In a blunt address aimed at her Chinese hosts and at critics at home, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton Tuesday sharply criticized China for its violations of human rights and its heavy-handed tactics in holding an international women’s conference.
Mincing few words, Clinton lambasted China’s government for refusing visas to thousands of participants, for using its secret police to harass those who did attend and for the nation’s forced abortion programs.
“It is indefensible that many women in non-governmental organizations who wished to participate in this conference have not been able to attend, or have been prohibited from fully taking part,” she said.
“Let me be clear: Freedom means the right of people to assemble, organize and debate openly,” she added, in a clear reference to China and other nations that tolerate neither freedom of expression nor dissent. “No one should be forced to remain silent for fear of religious or political persecution, arrest, abuse or torture.”
Her impassioned speech in Beijing to the fourth United Nations Conference on Women appeared to give new impetus to the delegates, as she assailed countries committing “intolerable” human rights violations against women.
“If there is any message that echoes forth from this conference, it is that human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights,” she said.
Thousands of African, Asian, European and Latin American women wiped away tears and stood to cheer in the corridors and meeting halls at Beijing’s Congress Hall. Only 1,500 delegates were able to cram into the conference room; the others watched Clinton on television monitors.
Afterward, one Western diplomat described Clinton’s speech as “a nightmare” for her Chinese hosts and “a cold shower” for Republican critics at home who argued her visit to Beijing would be turned into a Chinese progaganda coup.
In her address, Clinton made few diplomatic concessions to the Chinese government, though she didn’t mention the host nation by name in her criticisms. Later she told reporters she hoped China “got the message.” There was no immediate reaction from Chinese authorities.
Clinton traveled on Wednesday morning to Huairou, 30 miles north of Beijing, to show her solidarity with the 23,000 participants from so-called NGOs, or non-governmental organizations, who are holding seminars and workshops under the rigid surveillance of a Chinese security force.
Madeleine Albright, U.S. ambassador to the UN and the head of the American delegation to the conference, described Clinton’s Beijing speech as a “home run.”
“Mrs. Clinton is no Johnny-come-lately to these issues,” Albright told a news conference.
“She has been working on women’s and children’s rights all her life.”
When asked whether the U.S. fears negative Chinese reaction to the speech, the ambassador replied: “When you tell the truth, that’s the only way to go about this business. She has come here not to mince words but to get down to brass tacks.”
Without mentioning specific countries, Clinton included female infanticide as a human rights violation. The practice is a scourge in China, where parents kill infant girls because they prefer to have boys.
“It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied food, or drowned, or suffocated, or their spines broken, simply because they are born girls,” she said.
Clinton also singled out the burning of brides in India by husbands or in-laws seeking new dowries, and the raping of women amid political conflicts in Rwanda, Algeria and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
She said 5,000 girls a day are subjected to genital mutilations, and she also spoke out forcefully for reproductive rights: “It is a violation of human rights when women are denied the right to plan their own families, and that includes being forced to have abortions or being sterilized against their will.”
Hours later, Harvard University professor Mary Ann Glendon, who heads the Vatican’s delegation to the UN conference, served notice that she would try to dilute a proposed conference statement demanding that women be given access to family-planning methods, including abortion.
Glendon said men must have a say in decisions about birth control and families.
Delegates saw this as an opening salvo in the battle over the drafting of a 147-page action plan to culminate the UN conference. The Vatican is backing issues such as the protection of women from violence, more financial loans for enterprises headed by women and a more proportional representation in governments.
Glendon in her speech called for greater emphasis at the conference on traditional family values and motherhood.
She called for official recognition as professionals those mothers who dedicate their time to raising children and for financial assistance to them, perhaps in the form of a government stipend.
“Mrs. Clinton’s powerful defense of women’s human rights will be undercut if the U.S. government and governments around the world fail to take this opportunity to forcefully condemn blatant human rights violations occurring on the very doorsteps of this conference,” reflected Human Rights Watch director Dorothy Thomas.
Clinton’s visit to the UN conference Tuesday ran smoothly.
But her trip to the Women’s Forum in Huairou on Wednesday was raucous and rainsoaked.
A driving rain drenched 10,000 forum participants unable to push their way in as Clinton urged the 1,500 women inside the crammed hall to continue their contributions toward women’s rights. Their efforts as non-governmental activists, she said, will determine whether the UN conference “goes beyond rhetoric and achieves something.”
The forum’s convener, Supartra Masdit, introduced Clinton as “this courageous woman who has not always been given full credit because there are people around who feel threatened by a smart and capable woman.”
Among the thousands of women in the pushing-and-shoving crowd outside the hall was Bernadette Chirac, wife of the president of France. Unrecognized and unable to enter, she stood in the downpour for an hour.
Rallies in Huairou have been curtailed by Chinese police, but many activists saw Clinton’s visit as a golden opportunity to publicize their causes.
For days the small town has been blanketed by security agents, many of them posing as official Chinese participants, interpreters and monitors. They have shouted down Tibetan exiles and other critics of China, and have interrupted seminars by demanding access to microphones, only to spout official Chinese propaganda.
