MORNING
HR/CN/99/45
19 April 1999


Togolese Minister for Promotion of Democracy Addresses Commission



The Commission on Human Rights this morning concluded its debate on the rights of specific groups and individuals including migrant workers, minorities, mass exoduses and displaced persons, and other vulnerable groups.

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) raised a number of issues, including the repression of the rights of minorities in various countries, and the different forms of discrimination they suffered under. Speakers said these minorities often underwent forced displacement and mass exoduses.

Democratic structures were best suited to the protection of minority rights whether they pertained to religious, ethnic or racial minorities. The plight of refugees, whether from a conflict or from a negative economic situation, was also discussed. The issue of the illicit trafficking in persons was raised by the NGOs, as was the frequent ensuing violation of their human rights.

The Commission also heard from the Minister for the Promotion of Democracy and the Rule of Law of Togo, Harry Olympio, who spoke of the perilous state of human rights worldwide and in the African continent. Democratic reforms had taken place in his country and it had a continuing commitment to democracy by furthering the education of the Togolese people in the human rights area. He also spoke of the vital role played by the Commission on Human Rights in the continuing battle for the respect for human rights universally.

Egypt, Viet Nam, Estonia, Latvia, Turkey, Pakistan and Cyprus exercised their right of reply.

Representatives of the following NGOs addressed the meeting: the International Movement Against all Forms of Discrimination and Racism; the Commission for the Defence of Human Rights of Central America; Human Rights Advocates Inc.; Anti-Slavery International; Asian Cultural Forum for Development; the Himalayan Research and Cultural Foundation; War Resistors International; International Federation for Human Rights; International Institute for Peace; Afro-Asian Peoples Solidarity; Worldview International; Aliran; the American Association of Jurists; Rural Reconstruction Nepal; the Movement against Racism and for Friendship Among Peoples; Group for International Solidarity; Agir Ensemble pour les droits de l'Homme; Caucasians United for Reparations and Emancipation; International Organization for the Development of Freedom of Education; the Society for Threatened Peoples; Federacion de Asociaciones de Defensa y Promocion de los Derechos Humanos; International Educational Development Inc.; the International Council of Voluntary Agencies; the World Federation of Trade Unions; the Organization for Defending the Victims of Violence; Tupaj Amaru; International Indian Treaty Council; International Human Rights Law Group; Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom; Freedom House; Franciscans International; the Federal Union of European Nationalities; and the World Muslim Congress.

The Commission resumes its meeting at 3 p.m. this afternoon when it will start its consideration of indigenous issues.

Statements

HARRY OLYMPIO, Minster for the Promotion of Democracy and the Rule of Law of Togo, said the situation of human rights was well below the expectations of the international community. Many States ignored human rights. The situation was particularly grave in the African continent, a continent influenced by the persistence of confrontations and armed conflicts. The growing number of refugees, the poverty of the people, the sufferings of millions, terrorism and criminality, all were elements that showed how much the future of human rights was under threat.

Mr. Olympio said the Togolese Government was ready to cooperate with the different institutions. The democratic process in Togo had led it to understand that ignorance of human rights was often at the origin of social and political crises. The consolidation of the democratic process had to pass through a process of education, formation and information. It was necessary to encourage the growth of a true democratic culture, which could only take place through an ongoing process of education. The Togolese Government was doing its best to encourage this ongoing process, hoping to build a durable and positive democracy. The interest of Togo for the protection of human rights continued to grow.

ATSUKO TANAKA, of the International Movement Against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism, said there were many people engaged in the trade of persons from many countries. There was a need for a draft additional protocol to correct this. The victims were often drafted into the international sex industry. They were subsequently criminalized, whilst the perpetrators were left unpunished. A human rights regime, decriminalising these people, punishing the guilty, and fighting the trafficking of persons, was required. Information was also needed, but it was difficult to obtain since victims often needed the minimal amount of money that they received. The victims needed help to have their human rights and dignity respected and restored.

CELIA SANJUR PALACIOS, of the Commission for the Defence of Human Rights in Central America, said that the lack of concern shown by some Governments for their nationals who were suffering from discrimination was shocking. The global economic model was insufficient, since it showed a breach and did not cover all people. Inhabitants of Latin American countries emigrated to countries with higher standards of human rights, ignoring the abuses that they might encounter on the way. There were many deportations of illegal migrants from these countries, which often had negative effects upon these people, such as the separation of families, and a negative economic impact.

