The New York Times

Tuesday, June 29, 1999

To the Editor:

The decision by the United Nations Committee on Non-governmental Organizations to refuse accreditation to Human Rights in China was patently political (news article, June 22).

The China Society for Human Rights Studies, a Government-organized group, was accredited in 1998. This group does little more than issue rebuttals to the yearly reports on China by America's State Department, and it has justified the use of force to crush the 1989 Beijing demonstrations.

Can there be anything more absurd than a rights committee where all non-governmental organizations sheepishly echo their governments on human rights and justify their violations? By rejecting independent human rights groups, the United Nations is making itself a grotesque parody of what it should be.

LIU QING

(The writer is the president of Human Rights in China)