[House Hearing, 106 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
COUNTRY REPORTS ON HUMAN RIGHTS PRACTICES FOR 1999
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HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
INTERNATIONAL OPERATIONS AND HUMAN RIGHTS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 8, 2000
__________
Serial No. 106-124
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.house.gov/international
relations
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
65-719 WASHINGTON : 2000
______
COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York, Chairman
WILLIAM F. GOODLING, Pennsylvania SAM GEJDENSON, Connecticut
JAMES A. LEACH, Iowa TOM LANTOS, California
HENRY J. HYDE, Illinois HOWARD L. BERMAN, California
DOUG BEREUTER, Nebraska GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American
DAN BURTON, Indiana Samoa
ELTON GALLEGLY, California MATTHEW G. MARTINEZ, California
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey
CASS BALLENGER, North Carolina ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey
DANA ROHRABACHER, California SHERROD BROWN, Ohio
DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois CYNTHIA A. McKINNEY, Georgia
EDWARD R. ROYCE, California ALCEE L. HASTINGS, Florida
PETER T. KING, New York PAT DANNER, Missouri
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio EARL F. HILLIARD, Alabama
MARSHALL ``MARK'' SANFORD, South BRAD SHERMAN, California
Carolina ROBERT WEXLER, Florida
MATT SALMON, Arizona STEVEN R. ROTHMAN, New Jersey
AMO HOUGHTON, New York JIM DAVIS, Florida
TOM CAMPBELL, California EARL POMEROY, North Dakota
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts
KEVIN BRADY, Texas GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
RICHARD BURR, North Carolina BARBARA LEE, California
PAUL E. GILLMOR, Ohio JOSEPH CROWLEY, New York
GEORGE P. RADANOVICH, California JOSEPH M. HOEFFEL, Pennsylvania
JOHN COOKSEY, Louisiana
THOMAS G. TANCREDO, Colorado
Richard J. Garon, Chief of Staff
Kathleen Bertelsen Moazed, Democratic Chief of Staff
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Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey, Chairman
WILLIAM F. GOODLING, Pennsylvania CYNTHIA A. MCKINNEY, Georgia
HENRY J. HYDE, Illinois ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American
DAN BURTON, Indiana Samoa
CASS BALLENGER, North Carolina EARL F. HILLIARD, Alabama
PETER T. KING, New York BRAD SHERMAN, California
MATT SALMON, Arizona WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts
THOMAS G. TANCREDO, Colorado GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
Grover Joseph Rees, Subcommittee Staff Director
Douglas C. Anderson, Counsel
Peter Hickey, Democratic Staff Director
Nicolle A. Sestric, Staff Associate
C O N T E N T S
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Page
WITNESSES
The Honorable Harold Hongju Koh, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of
Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, U.S. Department of State.... 9
Ms. Elisa Massimino, Director of Washington, DC Office, Lawyers
Committee for Human Rights..................................... 52
Carlos Salinas, Advocacy Director for Latin America, Amnesty
International USA.............................................. 60
Nina Shea, Director, Center for Religious Freedom, Freedom House. 67
Alison DesForges, Consultant, Human Rights Watch/Africa.......... 72
APPENDIX
Prepared statements:
Hon. Christopher H. Smith, a U.S. Representative in Congress from
the State of New Jersey, Chairman, Subcommittee on
International Operations and Human Rights...................... 82
Hon. Harold Hongju Koh........................................... 86
Ms. Elisa Massimino.............................................. 96
Mr. Carlos M. Salinas............................................ 109
Ms. Nina Shea.................................................... 127
Dr. Alison DesForges............................................. 135
Additional material submitted for the record:
Prepared statement of the Hon. George Radanovich, a U.S.
Representative in Congress from the State of California........ 140
Insert from Amnesty International USA............................ 141
COUNTRY REPORTS ON HUMAN RIGHTS PRACTICES FOR 1999
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WEDNESDAY, MARCH 8, 2000
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
Subcommittee on International, Operations and Human
Rights
Committee on International Relations,
Washington, D.C.,
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:07 a.m., in
room 2360, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher H.
Smith, (Chairman of the Subcommittee) presiding. Mr. Smith. The
Subcommittee will come to order. Good morning.
I am very pleased to convene this hearing of the
Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights for
the purpose of reviewing the country reports on human rights
practices for 1999.
Our distinguished witnesses this year include Assistant
Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, Harold Koh,
and the representatives of four leading human rights
organizations.
Secretary Koh, I am particularly pleased to welcome you
back to the Subcommittee, now that we have been successful in
our effort to enact legislation requiring the State Department
to spend at least $12 million per year more on the Bureau of
Democracy, Human Rights and Labor.
As you know, this almost doubles the Bureau's budget, but
it is still less than one-half of 1 percent of the Department's
salaries and expenses and just a little more than what the
Department spends on its Public Relations Bureau. I know that
as a State Department official, you strongly disapprove of such
Congressional micro management, but I believe Congress
occasionally needs to help the executive branch get its
priorities right.
One such occasion is when Congress finds out that the State
Department is spending more on PR than on human rights. So this
reordering of priorities was a long overdue step and we believe
a necessary step, although certainly not a sufficient one,
toward giving the protection of human rights the leading role
it deserves in the foreign policy of the United States.
This year's country reports have already been the subject
of well deserved praise. Last year's reports were quite strong
and this year's contain even more information and pull even
fewer punches. I know this takes not only hard work, but also
courage on the part of the people who work on the reports,
especially when an honest and unvarnished statement of the
facts might create difficulty for the Department or the
Administration.
For instance, the China report does not attempt to conceal
the deterioration of the human rights situation in that
country. More arrests of political and religious dissenters,
more bad news for the people of Tibet and East Turkestan, more
evidence of forced labor and complicity of government officials
in sex trafficking, more forced abortions and forced
sterilizations. All this cannot help but lend support to those
of us who believe that 6 years of the Administration's
constructive engagement policy have harmed rather than helped
the long-suffering people of China.
This pattern of honest reporting extended even to some of
our strongest allies. For instance, the treatment of Northern
Ireland is fair and even-handed, even when the approach
requires scrutiny of our friend and ally, the British
Government.
In addition to describing acts of violence by the
republican and loyalist paramilitary groups, the report also
asserts that, ``members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary police
force committed human rights abuses'' during this year.
Similarly, when discussing the case of murdered defense
attorney Rosemary Nelson, the text reports ``doubts about the
RUC's impartiality'' in the investigation of Ms. Nelson's
original harassment charges against the police.
Unfortunately, there are still a few holdovers from the
pattern of a few years ago, in which the country reports often
appeared to be the product of guerrilla warfare between human
rights advocates within the State Department and their
colleagues whose primary interest was to avoid ``damaging the
relationship'' between the U.S. and some horrible dictatorship.
This old pattern is still strongly evident in this year's
reports on Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. Although a careful
reading of the Cambodia report makes clear that the
government's human rights violations during 1999 were numerous
and severe, the first few paragraphs of the report contain a
number of positive statements about the government, most of
them having little or nothing to do with human rights, which
tend to deflect the reader's attention from the government's
egregious human rights record.
For instance, the report begins by saying that the new
government headed by serial murderer Hun Sen has brought
political stability to the country. Hun Sen and others like him
around the world will be encouraged by the implication that
there is an internationally recognized human right to political
stability, but the object of the country reports on human
rights practices should not be to encourage the likes of Hun
Sen.
The report then goes on to take the controversial position
that despite numerous electoral irregularities and systematic
harassment of opposition parties, up to and including murder,
the formation of the new government reflected the will of the
electorate, the report says.
Finally, we are still in the first three paragraphs of the
report. It states that Cambodia is an impoverished country and
that the stagnant economy began to improve following the
formation of the coalition government.
Why does this statement about the government's economic
accomplishments belong in a human rights report? Surely, the
Human Rights Bureau does not intend it to excuse or perhaps
mitigate the government's human rights record. At best it is
distracting and irrelevant, and at worst it suggests that while
the government of Cambodia may be breaking some eggs, it may
also be making some tasty omelets.
The Laos report is noteworthy not for what it says, but for
what it omits. Among the most disturbing events in that
troubled country during 1999 was the disappearance of two
United States citizens, both members of the Hmong ethnic
minority, near the border between Thailand and Laos. An
eyewitness reported that he saw the two men cross into Laos in
the company of a Lao government official, and there was another
report that the Lao government had captured both men and
executed one of them.
Yet, the country report states only that there were
conflicting accounts of the incident, without providing any
further detail.
Assistant Secretary Koh, I know you will agree that
whenever a tyrannical government captures or kills an innocent
person, it is absolutely predictable that there will be
conflicting accounts of what has happened, because such
governments tend to lie. Yet a human rights report issued by
the U.S. cannot simply take the word of the alleged killers at
face value and close the books with the case permanently
unsolved.
At the very least, the report should have given the details
of the eyewitness accounts, along with the denial by the
government of Laos.
This year's Vietnam report reads a lot like the China
report used to read back in the bad old days. It honestly
states the facts about a wide range of human rights violations,
but it follows each terrible fact with a gratuitous and
exculpatory editorial comment, such as ``there have been
improvements in some areas.'' If you slice your areas thin
enough and have an optimistic outlook on life, you can always
find improvement in some areas.
The report also pays the government of Vietnam backhanded
compliments such as that it exhibited greater freedom for
different views on nonpolitical subjects than for political
ones. Unfortunately, the Vietnam report also puts a spin on
issues in which the Department or the Administration has a
strong interest. For instance, as in prior years, this year's
Vietnam country report repeats the conclusion of the UNHCR
monitors that none of the thousands of people returned to
Vietnam from refugee camps under the comprehensive plan of
action were persecuted upon their return.
In reaching this conclusion, UNHCR monitors had to decide
what to do among thousands of returnees who were subjected to
extensive interrogation by security police about their anti-
Communist activities before and after leaving Vietnam, who were
threatened with severe retribution if they engaged in similar
activities after their return, and who were denied the
household registration which we all know is necessary to
receive basic necessities of life.
Some of these people were imprisoned on return, allegedly
for crimes they committed before they left, and at least one
was executed. In every single case, the monitors decided either
that such ill treatment did not constitute persecution or that
it was inflicted for some nonpolitical reason.
The State Department has been given information on a number
of these cases, both by human rights organizations and by
Members of Congress. Rather than uncritically repeating the
UNHCR conclusions in future reports, I strongly urge the bureau
to investigate these cases and decide whether these people are
telling the truth about suffering serious harm upon return to
Vietnam.
In another particularly unfortunate mischaracterization,
the report cites the creation by the Vietnamese government of a
committee to govern the Hoa Hao Buddhist Church, as evidence of
the improvement in religious freedom, although the report also
notes that some Hoa Hao do not accept the committee as
legitimate.
I met with members of this denomination on a recent trip to
Vietnam and I am informed that nearly all of the Hoa Hao
believers reject the new committee. Its leader is a prominent
communist cadre and its first acts were to prohibit various Hoa
Hao ceremonies.
If the U.S. Government were to organize an 11-member
committee to govern the Catholic Church or the Methodist Church
or any Buddhist Church, nobody would claim this enhanced
freedom of religion for Catholics or for Methodists or for
Buddhists. We should not make the same mistake in the case of
the Hoa Hao.
Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia are small countries in which
U.S. diplomats are keen to build a better relationship with an
egregious government. Because the United States business
interests do not have the same economic stake in these
countries as they do in China, severe and well publicized human
rights violations may present a serious obstacle to the U.S.
trade concessions, foreign assistance and other diplomatic
building blocks.
The argument that has worked in the case of China that the
government consists largely of thugs, but that they will
eventually stop being thugs if we only trade with them and
trade some more, does not work for these countries and it
doesn't work for China.
We should send the same message day in and day out to every
human rights violator in the world. If you abide by certain
minimum standards of decency, then you will be welcomed by the
United States as an equal member of the community of free and
civilized nations, and good things will flow to you from the
U.S. If you do not abide by these minimum standards, you will
not receive these benefits.
I have often quoted the remarks of a witness who
represented Amnesty International at our first hearing of this
Subcommittee under my chairmanship. He stated, ``Human rights
is a island off the mainland of U.S. foreign policy,''
unconnected to anything else.
Unfortunately, we still have a long way to go in order to
integrate human rights into the mainstream of our foreign
policy. We should start by denying Permanent Most Favored
Nation status to China or to any other government that
systematically brutalizes its own people.
I'd like to yield to my good friend and colleague from
Georgia, the Ranking Member of our Subcommittee, Cynthia
McKinney.
[The statement of Mr. Smith appears in the appendix.]
Ms. McKinney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to
thank you for convening this panel, as well as your strong
leadership on the issue of human rights, particularly human
rights practices in China.
I am very pleased to welcome back our Assistant Secretary
Harold Koh and I look forward to your presentation of this
year's State Department Country Reports on Human Rights
Practices.
I also look forward to hearing from the representatives of
the distinguished human rights organizations from whom we will
also be hearing.
I'd like to express my appreciation to those people not
here today who contributed to the production of this report. In
Secretary Koh's February 25th statement regarding the release
of the 1999 country reports on human rights practices, he
correctly points out that the simple act of human rights
reporting is difficult and sometimes even dangerous work.
Last year, this Subcommittee, under the leadership of
Chairman Smith, reported out the Embassy Security Enhancement
Act of 1999. I want to assure you that, working with the
Chairman, we will continue to do our part to provide a safe and
effective environment for your colleagues who are working on
our behalf in embassies and consulates around the world.
The issues with which the country reports deal are among
the most important that our government faces in the conduct of
its foreign policy. We have come to realize that governments
that mistreat their own people are not likely to treat
foreigners much better and, therefore, that it's both easier
and safer to work with governments that respect human rights.
We have also discovered that countries that respect labor
rights tend to have effective, satisfied and productive
workers. Observance of human rights has thus become not merely
a lofty ideal for us to urge on others, but a very practical
consideration in the way we do business.
I want to begin my discussion of the particular reports by
first drawing attention to the record on China and the report
with respect to an issue that's before Congress, national
normal trade relations status. I have seen administration after
administration use the tired old excuse of constructive
engagement for rewarding brutal and repressive regimes with
everything from diplomatic recognition, taxpayer finance
largess, arms sales, or as is now the case, Most Favored Nation
trading status, based on the false promise of social change
through engagement.
Not once from the old apartheid regime of South Africa to
the killing fields of Guatemala and El Salvador, to the burned
ruins of East Timor, not once has engagement ever been
constructive in bringing about anything other than more
repression, a more entrenched oligarchy, more death, and more
despair.
Social change comes from the dedicated, persistent and
often dangerous work of activists, working for social change,
many of whom are in this room--never once from arms dealers and
bankers who tout engagement as a sale for the public conscience
over doing business with butchers.
In addition, I would like to turn to the situation in Iraq
and recognize two activists who have worked and sacrificed in
the face of overwhelming odds for the lives and dignity of
others. They are Hans von Sponik, the former humanitarian
coordinator in Iraq, and Juta Burkhardt, the former Chief of
the U.N.'s World Food Programme in Baghdad.
Both resigned in protest over the continued sanctions on
Iraq. Von Sponik's resignation follows his predecessor, Dennis
Halladay, who also resigned in protest and has become one of
the outspoken critics of the sanctions regime.
To put the issue in perspective, the total number of
Americans killed in war during the last century is less than
the number of Iraqis that have died due to the sanctions
regime. The sanctions themselves have become a weapon of mass
destruction. I applaud and honor Mr. Von Sponik and Ms.
Burkhardt for their courage, their conviction, and their
humanity.
It is time to bring an end to this dreadful episode in
American foreign policy. I am also deeply disappointed by the
situation in the Great Lakes Region. The territorial integrity
of the Democratic Republic of Congo must be protected. The U.S.
must become an honest broker in this war and should begin by
severing any covert military relationships with the armed
groups and factions that are committing crimes against
humanity.
The United States and its allies must be examples of
transparency, democracy, respect for human rights, and
sustainable development. Instead, Rwanda and Uganda continue to
raid the Democratic Republic of Congo, occupying large amounts
of that country's territory and stealing its resources.
Has the United States condemned these actions? Will you
condemn these actions today? Will you call for an immediate
withdrawal of Uganda and Rwanda from the DRC?
If not, then we are doing nothing more than hiding behind a
policy that condones the partition of the Democratic Republic
of Congo by African allies of the United States.
In her opening statement to the U.N. Security Council,
Secretary of State Albright cited an incident of 12 women who
were buried alive in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
The U.S. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the DRC reported
that these massacres perpetrated by Rwandan Rebels in 1998 and
1999, where more than 800 were killed, are the cruelest and
most violent incidents of the war.
These sorts of massacres are taking place in rebel-held
areas of the DRC, as the U.S. lamely asserts that it doesn't
support the rebels.
In Rwanda, we know the Clinton Administration actively
worked to prevent anyone from responding to pleas from the U.N.
forces on the ground attempting to prevent or contain the 1994
Rwandan genocide. Both France and Belgium have taken an
introspective look at what went wrong and why and the United
States needs to do the same.
This summer, Ugandans will vote on whether to establish
democracy or continue the present arrangement, which your own
human rights report in 1997 called a one-party state.
The position of the Administration has been that it will
support any result if the election process is fair. Human
Rights Watch strongly argued that the one-party system violates
basic human rights, such as freedom of expression and political
association, principles to which the U.S. is rhetorically
committed.
However, Human Rights Watch made very clear that since mid
1997, the U.S. has been nearly silent on the issue. Shouldn't
we care if Ugandans get to practice democratic freedoms and is
it not true that the security problems of Uganda, Burundi and
Rwanda won't be solved until they develop democratic
institutions?
In addition, I want to call particular attention to the
close collaboration of the Colombian military with paramilitary
groups that are responsible for massacres and widespread human
rights violations against the civilian population.
I question the Administration's plan to put more guns into
the hands of known killers. Based on the State Department
report on Colombia, it is clear that a massive influx of
weapons will do nothing to quell the Colombian government's
thirst for violence.
I emphatically agree with the new universal sentiment of
the NGO community on the generally high quality of the Bureau
of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor's work. Although the
Department has increased DRL's resources over the last few
years, it is still inadequately funded.
The budget should reflect the importance of the issues with
which it deals, and I will continue to work with the Chairman
until it does.
Finally, Mr. Chairman, an aside. We all treasure the role
and importance of the United Nations in the international
community. It was created to rid the world of suffering, to
prevent armed conflict, and, most important of all, to
guarantee that never again would the world permit rogue states
and mass murderers to commit genocide and crimes against
humanity.
But unfortunately, I regret to say that in the last 6
years, the United Nations has repeatedly failed the world. In
April 1994, the U.N. turned a blind eye to genocide in Rwanda
and allowed an estimated one million men, women and children to
be exterminated in 100 days. Just 1 year later, in July 1995,
the U.N. surrendered its own U.N. declared safe haven of
Srebrenica to the Serbian Army and in the following week, an
estimated 7,400 men and young boys perished.
Then last year, in August-September 1999, the U.N.
completely was ill-prepared to deal with violence in East Timor
and the destruction of Dehli.
With respect to each of these tragedies and only after
considerable complaint from concerned people, the U.N.
apologized for its abject failure. But weakly worded statements
of regret are not enough for these grave injustices and
violations of fundamental human rights.
Just last December, in 1999, I facilitated a meeting
between two Rwandan families in the U.N.'s independent inquiry
into its handling of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. At that
meeting, I heard the most extraordinary accounts from two
families, for the first time in history, that U.N. troops
themselves were accused of complicity and genocide.
In one instance, U.N. troops remained at one of the houses
and drank stolen beer while Rwandan Presidential Guard troops
tortured a woman and her children. In each of these instances
in Rwanda, Srebrenica and East Timor, the victims of the U.N.
have been left to piece their lives back together again.
Certainly, little that we discuss today will rival the colossal
failures experienced in Rwanda, Srebrenica and East Timor.
Just as we listen today about human rights conditions
around the world, we should know that some of the greatest
international crimes of the century are not to be found within
these U.S. human rights documents. We still have a long way to
go.
Once again, I would like to express my thanks to Mr. Koh,
to his staff and DRL, and to all the embassy officers whose
consistent attention to human rights issues has made these
reports possible. We are the only government that does this
thing and in so doing, we make a strong statement about what we
as a country are about.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Smith. Thank you for your statement. Before I yield to
Mr. Tancredo, I want to associate myself with your remarks,
because we have examined those issues in this Subcommittee over
the last several years, and you have been right there in every
one of those hearings and fact-finding trips and efforts to
make a difference, whether it be in the former Yugoslavia or in
Rwanda.
As we all know, there was an early warning heads-up that
the killing fields were about to erupt in Rwanda. Regrettably,
the General who was in charge of peace keeping faxed Kofi Annan
and his admonitions that action be taken were unheeded, and we
held a hearing, heard from people, actually had the fax in
front of us and read it, and it was another black mark in
opportunity missed and, as a result, as you pointed out so
well, the killing fields ensued.
So I want to thank you for your very, very strong
statement.
Mr. Tancredo.
Mr. Tancredo. I have no opening.
Mr. Smith. Mr. Delahunt.
Mr. Delahunt. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I welcome Mr. Koh
here today. Your appearance here is timely, particularly given
the context that this body will shortly be considering a rather
large package of assistance to Colombia.
There's been a lot of discussion during the course of the
past several weeks about the package and recently there was an
article that appeared in the Washington Post, written by Karen
DeYoung, and I'm going to quote from that article, because my
line of questioning would pursue the concerns that have been
articulated by the human rights community regarding the
package. It's quoting a Miguel Vivanco, who is Executive
Director of the Latin American Division of Human Rights Watch.
He is quoted as saying that ``Human Rights Watch is not
calling for Congressional rejection of the $1.6 billion 2-year
Colombian aid package.'' Rather, the report urges that strict
new conditions be placed on all U.S. security assistance to
Colombia, including the civilian prosecution of all military
personnel implicated in human rights abuses and restrictions,
and restrictions on intelligence sharing with Colombia Army
units.
My first question, and I would give you an opportunity to
reflect on this, is your department, your division's, your
bureau's involvement in the development of the package put
forth by the Administration. I will ask you a series of
questions regarding amendments that myself and other Members
intend to offer during the course of the process as this
package comes forward.
I would also just ask one other question, and it was
brought to my attention just recently by a member of my staff,
who noted that while the FARC, the major guerrilla group within
Colombia and the second major guerrilla group in surgency was
in Colombia, the ELN, are both listed on the foreign terrorist
organization list.
The AUC, which is an umbrella group for paramilitary units
within Colombia, headed by one Carlos Castanyo, is not listed
and I would be interested in hearing why Mr. Castanyo and the
AUC has failed to be listed on the foreign terrorist
organization list.
It would appear to me, upon reading the statute, that this
particular organization meets all of the criteria.
I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Mr. Delahunt. Mr. Ballenger.
Mr. Ballenger. I have no opening statement.
Mr. Smith. Thank you. I would like to now present to the
Subcommittee Harold Koh, who serves as Assistant Secretary of
State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor.
Before his appointment, Mr. Koh served both as Professor of
International Law and the Director of the Center for
International Human Rights at Yale Law School. Assistant
Secretary Koh, who earned both his BA and law degrees from
Harvard University, has authored numerous articles on
international law and human rights, and he is most welcome
before the Committee.
Please proceed as you wish.
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE HAROLD HONGJU KOH, ASSISTANT
SECRETARY, BUREAU OF DEMOCRACY, HUMAN RIGHTS AND LABOR, U.S.
DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Mr. Koh. Thank you, Chairman Smith and Members of the
Subcommittee, for holding this valuable hearing regarding the
1999 country reports on human rights practices.
I have a written statement, which I offer for the record,
which I would like to summarize.
Mr. Smith. Without objection, your full statement will be
made a part of the record.
Mr. Koh. Thank you. Mr. Chair, over the course of my 15
month tenure as Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights
and Labor, I have traveled to some 35 countries, some of them
several times. I have testified before you regarding numerous
human rights issues and I have developed a great respect for
this Committee's bipartisan support for human rights.
I hope that in the months ahead, we can continue to work
together to promote freedom and human rights, wherever they are
at risk.