Ms. Palacios said Hurricane Mitch had caused grave damage, not just at the structural level, but, for example, in the cases of women who were now forced to work in sub-human conditions. The Nicaraguan Government was condemned because it did not defend its people. There was concern that some countries in the region had not acceded to international instruments that would protect their people, whether migrants or not. The Governments of these countries should remedy this, and attention needed to be paid to the issue in a comprehensive manner.

CLAUDIA SMITH, of Human Rights Advocates Inc., said a large and growing death toll across the globe was due to border-crossings in difficult conditions. A border control strategy in the United States was guilty for much of these losses. Migrants risked prolonged exposure to the elements. Illegal migrants were forced into difficult environmental conditions, with the authorities hoping that this would discourage them - or kill them. Increased migration was predicted, and as a result, migrants would be driven deeper into the desert, with the parallel jump in the rate of deaths of these migrants. The strategy behind these deaths was to maximise the risk of death, contrary to basic human rights. The issue was not whether a State had a right to control its border, but whether this right was abused. The duty to preserve life had been ignored. There was need for a Special Rapporteur to study these issues.

CHRISTIANE DEHOY, of Anti Slavery International, said there was widespread repression of minorities and countrywide practice of forced labour in Burma which was documented in the International Labour Office Commission of Inquiry report of 1998. This had led to an unprecedented displacement of populations. The organization called the attention of the Commission and the Special Rapporteur on Myanmar to the situation of human rights in western Burma, which had resulted in unknown numbers of internally displaced persons as well as an influx of 40,000 people in the State of Mizoram of India and thousands more in Chittagon Division of Bangladesh.

Ms. Dehoy said the so-called development programmes consisted mostly of infrastructure projects carried out with unpaid forced labour and extortion from the local population. The organization urged the Commission and the Representative of the Secretary-General on internally displaced persons to make strong requests to the Government of Burma in order to investigate this issue and to assess the full dimensions of the humanitarian crisis.

RAVI NAIR, of the Asian Cultural Forum of Development, said there were attacks on the Christians of India. Crimes ranged from the destruction of churches, to the withholding of funds. The current level of analysis portrayed the attacks as sporadic, but this was deceptive. They were symptomatic of a mood of intolerance affecting the Indian people. The Christians were suffering from this.

Mr. Nair said there was a destructive trend of political movements that discriminated against minorities such as Christians. Fundamentalist organizations, fearing the rise of liberalism, had raised the spectre of forced conversion and foreign intervention. The State had decided to discriminate in its turn. The Dalits were discriminated against constantly, even by the State. Covert violence against minorities took place every day, and the Government did nothing to combat sectarianism, nor to fight the discrimination. There was growing intolerance of the minorities, both cultural and ethnic, which was dangerous to the integrity of India as a nation-State.

K. WARIKOO, of the Himalayan Research and Cultural Foundation, said the problem of mass exoduses and internal displacement continued to engage the attention of the international community. The number of such internally displaced persons had already crossed 25 million. The atrocities committed by Islamist mercenaries and terrorists on the indigenous Hindu minority community in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, with the aim of forcing them to leave their centuries-old places of habitat, had been highlighted by the Himalayan Research and Cultural Foundation in the Commission during the past few years. Some 400,000 Kashmiri Pandits were forced to leave their homes and hearths in Kashmir valley and to move and live in inhuman conditions in tents in Jammu, Delhi and elsewhere in India. As per official statistics, more than 50,000 families were registered as migrants, out of which 29,074 were families in Jammu.

Mr. Warikoo said the atrocities of the Islamist mercenaries and terrorists against ethnic and religious minorities in order to ensure their mass exodus had been going on for too long. It was time that the world community rose to the occasion and utilised all its persuasive skills and moral pressure to stop Pakistan from aiding and abetting terrorism in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir from cleansing the state from its ethnic and religious minorities and establishing an extremist Islamist order there.

DAVID ARNOTT, of War Resisters International, said according to the E/CN.4/1999/76 report, only 13 Governments replied to the Secretary- General's request of September 1998 for opinions on the Draft Guidelines on HIV/AIDS and human rights. This was a meagre response given the severity of the problem and indicated the level of denial involved. The human rights dimensions of HIV/AIDS highlighted the inseparability of civil and political rights and economic, social and cultural rights. The civil and political rights dimension of the epidemic had been treated almost uniquely as a health issue. Here again was the issue of denial taking as an example the epicentre of HIV/AIDS in Burma, keeping a special focus on the right to freedom of opinion and expression.

