BEIJING, Jan 21
(AFP)
Human rights in China are deteriorating and the international community must restart its resolutions to condemn Beijing at the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva, a rights group said Thursday.
�The time for silence is over,� said Sidney Jones, Asia director of the US-based Human Rights Watch.
�Last year, the key countries that have sponspored the resolution since 1990 opted instead for dialogue with China ... but China is carrying out one of the worst crackdowns against political dissent since 1989,� she added.
The annual session of the UN Rights Commission in Geneva starts on March 22 and runs to April 30.
Following the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, an alliance of Western nations started to table annual resolutions at the commission critical of China�s human rights.
Hard lobbying by Beijing diplomats stopped any of resolutions being passed and last year, China succeeded in substituting the resolution for a series of bilateral human rights dialogues.
Canada, Australia, the European Union, and the United States all hold bilateral dialogues with China.
�Past failures to adopt a resolution were largely due to a lack of political will by the sponsors who did not devote as much time and resources to getting a resolution passed as China spent getting it defeated,� Jones said.
�The decision on whether or not to criticize China in the UN�s most important human rights body should be based on principle, not on a calculated assessment of a motion�s success,� she added.
Over the past year, President Jiang Zemin had a televised debate with US President Bill Clinton in Beijing and China hosted a landmark visit by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson and signed the second of a pair of UN covenants on human rights.
Leading dissidents Wei Jingsheng and Tiananmen student leader Wang Dan were released, but this was soon followed by a crackdown on dissidents who attempted to set up a opposition political party. This has provoked sharp critcism overseas.
Three members of the China Democracy Party were handed sentences of up to 13 years jail on convictions of attempting to overthrow the state.
In addition, a labour activist who talked about rural unrest on Radio Free Asia got 10 years in jail and and a poet who published an independent literary journal got a seven-year term.
Most recently, a businessman who gave 30,000 Chinese e-mail addresses to a overseas dissident group received a two-year term for attempting to overthrow the state through the Internet.
Even Robinson�s trip was marred with difficulties as �Chinese officials produced none of the information she requested on prisoners, denied her access to the Panchen Lama and made no specific commitments on the ratification of the two UN human rights treaties,� Jones said.�The human rights situation in China has clearly deteriorated and a return to Geneva would be a fitting response,�
SEOUL, Jan 21 (AFP)
Talks to find a permanent peace on the Korean peninsula are not expected to be hampered by the reported defection of a senior North Korean diplomat, officials said Thursday.
A South Korean government official said he did not believe the communist North, chairing latest talks in Geneva between South and North Korea, the United States and China, would stage a dramatic protest.
�We expect the talks to go on as planned until this Friday. We don�t believe North Korea will walk out of the talks,� the official said.
On the third day of the Geneva peace talks, North Korea accused the United States and South Korea of kidnapping a diplomat, an economic official in North Korea�s Berlin mission.
Kim Kyong-Phil went missing with his wife last week and is reported to be seeking asylum in the United States.
The reported defection would be the highest-level escape from the starving state�s service since the North�s ambassador to Egypt defected to Washington in August 1997. The North�s top ideologue Hwang Jang-Yop defected in early 1997.
Li Gun, deputy head of Pyongyang�s negotiating team in Geneva, said meetings scheduled for Thursday would go ahead, but warned: �I think this is a good opportunity for the United States and South Korea to show their intention if they are willing to go on with the peace talks or make things worse.�
A US official in Washington appeared to confirm that the North Korean diplomat had sought US asylum but dismissed allegations he had been kidnapped.
�On its face, the allegation is pretty implausible,� the official said, adding that �when these asylum requests come up we generally don�t discuss them.�
US State Department spokesman James Rubin also said the reported defection should not affect the Geneva talks.
�We don�t believe this subject is relevant to the four-party talks and they are not an appropriate forum in which to raise concerns about such questions,� he said Wednesday in Washington.
�The Four-party talks are continuing today and are scheduled to go on until Friday,� Rubin said.
JAKARTA, Jan 21 (AFP)
Hundreds of police and troops were flown into an eastern Indonesian province Thursday to control riots between Christians and Moslems in which at least 20 people have died.
Some 750 police and army troops had reinforced the 1,000 local police, army and navy personnel in Maluku province while another 200 were expected from East Java and Bali, police said.
Some 5,000 people, including ethnic-Chinese, have sought shelter at police headquarters in the provincial capital of Ambon where the disturbances erupted Tuesday as Indonesia marked the Eid al-Fitr festival for the end of the Moslem fasting month.
�There are still small jolts, but they are mostly on the rim of the city centre and security personnel are both monitoring and handling the cases so that they do not spread further,� Maluku police chief Colonel Karyono told the Antara news agency.
