Tibetan woman says UN prevented public testimony


UNITED NATIONS, March 4 (Reuters) - Tibetan women accused the United Nations on Thursday of preventing them from testifying before a women's commission because of pressure from China, a charge U.N. officials denied.

Losang Rabgey, a Tibetan who holds Canadian citizenship, said she had been given permission to address the commission as one of five speakers on behalf of a Non-Governmental Taskforce on Women and Health but was told in the last minute she could not testify.

She did not name the U.N. official who conveyed the message to her. "But I was told the reason I could not speak is that my name is recognisable as Tibetan and it might offend the Chinese and would jeopardise our non-governmental status (NGO) in the future." Janice Mantell, executive director of the international Committee for Lawyers for Tibet was a witness to the exchange on Wednesday during a session of the U.N. Commission of the Status of Women, she said.

Beijing, which took over Tibet in 1950, has been sensitive about human rights abuse complaints which it says is an interference in its internal affairs. But there was no public protest from China's envoys to Rabgey's intended address.

A senior U.N. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity said that the incident was an error on the part of one U.N. staff member, noting that Tibetans, including Rabgey, had spoken before other U.N. committees on women in the past.

She said there was no intention of barring Tibetan advocacy groups that had registered with the United Nations.

But she also said the issue before the Commission on the Status of Women was on health topics and Rabgey's intervention was to be on violence against women in occupied territories and military conflict.

In response, Rabgey's said she was representing an Asian caucus, which wanted her to speak on women and violence, particularly in war zones. She said Tibet would not have been mentioned in her address.

Women's health, whether through rape or other forms of violence, she said, was negatively affected for women in areas of conflict and military occupation.

"The Asian caucus wanted that connection made," she said, adding that "the overriding issue is the need to protect access of NGOs to these kinds of sessions and this situation shows how fragile it can be." Several hundred advocacy groups or non-governmental organisations, from business associations to environmental groups, are accredited to the United Nations. They are permitted to testify before various committees and investigatory forums on areas that fall into their expertise.

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