Mr. Arnott said that in Thailand, the epidemic was no longer out of control due to an open, rights-oriented strategy backed by substantial political will. In Burma and other parts of the world where politically weak and unstable Governments denied freedom of expression and other rights, the HIV/AIDS epidemic was likely to spiral out of control. With its cross-border vectors of shared needle injection along drug trafficking routes, and sex and long-distance transport workers, the HIV/AIDS epidemic and its management could not be considered the internal affair of a single country.

GAZMEND PULA, of the International Helsinki Federation of Human Rights, raised the issue of human rights and genocide allegations in Kosovo. Pristina and other major towns had been turned into ghost towns by Serbian troops. Serbian forces and the administration had perpetrated ethnic cleansing, genocide and atrocities against Kosovo Albanians. The pattern of large-scale attacks and reprisals of Serbian security forces and paramilitary militias against Kosovo Albanians suggested a coherent policy aimed at a potential future partitioning of Kosovo following the decimation of its Albanian social and political fabric. Residents had not been killed or physically forced from their homes but had left for fear of State terror that used systematic and large-scale indiscriminate violence. Urgent and dramatic appeals had been made for a humanitarian corridor for these refugees, as the Pope had called for, and to recognize that what had been happening in Kosovo was genocide as defined in the 1948 Convention.

PANKAJ BHAN, of the International Institute for Peace, spoke of the plight of the people of Kashmir, who had been victims of a resurge of xenophobia, accompanied by ethnic, religious and racial hatreds. Some nation States had been responsible for providing sustenance to groups who had perfected the use of terror to subjugate minorities. The Kashmir Pandits had been deprived by terrorists and mercenaries of their rights to life, property, education, employment, liberty, equality, freedom of faith, expression and ideology. There were devastating consequences of terrorism and religious extremism on the socio-psychological, physical, health and demographic profiles of the innocent victims of terrorism. The Commission should consider the question of protection for displaced persons and the victims of mass exoduses. This should be coupled with meaningful action to penalise those who were responsible or the creation of such situations so that such displaced persons were able to return in safety and dignity to their place of origin and choice.

A.M. ALI, of the Afro Asian Solidarity Organization, said the question of the rights of minorities had been discussed regularly at every session of the Commission and the general consensus was that democratic structures were best suited to the protection of minority rights whether they pertained to religious, ethnic or racial minorities. The evolution of state structures in a manner where the majority not only respected but also worked to protect the distinct identity of minorities was a function of awareness brought about through education. In Pakistan, the spectre of sectarian violence threatened the very fabric of society and specific communities like the Mohajirs continued to be forced to adopt a siege mentality. The fault lay in the manner in which constitutional and legal structures had been framed, for they discriminated against specific minorities, and Pakistan permitted the mushrooming of educational institutions that seemed to revel in fashioning youth to persecute minorities.

Mr. Ali said another example was the former Yugoslavia where every religious group had oppressed the other, depending on its relative strength in a specific location. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was bombing the Serbs. Violence in the context of oppression of minorities could not be used to curb violence. It only increased the number of dead, mostly innocent people. The organization condemned the use of violence in all situations and encouraged the world community and nations to fashion their instruments of governance and education so that the concept of equality for all becomes instant reaction for future generations.

LITON BOM, of Worldview International, said that there had been religious persecutions taking place in Chinaman in the western part of Burma. The Chin people had converted to Christianity in an effort to maintain their separate cultural identity in the face of the overwhelmingly Buddhist Burmese ethnic majority. To the military rulers who had adopted a xenophobic, crypto-Marxist philosophy, this was a threat. The rulers had continuously manoeuvred to prevent the growth of the Chin Chinese Church, and to forcibly introduce Buddhism to the Chin. None of this was mentioned in the report of the Special Rapporteur of Burma, and he ought to investigate religious persecutions suffered by the Christians in Burma.

