Friday March 30 1:36 PM ET
U.S. Wants to Test Rights Records of China, Cuba

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) - The United States said on Friday that the United Nations could not remain silent as China steps up repression of the Tibetan minority and members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement.

U.S. ambassador Shirin Tahir-Kheli also called on the U.N. Commission on Human Rights to scrutinise the record of Cuba, whose Communist government she charged was systematically violating basic civil and political freedoms.

In a wide-ranging speech, she accused a host of countries including Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, North Korea and Sudan of committing gross abuses. She alleged that executions, torture and kidnappings continued in Russia's rebel Chechnya region.

The U.S. delegation, led by the Pakistani-American academic who was formerly with the U.S. National Security Council, has said that its priorities at the annual six-week forum in Geneva would be resolutions criticizing China and Cuba.

China's ``already poor human rights record worsened (over) the last year, particularly with respect to religious minorities and the Tibetan people,'' the U.S. envoy said.

``We seek no blanket condemnation of China,'' she said.

``(But) by speaking out the Commission can best serve the cause of human rights and fundamental freedoms. It should not be silent when the Chinese authorities demolish Christian churches and Buddhist temples and brutally repress Falun Gong practitioners exercising rights to freedom of belief and expression.

``It should not be silent when those who call for democratic government or more cultural preservation and religious freedom in Tibet and elsewhere in China are suppressed or when advocates of labor rights are thrown in jail,'' she said.

The U.S. envoy also accused Chinese authorities of detaining up to 1,000 people for ``counter-revolution,'' a crime taken off the books in 1997. Hundreds of others remained jailed under the state security law, while thousands are sentenced without trial in ''reform-through-labor camps,'' she said.

Uphill Battle

But diplomats say U.S. President Bush's administration faces an uphill battle to even win a true debate on China's record.

By introducing its own ``no-action motion,'' China's delegation has successfully avoided examination of its record every year since the June 1989 killing of student protesters in and around Beijing's Tiananmen Square.

Western powers repeatedly denounce the procedural maneuver.

Western diplomats fear that the Commission's composition -- new members include Algeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Libya, Syria and Vietnam -- gives China more allies than ever before and thus solid chances of escaping scrutiny again.

``Another country that this Commission must study closely is Cuba, for the government there systematically violates the fundamental civil and political rights of is citizens,'' Tahir-Kheli said.

Between 200 and 300 political prisoners remain in Cuban jails, many in deplorable conditions, she said.

``Throughout the year, Cuban authorities regularly harass, threaten, arbitrarily arrest, detain, imprison and defame human rights advocates...There are harsh government restrictions on freedom of speech, press, assembly and association.''

Secretary of State Colin Powell said earlier this month that the United States would fight hard to censure Cuba at the U.N. talks, predicting it would be a ``very, very tough fight.''

President Fidel Castro has launched a diplomatic and public relations mission to stop a repeat of last year's Czech-Polish resolution which condemned his island country for repressing dissidents and religious groups.

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