[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 156 (Tuesday, October 10, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1901]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



               E X T E N S I O N S   O F   R E M A R K S


[[Page E 1901]]


     THE UNITED NATIONS CONFERENCE ON WOMEN IN BEIJING--SUCCESSFUL 
              ASSESSMENT GIVEN BY JOURNALIST JUDY WOODRUFF

                                 ______


                            HON. TOM LANTOS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, October 10, 1995

  Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, United States participation in the United 
Nations Conference on Women, which was held in Beijing in early 
September, was far more controversial in the United States than it 
should have been. Questions were raised about the appropriateness of 
American participation because the conference was held in China and, 
clearly, the human rights record of the Beijing regime is appalling. 
Others expressed concern about the supposedly ``radical'' agenda of the 
conference.
  Mr. Speaker, I defended United States participation in the conference 
as appropriate and useful in several International Relations Committee 
hearings on that issue. I feel strongly that participation was in our 
interest. This was a U.N. conference, not a Chinese conference. The 
agenda and the procedures were agreed to by the member states of the 
United Nations, not dictated by the Chinese Government.
  I personally opposed the decision of the Bush Administration to 
accept Beijing as the site of the conference. But I recognize that it 
was the executive branch's prerogative to make that decision. Those who 
argued that we should have refused to participate ignored the fact that 
our absence would have been detrimental to our Nation's standing in the 
world and would have eliminated all possibility of our influencing the 
work of the conference in galvanizing the international community into 
meaningful action to advance the status of women.
  Mr. Speaker, many countries shared the concerns that were expressed 
about U.S. participation, but they decided that the best option was to 
go to Beijing and engage in the most open forum possible under the 
circumstances. We fully realized that the Chinese would attempt to 
place severe limits on freedom of action, and they did so. At the same 
time, however, our delegates protested these violations of 
internationally recognized rights.
  Our presence in Beijing and the presence in Beijing of a large 
gathering of non-Chinese from all over the world had important 
repercussions on that very closed society. The voices of our American 
participants were heard, and our American women brought to the 
conference unparalleled commitment, expertise, experience, vision, and 
the passionate commitment to a free and open society.
  Mr. Speaker, Judy Woodruff, an outstanding journalist and an anchor 
and senior correspondent of CNN, was one of the many international 
correspondents who attended and reported on the U.N. Conference on 
Women in Beijing. In the Washington Post, October 1, 1995 she gave her 
assessment of the conference. Ms. Woodruff has given us an excellent 
evaluation of the results of the conference. Mr. Speaker, I ask that 
Ms. Woodruff's article be placed in the Record and I urge my colleagues 
to give careful attention to her thoughtful views.

                [From the Washington Post, Oct. 1, 1995]

                     Beijing: A Real Picture . . .

                           (By Judy Woodruff)

