DANISH FOREIGN MINISTER TELLS HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION OF EFFORTS TO COMBAT TORTURE

25 March 1996

Press Release
HR/CN/712

DANISH FOREIGN MINISTER TELLS HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION OF EFFORTS TO COMBAT TORTURE

19960325 Commission Begins Discussion on Racism; Continues Debate On Right to Self Determination and Violations in Occupied Arab Territories

GENEVA, 22 March (UN Information Service) -- Any person who committed torture, or who ordered torture to be committed, must be held personally responsible and tried by a permanent international criminal court, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Denmark told the Commission on Human Rights this morning.

Highlighting the efforts made by his country in the fight against torture, Foreign Minister Niels Helveg Petersen said Denmark had gained much experience in the treatment of the physical and mental after-effects of torture through its Rehabilitation and Research Centre for Torture Victims in Copenhagen. That project had grown into the Rehabilitation Centre and the International Council for Torture Victims. Denmark believed that the process of eradicating torture should entail a preventive system of visits to places of detention.

Also this morning, the Special Rapporteur of the Commission on the use of mercenaries in the violation of human rights and the obstruction of the exercise of self-determination, Enrique Bernales Ballesteros, introduced his report. He told delegates that from the start of his mandate he had found a very close link between soldiers for hire and human rights abuses.

The report of the Special Rapporteur is being considered under the question of the right of peoples to self-determination. The Commission is also currently discussing the question of the violation of human rights in the occupied Arab territories, including Palestine; and the implementation of the Programme of Action for the Third Decade to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination, an item it took up this morning.

The delegations of Albania, Afghanistan, Brazil and China made statements to the Commission this morning. Representatives of the following non-governmental organizations also participated. International Educational

Development, Indian Council of Education, International Institute for Peace, Society for Threatened Peoples, Afro-Asian People's Solidarity Organization, World Peace Council, Liberation, Muslim World League, International League for Rights and Liberation of Peoples and Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.

India, Pakistan and Morocco exercised their right of reply.

Statement by Foreign Minister of Denmark

NIELS HELVEG PETERSEN, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Denmark, told the Commission that the deliberate torture of human beings was one of the most shameful violations of human dignity. Such practices must be eradicated, he said. Denmark had gained much experience, particularly on the physical and mental after-effects of torture, through the Rehabilitation and Research Centre for Torture Victims in Copenhagen. That project had grown into the Rehabilitation Centre and the International Council for Torture Victims. Denmark believed that the process of eradicating torture should entail a preventive system of visits to places of detention. Also, any person who committed torture or ordered torture to be committed must be held personally responsible and tried by a permanent international criminal court.

Another area in which Denmark had particular experience was with regard to indigenous peoples, he continued. The Inuit population of Greenland enjoyed equal partnership within the Danish realm. His Government welcomed the International Decade for the World's Indigenous People and had decided to contribute approximately $200,000 to the voluntary trust fund for the Decade. Denmark also favoured the inclusion of a separate agenda item on indigenous issues in the Commission's agenda.

Turning to the subject of economic, social and cultural rights, he said the right to development conferred a primary responsibility on States for their own citizens. The most important goal was the eradication of poverty. The gap between developed and developing countries remained unacceptably wide, and the international community had an obligation to assist in reducing that gap. Development aid must be supplemented with action to reduce the debt burden.

He also stressed the importance of incorporating the equal status and the equal rights of women into the mainstream of United Nations system-wide activity. Moreover, the Commission should continue to reinforce the functions of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, particularly his coordinating function as the United Nations official with principal responsibility for the Organization's human rights activities.

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Third Decade to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination

The Commission this morning considered the implementation of the Programme of Action for the Third Decade to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination. It also continued to examine the following items: the question of the violation of human rights in the occupied Arab territories, including Palestine; the right of people's to self-determination and its application to peoples under colonial or alien domination or foreign occupation.

With regard to the Programme of Action, the Commission had before it the report of the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, Maurice Glélé-Ahanhanzo. The report details the Special Rapporteur's visits in 1995 to Brazil, Germany, France and the United Kingdom. In those countries, the Rapporteur was able to collect information through exchanges of views with concerned persons from all segments of the population. The report is also based on the findings of the Rapporteur in the fields of legislative acts designed to combat all forms of racism in the four States. According to the report, racism is taking increasingly violent forms. The Special Rapporteur recommends that Germany adopt laws against anti-Semitism and xenophobia. He underlines the need to find a more humane solution than refoulement for Vietnamese and Mozambicans who were working under contract in the former German Democratic Republic. Reunification did not take their status into account.

