|
Rights Group Evades
Vietnam Drive to Bar It at UN
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A human rights group on
Friday beat back a campaign by Vietnam to bar it from taking part in
the work of United Nations bodies for three years on grounds it had
links to terrorism.
The 54-member U.N. Economic and Social Council rejected 20-22, with
11 abstentions, a resolution that would have suspended the
Rome-based Transnational Radical Party from consultative status with
the world body for three years.
The vote was a setback for a growing number of U.N. members -- such
as China, Cuba, Libya and Zimbabwe, themselves targets of human
rights groups -- that have banded together to exclude Western human
rights groups from accreditation.
Some 2,000 grass roots or advocacy groups, known as nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs), have consultative status with the Economic and
Social Council that enables them to give expert advice to various
United Nations bodies and international conferences.
In recent years, the NGOs have been increasingly active in fields as
diverse as international law, the environment, arms control and
women's rights.
But the council and its committee charged with monitoring NGO
participation are known for using politics to decide memberships. A
recent report by a special U.N. panel, led by former Brazilian
President Fernando Cardoso, recommended an accreditation process
that depended less on politics than on skills and expertise.
'TERRORIST' OR RIGHTS CHAMPION?
In the case of the Transnational Radical Party, Vietnam accused it
of repeatedly including Kok Ksor, president of the Montagnard
Foundation, in its delegation to annual meetings of the U.N. Human
Rights Commission in Geneva.
Ksor, who lives in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and his Montagnard
Foundation champion the rights of the Montagnard people of Vietnam's
Central Highlands, who accuse the Vietnamese authorities of
political persecution.
"Kok Ksor is a terrorist, pursuing a subversive agenda toward
Vietnam," Le Long Minh, Vietnam's U.N. ambassador, told the council,
accusing him of campaigning for decades for an independent
Montagnard state in the Central Highlands.
But Dutch Ambassador Dirk van den Berg, representing the European
Union, said there was "no reliable evidence" to uphold the
allegations.
"Neither Mr. Ksor nor the Montagnard Foundation appears in any U.N.
or European Union list of terrorist individuals and associations,"
he said.
"If they suspend the Transnational Radical Party, that means their
accusations that I am a terrorist will be true with the government,
and it will give them a license to kill those in Vietnam who support
my cause," Ksor said before the vote.
The Transnational Radical Party is a former Italian political party
that is now an umbrella organization for rights groups. It is headed
by Italian Emma Bonino, a former European commissioner and a current
member of the European Parliament.
"What we are seeing here is countries from the nonaligned movement
getting stronger and stronger and able to block a range of human
rights issues," said Matteo Mecacci, the group's representative at
the United Nations.
"If they can convince the United Nations that someone is a terrorist
and should not be allowed to participate, you will soon see many
human rights experts excluded," he said.
|