Simply put, the goal of these annual reports remains
unchanged to tell the truth about human rights conditions
around the world. We believe that these reports create a
comprehensive, permanent and accurate record of human rights
conditions worldwide in calendar year 1999. I recognize that
these reports have been read very carefully, but we continue to
believe that they are the most comprehensive, permanent, and
accurate record of human rights conditions around the world,
obtainable from any single source.
These reports represent a massive official monitoring
effort that involves hundreds of individuals, including human
rights officers from each of our embassies, country desk
officers from our regional and functional bureaus, officials
from other U.S. Government agencies, and a wide range of
foreign sources, including foreign government officials,
opposition figures, journalists, nongovernmental organizations,
dissidents, religious groups, and labor leaders.
Let me pay special tribute to Secretary Albright, under
whose leadership the coverage of the reports has greatly
expanded, to include broader coverage of such key issues as
religious freedom, trafficking in persons, women's rights,
worker rights, violence against gays and lesbians, and the
rights of the disabled.
You have said that human rights are not in the mainstream
of our foreign policy. I would question that and point directly
to the personal commitments of Secretary Albright, who I think
stands in everything she does and in every statement she makes
with the centrality of democracy, human rights and labor as her
core commitments. Let me also give very special thanks to the
dedicated and splendid country reports team in my own bureau, a
number of whom are here in the audience to back me up, and
especially to thank the talented and committed director of that
bureau, Mark Susser, and his deputy director, Jeanette DuBrow,
for bringing this year's report to fruition with such care and
integrity.
Mr. Chair, you and the other Members of the Committee have
highlighted some of the grim news in the report, but the news
is not all grim. Because 1999 saw no defining human rights
moment, like the fall of the Berlin Wall, few analysts noticed
that 1999 saw as profound positive trend toward freedom as in
1989.
Thanks to democratic elections in two of the world's most
populous states, Indonesia and Nigeria, more people came under
democratic rule in 1999 than in any other recent year.
In addition, the NATO intervention in Kosovo and
international intervention in East Timor demonstrated that the
international community has the will and the capacity to act
against the most profound violations of human rights.
Yet, these significant gains in democracy and human rights
cannot overshadow a number of profound challenges to human
rights that arose last year. Serbia's expulsion of 850,000-plus
Albanians, the Indonesian military's complicity in the military
rampage through East Timor, and the horrors perpetuated by
rebels in Sierra Leone all show the world still has a long way
to go before it fully adheres to the precepts of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights.
Too many authoritarian governments continue to deny basic
human rights to their citizens, including the all important
right to democracy. Throughout these reports, we continue to
resist requests to rank order countries, but because time is
short, let me touch on a handful of the country reports in
which Committee Members have expressed special interest.
In China, authorities broadened and intensified their
efforts to suppress those perceived to threaten governmental
power or national stability. Citizens who sought to express
openly dissenting political and religious views faced
widespread repression. In the weeks leading up to both the
tenth anniversary of Tienanman Square massacre and the 50th
anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic, the
government moved against political dissidents across the
country, detaining and formally arresting scores of activists
nationwide. Beginning in May, dozens of members of the China
democratic party were arrested in a crack down and both leaders
and followers of the Falun Gong movement faced harassment,
beatings, arrest, detention and sentences to prison terms for
protesting the government's decision to outlaw their practice.
China continued to restrict freedom of religion and
intensified controls on some unregistered churches, and for
that reason, Mr. Chairman, last October, Secretary Albright
designated China as one of five countries of particular concern
under the new International Religious Freedom Act.
Unapproved religious groups, including Protestant and
Catholic groups, continue to experience varying degrees of
official interference, repression and persecution. Some
minority groups, particularly Tibetan Buddhists and Muslim
Uighurs, were subjected to increased restriction of fundamental
freedoms. Other segments of Chinese society also faced abuse.
Coercive family planning practices sometimes included forced
abortion and forced sterilization.
Many women contended with domestic violence. The government
continued to restrict tightly worker rights, and forced labor,
particularly in penal institutions, remained a serious problem.
Our report also sites instances of extra judicial killings,
torture, forced confessions, arbitrary detention, lengthy
incommunicado detention, and denial of due process.
In many cases, particularly in political cases, the
judicial system denied criminal defendants basic legal
safeguards and due process.
For these and other reasons, the Administration announced
in January, earlier than ever before, it's intention later this
month to pursue a resolution against China before the U.N.
Human Rights Commission in Geneva.
Similarly, Cuba's human rights record also deteriorated
sharply over the past year. The Castro regime continued to
suppress opposition and criticism and denied citizens freedom
of speech, press, assembly and association. Cuban authorities
routinely harassed, threatened, arbitrarily arrested and
imprisoned human rights advocates.
The government denied political dissidents due process and
subjected them to unfair trials. Many remained imprisoned and
after our report was released last week, one prominent
dissident, Oscar Bissette, was sentenced to an unjust sentence
of 3 years.
Independent journalists faced internal travel bans, brief
detentions, acts of repudiation, harassment, seizures of office
equipment and repeated threats of prolonged imprisonment. As
you know, Mr. Chair, in Russia, the seizure by armed insurgent
groups from Chechnya of villages in the neighboring Republic of
Dagestan escalated by years and into a full-fledged attack by
Russian forces on Chechen separatists, including the Chechen
Capitol of Groznyy. The Russian attack included air strikes and
the indiscriminate shelling of cities predominantly inhabited
by civilians.
These attacks, which, in turn, led to house to house
fighting, led to the death of numerous civilians and the
displacement of hundreds of thousands more. There are credible
reports of Russian military forces carrying out summary
executions of civilians in Alkhan-Yurt, and in the course of
the Groznyy offensive. Credible reports persist that Russian
forces are rounding up Chechen men of military age and sending
them to so-called filtration camps, where they are allegedly
tortured.
Chechen separatists also reportedly committed abuses,
including the killing of civilians. We acknowledge that the
Russian government has a duty to protect its citizens from
terrorist attacks, but at the same time, the Russian Federation
must comply with its international commitments and obligations
to protect civilians and must not engage in extra judicial
killing, the blocking of borders to prevent civilians from
fleeing, and other violations in the name of internal security.
As Congresswoman McKinney also pointed out, defenders and
dissidents in Africa also faced severe challenges. In Sudan,
the government continues to restrict most civil liberties,
including freedom of assembly, association, religion and
movement.
Government security forces regularly tortured, murdered,
disappeared, harassed, arbitrarily arrested and detained
deponents or suspected government opponents.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, government forces lost
control of more than half of the country's territory to rebels
supported by troops from Rwanda and Uganda.
Government security forces increasingly used arbitrary
arrest and detention throughout the year and were responsible
for numerous extra judicial killings, disappearances, torture,
beatings, rapes and other abuses.
Anti-government forces also committed serious abuses,
including murder, robbery, harassment of human rights workers
and journalists, and the recruitment of child soldiers.
Mr. Chair, let me also discuss the human rights record of
two allies that have received significant media attention these
last few weeks. In Colombia, despite the Pastrana
administration's efforts to negotiate and end hostilities,
widespread internal armed conflict and the rampant political
and criminal violence persisted. Government security forces,
paramilitary groups, guerrillas and narcotics traffickers all
continued to commit numerous serious abuses, including extra
judicial killings and torture.
Although overall human rights conditions remain poor, the
government took important steps toward ending collaboration by
some security force members with the paramilitaries. President
Andre Pastrana and Vice President Gustavo Bell, who I met with
twice in the last 2 months and again yesterday, have assured me
that they will not tolerate active or passive collaboration by
members of the security force or paramilitary groups.
Last year, the President removed from service four generals
and numerous mid level officers and noncommissioned officers
for collaboration, for failing to confront paramilitaries
aggressively, or for failing to protect the local population.
In Turkey, which has an active and growing civil society
movement, the government still continued to limit freedom of
assembly and association and the police harassed, beat, abused
and detained large numbers of demonstrators.
In general, the government continued to intimidate, indict,
and imprison individuals for ideas they had expressed in public
forums. The Ecevit government did adopt a series of initiatives
during the year designed to improve human rights conditions,
including removing military judges from state security courts,
increasing maximum sentences for torture or for falsifying
medical records to hide torture, and passing legislation making
it more difficult to close political parties.
But only 2 weeks ago, a new cause for concern arose when
three Kurdish mayors were arrested, charged and briefly removed
from office, although they have recently been reinstated
pending trial.
These are only a few of the country situations of concern
to the human rights community. I would be happy to answer any
specific questions you might have about these and other country
situations.
But, Mr. Chairman, I cannot conclude without noting two
points. First, today, March 8, is International Women's Day.
While we honor the past and recognize the progress that's been
made, we must also look toward the future and acknowledge how
much needs to be done.
In Afghanistan, for example, women continue to face the
most serious women's human rights crisis in the world.
Elsewhere, women daily face violence, abuse, rape and other
forms of degradation. Female genital mutilation continues to be
practiced in much of sub-Saharan Africa and to varying degrees
in some countries in the Middle East.
In Kuwait and elsewhere, women continue to be denied the
right to vote and to seek election to the legislative bodies.
Today, let me also reaffirm, Mr. Chairman, the
Administration's unequivocal support for ratification of CEDAW,
the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women. Ratification of CEDAW is central
to maintaining our position as a leading advocate for human
rights. It would strengthen our global efforts to advance the
status of women and we have proposed a number of reservations
and declarations to ensure that the ratification complies with
all U.S. Constitutional requirements.
One hundred sixty-five countries have now ratified or
acceded to the convention and the United States is the only
country in this hemisphere, the world's only democracy and the
only NATO nation that has not ratified the convention.
Mr. Chair, it is now 5 years sine the Beijing Women's
Conference. For the Senate to hold hearings on ratification and
move swiftly to advise and consent to the ratification of CEDAW
would be no more than simple justice.
Second, International Women's Day reminds us of the deeply
related problem of trafficking and persons. Trafficking, as
Secretary Albright recently said, is a growing, ``global
problem that each year robs millions of their rights, their
loved ones, and often their very lives.''
It affects people from all walks of life, of every age,
religion and culture, and nearly every country in the world is
either a source, transit or destination country. As I have
testified before this Committee, trafficking represents the
anthesisis of universal declaration of human rights, where, by
treating its victims as objects, it denies their very humanity.
To highlight the U.S. Government's intensified focus on
this problem, this year, for the first, the State Department
established a separate section in each of the 194 country
reports to highlight this pressing issue and to bring about
efforts for reform.
Mr. Chairman, let me close by saying that as the
introduction to our report explains, the global right for human
rights is a team effort in which the U.S. Government is only
one player. The struggle requires creative partnerships that
cross partisan religious, ethnic and public/private lines. I
know that you and other Members of the Subcommittee share this
Administration's deep commitment to promoting democracy, human
rights, labor, and religious freedom worldwide.
In the months that remain in my tenure, I pledge again to
give my all to work with you and your Committee to continue
strengthening these vitally important human rights
partnerships.
Thank you. I now am ready to answer any questions you might
have. Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary, for your
fine testimony and for the good work that you do and your
staff. There's a great deal of respect for that on this
Subcommittee on both sides of the aisle.
I would like to raise a couple of questions on very
specific countries, beginning with the People's Republic of
China. In reading this voluminous report, which continually
uses the word ``intensifies'' and words like that to indicate
that the bad is actually getting worse in China, and it leads
some of us who are concerned about the upcoming battle to make
MFN permanent, which would take away all economic leverage that
we might have, that the trend line is seriously going in the
wrong direction, whether it be the issue of religious
persecution, which is on the rise, as you pointed out. Falun
Gong have been rounded up, they've been beaten, their noses
have been broken, their legs have been kicked out, and they've
actually killed a few of their practitioners. We know that
there has been a roundup of Catholic believers, including
Bishops and Priests and the Evangelical Church continues under
siege. Tibetans, Buddhists, the iron fist continues to hurt
them in a very, very serious way. Of course, the Uighurs, we
had a hearing on this just a few days ago, spoke of the rising
tide of repression against the Muslim Uighurs.
In looking at the report, there was one thing that--a
reference that I had not seen before, perhaps it was in
another, talking about the high female suicide rate and points
out that it's a serious problem.
According to the World Bank, Harvard University and the
World Health Organization, some 56 percent of the world's
female suicides occur in China, about 500 per day, 500 Chinese
women die from suicide a day, according to the country reports
on human rights practices.
That's outrageous, that's astonishing. The World Bank
estimated the suicide rate in the country to be three times the
global average among women and it's estimated to be nearly five
times the global average overall.
Research indicates that the low status of women, the rapid
shift to a market economy, and the availability of highly toxic
pesticides in rural areas are among the leading causes.
Frankly, Mr. Secretary, what's missing from this, which I
find to be a crass omission, is what many of us believe to be
the real reason--or at least a major contributing reason--and
that is the one child per couple policy in the People's
Republic of China.
I'd like to read you something that was in the New York
Times on April 25, 1993. It was by Nicholas Kristoff. He
states, ``She should be taking her 2-month-old baby out around
the village now proudly nursing him and teaching him about
life. Instead, her baby is buried under a mound of dirt and Li
spends her time lying in bed, emotionally crushed and
physically crippled. The baby died because under China's
complex quota system for births, local family planning
officials wanted Ms. Li to give birth in 1992 rather than in
1993, so then on December 30, when she was 7 months pregnant,
they took her to an unsanitary first aid station and ordered
the doctor to do the abortion.''
There at least ten million abortions per year, some say the
number is even higher, 90 percent of which are coerced in some
way, not unlike that woman who has been hurt by the government.
The article goes on to say, ``Ms. Li's family pleaded, the
doctor protested, but the family planning workers insisted. The
result, the baby died, and the 23-year-old Ms. Li is
incapacitated,'' and it talks about how emotionally she is
totally distraught.
I've had hearings at my Subcommittee, Mr. Secretary, where
we have heard from women who were forcibly aborted, some of
whom had the great fortune of making their way to the U.S.,
only to be incarcerated in Bakersfield because they came in on
the Golden Venture or came in in some other way. They finally
did get out, thankfully, but they told of the emotional trauma,
the absolutely debilitating emotional trauma, and yet in the
country reports, it notes ``highly toxic pesticides.'' And you
would think that if it affects women, it would also affect men,
and you would see a great increase in men killing themselves
from pesticides.
``A rapid shift to a market economy.'' We're being told,
especially with the upcoming Most Favored Nation status debate,
that this is the greatest thing since sliced bread, that
somehow China is going to matriculate into a market-oriented
economy and that everybody will benefit, and yet that's being
cited as a reason for the suicide rate.
Then ``the low status of women.'' In China, as we all know,
women have had an incredibly low status for a millennium, for
several millennia. This is nothing new. Bound feet and all of
the other terrible things that have been done against women
over the years.
Now we have something new. Ever since 1979, with the full
complicity of the population and family planning community,
including the United Nations Population Fund, you're only
allowed one child, and women are fined, they have children on
the run, there is a gross disparity between the births of boys
versus girls, as we know, and that's pointed out in this
document as well, and yet we see this alarming rise of female
suicides.
Obviously, there is a great emotional pain being felt by
the women of China. Why was that left out? I would respectfully
submit that there needs to be more research done on the real
reasons, since one witness after another that we've had--and,
again, let me just go back to that Nicholas Kristoff article. I
raised that in 1994 with the head of the family planning
program in Beijing and that family planning group with whom I
met to run the program said Kristoff had made it all up, the
New York Times was simply lying. Yet the evidence that we have
gotten from one person after another--we had a woman who used
to run a family planning program in Fujian Province, you might
recall, Bill and Tom, last year, who testified she ran the
program in Fujian, in one of their areas, for a dozen years.
She self-described herself as a mother by night, a monster by
the day, and talked about the emotional pain and suffering, not
to mention this theft of children and the killing of children
by way of forced abortion, but she talked about the emotional
pain.
I suggest that what's missing here is the fact that women
are crying out, so much so that they're taking their lives, and
this is glossed over in the report, it's glossed over by the
population control community, who want to ascribe it to
pesticides or some other situation like that.
If you could respond to that, I'd appreciate it.
Mr. Koh. Mr. Chairman, I think you've accurately painted
the overall picture. As we said, the human rights situation
deteriorated markedly throughout the year, and we highlighted
in the report many of the points that you made, the increasing
crack down on political dissent, the China democratic party,
some 35,000 incidents against the Falun Gong, restrictions on
religious freedom, not just with regard to Tibetan Buddhists,
Muslim Uighurs, also Christians and, as you pointed out, the
well publicized case involving the investiture of Catholic
Bishops.
We also pointed to forced and prison labor situations,
arbitrary detention and internet restrictions.
The issue of the status of women and the devaluation of
women in Chinese society is something that we've reported on
consistently over the years and the very issue that you
mentioned, which is the coercive family policy, is one on which
we have reported with great detail and indeed in which we've
engaged the Chinese directly in our human rights dialogue
Let me just read to you from pages 33 through 37 of the
report, which address it. We say the government continued to
implement comprehensive and often intrusive family planning
policies--jumping ahead to page 34--these population control
policies rely on education propaganda, economic incentives, as
well as on more coercive measures, including psychological
pressure and economic penalties.
On the next page, we describe the policies in a number of
the different provinces and then say intense pressure to meet
family planning targets set by the government has resulted in
documented instances in which family planning officials have
used coercion, including forced abortion and sterilization, to
meet government goals, and we go on and discuss this matter at
considerable length in the remainder of the report.
As you know, Congressman, when Gao Shoa Dwan, who has been
testifying before this Committee about these practices and how
they function, we have ourselves, in our bureau, taken a
special interest in trying to reunite Gao with family members
and to bring about a reunification of this issue.
So this has not been something on which we believe there to
be an omission in the report.
The specific point that you raise, which is with regard to
suicide rates, let me point out that we tried to put this in
the context of a range of different factors which have created
pressure and problems for women in Chinese society.
I should also point out that the suicide rate among men has
been very high this year, disturbingly high, but that in
particular, challenges from economic restructuring have
contributed to this problem and have created a situation in
which the low status of women has been translated into them
being particular victims of societal dislocation as the society
starts to change.
So my point would be that I have read the Kristoff article,
that we understand the concerns that you raise. These are ones
that we report on in considerable detail in our report.
We believe that your overall statement of the human rights
record rings true and indeed the statements you made both at
the recent testimony on Tibet and your other recent hearing in
the past few weeks on the relationship between human rights
issues and other issues are ones which we think accurately
reflect our report.
But we would disagree that we have made some omission here.
I think we have tried to put the grievous status of women 5
years after the Beijing women's conference into the context of
a range of factors that have caused this, and those are
outlined in considerable detail in the report.
Mr. Smith. Let me ask you, again, Mr. Secretary, 500 women
per day commit suicide in China, an absolutely staggering
number, if these figures are accurate. Even if it's half of
that, even if it's a third of that, it's a staggering number of
lost lives due to incredibly emotional stress that has to be
coming from somewhere.
Forced abortion is absolutely pervasive in China--I've been
fighting this for 20 years. I've been in Congress for 20 years,
found about it in the first couple of years of my tenure in
office, and I have been sickened by the international
community's pooh-poohing of the issue, glossing it over, saying
that that was yesterday, not today.
There's always light at the end of the tunnel, even though
the internal documents that we keep copies of, and the evidence
that we see in the field shows that women are being dealt with
so cruelly.
A woman wants to protect her own baby. We also have heard
from men who testified about the agony of seeing their sons or
daughters killed by the family planning cadres and they
couldn't do anything to stop it. When you can't protect your
own family members that might lead one to commit suicide or to
take some other drastic action.
I think it is a serious omission when the only things that
are mentioned are toxic pesticides, low status, and a shift to
a market economy. That's missing the mark by a mile, it would
seem to me.
I've had close to 15 hearings, maybe even more, on the
issue, focused exclusively or in part on the forced abortion
issue. I think it's an outrage to women that they are so
mistreated. That's why I argued against the Beijing venue for
the Beijing women's conference. It could have been held
somewhere else. Because I saw what happened there. They were
touted in their own press as being somehow enlightened with
regard to women. That is like having a civil rights conclave in
South Africa during the height of Apartheid, and somehow
suggesting that they were the beacon of hope for racial
harmony.
The same thing goes for China with regard to women and
forced abortion and forced sterilization, breaking up families
the way they do. To not look into this as a factor contributing
to the suicide rate is a serious oversight. We've had so many
people recount the terrible, deleterious, emotional
consequences of this forced abortion policy and its impact on
women. Its nowhere to be found.
I would hope and I ask you, plead with you, to go back and
check this. If the people that do the investigating are part of
the population control community, forget it, you'll get a
tainted report. They have been whitewashing the crimes against
China for so long, I've lost count. I go back and I look at the
hearings and--the floor statements--I do have a long memory
when it come to this and whether it be Dr. Sadik of the UNFPA
who said the Chinese Program is totally voluntary, or someone
else. Wei Jingsheng, when he testified before us immediately
after his release, said he was outraged when he saw the U.N.
workers were working side by side with the family planning
cadres in going after their families and forcibly aborting
these women.
Children are precious. Abortion is violence against
children and it's also violence against women and when it's
forced abortion, the emotional consequences are devastating.
Please, this has to be fixed. Fixed with the facts, I would
respectfully submit, because this doesn't tell the story of why
those suicides occur. These women are the walking wounded and
we need to at least accurately tell the world why they're
wounded and there's ample evidence out there and we can put you
contact with sources--and I'm sure you have your own.
There is also something in the report dealing with----
Mr. Koh. If I can respond.
Mr. Smith. Yes.
Mr. Koh. Mr. Chairman, we admire your passion and
commitment on this issue, which I think has done an important
job in highlighting this issue and it's one on which we have
devoted a lot of energy in our own bureau and in the department
to investigating.
I think the facts, as you say, are depressing. This is a
very, very large country in which there is a very, very high
suicide rate on the part of both men and women and we've tried
to identify a number of the facts throughout the report. As we
said, all of the population of China is living under a markedly
deteriorating human rights condition.
But I do think that when the question comes as to why 500
women commit suicide in an average day in the largest country
in the world, as a lawyer and as someone who has to be very
careful with the facts, I have to take care to make sure that I
fully understand the causes before I assign causation to it.
China is a closed society. We do not have as much
information as we would like and I----
Mr. Smith. With all due respect, you have assigned causes
here such as the low status of women in China. There has been a
low status for women, like I said, for thousands of years, as
women in other nations around the world have suffered from low
status, which did not lead to mega suicides like we're seeing
in China today.
There is a reason to be found if an honest investigation is
instigated, I believe, based on tons of anecdotal evidence that
we have, including from victims. We had a woman testify who was
being held, regrettably, by the administration in Bakersfield,
we had to subpoena her to come and speak. She was a passenger
on the Golden Venture, who said she found a baby girl who had
been abandoned and that she was told by the family planning
cadres that her time was up, that now she would be forcibly
aborted and sterilized, because she had her one child.
She broke down crying. She couldn't even finish her
testimony, she was in such agony. Yet this goes unreported. You
have ascribed reasons and I believe that they have missed the
mark by a mile.
We had a hearing just a few days on China, again, one in a
long series. One of our witnesses took issue with the
assertion. In direct answer to a question right out of the
country reports that I quoted, that ethnic minorities, such as
the Muslim Uighurs and the Tibetans, are subject to less
stringent population controls. Those who testified, both on
behalf of the Tibetans and the Muslim Uighurs, said that was
absolutely false. What is the evidence to back that up?
Mr. Koh. That's based on the best evidence we have. If it's
something which is subject to challenge by your witnesses, we'd
welcome more information.
I would point out that the factors that you noted are ones
that we said were among the leading causes and we obviously
have to be careful, in my case, lawyerly, about what we assign
as causes.
I take your point, Congressman. We will endeavor to
investigate the issue further and if we think that we can make
an objective statement about both of these issues, the issue
with regard to the Uighurs and the one that you have raised,
then we will do so and correct it for the future report.
Mr. Smith. Before I move on to another question, let
meask--as a lawyer, do you find it obvious or somehow proven
that, ``pesticides, toxic pesticides'' are more likely to cause
suicide than forced abortion?
Mr. Koh. The statement says research indicates that the low
status of women, the rapid shift to a market economy and the
availability of highly toxic pesticides are among the leading
causes. I think that can mean that there are other causes as
well, but that's what we have encountered as the leading
examples and that's what we relied upon.
Mr. Smith. But, again, who are the researchers? This is why
we need an absolutely unbiased group of researchers to
interview these women, and there are several in our own
country. We've had many at our hearings, although that's
anecdotal, but it's certainly very suggestive.
