SPEAKERS CONTENTS INSERTS
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42–925 CC
1997
COUNTRY REPORTS ON HUMAN RIGHTS PRACTICES FOR 1996
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FIFTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
JANUARY 31, 1997
Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations
COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York, Chairman
WILLIAM GOODLING, Pennsylvania
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JAMES A. LEACH, Iowa
HENRY J. HYDE, Illinois
DOUG BEREUTER, Nebraska
CHRISTOPHER SMITH, New Jersey
DAN BURTON, Indiana
ELTON GALLEGLY, California
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida
CASS BALLENGER, North Carolina
DANA ROHRABACHER, California
DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois
EDWARD R. ROYCE, California
PETER T. KING, New York
JAY KIM, California
STEVEN J. CHABOT, Ohio
MARSHALL ''MARK'' SANFORD, South Carolina
MATT SALMON, Arizona
AMO HOUGHTON, New York
TOM CAMPBELL, California
JON FOX, Pennsylvania
JOHN McHUGH, New York
LINDSEY GRAHAM, South Carolina
ROY BLUNT, Missouri
JERRY MORAN, Kansas
KEVIN BRADY, Texas
LEE HAMILTON, Indiana
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SAM GEJDENSON, Connecticut
TOM LANTOS, California
HOWARD BERMAN, California
GARY ACKERMAN, New York
ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American Samoa
MATTHEW G. MARTINEZ, California
DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey
ROBERT ANDREWS, New Jersey
ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey
SHERROD BROWN, Ohio
CYNTHIA A. McKINNEY, Georgia
ALCEE L. HASTINGS, Florida
PAT DANNER, Missouri
EARL HILLIARD, Alabama
WALTER CAPPS, California
BRAD SHERMAN, California
ROBERT WEXLER, Florida
DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
STEVE ROTHMAN, New Jersey
Vacancy
RICHARD J. GARON, Chief of Staff
MICHAEL H. VAN DUSEN, Democratic Chief of Staff
GROVER JOSEPH REES, Staff Director, Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights
ALLISON K. KIERNAN, Staff Associate
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C O N T E N T S
WITNESSES
Hon. John Shattuck, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, Department of State
Mr. Stephen Rickard, Director, Washington Office, Amnesty International
Ms. Holly Burkhalter, Advocacy Director, Human Rights Watch
Ms. Elisa Massimino, Acting Director, Washington Office, Lawyers Committee for Human Rights
Ms. Nina Shea, Director of Religious Programs, Freedom House
APPENDIX
Opening statement of Chairman Benjamin A. Gilman
Statement of Congressman Donald M. Payne
Statement of Assistant Secretary John Shattuck
Statement of Nina Shea
Statement of Elisa Massimino
Statement of Holly Burkhalter
Statement of Stephen Rickard
Responses to additional questions submitted for the record
COUNTRY REPORTS ON HUMAN RIGHTS PRACTICES FOR 1996
FRIDAY, JANUARY 31, 1997
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House of Representatives,
Committee on International Relations,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 11:15 a.m. in room 2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher H. Smith presiding.
Mr. SMITH. The Committee will come to order.
Good morning. This hearing of the House International Relations Committee is for the purpose of hearing testimony from the State Department and from nongovernmental organizations on the 1996 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. This hearing is usually held every year by the Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights. Because the Subcommittee will not be formally organized until next week, Chairman Gilman has graciously agreed to let us use the auspices of the full International Relations Committee hearing for the purpose of receiving the Country Reports and testimony about them.
The last hearing of the Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights, just a little over a month ago, was on the occasion of the official visit to the United States of General Chi Haotian, the Defense Minister of the People's Republic of China.
The General, who was the operational commander of the forces that attacked the pro-democracy demonstration at Tiananmen Square, had been invited to the United States by our government. The expenses of his visit were paid for with tax dollars. He was given full military honors, a 19-gun salute, visits to several military bases, and a tour of the Sandia Nuclear Laboratory.
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General Chi, whom many of us regard as the butcher of Beijing, not only was there on the scene when those students and activists were gunned down, but he actually gave the orders, and he also had a personal visit and meeting with President Clinton at the White House. During his visit, General Chi stunned the civilized world by announcing—in response to a question about whether the Chinese Government had learned anything from the killings at Tiananmen Square on June 4th, 1989, and thereafter—that nobody was actually killed at Tiananmen.
We held a hearing, as I indicated, and we heard from many people who were there on the scene, reporters, including one from People's Daily, who himself landed in a prison because he spoke out and sided with the activists, and also from a correspondent from Time Magazine, and then some of the activists themselves, who confirmed the truth of what happened and pointed out that this was another manifestation of the big lie so skillfully employed by the Chinese dictatorship. Thus, the official wining and dining of the butcher of Beijing is an important symbol, not just of our one-way love affair with the brutal Communist Government of China, but also of the broader systemic problem and relationship between the protection of human rights and other goals of foreign domestic policy.
As James O'Dea, who testified for Amnesty International at our hearing on the 1994 Country Reports, put it, ''Human rights is an island off the mainland of U.S. foreign policy.'' This Country Report, like those in previous years, appears to be generally accurate and carefully compiled. The reports, however, should only be the beginning of our official commitment to human rights. Instead, too many government officials treat them as items to display on a shelf and to point to when someone complains that we are not doing enough about human rights. As Mr. O'Dea put it, when the reports are not used as a ''basis for a plan of action,'' they only serve to prevent integration of human rights into the full range of policy development and implementation.''
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To put it even more bluntly, the message we are sending to the world is that the Government of the United States is committed to the protection of fundamental human rights only insofar as such a commitment does not threaten to interfere with anything else it wants to accomplish.
This is a terrible message to send, not only to the international thugs who know that they can murder and torture with impunity so long as they are hospitable to U.S. trade and investment, but also to their victims. And the current administration, which came into office on a strong human rights platform, and justly criticized the previous administration for coddling dictators in China and elsewhere, suffers from an even wider gap, a human rights credibility gap, between its rhetoric and its record.
Our first witness today, Assistant Secretary of State John Shattuck, has shown himself to be an encouraging exception to the rule. Mr. Shattuck, I know that you and the people who work for you in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, are working every day to give human rights protection the priority it should have in our foreign policy. But I also know that you have got a very, very tough job. Not only has the Administration failed to provide leadership at high enough levels to make a difference on these issues—the shameful installment of Most-Favored-Nation status with China comes quickly to mind—we all remember the fanfare and the accolades the President rightfully received when he linked MFN with China and human rights and said that there had to be significant progress or there would not be a conveyance of MFN for an additional year. But when there was significant regression, what did he do? He ripped it up and said there is no longer any link between human rights and trade with China.
