China Wins UN Human Rights Vote
(TIN | March 9, 1994)
China today persuaded the United Nations for the fourth year running to throw out a resolution criticising its human rights record.
China and its allies won a procedural move by 20 votes to 16 ruling that "no action" should be taken on the resolution. 17 countries abstained. There was little attempt to justify the "no action" ruling, which was largely a political device, with China arguing that the human rights criticism was an attack on its internal affairs.
The modestly worded resolution, which even acknowledged that China had made some "positive achievements" in human rights, had been proposed by the European Union with voluble support from the United States. The United States representative called unsuccessfully "on all members of the Commission to think of the victims of human rights we are here to protect ... and [to] decide important questions of human rights on their merits". The UK also made a strongly worded call for the Commission to preserve its credibility by allowing discussion about major nations like China.
China received support from Cuba, Pakistan, Iran, Syria and Mauritania, as well as from a large group of African countries including Kenya, Nigeria, Angola, Cameroon and the Ivory Coast. The western block attracted support from Costa Rica, Japan and Russia, as well as Hungary and Bulgaria. Tunisia and Cyprus, which last year supported China, this time abstained.
The Latin American block abstained en masse, including Mexico and Brazil - countries which some human rights lobbyists were arguing this evening could have been persuaded by the US to vote with the western block if the US had really wanted the resolution to pass.
The resolution had earlier generated controversy amongst its supporters because of the contradictory role played by the US behind the scenes. The US gave its support to the resolution only on condition that the European countries, as proposers, modified the wording so that Tibet was defined as a minority, and therefore as part of China.
The US insistence on inserting an gratuitous statement about Tibet's political status in an inappropriate human rights context led to fierce criticism from the Tibetan government-in-exile in a public statement last week, and laid open to question the US commitment to criticising China's human rights policies.
One European diplomat told TIN last week that he was "baffled" and "at a loss" to explain the US insistence on controversial wording about Tibet, which was against European wishes and was always at risk of weakening support for the resolution.
On March 4th a State Department official is reported to have told two US Congressmen that the US would not insist on the wording about Tibet, which would have had a serious impact on the Tibetans' future hopes to negotiate effectively with China. But the denial came too late to effect the resolution, which was already tabled by the time it reached Geneva.
Friends of Tibet (INDIA),
PO Box 16674, Bombay 400050
www.friendsoftibet.org