COUNTRIES DECRY 'SELECTIVITY' IN DISCUSSION OF HUMAN RIGHTS AT COMMISSION

Press Release
HR/CN/797*

COUNTRIES DECRY 'SELECTIVITY' IN DISCUSSION OF HUMAN RIGHTS AT COMMISSION

GENEVA, 10 April (UN Information Service) -- The Commission on Human Rights continued its debate on human rights violations throughout the world this morning, with several members decrying what they called an impartial approach on the part of developed countries.

According to the representative of Malaysia, the human rights paradigm had been allowed to be re-packaged, with all notions of universality being discarded. There now was selective use of human rights by some nations as political weapons against their adversaries, he said, adding that the North manifested an attitude of total conceit in castigating countries for being slow in effecting reforms.

These sentiments were echoed by the representative of India, who said the Commission seemed to have adopted an approach that was both adversarial and selective. The Commission had recently heard a call to monitor and expose human-rights violations with a view to putting pressure on Governments and marshalling international condemnation and public embarrassment against those Governments, said the delegate. This approach led to anger and acrimony and not to cooperation or effective solutions to genuine human- rights problems.

The representative of Brazil, meanwhile, dismissed suggestions of a divide between the developing and developed counties on human rights issues in terms of monitoring of violations. This division was not conceivable, given that monitoring mechanisms had first been set in motion by the developing world, he said.

Near the end of the morning session, the representative of Nicaragua said that in Cuba established laws were the primary violators of human rights; they were a contradiction and negation of the fundamental human rights the Commission espoused, and deserved to be studied extensively. The representative of Cuba countered that the Nicaraguan Government had ceded its sovereignty to the enemies of the Cuban people, as it had done 36 years ago in participating in a Central Intelligence Agency-organized mercenary attack against the Cuban revolution.

* This supercedes Press Release HR/CN/797.

Also taking the floor this morning were the representatives of China, India, Indonesia (on behalf of the Organization of the Islamic Conference), South Africa, the Russian Federation and Canada.

Statements in Debate

WANG GUANGYA (China) said his delegation was deeply concerned about the situation in Cyprus, whose independence and sovereignty should be respected. United Nations resolutions for the settlement of the situation in Cyprus should be earnestly implemented. China hoped a reasonable and just solution could be found at an early date to resolve the situation and contribute to peace in the region. The parties concerned had made in this direction, and China hoped that they would seize the opportunity and start negotiations in close cooperation with the United Nations. China supported the mediation efforts of the Secretary-General to end the conflict.

HISHAMMUDDIN TUN HUSSEIN (Malaysia) said the human-rights paradigm had been allowed to be re-packaged, with all notions of universality being discarded. There now was selective use of human rights by some nations as political weapons against their adversaries. The North manifested an attitude of total conceit in castigating countries for being slow in effecting reforms; to allow oneself to be lectured and hectored on freedom and human rights after years of struggle to regain one's liberty and human dignity, by those who had participated in, or benefited from, the subjugation, was willingly to suffer impudence. Human rights must be applied non-discriminately and even-handedly; it also had to be understood that change towards sustainable democracy took time. In addition, there was lately an inability to accept the principle of diversity and understand that there existed other notions and priorities on human rights; and recent efforts by developed countries to make aid contingent upon human rights and greater democracy had further sharpened the edge of North-South controversy. Malaysia wished to cite great concern that the perpetrators of some of the worst crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina were still at large, and firmly believed all responsible for war crimes there must be brought to trial and punished.

ARUNDHATI GHOSE (India) said the Commission seemed to have adopted an approach that was both adversarial and selective. The Commission had recently heard a call to monitor, report and expose human-rights violations with a view to putting pressure on Governments and marshalling international condemnation and public embarrassment against those Governments. This approach led to anger and acrimony and not to cooperation or effective solutions to genuine human-rights problems. It was perhaps time to assess the effectiveness of this so-called "spotlighting" approach to see whether persuasion and introspection might not be a more result-oriented option. In assessing the role of the Special Rapporteurs, India wondered if they could be more than fact-finders and also play a "good offices" role on behalf of the Commission.

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India did not see the Rapporteurs as adversarial issuers of report cards to States; a cooperative and constructive approach might explain why some rapporteurs were successful while others appeared to have a hostile relationship with the States concerned. In its own efforts, India did not pretend that it had been able to solve all the problems relating to the protection and promotion of the rights of its citizens. India's approach addressed the underlying causes through dialogue and the search for political solutions as well as through increased efforts for all-round economic development. Situations in the north-east of India, in Punjab, in Jammu and Kashmir, had been presented. India did not condone any violations of human rights by the security forces. Action was taken against anyone found guilty of such violations.