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We also know that you have struggled with the institutional mind-set of the career bureaucracy at the State Department, which is that human rights protection is at best one goal to be balanced against other priorities, and at worst an embarrassing distraction from the real business of diplomacy, which everyone knows consists of maintaining friendly relations with terrible governments.
Unfortunately, the reports themselves sometimes appear to reflect a sort of guerilla struggle between those in the State Department who wish to tell it like it is and those who would rather avoid embarrassing dictatorial regimes.
For instance, the concluding paragraph of the introduction to the China report begins with the observation that, and I quote, ''In many respects, Chinese society continued to open further during 1996.'' The principal evidence of this remarkable assertion was that satellite television broadcasts are widely available, and that increasing numbers of citizens have access to the Internet. But the same paragraph also points out that the regime is doing its best to shut down access to the satellite broadcasts and Internet sites that might provide a genuinely free flow of information to Chinese citizens.
The pro-human rights forces also managed to include a final observation that during 1996 the government placed new restrictions on the news media. But they apparently did not prevail in getting the department to delete the false conclusion about the alleged opening of Chinese society during 1996, or even to modify it to make clear that such an opening was despite the regime, certainly not because of it.
Another section of the China report acknowledged the brutal crackdown on what the report calls the unofficial Christian religious groups, including the Roman Catholic Church and Protestant ''house churches.'' Unfortunately, the report carries over the ridiculous assertion from prior years' reports that the Beijing Government has returned certain churches, mosques, and monasteries that were confiscated from religious organizations. The report fails to mention that the so-called ''return'' was not to the religious groups from whom the properties were confiscated, but to the new official religious organizations that were designed to supplant the real ones. As the report makes clear, these official organizations are directly supervised by government organizations which are dominated by atheists.
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You and I in the past have met with the leaders, both here in Washington and I met with them on at least two occasions in Beijing, and these people care about only one thing: control, control, control. They don't care about religious freedom at all. So the report is giving the government credit for returning confiscated properties to itself, not to the people it stole the properties from.
To its credit, the Department has included in this year's Mauritania report a statement that, ''Slavery, in the form of unofficial forced or involuntary servitude, exists.'' This replaces a statement in last year's report that only the, ''vestiges'' of slavery still exist in Mauritania. Unfortunately, the report later includes a statement that slavery in which government and society join to force individuals to serve masters no longer exists. This assertion is contradicted by the conclusions of antislavery activists and independent human rights observers, who believe that the Government of Mauritania has never really enforced the antislavery law which it enacted in response to international pressures in 1980.
Despite these concerns, Mr. Shattuck, I know you speak, and I speak, for the other members of the Committee in saying that the Country Reports are a bright spot in an otherwise dismal landscape of international oppression and of silence in face of oppression. But it is important that we send a strong message to the world that the United States is not content merely to identify tyrants and victims, but the centerpiece of our foreign policy will be opposition to tyranny and support for those who resist it.
As you know, many of us in Congress have worked with the Administration, and our subcommittee last year had some 41 hearings, most of them about violations of human rights, including forced abortions and sterilization in China; slavery in Mauritania and the Sudan; child labor; torture; the forced repatriation to Vietnam of people who have been persecuted because they or their family members fought on our side against the Communists; attempts to influence U.S. policy by Libya and other rogue regimes; the resurgence of anti-Semitism in the former Soviet Union; and the persecution of Christians around the world; and we had many other hearings as well.
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It seems to me, Mr. Secretary, that the test in 1997 will not be the mere protesting of human rights abuses, but the concrete actions that are taken, the deeds, if you will, to mitigate and to end these abuses. I believe in the core of my soul, as I believe you do, that human rights are indivisible, that all human rights are sacred and precious, and I include in that the rights of the unborn. The last 4 years have been a disappointment. Perhaps 1997 will be different, and hopefully with our new Secretary of State at the helm we will see some real changes in the weeks and months to come.
I would like to ask our very distinguished ranking member of the Full Committee, Mr. Hamilton, if he has any opening statements.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Smith appears in the appendix.]
Mr. HAMILTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I don't really have a formal opening statement, but I do want to express my appreciation to Chairman Gilman and to you for this hearing on human rights. It is an important subject, and even though the Committee is not organized, I appreciate the efforts you and others have made to have this hearing.
I also want to express my appreciation to Secretary Shattuck. I think he has one of the more difficult portfolios in the foreign policy field. He has carried that work out in the last 4 years, I believe, with extraordinary distinction, and I thank him for that. I don't know exactly what the new shape of the State Department under Secretary Albright will be, but I am hopeful that you will be able to continue your responsibilities, because you have carried out this difficult assignment very well indeed.
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I think your voice has helped to elevate human rights as an important part of American foreign policy wherever you have gone. You have made a great contribution, and it has been exceedingly helpful in American foreign policy. So thank you, Secretary Shattuck, and we look forward to your testimony.
Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much, Mr. Hamilton.
Mr. Payne, do you have an opening statement?
Mr. PAYNE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Let me, first of all, thank you again for calling this very important hearing. I think that most of the newspapers today have had stories about the report, Mr. Shattuck, that you did a very outstanding report, and I would also like to continually praise you for the outstanding, very difficult work that you do around the world in viewing these various situations and reporting back to us.
I have had a chance to read some of the report, and overall, I think it is a very comprehensive report, as I have indicated it usually is. I think everyone on this committee is familiar with my stand on countries and the human rights of its people. I have spoken out on the abuses of minority Catholics in Northern Ireland, individuals in East Timor, opposition to the Myanmar's ruling generals, those innocent victims of child slavery in Sudan and Mauritania, the problems of children soldiers in Liberia, the Polisario in Western Sahara, and the minorities in Kosovo, and many of those around the world that experience discrimination and religious discrimination in Germany with, for example, the Scientology religion.
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So I think that there are certainly enough problems going around. But in regard to China, as our chairman was talking about, I believe that the report gives an accurate picture of the Jiang Zemin Government.
In the Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights, we convened a hearing to discuss the visit of General Chi Haotian to the United States. At that time, he stated that no one died during the Tiananmen Square massacre. He also mentioned the fact that the use of force was still a very viable option as it relates to Taiwan. So you can see that I find it appalling that on the one hand we read about these egregious violations on the part of the government, but on the other hand we still manage to delink trade and human rights and say that the two cannot be commingled. And even as the trade deficit with China grows and our Secretary of State, who was recently designated Madeleine Albright, plans to visit China, I am not sure whether this gives an approval to what they are doing or whether we will once again try to re-engage them on the question of human rights in that country. I believe this would send a signal to the Chinese authorities that they cannot act without impunity if we would have a firm stand with them. We still have a possibility of becoming independent—going to become linked to China as Hong Kong has been, and so there could probably be some other problems.