DEBORAH STOTHARD, of Aliran, said the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was currently gripped by the crisis of displaced people. About 200,000 people were officially recognized as refugees, however many Governments overlooked the plight of millions who had been displaced as a result of military aggression, political repression and harmful Government practices such as forced relocation in so-called development projects and transmigration. The organization was deeply concerned that ASEAN members had been using the current economic crisis as an excuse to shrug off their responsibilities to asylum-seekers, displaced peoples and migrant workers. These included undocumented migrant workers, many who were in fact refugees from repression and armed conflict.

Ms. Stothard said that in Malaysia, police had repeatedly harassed Acehnese refugees. These intimidations had occurred regularly despite concerns raised by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees with the Malaysian authorities who made no efforts to monitor the refugee safety. Aliran urged the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to live up to its moral responsibility and to deal humanely with the displaced peoples and migrant workers in the region.

MERCEDES MOYA, of the American Association of Jurists, said that the new world order developed at the global level privileged development at a curative level. However, this resulted in the privileging of the developed countries, and mitigated the curative powers by creating tensions between different cultural groups. This resulted in violations of human rights, such as massacres and the denial of human dignity. To justify these kinds of human rights violations was impossible. The situation of the African people in Brazil was an example of the discrimination suffered by these people who suffered many forms of discrimination and whose rights could not be guaranteed. There was a need for the Commission to ensure that countries apply the provisions of relevant international instruments.

CHARM TONG, of Rural Reconstruction Nepal, said that Burma suffered under a forced relocation campaign by the military regime and attacks on its ethnic people. There were terrible human rights violations. Many children left Burma because they had no future, no schools, hospitals or food, and because the State Peace and Development Council was attacking their homes. Children were therefore easy prey to traffickers. Many girls ended up in the sex industry. There was no safety, no jobs, and no food, which made child trafficking very easy.

MUSA KAVAL, of the Movement Against Racism and for Friendship Amongst Peoples, said that the Kurdish minority was suffering from a human and political drama, since it had been deprived of its rights and did not even have the status of a minority. The Kurdish problem had been an international one since the beginning of the century. The Kurds had fought for their political rights, as well as their right to self-determination. Kurds had had to settle for their cultural and ethnic rights within borders of nation States that violated their other rights. Kurds suffered, most particularly in Turkey. The continuation of the negation of Kurdish identity caused a continuation of the conflict and menaced peace and security in the Middle East. The Commission should ask the Government of Turkey to negotiate a political settlement with the representatives of the Kurdish People, a solution that would recognise the identity of that people.

PRAMOD KAPHLEY, of (the Group for International Solidarity (GRINSO), said it wanted to speak about violations of basic human rights by the Government of Bhutan and the fate of Bhutanese refugees living in Nepal and India. The present Bhutanese refugee crisis began in October 1990 with the State- sponsored mass exodus of the Nepali-speaking southern Bhutanese when the Bhutanese regime introduced a fatal policy of ethnic cleansing (Citizenship Act 1985). Around 120,000 Nepali-speaking southern Bhutanese, that is 20 per cent of the total population, had been forced to flee the country over the last 9 years. More than 95,000 were living in refugee camps in eastern Nepal and were being looked after by the High Commissioner for Refugees. Several rounds of bilateral talks had been held between the Governments of Nepal and Bhutan to resolve the Bhutanese refugee crisis. However they had all turned out to be failure.

Mr. Kaphley said the Bhutan Government claimed that those who left the country were not Bhutanese citizens. In order to prevent the refugees from returning to their homeland, their lands had been distributed to people from other parts of the country under a resettlement plant currently being implemented in southern Bhutan. The organization was concerned about these gross violations of human rights and the denial of fundamental rights in Bhutan, including the right to return.

HECTOR CASTRO-PORTILLO, of Agir Ensemble pour les Droits de l'Homme, said that forced displacement in Colombia continued and the figures were appalling. These displacements were exacerbated by offenses against human rights, and against international instruments, with the aim of making political or territorial gains. Those mainly responsible were the paramilitary groups. Official troops were also guilty of indiscriminate bombing or strafing against civilians. Government humanitarian assistance was intermittent and insufficient. The situation was terrible, and there were no concrete programmes to reverse the displacements.

Mr. Castro-Portillo said the displaced were not given special treatment by the Government. There were no measures of protection against human rights violations. The Commission should exhort the Colombian Government to remedy the situation and provide aid for the civilian population. It should prosecute paramilitary groups on this basis.