Over the years, I've been in contact with many women who
have had forced abortions. They break down and say that it's an
agony that is almost unbearable when the state says the baby
you're carrying must be destroyed because it doesn't fit into
the quota system.
The weakness, the sense of vulnerability that they couldn't
even protect their own child and the state has stolen and
killed their child is a major contributing cause to this, I
believe, based on 20 years of dealing with the issue.
Mr. Koh. I understand your point and with the help of the
Committee and with the sources that you have, we'll try to move
toward as full accuracy as we can obtain in these reports.
Mr. Smith. My Chief Counsel makes a good point. We'd like
to see the studies that led to that and see what was omitted
and part of coming to that conclusion.
I have, and you have it, as well, I'm sure, volumes of
evidence to show the forced abortion policy is central policy.
They say one thing to the public, for the crowd, so to speak,
and for the international community, but the internal documents
clearly say you have your one child, sometimes two, and that's
it.
Let me ask you another question, and then I'll yield to my
colleagues and go to a second round. On Chechnya, in Russia,
we've had some hearings in the Helsinki Commission, which I
Chair. You are a distinguished commissioner on that, as well.
Obviously, to many of us, it seems like dejavu all over
again, as Yogi Berra said. Here it goes again. The United
States has at least spoken out this time. We didn't do it last
time with any real conviction. As a matter of fact, Al Gore, at
a crucial time--and we actually convened a hearing on this--
said that it was an internal affair during that first Chechen
war. Many people, including Elena Bonner, wife of Sakharov,
Nobel Peace Prize winner, said at one of our Helsinki
Commission hearings that that gave the green light to the
Russians to commit the terrible crimes which led to about
80,000 people dead in Chechnya.
There are many people in Russia, and this came out in our
most recent hearings, who see a moral equivalence to what we
did in Kosovo or in Serbia and actually don't feel they need to
listen to the U.S., that our moral standing or stature has been
at least tainted by the fact that when we bomb, it's OK, when
they bomb, it's not.
But right now, as you know, the atrocities the number of
people killed, the number of displaced people are sickening.
My question, bottom line, is do you think there needs to be
a war crimes tribunal investigation to hold the Russians and
the Chechens, anyone who has committed atrocities in that war,
accountable?
Mr. Koh. We think that there needs to be a full transparent
and objective investigation leading to the punishment to those
individuals who are responsible. Secretary Albright, today, in
the Washington Post, on page A-31, says ``we have called for a
full and transparent investigation with international observers
and punishment for those responsible'' and has recounted her
own discussions about this issue with acting President Putan
and an issue that she raised directly with Foreign Minister
Igor Ivinov in Lisbon last Friday. It has been the subject of
intense discussion within our own bureau and, again, with the
goal of trying to get to the bottom of these reports,
particularly the reports of summary executions, indiscriminate
shelling of civilians, massacres that have been recounted in
Alkhan-Yurt.
Last week, as you know, there was a videotape, whose
authenticity is still under discussion, which purported to show
mass grave sites and then, of course, the conditions in the
filtration camps.
The point, I think, is will the Russians themselves open up
the situation and permit a full, transparent and fair
investigation to go on. Acting President Putan has pointed
Vladimir Kolomonov as his human rights ombudsman. He has
invited Council of Europe observers, including the new Council
of Europe Human Rights Commissioner Mr. Alvaro Hill Robles.
I met with Mr. Hill Robles last Friday and we discussed
this issue. They have now invited Mary Robinson, the U.N. High
Commissioner for Human Rights, and also OSCE representatives to
come to visit the region. Human Rights Watch Executive Director
Ken Roth is on his way and I spoke to him last night.
So my own view is that what is gradually happening is a
shift in the Russian policy from a total exclusion of
international observation and a statement that's only an
internal affair, to a recognition that they do need to get to
the bottom of the question.
We have said repeatedly that we believe that this raises
very fundamental questions of international humanitarian law
and we believe that those investigations need to get to get to
the bottom of those questions.
Once those investigations get underway, only then will we
have a sense of whether what has been unearthed is an example
of a war crime or a crime against humanity. As you know, those
are legal terms of art and we have to see where the evidence
leads.
Mr. Smith. I'd like to yield--thank you, Secretary Koh--to
Cynthia McKinney.
Ms. McKinney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Assistant Secretary
Koh, you lucked out, because my voice is giving out on me. I
will be very brief. I'm just concerned about balance in the
reporting.
For instance, I have perused the Democratic Republic of
Congo report and unfortunately, the situation in Eastern Congo
I don't believe is given enough attention, where most recently
Robert Geraton has actually used the words ``crimes against
humanity'' as having been committed there.
I understand that the United States has allied with Uganda
and Rwanda, but it seems to me that in these reports, at least,
we ought to be calling a spade a spade.
In the Uganda report, you mention concerns about regional
security causing the country's intervention in DROC. Why did
you use the word ``intervention'' and not ``invasion?''
Mr. Koh. Let me say, Congresswoman McKinney, that we have
struggled in all these reports to do exactly what you say, to
call a human rights abuse a human rights abuse. I think we have
made it clear in our own report on the Democratic Republic of
Congo that rebel forces and their Rwandan backers have
committed extra judicial killings, disappearances, torture,
rape, and illegal detention, the point that I made in my
opening statement.
We've also pointed out that in rebel areas, observance of
civil rights are often nonexistent. As I know you know from
briefings that members of my office and bureau have given to
your office, we have pressed on these with great detail,
particularly in the case of the Moinga burials, the women who
were buried alive, and also in relation to issues with regard
to the Hema and Lindu fighting.
The U.S. Government in this situation is committed, as you
know, to trying to bring peace to what is really a genuinely
volatile situation. In January, as you know, numerous Members
of Congress were present when Ambassador Holbrooke held, in his
Month of Africa, the Month of the U.S. Security Council
leadership, an entire week that was devoted to discussion of
issues in the DROC. President Kabila came and participated in
those meetings and the question was how to move to enhance the
Lusaka process to bring about real peace in this extremely
troubled region.
Now, I think we have made the point repeatedly that we will
not tolerate human rights abuses by any side. We have publicly
and privately denounced abuses. The situation on the ground is
extremely difficult to determine because, as you know, many
parts of the country are in open warfare. We've called for
investigation of massacres, accountabilities for abuses in
security and access for both humanitarian workers and for human
rights monitors, where they occur. We work closely with human
right NGO's, particularly Silomon Baldo of Human Rights Watch
Africa, and Alison DesForges who will be appearing here later.
I think our goal is not to make statements with regard to
political actions, but simply to call human rights abuses human
rights abuses, and that that is what we do in all of the
reports, the DROC report, the Uganda report and the Rwanda
report. I don't think we let anybody off the hook.
Ms. McKinney. Have we called for an investigation of the
plane crash in 1994 that set off the Rwandan genocide?
Mr. Koh. I think that has been the subject of extensive
examination and inquiry and still a lot of answers that have
yet to be obtained.
But I do think with regard to the DROC situation----
Ms. McKinney. Has it been the subject of substantive
inquiry in the United States?
Mr. Koh. I'm the human rights officer and this is a little
bit out of my rubric. It was both before the time I came and it
regards a situation in which I have not personally been
engaged, but I do want to say that with regard to the Great
Lakes Region and the entire set of human rights issues, we have
been extraordinarily energetic on the question.
I know that in your opening statement, Congresswoman, you
said that our statements with regard to Rwanda were--I forget
how you put it--but I remember quite a strenuous criticism of
what we have done.
But I do think that in this region, we recognize how
volatile that situation is and we have devoted extraordinary
energies in my time in office to what we have called atrocities
prevention. Indeed, that was the entire purpose of the Month of
Africa and the focus that was given by Ambassador Holbrooke on
this issue with regard to Angola, Burundi, Sudan, Sierra Leone,
and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
There was an effort to bring together those key political
players to try to head off these disputes and prevent them from
erupting into another genocide.
I think particularly the case of Burundi, in which Nelson
Mandela made an extraordinary appearance before the Security
Council, where, in the URUSHA process, President Mandela has
brought his huge moral authority to bear, where President
Clinton participated by video link in an effort to try to bring
the parties to the table and head off another round of
killings.
This is an area in which we are really trying to put our
resources to prevent atrocities from breaking out. I went to
Africa with Secretary Albright in November and the entire
discussion was on these two issues. First, how to build
democracy in the region, in countries such as Nigeria, support
democracy in Mali, to hold peace together in fragile countries
such as Sierra Leone, at the same time, how to prevent there
from being future outbreaks of violence of this nature.
Sometimes it's hard to prove an atrocity that's been
averted, but I will say that this Administration has really
given Africa, I think, unprecedented attention in an effort to
really try to make Rwanda and similar kinds of events not
happen again.
Ms. McKinney. There have been recent revelations from a
Canadian newspaper, Steven Edwards, of the National Post, about
the goings on of the U.N. Rwanda tribunal. One of the things
that was mentioned was the fact that there is currently an
investigation underway to investigate the leaders, the current
leadership of the government of Rwanda for having committed
human rights abuses in the past, that there also is an
investigation of the plane crash as well. Now, in the area of
atrocities prevention, we know that Vice President Kagame was
trained in the United States and we also understand that
current members of the Rwandan military are receiving training
in the United States.
Do we know the extent to which they have subscribed to
atrocities prevention curricula and whether or not our students
have been involved in human rights abuses in Democratic
Republic of Congo or in Rwanda?
Mr. Koh. Congresswoman, I am a professor and have been a
professor for the last 15 years. Many of my students have gone
on to do things that I don't approve of and, frankly, I don't
take the blame for all of that. I think I teach them well, and
then they go off and do what they're going to do with the
training we give them.
Ms. McKinney. But, now, the question was are we making an
effort to understand just exactly what it is that our students
and former students are doing in Rwanda or Uganda, and for that
matter, the Democratic Republic of Congo?
Mr. Koh. We not only make it a point to know. We consider
it to be a critical part of our legal duties in this regard. I
know Congressman Delahunt has already signaled to me some of
his questions with regard to all of our security assistance. We
work as hard as we can on the question to try to make sure that
human rights training is done, that those people who train in
the United States have rigorous human rights training and
understand those issues.
What they go off to do, that is sometimes beyond our
control. I understand the concerns that you have about the
Rwanda tribunal. It has not functioned perfectly and on
numerous occasions, we have pointed out the difficulties both
in setting up the operation and for it to move into an
effective tribunal for investigations and prosecutions.
We're happy to get back to you on the specifics of the
questions that you asked, but I will say that on this issue, we
acknowledge the concerns that you have about the tribunal
itself. We simply point to the fact that there is no
alternative to a well functioning Rwanda tribunal, and we have
to move as hard as we can to try to beef it up.
There's a new prosecutor there, Carla Del Ponte, who has
committed herself to make new commitments on the issues. There
are new judges on the tribunal, including a new Sri Lankan
judge, Justice Osaka Gunarwahduna, who is a person of
considerable reputation. Our hope is that the Rwanda tribunal
can move forward and start to deliver real justice in important
cases.
Ms. McKinney. It's my understanding that there are some
people who are very fearful for their personal security as they
conduct these investigations of events surrounding the plane
crash and what happened in 1996 in Democratic Republic of
Congo.
What are we doing to make--to assure the protection of
those investigators as they go about the important business of
letting us know, letting the world know just exactly what
indeed did happen there?
Also, I have a question about the Gersoni report and I
would like to know if you've read the Gersoni report and if you
have, would you please make sure that I could get a copy of it?
Mr. Koh. In fact, I do think the Gersoni report was
something that we provided to your office through our
legislative----
Ms. McKinney. I requested it, but we have not yet received
it.
Mr. Koh. I'm sorry. After the meeting that we had in your
office with the members of my bureau, they were not able to get
a copy of it because it has not yet been published. We will
continue our effort to try to get that report and make it
available to you.
Ms. McKinney. And what is it that we're doing to protect
those people who are conducting these investigations of very
sensitive issues concerning the events in 1994 and 1996?
Mr. Koh. I don't have the current information, so let me
get back to you on that one.
Ms. McKinney. I guess I'm done, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Ms. McKinney. Mr. Delahunt.
Mr. Delahunt. Yes. Mr. Secretary, my first question is, in
terms of the assistance package that will be shortly considered
by Congress relative to Colombia, could you describe your
involvement? Not necessarily your personal involvement, but the
engagement of your bureau in terms of the development of the
package?
Mr. Koh. Yes. It's consumed a very large part of my
personal time and also the time of many members of my bureau. I
think this is illustrated by the fact that yesterday, when we
got together with Vice President Gustavo Bell, who is the point
person for the Colombian human rights program. We probably had
15 members of my bureau in the room, each of whom had worked on
some aspect of this.
Let me go back. As you know, Congressman, I went to
Colombia last April and spoke at a conference in Medellin, in
which we outlined the five human rights concerns that the
Administration has; first, the need to bring about peace;
second, the need to end impunity, which I know has been a great
concern of yours; third, the need to reestablish the rule of
law; next, to protect human rights defenders; and then,
critically important, to end paramilitary/military ties. At
that conference, which was in April 1998, I called for the
arrest of Carlos Castanyo, which, given that he was in
Medellin, I don't think made me very popular and made the ride
to the airport a very enjoyable one.
Since then, the government of Colombia has come forward
with Plan Colombia and it is a Colombian plan, but it is one on
which they sought input from both the U.S. Government and from
other foreign donors.
As you know from hearings that Under Secretary Pickering
has given up here, it's a massive plan. It's some seven billion
plus of which the Colombian contribution is four billion and
the U.S. contribution, depending how it would be measured and
which is before this body on the aid packages, between 1.3 and
1.6 billion.
Now, early on, identified was the need for both social and
economic development to be part of this plan, which means
nationwide; namely, building human rights institutions and the
rule of law. The Fiscalea, the prosecutor's office, the
Procuradorea, the creation of houses of justice, so-called
cases judicias, and it was our bureau, particularly our office
of democracy promotion, working together with the Agency for
International Development, that developed what could be called
the nationwide elements of the human rights, building of the
human rights rule of law infrastructure and discussing this and
relating it to the Plan Colombia Program.
Mr. Delahunt. Now, let me interrupt, because there are
aspects of the plan clearly that I think are very positive in
nature, and your reference to them, the funding for alternative
crop substitution, or I think a better way to describe it is
economic development in rural areas, infrastructure needs, the
funding for judicial reform, support for the attorney general's
office, as well as the chief prosecutor.
These are all very favorable. From my perspective and my
opinion, they are very attractive.
Mr. Koh. Right.
Mr. Delahunt. And I think it's important to understand,
too, that they, in many cases, are new to Colombia, because
historically Colombian governments have not invested in the
more rural areas. Only recently has the concept of alternative
crop substitution been embraced by the government and that's
under the leadership of President Pastrana. It has not existed.
So we find these very attractive.
But you are clearly aware of many of the concerns that have
been articulated by the human rights community regarding the
military, the security assistance package, and that's what I
want you to address.
I'm sure you're as familiar with those reports as I am.
Mr. Koh. I may even be more familiar with them than you
are, Congressman.
Mr. Delahunt. I'm sure you are.
Mr. Koh. Let me say this. The separate issue that you raise
is the extent to which support for an increased counter-
narcotics effort in the south part of Colombia, particularly
the Putumayo and the Kakaita regions, will itself create or
enhance human rights problems because of concerns that we have
about the human rights record of the Colombian government, and
that has been a primary concern for me, because, Congressman,
I'm not going to be in this job for the rest of my life and for
me, I am not going to participate in anything which I think
makes the human rights situation in the country worse.
Now, I think----
Mr. Delahunt. But don't we have--let me interrupt you
again, Mr. Secretary, because I would suggest that if we
strengthen, if you will, the conditions or we amend--if we
subject the military, the security assistant to certain
conditions, in fact, there is the potential to improve the
record of the Colombian military.
I have a variety of amendments that myself and other
colleagues will be proposing, but I think there is an
opportunity here to do something in terms of the military as an
institution within the society, to strengthen it in terms of
its record on human rights, which, until recently, has been
poor, and that very well might be an overstatmenet.
Some would describe it, I think appropriately, as abysmal.
While I'm speaking here, I think it's important to know that
really it has been the government of President Pastrana, as
well as the leadership of General Tapias and General Mora and
other certain selected members of the military that have made
an effort, and I think it would be remiss of us not to know
that they--that some progress has been made.
But I think and I believe that we have an opportunity here,
in fact, to move that agenda, the agenda of the respect for
human rights by the military further if we strengthen, by a
series of conditions, the proposal when it comes to security
assistance.
Mr. Koh. The first part of your statement, which is that we
ought to work with the Pastrana government to try to promote
their structural efforts to improve what we acknowledge is a
poor human rights record, I couldn't agree with more.
The question is whether the imposition of human rights
conditions on aid is the best way to achieve that, and then
there I think we may have differences.
Let me go back, because, Congressman, I went with Secretary
Albright to Carahania in January. I went with Under Secretary
Pickering to Bogatah in February, just a few days before you
got there. I met with the Plan Colombia team and the human
rights elements of it, both when they came up here in mid
February and I met again with Vice President Bell yesterday to
go over a range of issues.
I think the key is the extent to which the civilian
leadership in Colombia, which has a demonstrated commitment to
trying to address what they recognize is a problem, which is
the persistent ties between the paramilitary and the military,
and how they can move forward with a credible, practical
program for severing those ties.
Now, on February 25, Vice President Bell announced the
creation of an interagency coordinating commission that would
try to receive inputs about pending paramilitary activities and
to try to head them off. Defense Minister Ramirez announced
that there would be an effort to give to General Tapias, who I
think we all agree is a man of great credibility in this
effort, authority to clean house that would be parallel to that
given to General Serrano, the head of the national police.
Mr. Delahunt. May I interrupt? Because that happens to be
exactly one of the amendments that I intend to offer in terms
of this particular package is that the authority that was
conferred upon General Serrano, which I suggest and submit has
had a very positive impact as far as the Colombian national
police, also be conferred on General Tapias.
Mr. Koh. Congressman----
Mr. Delahunt. And I think that's an important condition
prior to the delivery of any security assistance, Mr.
Secretary.
Mr. Koh. The question is, does that need to be an external
condition, when I believe that that is an internal condition
that will be imposed by Colombian law. The Colombian government
has passed a military justice reform act and is moving to the
passage of implementing legislation and decree authority has
already been given, and I think the critical----
Mr. Delahunt. Again, I think you and I are on the same
page, Mr. Secretary, but that hasn't been passed by the
Congress. It's still pending and it has been pending for some
time.
Mr. Koh. I agree.
Mr. Delahunt. And I, for one, am not ready to support a
military assistance until that occurs, until that is done.
Mr. Koh. You are----
Mr. Delahunt. You call it an external condition. These are
American taxpayers' dollars and we need reassurance.
Mr. Koh. I think the key condition is the one which is
already there, which is the Leahy amendment, and which I think
is designed to make sure that U.S. security assistance does not
flow to forces that have not taken effective measures to
prevent human rights abuse. I think that's been a salutary
condition, it's been one that my office is devoted to
monitoring and it's one that we continue to think is hugely
important.
My own view is that you don't have to sugar-coat the human
rights record of the government, because our report does not do
that. We call a human rights abuse a human rights abuse.
But I think you can still conclude that the current
conditionality regime, which is the Leahy amendment, coupled
with the government's own stated commitments and efforts to
modify and change domestic Colombian law, which include we are
pressing them very strongly on the enactment of law enforced
disappearances, implementing legislation to the code of
military justice, we then create the internal conditions that
make the imposition of these external conditions unnecessary.
I think President Pastrana put it well when he said that
the key condition is the condition within his own government,
namely, his own no tolerance policy for human rights abuses,
and my view is you can recognize that he has only gotten a
certain amount of traction on these issues in his time in
office and still say that our best hope of bringing real human
rights change to Colombia is to support the Pastrana
administration in bringing about a genuine human rights action
plan to address these issues, and that's where I stand on the
question.
Mr. Delahunt. Again, I would just note for the record that
in Colombia, we have an administration that merely has a little
more than 2 years at this point in terms of its existence.
What I'm concerned about, not so much as what the Pastrana
government may do or not do, but after the Pastrana
administration is concluded and legislation that cannot be
changed by decree, I would suggest and submit to you, is
absolutely essential.
Mr. Koh. I happen to believe, Congressman, that most change
of human rights has to come from within the country, driven by
the domestic democratic process, and a commitment to this which
is then embodied in the constitution and laws of that
government.
That's the way human rights change comes about here and
that means both strengthening internal structures--namely,
structures of internal military discipline--and external
structures--namely, structures of prosecution and judicial
independence and also rule of law questions, and I think that's
where our resources need to go.
My own view is that that will be the key. The point I think
that you made very well, Congressman, is there is a problem
with democracy in Colombia and it's not elections. They have
elections regularly. It's that they simply do not have the kind
of legal infrastructure and institutional infrastructure that
we see in countries that have more well developed systems of
checks and balances, judicial independence, the rule of law,
and that's what they need to build.
I think it's a very daunting challenge for the Pastrana
government. I think they have a credible action plan as part of
Plan Colombia to deal with it, both on a nationwide level and
in regard to the particular concerns in the Putumayo and
Kakaita and I think we ought to support them in that effort.
I think that the conditionality of the Leahy amendment,
coupled with the internal conditions that they are imposing on
themselves through law, are, in our judgment, sufficient to
meet the concerns that you and I share.
Mr. Delahunt. I'm sure we'll be talking, and I'll yield
back.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much. Mr. Tancredo.
Mr. Tancredo. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My concerns go back
to, I think, some comments or reflect the kind of comments that
have been made earlier in terms of not a concern about what is
in the reports, the country report, but in this case,
specifically Sudan, what is not there.
I think that there is an absolutely egregious lack of
information, an egregious fault here that has been
characterized by a lack of attention to some of the most
pressing, most incredible human rights violations that the
world has ever seen. I know that that's a fairly dramatic
statement and some might even call it bombastic, but the fact
is that we are reaching proportions now with two million dead,
over four million dispossessed people, and I think you can
characterize the situation in Sudan in the kinds of terms that
I have used.
Certainly you could characterize the situation in Sudan in
terms far more severe than were used in your country report.
For instance, there is no mention of genocide. That term is
often thrown around far too loosely, I believe, and in using it
incorrectly, it tends to actually demean its real effect. In
reality, this can be absolutely and accurately applied to what
has been happening in Sudan, yet it does not appear in your
report.
Nothing in your report reflects the government, the
Khartoum government attempt and successful attempts at blocking
food aid. The fact is that this is perhaps one of the most
significant parts of the problem there, causing more deaths
than many other things in Sudan at the present time. Yet there
is no mention of it, at least certainly not enough to actually
bring it to the attention necessary, I think, for our Committee
to reflect on it. There is no mention of the effect of the oil
money that is now falling to Khartoum as a result of the
pipeline that has been opened and the scorched earth policy
that has been implemented by Khartoum around the pipeline. They
are attempting, of course, to prevent attacks on the pipeline,
but the money that is now coming into Khartoum, we see the
effects of that.
We have observed an increase in the number of incidents and
in their severity. Not that bombings are new, but some of the
characteristics here of the bombings in Sudan would indicate
that there is a greater level of severity and a greater level
of technological application here that could only come about as
a result of the money that the Khartoum government is obtaining
as a result of the pipeline. There is no condemnation of the
companies running the pipeline, no condemnation of Talisman, no
condemnation of the China National Petroleum Corporation for
what they are doing there and what is happening as a result of
the money that's flowing in to Khartoum.
There is no mention, to the extent that I was able to
review here, no mention of Joseph Coney and his Lord's
Resistance Army, which has been responsible for large-scale
abductions of children. The Khartoum regime has been harboring
and supporting Mr. Coney. Children are forced to serve in his,
``army'' either as child soldiers, laborers or sex slaves.
In the past, Coney has promised mass release of children,
which never materialized.
Is there anything that the United States can do to help
secure the release of those children or help slow the pace of
these awful kidnappings?
I'm not surprised that this certainly wasn't mentioned in
the report, but am I to gather that because you have chosen not
to emphasize these things, not to accurately reflect the
situation in Sudan, not to reflect the egregious outrages being
perpetrated by Khartoum on the south, this is a reflection of
Madeleine Albright's statement of September 15, 1999, where she
said ``the human rights situation in Sudan is not marketable to
the American people.''
