China’s sensitivity about Tibet were all too apparent Wednesday when a Canadian women was blocked from speaking to the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) – apparently because of her Tibetan origin.

Losang Rabgey told IPS she was taken off a list of speakers from non-governmental organisations (NGOs), who were testifying about violence against women worldwide after fears that Chinese delegates would be offended by her presence.

Ironically, Rabgey added, her planned presentation to the CSW meeting did not even concern Tibet. “I think they just assumed, because of who I was, that Tibet would be the subject,” she said.

As a result, she said, she had been prevented from speaking – although not barred from participation in the conference as a whole – simply because of her ethnic identity rather than the content of her planned speech.

Rabgey’s exclusion angered many NGOs present for the meetings, which focus on women’s rights, and drew attention to China’s repeated blocking of the issue of Tibet at the United Nations, even in venues that do not focus on Tibet’s status.

“It is unacceptable that a UN body entrusted to promote the human rights of women cannot hear from a participant because her ethnic identity is a politically sensitive issue for China,” argued Janice Martell, executive director of the International Committee of Lawyers for Tibet, which is based in California.

“The threat alone of offending China is enough to exclude the voices of those women suffering the very real violence this (CSW) conference is convened to address,” she added.

The Transnational Radical Party, another NGO present at the conference, sharply criticised China’s population policies in Tibet in a written intervention on women and health, submitted as a follow-up to the Platform of Action for the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women, which was held in Beijing.

“The reproductive rights and health rights of Tibetan women are routinely violated,” the Radical Party argued.

“Tibetan women are subjected to systematic violence in the form of forced or coerced sterilisation, contraception and abortion, including late-term abortion.” At the same time, the Radicals argued, “most Tibetan women have almost no access to basic medical care”.

The Radicals’ intervention cited statistics from the Tibet Autonomous Region’s family planning department citing that, by 1987, some 30 percent of all Tibetan women of child-bearing age had undergone some birth-control operations. In 1997, 113 forced abortions were recorded in one district alone, in Amdo, the party claimed.

China has succeeded at preventing discussion of its rule in Tibet at the United Nations; yet the allegations of draconian practises by the family-planning authorities in Tibet have added to concerns over China’s population programme in general.

In recent years, the Republican-led US Congress has seized on the China controversy to justify its efforts to block Washington’s funding for the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), which supports some Chinese family planning programmes.

Last year, the Republicans succeeded in defunding UNFPA, although President Bill Clinton has promised to try to restore US funding for the agency over the coming fiscal year.

Central to the Clinton administration’s effort, however, is a UNFPA initiative designed to distance the agency from any controversy over its China programme.

UNFPA Executive Director Nafis Sadik announced in January that the agency would launch a pilot programme monitoring 32 Chinese counties to ensure that the Beijing authorities were not using quotas or targets to lower population growth.

US first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton responded by telling a population forum in The Hague that Washington would be pleased to see confirmation that “China’s one-child policy” was no longer in force.

She added that the White House would push for some 25 million dollars in US funding for UNFPA for the year 2000, and 31 million dollars for 2001.

Those efforts at rapprochement, however, have continually been hampered by China’s hard-line tactics to quash discussion on issues like Tibet, including concerns about sterilisation and abortion policies there.

In the four decades since China crushed a 1959 rebellion in Tibet, many Tibetan speakers – including the Dalai Lama, spiritual leader for Tibet’s Buddhists – have reported problems when trying to speak to UN bodies. As with questions concerning Taiwan, UN officials privately concede that Tibet is seen as a “sensitive subject” by China, one of the five powerful veto-holding member states of the UN Security Council.