SILIS MUHAMMAD, of Caucasians United for Reparation and Emancipation, asked whether the refusal of the United States to ratify certain United Nations human rights treaties, which would lead to the restoration of the human rights of its handicapped victims of slavery, amounted to a violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Universal Declaration envisaged the establishment of a common framework of protected human rights for everyone, everywhere. The United States knew, upon the adoption of the Universal Declaration in 1948, that African-Americans did not have their original mother’s tongue, their inherent religion or their ancestral culture, as a result of the acts of the Anglo-American Government. The United States had kept Afro-Americans perpetually regenerating the human rights of the Anglo-American, against their will. The identity of the Afro-Americans as a national minority in possession of human rights could never be achieved if left to the will of the United States. The United States was still shunning its responsibility for 400 years of slavery and its legacies.

Mr. Muhammad said the Afro-Americans would continuously remain victims until the United Nations corrected the damages that the United States had done to them. The United Nations should grant Afro-Americans a forum for the purpose of restoring their human rights, their political being, and their status as a people.

LUIS ARASANZ, of the Right to Education and Freedom of Education, said that taking into account that education was essential for the recognition of one’s identify, and especially the identify of minorities, the only way for a minority to pass down its culture was to have the possibility of establishing and managing its own educational institutions, financed by the Government. A State could not provide a freedom or right to a social group without providing the means to enjoy it. If the rights of minorities were to be respected, a positive attitude from majorities were required. Australian policies, considered as a model by the Special Rapporteur on religious intolerance in his report in 1997, allowed the Muslim, the Jew, Hindi and Buddhist minorities to be recognized as such and to get enough political, institutional and financial support to strengthen their identity.

MONIKA GYSIN, of the Society for Threatened Peoples, said the situation in the Karen state of Myanmar Burma had not improved, on the contrary, it had become increasingly difficult. The Karen were victims of a policy of scorched earth used by the military junta to break Karen resistance at all cost. The soldiers proceeded arbitrarily not only against active supporters of the Karen freedom movement, but also against the civilian population, which was generally suspected of supporting the freedom movement. Almost the whole population had fled from the villages and had hidden in inaccessible countryside areas.

Ms. Gysin said the organization welcomed the Burma resolutions adopted by the United Nations Human Rights Commission during the last years. However, the recommendations and demands laid down in the resolutions had not been carried out yet. The organization forcefully appealed to the Human Rights Commission to demand urgently that the resolutions be carried out immediately in order to effectively stop the serious human rights violations.

MIGUEL ANGEL SANCHEZ, of the Federation of Associations of the Defence and Promotion of Human Rights, said that there was a current tendency by States, especially in the European Union, to close their borders to immigrants and to reinforce their controls, particularly political. While the Federation agreed with the basic desire to create a common policy on immigration, asylum and refuge, it could not agree with the basic philosophy since the concepts of liberty, security and justice needed to be discussed democratically and not established intergovernmentally. Further the concept of security in the plan had an overall negative tone in relation particularly to the fight against illegal immigration and criminality. Security needed to be spoken of for all, including for the immigrants, and the plan of action did not offer a global vision of future possibilities. It called for the establishment of a legal statute for immigrants, distinct from general legislation, the facilitation of the legal entry of immigrants in appropriate quantities and the equipping of the citizens of the European Union, and various other guarantees and mechanisms of equipping the rights of the immigrant individuals and their families.

KAREN PARKER, of International Educational Development Inc., said it was concerned about the plight of prisoners who were abused and forced to work for low wages. This had a negative effect on the prisoners, and on society as a whole. This occurred in, for example, Japan and the United States. In the former, prisoners were not paid for their work. Sweatshops represented another form of slavery. Companies were setting these up in developing countries, for example impoverished Asian countries. Women were usually abused and suffered from appalling work conditions and low pay. United States companies were among the worst violators of these worker's rights. The United States should be condemned by the Commission.

MARC VINCENT, of the International Council of Voluntary Agencies, said the organization commended the Representative of the Secretary-General on internally displaced persons, Francis M. Deng, for his dedication to highlighting and alleviating the suffering of internally displaced people world wide. The Norwegian Refugee Council had created a global survey on internally displaced persons as an information and advocacy project dedicated to increasing understanding of their protection and assistance needs. It would soon be available on the Internet. The Norwegian Refugee Council was also working closely with the Office of the Secretary-General’s Representative to promote and disseminate the United Nations guiding principles on internal displacement. Unlike refugees, internally displaced persons had no international instrument of protection. There was no international organization mandated to provide them with assistance and protection. They therefore suffered in isolation and obscurity.