As to France, the report recommends that the Government revise the "Pasqua Acts" to make them more humane and more in keeping with the French ideal of human rights and the international conventions on the rights of the individual. He further recommends that French authorities be more generous in granting entry visas to people from the South.

With regard to the United Kingdom, the Special Rapporteur recommends that action be taken to ensure that the country was not seen as one that rejected people from the South, particularly black minorities.

In Brazil, the report concludes, racism and racial discrimination are not easy to pin down. Among other things, the Special Rapporteur recommends that the Brazilian Government should undertake a major survey of the problem of the sterilization of black women and take vigorous action to eliminate racial discrimination in the field of employment.

The Commission also had before it the report of the Secretary-General concerning measures adopted by States in application of the Programme of Action; and the annual reports on racial discrimination submitted by the

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International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Statements in Debate

ENRIQUE BERNALES BALLESTEROS, Special Rapporteur on the use of mercenaries in the violation of human rights and the obstruction of the exercise of self-determination, introduced his latest report. He said that from the start of his mandate he had found a very close link between soldiers for hire and human rights abuses. Furthermore, there were links between mercenaries and international terrorism. It was important to remember that mercenaries were professionals -- they were skilled, effective, and functioned for profit rather than out of moral conviction. Their involvement in arms and drug trafficking, and even political assassinations, further attested to their widespread influence.

Tracking the activities of mercenaries was difficult, he continued. There was a kind of legal vacuum regarding them; their true employers often were disguised through the use of third States, and they could be hired for ostensible purposes that were far removed from their true ones. While some African internal conflicts, such as in South Africa, Angola, Namibia and Mozambique, had died down recently, resulting in less use of mercenaries, others -- in the Comoros and Sierra Leone -- had flared up. In the Comoros a rebellion had essentially been carried out entirely by mercenaries. Also, there were private firms that specialized in providing soldiers of fortune, and such a firm -- Executive Outcomes -- had played a major role in the recent conflict in Sierra Leone.

Even when not fighting, soldiers for hire could have a malign influence by conducting training camps, he said. Mercenaries also had intervened in the fighting in the territory of the former Yugoslavia, expanding an already difficult conflict. They must be forced to withdraw. Effective international sanctions, including a convention against the use of mercenaries, were needed. Mercenaries responsible for gross abuses of human rights must be hunted down internationally, tried and punished. They should not be allowed impunity.

ANDI GJONEJ (Albania) said the selective application of the right of peoples to self-determination, as well as the prevalence of double standards, had rendered the contents of that right unclear. That in itself was a flagrant violation of this most sensitive right and a source of discrimination and intolerance. The denial of this right was the real source of conflict and political instability in certain regions. Lack of negotiation and political will had led to armed conflicts on a large scale, to violations of international humanitarian law, and to the commission of crimes against humanity. Such tragic events had occurred in the Balkans, which still remained politically unstable.

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HUMAYUN TANDAR (Afghanistan) said the list of countries supplying or harbouring mercenaries might well lengthen next year. In Afghanistan, mercenaries were a very upsetting influence; they played a role in military planning and in carrying out the food blockade plaguing his country. Over 90 per cent of those mercenaries had the same nationality, and once they returned to their home country they enjoyed full impunity. Afghanistan hoped that country would keep these criminals from continuing their activities against Afghanistan.

SIVASAUBRAMANIAM SIVAJI, of the International Education Development, said the Government of Sri Lanka had inflicted untold hardship on Tamils with its attempts to separate the people from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The Government did not show any urgency in relieving the suffering of the Tamil people. As a result of a series of army operations in 1995, there had been large-scale destruction of life, property and institutions. Thousands of Tamils had become refugees in their own country.

