Published by: World Tibet Network News, Monday, Jun 03, 1996

Istanbul, June 2, 1996: Johanne Abonader (CTC) and Losang Rabgey (ICLT) have arrived safe and sound. They have registered successfully for the Conference and Forum. We have been to the workshops today. They are getting better and better (substance and participation wise).

The Women's Caucus is having a debriefing every day to go over the progress of the document. In the morning, they will have strategy sessions.

There don't seem to be any tickets for NGOs for tonight's opening ceremony for the official intergovernmental conference. The Opening Plenary Session tomorrow is open to only 80 NGOs. This session will be ticketed on a first come first basis. However, those who are interested to listen to the speeches will have TV monitors that they can watch from the NGO Lounge in the same building.

Tonight, we will rework our precedents into the proper format as the Women's Caucus has done. This will be more helpful than the listing we currently have.

DOCUMENT: Our NGO submissions to the NGO Composite document were accredited to UNA-UK. The reason for this is that since not one Tibet group was accredited to the conference, we are not actual players. So our amendments submitted under a non-accredited NGO was not "live" for the governments to consider. So, the change in name has made these very same amendments "live" and available for all governments to consider when they begin their deliberations.

Johanne Abonader and Kunzang Yuthok have met with the person who did the compilation and he is supportive of our language. He suggests that we lobby countries other than the G77 and EU since there will not be enough time for these blocks to adopt any - not only our - type of language due to the time it takes to get concensus.

In New York at the third PrepCom, individual members of these groups did speak from the floor, but now, they will not be speaking individually since they have had the time to develop their combined position papers. The papers will be available tomorrow (Monday, June 3) when the official conference opens.

ACCREDITATION: Kunzang has spoken with a senior staff member of the NGO Liaison office based in Nairobi. She is aware of the TRC situation and the additional complications that occurred at the ECOSOC. The TND has asked her to help clarify the situation. She agrees that TRC did not provide erroneous information. She is going to talk to Senior staff members from the Nairobi Habitat Secretariat and schedule a meeting for us to talk about the ECOSOC issue that needs to be clarified for the record. We believe she is a friend who we can work with on this.

CONFERENCE STRUCTURE: The Conference is going to break up into two Committees. Committee 1 and Committee 2. Committee 1 will deal with the document and Committee 2 will deal with the Istanbul Paper. Will write more tomorrow on the significance of these two committees as Kunzang will be preparing a briefing paper on this for our delegation.

NGO FORUM ACTIVITIES: On June 3, we have been invited to participate in a "Migrants Forum". We plan to have Tsering Tsomo of the Tibetan Women's Association make our presentation there.

On June 4, (Tiannanmen Square anniversary), we are working with the Asia/Pacific Caucus to do some action. The Asia/Pacific Caucus is going to concentrate on "Illegal Evictions". We want to lead the commemoration of Tiannanmen Square anniversary. Planning meeting for this is Monday, June 3.

MEDIA:

Brazilian Press interviewed our delegates at the booth.

BBC-World Radio Service (Turkey bureau) interviewed Kunzang Yuthok yesterday (June 1).

Earth Times interviewed Kunzang Yuthok today (June 2). They also took a picture today. When this is printed, the Chinese will certainly know that Tibetans are at the Conference too!! Earth Times is published daily here in Istanbul.

Submitted by:

Kunzang Yuthok (TRC) and Johanne Abonader (CTC) June 2, 1996