Mr. Vincent said Kosovo was a sad example of the situation facing internally displaced persons. There were estimates of several hundreds of thousands of people being displaced by the conflict and remaining within Kosovo. The organization welcomed the statement by the Chairperson of the Commission condemning the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and urged the High Commissioner for Human Rights to give particular attention to this matter in this session.

SURYALAL AMATYA, of the World Federation of Trade Unions, said the Ahmediya was a small community in Pakistan of about 100,000 persons. Sir Zafarullah Khan was a leader of great distinction representing Pakistan in the United Nations and he was an ardent Ahmediya. On behalf of Pakistan, he participated in the deliberations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 and would never have imagined that his own community of Ahmadiya would be the first victim of the violation of these rights. In Pakistan, the Ahmadiyas were declared non-Muslims by a constitutional amendment during the Prime Ministership of Zulfiqar Ali Bhuto. Persecution and repression of Ahmediyas began systematically and persistently since the promulgation of the 1984 Ordinance of un-lslamic activities and two more additions to the penal code the same year. The persecution of Ahmadiyas continued unabated. The change of government in Islamabad did not materially change the situation. According to recent reports, the situation of all minorities was getting worse in that country.

YADOLLAH MOHAMMADI TEHRANI, of the Organization for Defending Victims of Violence, said the issue of displaced persons was one of the major catastrophes of human history, a phenomenon rooted in prejudice and illiteracy, and the power of majority and the lack of tolerance. Totalitarianism, relying on its naked power and using an organised public system, attacked a minority group and forced its members to leave their homeland on any given excuses such as racial, ethnic, language or other. The international community had witnessed the continued appalling situation of the displaced persons and refugees all over the world, for example in Afghanistan, and Palestine. The latest example was that of Kosovo, where refugees were victims of ethnic cleansing and racial discrimination. This deserved the full attention of the Commission.

LAZARO PARY, of the Indian Movement "Tupaj Amaru", said that defining the concept of minorities would be too complicated to do in a complete manner. The situation of ethnic minorities had become dramatic in the new economic international order based on the law of the strongest. In the movement toward globalization of economies, these minority ethnic groups and indigenous communities had become increasingly excluded from the national consensus, freed by the voraciousness of the market forces, discriminated against and persecuted in their own countries. The people of Kosovo, Iraq and Turkey were cited as examples where ethnic minorities had suffered injustices.

ROSEANNE OLGUIN, of the International Indian Treaty Council, said the majority of migrant workers in the Western Hemisphere and other parts of the world were indigenous peoples, fleeing intolerable situations in their original homelands due to privatization and gunpoint jurisdictions called Constitutions. The migrant stream flowing north had continued to increase with the myriad of human rights abuses. The IITC had reported continued patterns of abuse suffered by migrants at the hands of immigration officials, border patrol agents, vigilante groups and immigration and naturalization agents. These violations were well documented and confirmed by numerous refugees, border and human rights monitoring groups, now joining in the global coalition to align the United Nations campaign to bring the Convention on the Protection of All Rights of Migrants and their Families into force.

Ms. Olguin said over 5 million migrants and seasonal farm workers from Guatemala and the interior Mexican states followed the crops of the United States. It was a disgrace that these peoples worked so hard for so little to put food on tables in the United States, the so-called "leader of the free world". The United States addressed item 14 with regard to religious minorities only, and made no mention of indigenous peoples, let alone migrants. The organization was not surprised that the industrialized nations had dodged their international obligations by refusing to sign and ratify the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrants and their Families.

BELQUIS AHMADY, of the International Human Rights Law Group, said that there had been grave violations of the human rights of Afghan refugees in Pakistan. As a result of ten years of foreign invasion, and another 10 years of civil war, a large number of Afghans had had to leave their country to save their lives and to escape poverty. Afghan refugees, particularly refugee women, had been deprived of the right to education, which had significant implications for their capacity to enjoy other fundamental human rights, such as the right to health and the right to security. The Commission should monitor the violations of the rights of the Afghan refugee, and use its various mechanisms to ensure they were not violated. The international community should strengthen assistance to the refugees, particularly in the areas of education and health.