REENA MARWAH, of the Indian Council of Education, said there had recently been fast growth in ethnic, national and regional movements that defined the right to self-determination as the right to secession, with violent consequences. It was important to define this right clearly. The cold war had ended, encouraging many to seek secession or to incite ethnic conflict under the impression that borders previously had been frozen only for reasons of strategic interest of the super-Powers. Self-determination should be seen as the fulfilment of the aspirations of minority or ethnic groups -- they should be allowed to freely practice their religions and speak their languages in an atmosphere of tolerance and democracy. Self-determination should be a feasible right to be exercised within the framework and sovereignty of existing States.

A.S. NARANG, of the International Institute for Peace, said the human rights of the people of Jammu and Kashmir were being violated by groups like Harkat Ul Ansar and the Al Faran through a series of kidnappings and violence. Harkat Ul Ansar was also active in Bosnia, Tajikistan and other countries. The members were recruited by Pakistan and were based there. The return of peace to Jammu and Kashmir had been continuously prevented by that group.

MICHAEL C. VAN WALT VAN PRAAG, of the Society for Threatened Peoples, asked, what the essence of democracy was if not to allow peoples to choose their own leaders and their own paths and cultures. Self-determination did not have to mean secession, if respect for minorities and ethnic groups was full-fledged. But the interests of Chechens had not been respected by Moscow, and the interests of Tibetans had been brutally repressed by Beijing. The issue was not how to restrain the urge towards self-determination, but how to get States to stop violently suppressing their peoples in the service of "sovereignty", "territorial integrity" or "national security". These terms

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were empty slogans when the State no longer possessed the necessary legitimacy -- the support of its citizens. Other regions of concern were in Kosova and Sanjak, East Timor, Abkhazia, and Western Sahara.

AMADUZZAMIN MOHAMMED ALI, of the Afro-Asian People's Solidarity Organization, said that in response to various ethnic, religious or linguistic conflicts in different parts of the world, some observers and politicians had been articulating a new version of the concept of self-determination. Some advocates were trying to impose the idea that the principle of self-determination implied that any group of people, simply because it considered itself to be a separate national group, was qualified to determine its own political status, including, should it so desire, the right to its own State. The number of groups which, on the basis of ethnicity, religion, race, culture or language, could demand a separate definition for themselves was enormous: potentially more than 5000 nation States. The Commission, instead of countenancing demands for secession under the guise of self-determination, should impress upon States to strictly adhere to article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

G. SHINOJI, of the World Peace Council, said when a third country using the excuse of religion or ethnicity created conditions of instability and fear leading to violence, based on illusory threats to religion, it made a mockery of the very concept of self-determination. In various parts of the world, colonialism still persisted. Areas of Jammu and Kashmir had been occupied through armed force by Pakistan in 1947. People there did not have democratic representation. There and elsewhere, cultural identity and minority rights were threatened, and help from the United Nations was urgently needed. The Commission must deal with the real issue of self-determination in Jammu and Kashmir, and not allow it to continue to be used for political purposes or given the false colour of religion.

RACHEL GARSTANG, of Liberation, said disputes involving the areas of the Punjab and Kashmir, as well as those touching the Kurds and the Tamils, had resulted in persistent human rights abuses and sometimes threatened regional and international peace. The issue of the East Punjab was little understood. It concerned the majority community of the Pubjab -- the Sikhs -- and their desire to protect their cultural, economic and political future through a self-determined political status in south Asia. The Sikhs of Punjab did not share the cultural, linguistic, historical and political concepts of the Indian State. As for the Kurds, it was a community desperate for recognition of its suppressed and denied status, which remained subjected to abuses in Turkey and Iraq. Likewise, the Kashmir conflict gave little comfort or hope to its people. While Liberation did not necessarily endorse or criticize any of those struggles, it was time the Commission began to address those disputes realistically, whether they fell neatly into a category or not.

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GHULAM MUHAMMAD SAFI, of the Muslim World League, said Jammu and Kashmir truly was disputed territory, not an "integral part" of any State's territory. Some 13 million people continued to suffer and to await a true, fair plebiscite on their future. They were being held in bondage. India's violence and expansionist designs must be thwarted. India continued to prolong and perpetuate the agony of Kashmiris. The Muslim World League was dismayed by the lack of international action to stop the carnage in Jammu and Kashmir. Peace in the populous region of south Asia and a civilized world order were at stake, not only the survival of a people.