In this region, though, I am pleased to see in Haiti, the Preval administration has taken aggressive action to increase economic reform and police training as compared to the period from 1991 and 1994, under the Cedars regime when approximately 4,000 people were killed. I think that we can see that human rights abuses have declined tremendously.
I do think, though, that the Haitian Government will not be able to succeed, and they are having some problems with the police department because they are unable to get the training needed, and we need to have the $10 million promised to do training in Haiti if we expect that situation to improve.
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In Nigeria, I see in your report that you state that it is dismal, as you paraphrased, and I paraphrased the lack of progress, and I certainly agree with that. As you do in your report, you mention Alex Ibru, the editor of the Guardian who was permanently injured in February. That kind of situation continues to exist, and we now see the linking of China with Nigeria, with China sending defense missiles to Nigeria, and I think that that is a situation that needs to be really looked at.
Mr. Abiola is still in prison, Chief Abacha is still there, but I hear that there may be some move to lessen the visa ban in Nigeria on diplomats and government officials. I think that that would really be a wrong move.
In conclusion, I have just recently returned from the Great Lakes region where the refugee situation is still critical, and there is still a large number of unaccompanied children in Zaire, and the problem of rape has not been addressed by the international tribunal or the Government of Rwanda. Many children are now orphans or abandoned children in Rwanda—this is still a very, very important issue.
I will actually submit the rest of my statement, but I do have concerns about what is happening in Zaire, and I think that we need to take a strong look at what is happening in the eastern region.
I met with Mr. Kagame in Goma recently where that area has been taken over by rebel troops, and I think that we need to really pay attention, strong attention to Zaire, and also what is happening in the Sudan as the rebels of Khorenous forces are moving further toward the capital city there, in Khartoum.
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So once again, I will be listening very carefully, and I have a number of questions when my time comes up. Thank you very much.
Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much, Mr. Payne.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Payne appears in the appendix.]
Mr. SMITH. I would like to now turn the floor over to Assistant Secretary John Shattuck, who was sworn in as Assistant Secretary of the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, in the Department of State in June 1993.
Previously, Mr. Shattuck served as vice president of Harvard University where he taught human rights law. In 1976 to 1984, he was the executive director of the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties Union. He holds degrees from both Yale University and Cambridge.
Secretary Shattuck.
STATEMENT OF JOHN SHATTUCK, ASSISTANT SECRETARY, BUREAU OF DEMOCRACY, HUMAN RIGHTS AND LABOR, DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Mr. SHATTUCK. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And thank you for calling this hearing.
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I am privileged to be the first Administration witness to appear before this Congress, not for a confirmation proceeding, but for a substantive hearing. I think it is a very important symbol that the very first hearing that this Congress is conducting is on a subject as important as human rights, and I congratulate you and all of the members of the Committee for agreeing to do it that way.
I would like to, of course, thank you for the opportunity to appear here to discuss the Human Rights Reports of the State Department. I will discuss them generally in my prepared statement and then am prepared with the Committee, to discuss what we are doing about the situations in the countries that are characterized in the reports. I think perhaps more than any other element of our Nation's foreign policy, the democracy and human rights agenda reflects American principles and beliefs, and our vision for a safe and peaceful world.
Let me make three points at the outset about why the reports are so important and why the work of your committee is so important as well as, we believe, our Bureau. Truth and candor are the ultimate instruments of human rights progress. Truth and candor bring into the spotlight abuses that would otherwise never be known. When that spotlight is cast around the world, and it is cast in this case by the U.S. Government working closely, I might add, with many other governments, the spotlight itself can have a very significant impact on the situation involving human rights.
Our government and President Clinton have allied ourselves with a great global movement for democracy and human rights, a movement that has fundamentally transformed many countries in this world. But it is a movement at the grass roots; it is not a movement of governments. It is a movement of people who are trying to advance their own cause of human rights and democracy under international standards under the universal declaration of human rights. It is a movement unleashed at the end of the cold war that has brought profound change in many countries, South Africa perhaps in many ways most dramatically. But it has also brought change of course in all of the countries of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, also in parts of Asia, and certainly throughout Latin America where there is now a formation of democracies where there was once repressive government.
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To be sure, there are huge human rights abuses that continue and these reports chronicle those abuses. But what we see in the work of your committee, the State Department under the leadership of now Secretary Albright and President Clinton, is that the United States stands on the side of those who are asserting their own rights, and that is what we are all about in these reports.
The third point I would make is that keeping faith with people around the world who are struggling with their governments and with other situations that violate their human rights is what the long-term process of human rights development is all about. It is very important for us to keep our eye on the ball as we work on these issues, to condemn immediate abuses and put them in the spotlight, but also to work for the long-term progress that I believe can come if we keep very firmly engaged in the way that we are.
Let me turn to some of what we are doing about what is in the reports in this very creative collaboration between the legislative and executive branches that I think is what the establishment of my bureau was all about some 20 years ago. This is a creative enterprise that involves two of the key elements of our government.
The Country Reports' role in human rights advocacy and diplomacy is far reaching. To begin with, just look at it in terms of, as you were saying, Mr. Chairman, the bureaucracy. Thousands of personnel hours are devoted to preparing the report at our embassies in every corner of the world and here in Washington. The reports serve to concentrate the minds of U.S. diplomats and their foreign counterparts on the commitment to the promotion of human rights and to bring personnel into ongoing contact with extraordinary human rights activists in every country whose independent reporting is indispensable to our own.
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The annual presentation of the Country Reports to host governments, which is incidentally going on as we speak all over the world in 193 capitals, is itself a way of creating a dialog on human rights in those countries, and affording a regular benchmark for progress and a steady reminder of the U.S. commitment in this field. As Justice Brandeis once observed, the best disinfectant is sunshine, and the spotlight on abuses cast by these reports, backed by the credibility of the United States, is itself a major boost to the work of human rights advocates.
The Country Reports set a factual basis for the formation of our human rights policy. Highlighting abuses is an important first step in our approach. Repressive regimes often cringe at criticism. As Secretary Albright said yesterday in introducing the reports, they are read even by those or perhaps even most closely by those who condemn them. The number of condemnatory comments that have been made from countries around the world over the last 2 days is an indication of how much that criticism reaches those countries. Human rights advocates around the world are heartened that the United States has spoken out on their behalf. The Country Reports will quickly make their way around the world, and in doing so, will advance U.S. interests.
