AFP - 4/11/2002

GENEVA - China's human rights record will not face scrutiny by the UN's top human rights forum, a UN spokeswoman said on Wednesday, triggering anger from rights organizations.

"The last deadline for resolutions to be presented was Wednesday at 1600 GMT. None of them are regarding China," said Veronique Taveau, spokeswoman for UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson.

The failure of the Commission's 53 members to submit a resolution on China provoked angry condemnation from campaigners, including U.S.-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), which denounced it as a "lamentable lack of political will."

HRW spokesman Reed Brody singled out for criticism the European Union and the United States, which this year has been relegated for the first time to observer status. "In past years, China had to at least defend its human rights record. This year it is not even being questioned," he said.

He denounced the failure of a China resolution as a "diplomatic fiasco," adding that the Commission's members should be "very embarrassed to have been caught with their heads in the sand."

China has until now faced hostile resolutions every year since 1990 at the UN Human Rights Commission, currently holding its annual six-week session in Geneva until April 26. But Beijing has successfully blocked the resolutions from even being introduced before the Commission in previous years, except in 1995, by using a procedural loophole called a "no-action motion."

Three Tibetan non-governmental organizations also vigorously criticized the "political apathy" of the 15-nation EU for failing to act on China.

"This sends the wrong signal to the Tibetan people," said Tsering Jampa of the International Campaign for Tibet.

In a joint press release, the three groups said the EU's refusal to sponsor a resolution on China was based on the "flawed premise" that action on China at the Commission would "compromise its failing dialogue and provoke political reprisals from China."

Human Rights Watch said it had documented increasing human rights violations in China over the past year.

The massive anti-crime campaign that Beijing launched last April has led to thousands of arbitrary arrests and summary executions, while new restrictions on the Internet have also been imposed, HRW said.