Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 3, 1995 TAG: 9509050077
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-15 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune
DATELINE: HUAIROU, CHINA LENGTH: Medium
Angry organizers of the international Non-Governmental Women's Forum threatened Saturday to close the conference unless Chinese authorities stop hassling participants.
The ultimatum was issued after complaints mounted that insolent Chinese security agents were demanding to search delegates' rooms in the middle of the night, had ejected some forum participants from hotel rooms, tried to break up private meetings and are confiscating printed material.
On the fourth day of the grass-roots forum, executive director Irene Santiago said the Chinese were given one day to withdraw all police from the 103-acre forum site in Huariou.
``If the Chinese do not comply, we go back to our delegations and ask them: `Do you want to cancel? Do you want to boycott? Or do you want to riot?'' said committee member Salamo Fulivai.
Late Saturday, the Chinese withdrew police around the security checkpoints leading into the forum, thus permitting access to the workshops and seminars by the estimated 18,000 delegates without official scrutiny.
But organizers also sought to have security agents removed from inside the site of the related United Nations Conference on Women, which begins Monday at Beijing's Asia Village, and a halt to surveillance of activist groups, who are being followed and filmed by Chinese agents.
Saturday's ultimatum has precipitated a row between forum organizers and China's formidable Public Security Bureau, which is accustomed to spying, snooping, phone tapping, hassling, detaining and jailing people without challenge or public criticism.
Its agents aren't required to explain their actions or identify themselves. Over the week, they have prohibited forum participants from screening videos and films in private. They also have broken up pre-workshop meetings, stopped reporters from visiting delegates and ordered participants in and out of meetings as if they have no more rights than Chinese citizens.
Saturday's ultimatum came two hours after a senior U.S. diplomat called on the United Nations to ``step in at the highest level'' to tell China's government that its public security agency - the most feared force in China - was exceeding authorizations at both the forum and the U.N. women's conference.
``It is imperative that the U.N. be very firm with the Chinese about what their obligations are and what they are not,'' said Timothy Wirth, U.S. undersecretary of state for global affairs.
Wirth called on U.N. General Secretary Boutros-Boutros Ghali to personally ``take a firm stand'' with the Chinese, who he said ``are incurring an awful lot of frustration and wrath from people the way they are handling this.''
Even as Chinese officials and U.N. delegates were meeting in an effort to iron out differences and save the forum from a premature demise, security agents entered the forum's lesbian workshop tent and confiscated every publication written in Chinese. Within 20 minutes, more police entered the tent and began seizing publications in other languages, too.
The forum's own daily publication, Forum 95, wasn't issued Saturday because the Chinese censor hadn't approved a column called Terra Viva. Another publication meant for the forum, the Earth Times, was held up because Chinese authorities claimed there were problems with the printing.
All week, delegates complained of lack of bus and taxi transport to ferry them into Beijing, a 90-minute ride. Taxi drivers have been discouraged from driving to Huairou and uniformed police have closed the town to all non-UN traffic.
Huairou was hurriedly converted into a conference town after the Chinese government last May abruptly announced that the independent-minded forum of non-governmental agencies was being shifted from Beijing to this drowsy little town. The bulk of its inhabitants were told to ``take a holiday'' during the forum.
``We have come here to discuss women's human rights, but the participants at this forum are suffering from fundamental human rights abuses,'' complained Dorothy Thomas, head of the Women's Rights Project.
by CNB