SILVI STERR, of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, said the organization was concerned about the continued worsening of the situation of migrant workers and their families. Their situation was exacerbated by the parallel rise in attitudes and acts of racism and xenophobia. The League called on the international community to ratify the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families. Azerbaijan and Mexico were congratulated for their recent ratification, Bangladesh and Turkey for signing, and the Parliament of Senegal for having decided to ratify the Convention. Not a single State in the Western Group had had yet ratified the Convention. The Working Group of intergovernmental experts on the human rights of migrants was congratulated. The League supported its recommendation for the creation of a Special Rapporteur on this issue.

ELIZABETH BATHA, of Freedom House, said that as recorded by Christian Solidarity Worldwide, the people of scheduled caste origin in India formed a severely marginalised and underprivileged minority. Although legislation had been introduced to address their disadvantaged status, this was implemented in a discriminatory manner in which its benefits were denied to Christians. This was discriminatory both because it was based on the concept that the group fell outside the Hindu caste system and because it was inconsistently applied, as converts to their religions may continue to enjoy the compensatory benefits. The suffering of this minority group had recently been compounded by the increase in religious-motivated violence against the Christian community, and in particular against those in rural underdeveloped areas. The number of anti-Christian attacks reported in 1998 was over a hundredfold the annual average from 1964 to 1996. This violence had been fuelled by the rise in Hindu nationalism and its accompanying anti-minority sentiment, hate speech and incitement to violence. Freedom House urged the Commission to give specific attention to this serious issue. It believed that India's standing as a political democracy required it to act decisively in addressing these concerns.

PHILIPPE LEBLANC, of Franciscans International, said its work with thousands of internally displaced people in Colombia, Mexico and the Philippines had urged it to ask questions which were not often addressed at the Commission. Why was this suffering allowed to continue in countries that had democratically elected governments? Who planned, benefited or at least took advantage of this misery? People displaced other people out of hatred as in Kosovo, but also for profit as was the situation in Colombia. Economics were the root of the present day phenomenon of internally displaced persons in Colombia. Some 25 years ago, the displacement of people in Colombia was due to the struggle between guerillas and the Government over the control of land. Some 15 years ago, narcotics-traffickers displaced thousands of people and became the largest landowners in the country of, owning an estimated 3 to 5 million hectares of the best agricultural and ranching land.

Mr. Leblanc said that in the Philippines, which essentially still had an agricultural economy, the authorities wanted to move into the twenty-first century and to march with the rest of the industrial-technological world. The plan was to open large swathes of rural areas to development by building industry-friendly complexes. In Mexico, paramilitary groups affiliated with the ruling institutionalized revolutionary party were responsible for the internal displacement of 15,000 indigenous people in the highlands and northern part of the state of Chiapas. The organization recommended that the task of the Commission be to return to capitals to inject concerns for human rights of internally displaced persons into key Government departments such as finance and trade.

JOSEPH KOMLOSSY, of the Federal Union of European Nationalities (FUEN), said ever since the 1989 ethnic-based escalation of civil war in the territory of the former Yugoslavia, the ongoing genocide in Kosovo had been clearly foreseeable and yet no adequate preventive measures had been taken to avoid the tragic escalation. The next victim of the Serbian nationalistic aggression was most probably the Vojvodina region near the Hungarian border. The Commission should take immediate action and arrange for the re-establishment of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) mission headquarters in Subotica and establish a dense network of OSCE missions in the settlements and regions where the Hungarian, Croat, Slovak and other traditional ethnic minorities lived. This appeal was seen as probably the last one before it was too late.

MAQBOOL AHMAD, of the World Muslim Congress, said the debate on the subject in the Working Group on minorities, the Subcommission for the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, and the present Commission had enabled human rights activists to bring to light the situations of human rights violations of minorities which otherwise would have gone unnoticed due to lack of media interest. As stated in the draft "Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities," it was up to the States to take action and provide necessary protection and to promote human rights of the minorities as appropriate. Persons belonging to national, ethnic, or other minorities, while justified in demanding that their human rights be respected, also had a responsibility to make a positive contribution to harmonious living of all the people in a state.