Now, if that is the case, if that's the reason, then I
would suggest to you that it is not proper and it is a flagrant
admission of this Administration's policy of heating polls
rather than facts.
I would suggest to you that whether or not the human rights
situation in Sudan is marketable to the American public should
not be a criteria for the State Department, in terms of the way
it addresses the situation there. It should address the
situation in Sudan on the basis of the fact that we know
genocide is actually going on and all of the other things that
I have mentioned.
So I am very, very concerned, of course, about first, the
lack of emphasis that I think should have been placed on the
situation there, and also maybe the reason for that lack of
emphasis. I'd like you to comment.
Mr. Koh. Congressman Tancreda, we share your deep concern
about the human rights situation in Sudan. Secretary Albright
and I have talked about it on many occasions and spent a
particular amount of time in November, when we traveled to
Nairobi, Kenya, met with members of Sudanese civil society,
also met with members of the EGAD process, which is an effort
to try to bring about this issue.
Your former colleague, Congressman Harry Johnston, who I
think we would all agree is a man of tremendous integrity and
as the former chair of the Africa Subcommittee, extraordinarily
knowledgeable about this, has come back to try to bring about
peace in Sudan to end this 16-year civil war, which we
acknowledge is one of the world's greatest humanitarian
tragedies. It's claimed the lives, as you said, of some two
million Sudanese civilians and internally displaced four
million others.
Where I would differ with you, Congressman, is about the
statements that you say that we have not made. Blocking of food
aid is something that we have discussed at tremendous length,
as mentioned in Section 1G of our report. The scorched earth
policy is discussed in Sections 1A, 1C and 1G of the report.
Bombing of innocent civilians in Part 1A, 1C, 1G and 2C of the
report.
Joseph Coney and the Lord's Resistance Army, that whole
situation came to light because of a Human Rights Watch report
which was authored by the person who is now my special
assistant. It's covered not only in Section 5, 6C, 6F, 6D and
1G of the report, but also at great length in the Uganda
report, where we point out that the Lord's Resistance Army
operates in the north from bases in southern Sudan, viciously
abusing human rights, continuing to kill, torture, maim and
rape, et cetera.
Secretary Albright has herself--I think the context in
which she made the statement, it is not marketable, was
followed by the statement, but nevertheless, she will continue
to mention it every turn.
On February 16, after her meeting with Bishop Max Gossis,
who I think many of you up here have met, who is the
charismatic and courageous Bishop from the Nuba Mountains, we
issued a statement in which the Secretary expressed her outrage
at the Khartoum government's bombing of a school on February 8
and called on them to cease the aerial bombardment of civilian
targets, pointing out that 14 young children and one teacher
had been killed, and again committing ourselves to reenergize
the EGAD process and to carry on the work of Harry Johnston.
On these issues, the particular issues, slavery, religious
persecution, blocking of humanitarian life lines,
indiscriminate bombing of civilians, we have mentioned this at
every turn.
Now, the two points that you mentioned, the effect of oil
money. We have read the Harker report from Canada, which just
came out in February, and, therefore, is not discussed in our
report for the simple reason that our report ends in December.
It will be discussed in next year's report.
It's also the subject of discussion by the special
Rapporteur. We are very concerned about the extent to which
U.N.--I'm sorry--that oil money will continue to fuel the
conflict and it's something on which we have engaged with the
Canadians already with regard to the Talisman energy issue.
When we were in Cartahana, Secretary Albright met Foreign
Minister Axworthy and discussed this issue with him. Foreign
Minister Axworthy was here last week and she discussed it with
him again.
Obviously, the Chinese have not been as responsive to us on
this question as they have on other human rights concerns, but
it's nevertheless an issue that we raise with them.
I think in the end, the one point on which you point is the
question of genocide. Should we use the term genocide? And I
think you yourself made the good point that it's a term that
has both a legal and a political connotation. The legal
connotation flows from the 1949 genocide convention, which the
Senate ratified. As a Justice Department attorney, I worked on
the ratification process.
It's a standard which is met by any number of situations
around the world. It's the intent to destroy, in whole or in
part, a race or ethnic group.
But I think what we also understand is that the political
understanding of the term genocide is something that we reserve
for extremely grave and egregious situations and the question
is what does this mean, how should we respond, if we're going
to use a term like genocide. I think that's something that we
have been extremely concerned about.
I think the question in the State Department is are we
taking a hard tough look at our Sudan strategy and try to make
it work better, recognizing the difficulties we have had up
until now in having a real impact on the situation.
I would say that I have been in meeting after meeting on
the Sudan policy, some of them have been extremely difficult,
but I think that Secretary Albright has made it clear that this
is really one of her top human rights priorities and not
because of welcome political and public attention to the
question, not because it's marketable, but because it's
something on which we as an Administration would really like to
get some traction before the end of our time in office.
Mr. Tancredo. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Mr. Secretary, you
mentioned you would like to get some traction on it and, of
course, the Congress gave you an option in that regard. It gave
you an opportunity, which you chose not to use, in terms of the
ability to use food aid to support the south.
I assume that you still believe that that is a correct path
to follow, but I guess I wonder under what conditions do you
consider. Would you consider that a change in your policy vis-
a-vis the food aid to the south should be considered?
Mr. Koh. As you said, this was an opportunity that was
given to us that we are still contemplating how to act on and
that I do think the question of how food aid can or should be
used in an ongoing conflict is a subject of very extensive
disagreement.
I think that if you call humanitarian NGO's here and ask
them about the impact of this and whether it would potentially
have an impact on Operation Life Line in Sudan, they might give
you questions that would raise concern for you as to whether
this is the best way to go. I think in the end, our focus is on
revitalizing the EGAD process and trying to bring the relevant
parties to the table, trying to use special envoy Harry
Johnston, who is a person of tremendous integrity, to try to
deal with all sides of the issue, to try to call the SPLA on
human rights abuses when they occur, and we've just had an
incident with regard to John Gurang, where Secretary Albright
called him last weekend to encourage him to relent from the
signing of a memorandum of understanding which led a number of
leading humanitarian organizations, including CARE and World
Vision, to withdraw from the process, and to keep the public
focus on the very issues that you've mentioned, slavery,
religious persecution, interference with humanitarian aid, and
the indiscriminate shelling of civilians.
This is something that we're trying to do at the U.N. Human
Rights Commission in Geneva, we're trying to do in all of our
bilateral discussions, and it's an issue that we will not let
drop.
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Mr. Tancredo. I just have a few
followup questions and my colleagues may want to pose a few
more, and we do thank you for your generosity of time, Mr.
Secretary.
Last year, as you may know, the House of Representatives
passed my resolution H. Res. 128, which condemned the murder of
human rights lawyer Rosemary Nelson and specifically called on
the British Government to launch an independent investigation
into her murder, as well as a public judicial inquiry into the
possibility of state collusion in the murder of defense
attorney Patrick Finucane in 1989.
Similarly, in Section 405 of our bill H.R. 3427, which the
President signed, the State Department authorization bill, the
full Congress expressed its concern about the violence or
threat of violence against defense attorneys in Northern
Ireland and, again, highlighted the murders of Rosemary Nelson
and Patrick Finucane. Rosemary Nelson herself testified, as you
know, before our Subcommittee in September 1998 and asked the
U.S. Government to do more on behalf of attorneys like herself
who continued to receive death threats for discharging their
duties on behalf of those clients charged with political
offenses.
She said, and I remember she said this very clearly on the
record, ``No lawyer can forget what happened to Patrick
Finucane,'' and explained further that allegations of official
collusion in his murder, which U.N. Special Rapporteur Param
Cumaraswamy found credible, are particularly disturbing.
Rosemary Nelson asked us to communicate to the British
Government how important a public inquiry into the Finucane
case would be to the peace process and for the rule of law in
Northern Ireland.
In response, several members joined me in writing Tony
Blair, urging an independent public inquiry. We passed
legislation calling on the British to do more for defense
attorneys in the north and mandated a reform FBI/RUC police
training exchange program, a vetting process.
I see in the report much discussion about the Nelson and
Finucane cases, especially the new developments in the Finucane
case, which seem to substantiate the charges of RUC collusion
in this murder.
My question is, is the Administration now prepared to join
the House and, in fact, the Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern
who just 2 weeks ago called for an independent judicial inquiry
into the murder of Patrick Finucane and, I would add, as well,
Rosemary Nelson.
Mr. Koh. Congressman, as you know, this has been something
of great concern to me. We discussed it last time I was here
for the country reports. This past week, and I was in Dublin at
a gathering of human rights lawyers, in which this was very
much the subject of discussion, I discussed it with Mr. Martin
O'Brien, a leading human rights attorney there, Jane Winter of
the Irish Human Rights Center has been here and has raised this
issue with both of us.
The Finucane and Rosemary Nelson killings were, in our
view, a savage assault on the independence of lawyers and it
was very clear that the Rosemary Nelson murder following 10
years on the death of Mr. Finucane, a still unsolved case, has
only made the point again.
I understand next week, Mr. Chairman, you're holding a
hearing at the Helsinki Commission to hear from Mr. Finucane's
widow on the range of issues that are raised by this.
I think we believe that there must be an objective and
independent investigation to the question. I think we have
called on--we have identified in the human rights report our
concerns about the independence of these issues in the past.
Obviously, the peace process continues to be a prime
concern. Jim Steinberg, the Deputy National Security Advisor,
and Mr. Norland, are there now in Ireland on this question and
as you know, Bertie Ahern and the other leading players in the
peace process will be coming here on St. Patrick's Day for a
major meeting at the White House.
In our view, the range of issues to be implemented have to
be folded into the peace process. You had a hearing before this
Committee in which Chris Patton, who is now the Foreign
Relations Commissioner of the European Union, appeared and he
was discussing the results of his own report on policing. I
know you will be hearing later this afternoon from Elisa
Massimino from the Lawyers Committee on Human Rights, which has
played a leading role on the question.
I think our belief is in this process, we have to move
toward getting to the bottom of these two cases, which are not
only egregious cases in themselves, but have a broader
significance, and to use the peace process in a way to energize
the human rights process in Northern Ireland that will prevent
such cases from happening again.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much for that and, hopefully, as
a Commissioner, you will join us at that hearing.
As I think we have had five hearings on human rights in the
north of Ireland. We had, as you pointed out, Patten himself.
Frankly, while he's a very clever and articulate diplomat,
having read the report twice and made a number of notations in
reading it, and then, more importantly, having asked him a
number of questions, I was very, very disappointed in the fact
that there will be no vetting whatsoever of those who may have
committed atrocities, may have been a part of the collusion.
Just for the record, our hearing will be held on Tuesday,
March 14th. The Committee on the Administration of Justice,
Martin O'Brien's group, will be part of that, Geraldine
Finucane, as you pointed out, Rosemary's brother will also be
here.
So it should hopefully bring additional focus and we hope
that the Administration will be very bold, as it has been on
other Irish issues, in asking for that independent inquiry.
There seems to be a cover-up, an unseemly cover-up, if you
will, and the suggestion of that, we don't know for sure, came
out during our hearing with Patten. Just why not, why not go
wherever the evidence takes us on these cases. To think that
people who may be very high in the RUC may have been complicity
in these crimes and other crimes makes for justice denied, as
well a perhaps other acts which could be committed in the
future.
Let me just turn our attention briefly to Peru. Although it
doesn't reach a firm conclusion, the country report for Peru
lays out the strong case for the unconstitutionality of
President Fujimori's effort to win a third term.
A recent report by the highly respected ombudsman, Jorge
Santistevan, also suggests evidence of massive fraud and
manipulation by the government officials on behalf of the
Fujimori candidacy.
In light of the Administration's frequently stated
commitment to democracy in the western hemisphere, and it's a
commitment we all share, what specifically is the U.S.
Government doing to ensure free and fair elections, with the
media being very heavily put upon?
We know that the government controlled news media has
attacked the ombudsman. There have been attacks on El
Commercio, the newspaper that broke the story on the election
fraud, and I know there are probably some people who think the
opposition party shouldn't even participate rather than
participate in a fraudulent election.
What are we doing to ensure that this does not happen? We
know that there was a Fuji coup before. Now, in daylight, we
may be seeing something that is parallel to that by rigging the
process.
Mr. Koh. One of the themes of our introduction to our human
rights report is about threats to Latin democracy that occurred
in 1999 and efforts to deal with those. In Ecuador, in
Paraguay, concerns that we have in Venezuela, and, of course,
the issue of Peru.
I think that we have said in our report that we're in a
situation in which the separation of powers has been
dramatically undermined. The executive branch dominates the
legislature in the judiciary. Congress removed three judges so
that the constitutional tribunal there is unable to function,
and questions remain about openness and fairness of electoral
process and about due process, the well known Lori Berenson
case.
We have also seen inhibitions of media freedom, continuing
impunity, torture and poor prison conditions, and issues of
arbitrary arrest and detention.
In November, I went to Costa Rica for the 30th anniversary
of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and there we
engaged with the Vice Foreign Minister of Peru about the
questions of the relationship between Peru and the Inter-
American human rights system. As you might know, they have
withdrawn from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and we
believe that this is an extremely negative trend.
Recently I met with both the Vice Minister and the Foreign
Minister--I'm sorry--the Justice Minister and the Foreign
Minister, Mr. Bustamonte, and raised again our concern about
these issues, and he actually commented about the meeting later
in criticizing our human rights report.
Now, we have been trying to deal with this by funding
programs for electoral and democracy building in Peru and
particularly we've funded pre-electoral observation missions
that are run by the National Democratic Institute and the
Carter Center and the funding of local observation and voter
NGO education programs through approving NGO called
Transparencia.
We've also tried to build approving civil society
organizations by funding them to promote voter education and
turnout, especially in the rural areas, to build political
participation among women and young people and promote greater
debate about the issue of democratic reforms.
U.S. programs have also been used to strengthen the program
of the human rights ombudsman and to support the work of human
rights NGO's.
I think it's fair to say that Latin democracy, in many
cases, is a fragile institution, as we've seen. Many times, the
people prefer the strong leader to the strong democratic
institutions, and it's a long-term struggle on which I think we
need to unite hands and work on a bipartisan basis over the
years to come.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary. Hopefully,
those organizations that you mentioned, the Transparencia and
the Carter group and the Democratic Institute, will be very
proactive, because it's not just--as we all know--the day of
election. We've seen a growing theft, the growing evidence at
least that there may be a theft of the presidency by President
Fujimori.
So hopefully more can be done. It's only a month away or
so. April 8th, I believe is the date for the election. So that
there is a real honest to goodness lead-up to and then actual
casting of ballots.
Mr. Koh. One of our most skilled Ambassadors, John
Hamilton, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Western
Hemisphere Affairs, has been posted to Lima and has been
working these issues extremely aggressively.
I spoke to him about this, about 2 weeks ago, and the
embassy is deeply committed to pressing and working on the
issue, as is everybody in the department.
Mr. Smith. I appreciate that, and thank you for your
statement. Let me ask, again, with regard to Peru, the country
reports noted that there were serious charges of involuntary
sterilizations in the Peruvian government's family planning
program in 1997 and 1998, but it lists only cases involving
offers of food or other benefits or which people were
sterilized without being fully informed of the nature of the
operation.
Why does the report fail to mention even more serious
charges, such as sterilization of women after caesarian
sections without any attempt at all to get the woman's consent?
You might recall, we had a hearing, at which time we heard
from two women who had been sterilized against their will and
at great risk to themselves, flew up here and spoke out, and
also a doctor who was a whistleblower, who also made very
strong statements with regard to Fujimori's war on poverty,
which was to sterilize the poor, using denial of benefits and
other--and then more coercive means of doing so.
The report notes that the ombudsman has received numerous
complaints of instances that are said to have occurred after
March 1998, when the government stated that it was changing its
policies to eliminate coercion. The country report notes that
the ombudsman has continued to investigate these complaints. In
light of the substantial U.S. cooperation with and support of
the Peruvian government program, have we conducted our own
investigation of these complaints? What have we concluded? What
changes will result in our policy of cooperation with the
Peruvian government if we discover that coercive practices are
continuing in the program?
Mr. Koh. Congressman, these were of concern to me at the
time of my confirmation. You and I discussed this in your
office when I first came up to meet you and it's something on
which we've asked for special examination.
On the specifics of this particular question, I prefer to
take the question and give you a written answer.
Mr. Smith. I would appreciate that. Let me ask you with
regard to Mexico, again, and just staying with this issue of
forced sterilization, which in our hemisphere, the southern
hemisphere, in such close proximity.
The report says, building on the reports of last year, that
the largest number of complaints against health care
institutions involved forced sterilization. This year's Mexico
report states that there continue to be credible allegations of
forced sterilization in the country.
Has the United States taken any independent steps to
investigate the extent of the forced sterilization problem in
Mexico? On one fact-finding trip that I took, I asked the human
rights groups, and, frankly, all of the human rights groups,
while my words are being translated into Spanish, as they were
being translated, were shaking their heads ``yes'' and then one
right after another spoke of it.
Yet our person from AID dismissed the whole thing and said,
``no, that's not a problem.'' I have raised that before with
you. Last year's report did note that several NGO's monitored
the family planning practices, and yet that's absent this year.
Who are the groups that are monitoring? Are they the family
planning groups themselves who always seem to deny that there
is any coercion, or was it an independent, nonbiased,
nongovernmental organization, like one of the human rights
groups? And in light of this, especially since Mexico was a
major recipient of U.S. Government population control money,
what are we doing as a major donor to see that these practices
end completely and no woman is sterilized against her will?
Mr. Koh. Again, on the specifics and which groups are doing
the monitoring, I would prefer to submit an answer, along with
the Peruvian answer.
I will say that we have an extremely robust bilateral human
rights dialogue with the government of Mexico. It's been
conducted over the last couple of years by my principal Deputy
Assistant Secretary Leslie Gerson, who, unlike myself, is a
Spanish speaker. It happens at the Deputy Assistant Secretary
level, it happened last year in Washington. She went then to
Mexico for a period of about 5 days, including trips to Chiapas
and dealing with her opposite numbers there.
I had discussions with Foreign Minister Rosario Green when
I was in Costa Rica and saw her again at the Guatemalan
Presidential inauguration in February and Secretary Albright
met with Rosario Green and raised human rights issues, among
others, in Wauhauka, in early January.
Our Ambassador in Mexico, Jeff Davidow, is a former
Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs and has made
sure that these bilateral dialogues at the high departmental,
inter-departmental level are carried forward on a day to day
basis.
Mr. Smith. I appreciate that. Let me ask you with regard to
Cuba: There have been reports that there has been a crack down,
especially with Elian's case being so high profile, on
dissidents, using the cover of Castro's professed concern about
family reunification, which would be very novel. But there's
this crack down that we've had some evidence of.
If you could speak to that, what do we know about that, of
dissidents being rounded up? And, second, the Cuban report
notes that under the terms of the May 2, 1995 U.S.-Cuba
migration accord, the government agreed not to prosecute or
retaliate against migrants returned from international or U.S.
waters or from the U.S. Naval base as a consequence of their
attempt to immigrate illegally.
However, it does not say whether the Castro regime did, in
fact, prosecute or retaliate against any of those returnees.
Specifically, has there been any retaliation? I've seen
reports that there has been. What is your finding? How many
people did the U.S. return to Cuba during 1999 under that
agreement? How many of the total number of returnees since 1995
are now in prison and how do we go about monitoring their
treatment or mistreatment if they are indeed in prison?
Mr. Koh. We'll be happy to supply you with the specific
numbers. I think as you and your senior counsel know, I had
represented Cuban refugees in litigation as a private attorney
and this is an issue on which I feel very concerned because of
the human rights conditions to which they are being returned.
On the Ilion Gonzalez case, because of my responsibilities
as the asylum--in our asylum office and dealing with asylum
questions, there is a possibility that that case may come
before me in a form in which I'm going to have to provide a
legal opinion, and, therefore, I would prefer not to address
it. I do think that the broader issue of Cuban human rights
abuses is one that we discuss in great detail in the report,
the continuing crack down on political dissent, the continuing
detention of the four dissidents, of the dissident working
group, including Marta Beatrice Roques, who is now very ill,
Vladimir Roka, who is the son of the famous Mr. Roka, the
leader of the--the original leader of the communist party and
as I mentioned in my own original testimony, the sentencing of
Oscar Bissette.
There was a hope that the Ibero-American summit might give
an opportunity for the Castro regime to let up and indeed
during that summit, which was held in Havana, some nine
delegations met with dissidents, including three heads of
state, and I think it's telling that in the aftermath of that,
the Cuban government, as opposed to letting up, has, in fact,
continued its crack down, bans on journalists, as I recounted
in my oral statement, new restrictions, harassment efforts, and
that it is for that reason that we supported the Czech and
Polish government in their introduction last year of a
resolution on the human rights conditions in Cuba that passed
and we believe that there will be another resolution this year.
U.S. interest section personnel do visit returnees to
monitor their condition. Vicky Huddleston, who is the principal
officer in that interest section, is someone with whom I've
worked closely. She has a deep commitment on these issues, as
well as the head of our Cuba desk, Mr. Charles Shapiro. So we
will be happy to get back to you on specific numbers.
Mr. Smith. In that answer, could you say why the report
doesn't say whether any harm has come to those returnees? Is it
because there hasn't been any harm? Unless I missed something
in the report, I didn't see any mention of that.
Mr. Koh. We'll clarify that in our answer.
Mr. Smith. Appreciate that. You mentioned Dr. Biscet. There
was an Associated Press article on February 25, just a few days
ago, talking about his recent arrest. The AP points out that he
became an activist after protesting late term abortions at a
government hospital where he worked and that he was eventually
fired.
There was a staff delegation that went down from the Senate
and House about a year ago and one of their bottom line
findings was that Cuban doctors say that the regime employs a
policy of coercive abortion to eliminate social risk
pregnancies and that some of the criteria include hypertension
and even diabetes, and that accounts, according to the staff
delegation report, why they seem to have a low rate of death
among newborns, because they kill children who manifest any of
these problems, like diabetes or the mother might have diabetes
or some other problem.
What can you tell us about the issue of coercive abortion
and sterilization in Cuba? Because it has not gotten much
attention in the past and yet there are people like Dr. Biscet,
who is well known, very credible, who is very much of an
activist against the policies of his Cuban government because
of that very thing.
Mr. Koh. I'm restricted in the sense that I cannot visit
Cuba. That's something that we do not do at the Assistant
Secretary level. I've been, of course, to Guantonamo Bay in my
refugee capacity on numerous occasions, but I have not been to
Havana.
However, the head of our Office of Country Reports, in
fact, the master editor of the entire volume, Mr. Mark Susser,
and Susan Kovalich, who one of the officers in our country
reports section, did visit Havana and have been looking into
these issues and discussing the whole set of issues.
Now, I know that they have the--I think--I'm not sure that
they went down until after the staff delegation report was
produced and so I'm not sure they have a chance to actually
test and check the particular information that you have
provided, but let me check with them and ask them to give me
some information so I can give you an answer to that specific
question.
Mr. Smith. Let me ask briefly, and then I'll yield to my
distinguished friend from Georgia, with regard to Burma. A
recent editorial by Fred Hyatt in the Washington Post
summarized this year's country reports on Burma as follows;
``Soldiers kill and rape, forced child labor, trafficking women
and girls from China for prostitution, 1,300 political
prisoners, universities closed since 1996,'' and it goes on and
on and on and the report goes on and on as well in chronicling
those abuses.
Although we don't supply direct assistance, we do so, as we
all know, through NGO's and through organizations like the
UNDP, and we are concerned that there may be a new program that
UNDP would like to undertake that would build roads, bridges,
other kinds of infrastructure which would probably be of very
great benefit to the military.
Now, my question is whether or not that is something that
is in the offing, whether or not that is under consideration,
as far as you know? Will the U.S. use its influence to ensure
that U.N. organizations and international financial
institutions limit their activities to activities in Burma,
that address the needs of the poor and do not assist the
military or government in Burma, and will they work with the
National League for Democracy and the National Coalition of
Government of the Union of Burma, which all of us know ought to
be the ruling government in that country?