       Since returning earlier this month from 2\1/2\ weeks of 
     covering the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, I 
     have been repeatedly asked what it was like to arm-wrestle 
     muscular Chinese security men amid nude protesters while 
     reporting on the dominant issue of lesbian rights.
       The Chinese police, uniformed and plainclothed, were 
     ubiquitous, carrying out the orders of a government 
     determined to minimize contact between foreigners and the 
     Chinese population. The security was at times oppressive; 
     there were hall ``monitors'' in most hotels. Buses were 
     unreliable and conditions were especially difficult in 
     Huairou, where the 32,000 nongovernmental organization (NGO) 
     delegates were forced to gather, largely isolated, as the 
     Chinese had wanted. All of them put up with relentless rain 
     and ankle-deep mud in order to move from one workshop to 
     another.
       But the picture, fed by conservative critics, of a festival 
     of radical feminism where ideas germinated in the West were 
     spread aggressively among wide-eyed disciples from the rest 
     of the world, didn't match the conference that I covered. 
     Despite some of China's anti-women practices--a one-child 
     policy that has led to frequent abortion of female fetuses, 
     for example--it was fitting the conference was held in the 
     world's most populous and dynamic continent. The Far Eastern 
     Economic Review--hardly a beacon of radicalism--noted: ``Just 
     as Asia has outstripped the rest of the world in economic 
     growth, so too has the continent experienced more than its 
     share of the attendant social dislocations and what is termed 
     in conference jargon the `feminization' of poverty.''
       Indeed what the Beijing conference really was about was 
     tens of thousands of women--and more than a handful of 
     supportive men--who raised the money and carved out time to 
     travel long distances to discuss and exchange valuable 
     information about their work promoting health, education, and 
     economic opportunity for women and girls and preventing 
     violence. Some whom I met and interviewed for CNN were 
     particularly memorable.
       Merab Kiremire of Lusaka, Zambia, who three years ago 
     started a program to give prostitutes information and skills 
     to get them off the streets and into jobs. ``I want to tell 
     the world,'' Kiremire said, ``that a lot of African women go 
     into prostitution not because they want to but because they 
     have no other alternatives.'' Since 1992, Kiremire has helped 
     more than 150 prostitutes move to different occupations but 
     also has seen dozens of women become sick with HIV 
     infections, some of whom have died. She is a passionate 
     advocate of the need to devote more resources to women's 
     health and education.
       Stories of violence against women and exploitation of women 
     were pervasive at the conference, both at the formal U.N. 
     session and at the NGO meeting. Jacqueline Pitanguy of Rio de 
     Janiero runs an organization that tries to help domestic 
     workers, who she says are paid little for their long hours, 
     yet are devalued by society and physically isolated, making 
     it hard for them to speak out about their plight. Back in 
     Rio, she told me the conference Platform for Action ``gives 
     us international legitimacy . . . so in moments of difficulty 
     . . . [public policy makers can't argue] what I'm saying is 
     crazy; it can be supported by a document to which my country 
     has agreed.''
       Among the many remarkable mothers and daughters who came 
     together to the conference were Estefania Aldaba-Lim and her 
     daughter, Cecilia Lazaro, from Manila. Aldaba-Lim, an 
     official delegate and a former minister of social development 
     and welfare in the Philippines, told riveting stories about 
     her work during the past two decades with the ``marginalized 
     members of the population,'' the more than 55 percent of 
     women in her country who are impoverished. They have been 
     victims of incest, abuse and violence in the home; many have 
     been forced to migrate to the United States and elsewhere to 
     work as domestics to send money back to support the families 
     they left behind. Anyone who doesn't understand the pain of a 
     young mother leaving her children behind in order to try to 
     provide some minimal economic security, ought to talk with 
     Aldaba-Lim and Lazaro. The daughter, a television journalist, 
     is just as eloquent: She says her mother, who was widowed at 
     an early age, is her role model--a woman of privilege who has 
     worked tirelessly for the less fortunate of her country.
       Despite tight restrictions, the sessions had a visible 
     effect on some Chinese women there. Chen Shu Yun, from the 
     ancient capital of Xian, is a senior engineer and 
     international trade specialist who is on the standing 
     committee of the provincial people's congress in her home. 
     Steering clear of publicized controversies in her country, 
     Chen nevertheless came away determined to help women get 
     better access to schooling and jobs. ``Before this, I didn't 
     pay enough attention to women's problems,'' she said, adding 
     she plans to go back to per provincial government and suggest 
     ``a special group for the women's affairs. We have the 
     special group . . . for the economic, for the industry, for 
     the foreign affairs, but not for the women affairs.''
       To the skeptics who dismiss the Beijing conference as an 
     inconsequential event in the world of serious international 
     affairs, that will be true only if international and grass-
     roots organizations don't hold governments accountable. And 
     to those who argue there was a dangerous political agenda at 
     work, that is true only if you believe there is something 
     dangerous about helping 70 percent of the world's poor, who 
     happen to be women.

                          ____________________