The ****trait of a Lying Agoraphobic "Olympic Host" -- China rejects bid
by UN rights boss for April visit
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L10591021.htm
China rejects bid by UN rights boss for April visit
10 Apr 2008 11:42:59 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Stephanie Nebehay
GENEVA, April 10 (Reuters) - China has turned down a request by U.N.
High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour to visit Tibet this
month to look into anti-Chinese protests in which at least 19 people
died, her spokesman said on Thursday.
"The Chinese authorities came back to her... and said it wouldn't be
convenient at this time," spokesman Rupert Colville told Reuters.
"However they said she would be welcome to make a visit at a later date
that would be mutually convenient," he said. Arbour made the request two
weeks ago following widespread unrest and re****ts of killings and mass
arrests in the Himalayan region.
The Tibetan protests and Chinese crackdown in Tibet have fuelled
protests along the Olympic torch relay route through London, Paris and
San Francisco ahead of the summer Olympic games hosted by Beijing in
August.
Arbour, a former U.N. war crimes prosecutor and Canadian Supreme Court
judge, had sought to go to Tibet around mid-April to evaluate the
situation after a series of protests by Buddhist monks and rioting in
Lhasa on March 14, he said.
China says 19 people died in the violence, but aides to the Dalai Lama,
Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, say some 140 people died in the unrest
across Tibet and nearby provinces with large Tibetan populations.
Separately, six U.N. human rights investigators called on China to show
restraint and allow journalists and independent experts access to Tibet
and nearby regions hit by violence.
More than 570 Tibetan monks, including some children, were arrested in
late March following raids by security forces on monasteries in Ngaba
and Dzoge counties in Tibet, they said in a joint statement issued on
Thursday.
The U.N. investigators have global mandates to probe allegations of
torture, killings, arbitrary detentions, minority issues, as well as
curbs on freedom of opinion and expression, and on freedom of religion.
They re****t to the U.N. Human Rights Council, the top U.N. rights forum
whose 47 member states include China.
The U.N. investigators said China had organised several fact-finding
delegations to visit Tibet but that these were no substitute for
granting access to U.N. experts.
Arbour, who has announced she will leave office at the end of her
four-year term on June 30, previously visited China in September 2005.
She said at the time she was "guardedly optimistic" China was making
progress on human rights but brushed off Beijing's standard line that
every nation should protect rights in its own way -- stressing that
international standards had to be met. (Editing by Jonathan Lynn and Jon
Boyle)
AlertNet news is provided by Reuters
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