LUIS ZUNIGA (Nicaragua) said that in Cuba, established laws were the primary violators of human rights; they were a contradiction and negation of the fundamental human rights the Commission espoused, and deserved to be studied extensively. Article 5 of the Cuban Constitution, for example, said the Communist Party was paramount and would guide and rule the Cuban nation; true elections were never held; article 99 prohibited changing the regime, meaning there was a perpetual dictatorship. High-level officials of the Central Committee of the Communist Party controlled the functions of the legislature and the judicial system, which was not independent. Supposed "crimes" limited free expression and free association, and imposed severe penalties on those who exercised such freedoms; the penal code listed a number of offenses for which the death sentences was allowed, but it was impossible to know how many persons were executed, although there were many, as no information was published, and those executed were buried in common graves without notification of their families; others were killed, including women and children, as they tried to escape the country; such flagrant and massive violations exceeded anything else in Latin America. This was not an issue of political confrontation with the United States, as Cuba always claimed, but between Cuban people and the repressive Cuban regime.

MUNIR AKRAM (Pakistan) said there was a direct correlation between international security and respect for fundamental rights. He agreed with the remarks made yesterday by the Secretary-General that gross violations of human rights could threaten security and were likely to degenerate into conflicts. In Bosnia, for instance, the peace agreement was jeopardized by the fact that indicted war criminals had not been prosecuted. And the new Israeli settlement in Abu Jabel Ghaneim was a set back to the peace process. Meanwhile, In Indian-held Kashmir, the United Nations has not been able to contribute to preventive peace-keeping. There for the last seven years the people had faced undiminished repression: 50,000 Kashmiris, 99 per cent of them non-combatants, had been killed, and other massive violations of human rights had been recorded. Despite frequent crackdowns, the International Committee of the Red Cross had not been given access to prisoners. The

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situation could not be wished away by stage-managed elections that international observers had not been allowed to monitor. The regime in Srinagar was a puppet government. Pakistan wanted a sincere and results-oriented dialogue with India in order to find a speedy resolution of the conflict. The recent talks between the Foreign Ministers of India and Pakistan, and the forthcoming talks to be held in Islamabad, were positive developments. Dialogue, however, was a two-way process.

HASSAN WIRAJUDA (Indonesia), speaking in its capacity of Chairman of the Group of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), said the OIC was determined, in the spirit of the true essence of Islam, to work with the international community to address challenges to human rights. It had been disturbing to watch televised acts of violence in recent weeks being perpetrated by the occupying Israeli authorities against Palestinian civilians; the Commission must establish a strengthened procedure through which the Government of Israel would be compelled to cease blatant provocations and the use of force; the OIC also demanded cessation of construction of Israeli settlements and full implementation of all agreements signed and commitments made in accordance with United Nations resolutions and the land-for-peace formula. In Bosnia and Herzegovina and other parts of the former Yugoslavia, violations of human rights and persisting suffering of innocent people continued; it was important for the Commission to draw a clear line separating victims from aggressors, and make it clear to all that punishing both victims and aggressors by, among other things, delaying the reconstruction process in Bosnia would be counter-productive to efforts to promote human rights in the country.

JACOB SELEBI (South Africa) said there was still enormous scope for international cooperation in the promotion of a wide range of human rights, some of which were still being elaborated or which had not yet achieved universal acceptance. It was important to point out both shortcomings and improvements. In this spirit, South Africa welcomed the progress toward peace, democratization and respect for human rights recently made in countries like Angola, Mozambique, El Salvador, Guatemala and Haiti. At the same time, violations of human rights continued in situations where one part to a conflict, usually the Government, had superior force or power against others. The world was full of such situations, be they in Israel, Nigeria, Myanmar or Sudan. This was not an exhaustive list. Another issue of concern was official silence in the face of continued violations of human rights. The international community and the Commission could and had to speak out where such violations occurred; this could not be left to the non-governmental organizations alone. Cultural and religious differences should not be used as a pretext for violating one another's right, as had occurred in Afghanistan, Cyprus and in the Great Lakes region. South Africa noted with alarm the increasing number of terrorist acts throughout the world, as well as the persistence of racism in all its manifestations, including xenophobia. So

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long as countries violated their citizen's fundamental rights and freedoms, and then hid behind cries of "interference in domestic affairs" the world would never achieve the goal of perfection.