Mr. Koh. I think we have expressed on many occasions over
the last 5 to 10 years our unqualified support for Onsunsu Shi
and her efforts to bring democracy to Burma in the face of what
is now the SPDC. My own engagement on the issue came from the
fact that before I was in this position, I knew Onsunsu Shi's
husband, Mr. Michael Aris, and the outrageous conduct of the
Burmese government last year as he attempted to be reunited
with her during the period when he was dying with something, I
think, again shows the really appalling human rights
insensibility of the regime.
I think on this point, our strategy has been one of multi-
lateral sanctions, working closely with our allies. We have
suspended economic aid, we've ended GSP, and overseas private
investment, we have blocked lending by international financial
institutions, we banned new investment by U.S. persons, and
we've worked to build a broad multi-lateral coalition.
At the same time, I think we all understand that Burmese
refugees, and particularly students, are the future of Burma
and that it's important that when this all ends, that there be
a cadre of civil society that's capable of supporting
democracy, and for that reason we have earmarked some six and a
half million dollars for democracy and humanitarian activities
for Burmese refugees along the Thai border for scholarships for
Burmese students and to support democracy-based activities
inside Burma.
When I traveled with Secretary Albright last March to
Bangkok, I met there with a group of Burmese students who have
been focused on this issue, were deeply supportive of Onsunsu
Shi.
Now, I know that there is a continuing concern about the
question of humanitarian aid. One of my own students from Yale,
who now works inside of Burma, has been talking to me about
this question and raised the particular set of concerns that at
what point should the multi-lateral sanctions regime need to be
adjusted because of concerns about humanitarian impacts.
I think this is obviously something that a multi-lateral
sanctions regime has to adjust to try to make sure that they
are smart sanctions, that they're not impacting negatively on
the people, but at the same time, that they're actually
affecting the regime that's the cause of the problem.
Mr. Smith. But the specific concern is that the UNDP will
be ratcheting up its support and there may not be the adequate
check-offs by the people who care most intimately about what
happens there. They have not had a stellar record in the past
and there are concerns by myself and many of us that this will
be aiding and abetting the military dictatorship.
Mr. Koh. We have worked closely with them and I met with
the Director, Mr. Mark Mallick Brown, in September. I think he
has done an outstanding job with UNDP and is very focused on
these questions. I can try to find out more about the specifics
of the program and get back to you on that.
Mr. Smith. Let me ask you about Indonesia. We have had a
number of hearings, again, in this Committee. I have gone over
there. My staff director, Joseph Rees, has also visited, just
recently got back from East Timor. But one of the issues that
we focused on was the government or military-to-military
collaboration in the past and we understand that there may be a
step in that direction again under the Wahid Administration.
Could we get your feeling about the Wahid Administration's
human rights record, whether or not the military to military is
about to be resumed. We heard from Pius Lustrilanang one of the
people who was tortured. He believes and we believe, although
we can't prove it absolutely, he was tortured by the military.
Under the JCET's Program, we were training members of the
Kopassus in sniper training and urban guerrilla warfare at a
time when ultimately there were people being killed in the
street using those very tactics.
There are deep concerns about, again, a vetting process and
whether or not people we may be training again could be human
rights abusers.
Is there something that is going to be announced anytime
soon, do you know, and is your bureau involved in the decision
with DOD?
Mr. Koh. Yes. I went to Indonesia actually the day that I
took office in November 1998. I returned with Secretary
Albright in March and then I returned again to both Jakarta,
West Timor and East Timor in early October, both to look into
the situation in Delhi and also to look into the plight of
refugees in West Timor, and I know that you and your chief
counsel Mr. Reese have played an important role in highlighting
those issues and getting Congressional attention paid to them.
I think everybody understands and acknowledges the role
that the TNI had played in paramilitary abuses and the need for
thorough military reform and for accountability.
Indeed, our new Ambassador Bob Gelbard has been a leader on
this issue, as has Assistant Secretary Stanley Roth, and
Secretary Albright herself has designated Indonesia as one of
her key priority countries for democracy issues for this year.
In September 1999, the President suspended mil-mil
relations or military to military relations, which were already
restricted, including initiating new training under the
expanded IMET Program. As was reported in the paper, there were
some very small number of former IMET students are here, I
think seven of them. They are allowed to continue and finish
their training with non-IMET funds.
Then the Leahy amendment conditions resumption of IMET on
an important set of conditions which have been the guideposts
for the executive branch's actions on this.
I would say the U.S. has not initiated any IMET, EIMET
Programs in fiscal year 2000, nor have we conducted DOD JSEP
Programs with Indonesia, since they were frozen in 1998. I
think the best thing we can say at this point is the
Administration is going to continue to consult with Congress to
determine when it would be appropriate to resume any kind of
training and any plan for reengagement would be developed in
response to concrete changes. I the government of President
Wahid has faced huge challenges. This is the fourth largest
country in the world. They have very little tradition of
civilian government. They have a new cabinet, many of whom are
new to government. Nevertheless--and they're facing not just
East Timor, but also situations in Ochi, Ambonne, the Malucas,
as well as domestic accountability issues, as now presented by
both the international commission of inquiry report on East
Timor and the domestic commission report. So they have their
hands full.
Only a few weeks ago, three of the ministers of Indonesia,
the new attorney general, Marzuki Daruzmon, the new human
rights minister, Mr. Hasbal Asad, and the minister for
legislation, came over and we talked to them about how to
address and deal with these human rights issues.
In our bureau, we're trying to find ways to support the new
human rights ministry under Mr. Asad's leadership and we're
also looking for ways in which we can support the human rights
monitoring effort of the U.N. transitional authority in East
Timor, headed by Sergio Veradamela.
So we are very focused on the challenges both in Indonesia
and in its regions and our committed to keeping this country in
the democratic column.
Mr. Smith. Let me ask you briefly about Egypt. Nina Shea,
in her testimony, makes a very important point with regard to
the Coptic Church, and I have myself met with President
Mubasak, raised the issue of Al Kosheh and we've recently had a
number of Members who actually went to Egypt and raised the
issue with high government officials.
There seems to be a very serious deterioration of respect
for the Coptic Church. It is a very, very large minority of
Christians in the Middle East, and yet the violence is growing.
There is not a prosecution strategy that we can see to get
the perpetrators of these crimes, and the human rights report,
as Nina Shea points out, asserts that the government's human
rights record, we're talking about Egypt, again, improved
somewhat over the previous year. This assessment carries great
weight.
She testifies or will testify, ``to our knowledge, it has
been cited by asylum officials in two recent cases to deny
Copts petitions. It is misleading in that it fails to take into
consideration the fundamental fact that government-sponsored
intolerance against a religious minority in the context of
religious extremism.''
I have met with a number of Copts myself. I spoke to
Bhoutros-Ghali, who was giving the opposite view, on behalf of
the government, who made it sound like for the Coptic Church,
everything was just dandy, and yet the evidence clearly points
in the other direction in a profound way.
What is your response to her testimony and those
assertions, which are shared by this Chairman?
Mr. Koh. We have concerns about the government of Egypt's
treatment of Coptic Christians, and that has been a special
subject for Ambassador Robert Seiple, our Ambassador at Large
for International Religious Freedom, whose office is in our
bureau.
He's given it a lot of attention and has visited Egypt to
discuss these issues.
I have myself raised the issue with Ambassador Fami here. I
know Secretary Albright has raised it with Foreign Minister
Musa, and the Alkoush case obviously is, in both of its
manifestations, one in 1998 and the more recent incident, a
particularly troubling event.
There is a particular issue with regard to this year's
report, which is, again, we have to cutoff the report on
December 1999. Some of the violence which started Alkoush two
started on New Year's Eve, and it continued into the next year,
and, therefore, we report on it in our introduction.
It will be reported at great length, I'm sure, in this
year's international religious freedom report, which will issue
in September.
In the meantime, Ambassador Dan Kirtzer and our embassy in
Cairo continued to press on the issue and this is something on
which the Commission for International Religious Freedom, on
which Nina Shea sits, has done a good job in highlighting. We
think that that issue will continue to receive a lot of well
deserved attention.
Mr. Smith. Can that information also be gotten to asylum
officers, I'm not sure what your mechanism is, so they're not
making decisions based on guidance that is either outdated or
wrong?
Mr. Koh. As we say, Mr. Chairman, I'm glad you mentioned
that issue. We have a valiant staff of 12 who do human rights
reporting. They now do a country report which, as you know, is,
this year, 6,000 pages. They finished it at the end of
February. They have to then move quickly to the international
religious freedom report, which is then due in September.
We have expanded reporting requirements on a number of
issues. They also bear the burden of revising asylum profiles
and, frankly, many of them are so exhausted that it's something
that we really don't have a chance to update these profiles as
much as we'd like.
This is not for lack of commitment on the issue, and we do
appreciate the enhanced resources that we have this year, but I
think it's a continuing concern to us as to how we can keep
handling new Congressionally mandated reports which really tax
our resources and keep doing the job that we're supposed to do
in so many different areas.
Mr. Smith. I do have other questions, but I will yield.
Congressman Radanovich has asked that his statement be made
part of the record and he does ask about a constituent. He
says, just briefly, ``I am primarily concerned with statements
made by the State Department that 'there are no reports of
politically motivated disappearance,'' and he's talking about
Laos.
``You may be aware of the case of my constituent, Michael
Vang, and his co-traveler.'' I wonder--and I raised this in my
opening comments, Mr. Secretary--if you might touch on that,
and then I'll yield to Cynthia McKinney.
Mr. Koh. Yes. The case of the two Americans, Woa Li and
Michael Vang, has been a great concern to us. When we first
learned of the disappearances, our embassies in Laos and
Thailand worked closely with the FBI to try and pursue all
credible leads. We sent a joint fact-finding team to the border
area twice, first in November 1999, then in November 1998 and
July 1999, and were unable to reach conclusions.
You mentioned this in your opening statement. There were
conflicting reports and it was difficult to resolve them and
the inconsistencies between them. We tried to get to the bottom
of it. Our embassy raised the issue. Ambassador Seiple visited
Laos and again raised the issue. Assistant Secretary Roth has
pursued the question here in D.C., and Neil Silver, who is the
head, the Office Director for our Laotian Affairs Bureau, has
been pursuing this.
The lead on this has been taken by our consular affairs
bureau, which, of course, has responsibility for the
whereabouts of all American citizens.
The fact remains that the reported disappearances occurred
in the Golden Triangle area, which is very rugged terrain. We
have incomplete reports, which complicate the investigation.
But it continues to be a very high priority for us in terms of
resolving the issue. Secretary Albright has met with both the
Lao Ambassador and also the Lao foreign minister to underscore
the concern and our charge in Vientiane has repeatedly pressed
on the question. We know that staff from this Committee and
also from the Foreign Relations Committee went and have been
trying to get to the bottom of the question.
I'm happy to say that we are hoping that the next deputy
chief of mission in Vientiane will be an alumnus of our own
office and will, I'm sure, be taking this question on board.
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Cynthia McKinney.
Ms. McKinney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just have a few
questions. First of all, what is the position of the State
Department with respect to a tribunal to investigate the crimes
against humanity that have been committed in East Timor?
Mr. Koh. I think we don't always move first to the question
of international tribunal, if a credible domestic process can
function. As you well know, Congresswoman, it was so difficult
to create both the international tribunal for the former
Yugoslavia and for Rwanda----
Ms. McKinney. Are you suggesting that a credible domestic
opportunity exists to bring the Indonesian military to justice
for the crimes that they have committed in East Timor?
Mr. Koh. When the International Commission of Inquiry
issued their report, which they did on January 31, on the same
day, KPP Hahm, or so-called Komnisom, the National Human Rights
Commission issued a report which was in many senses reaffirming
and confirming the same information. That national report has
now gone to the Attorney General's office, under Marzuki
Darizmon, who as I mentioned, was here a few weeks ago.
He is a former leader of the National Human Rights
Commission and that office is currently exploring the question
of whether prosecutions can be brought against some of these
individuals. As I understand it, there are three issues at
stake now; one is the extent to which these can be brought
under existing Indonesian law, a second question about the new
human rights law, which the Wahid government is attempting to
enact. My understanding is that that law is in its eighth
reading at the moment. Then there is the question of how to
work together closely with the U.N. transitional authority to
gather evidence and information.
We have a number of staff people, including my own special
assistant, who are in Jakarta and East Timor now working on the
issue, and I think it's too early to say where all this
evidence will lead.
What I will say is that the new government is attempting to
take the National Commission report, and use the information
from that report to try to move to a credible process of
prosecution, investigation and conviction. I think we ought to
support them in that effort.
Ms. McKinney. I'm interested in the attitude in the
department as it relates to corporate behavior, U.S. corporate
behavior. You very well know the activities of Chevron Oil
Company in the Niger Delta and their complicity in massacres
and in torture.
What is the attitude of the department in the inclusion of
corporate behavior in its human rights report?
Mr. Koh. Ours is principally a report on the activities of
governments. Also, we do mention behavior of corporate actors.
You will see mention of this throughout the reports.
I will say that our own view is that corporate actors are
an important transmission belt for human rights values, the
fact of the matter is that in many countries around the world,
it is the corporations that have the lead and many corporate
executives are committed on these issues. This was something
that Kofi Annan raised in Dovos last year, and what we have
done at the Department is to try to forge closer ties with
corporations to try to bring their best practices to bear.
One thing that was mentioned by Secretary of State Albright
in Dovos on January 28 is an effort that we're trying to do to
work with corporations, particularly U.S. corporations, on
promoting higher standards and highlighting best practices in
the extractive industries.
I know my deputy Bennett Freeman came up and briefed you on
this issue. There are three countries that we have identified,
Colombia, Indonesia and Nigeria, on which we're going to be
doing substantial work.
Obviously, the situation in the Niger Delta is of grave
concern and we have also met with members of Mosup, the Algoni
people and particularly Owen Zwila, the brother of the martyr
Ken Sarowiwa, to discuss those continuing concerns.
But this is something in which we are trying to get
corporations to agree to make a commitment on promoting the
basic principals of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
and, in particular, practices in the extractive industries,
particularly with regard to their security arrangements, to
make sure that they are part of the solution and not part of
the problem.
Mr. Smith. Mr. Delahunt.
Mr. Delahunt. I mentioned in my opening remarks that I was
going to ask you about the fact that both of the guerrilla
groups, the ELN and the FARC, are listed on or named on the
list of foreign terrorist organizations, and the AUC is not.
Can you give me a response to that question?
Mr. Koh. I think we're going to have to get back to you
with the specifics about the terrorist list. I don't do
terrorism, I do human rights, so that's really another part of
the program, of the Department.
I will say that with regard to paramilitary abuses, I think
they're chronicled at great length in the report.
Mr. Delahunt. Yes, and I applaud you on that and it's clear
that the vast, the majority of human rights abuses are, in
fact, committed by paramilitaries. They far exceed those
committed by the insurgent groups and I think in the 1998
report, I don't know what the statistic is this year, but there
was 3 percent was claimed that was committed by security
forces.
I presume those percentages haven't changed much, Mr. Koh.
Mr. Koh. This is something in our report. We've looked at
both reports of the NGO's, particularly the NGO Sinap. We've
looked at the report of the Ministry of Defense and there are
some discrepancies in the numbers. Where they all agreed is
that extra judicial killings by paramilitaries last year were
in the range of 700 to 850. Both the NGO's and the Ministry of
Defense agree on those numbers, and those are higher than
either abuses--extra judicial killings that were committed by
the guerrillas or by the security forces.
The number of killings were in the zero to 24 range,
depending on who you believed.
Mr. Delahunt. But you haven't incorporated within the
report a specific percentage, I take it. I haven't had a chance
to peruse the report.
Mr. Koh. Again, it's a question of how we----
Mr. Delahunt. I'm sure these are estimates, also. I mean, I
understand that.
Mr. Koh. Sometimes----
Mr. Delahunt. But what I find disturbing, and I presume
that there is a sound basis for not listing the AUC, but our
own General McAfree has indicated that the flow of drugs into
the United States is a threat to our national security and if
it comes to the definition of definitions within that language,
I presume that if, in fact, we consider the flow of cocaine and
heroin into the United States to be in our national interest,
that the reality is that the AUC, which has been described by
DEA, INL and other agencies, as to be more implicated into the
drug trade than even the guerrillas, that appropriately they
ought to be listed, with the consequences that ensue by that
listing.
So I know that's not within your particular province, but I
would ask that you take it back to the appropriate official and
provide us with an answer, and, at the same time, encourage
them to look at it with a liberal interpretation.
Mr. Koh. We agree.
Mr. Delahunt. Of the statutory language.
Mr. Koh. We agree, Congressman, that both the
paramilitaries and the guerrillas commit large-scale abuses of
international human rights and humanitarian law and that they
ought to be outlawed.
I think they do have a difference in tactics.
Paramilitaries more frequently engage in massacres of civilian
groups, whereas the guerrillas have engaged in a variety of
tactics, including kidnappings, massacres, extra judicial
killings, recruitment of child soldiers and other kinds of
abuses.
I do think that both engage in profit from the drug trade
and they're both part of the problem that the Pastrana
government has to get on top of if they're going to bring this
country into a new period in terms of human rights.
Mr. Delahunt. I thank you, Mr. Secretary. I would ask, at
this point in time, the Chairman, and I applaud him for having
a hearing next week in terms of the situation in Northern
Ireland, but I think it's particularly timely if we would
consider to have--consider having a full hearing on the
situation as it exists in Colombia.
This is a--clearly, this package has multiple aspects of
it, some of which I find very attractive, others concern me.
But in particular, the area of human rights, I think it
would be most timely to have a full hearing. I think it's
important and I think it would assist a lot of Members to have
the ability to ask some questions, not just from the Secretary,
but from a variety of groups, both here in the United States
and from Colombia.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much. We will look into that, but
I understand that the Appropriations Committee is moving fast
in terms of a markup. So it's something we ought to, as soon as
we're done here today, talk about.
There is another issue I'd just like to raise, and you've
been very, very generous, Mr. Secretary, unlike some people who
come down and speak before the House and always have to be
somewhere else, so they're running out the door. You have been
very generous and we deeply respect and appreciate that.
Mr. Koh. It's my job and that's why I get the big bucks.
Mr. Smith. You are a person who cares so much about it, as
evidenced by your previous work and the fact that you are so
infatigable in your efforts on behalf of human rights.
Amnesty International, in their testimony, Carlos Salinas
will be testifying momentarily, makes the point again. He calls
you a good friend and has nothing but respect for you, as we
all do, but the problem, as I said in my opening statement, is
this idea of a compartmentalized approach--separating policy
from the issue of reporting. He points out that when you
scratch beneath the rhetorical surface, you find a complex
substratum where human rights concerns are compartmentalized
and rationalized out of key decisions. You might want to
comment on that again, because I think that's our main problem.
If you were running the show, I think we'd have very few
questions about human rights being integrated with our overall
foreign policy, which brings us to Turkey. I know I wanted to
join you at the OSCE meeting. We unfortunately had a session of
Congress and much work on our plate here and I couldn't join
you. I know you did a good job there.
But Amnesty points out and many of us have concerns about
the Administration's apparent gearing up to provide an export
license for four billion dollars for attack helicopters. We all
know the incredible carnage that has been committed against the
Kurdish minority. There were some human rights benchmarks that
were laid out by the Turkish Prime Minister and our President
in December 1997, and if you look at those benchmarks, it looks
like they have not been realized and are not in the process of
being realized, and maybe you have other information that you
could provide to us on that.
But what is the situation in Turkey in general and your
view on this proposal to sell attack helicopters? Have those
benchmarks been realized?
Mr. Koh. As I understand it, the government of Turkey has
narrowed the field in terms of the manufacturers who are still
competing on that bid and so we're not at the point yet where
they've selected an American bidder or an export license is
actually being requested.
I think it's pretty clear that if Turkey does choose a U.S.
manufacturer, our export license decision is going to be based
on the full range of considerations that are required by law,
our arms export control policy, as well as a thorough review
and evaluation of Turkey's progress on improving human rights.
This has been one of the prime areas in which I have
devoted my time. In August 1999, I went to Turkey for 10 days.
I think that's the longest trip I've spent in any single
country, including a number of days in the southeast. I went to
Komlerfa, Diarbakur, the whole region in which the set of human
rights concerns have been raised.
I returned for the review conference in Istanbul and I
returned with the President and Secretary Albright at the end
of November. During that period, I opened up a human rights
dialogue with the state human rights minister, Mehmet Ali
Irtemcelik, with the justice minister, Mr. Sami Turk. I visited
Layla Zana, Akin Birdal, and have continued to focus on these
questions.
You had a hearing of the Helsinki Commission on the road to
Istanbul in which Mark Grossman, the Assistant Secretary for
European Affairs, and I both testified in which I reviewed the
human rights situation.
You are correct that in 1997, in December, President
Clinton and then President Ilmas did discuss the issue of
attack helicopters and identified a number of important
benchmarks with regard to decriminalization of freedom of
expression, the release of journalists, prevention of future
prosecution of journalists, addressing of the problem of
torture and impunity, reopening of human rights NGO's, the
implementation of the 1995 constitutional amendments regarding
political participation, meaningfully ending the state of
emergency in the southeast and allowing refugees of evacuated
villages to go home.
Now, I discussed a number of these in March 1999 when I
testified before the Helsinki Commission and we have tried in
our country reports to give the basis on which an assessment
can be made in these areas.
I think it's fair to say that with regard to torture, the
government has announced some important polices, a no tolerance
circular, but that, in fact, on the ground, there are serious
continuing problems with regard to torture. President Demirel
said, when President Clinton was there, we do have a torture
problem, and just last week the parliamentarian in charge of
the human rights commission there, Mrs. Selma Piskins, reported
that there were, in a raid on a local police station, torture
instruments discovered.
In the area of freedom of expression, this continues to be
a serious problem. There have been efforts to bring about
legislative reform, particularly the lifting of Article 8 and
312, but, in fact, the net result has been two new laws with
continuing restrictions.
There have been raids on newspapers, harassment of
journalists and a number of high profile journalists,
particularly Andrew Finkel of Time Magazine and Nadira Mater,
who is the author of a well known book about the plight of the
southeast, have continued to be subject to continuing
restrictions.
With regard to NGO's, there have been a number of NGO's
that have been reopened, but a number which continues to be
closed, particularly branches of the human rights association
in Malatya. The Mersin Migrants Association was, however,
recently allowed to open. Mr. Birdal, who I met in Istanbul and
I think we were helpful in securing his release, had been
released on medical grounds, but he continues to face
supervision.
On the political participation question, I think the
question of whether the government will seize the opportunity
presented by the arrest of Mr. Ochelon remains very much up for
grabs. Three of the Kurdish mayors from the Hadab party,
particularly Mr. Ferdin Chellick, with whom I spent time in
August, were arrested, and as I mentioned in my oral statement,
were released, but are still pending trial.
As I said when we released the country reports, we find
this to be a very puzzling, very disturbing set of events.
There are allegations that they were tortured while in
detention. When there were protests about their detention,
there were restrictions on freedom of expression.
I think the general issue of the Kurdish question and the
conditions in the southeast remain a very serious concern. We
think that the government needs to move forward on this
question, to recognize Kurdish language rights and cultural
rights. The state of emergency has been lifted in the Province
of Sert, but continues in five other provinces, and although a
number of people have been evacuated forcibly, only a small
percentage have been resettled.
So I think we do have continuing concerns about these
issues. I will say, as I said in my oral testimony, that the
Ecevit government has had a number of important statements and
recognitions of the need to address these questions. Foreign
Minister Jihm, Ismael Jihm said that he was firmly of the
belief that the Kurdish issue ought to be addressed. Sami Turk
and the human rights minister have spoken out aggressively on
the torture issue.
I met with Prime Minister Ecevit in August and he is
himself a former journalist who I think is committed to
progress on this issue. I think the Helsinki, of which I and
you are Commissioners, will continue to look into the question
and make sure that the human rights record remains under
careful review.
Mr. Smith. The Chair recognizes Joseph Rees, the Staff
Director, and Chief Counsel.
Mr. Rees. I have what I hope will just be a couple of very
brief questions. Assistant Secretary Koh, you mentioned the
asylum advisory opinions, the asylum profiles that your office
produces, and I think we've talked about these before.
The last I checked--and I hope that things have changed
since shortly after last year's hearing, when we looked into
this--some of those profiles contained information that was
years old.