Just to give you one measure of the widespread interest in the reports, last year after we posted them for the first time on our Internet web site, WWW.State.Gov. They drew over 20,000 hits in just over the first few hours. The World Wide Web, in fact, has become an extraordinary tool in not only helping us get our message out, but in promoting human rights more generally.
But casting the spotlight on abuses is only the first step in our policy. Our goal has been, and will continue to be, to use all of the tools at our disposal to advance the cause of human rights democracy and justice, to be sure, differently in each country. There is no one-size-fits-all approach toward human rights, but in every country it must be a key element of our work.
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Our arsenal for promoting human rights is a broad one and we employ it actively. It includes both traditional diplomacy and a range of new approaches that we continue to expand and develop. I would like to review for you briefly some of the means we employ:
First, is getting out the information, as we have done in the reports delivered this week.
Second, we express our views vigorously and publicly. Hardly a day goes by that the State Department does not offer its public view on a human rights violation or development in some country. In recent days, for example, we have voiced our concerns about Chinese decisions that could restrict civil liberties in Hong Kong. We have condemned the deterioration of human rights in Burma. We regularly voice our human rights concerns regarding the Soeharto Government, both in Jakarta and in Washington. We expressed our lack of confidence in the integrity of the Armenian elections. Speaking is not a small step; it is very important. When the United States speaks, people listen.
Third, we conduct an energetic diplomacy in support of human rights. Let me mention just a few examples:
The President, the Vice President, and the Secretary of State have regularly raised human rights concerns in their meetings with foreign leaders, including most prominently China and Indonesia, and at regional forums, such as ASEAN.
Recently, at the conclusion of his trip to China, former Secretary of State Christopher stated that he had spent more time on human rights than on any other issue, except nonproliferation. Or to cite another example, last October, Secretary Christopher and I met with a broad range of Ethiopian human rights nongovernmental organizations, opposition party representatives, and government officials in Ethiopia.
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I myself, as you noted, Mr. Chairman, have logged hundreds of thousands of miles to 40 countries to raise human rights issues with foreign leaders. Among other recent initiatives, I have pressed President Milosevic of Serbia for democratic reforms and freedom of the media; I met with Bishop Tutu in South Africa to encourage the South African Truth Commission; and worked with the leaders of Rwanda to promote national reconciliation.
Members of my staff have visited Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan in recent months to press for the evolution of democracy, and have participated in monitoring elections in Bosnia and Albania.
We have initiated the first series of formal human rights dialogs with Russia, Colombia, and Vietnam to highlight our concerns and press for progress.
Secretary Christopher and now Secretary Albright have issued worldwide cables, the first ones ever issued in the State Department, to all of our ambassadors instructing them to raise human rights issues and concerns with governments around the world. In particular, we have asked them to pay special attention, and to be ready to raise with host governments, issues of religious persecution.
And we have worked with our allies in the European Union, in the OAS, ASEAN, and the OSCE, the United Nations' many forums, and in a host of multilateral organizations, such as the OECD, to develop common approaches and coordinated strategies on issues of human rights, democracy, and the rule of law.
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Fourth, we have worked to build new international institutions that will advance human rights. Most notable are the war crimes tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Just last week, the Rwanda Tribunal took a major step forward with a transfer from Cameroon of Colonel Theoneste Bagosora, a major architect of the 1994 genocide. I might add that was a major diplomatic initiative of the United States, working with the Government of Cameroon, the Government of Tanzania, and a number of European governments, and then providing security as this major figure in the Rwanda genocide was transferred by plane from Gallum to Arusha.
We have been the chief political, financial and logistical supporter for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav Tribunal has proven critical to the Bosnian peace process as a way of isolating opponents of peace, helping to create breathing room for moderates to emerge and beginning to answer the demand for justice by victims who would otherwise seek retribution. We are working with our allies to assist and enhance the ability of the tribunal to bring war criminals to justice.
We are deeply involved in programs promoting the rule of law, administration of justice and training police, prosecution and judges in human rights.
While at the international level, the most significant and promising of the institutions being created today are the war crimes tribunals. We are also deeply involved in the development of new quasi-international human rights institutions. In the former Yugoslavia, 1996 saw the creation of both the Commission on Human Rights for Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the International Commission on Missing Persons in the former Yugoslavia, chaired by former Secretary Cyrus Vance.
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In addition, we have actively supported new institutions of accountability in countries around the world, such as the National Truth Commissions of El Salvador, Haiti, and South Africa and National Human Rights Commissions in India, Indonesia, and Mexico.
We are also supporting the efforts of regional bodies like the OAS and the OSCE to deepen and broaden their human rights efforts and capabilities in Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe.
In the U.N context, we have supported the creation and strengthening of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Another major initiative that has resulted from U.S. leadership and support has been the creation of U.S. human rights field missions and field offices in countries from Rwanda to Colombia to Cambodia. These missions have spotlighted abuses, helped us coordinate response on the ground, and provided valuable early warning of impending human rights crises.
Fifth, we have worked to build multilateral coalitions to promote human rights, whether a sanctions coalition on Nigeria, which we are still very actively pursuing, a human rights monitoring and humanitarian relief coalition in Haiti, or coalitions to promote democratic development and peace in El Salvador and Guatemala.
Sixth, another new departure in which my bureau is involved is on the program side. We have succeeded in establishing several new assistance programs: the newly created Middle East Regional Democracy Fund will finance small, highly focused programs promoting democracy, rule of law, the rights of women and institutions of civil society, aiming at nongovernmental organizations. The Democracy and Human Rights in Africa Fund provides an accessible and quickly disbursable mechanism to support democratic transitions in Africa through NGO-managed programs, local and U.S.-based. We are currently working to develop a South Asia regional democracy fund.
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My bureau also now manages economic support funds that we allocated for democracy and human rights programs, and has directly managed the implementation of the congressionally mandated earmark for Burma, allocating grants only to NGO's that conduct democracy and humanitarian programs.
We have extended ESF programs to Haiti, Cambodia, and throughout Africa geared to democracy, rule of law, administration of justice and police training for human rights. And we administer the U.S. contribution to the International Commission on Missing Persons in the former Yugoslavia.
In addition, a DRL human rights fund is currently being established, budgeted at $7 million in fiscal year 1997, to provide the Secretary of State with an instrument to respond to human rights emergencies, conflicts, and crises as they occur. Among the activities that we think could benefit from this fund are human rights monitoring missions, justice, and accountability projects, and victims of torture.
Seventh, we are increasingly collaborating with USIA on programs such as bringing human rights activists to the United States to observe our own democratic processes at work, or arranging legal exchanges that can bring American jurists overseas where they can advise new democracies on law reform.
