From: World Tibet News - May 13,'95
By CAROL HYMOWITZ and SUSAN CAREY
The Wall Street Journal May 12, 1995
A battle is brewing between China and women of the world. On
one side are tens of thousands of foreign women set to descend on Beijing late this summer to air their views on issues from human rights to spousal abuse to Tibet, in connection with the United Nations'
Fourth World Conference for Women. The women, who aren't part of
the conference, are determined to set the rules for their own
parallel meeting.
But China -- which welcomed the conferences as a consolation
prize after losing its bid to stage the Summer Olympic Games in the year 2000 -- suddenly has gotten cold feet. Earlier this week, the women
rejected China's last-minute plan to banish them to a tent city an
hour outside of the capital, far from the official U.N. meeting.
Claiming that the U.N. conference would suffer without their
input, the women have launched a very public campaign for a better
venue -- or a cancellation of both meetings.
``This site they've chosen has none of the facilities --
telephone lines, computer connections, hotel rooms, even meeting
spaces -- we need to interact,'' says Marnaz Afkhana of Sisterhood
Is Global, a 70-country women's group. An Australian official from
the International Women's Development Agency, says: ``At a time
when the emphasis should be on women being heard, this action
means that women's voices will actually be suppressed.''
Since 1992, big U.N. policy-making conferences have allowed
nondelegates -- such as women's groups -- to mix freely with
government officials, often influencing policy statements and
agendas. But the specter of an army of feisty women with strong
views on everything from reproductive rights and homosexuality to
Taiwan's status seems to be stirring dread among Chinese
officials.
``They got shocked and scared when they began realizing that
women in all these thousands of mushrooming nongovernmental groups
are outspoken and organized and can influence large groups of
people,'' contends U.S. feminist leader Bella Abzug, who heads the
Women's Environment and Development Organization.
(...)
``I think it finally hit the Chinese,'' says Suzanne
Kindervatter, a director of InterAction, a coalition of 160 U.S.
agencies that work overseas.
A few weeks after the Copenhagen meeting, Chinese officials
announced that the site of the nongovernmental forum, the
centrally located Workers' Stadium in Beijing, had ``structural
problems.'' Chinese organizers then proposed Huairou, a ``famous
scenic tourist area'' near the Great Wall.
But some of the nongovernmental women immediately inspected
the site and complained that it lacks hotels, meeting rooms,
international phone lines -- everything a huge meeting requires.
The Chinese have offered to make improvements, including erecting
31 tents.
Along with the 35,000 women who have registered for the
nongovernmental conference, 5,000 Chinese women and 5,000
journalists are expected to seek entrance, while another 10,000
delegates are headed for the official U.N. conference.
Responding to grass-roots outrage, 11 of the 15 women
responsible for the nongovernmental forum earlier this week agreed
that the new site is ``unacceptable.'' They now are pressing
Boutros Boutros-Ghali, U.N. secretary-general, to personally
intercede with the Chinese.
The women say they want to know by May 24 that China intends
to make available a larger, better-equipped meeting site in
central Beijing. If not, ``there is a very strong sentiment that
... we would push for cancellation of'' both meetings, says Irene
Santiago, executive director of the NGO Forum on Women, the
organizing body for the nongovernmental conference. ``This is
going to be the largest gathering of women in history,'' she says.
``If it's going to happen in September, I don't think another
country is an option.''
(...)