From DEBRA@OLN.comlink.apc.orgMon Sep 4 09:21:08 1995 Date: Sat, 02 Sep 1995 10:37:00 +0100 From: Debra Guzman Reply to: beijing-conf@tristram.edc.org To: beijing-conf@tristram.edc.org Subject: WCW: Pink Shirts..... [The following text is in the "ISO-8859-1" character set] [Your display is set for the "US-ASCII" character set] [Some characters may be displayed incorrectly] ## author : Bebecee@aol.com ## date : 27.08.95 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [This article has been excerpted.] By Benjamin Kang Lim BEIJING (Reuter) - Hundreds of Chinese workers in pink shirts welcomed thousands of women arriving Sunday to a grassroots forum in Beijing, but customs officials forced one human rights group to tear a cartoon of Deng Xiaoping out of a book. About 3,000 people arrived in Beijing Sunday for the Non Governmental Organization (NGO) Forum on Women that begins Wednesday in suburban Hairou, transformed from a...town in the shadow of the Great Wall to frantic host for nearly 30,000 women, Xinhua news agency said. Officials expect 18,000 arrivals Monday, including 200 arriving aboard a United Nations Development Program Beijing Express train tracing the route of the Trans-Siberian express from Warsaw. "The Chinese are trying..." NGO convenor Supatra Masdit told Reuters. "They give in to everything we request. We never expected this, it is a lot better than I expected." Hundreds of English-speaking student volunteers, identifiable by their pastel pink shirts, struggled to help women pouring off flights into Beijing's Capital Airport. "How do I get to my hotel?," How much do I have to pay?," "Please write down for me the address of my hotel in Chinese," were some of the bombardment of appeals by women arriving from Nigeria to Spain and Britain. For most women, the biggest problem at the airport was a shortage of baggage carts. For the Organizing Committee of the People's Decade for Human Rights Education, the problem was customs. Customs officials spent two hours sifting through the group's 16 boxes of materials they had brought for their forum worshop, removed sample leaflets and balked at a book with a cartoon caricaturing Chinese paramount leader Deng Xiaoping. "They looked at it, ...found a picture of a cartoon of a Chinese dictator, saying 'no human rights here'. They were very offended," executive director Shulamith Koenig said in an interview. "I told them I will not leave until I get my book back. I tore the page out and gave it to them and they let me go with my book," she said. "I felt kind of upset because I was coming to a country where certain human rights are here, such as food, but others, such as political and civil, are not," Koenig said. However, most women were delighted with their reception. "We have no problems coming here from the airport," said Mary Castor from the Brazilian Confederation of Domestic Workers Labor Union. "It is very beautiful and the volunteers are...kind." In Huairou, rows of Chinese stared as Nigerian women in flowing gowns and colorful turbans joined women from Spain, the United States and Britain to register for their passes and check into hotels. Officials said 1,591 had registered by the late afternoon and 10,000 were expected Monday. Pastel yellow, pink and blue flags and red banners decorated the streets of the town and all cars other than special buses and car with passes were cleared off the road from Beijing to speed up the arrival of the women for the 90 minute drive from Beijing's airport. Masdit, speaking as she watched 6,000 Chinese rehearse a spectacular opening ceremony for the forum at Beijing's Olympic Stadium said: "I think it will be successful. Women want to come together and set their own agendas and work together.