Mr. Ahmad said an issue which deserved special attention was in connection with the protection of minority groups such as the Rohingyas, inhabiting Arakan in north-west Myanmar, who were undergoing extreme forms of State persecution. There was a lack of knowledge about their case, and there were no means for their grievances to be heard at the appropriate platforms. The Muslims of India were another minority living in conditions of deprivation and whose suffering was not well understood. Through gerrymandering, the Indian Muslims had been removed from the political process. The organization urged India to take all the measures necessary to protect the cultural and religious identity of Indian Muslims, and to enable them to exercise fully and effectively all their human rights.

Rights of Reply

The Representative of Egypt, speaking in right of reply, said that the way in which the United States had dealt with this issue was identical with the views of the non-governmental organization Freedom House, which expressed the same claims. They aimed at harming Egyptian unity and dividing the Egyptian people. Egyptian people had always been united, and a number of independent sources had corroborated that there was no discriminatory policy in Egypt. Terrorism harmed not only the Copts but all members of society in Egypt, whether Christian or Muslim. This approach was ill-intended. Human rights should be studied impartially, not just from a political angle.

The Representative of Vietnam, speaking in right of reply, responded to the statement by the United States, saying that it was misguided and reflected little knowledge of Viet Nam’s desire to respect religious and political freedom.

The Representative of Estonia, speaking in right of reply, referring to the statement by the Russian Federation, said Estonia was concerned that the latter still felt a need to transmit erroneous information. Estonian citizenship was not based on ethnicity; the amendment to the language law had been expressed in a totally twisted manner by the delegation of the Russian Federation; minorities were allowed to express themselves in their own language. As for elections to government, there was no language test. No law on deportation or illegal immigrants had been debated or passed by the Estonian Parliament. The use of the word deportation was deeply offensive.


The Representative of Latvia, speaking in right of reply, registered concern about peculiar perspectives held by the delegation of the Russian Federation. There was much misrepresentation of Latvian policy upon naturalisation, the pace of which was being monitored closely, so that it could be periodically reviewed at an appropriate time. Laws on languages were in the process of being studied. It was suggested by the Russian Delegation that the Latvian Government had ignored suggestions made by the European Union. Latvia was not aware that it had received such recommendations. There was consistent democratic growth in Latvia.

The Representative of Turkey, speaking in right of reply, said the Greek Cypriot representative had described the Turkish presence in Cyprus as an "occupation" and had cited the Fourth Geneva Convention as a tool to attack the country. The Turkish presence in Cyprus was not an "occupation" but a lawful presence based on international agreements. The Turkish Army was in Cyprus under legal obligations to keep peace pending a solution and Turkey had no jurisdiction in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus which had its own democratically-elected Government exercising full and exclusive authority and jurisdiction over the territory and people under its control. The refugee problem and the issue of displaced persons in Cyprus were cited although the issue of displaced persons had been settled in 1975. It was beyond understanding as to how the Greek Cypriot side envisaged a bi-zonal solution on the one hand and the return of the refugees on the other.

The Representative of Pakistan, speaking in right of reply, responded to remarks made by the Representative of the United States. The statement of the United States reflected discrimination. The gross and systematic violations of the rights of minorities carried out in “neighbour country” merited but a sentence. Perhaps for political balance, a reference was then made to Pakistan, although no such mass violations had occurred there. Some minorities seemed to be more entitled to protection from the United States than others. This was unacceptable, especially during a discussion of human rights. Pakistan had been very careful, for example not referring to the treatment of Muslims in western countries who were suffering from discrimination. All religions were equal, and deserved the equal protection of the law.

The Representative of Cyprus, speaking in right of reply, said that the delegation of Turkey had attempted to place blame for their extensively documented violations in Cyprus on the shoulders of their victims. These violations would only disappear when Turkey decided to mend its ways, and to accede to the human rights instruments that it had already signed. In 1974, there were approximately 120,000 Turkish Cypriots in Cyprus. Today, Turkish sources gave a figure of only 60,000 left. Some 50 per cent of the Turkish compatriots had left the country. That was one of the loudest condemnations of Turkish policies in Cyprus. The so-called paradise that Turkey had created for the Turkish Cypriots had been abandoned massively by them and in their place mainland Turkish settlers were implanted in furtherance of Turkey’s colonization policy. Their numbers were up to 114,000. Turkey should abandon its expansionist designs against Cyprus, respect legality, and constructively contribute to the solution of the Cyprus problem.