The quality of the profiles is not nearly as high as the
quality of the country reports. Often, there is boilerplate
that tends to talk about how many fraudulent cases there are.
They really look, in some cases, like a recipe for denial in
asylum cases.
Specifically on the forced abortion cases from China,
although these comments are not limited to that, there was
information which has long since been discredited about how
there aren't many forced abortions and so forth. If you could
only do one thing in a timely way to eliminate the lag time
between information that might tend to help asylum applicants
that your office has--and I know you appreciate with this, with
your own background--getting it into the hands of asylum
officers and immigration judges should be a top priority,
because it's not like nothing is happening while you're waiting
to eliminate that lag time.
People are being denied and it is of course, wrong for them
to be denied on the basis of information which is not correct.
I know that I speak for the Chairman in asking that you put
in place, if you haven't already and maybe you already have, a
system to ensure that outdated information will not be used to
deny asylum claims if subsequent information in the possession
of the bureau would tend to support those claims.
Mr. Koh. Mr. Reese, you and I have both spent most of our
careers representing asylum seekers, and so I completely share
your sentiments. I do think that we, in our bureau and
particularly the office of country reports and asylum, are
struggling to deal with a massive workload, much of which is
imposed on us by bills that have been passed by Congress,
salutary bills, in many respects. But without a full awareness
of the kinds of burdens that it imposes on us, and there are
other bills that are pending which would impose new reporting
requirements and, frankly, which make it difficult for us even
to spend the enhanced resources that we have to do all the
things that we need to do.
On the China asylum profile, your point is something we
completely accept, it's one that we have discussed in the past.
We are sending one of our officers from the country reports and
asylum team to China to make sure that all the information
there reflects not just the country report, but also the most
current information. But frankly, to be able to do this, with
all of our asylum profiles and the tiny staff that we have, is
extremely difficult.
So we're really struggling to do everything we have to do.
I don't exaggerate to say that this is the hardest working
group of people I've ever worked with, the most committed, upon
whom new mandates fall every day.
When this bureau started in 1977, we had two mandates and
we now have 55 mandates. Without a significant expansion of
resources, I do think Secretary Albright has really committed
herself to try to give us more resources, but as you know, the
entire pie has been restricted and every day there is a fight
for new resources.
It's something that I didn't appreciate outside of the
executive branch and now that I am here, it's, for me, one of
the greatest challenges as to how to address this question.
Mr. Rees. You ought to try working in the Legislative
Branch. We're not trying to gainsay that, but frankly, as
between sending out a wrong report and not just sending out a
report at all, it would be better if you didn't send out a
report at all.
You mentioned the ratification of CEDAW. One of the
concerns that the Chairman and other Members, primarily on the
Republican side, and Senators have had is that some of the
language in CEDAW might be used to create an international
right to abortion.
The Administration, although it supports abortion rights in
domestic U.S. policy, has said that it does not favor the
creation of an international human right to abortion. Yet,
recently, this fear has become more than a fear, it's become a
growing reality.
When CEDAW commissions in country after country have been
recommending, as part of their mandated recommendations, to
countries, that in order to comply with CEDAW, those countries
have to legalize abortion.
Is that one of the reservations that the Administration has
prepared to make sure, to make clear, that in order to comply
with CEDAW, a country does not have to provide legal abortion?
Mr. Koh. As you know, Mr. Rees, this is an issue that's
addressed under our own constitutional law. I think it's the
CEDAW issue and the package of reservations, understandings and
declarations, under which it would be ratified, were really
settled in 1994, when the Foreign Relations Committee reported
the convention favorably to the whole Senate. At the time,
Senator Helms proposed an additional understanding to clarify
his concerns.
At that moment, some 68 Senators, which is more than two-
thirds, had written a letter to President Clinton, urging him
to take the necessary steps to ratify the convention, but then
later, because of a parliamentary motion, a hold was put on it
and since 1994, the Senate has taken no additional steps toward
ratification.
Indeed, if the concerns that you have are ones that are
widely shared, the best solution would be to hold hearings and
let those concerns be vetted. But the fact of the matter is
that there have been no further hearings on this question
before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
As I pointed out, 165 countries have ratified or exceeded
to this convention and it's one I think that the UNICEF has
issued a report in which they have chronicled all of the
different countries in which it has been passed and the
tremendously salutary impact that ratification of CEDAW has
had.
Let me put it bluntly. With regard to countries who have
ratified, we look bad, because frankly we have better records
on equality of rights, but we don't get the credit. With regard
to the countries that don't ratify, we look bad because then
we're put in their company.
I think it's, something on which the Senate obviously has
the lead because of its treaty ratification power. But on
today, International Women's Day, it's a good day to say this
is a treaty that ought to move, ought to be ratified, that we
ought to be a part of. Frankly, it's embarrassing for me, as
the executive branch representative, to go to meetings around
the world and be asked why we haven't ratified it and to have
no good explanation, other than the fact that people have
concerns about it that have not been aired in new hearings in
the last 6 years.
I think if the concerns that you raise are legitimate, they
ought to be aired by having hearings before the end of this
Senate session and then to try to get this ratified, so we can
join the vast majority of other countries who have ratified
this convention and benefited by it.
Mr. Smith. Mr. Secretary, thank you very much for your
testimony. You've been here slightly in excess of 3 hours. We
do appreciate it. I do hope you will join us on Tuesday at the
Northern Ireland hearing as a Commissioner of the Helsinki
Commission.
Mr. Koh. Thank you very much and thanks for staying through
the whole thing.
Mr. Smith. I would like to ask our second panel, and I
thank you in advance for your patience. Elisa Massimino, is the
Director of the Washington, DC Office of the Lawyers Committee
for Human Rights. Ms. Massimino, who earned her law degree from
the University of Michigan, directs the Lawyers Committee's
National Advocacy Program, with special focus on refugee
issues.
Next, we will hear from Carlos Salinas, who is the Advocacy
Director for Latin America for Amnesty International USA. Mr.
Salinas who has worked with Amnesty since 1986, earned his
Master's degree in Latin American studies from Georgetown
University.
Next we will hear from Nina Shea, who is a Member of the
United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, as
well as the Director of the Center for Religious Freedom at
Freedom House. A lawyer specializing in international human
rights issues, for the past 12 years she has focused
exclusively on the issue of religious persecution.
Finally, we will also hear from Dr. Alison DesForges, who
is a consultant to Human Rights Watch, who has undertaken some
two dozen missions to the Great Lakes Region of Central Africa.
She has provided expert testimony to the International Criminal
Tribunal for Rwanda, as well as to judicial authorities in
Canada, Belgium, and the United States. Trained as an historian
at Harvard and Yale Universities, Dr. DesForges is the author
of ``Leave None to Tell the Story,'' the definitive account of
the Rwanda genocide, published last year by Human Rights Watch.
Elisa, if you would begin.
STATEMENTS OF ELISA MASSIMINO, DIRECTOR OF WASHINGTON, DC
OFFICE, LAWYERS COMMITTEE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
Ms. Massimino. Thank you. Thank you, Chairman Smith and
Members of the Committee, for convening this hearing and for
asking us to share our perspective on this year's State
Department country reports.
We are deeply appreciative to you, your staff, and all of
the Members of the Committee for your steadfast concern for
these issues and your continued efforts to highlight human
rights in the Congress.
Mr. Chairman, I have a written statement which I would like
to summarize for the record.
Mr. Smith. Without objection, yours and all the other full
statements will be made a part of the record.
Ms. Massimino. Thank you. The Lawyers Committee for Human
Rights works to protect and promote fundamental human rights,
holding all governments, including our own, accountable to
standards contained in the universal declaration of human
rights and related international human rights instruments.
We focus our work on how best to protect human rights in a
lasting way, by advancing international law and legal
institutions, by working to build structural guarantees for
human rights in national legal systems, and by assisting and
cooperating with lawyers and other human rights advocates who
are the front line defenders of human rights at the local
level.
As Secretary Koh pointed out, it's especially fitting to
hold these hearings today, Mr. Chairman, on International
Women's Rights Day.
Five years ago, women from around the world gathered
together to affirm what to many might seem a truism: that
women's rights are human rights. Yet today, as detailed in many
of the reports before us, we are witnessing an increase in
extreme violations of women's human rights--in political life,
in the workplace, and in the home.
As documented in the pages of these reports, women are
beaten by their husbands, raped with impunity, denied the right
to vote, denied basic health care and education, forcibly
sterilized, driven, in China, as you pointed out, to suicide at
an astonishing rate, sold into sexual slavery, and killed by
their relatives to uphold family honor.
These abuses are truly horrific. The State Department,
under Secretary Albright's leadership, is to be commended for
having given a much higher profile to defending the rights of
women. But it is disturbing to us that the United States, which
has exercised such leadership in advocating for the rights of
women around the world, remains outside international consensus
by failing to ratify the Convention on the Elimination of All
Forms of Discrimination Against Women.
Ratification of CEDAW will strengthen U.S. efforts to
advance the rights of women throughout the world and will give
the United States a greater voice in shaping national and
international policies, as you pointed out, Mr. Rees, that
affect the lives of women.
The United States should not let another March 8th go by
without becoming a party to this important human rights treaty.
The State Department's reports cover 194 countries, but
there is one country whose record is not analyzed in that
document, and it's the United States. A couple of years ago,
when we held this hearing, Congressman Houghton asked the
question ``I wonder how other countries view our human rights
performance?''
Since that time, the U.S. has conducted its own analysis of
U.S. performance under the Convention Against Torture, and
Secretary Koh is to be commended for his role in helping to
produce that report.
We have many problems of our own, and I didn't want today
to go by without us talking a little bit about that. One of the
pieces of legislation that this body will soon consider is an
effort to address some of those problems; in particular, the
problem of torture in this country.
You see in the reports before us page after page after page
of serious violations. We are rightly proud in the United
States of our own human rights record in many, many areas, but
there are some areas in which we fall short, and, regrettably,
there are instances of torture in the United States. This
legislation which is soon to be introduced would make torture,
per se, a crime and prosecutable as a crime in the United
States.
Mr. Chairman, as you know, the quality and accuracy of the
country reports have been of great concern to the Lawyers
Committee since the Department of State was first mandated to
present these reports to Congress almost 25 years ago.
Beginning in 1979 and until 2 years ago, the Lawyers Committee
published an extensive annual critique of the reports, and we
continue to believe that they require and benefit from critical
input by the nongovernmental human rights community.
In recent years, we have witnessed a steady improvement in
the objectivity and comprehensiveness of the reports and we
commend Secretary Koh and his very able State Department
colleagues for their professionalism and diligence in the
production of these reports.
One of the distinguishing marks of a good country report is
the degree to which it reflects extensive consultation by U.S.
embassies with local human rights advocates and NGO's. Today's
hearing is an important forum in which U.S.-based NGO's can
critique our own government's reporting and highlight needed
changes in next year's edition of the country reports. We
welcome this opportunity.
I would like to single out three countries for special
notice in my oral comments today. In doing so, I recognize that
my very distinguished colleagues with whom I share this panel
will cover many of the other countries. I am quite humbled
being on a panel with such distinguished human rights experts
as we have here before us today.
China, Turkey and Mexico are the three countries which I
would like to focus on. In each of these countries, widespread
and persistent human rights violations continued throughout
1999. The conduct of each of these three states presents a
serious challenge to the integrity of the international human
rights treaty regime and of the institutions that the
international community has established to enforce compliance
with human rights norms, and, in each instance, the nature of
the response by U.S. policy makers will have profound
bilateral, regional and even global ramifications.
With respect to China, the report includes an extremely
thorough and generally accurate description of the downward
spiral in China's human rights performance during 1999. The
report properly focuses on the crack down on China democracy
party leaders and highlights the fact that by year's end,
``only a handful of dissidents nationwide dared to remain
publicly active.''
In addition, the report contains extensive information on
government repression directed against religious practice.
Chinese law and practice reveals a deep hostility toward
``unofficial'' religious belief, and those who seek to exercise
their right to freedom of religion are frequently punished, in
some cases severely.
As China struggles with extraordinary economic, social and
environmental challenges, nothing is more important to its
future stability than the expansion of the right to freedom of
association and the free development of critical voices in the
nongovernmental sector.
As such, an area of the State Department's report which
continues to be disappointing is its discussion of regulations
on the NGO sector in China. As the report notes, these impose a
variety of new obligations on those seeking to register as
nongovernmental organizations. The conclusion of this section
of the report, ``preexisting groups report little or no
additional interference by the government since the new
regulations came into effect,'' is misleading.
Indeed, in light of the statement later in the China report
that ``there are no independent domestic NGO's that publicly
monitor or comment on human rights conditions,'' it is
astonishing that the discussion of NGO regulations fails to
reach any opinion on the degree to which these restrictions
impose unreasonable burdens on civil society in China or
contravene existing international norms on freedom of
association.
Unfortunately, the superficial treatment of freedom of
association, especially for domestic human rights advocates,
remains a persistent weakness of many of the country reports.
This is particularly disappointing in light of the adoption
by the U.N. General Assembly recently of the Declaration on
Human Rights Defenders, which breaks new ground in defining an
international consensus on the content of the right to freedom
of association. Future reports we hope will rectify this
weakness.
The report contains a detailed analysis of China's efforts
to block the flow of information over the internet. China is
trying to sustain expansion of the internet and other
communications infrastructure, while also expanding
restrictions on its content and use, a balancing act that seems
destined ultimately to fail.
Internet expansion may prove to be an arena where the line
between an opening economy and political liberalization becomes
blurred, and the United States should be doing all it can to
promote this trend. In light of the detailed information
contained in the report about widespread restrictions on
internet use, the report misses an important opportunity by
failing to describe how these restrictions, which include
special internet police units, not only interfere with the
right to private correspondence, the section in the report
under which these restrictions are described, but have a
negative impact on the exercise of many other core rights.
The report devotes considerably more attention than in past
reports to an analysis of numerous legal reforms, including the
criminal law, the criminal procedure law, the administrative
litigation law, the state compensation law, and the lawyers
law, and makes an initial assessment of whether these reforms
are leading to better human rights protections for Chinese
people.
Future reports should maintain their focus on the range of
legal reforms, all of which, to the degree they are
implemented, have the potential to enhance the rights of
Chinese citizens vis-a-vis the state.
This emphasis on systemic legal problems should serve as a
model for all of the country reports.
As China grapples with its ongoing legal reform process and
as Chinese citizens acquire greater consciousness of their
rights, a central question before the U.S. Government is how
outsiders can best contribute to moving that process in the
direction of greater compliance with international human rights
standards.
The report notes that China has had human rights dialogues
with a large number of countries, but admits, frankly, that
these dialogues ``have not produced significant improvements in
the government's human rights practices.''
In light of this failure and in the face of serious
violations, such as those that took place in 1999, these
dialogues certainly cannot substitute for the traditional
measures of external pressure, such as a resolution at the U.N.
Commission on Human Rights.
Despite the comprehensive nature of the report on China, it
is marred in places by language that seems designed to blunt
criticism of government practices. Particularly disturbing is
what seems to be an increased use this year of reference to the
motivations of the government in perpetrating abuses, as if
somehow to excuse or minimize the violations.
For example, after stating that ``the government continued
to commit widespread and well documented human rights abuses in
violation of internationally accepted norms,'' the report cites
the government's ``fear of unrest'' as one of the reasons for
these abuses. When ``communist party leaders moved quickly to
suppress'' political dissidents, it was because ``they believed
them to be organized challenges that threatened national
stability.''
Finally, in a recitation of the ``positive trends in
China,'' the report implies that the government suppresses only
``those perceived to be a threat to the government power or to
national stability.'' Yet, as the report outlines, who are
these people that are threats to national stability? They are a
man who sought, in accordance with tradition, to sweep the
graves of some students killed in Tiananmen Square, a man who
seeks to worship as he pleases or a couple who longs for a
second child.
In her remarks on the release of the country reports,
Secretary Albright noted that ``China is perhaps the most
prominent example of a country with which we have substantial
and well known differences on human rights, but with which we
are also engaged on a wide variety of other issues.''
Now, this may be a simple and straightforward statement of
fact or policy, but this oft-repeated refrain of the
Administration reflects, I think, a fundamental and persistent
error in U.S. policy toward China. The litany of abuses
detailed in this year's report are not and should not be
portrayed as merely differences in one aspect of a multi-
faceted bilateral relationship.
This year's report details profound and widespread
violations by China of internationally recognized human rights
norms, and these violations must--and must be seen by China
to--affect every aspect of its relationship with the United
States.
This is not to say that promotion of human rights is
necessarily served by disengagement with China. Quite the
contrary. Further engaging China in the web of international
agreements and norms could hold the potential to catalyze
change in the long term. Legal reforms have new resonance in
China in the context of an opening economy, and attempts to
reform China's commercial legal system could provide a
foundation for an independent judiciary and other essential
elements of an accountable justice system. But this must be
combined with consistent pressure for improvements from outside
China.
That is why the pursuit of a resolution condemning China's
dismal human rights record at the Human Rights Commission is so
important. We commend the Administration for pursuing this, as
well as those in Congress who have consistently called for such
a resolution.
Although engagement may provide a framework in which to
foster human rights improvements, engagement must be toward a
purpose and will not of itself necessarily lead to any changes
in China's human rights performance.
Human rights concerns must permeate our interactions with
China in all of the areas with which we engage the Chinese
government. China should not be able to cutoff dialogue or
avoid criticism by the United States about its human rights
violations simply by refusing to meet with U.S. officials who
carry a human rights portfolio.
Human rights violations in China undermine U.S. strategic
and economic interests there, and that judgment should be
reflected in every high level meeting between U.S. and Chinese
officials.
Human rights should not be portrayed to the Chinese as an
area where we will agree to disagree.
The report on Turkey is comprehensive and well informed.
This extremely thorough analysis reflects a serious commitment
on the part of U.S. diplomats in Turkey and in the DRL bureau
to follow human rights developments there. Detailed
information, such as that found in the extensive section
regarding torture, is in part available because U.S.
representatives have been present at many high profile trials
with a human rights dimension throughout Turkey.
Torture, unfair trial and restrictions on nonviolent
freedom of expression remain widespread problems, as the State
Department report recognizes. These problems must be remedied,
and this message has been delivered at the highest levels of
the bilateral relationship, notably during President Clinton's
visit to Turkey last November, including in his address to the
Turkish Parliament.
As the report rightly emphasizes, a climate of impunity for
human rights abuse in the security forces is an enormous
obstacle to improving Turkey's human rights record,
particularly in the area of torture. In the few cases where
prosecutions and convictions of police officers have occurred,
such convictions were reversed on appeal. The report makes note
of the directive issued by Prime Minster Ecevit on June 26,
1999, authorizing prosecutors to carry out unannounced
inspections of detention facilities to monitor the well being
of criminal suspects in detention.
Although the report outlines the preliminary results of
these inspections, it fails to note the remaining obstacles to
resolving this serious problem.
The June directive alone will not be sufficient to resolve
the problem of torture in detention. We have looked at this
problem quite extensively and have recently published a report
entitled ``Obstacles to Reform,'' which I would like to share
with you later, which details the steps we think need to be
taken in order to remedy this situation.
The report asserts, in its opening paragraph, and I think
this is probably the most distressing part of the Turkey
report, that ``the government generally respects the
constitution's provision for an independent judiciary.''
Last year, in our testimony, we criticized the report for
stating that ``the government respects the constitution's
provisions for an independent judiciary.'' This year the report
states that ``the government generally respects the
constitution's provisions for an independent judiciary,'' and,
again, this assertion is simply not borne out by the facts.
State security courts try civilians accused of crimes
against the state, including individuals accused of nonviolent
actions. Many prosecutions in such courts appear to be
politically motivated, such as those brought against leaders
from the political Islamic movement, the mayor of Istanbul, and
nonviolent political leaders associated with the Kurdish issue.
Advocates such as Mr. Birdal, who you heard Secretary Koh
mention he had met with, have been brought to trial before
state security courts as a result of statements or publications
criticizing the government's human rights practices.
After miraculously surviving an assassination attempt, Mr.
Birdal faces trial yet again this month, in just a couple of
weeks, for speech the government found offensive. These
prosecutions are not ``independent.''
Despite these obvious examples demonstrating the lack of
independence in the judiciary, the State Department report
fails to provide a forthright critique of the problem. Instead,
we get confusing assertions, such as ``the constitution
provides for an independent judiciary and, in practice, the
general law courts generally act independently of the executive
and legislative branches. However, various officials
acknowledge the need for legislative changes to strengthen the
judiciary's independence.''
In commenting on the NSC--that's the Turkish NSC--
directives identifying threats to the state, the report merely
concludes that such communiques ``could be interpreted'' as
instructions to the judiciary. As for the dominant role of the
high judicial council and the appointment of judges, the report
fails to speak in its own voice or even to take a position,
reporting only that ``some observers assert'' that this
arrangement might undermine judicial independence.
Many sectors of Turkish society are now sending a clear
message to the government that the mistakes of the past should
not be repeated. For example, the chairman of the high advisory
council of the Turkish Industrialists and Businessmen's
Association, TUSIAD, said, on September 10, 1999, that ``the
democratic transition can be delayed no more. We are telling
our politicians to listen to society's voice.'' He noted in
particular that in Turkey, ``we are way behind in matters of
freedom of thought and expression, to the extent that it has
become a threat to our national progress.''
A strong, clear and unwavering U.S. human rights policy
toward Turkey is particularly essential now to ensure that the
Turkish government capitalizes on this current climate of
potential change.
The State Department report on Mexico includes an extensive
section on the prevalence of torture in the context of the
criminal justice system. This section is quite forceful and
accurately identifies many of the most serious issues relating
to this problem, using clear, straightforward language.
The report notes, ``the police regularly obtain information
through torture, prosecutors use this evidence in courts and
the courts continue to admit as evidence confessions extracted
under torture.'' It doesn't get much clearer than that. We'd
like to see that kind of language in many of the reports on
countries where torture is a problem.
The report also notes that this problem derives in part
from the fact that police and prosecutors do not have proper
training and equipment and so often rely on torture as an
investigative tactic, and in this way the report highlights the
fact that reliance on torture in criminal investigations not
only constitutes serious human rights abuse, but is also not an
effective crime-fighting technique.
The report notes that ``police officers often attempt to
solve crimes by rounding up likely suspects and then extracting
confessions from them by force.''
In contrast to the section dealing with torture, however,
in some other areas the report resorts to formulaic statements
in order to avoid a more profound analysis regarding human
rights problems in Mexico.
For example, the report states that the judiciary is
independent, while noting that it has, on occasion, been
influenced by the executive branch. Yet the laws regarding
appointments to the bench, which allow for heavy executive
branch influence over this process, and the lack of lifetime
tenure for judges, present real problems for the independence
of the judiciary in both law and practice.
The report also states that court hearings are open to the
public, but this is misleading and does not reflect an
understanding of the actual practice of hearings in Mexico.
There are no courtrooms in Mexico. Generally, four or five
hearings are conducted simultaneously before the same judge at
several tables in a busy room. There is no opportunity for the
public or press to actually hear what transpires in any of
those hearings, nor is the judge generally present.
In several cases, the report addresses serious human rights
problems by stating, without taking a position of its own, that
human rights organizations have criticized certain measures
adopted by the Mexican government. For example, the report
notes that the new Federal Preventive Police includes
approximately 5,000 transferred military personnel. The report
then notes that the inclusion of former military personnel led
to criticism from some human rights NGO's. Yet the report makes
no independent comment on this point.
The report's reluctance to fully address this issue may
have to do with the fact that the United States has encouraged
military involvement in civilian law enforcement activities in
Mexico as a strategy in the fight against drug trafficking.
Similarly, the report notes that the military continues to
handle cases of civil and human rights matters involving
soldiers.
The report then notes that calls for reform of the military
justice system and criticism of it have increased. However, the
report makes no comment about the need for these reforms.
Similarly, the report states that the government respects
the rights of assembly and association and that a wide variety
of human rights groups operate largely without government
restriction. This assertion is not borne out by the facts, even
those set out in the report itself.
As the report states, the government has been accused of
harassing NGO's, especially in the state of Chiapas. The report
also notes that PRODH, a noted human rights reporting and
action center, members of which recently visited the United
States, and other organizations are receiving death threats,
and the investigations into these threats have not yet yielded
any concrete results.
Mexican law and practice, in fact, creates a disabling
environment in which human rights defenders are frequently
harassed and intimidated.
