d’etat” after it fired an Australian judge in charge of the case where a whistle-blower disclosed the UN’s role in assisting China in its human rights violation. In July 2019, the international body dismissed Australian judge Rowan Downing, QC, a former international war crimes judge, from his role as President of the UN Dispute Tribunal. Downing, 69, was supervising the case of former UN human rights officer Emma Reilly who revealed her organisation had been going against its own rules to provide the Chinese government with the identity of Uyghur and other Chinese dissidents scheduled to speak at the UN Human Rights Council. Reilly said this information enabled the Chinese authorities to threaten and, in some cases, torture the dissidents’ families who are still living in China. According to reports from The Age and The …