BORIS KRYLOV (Russian Federation) said Russia's belief in equality of human rights, now reflected in the Constitution of the Russian Federation, was being put into practice. Last year, for the first time in the country's history, a Head of State had been reelected democratically. New criminal and civil codes; judicial system legislation; laws on a Russian Ombudsman; general principles of local self-government, and many other pieces of legislation had recently been adopted. In addition, the country was in the process of harmonizing its legislation to respond to the standards of the Council of Europe, which Russia had joined last year; also last year, Russia had also signed a number of instruments, including the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, and it had adhered to a moratorium on the application of the death penalty. Still, the crisis in Chechnya had turned into a deep sore for Russia, and certain problems persisted in spite of the cessation of hostilities. During the crisis, Russia had maintained active cooperation with the High Commissioner for Human Rights and other United Nations human-rights bodies, and had repeatedly provided proof of its willingness to engage in a fair discussion of its deeds and misdeeds.

J. A. LINDGREN ALVES (Brazil) said it was important to recall that United Nations activities had focused the attention of the international community on the violation of human-rights norms and standards that should regulate national legislations and behaviour worldwide. This fundamental development, and the consequent expansion in the scope of activities of the United Nations in the area of human rights, had been achieved mostly on the initiative of developing countries. Thanks to the actions of those countries, the international community now counted with an impressive arsenal of mechanisms to monitor violations of human rights wherever they occurred. Frequent allegations had been made that the international system for the protection of human rights gave priority to monitoring instead of cooperation. This did not diminish the fact that States were obliged, under the United Nations Charter, to cooperate for the solution of human rights problems. Repeated references had been heard regarding the divide between the developing and developed counties on human-rights issues, particularly in terms of monitoring. This division was not conceivable, given that monitoring mechanisms had first been set in motion by the developing world.

ROSS HYNES (Canada) said that certainly cooperation was Canada's preferred way to address human-rights problems, but confrontation of one sort also was indispensable for the Commission's work; it could not do its job without confronting the facts about violations, and, unfortunately, many Governments refused to face the facts and refused to engage in genuine cooperation with the international community. Canada was concerned with

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situations in Burma, Sudan, Nigeria, Iraq, and Iran, and in all of these cases hoped that growing calls for cooperation in the Commission would lead to genuine cooperation with the Commission and its representatives. Canada also hoped for greater human-rights progress in China, Indonesia, East Timor, Pakistan, the Great Lakes region of Africa, former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, India, Colombia, Sri Lanka, and Turkey. It further hoped that the final peace agreement signed in Guatemala and other important steps taken there during the past year, all amounting to a happy note, would lead to further improvement.

JUAN ANTONIO FERNANDEZ (Cuba), responding to the statement by Nicaragua, said 36 years ago, Nicaraguan dictator Luis Somoza had accepted to work with the Central Intelligence Agency in launching an unsuccessful attack against the Cuban revolution. Today, on instructions, it was the turn of the new Government of Nicaragua to cede its sovereignty and attack Cuba. The Nicaraguan and Cuban peoples had fraternal links; Cuba felt the betrayal of the Nicaraguan people, which had shown its confidence in a leader who then had allied himself with the enemies of Cuba.

Debate in the Commission in recent years had focused on confrontation rather than dialogue, he continued. The Commission witnessed the arrogance of those who stood and criticized some countries and extended impunity to others. To them, nothing that the countries of the South did could be adequate. There seemed to be no human rights violators in the so-called "first world". Yet, in the European Union, there was unemployment, large numbers of prisoners, including political dissidents, and almost institutionalized racism; in Canada, impressive economic development had not benefited indigenous populations; and in Australia, the situation of the aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders continued to attract attention. However, it was the Unites States which presented the most revealing picture of flagrant human rights violations in a rich country. The "American Dream" continued to be a tragic nightmare for vast sectors of the population. One of every five children, many of them black and Hispanic, lived under the poverty line, while indigenous peoples continued to be the victims of one of the greatest injustices in history. But the most representative aspect of the true situation of human rights in that country was its prison population: over 1.2 million people filled its jails, the highest number in the world. The imprisonment rate for blacks was six times that of whites, which meant that by the year 2021 the majority of black men between 18 and 40 would be in jail or in re-education camps. Unfortunately, those realities were not the subject of condemnation by the Commission.

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