Women’s Protests Against China Grow Activists At U.N. Conference Say Chinese Attempting To Muzzle Them

On the eve of a 181-nation U.N. women’s conference that China hoped would boost its prestige, delegates from a parallel meeting of private groups on Sunday staged their biggest day of protests yet.

The NGO Forum dropped its threat to send its 23,000 delegates home, even though China refused to loosen security that the women said was intended to harass and intimidate them.

Complaints that China is trying to muzzle the activists and limit their contact with delegates to the U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women have overshadowed the official meeting, which begins Monday.

Tibetan independence activists said one of their members was shoved and chased from a meeting Sunday when she tried to hand out leaflets. Security guards also stopped a march by about 150 anti-nuclear activists.

The Chinese did not interfere with Kuwaiti women demanding that Iraq free Persian Gulf War prisoners or Iraqis protesting the U.N. embargo. There also were protests by Muslim women whose use of a movie theater was preempted and by women from South Asia shouting “Peace now!”

The head of the U.N. meeting said Sunday it will have a double goal - pushing for equality of the sexes by the 21st century and fighting to keep social gains made in the 20th.

“We must struggle … to come out with a document for the advancement of women,” said secretary-general Gertrude Mongella. “We must watch out … for conservative or backward-looking elements which want to keep the woman in a place where she has always been.”

Mongella called on delegates to oppose attempts to roll back previous conference agreements on human rights, abortion and contraception.

Those issues are expected to dominate debate at the 12-day meeting, which first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton will attend as honorary chief of the U.S. delegation.

Mrs. Clinton defended the conference Sunday, rejecting accusations by conservatives who have portrayed the conference as a radical, anti-family event that will endorse liberal stands on issues such as abortion.

“The composition of our delegation refutes that charge,” the first lady said in her weekly newspaper column. “It is a broad-based, family-oriented group committed to the mainstream agenda of the conference.”

The White House rebuked China for harassing delegates to the meeting of private groups.

“We very much regret the restrictions on free expressions and association which have been occurring in Beijing,” said White House press secretary Mike McCurry. “We believe those are wrong and they are counterproductive to the work of a very important international conference.”

Nafis Sadik, executive director of the U.N. Population Fund, expressed frustration that issues already decided at the 1994 U.N. population conference in Cairo and the 1993 U.N. human rights meeting in Vienna are on the Beijing agenda.

“It’s because there is the desire to subjugate women in so many of the societies of the world. All kinds of spurious arguments are made, religious, moral - except the moral argument that everyone is equal. That is never used,” Sadik said.

The three previous U.N. conferences on women were highly politicized by the Cold War, the Palestinian struggle and apartheid. With those issues either resolved or being negotiated, organizers had hoped to keep the spotlight entirely on women’s issues.

But they hadn’t factored in the conflict between China’s fear of free debate and the women’s demand for it. Women attending the NGO Forum of private groups complained of Chinese security guards shadowing and photographing delegates, confiscating video tapes and breaking up meetings.