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.''

(...)