VERENA GRAF, of the International League for the Rights and Liberation of Peoples, said the application of the principle of self-determination to Western Sahara was recognized, since the International Court of Justice had rendered its consultative opinion in 1975. However, the process of referendum for self-determination had been delayed for four years. The process of identification of future voters had been interrupted by Moroccan manipulation aimed at annexing the territory. Out of the eight registration centres, only two had been able to function so far.

In Turkey, she added, Kurds were not able to exercise the right to self-determination; instead, they were constantly and systematically silenced, oppressed and brutally massacred.

MARCOS PINTA GAMA (Brazil) said the Special Rapporteur on racism should carry out further missions in both the developed and developing world. Brazil welcomed the acknowledgment by the Special Rapporteur, during his review of Brazil, of the complexity and uniqueness of Brazil's sociological context. It was true that prejudice against people of African origin or of mixed parentage occurred mainly on a social and economic basis, because such people constituted a majority within the underprivileged and excluded segments of society. However, the delegation could not conceal disagreement with the Special Rapporteur's interpretation that biological and cultural intermingling would be a cause of social stratification and ethnoregional imbalance. In fact, this intermingling was considered one of the most positive aspects of the country's social life -- it was a symbol that the Brazilian "melting pot" truly worked.

ZHANG FENGKUN (China) said that over the past 50 years, the United Nations had adopted numerous resolutions, declarations and conventions denouncing racism and racial discrimination as inherently inimical to the enjoyment of human rights. Today, the colonialist structure and the apartheid system had crumbled and over a hundred countries had achieved independence. That was a tremendous victory by the world's people in their struggle for independence and liberation. However, a number of developed countries, whose might and wealth bred in them a sense of superiority, did not treat others as equals. China called upon the Commission to denounce all forms of racism;

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vigorously implement the Programme of Action for the Third Decade; advocate equality of all countries, regardless of size, might or wealth; commend the Special Rapporteur of Commission, Mr. Glèlè-Ahanhanzo for his work and urge all those who have not done so to ratify or accede to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination as soon as possible.

BRIGITTE SCHMIDT, of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, said that if the European Union was to be built on the principle of a better and more prosperous life for all, then benefits and opportunities must be extended to all. The rising level of racism in Europe was at odds with this vision. There was racial violence; organized fascist activity targeting blacks, migrants, and Jews; and racial discrimination and inequality in employment, housing and access to social services. Despite these problems, the European Union had no legal competence on grounds of race. European politicians should acknowledge the threat racism posed to the social fabric and to design laws promoting diverse and harmonious societies.

ROMESH CHANDRA, of the World Peace Council, said he was speaking on behalf of a number of non-governmental organizations. The issue of racism must be looked into more deeply, to determine root causes. Apartheid had been toppled, but racism had not disappeared. Racist propaganda and incitement to racial hatred appeared to be spreading around the world and growing more violent. Experience had shown that economic difficulties exacerbated racial problems. The Programme of Action for the Third Decade must be vigorously pursued, well-funded -- a great problem to date, as many countries had not followed up on their obligations -- and carefully organized and carried out. Education against racism should be stressed.

Right of Reply

HEMANT KRISHN SINGH (India) said his delegation took the floor with reluctance to place on record its disappointment with developments in the Commission yesterday afternoon. There was a need to avoid politicization of human rights issues in the Commission. If members were really sincere about protecting human rights, it was imperative that they eschew such practices. A country which had recently stated its intention to promote human rights had itself indulged in confrontation, politicization and disharmony. India had become used to Pakistan's repeated attacks, but abuse and propaganda did not contribute to the promotion of human rights. The Commission must not be used to promote the political ends of individual members, which undermined what belonged to all.

NASOOD KHAN (Pakistan) said the representative of India did not want to make a substantive intervention on the right of self-determination of the people of Kashmir; he did not have a substantive case to make. The right to

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self-determination of Kashmiris could not be relegated to a secondary position to suit the Indian delegation. Such a right could not be suppressed. International law could not be repressed or rescinded; it could not be altered for the convenience of occupying forces or a colonial Power. Of late, international shunning of the problem of Kashmir was based on business interests eager to profit from the consumption of India's vast population.

NACER BENJELLOUN-TOUIMI (Morocco) said the statement made by the International League for the Rights and Liberation of Peoples was mere propaganda and did not reflect the real situation of Western Sahara. His delegation was ready for any dialogue concerning the question of human rights within the Commission.

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