Eighth, building on the President's model business principles, we are engaged in extensive outreach to the business community to develop new ways of linking human rights and worker rights and concerns of child and slave labor, with corporate responsibility. We have created awards for corporate responsibility abroad.
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Ninth, we work closely with the International Labor Organization on its program to eliminate child labor, drawing on our own labor attaches and reporting officers around the world to report extensively on child labor. Working with USTR, we have achieved a partial suspension of Pakistan's GSP benefits because of concerns over child labor, targeting industries—particularly sporting goods, surgical instruments, and hand-knotted carpets.
Tenth, we have identified a number of key thematic issues to which we are giving special attention, and we will be stepping up our work in these areas in the next year. We have formed a State Department working group on women's issues, ranging from women's participation in political life to female genital mutilation to trafficking in women and girls.
The President and the Secretary of State have established the Secretary's Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom Abroad, which will create ongoing linkages between the State Department and religious leaders and authorities who are working to combat religious persecution abroad, and will interact with religious organizations promoting conflict resolution, human rights, and civil society. The first meeting of that committee, which I chair, will be on February 13th.
In my tenure, we have tried to foster greater coordination between the human rights community and our country's armed forces. Next week, for instance, I will be making the latest of a number of trips to the U.S. Southern Military Command for discussions with Latin American Ministers of Defense and military chiefs of staff. This is but one illustration of how far I believe we have come in this hemisphere where a dialog of this type would have been unthinkable a decade ago. Similarly, in Bosnia, we have developed path-breaking new forms of cooperation between U.S. military forces and human rights institutions and personnel. I should say that of course we have, I believe for the first time in history, linked human rights diplomacy backed up by military force in both Bosnia and Haiti to address catastrophic human rights situations in those countries.
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Most of the steps I have been describing are approaches that are aimed at encouraging and assisting people and countries to improve human rights. In our bilateral human rights diplomacy, we employ a range of measures, some ''carrot'' and some ''stick,'' a few of which let me illustrate with some examples.
Economic sanctions: In Nigeria, we maintain a range of sanctions on the Abacha regime, including a ban on the sale of military goods and suspension of consideration for Exim and OPIC financing. We have suspended our economic aid program to Burma and have urged others to do the same; our post-Tiananmen sanctions on China remain in place, as do the restrictions on arms imports from China announced by the President in 1994; and we have sanctions in place for rogue regimes like Cuba and Iraq.
We have imposed visa restrictions on leaders of repressive regimes. Those who benefit from the dictatorial regimes of Nigeria, Burma, and Zaire are routinely denied visas to the United States and their movements are severely restricted on their visits to the United Nations.
We have restricted arms sales in countries with poor human rights records. As you know, DRL reviews applications for arms and munitions sales for their human rights ramifications. As a result of our interventions, export licenses for a wide range of munitions or crime control commodities have been denied or held for review during the past 2 years for Afghanistan, Algeria, Angola, Burma, Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, China, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Guatemala, Indonesia, Iran, Lebanon, Liberia, Mauritania, Peru, Rwanda, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Togo, Turkey, Vietnam, Yemen, and Zaire.
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We have regularly voted against development bank loans to Mauritania, and conversely, worked to direct multilateral assistance in support of human rights progress, as in Guatemala where we pledged large amounts of assistance for the peace accord implementation.
Mr. Chairman, we have pursued all of these policies in a new post-cold war world with a focus on three primary areas: facilitating the expansion of new democracies; promoting adherence to international human rights standards; and reducing regional conflicts among ethnic, religious, and national groups.
Over the past 4 years, we have worked steadily to integrate these issues into the mainstream of our foreign policy. Our experience has taught us that much can be accomplished when the United States exercises leadership, but at the same time we can be most successful when we pursue our objectives in close coordination with our allies and with those organizations outside government which share our goals.
Mr. Chairman, these remarks have offered just a brief overview of some of the human rights policies and activities we have pursued in recent years. We are pleased to work in close partnership with the Congress to advance human rights as a critical component of our foreign policy.
In closing, I would like to offer my thanks to the Congress for its strong support of our efforts over these past 20 years to promote and protect human rights. This support has been bipartisan and it has come from both Houses of Congress. The encouragement and the tools you have provided have given us the wherewithal to make a real difference in the world. With your continued support we can achieve a great deal more. I look forward to continuing to work closely with you in the months ahead in our common effort to advance the cause of human rights and democracy.
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Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Shattuck appears in the appendix.]
Mr. SMITH. Mr. Secretary, thank you for your very comprehensive statement, and again the very fine work that you and your department do on behalf of human rights.
I would like to ask a few opening questions and then yield to my colleagues, and then we hope we will go to a second round and continue to delve into these issues.
The first one I would like to pose is on China. Obviously, it is the largest country in the world, the largest population. It is certainly a country whose brutal dictatorship seems to be getting stronger, not weaker. While improving its markets and its economic circumstances, particularly for those who are part of the People's Liberation Army—it is going in the opposite direction on human rights, in several particular areas.
The Country Report points out that there is virtually no dissent toward the centers, people like Wei Jingsheng and others. You and I were among the last people to see Wei before he was rearrested and his show trial was undertaken to put him back into prison.
When he met with me and when I talked to other dissidents, there was a general sense that the Chinese Government is getting the best of us. They are getting the trade relationship, exporting to the United States at about a 3-to-1 ratio over what they import from us. I think there is now about a $35-million trade deficit in their favor, so we had some leverage that we lost.
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When I asked you, when you were asked last year, whether or not you thought that the Administration's policy reversal on MFN was a wise one, you said that to deny China MFN was very likely going to have a negative impact on the human rights situation in China.
My first question would be whether or not you feel this comprehensive engagement has led to improvement in the human rights situation? Why couldn't there have been sanctions targeted toward those industries and businesses owned by the military? Although it is sometimes difficult to determine exactly who owns what, there could have been an effort made.
Let me ask you also on the issue of the dissidents: What is our embassy, our government doing to see them, to determine whether or not they are being maltreated, whether or not they are being tortured? Is the release of Wei and all of the religious dissidents an absolute front burner issue?
I will never forget handing Li Peng a list, Frank Wolf and I handing him a list of incarcerated bishops and house church leaders, and he said it was simply not true; that there is nobody in China who is arrested for his religious beliefs. An utter boldfaced lie, but he said it.
On the issue of gulag labor, there is an understanding in effect that was negotiated during the Bush administration. I have actually been to one of those gulags and saw things being made that were for export, that particular one is closed down, but I am told, and I was told during that day, both during the Bush administration and now the Clinton administration, that we have very limited access to these gulags. So what is being done to aggressively implement the MOU on prison-made goods? How many investigations have been undertaken? What have we found and what kind of cooperation are we getting from the Chinese?
