Months pass the man stews in jail and the woman says nothing Until eventually
Months pass, the man stews in jail and the woman says nothing Until eventually, torn with guilt, she owns up. White woman makes love with black man Black man is charged with rape. The issue remains unresolved.Owen Bennett Jones is the BBC Correspondent in Geneva. But Indonesian diplomats insist that he should merely be allowed to use the microphone reserved for non-governmental organisations.
This year, for example, there is an argument about the status that should be accorded to the East Timorese independence leader and co-winner of the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize, Jose Ramos Horta.His supporters say that as a Nobel laureate, Mr Horta should address the Commission from the podium. "But you can achieve things with quiet diplomacy.''Lacking a clear moral lead from their politicians, delegates while away their stay by Lake Geneva haggling over issues so arcane as to defy belief. But now he is an international outcast, even the suggestion of an assault would risk the imposition of more UN sanctions.As he prepared to step down as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights this week, Jose Ayallo Lasso conceded that, like all UN structures, the body is permeated with narrow national interests "There will always be political considerations," he said. Saddam Hussein even launched a chemical weapon attack on the Kurdish village of Halabja with scarcely a reprimand. When still a major purchaser of Western arms, Iraq used to escape condemnation in Geneva.
"They fear jeopardising access to the vast Chinese marketplace."The cynicism with which the Commission's work is manipulated is exposed with remarkable clarity when a country once close to the West is demoted to pariah status. "In the end, countries are afraid to vote against China," said one. Is that fair?"China insists that any resolution against it will again be defeated, and UN officials share that assessment. "The Western countries act like school teachers handing out marks to their pupils," said the head of Peking's delegation, Wu Jianmin "They are targeting developing countries. This year, as usual, the US and the EU are threatening to hold China to account, and the Chinese are complaining. Amnesty International has for years been publishing evidence of the use of torture there, but as a member of Nato and a pillar of US security strategy, the Turks get away with it.The Chinese, like the Turks, are particularly adept at side-stepping the Commission: for six consecutive years, Peking has managed to defeat resolutions critical of its human rights record. "The countries which get singled out," conceded one UN official, "are those with no powerful allies."Others, like Turkey, will avoid the Commission's scrutiny.