The Lawyers Committee has recently published a briefing
paper analyzing restrictions on Mexican NGO's and laying out a
detailed plan for improvements by the Mexican government.
United States policy toward Mexico, which tends to be
driven largely by concerns about immigration and drug
trafficking, should focus on pressuring the government of
Mexico to adopt these reforms.
In conclusion, these comments represent our initial
reaction to the country reports, and we look forward eagerly to
a more substantive discussion of the reports with
Administration officials and interested Members of Congress
once we have had the opportunity to carry out a more extensive
review of their content.
Nonetheless, even a brief examination of a few key
countries makes apparent the general accuracy and
professionalism of the country reports and their enormous
contribution to our knowledge of human rights conditions around
the world.
The challenge remains, as always, to close the sometimes
striking gap between human rights reporting and the realities
of foreign policy decision making.
Thank you. Mr. Smith. Ms. Massimino, thank you very much
for your testimony. I think so much of what you said bears
repeating, but the point that you made about ``abuses should
not be passed off as differences,'' that's a very good spin
that is used by the Administration and it certainly doesn't
serve the cause of human rights, to just say that could be put
over in this compartment.
So I appreciate you underscoring that in your testimony.
I'd like to ask Mr. Salinas to begin.
STATEMENT OF CARLOS SALINAS, ADVOCACY DIRECTOR FOR LATIN
AMERICA, AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL USA
Mr. Salinas. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Members of the
Committee. It is our distinct pleasure to accompany you to help
you assess the State Department's 1999 country reports. I think
Ms. Massimino has really laid the challenge that we would like
to address, which is that wide gap, that yawning gap, between
foreign policy decision making and the information that the
U.S. Government holds and knows to be true.
Before I get to that, though, I would like to extend some
words of thanks to all three of you for specific human rights
actions you have taken in this past year. It's good to look at
the reports, but it's also good to look at specific actions
that have been taken. The information without action is
essentially a tome that gathers dust on the shelf.
Mr. Chairman, from your multiple hearings to what we
consider to be a significant achievement that you deserve a
great deal of credit for: the increase in the budget for the
human rights bureau, although we know that we have to monitor
that very closely to ensure that certain paper games aren't
played and the budget really is increased, to your fight last
year to add additional expertise to the Office of the Assistant
Secretary for Human Rights.
We disagreed with the voices that opposed that effort. We
believe that it would have added something very valuable to
your continued vigilance with these hearings. You provide an
important forum for the human rights community, but also for
Congress, to zero in and focus on this important issue.
So we would like to thank you publicly for that.
Congresswoman McKinney, you were and are an important
leader in the issue of arms transfers. We supported the code of
conduct, your version that you had here in the House of
Representatives. You not only have been a leader also in the
systemic issues, but also in the specific country regional
issues, whether it be the Great Lakes in Africa, to, from what
I understand from our human rights and the environment program
folks, even contemplating some important work with the
indigenous communities in Ecuador, and we thank you for that.
Congressman Delahunt, you are the proverbial voice crying
in the drug war wilderness of election year politics. Your
leadership has been significant and it's particularly important
as we are on the eve of what could be, in our opinion, a very
disastrous choice by the U.S. House of Representatives. We
thank you for being that voice for raising the issues that need
to be raised and for trying to provide some balance to the
discussions on Colombia.
Of course, my own pet project that I would personally like
to thank all three of you for is for your co-sponsorship of the
Human Rights Information Act.
With that, I would like to first introduce you all to our
legislative priorities. The Human Rights Information Act, H.R.
1625, a bill to establish an orderly declassification process
for human rights information, now enjoys 110 Members of the
House as Co-sponsors and we are hoping for markup in the
Subcommittee on Government Management, Information and
Technology fairly soon, from what we understand from Chairman
Horn and his staff.
Five of the Members of this Subcommittee, in fact, are co-
sponsors. We will continue to work to make sure that all the
Members of the Subcommittee become co-sponsors.
We are also pushing for the ratification of the Convention
on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against
Women. In the House, what we have called for is support for
House Resolution 107, which tries to express the sense of the
House that CEDAW is worthy of support, and I think it is an
important topic for us to engage, for us to try to understand
where the potential pitfalls may lay, so that we can achieve
clarity and ratify this important human rights treaty.
We also would like to achieve a simple majority in the
House of Representatives for the Congressional Human Rights
Caucus. We think that this is a no-brainer. We think that
everyone should be, like you all, very active Members of the
Congressional Human Rights Caucus.
Finally, we would like to get continued Congressional work
on our Special Focus Cases of prisoners of conscience, people
that we are calling for their immediate and unconditional
release. These include the Mexican Brigadier General Jose
Gallardo, whose crime was to call for the creation of a human
rights ombudsman in the Mexican armed forces.
We call for the immediate and unconditional release of
Turkish human rights activist Eber Yagmurdereli, whose crime
has been to advocate for Kurdish human rights in Turkey.
We call for the unconditional and immediate release of
Peruvian student Mirtha Bueno Hidalgo, whose crime was to have
class notes that the security forces misinterpreted as being
subversive literature.
We call for the immediate and unconditional release of the
Chinese student Chen Yanbin, who was arrested at the age of 23
for protesting against the crack down that followed Tiananmen
Square massacre and for being a pro-democracy activist.
As we look at the specific action agendas, we have to come
back to the country report, to the information the U.S.
Government knows to be true, and ask why is there a gap between
the knowledge and the action.
As we look at that, we have to focus on some specific
issues, and I think Ms. Massimino always does an incredible job
in pointing out very important details that are actually quite
relevant to the bigger macro picture that at first might seem
not as important, but are very relevant.
In general, we would say that one of the persistent, maybe
even a chronic failure in the State Department's country
reports is its failure to use its own voice.
We believe that it's important to engage with NGO's on the
ground, but we also believe that it's important that the U.S.
Government make its own determinations about the allegations
and issue some real determinations.
I would meet the challenge Mr. Koh laid out in his opening
remarks. We do believe that human rights is still an island off
the foreign policy mainland. There is a gap between rhetoric
and policy reality. Where could it be more clear than where I
would like to focus: the failed Administration policy toward
China, the incoherency of the foreign policy toward Colombia
that's being proposed, and the possible irresponsibility of the
Turkey policy.
With regards to China, we welcome the fact that the
Assistant Secretary announced early on the intention to
introduce a resolution at the United Nations Commission on
Human Rights and we believe that the general accuracy of the
report will give him leverage.
But not to be necessarily nitpicky, there was one omission
that we found quite troubling. The report noted that business
woman Rebiya Kadeer, her son, and her secretary, were detained
in the Xinjiang region. It went on to state that Kadeer was
detained on her way to meet a visiting foreign delegation and
was charged in September for passing state secrets to
foreigners.
[Statement of Mr. Salinas appears in the appendix.]
The report for some reason fails to mention the origin of
this mysterious visiting foreign delegation. Mr. Chairman,
Members of the Subcommittee, the foreign delegation was from
the United States Congressional Research Service! This woman is
in jail for meeting with Members of the Congressional Research
Service. We cannot understand why a detail like that would be
left off this report. One would assume that if U.S. Embassy
officials would know anything, they would know about who U.S.
officials are meeting with or failing to meet with.
I would like to include for the record an Amnesty
International report on this case and ask you all to ask the
State Department for an explanation of this omission.
Talking a little bit more about the gap between the
information and policy, in about 20 minutes, we understand that
President Clinton will be giving a speech on his China policy
at Johns Hopkins University. We have a few questions that we
would like to put forth.
Will President Clinton's speech highlight the report's
information or will this report lie dormant? Will President
Clinton reflect the report's findings that China's poor human
rights record deteriorated markedly throughout the year, as the
government intensified efforts to suppress dissent?
Will President Clinton demand that Ms. Rebiya Kadeer, who
was arrested for meeting with Congressional Research Service,
be released and thus call on Congress to endorse and pass the
concurrent resolution calling for the same?
Will President Clinton demand that the Panchan Lama be
released? Will President Clinton demand that the crackdown on
underground churches and ongoing religious persecution be
stopped?
Will President Clinton demand that forced abortions and
sterilizations be stopped?
Will President Clinton announce that he'll re-link human
rights benchmarks to the normal trade relations debate that
we'll engage in within Congress?
These are some questions to consider as we try to
understand what is the role of this information into policy.
With Colombia, first, I'd like to say that I urge you all
to consider the proposal that Mr. Delahunt has just made that a
hearing be held. We do realize that the House is moving on a
very fast track and, in fact, on Monday, Amnesty International
and several other organizations following developments in
Colombia issued a letter to House and Senate leadership asking
that given the ramifications of this aid package, given the
enormity, given the potential for a human rights and
humanitarian catastrophe, that ample consideration and ample
time be given to address all the many issues that have been
raised in the context of this proposal.
We have been going to the hearings, we have been observing
the hearings. We've been amazed by the amount of questions that
are remaining unanswered and these questions are coming from
all sides, not just those who, like you, have an expressed
interest in the human rights dimension, but from all different
sides. We don't see clear answers coming from either the
Clinton Administration or the Pastrana Administration.
While the report is very forthright about paramilitary/
military links, there are important omissions. One key omission
is a July counter-attack in Puerto Lleras by the Colombian army
and the air force against an attack from the FARC. The counter-
attack had a devastating impact on the civilian population and
this is not discussed in the country report.
The civilian population was subjected to what are probably
violations of international humanitarian law by the Colombian
security forces. Not only is this troubling, but the human
rights report does, in fact, refer to this very same attack by
pointing out the very real problem of child soldier recruits by
the FARC. So they point out the dead children who were members
of the FARC, that resulted from this attack, but for some
reason, there is no mention of the civilian casualties that
took place during this counter-attack at the hands of the
government forces.
Furthermore, there is a very troubling news account that
U.S. personnel may have participated in the counter-attack in a
support capacity.
I would like to ask you all to followup on the report that
was issued by the Dallas Morning News in August and I'd like to
offer that for the record. I just talked to the journalist, who
is a bureau chief for the Dallas Morning News for South
America, and was formerly foreign correspondent for the
Washington Post. He is a person with very high standards,
certainly it's never easy for me to pitch him a story.
When I spoke with him, he made it very clear that he stood
by his story 100 percent. So I think this is very troubling and
needs to be followed up.
Unfortunately, this is not the only troubling allegation
involving the U.S. Government in Colombia policy. Just last
week, Amnesty International called on the Department of Defense
to explain a 1997 special forces training of Colombian
personnel that took place at a location very close to a
massacre cite, and we understand from Defense Department
records and from Defense Department correspondence that there
were special forces deployments both right before and right
after the massacre that took place.
We also understand from Defense Department correspondence
that the Colombian unit trained immediately after the massacre
was, the one whose personnel was implicated in this massacre
and we would ask you all to please look into this. Senator
Leahy and Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. have been making
inquiries, but I think they could certainly use more support.
Among the many issues, it can be raised that the
correspondence that was sent to Senator Leahy listing the
special forces deployments doesn't quite correspond to the
information that was reported to Congress by the Defense
Department on special forces deployment. So there is a
discrepancy in what the Defense Department is conveying to
Congress and somehow we have to get to the bottom of which
dates are the correct dates and what did take place and what
did not take place.
But in the meantime, we continue to document one
paramilitary massacre after another in Colombia. You may wonder
what's the connection here and the connection is simply this:
that you all will be asked to vote on an aid package with many
unresolved questions, more than likely. We hear a lot about the
creation of new rapid response mechanisms by the Colombian
government.
However, we would just like to see a response. In the San
Jose de Apartado massacre on February 19, it was a massacre
that took place over 25 minutes. The Colombian 17th Brigade was
called within 6 minutes of the first killings or the first
shots. They took three and a half hours to arrive there.
What's further disturbing are credible allegations that it
may have been members of the 17th Brigade itself that committed
this atrocity.
On the 29th of February, paramilitary members entered a
community, finding that all the inhabitants had been wise
enough and had fled, and proceeded to burn the village to the
ground. What's telling is that the paramilitary presence had
been denounced repeatedly to the Colombian authorities and the
paramilitaries camped out for a full month about two miles from
the Colombian army detachment, Heroes of Saraguro Battalion.
So it's very hard to understand how a new layer of
bureaucracy will help when the basics aren't being met.
You will more than likely encounter or have probably
encountered Vice President Bell from Colombia. He is certainly
a very pleasant and articulate diplomat and he will try to
convince you that the Pastrana government has the political
will to tackle effectively the human rights situation.
I would like to say to you what you would probably hear
from many other human rights organizations that follow Colombia
closely. The question of Colombia is not a question of a lack
of resources, it is not a question of a lack of information,
it's not even a question of a lack of credible information.
It's a question of political will.
I would venture to say that what the Pastrana government
needs to do is fulfill its unimplemented mandates and its
promises.
I will tell you about four of these. For instance, he
should establish the search block. President Pastrana first
promised this in October 1998. He decreed the creation of this
to go after paramilitaries. This search block wasn't an
invention unique to the Pastrana administration. It was first
announced by the Barco administration in 1989 and each
successive administration, has when pressed about the
paramilitary groups, stated, ``oh, we're going to create the
search block to go after the paramilitaries.''
If you ask Vice President Bell about this, you may get an
involved treatise on the importance of nation building, as we
did when we met with him on Monday.
The Pastrana government needs to enforce the close to 400
outstanding arrest warrants and detention orders issued by the
attorney general's human rights unit. The majority of these
arrest orders are on paramilitary members. However, if you ask
Vice President Bell about this, you may yet vague numbers about
new detentions, you may get one or two real concrete cases. But
if you happen to ask for a time table and benchmarks on the
enforcing of these arrest warrants, you may get, as I did, a
blank stare.
The Pastrana government also needs to pass a law for
``disappearances,'' a law which has been repeatedly vetoed,
President Pastrana no exception, since the administration of
President Gaviria when it was first introduced. If you ask Vice
President Bell about this, you may get contradictory excuses,
as a large group of human rights organizations did on Monday.
You may perhaps get fumbled attempts to explain legislative
failings that did not happen, or principles that were not
flagged early enough. You may even ask about what the
government's strategy is to pass the legislation and he may
tell you that they will be calling the legislators as soon as
they return to session.
One could go on. The key is that the problem is one of
political will. We are now being told that a new layer of
bureaucracy is being created. A very good example of how
resources upon resources won't necessarily lead you to
effective human rights protection is not only this Colombian
case, which has a very vast and complex and well funded human
rights bureaucracy, but the Mexican case and its National
Commission on Human Rights.
Because of the clear failings of the Colombian
administration of President Pastrana and of the Clinton
Administration, we call on you to stop the rush into what will
probably turn out to be a humanitarian and human rights
catastrophe, with a not so desired, but clearly visible ``made
in USA'' label.
We ask that you please do what you can to make sure that
these unanswered questions are addressed.
Finally, on Turkey, I think Mr. Koh was every eloquent when
he went through the list of the benchmarks. I think it is very
clear that the benchmarks have not been met and we hope that
you ensure that the Administration vetoes or rejects the four
billion dollar export license for further attack helicopters
for essentially what will be further carnage.
Thank you all very, very much. Mr. Smith. Thank you, Mr.
Salinas. Mr. Delahunt has to leave, but asked if he could pose
a question to you.
Mr. Delahunt. Thank you, Mr. Salinas, for your generous
words. In the Human Rights Watch, there is language that--let
me quote it. It says ``Colombia's civilian investigative
agencies, in particular the attorney general's office, are
capable of sophisticated and hard-hitting investigations.''
That's from their language. Do you agree with that
statement?
Mr. Salinas. Absolutely.
Mr. Delahunt. You have confidence in that.
Mr. Salinas. Yes. In fact, the problem is not so much their
investigations. The problem is that when they do issue a
detention order, they're not enforced. The security forces are
not enforcing them.
Mr. Delahunt. I had an opportunity in my last visit to have
an extended conversation with Hami Bronow. I have yet to have
had an opportunity to have a conversation with Mr. Gomez. It
was a very good conversation. He is not a member of the
president's party. Am I correct in that particular statement?
Mr. Salinas. I'm not sure, sir.
Mr. Delahunt. I think he's a liberal as opposed to a
conservative. He is also, I understand, very much involved in
the peace process, specifically as it relates to the ELN, and
has taken a leadership role there.
I ask these questions because earlier I had asked--
requested a hearing and you alluded to it in your remarks, by
this Subcommittee, because as we know and as the Chair and my
friend and colleague and Ranking Member from Georgia know, any
legislation is a process. It's static at times and it's very
dynamic at other times.
I would anticipate that this will be a process that will,
despite the fact the reality that it is scheduled to be in a
fast track, hearings still are important to inform and to
educate. I would think that if we extended an invitation, Mr.
Chairman, to the attorney general, that he would be a very
credible witness for us to hear and possibly we could encourage
him to come to Washington and give us his perspective, because
I found it very informative.
Much of what he had to say about the Pastrana
administration was positive, I think I should note that for the
record, but the reason that I did specifically seek to have a
conversation with him was based upon a statement by a Colombian
General, Mestor Ramirez, in Miami, relative to the attorney
general and Mr. Gomez being an enemy of the state. That caused
me great concern, but I think it's best if I yield back my
time, and since I have another appointment.
But I would ask you again to consider that request. Thank
you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Mr. Delahunt. Ms. Shea.
STATEMENT OF NINA SHEA, DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM,
FREEDOM HOUSE
Ms. Shea. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Members of the
Committee, for holding these important human rights hearings
and for inviting me to testify.
I am appearing today on behalf of Freedom House and I'm
also a Member of the U.S. Commission on International Religious
Freedom, an independent panel created by Congress to review
U.S. Government policies regarding religious persecutors, and
will be commenting for them, as well as Freedom House, on the
countries of China, Russia and Sudan. These were the three
countries that are the primary focus of the Commission during
its first year. Before beginning, Mr. Chairman, I also want to
express our deep appreciation for your personal dedication to
ensuring that human rights concerns remain a force in U.S.
foreign policy.
This year's country reports reflect a monumental effort on
the part of Assistant Secretary Harold Koh and his Bureau for
Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, they and all the American
foreign service officers who contributed to the reports deserve
to be commended.
As the reports have become comprehensive, they have come to
be relied on by many policy makers, immigration officials and
judges, the media and human rights defenders, precisely because
the reports are viewed by many as authoritative, this exercise
of providing critiques to continuously fine-tune and improve
the reports is essential and not a matter of mere quibbling.
Many of the reports, those on Pakistan, India, Burma,
Afghanistan and North Korea, for example, provide excellent
summaries of the status of religious freedom. Others need
revision.
As my colleagues who have already spoken have pointed out,
the biggest problem with the reports is that their findings do
not always correspond to American policy action.
While there are various underlying explanations, part of
the problem is attributable to the reports themselves. The
reports contain an overwhelming and unselective compilation of
facts and information, without reaching definitive conclusions
or conveying a sense of priority.
Fundamental human rights problems are lost sight of in a
welter of detail. Severe violators are hidden in an avalanche
of information. In some cases, this may be an attempt to
downplay abuses and avoid making embarrassing conclusions about
the conduct of valued allies and trading partners, reporting
that might lead to calls for sanctions.
I regret that Mr. Koh, in his remarks this morning, said
that they will continue to resist attempts to rank or order
these country reports. There is a real need to give focus and
priority designation in a report of this magnitude and type and
it's the best way of ensuring that appropriate focus and
concerted attention is given.
The world should know who is carrying out genocide and who
are committing crimes against humanity.
I'm not suggesting that the State Department undertake
anything as elaborate as Freedom House's own systematic ranking
of countries in its Freedom in the World Survey and our
forthcoming Global Survey on Religious Freedom; however, a more
selective listing of the most egregious human rights violators
and violations is needed somewhere in this report. A model for
this might be provided by the International Religious Freedom
Act, which called for an annual report, as well, and also a
designation of egregious religious persecutors as ``countries
of particular concern'' and articulation of policy regarding
those ``countries of particular concern.''
The country critiques that I'm going to talk about today
are examples of where critically important religious freedom
problems are cited in the reports, but are swamped by a
bewildering mass of unselective and unprioritized data. In a
number of country reports, a consequence of obscuring important
points of focus is that the wrong conclusion is reached about
the overall status of religious freedom.
Now, I turn to the reports of the three countries with
respect to which I speak on behalf of both the Commission and
Freedom House.
Regarding China, a crucial point that the report fails to
emphasize is that control of religion is manifestly a policy of
the central authorities. Exercise of religion is tolerated only
insofar as it serves the purposes of the state.
Since the passage of the State Council regulations in 1994,
requiring registration of all religious groups, China has shown
a determination to ``manage'' exercise of religion according to
law.
In compliance with that policy, local authorities
throughout the country have drafted restrictive regulations
pertaining to the exercise of religion, while the degree of
zeal with which the policy is implemented varies from province
to province. The principle that religion must serve the state
inherent in the Chinese communist party's Marxist ideology is
promulgated through law and propaganda by the communist party.
This fundamental fact should be highlighted, not mentioned,
only--and not only mentioned on passing as one among hundreds
of other facts in the 67-page China report.
Similarly, it bears emphasizing in the 77-page report on
Russia that the largest pending issue there is the status of
the significant number of religion organizations that were not
able to re-register before the December 31 deadline.
Up to half of Russia's religious groups remain unregistered
and according to the 1997 law, are now subject to liquidation.
This month, for the first time to our knowledge, a local court
has used the liquidation procedures to terminate a church and
is now threatening to liquidate up to 13 others.
Though this information became available only after the
State Department report was published, many of the religion
organizations have been and continue to be in an insecure legal
situation that probably will not be resolved until after the
Presidential elections in late April.
The registration problem is fundamental to understanding
religion freedom in Russia, for it points to the lack of legal
and institutional security for religion in Russia.
In addition, conspicuous in its absence is any discussion
of the clearest harbinger of future religion persecution, the
government's use of anti-Muslim language in its propaganda
campaign to stir up support for its conflict in Chechnya. These
facts merit priority treatment and analysis in the report.
Essential facts are lost in the report on Sudan, to such a
degree that it possibly qualifies as the weakest of the reports
in the whole compilation, and this is--this country of Sudan is
probably the worst human rights hell on earth, from my
perspective.
While the report mentions that two million people have died
in the conflict, it fails to give a real sense of the scale and
intensity of the government's prosecution of the war. At times,
the report is erratic and unclear, even about the basic fact
that religious persecution is at the core of the conflict.
Tucked into the middle of a paragraph about press freedom
is the critical finding, ``in the context of the Islamization
and Arabization drive, pressure, including forced
Islamization--on non-Muslims remained strong. Fears of
Arabization and Islamization and the imposition of the Shari'a
fueled support for the civil war throughout the country.''
I was disappointed to see that Secretary Koh, in his
remarks this morning, only devoted one sentence in his
testimony, in his written testimony, to this situation, the
conflict in southern Sudan. His remarks address extra judicial
killings and disappearance, but doesn't scratch the surface of
what is actually happening there and certainly doesn't sound
any alarms about the scale of what's happening.
As you know, the House of Representatives passed a
resolution last June which characterized the Sudanese regime of
``deliberately and systematically committing genocide.'' The
Catholic bishops of East Africa made a similar assessment last
August. The Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel,
after reviewing the facts in many human rights reports, wrote
to President Clinton in a letter, which is published in the
current issue of the Jewish intellectual journal Sh'ma, that
``I am haunted by what I know of Sudan,'' also calling it a
genocide. So Congressman Tancreda was not the only one to call
it a genocide this morning. He's in very good company.
The Commission met with the Ambassador at Large for War
Crimes, Mr. David Scheffer, just last week and he said that
the--he told them that he has never looked into whether there
is genocide occurring in Sudan because no one in the State
Department has ever requested it, which seems to belie
Secretary's Koh's comments that they were concerned about it
and had so many meetings about it.
The Commission on International Religion Freedom is
apparently the sole genesis for such an overdue inquiry and we
are at this point eagerly waiting for the state's determination
or work product on this investigation.
The report neglects to underscore the significance of the
government's routine blocking of international, including
American food aid to south Sudan, though they mention it. In
what Senator Bill Frist calls ``calculated starvation.'' This
strategy has killed hundreds of thousands Sudanese civilians in
1998 alone and is unquestionably the most lethal weapon of war
in this conflict.