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I have always found it astonishing that the Chinese have the ability to deny us access and to put off inspections for a time certain so that when our investigators do go in, they are likely to see a village that has been sanitized to the point of being ridiculous.
On the issue of forced abortion and forced sterilization, our office continues to get very credible reports that coercive population control as part of the one-child-per-couple policy is worse and getting worse by the day. And just as recently as this morning, I checked with the man who wrote the story back in the 1980's, Steven Mosher, who was there living among the rural Chinese when women were being coerced to kill their unborn babies and did so only because they had no other choice and were shackled and forcibly aborted. It was a crime against humanity at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, and certainly it is a crime against women and humanity in 1997. Yet what has been done by the Administration on this?
My sadness is that we have continued to give money to the U.N. Population Fund which is there on the ground in China as part of that program. And while they say that there is no coercion going on—their leader in New York, Dr. Sadik, says that—the evidence is totally contrary to that. The practice is widespread, pervasive, and it is being focused on the handicapped now as well.
Has the mistreatment of the indigenous population in Tibet gotten worse or better, particularly the Buddhists and the Buddhist monks and nuns who have borne the brunt of the Chinese dictatorship for some time now? And of course there is the issue of religious freedom, which you and I have spoken out on frequently—this ongoing repression of the Catholic church and the house church movement. If you could speak to that as well.
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Mr. SHATTUCK. Well, Mr. Chairman, China is definitely a major human rights preoccupation, as we all know. Let me be as candid with you as you are being here with me. We share, I think, a deep concern over the human rights situation in China. Nowhere in the world is the spotlight that I described at the beginning of my testimony more important than with respect to the human rights situation in a country which has the most people in the world by a very long shot.
China is a very complex country and a complex society, but our report is very clear, as Secretary Albright has said, in calling it like it is. We know historically that isolating China not only doesn't work, but is counterproductive from a human rights standpoint. The cultural revolution, which is perhaps one of the great human rights catastrophes of the last four decades, took place at a time when China was totally and completely isolated. There was no engagement in China by the rest of the world.
It is important as a basic cornerstone of our policy that we engage fully, freely, and aggressively with China on issues of great interest to the United States, China and the rest of the world. Human rights is a very paramount issue in that regard.
Mr. Chairman, we are engaged very directly with China, and at the highest levels, and repeatedly we are engaged in terms of raising very specific cases. I, as you indicated in your remarks, have traveled frequently to China, as have you. I was most recently there with Secretary Christopher, when he raised the cases of Wei Jingsheng, Wang Dan, Chen Zi Ming, and other prominent dissidents whose releases on medical parole we are all, under international standards, ardently seeking.
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Secretary Christopher raised issues involving access to prisons by international humanitarian organizations, which has not happened. He raised the fact that China has not signed or ratified international treaties and covenants. He raised, and other officials have as well, the severe persecution of freedom of religion, both of all religions and all minority religions in terms of their requirements of registration and restriction of the kind that are laid out in some detail in our report. These issues are squarely on the agenda of the United States and China. There is no perfect formula, Mr. Chairman, for obtaining year-to-year progress in a country as large and complex as China.
But in terms of the long term, isolation is dangerous to human rights. Dissidents in China and Chinese dissidents in this country take that view, and are strongly against a policy that would not involve engagement.
Second, we need broad cooperation and communication with the Chinese people through exchanges, through open communications as much as can possibly be done. This, of course, is what Radio Free Asia is all about. It is a strong initiative in this administration, but it is also what the hundreds of thousands of Chinese visitors to not only the United States, but many countries elsewhere in the world are all about. That is a critical long-term effort with respect to China.
But let me be very, very clear, that in the short term we will not shrink from calling all of these issues by their proper names. Secretary Albright has made that very clear. Issues of prisoners, religious freedom, access to prisons, adherence to international covenants, and other issues of human rights will be very squarely on her agenda with Chinese leaders. We will work in appropriate international fora, such as the International Human Rights Commission if there is no progress in China, and there is no area more important in our policy than human rights.
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But it is clear to me personally that a policy of restrictions, isolation, and withdrawal is not the right policy for us to pursue. We will make very clear what our human rights views are on these matters and work with other governments around the world who have concerns about human rights in China.
Now, on the subject of access to the Laogai prison camps, which is also detailed in the report, we are disappointed with the quality of cooperation. There has been one visit this past year. There are a number of detention orders for goods that would come into this country that we know, based on previous information, would have been, or have been made in Chinese prison camps. The U.S. Customs Service can provide a briefing on the specifics of detention orders, which are not public information. The Memorandum of Understanding between the United States and China is an important advance in that area, but right now its enforcement is not anything like what we would like it to be.
On the subject of forced abortion and coercive family planning, the United States is very strongly opposed to any forms of coercive family planning. I would commend to you the statement the First Lady made at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, when she said 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.
The President made the same point just a few weeks ago on December 10th, on Human Rights Day, when he said that we must recognize that it is a violation of human rights when women are denied the right to plan their own families, including through forced abortions.
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We oppose any establishment of a U.N. FPA program in China because of the record on forced abortions. In my own visits to China, I have had occasion, as I am sure you have, Mr. Chairman, to raise these issues directly with appropriate ministries. I think what we see is that poor supervision of local officials, who are under intense government pressure to meet family planning targets, result in abuses, including forced abortion and sterilization. It is very clear in the report. We document what we know, which is that there is a considerable amount of evidence that there can be situations where people are coerced.
I think that covers it.
Mr. SMITH. Just one brief followup, in terms of isolation. Nobody has suggested isolation. We need targeted sanctions and a calibrated approach to let the Chinese leadership know that we mean business. Otherwise, the message that goes out is that our words are strong but our deeds lag far behind. And there were a number, and continue to be a number, of targeted proposals that many of us have suggested to try to let the dictatorship know—you know, and hopefully let the business community know as well—that if a country so brazenly violates the rights of its own citizenry, why are we to believe that when it comes to contract law or intellectual property rights, that they are any less believable or credible? When it serves their interests, they will violate those as well.
I look at everything that comes in on this, and I talk to people who have been there. Michael Weiskopf did an expose when he was in Beijing for the Washington Post. In a three-part series he pointed out publicly the leadership denies that they are into coercion, but a closer look reveals that previous coercion is part and parcel—I am paraphrasing, but it is close—part and parcel of the way they govern. It is the way they get the job done to enforce the one-child-per-couple policy. And that big lie continues to be circulated by the leadership.