Foreigners trapped at the main airport said they could see smoke rising from at least six burning houses.
Karyono said the violence had spread to the western Maluku island of Sulabesi, some 300 kilometres (185 miles) northwest of Ambon, were two people died, two others were severely injured and 33 buildings damaged.
Two places of worship were also damaged in Piru, on the island of Seram, some 66 kilometres (41 miles) north of Ambon, he said without clarifying whether they were churches or mosques.
Karyono said 18 people had been killed and 34 seriously injured in Ambon.
Eight places of worship, two markets, a shopping centre, an inn, a cinema and 89 houses were burned or damaged, and 18 cars, 25 motorcycles and hundreds of pedicabs torched, he added.
Karoyono said that among the security forces deployed were a battalion from the Kostrad army special force and a police mobile brigade company from Ujungpandang, South Sulawesi. Other police and army reinforcements were expected.
One diplomat said several embassies in Jakarta were trying to arrange to evacuate their nationals from the Moluccan island.
Diplomats in Jakarta said a small group of foreigners were trapped at Ambon airport, unable to return to the city or take a flight out.
�It is still very tense. We can see six houses burning from here,� a diplomat quoted a tourist at Ambon airport as having told him.
Transport Minister Giri Suseno ordered the closure of Ambon airport and port because of the unrest, the Suray Citra Televisi Indonesia private television channel said.
At Ambon police headquarters people have been given temporary shelter in the hall, offices and in tents outside.
�More people are still being picked up by security forces to be taken into the headquarters as they have lost their homes,� an officer added.
Police said the violence was sparked by a criminal act but degenerated into a riot because it involved an attack on a local by a migrant.
A Moslem migrant from the South Sulawesi ethnic Bugis group apparently threatened a local bus driver with a knife and demanded money.
The driver escaped and returned armed with a machete but the migrant, living in the village of Batumerah, alerted friends and went after the driver.
Unable to find him in the neighbouring village of Mardika, they burned two houses and a motorcycle garage.
Mardika villagers retaliated and attacked Batumerah, a mainly Moslem village, and burnt several houses.
Karyono was quoted by Antara as saying no orders were given to shoot rioters on sight but security forces may have opened fire to try to re-establish order.
�If any of the security forces had fired shots, they must have done so according to the prevailing procedures, or because they were compellled to,� he said.
At least three people had died of bullet wounds, Antara quoted sources as saying.
The latest unrest came as the world�s largest Moslem-populated nation marked the two-day Eid al-Fitr festival.
President B.J. Habibie cited harmony between Christians and Moslems in Maluku as a model for the country when he appealed last month for religious tolerance.
Indian security officials say they have arrested 11 people in connection with an Islamic militant plan to bomb the United States embassy and other diplomatic buildings in Delhi, Calcutta and Madras.
The BBC�s Subir Bhaumik in Calcutta: �Security stepped up� The officials said the 11 were part of a radical group Lashkar-e-Tayyaba allegedly backed by the exiled Saudi militant Osama bin Laden, who is accused of being behind the bombings of two US embassies in Africa last year.
The suspects include a Bangladeshi man named Sayed Abu Nasir, who is said to work for Pakistan�s intelligence agency.
Anti-terrorist agents from the United States have now arrived in Delhi, to investigate reports of the bombing plot.
Osama bin Laden: Believed to be behind the Africa bombings
Police said the attacks were to have taken place before next Thursday�s national holiday marking the anniversary of India�s constitution.
A spokesman for the American embassy in Delhi told journalists that counter-terrorism experts from several federal government agencies in Washington were in India to look into the alleged plot.
The BBC correspondent in Delhi, Daniel Lak, says observers believe the revelation of a plot will need careful investigation, as there are frequent reports of Islamic militant plots which cannot be confirmed from independent sources. Washington can be expected to mount a thorough investigation, he says.
Security beefed up
Security around all US diplomatic establishments in India has now been tightened. The August bombings of the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya killed more than 200 people.
India�s intelligence officials say the arrests began in Calcutta last month. Mr Nasir, allegedly the leader of a hit squad of the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba group was arrested last week and is now in a high-security prison in Delhi.
He has been charged with waging war against India, illegally carrying explosives and illegally entering the country.
Foreign connection
The Lashkar group is involved in the separatist campaign in Indian-controlled Kashmir, but Mr Nasir has allegedly confessed that his mission was to blow up the US embassy in Delhi and the consulate in Calcutta.
He has also said that his group includes a few Afghans, a Sudanese, even a Burmese Muslim.
Police says they are still searching for other members of the group.
Pakistan�s foreign office says India has not informed Pakistan about the arrests and that they have no information on the case.
BBC