The report also fails to make the critical connection
between new oil development by Khartoum and the unfolding human
rights tragedy. Recent assessments by Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Sudan, and
the Canadian Government have all found an inextricable link
between the actions of the Khartoum regime and the Greater Nile
oil project.
Since the oil pipeline revenues began flowing several
months ago, the Khartoum regime has escalated its ruthless
assaults on southern civilian populations. Targeted with
particular savagery are those areas immediately surrounding the
pipeline itself, where, as the report finds, the Sudanese
military is now carrying out a scorched earth devastation.
The international press, late last year, as well as a
recent report commissioned by the Canadian Government, have
reported that the resources of the Greater Nile partners,
including their roads, airstrips and aircraft, are being used
directly for military purposes. Helicopter gun ships and
Antonov bombers, key elements of the Khartoum regime's war on
civilians, had access to the extraordinarily well positioned
airstrip of the partners.
Two days ago, the compound of the Irish aid group, CONCERN,
was bombed by the Sudanese air force, and on March 1, the
Khartoum regime bombed the Samaritan's Purse hospital, run by
the family of Rev. Billy Graham, in Lui, near Juba in southern
Sudan, where four American doctors have treated over 100,000
patients since 1998, and at least two patients we know of were
killed in that attack.
Then last month, the government had deliberately bombed a
Catholic primary school in the Nuba mountains, killing 19
children. Without a doubt these planes, these Antonov bombers,
are being fueled by oil from the Greater Nile project.
In addition to facilitating the Khartoum regime's war
effort through direct enrichment and resources, as Secretary of
State Albright made clear several months ago, it is the
prospect of new unimpeded oil revenues that convinces the
otherwise bankrupt Khartoum regime that it can acquire the
military means to win the war outright. A war that the Congress
has declared to be genocidal, will continue unless oil
development and revenues are removed as the means for the
regime to insulate itself economically.
This was precisely Secretary Albright's point in Nairobi
back in October, when she criticized the involvement of
Talisman Energy, a 25 percent partner in the Greater Nile oil
project.
The Sudanese government's oil joint venture was itself
especially designated as a sanctioned entity by the U.S.
Treasury Department on February 16, though the individual
partners, such as Talisman, the Chinese oil company, were not
sanctioned.
The Petro China, a front company for the Chinese oil
company involved in Greater Nile, which, at 40 percent
partnership, is the largest shareholder, has already applied to
enter the U.S. equity markets and is soon expected to be
approved by the SEC.
So why doesn't the report draw the link between the oil and
the escalating conflict--the genocidal conflict? Why is the
Administration permitting this IPO to go through?
This concludes my joint statement on behalf of the U.S.
Commission on International Religion Freedom and the Freedom
House.
Now, on behalf of the latter, I wish to briefly comment on
several other countries.
As you pointed out earlier today, Mr. Chairman, that lost
in the Egypt's report myriad of detail is the fact that the
Coptic Christian minority, the largest Christian minority in
the Middle East, is relegated to second class status by
official policy which fosters an atmosphere of intolerance that
has given way to patterns of violence, both by the militants
and government security forces.
This fundamental fact is epitomized in the continuing Al
Kosheh crisis of the past 2 years, a tragedy that is only given
sketchy treatment in the report and a tragedy that continued
throughout 1999 by virtue of the fact that there was a failure
of justice in the case, no one was ever convicted.
In fact, a government press report says that those who were
implicated were exonerated and given cash awards. That the
NGO's have been restricted across the board and that the head
of the largest human rights group, the EOHR, was charged, after
he brought forward facts about the Al Kosheh incident, and is
now in exile, as far as we know.
As I point out in my written testimony, this assessment by
the State Department that somehow the human rights record in
Egypt has again improved somewhat over the past year, is being
used by asylum officers to deny Coptic Christians asylum.
The Vietnam report is also deeply flawed in its assertion
that in some respects, conditions for religion freedom improved
during the year. In view of the extensive April 1999 decree on
religion, which is barely acknowledged in the report, as well
as other developments, it can be more persuasively argued that
in important respects, religious freedom saw setbacks in 1999.
Under this new decree, all religious properties confiscated
by the communist authorities after 1975 have become the
permanent property of the state and government agencies are
empowered to determine which religions are authorized in the
appointment of religious dignitaries and publication of
religious matter are subject to the prime minister's approval.
So the key to understanding the status of religious freedom
in Vietnam is the fact that the regime claims the right to
control religion, that a government-created Hoa Hao committee
directed by the well known communist cadre Mudi Ton was given
official recognition and was able to hold a festival, is
consistent with this fundamental fact of government control and
is not a sign that religious freedom is expanding.
The independent Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam remains
severely persecuted with its organization and legal activities
banned and top leaders in detention under close police
surveillance.
Throughout July and August, police and religious official
broke into pagodas throughout the country and conducted
midnight raids. Unlike the government-controlled Hoa Hao, the
independent Buddhists had to hold their Congress last May
overseas in California. Christians in the Hmong region and
tribal areas were the most severely prosecuted of the Christian
groups, as the report states. This, too, can be explained by
the fact that government bloc committees and surveillance
agents can and do more readily intimidate and harass Christians
in developed regions within the government's reach, whereas
far-flung rural villages are largely outside the government's
ability to control on a regular basis.
Finally, regarding Saudi Arabia, the report gives credence
to misleading government claims that private non-Muslim worship
is permitted. Public worship by Christian Jews and other non-
Muslims is, in principle, a capital offense and the religious
police have in the past year, as in previous years, entered
private homes searching for evidence of private worship by non-
Muslims.
In recent years, non-Muslims have been flogged, imprisoned
and reportedly killed for private worship.
Last October and again in January of this year, private
homes have been raided and the Filipino Christians conducting
worship services inside, including children, were thrown in
jail for up to 40 days without consular access, some of whom
were threatened and abused by police before being deported.
That concludes my statement. Thank you.
Ms. McKinney [presiding]. Thank you.
Ms. Shea. Madam Chairman, I'd like to mention that I'm
going to have to be leaving in 10 minutes to pick up my
children from school.
Ms. McKinney. All of us will, as well. So I would really
like to hear Ms. DesForges.
STATEMENT OF ALISON DESFORGES, CONSULTANT, HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH/
AFRICA
Ms. DesForges. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I think the
persistence and endurance of this particular Subcommittee in
the intensity of its examination of this issue is indeed one of
the reasons why we have seen such steady improvement in the
country reports.
The Congressional oversight and insistence upon the
importance of human rights has obviously played a large role in
focusing the attention of the State Department on this central
issue.
I would like to address quickly some important points about
the reports dealing with the Great Lakes Region of Africa,
before moving on to what is essentially the most important part
of my testimony, some concrete recommendations about how
exactly we can move to integrate better those concepts which we
all honor into an effective foreign policy.
Several speakers this morning and members of the panel, as
well as Members of Congress, have indicated important omissions
in various country reports. Nowhere is this more glaring than
in the treatment of the Great Lakes of Africa, where, for
example, the role of Ugandan troops in the DRC is barely
mentioned.
There is no discussion whatsoever of possible human rights
violations by these troops. The conflict between the Hema and
the Lindu, for example, is examined, but nowhere is there any
mention of the role of Uganda in politicizing and militarizing
this conflict.
This is all the stranger given the underlying context of
much of U.S. policy in the Great Lakes and, in fact, of much of
human rights focus in the Great Lakes, which is exactly what
Mr. Koh described this morning as atrocity prevention. The
prevention of atrocities is increasingly narrowly defined as
atrocities which could potentially happen to those people who
are Tutsi or Tutsi-related. So that in the section dealing with
the DRC, for example, there is extensive and absolutely
justified discussion of anti-Tutsi sentiment on the part of the
Kabila government, but in those scanty sections dealing with
rebel factions and their backers, there is no mention
whatsoever of anti-Hutu sentiment.
So it's important to recognize that the distortions which
we see here are a result not simply of questions of political
alliance, which are, of course, important, but of this
continuing fundamental sentiment of overwhelming guilt which
results from the failed U.S. policy at the time of the Rwanda
genocide.
We're always trying to prevent that horrible past from
happening again and until we come to terms with that, as
Congresswoman McKinney has suggested, through an open
investigation of our own role, we are going to continue chasing
our tail in an attempt to make not happen what has, in fact,
already happened.
In addition to important omissions in dealing with Uganda
and Rwanda in particular, there is another spin given to the
material, similar to the spin that other panelists have also
mentioned in other parts of the world: an attempt to minimize,
soften in some way the presentation of data. Yes, they put it
out there, but they then qualify it in one way or another to
attempt to reduce its impact.
So that when dealing with reports of killings by Rwandan
troops in the DRC, for example, it is several times these
reports are cushioned with statements questioning the
credibility of these reports?
Yes, of course, when you're assessing reports of human
rights abuses, you must look for confirmation, but once you
have the confirmation, you report what is, in fact, confirmed
and you let the rest drop. There is no need to keep reminding
us that many reports are not credible. Of course, that is true
everywhere. In addition, the killings of Rwandan troops and
their attacks on civilian populations are put very much in the
context of self-defense.
The chapter on the DRC, for example, states that Congolese
Tutsi, as well as the governments of Burundi, Rwanda and
Uganda, all relied on the Rwandan military presence for
protection against hostile armed groups operating out of the
eastern part of the country. That's putting a tremendous burden
on the Rwandan military establishment and it does, in fact,
seem to serve as a justification for whatever abuses it might
then be accused of committing.
In a similar vein, whenever Rwandan attacks and massacres
are mentioned, they are also preceded by the information that
this was a response to what somebody else did. So here, again,
the attempt to give it a spin, to make it less awful than it
really is.
Let me point out, too, some very interesting comparisons
between the chapters on Rwanda and the chapters on Burundi,
where the difference in language clearly reflects the degree of
closeness to the current government.
So that when discussing ethnic discrimination in Rwanda,
the chapter says at the start that yes, there is ethnic
discrimination, but later in the chapter it softens this by
saying that some Hutu accuse the government of discrimination,
again without taking a position. Whereas the chapter on
Burundi, where you have a very similar situation, but where we
have not the same closeness to the Burundi government, there is
a clear statement: state discrimination against Hutu affects
every facet of society, but most particularly higher education
and certain branches of government, such as the armed services
and the judicial system.
Similarly, in discussing the judicial system, in the
Rwandan chapter, we're told that there are no reports of
political prisoners in Rwanda. Human Rights Watch has delivered
a number of cases directly to the door of the embassy, but here
we're told there are no cases of political prisoners in Rwanda,
while in the Burundi chapter, we're told that there are some
clearly identifiable political prisoners.
In talking about the Rwandan judicial system, as well, the
Rwanda report concludes that the ``vast majority of trials met
international standards,'' yet earlier in the chapter it says
50 percent or fewer than 50 percent of the accused had access
to legal counsel. In what way then does this meet international
standards?
Similarly, when discussing the proposed reform of the
judicial system to create popular justice, the popular justice
system of gacaca, the report says that lawyers will not be
permitted to ``participate officially.'' That's not so. Lawyers
will not be permitted to participate in any form whatsoever.
So these details indicate a spin on the report which is a
very important one.
Another case: the mention of villagization is passed over
very quickly in the context of the report, simply saying that
some observers believe that residents were compelled to move to
these government designated villages. This gives no sense of
the fact that thousands of people have been forced to destroy
their own homes and to move to government designated sites,
where they are now living in shelters made out of sticks and
grass and banana leaves, some of them for 2 years, because the
government has imposed this policy of forced villagization.
The reports on the DRC and on Rwanda make the point many
times that it is difficult to get information, and in fact,
this is a problem. But if embassy personnel were more open to
receiving information from local human rights organizations,
they would find themselves relatively well supplied with what
they need.
Of course, this information would need to be critically
assessed, but the point is the information is there. All we
need to do is make adequate use of it.
Let me go on to some concrete recommendations which could
perhaps help to bridge the gap between that island of human
rights and the mainland of general policy.
First of all, as the reports indicate, the allegations of
massive crimes against humanity in the DRC have never been
investigated. The U.S. initially supported the idea of a U.N.
investigation, but backed off when the Kabila government and
the Rwandan authorities said no.
In the recent U.N. Security Council resolution establishing
the peace keeping operation in the Congo, the U.S. has once
again endorsed the prospect of an investigation of these
massacres. We would urge the Subcommittee to keep that on its
agenda and to ensure that the Administration understands the
vital importance that this time that investigation be done, be
done well, promptly and thoroughly.
Uncovering the truth of crimes is not enough. We also have
to have accountability and----
Mr. Smith [presiding]. Ms. DesForges, would you mind
yielding just for a minute? The gentle lady from Georgia had a
question.
Ms. McKinney. Yes. I do need to go vote. But, Dr.
DesForges, I would just like to request that I can call you and
we can discuss some issues later, since I've got your number
here.
But you were about to go into the issue of accountability,
and you might even answer my question. I will just say that I
have concerns for all of you about the accountability of the
United Nations, the accountability of the United States itself,
and about U.S. corporations and U.S. corporate behavior and
their accountability.
So why don't you go ahead and finish on the accountability
and then I will pose my question, because I want to hear what
you have to say.
Ms. DesForges. Just as a side light, let me mention that
the OAU report on responsibility for external actors during the
Rwandan genocide will be published shortly and should provide
an opportunity to call once again for a United States
investigation into its own behavior.
If the pattern of impunity is to be broken, these kinds of
crimes must be dealt with in something other than simply a
truth-telling kind of mechanism. The international criminal
tribunal for Rwanda, which is a very, very flawed structure in
many ways, is perhaps the best we're going to get in the short
term. We need to exploit it to its maximum, including insisting
that its mandate be extended, so that it parallels the mandate
of the tribunal for former Yugoslavia. That is, it becomes an
open ended mandate, which allows it to deal with events that
happened after the end of 1994, and which would allow it to
deal with events that happened also by all parties in the DRC.
Similarly, the establishment of a separate chamber to deal
with Burundi would allow it for the first time to deal with the
unresolved issue of accusations of genocide and crimes against
humanity in Burundi. Those charges were made by a U.N. Security
Council commission of investigation and they were let drop
completely.
The connections in this region are too complex to permit
partial justice; that is, justice for one party and not
another, justice in one country and not another.
Even with the best possible functioning of international
justice, we also need to support development of judicial
systems within these various nations. The United States is now
well placed to do this, with the Great Lakes justice
initiative, and I would encourage you to support the efficient
administration of that fund so that, for example, in Burundi,
money can be directed to helping to redress the gross ethnic
imbalance there by providing immediate short-term training to
Hutu jurists so that they can enter into the court system and
perhaps to allowing for the temporary recruitment of foreign
jurists to lend greater credibility to judgments in those
courts.
In the Rwandan context, support for the new gacaca process
is, of course, a valuable idea, but it's one which we should
permit only if we do not sacrifice our own standards of due
process, and that means particularly allowing accused to have
the right to legal defense, particularly if the consequence of
their condemnation will be a life in prison.
Local human rights groups have been mentioned several times
this morning as important sources of information. Supporting
them financially and politically is of the greatest importance.
In the Rwanda chapter, there is a mention that local human
rights groups are weak because they have very few resources.
Yes, indeed, and USAID has refused to give any money to those
local human rights groups, up until very recently, when, after
we made a vigorous protest, they decided to look at local human
rights organizations as a possible recipient of funds.
The Members of the Congressional Friends of Human Rights
Monitors have played in the past a very important role and need
to continue playing that role, being alert to possibilities of
persecution and danger for our colleagues on the ground. When
on missions, we've heard how often you all travel, a great deal
obviously, on those missions, your being in touch with local
activists rather than simply with official types gives those
people a small measure of protection and an enormous amount of
encouragement.
Ms. McKinney. Let me thank the Chairman. I think I've just
about given up my opportunity to go and vote. But for all of
you--maybe this is just a vent right now--the United Nations
has apologized three times in Rwanda, Srebreneca, and East
Timor, for their failings.
They said I'm sorry. My question is, is I'm sorry enough?
As I watch the Rwandans, the Srebrenecans and the East Timorese
try to put their shattered lives back together and in the case
of Rwanda and East Timor, trying to put countries back
together, I'm sorry just doesn't seem to be enough.
Since you represent the legal community, maybe you could
help with, under the face of the staggering culpability by the
United Nations, what's out there for victims of U.N. complicity
in human rights violations.
But let me continue with the United States and
accountability on the part of the United States. As we learn
and continue to learn even today about U.S. military ties to
other militaries, we see that our own troops, our own people
are complicit in human rights abuses, and in some cases, even
worse situations with respect to Rwanda, I believe.
So what is it that keeps the United States accountable and
for those people who are victims of U.S. military behavior and
policy, Mr. Salinas, you talked in your piece about good
information, but bad policy. To whom do the victims of U.S. bad
policy turn for redress and holding the United States
accountable, and then with U.S. corporations? Oil companies and
our diamond people, we see that oil and diamond are used as
excuses for fueling wars and the commission of human rights
abuses.
How is it that we hold our U.S. corporate community
accountable for the human rights violations that they
participate in as well?
Ms. Massimino. There's a lot there to respond to and all of
them very, very good points. I'd like to make a couple of
points in response to that.
There had to be a lot of ``sorries'' on the part of the
U.S., on the part of the United Nations, over many, many years,
and this is a big problem, the U.S. participation in human
rights abuse, the U.S. standing by watching human rights abuse
and then deciding to act when it's too late to prevent.
I guess I would say there are a number of steps that could
be taken to help make sure we are not in a position of having
to say only ``sorry.''
Again, one is--and Mr. Salinas can talk more about this,
but one is the importance of making sure that people know that
the conduct of their own government and their participation in
human rights violations is going to be made public, and that's
why the Human Rights Information Act is such an important idea
and such an important vehicle, because if people know, if
bureaucrats know that their actions, that the basis on which
they are making their decisions, their involvement in the human
rights violations of other governments, to the extent that's
documented, is going to be made public, that's a huge
deterrent.
On the issue generally of accountability----
Mr. Smith. Ms. Massimino, would you mind suspending just
briefly. Ms. McKinney and I both have a second in a series of
votes and now they're only 5 minute votes and this is on a
bill. I have several additional questions, but one with regard
to North Korea, which has been noticeably absent in much of
this discussion.
When Ambassador Seiple was here and appeared before our
Committee and named the countries of particular concern, he
left out North Korea. I asked him couldn't we presumptively
list it, even though we may not have access to detailed
information? How do you get a delegation on the ground?
Reporting is minimal, nil to none, and yet we know that there
is severe repression that ought to presumptively qualify North
Korea in that list.
You might want to touch on North Korea.
Mr. Rees, who is our chief of staff, will keep the hearing
open, and your answers will be looked at very carefully by all
of us, and we thank you so much for coming. I hate to leave,
but there is a whole series of votes coming up.
Ms. Massimino. Thank you.
Mr. Rees. Perhaps you could briefly finish the answer to
the other question and then answer the question about the
absence of information in North Korea.
Ms. Massimino. The other point I wanted to make on
accountability is this. One thing that was striking to me, it
was in Secretary Koh's introductory remarks, on the release of
the report. He talks about accountability a lot and one of the
things he says is that there is no international consensus on
the need for an international criminal court.
Happily, that's not true. There is a strong international
consensus that we need this international criminal court, a
standing body to address the kinds of abuses that have had to
be addressed in the various ad hoc tribunals.
The problem is that the U.S. is standing outside of that
international consensus and that's terribly distressing and a
part of U.S. policy that we hope to see changed in the future.
Mr. Rees. Does anyone have an answer to the North Korea
question? I think the focus of the Chairman's question on North
Korea was that--and it's not only North Korea, it's also
notable in the Laos report, the Burma report--where you can't
get information, where there are reports, particularly from
exiles, who say, ``well my relatives in the country or my
friends tell me that this terrible thing is going on,'' and
then the report either doesn't mention those things or it says,
there were reports, but there was no way to confirm it.
Does the worst government win? In other words, the more
successful you are at blocking transparency, at keeping human
rights organizations out, at keeping information from getting
out, do you get a pass in the human rights report because of
that? What is the solution?
Ms. Massimino. That's a difficult problem and we face it
ourselves. If we were to sit down and talk about countries
where we don't get access and, therefore, can't publish reports
and can't--all we can do is hold press conferences or issue
statements saying that they won't let us in.
Cuba, North Korea, Syria, there are a number of countries.
Now, usually those are countries that are not getting a
``pass'' in terms of U.S. policy toward them, because they are
denounced as pariah governments and aren't getting aid so
that----
Mr. Rees. Laos and certain regions of Vietnam are utterly
inaccessible. Terrible things are said to happen there, and
it's arguable that those countries are getting a pass in terms
of U.S. policy. Maybe other countries, as well.
Ms. Massimino. Yes. I guess what I would say is that what
we have to do in countries like that and what we urge the
country reports to--the approach to take is to state
specifically all of the allegations about abuses and to make a
bigger point of not assuming that access will be denied, but
make--this is what we do--make requests, get denied, press
again and document the denial of access as prima facie evidence
of their being something to hide there.
It's a hard problem and we face it, too.
Mr. Rees. Anybody else on that question?
Mr. Salinas. I think part of it is to look at it in terms
of whether or not you allow the countries that do not permit
access to get a free pass. In a way, this is kind of answering
the question of the Ranking Member, ``who holds the U.S.
Government accountable?'' The answer is you all. It's the role
of Congress, it's the oversight, it's the checks and balances
on the executive branch, it's why we're so focused on Congress
with this Colombia aid package.
You are the ones that can get the information. You are the
ones who can pass a bill to set up an orderly process to have
clarity, and you are also the ones that can help nudge the
administration to make it clear to countries that do not offer
access, make it clear to them, so that they understand, that
there is a price to pay for that.
So we're not just left with an omission, it's not just a
gap in the reporting, you make a big deal out of it. You make
it clear that this is unacceptable and you keep insisting.
Mr. Rees. Dr. DesForges, this example in the context of
North Korea, other Asian nations, recalls the situation in
Eastern Congo, then Zaire, in 1996, when Refugees
International, UNHCR, and other groups were saying that there
were over 100,000 missing refugees somewhere who might be being
killed.
As far as I know, the international community has--the
bodies that like to cal themselves the international
community--have never come to terms with that. They've never
said ``yes, too bad, they got killed,'' or ``no, they didn't.''
You might be more familiar with the end game on that
terrible situation, about the lack of information and how the
lack of information and perhaps the deliberate failure to
search for information generated policy.
Ms. DesForges. Yes. I think that's the important
distinction, when is lack of information a true lack? It's like
we're finding increasingly that famine is never really famine,
it's all politically determined. It's not a lack of food, it's
a question of policy. I think it's not a lack of information,
it's a question of policy.
As in the case you mentioned, the information was there.
The U.S. had satellite surveillance. The information was there.
It was that one part of the U.S. Government was not about to
share that with human rights defenders because of certain
policy interests.
I would suppose that even in a case like North Korea, that
there is a substantial amount of intelligence available if
there were a human rights culture that infected our
intelligence service and if they also believed that this was
something that their information should reflect. My guess is
there would be a way that that information could be gotten and
passed to the country reports people.
It's just that that, as we have bemoaned all day long, has
not yet happened. We're creeping up on them. But I think there
is also the question of time. As my colleagues have stressed,
it's not enough to be refused once. You have to keep trying,
and things do change. No situation is set in concrete and no
group of abusers, no abusive government is homogeneous.
There are always factions within any government and at some
point, they will start to see that the costs of continuing to
stonewall on these issues is such that it might be better to
give in and allow for some closer examination.
I think it's a question of publicity. For example, the
Mwenge incident, which has now become so famous that Secretary
Albright mentioned it at the United Nations, 15 people were
massacred. How many times have 15 people been massacred in
Eastern Congo?
Now, obviously, this was a particularly gruesome incident
that caught people's imagination, but it was simply the fact
that that was picked up and talked about over and over and over
again, that finally led those local authorities to get in touch
with people like us to say wouldn't you please come and
investigate, because we would really like to have the world
know what happened at Mwenge.
Of course, then you're subject to manipulation once you get
there and you have to be alert to that. But the point is that
over time, with sufficient pressure, cracks develop in those
edifices and then you can scoot on through.
Mr. Rees. In accordance with the Chairman's order, the
hearing is now closed.
[Whereupon, at 2:40 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.
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A P P E N D I X
March 8, 2000
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