To the attention of Mr. John MAJOR

Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Brussels, August 26, 1995

Dearest Mr Major,

I am writing you regarding the Fourth UN World Conference on Women which is scheduled to be held in Peking from September 4 - 15 (p.v.?) and which will be preceded by a Forum of Non-Government Organizations (Hairou, August 30 - September 8).

As you know, the theme of this conference, "Equality, Development and Peace", is centered on the objective to stimulate the advancement of the status of women and in particular of all the oppressed women of the world. It seems therefore strange that some of the most oppressed and discriminated against women, Tibetan women, have been excluded from the Conference.

The Economic and Social Council of the UN (ECOSOC), in response to pressure by the Chinese government, has infact denied accreditation to Tibetan women for the Conference. The Chinese government claims that Tibetan women are already being represented by Chinese women and has allowed for only a few NGOs who support the Tibetan cause to be accredited to the NGO Forum.

In addition to this first discrimination, another more serious one has been added since China is actually denying the visas of many of the women who have already been accredited by the United Nations.

This incredible and unprecedented decision of the Chinese government is located in the context in which human and civil rights are being violated daily and in which numerous executions are being sentenced daily in China, as can be gathered from sources of information.

A similar position on the part of the Chinese government seems serious since it conveys an ulterior expression of the authoritative and anti-libertarian orientation of that regime. Furthermore it appears as an unacceptable precedent for the UN that who has or does not have the right to participate in the meetings organized by the UN itself, has been left to the an arbitrary choice of the host country according to its own political criteria.

I ask you, if you believe that you should make the participation of your government's delegation conditional to the release on the part of the Chinese authorities, of the entrance visas to all those who have already been accredited by the Organizing Secretary of the Fourth Conference on Women of the United Nations.

I ask you if your government intends to assume initiatives and acts towards reestablishing the normal conditions of procedure at the Forum and the Conference, even tot he point of asking for the suspension of the Fourth World Conference and its transfer to another place to conditions more adequate to the nature and dignity of the Organization of the United Nations.

I ask you furthermore if you believe in undertaking any political or diplomatic action, in order to attain from the Chinese authorities a reversal on the tendency and application in the legislative code of capital punishment.

I send you my warmest regards Mr. John MAJOR,

Olivier DUPUIS

Secretary of the Radical Party

Transnational and transparty