For Immediate Release May 9, 1996

Tibetan Groups Excluded from United Nations Housing Conference

Washington and Beijing Clash at ECOSOC; Tibetan Group Demands Apology

A United Nations committee voted to exclude a Tibetan organization from a major UN conference this summer by a vote of 21 to 15. Another Tibetan organization was excluded without a vote which means no Tibetan organization will be represented at the conference. The vote brought Washington and Beijing into yet another area of confrontation - whether Tibetan non-governmental organizations based in the West are entitled to participate in UN fora.

Ambassador Victor Marrero, who represents the U.S. at the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), vociferously supported Tibetan participation and was attacked by the Chinese representative for needlessly expending tight UN resources to vote on this matter for "its own political purposes."

While China succeeded in blocking the participation of Tibetan NGOs, it was unable to do so through informal consultations, resulting in a number of public debates, and for the first time, a vote in the 54 member ECOSOC. The vote broke down along similar lines to the UN Human Rights Commission which defeated a motion to censure China last month. In both votes, China won by commanding an overwhelming majority of African and Asian nations, whereas Western countries and some Latin American and Eastern European states voted against China's position.

In the ECOSOC vote, controversy arose over an accusation by Farouk Malawi, a UN official, that the Tibetan organization, the Tibetan Rights Campaign, submitted erroneous information in its accreditation application. Based on Mr. Malawi's accusation, Canada abstained instead of voting in favor of accrediting the group. According to an ECOSOC press release on the vote, Mr. Malawi charged that the group did not participate, nor was it recommended for accreditation to the Beijing women's conference, which are both relevant to accreditation to the Habitat conference. However, the group participated intensively in the conference and had been recommended for accreditation.

Kunzang Yuthok, the Executive Director of the Seattle-based Tibetan Rights Campaign said, "This accusation is completely false. Our application does not say that we were accredited to the Beijing conference. It states that our activities included work for the conference. We were part of the Tibetan women's delegation to the conference and served as its U.S. coordination body."

It is unknown whether Malawi's accusation swayed enough countries to change the outcome of the vote. Valerie Raymond, head of the Canadian delegation to Habitat official said that Canada had planned to vote for accreditation, but changed their vote at the last minute after hearing Malawi's accusation. Ms. Yuthok is calling upon Mr. Malawi for a apology, and has not discounted bringing legal action against the UN for the false accusation which affects the groups reputation and integrity both within and outside the UN.

Banning Tibetan NGOs from the Habitat conference on housing and sustainable communities, which takes place in Istanbul in June, continues the UN policy that Tibetan human rights groups which include self-determination issues in their work are unwelcome at the UN. In the accreditation debate, the Chinese delegate stated that the primary objective of the Tibetan Rights Campaign is "splitting Tibet from China."

For years, the Tibetan Rights Campaign has worked on issues relevant to the conference but does not deny that it also aggressively advocates independence for Tibet. Many Tibetan non-governmental organizations also fall into this category, such as the Canada Tibet Committee, which was denied accreditation without a public vote.

The vote to exclude Tibetan groups has raised the question in the human rights community as to whether groups advocating self-determination, which is one of the human rights named in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, may be barred from UN conferences and other fora. China's ability to martial votes among third world countries to keep its non-governmental critics out of the UN system is clearly a controversy the UN would like to avoid. According to reports, officials from the U.S. and other Western countries also hoped to avoid public confrontation with China at ECOSOC.

China's unbending position, however, would have required the U.S. and other countries to agree to bar deserving NGOs because of their political views on Tibet.

More than six Tibetan non-governmental organizations will still go to Istanbul this summer to participate in a parallel non-governmental conference and have vowed to continue to raise the issue there.

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The International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) was established in 1988 to monitor and promote internationally recognized human rights and democratic freedoms in Tibet. ICT is a non-profit, tax-exempt organization incorporated in Washington, DC.