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I will never forget meeting with the head of the population control program in Beijing for about 3 hours, and it was surreal. I thought I was hearing Orwellian double-speak the entire time, to hear the kinds of lies that were spewing out of the mouth of that particular official.
So just like there are no religious prisoners, there is no forced abortion. And let me also raise one issue where I believe your good office can be very helpful.
As you know, some of those who made their way to this country when the Golden Venture ran aground and have now been incarcerated for over 3 years had claims of suffering under China's coercive population control policy, and they were able to prove to an immigration judge that they were credible. However, the Administration changed the law to remove such claims as a grounds for asylum. Well, as you know, we have changed the law back to what we had under the previous Administration, where a well founded fear of persecution based on opposition to forced abortion could obtain one asylum.
We had in a hearing room on this floor three of the women who were forcibly aborted and one man who was forcibly sterilized who told chilling stories of how, at 6 and 7 months gestation, they were forcibly aborted by the cadres. One woman talked about how she had found a girl abandoned, about 7 or 8 days old, took that child, like a good samaritan, as her own, and that counted against her allotted one, and she was penalized and forcibly sterilized for that.
These women and some 40 others like them continue to languish in our own prisons, and I plead with you, as I have with the Administration, as I did in Beijing at the women's conference in a face-to-face meeting with Mrs. Clinton, to let these people go. Why should they suffer so cruelly in our own system for the crime of having been forcibly aborted and having the good sense to get out of that country in any way that they could? It seems to me now—especially since the law has been changed back to what is, I think, a humane law—that we need to implement the law and provide asylum for these people.
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I am dumbfounded. Last Christmas, not this Christmas, a year ago, a group of Members, including several Democrats and Republicans, and I called on the Administration, as a gesture of humanitarianism, to let these people go. Some of them have grown so frustrated that a few of them went back to China. We have a sworn affidavit that one of the men who returned had his legs broken. All of them had targets on their backs as being, you know, enemies of the State. To send any of them back would be cruel, and now I think the time has come to let them go.
You know, we talk about human rights abroad. Here we have people who have been victimized by human rights abuses and now have an extension of that within our own country. And so I ask you, I actually plead with you, to please let those people go.
Mr. SHATTUCK. Mr. Chairman, if I could just respond to that just as a matter of factual information and give you a status report. As you know, this is a matter within the jurisdiction of the Department of Justice, but I have looked into this myself, and I wanted to respond because this is a matter of concern for sure.
Here is the status of the Golden Venture that you just referred to. Nine have been offered resettlement in Ecuador and are now living there. One has been granted asylum in the United States, and three remain in custody and are being held in an INS facility in Bakersfield.
However, I understand that at least one of those three—perhaps all, for all I know—has actually filed a motion to reopen her asylum case under the new law, and that of course will be treated under the law that you described, and I think that is an appropriate resolution of that case. I can't give you any more information at this point, but we could certainly provide you more if you wanted more.
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And just one comment on the issue of China and the rule of law. There have been law reforms in China, even as there has been a crackdown on dissent that is very severe. One of the important law reforms last year was in the area of criminal procedure law. They finally provide some more access by attorneys to criminal cases in advance. Even so, they still fall short of international standards.
I am not sitting here and saying Chinese law in the area of human rights is significantly approaching international standards. To the contrary, I think what we see is a complicated situation. The crackdown on dissent continues and is of a very severe nature, but at the same time, China's legal reform effort, driven by pressures from contract issues and commercial ventures, also is proceeding. This legal reform may, over the long term, have a positive impact on the human rights situation.
Mr. SMITH. And I do have additional questions on that which I will get to, but I will ask Mr. Hamilton to proceed.
Mr. HAMILTON. Mr. Secretary, my recollection is that the first Country Reports on Human Rights Practices came out about 20 years ago in the mid 1970's, and we may even in this year be observing the 20th anniversary of the Human Rights Report.
Looking over your statement, I am impressed that your emphasis, as I think you identified in your statement, is on process, and I commend you for all of the things that you are doing. But at the end of the day, of course, we have to judge efforts the government makes not by means but by results.
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So the question on my mind is, what have we really accomplished in terms of our human rights programs? I am not speaking now just about the last year; I am speaking about the last 20 years. Do you think we have really saved lives? Do you think we have reduced torture? Do you think we have reduced the number of political prisoners? Do you think we have raised the level of human rights consciousness in governments and seen tangible results of that?
You referred briefly to the effort that the Department makes to put out this report, and it is an enormously huge undertaking. If you compare the reports today with 20 years ago, they are much more sophisticated reports, they are more informative; no question about the improvement in them. But what about results?
You know, if you talk about economic aid, we love to point out the success stories of American economic aid in Korea, and Taiwan, and so forth. Do we have success stories that we can talk about in terms of human rights? What are the results of this human rights policy?
Mr. SHATTUCK. Well, Mr. Chairman, that falls in the category, ''I'm glad you asked.'' I won't give a lengthy answer, because I know there are others who want to ask questions. But that is a very important question and it is one I feel very deeply about. I think the evidence is very powerful.
I said at the beginning of my statement that I believe there has been over the last decade, and even more powerfully over the last 5 years, an extraordinary hunger for human rights. I think what we see in this global movement for human rights and the number of countries whose democratic processes have come into being just in this short period of time is, in very large measure, a direct result of the United States having made this such a priority bipartisan concern, which has been incorporated into the mainstream of our foreign policy over the last 20 years.
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That is a general statement. Let me be very specific. Haiti and Bosnia. Those are two country situations in which this administration has concentrated enormous foreign policy resources, including diplomacy backed up by military force, and enormous coalition building in the multilateral world. Haiti and Bosnia were human rights catastrophes drawn to the attention of policymakers at the highest level by these Human Rights Reports.
I will never forget the day that the President asked me to come and brief him on the human rights situation in Haiti. It was in September before the deployment of a multinational force, and our reports were really the only source of information that was available, because the Organization for American States had its monitoring mission removed due to the horrendous security situation in Haiti, where over 3,000 people were killed during that previous year.
So it was only through the report of the State Department and the Embassy that we could keep tabs with what was going on as much as possible day in and day out. And I wouldn't presume to suggest that I can tell you all the factors that were in the President's mind when he finally determined that he was going to put the United States on the line in resolving a human rights catastrophe in Haiti, but I can certainly tell you that these reports played a very major role in that process, as have, of course, the implementation of the process and the deep involvement by——
Mr. HAMILTON. I am always impressed, Mr. Secretary, with the ability of our government to quantify things. It is really quite remarkable. But interestingly enough, you don't——
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Mr. SHATTUCK. I never considered it one of my major achievements.
