From DEBRA@oln.comlink.apc.orgFri Sep 1 10:03:07 1995 Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 10:01:00 +0100 From: Debra Guzman Reply to: beijing-conf@tristram.edc.org To: beijing95-l@netcom.com, beijing-conf@tristram.edc.org Subject: WCW: The Rights of Women [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] [This article has been excerpted.] Newsweek 28 August 1995 ------------------------------------------------------------------- THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN By Tony Emerson [Human rights in China as much as women's rights in general are likely to dominate the contentious U.N. conference about to open in Beijing] Invite tens of thousands of women's rights activists from around the world to a single place - and the results are bound to be...lively. Invite them to China, where many of the basic human rights they are fighting for are being flouted by their hosts, and you could asking for trouble. That is essentially the fix...Beijing - and the world women's movement - is in as the Chinese government prepares to host the largest gathering ever for a United Nations conference on women, due to open...Sept. 4. Amid a swirl of unanticipated issues...many of the 40,000 delegates expected at the official assembly in Beijing are to arrive this week. Most of them will likely show up at the conference's parallel nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) meeting in Huairou an hour away - a venue that...has become a contentious issue. The key problem of the conference is one of focus. The official agenda - poverty and violence against women - is serious enough. Each year, so many baby girls are killed or aborted in Asia...the continent is now "missing" up to 100 million women, creating a serious population imbalance. Just as serious as issue is the fear of many women's rights leaders...their cause is slipping back for the first time since the United Nations started holding these...conferences in 1975. Many delegates worry...these questions will be drowned out by the controversy surrounding China's handling of the event. "No one's paying any attention to the issues, only to the mud, the circus tents, the commutes and the toilets," says a conference observer in Beijing. "What...happened to women's rights?" The Beijing authorities are eager to maintain an orderly facade - and that's part of the problem. The difficulties began when Li Peng, China's hardline prime minister, was heckled by...members of NGOs at the U.N. Social Development Summit in Copenhagen last March. Li responded by banishing the Beijing conference's NGO Forum to Huairou. Privately, officials admitted the move was to ensure against demonstrations in the capital. Chinese officials were horrified by Li's account of "the rabble" and the list of NGOs, which include fierce critics of China's own record on women and human rights. Furious, the NGOs accused Beijing of trying to silence them. The former garrison town of Huairou...had no hotels, few phones or toilets, and no hall big enough. The dispute was resolved in June when the NGOs agreed to go to Huairou, so long as Beijing provided facilities. Last week thousands of...workers toiled in a muddy field outside the town, scrambling to erect circus tents and install phone lines in time. The biggest part of the show may yet unfold in Beijing. Tension between China and the United States threatens to overshadow the official conference... Republicans in the U.S. Congress, who infuriated Beijing by orchestrating a visit to the United States by Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui, are urging the First Lady to skip the conference to protest Beijing's human rights record... If Hillary Clinton does not attend, Beijing will see it as a deliberate American snub to an event the Chinese regard as a certification of their role as a major player on the world stage. None of this is what Beijing had in mind when it invited the United Nations in 1990. It hoped then...a marquee international gathering would help erase the memory of the bloodshed in Tiananmen Square the previous year. But five years on, the priorities of China's leaders are different. They are in the midst of a succession struggle as...Deng Xiaoping lies dying, and they are grappling to retain their once iron control of the country, which is weakening as market forces begin to take over. Given all the political fuss, there's a danger...the real business of the conference will be blotted out by background noise. For all the improvement in their lot since 1975, women still make less than men for the same work..., their illiteracy rate...is falling more slowly than men's, and they account for a growing portion of the world's poor... U.S. special adviser Kathleen Hendrix says the American delegation's main aim is..."making sure no ground is lost," particularly in defending the idea that women's rights are "universal." These conferences have never been tidy affairs. The inaugural one was disrupted by women from poor nations demouncing their rich "sisters" from American and Europe. The 1985 conference in Nairobi was nearly derailed by...Zionism and apartheid. This time around, there are all sorts of extracurricular activities planned. A Latin American NGO wants to stage a mock referendum on rights for Chinese women. "The question is not whether to demonstrate but how," says a representative of an Australian NGO, which plans to commemorate students killed in Tiananmen Square. All this comes at a time when Beijing is trying to tighten its control. So far this month at least 16 criminals have been executed as part of a campaign to clear the streets of potential troublemakers. Police have instructed taxi drivers not to drop off passengers nears Tiananmen Square during the conference. The word is...the Chinese authorities will tolerate protests at the conference site, but not if they spread beyond there. ...