HUMAN RIGHTS: UN Commission tackles China and Cuba

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Apr 14 1997 (IPS) - The UN Human Rights Commission, accused of being biased in favour of the developed countries, will face voting on the hottest issues, like resolutions on China and Cuba, Tuesday.

The decisions to be taken by the body also include motions to censure regimes like those of Iran, Irak, Zaire, Sudan and Burma.

The Commission has recently been the brunt of severe criticism from Asian countries. Last week, India complained the organism had a selective outlook and a confrontational attitude.

The Malaysian delegation complained the organism tried to impose the respect for human rights through sanctions and pressure and/or discriminatory methods.

In the unsettled atmosphere of sessions due to end Friday, just as in all the other annual sessions of the Commission, the human rights situation in China took the limelight once again.

Several western countries, like Germany and France, declined from presenting the motion to censure Beijing, and it was not until late in the day that Denmark agreed to lead the initiative.

It was then joined by Austria, Belgium, Britain, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland and the United States.

The US undersecretary for Democracy, Human Rights and Labour, John Shattuck, said Monday in Geneva his country would support the resolution with China, while stating that Washington “is not looking for confrontation” with the Asian nation.

China has transformed significantly since it introduced economic reforms, but its government continues to “commit broad and well proven violations of human rights,” said Shattuck in a press conference.

The proposed resolution, gently expressed concern “for the continuous reports of the violation of human rights and basic freedoms in China.”

It also declared concern for the restriction of the cultural, religious and other liberties of the Tibetans, including the case of the eleventh Panchen Lama, Gedhun Choekyi Nyima.

But discussion of the Chinese crisis will probably end, as it has every year since 1990, with the intervention of the Beijing representative at the moment of the vote, said diplomatic sources.

The Chinese ambassador, Wu Jianmin, will answer Denmark’s proposal with a “no action,” motion, a procedural element which allows the Commission recommendations to be shelved before any decision is made.

In the case of Cuba, the resolution project has been carried ahead by the United States, as it is each year. It is supported by most of the countries of Western Europe, this time including Spain, and some of the former socialist nations, like Rumania, Hungary, Slovenia, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria.

Honduras and Nicaragua are the only Latin Americans to have supported the project.

Shattuck said Washington was using the resolution to send a strong message to Cuba, stating that its policies and measures are anachronistic in a hemisphere which has changed notoriously in regard to the respect for human rights.

The Havana delegation has systematically refused to accept the motions against it, arguing the Commission is getting mixed up in politics by accepting the proposals from the United States.

The Cuban ambassador, Carlos Amat Flores, said last week the main charge against his country was that “Cuba is, despite the difficult economic situation it faces, a viable alternative to savage neoliberalism.”