Mr. HAMILTON. You don't seem to have a way to quantify progress in the area of human rights. I know it is a very complicated business.
You look back over the 20 years; what is the trend? Are you optimistic about the trend in promoting human rights? Are you discouraged? I know you even point to one country or another where you have ups and downs. But let's take a 20-year perspective on it; how are we doing?
Mr. SHATTUCK. I think the 20-year perspective is dramatic. I mean, if you look at the world in 1977, you had a bipolar world where almost half the world was suffering under the scourge of totalitarianism, and there were vast governmental abuses of human rights throughout major portions of the world, and dictatorships in Latin America, in many parts of Africa.
In the period since 1977, Latin America has been transformed. There is only one country in this hemisphere that is now not a democracy, and every country in Latin America now has some degree of commitment to the human rights area. There are many abuses that continue, but you will note in my reports and in all the discussion of them, there is not a lot of focus on Latin America. I can take you through many abuses there for sure but the interest tends not to be there because I think the situation has improved.
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In Africa, I think the same trend is there. I would not presume to say that the trend is certain and that it can not be reversed, but I think the popular forces in Africa are now no longer willing to tolerate the kind of an authoritarian one-person rule that we saw for a long time before.
Mr. HAMILTON. It may be in talking about human rights it would be better to talk about some of these successes than to talk about approaches and means, because I think there is a lot of cynicism sometimes attached to human rights reports.
Mr. Chairman, if I may raise one other question, and that is this whole business of linkage.
Now, we know your statement cites a number of cases where we link various means of applying pressure to a particular country's human rights performance, and it seems to me we do that sometimes and sometimes we don't. Can you give me any guidelines about linkages and how you view them generally?
We have a lot of ways we can apply pressure on any particular government, and sometimes we do that, sometimes we don't. You hear criticism from time to time that we are inconsistent in our human rights policy, and I guess it relates to this question of linkages and applying pressure.
Can you help me with understanding how our government views the question of linkage and pressure to get countries to improve their human rights performance?
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Mr. SHATTUCK. Well, that is of course a very difficult question. There is no ''one-size-fits-all'' human rights policy. In fact, there is a differently constructed human rights policy for each situation, but I think an overall consideration has always to be whether a country is engaged in some positive way with us on a range of issues, including human rights, or whether a country is systematically constructing its own cocoon within which it refuses to engage or is openly hostile to us on a wide range of our issues.
In the latter case, clearly ''sticks'' and appropriate forms of sanctions are appropriate, but I should add, only when they can really be effective, when they are truly multilateral. And I think the one great sanction success story of the last decade of course is South Africa, where multilateral sanctions were able to attack a horrendous situation, apartheid, which is one of the worst forms of human rights abuse.
So I think the willingness of a country to work with us on a range of common interests does determine to a large extent whether or not we are going to either isolate or try to engage with that country.
Mr. HAMILTON. I thank you, Mr. Secretary.
Mr. Chairman, may I just point out that we are very pleased to have Congressman Kucinich with us this morning, attending his first committee meeting, I believe. He is going to be a new member of the Committee. We are delighted to have him, and I wanted to acknowledge his presence here.
Mr. SMITH. I too want to extend my welcome and am happy to have you on the Committee.
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Mr. KUCINICH. Thank you very much.
Mr. SMITH. At this point, Mr. Houghton has graciously allowed Ms. McKinney to go ahead. So please proceed.
Ms. MCKINNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I would like to thank my colleague from New York for allowing me to go ahead. I do have to leave, and so I won't be able to ask questions, and I would like permission to submit my questions for the record and have them answered by the Secretary.
Mr. SMITH. Without objection, those questions and answers will be made part of the record.
Ms. MCKINNEY. Thank you very much.
[The information appears in the appendix.]
Ms. MCKINNEY. I would like to state for the record, however, that despite the fact that I sit on the other side of the aisle from my chairman, I want you to know that I do share his concerns on the issue of human rights, and in particular with China, recognizing that Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan are to follow. We have heard a lot about what the wrong policy is, but I am interested in what the right policy is.
I also have concern about those Spanish language manuals that were produced by the Pentagon in the School of Americas which is located in Georgia, and I think that the people who wrote those manuals should be held accountable.
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I have a concern about U.S. arms transfers and the transfer of U.S. weapons technology. I wonder whether or not any such technology and weapons have been used to commit human rights violations, and I would like to get a report on that.
Finally, I also hope that the case of scientology and its treatment in Germany will be included on the agenda as an issue to be discussed by the Advisory Committee on Religious Liberty Abroad.
So with that, Mr. Chairman, I thank you very much and yield back my time.
Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Ms. McKinney.
Mr. HOUGHTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just have two questions.
I wonder if we turn the mirror on ourselves. I wonder whether you get questions, as you go around sounding off this human rights issue, as important as it is, do people ask us about Native Americans? Do people ask us about the drug culture? Do people ask us about the murders? Do people ask us about the subtle barriers for race or sex in this country?
I mean, I think what we are reaching for is right, but I think we have also got to consider we are part of the pool, not just standing off and casting judgments on others. So that is No. 1.
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No. 2: I am wondering whether the United States can continue what it is doing on its own. It seems to me that it is out there all by itself, and I have a feeling that maybe the time comes—and you may disagree with this—that we should do as we do in trade, is to have a world trade organization or a world human rights organization to be able to pull together the feelings of other peoples in other countries rather than just having those represented by the United States.
Maybe you could answer those two questions.
Mr. SHATTUCK. Mr. Houghton, on the first one, a very important question: Do we cast the mirror on ourselves? One of the things I am proudest of in having been able to serve the President as a Human Rights Assistant Secretary, is that for the first time in this administration we have, in fact, done a report on U.S. compliance with the International Covenant on Civil or Political Rights, and we have appeared in an international setting, the United Nations, before the U.N. Human Rights Committee to discuss very openly and candidly our own situation in the human rights area. And of course, candidly, there are plenty of problems. We have had no difficulty setting those out and being clear with other countries.
We had that report translated into Chinese. On one of my trips to China I took our own Report on Human Rights in the United States, and distributed it in Chinese to my counterparts in the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I think it is an important signal that we are willing to do that.
Much more important, of course, is the fact that we have a vigorous Civil Rights Enforcement Division of the Department of Justice. We tackle our own human rights problems aggressively enough that we can talk with other countries about that. In large part our dialog in human rights in these settings does involve discussion of our own shortcomings.
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And you are absolutely right that there is plenty of criticism of U.S. problems with crime, drugs, the very powerful claims of indigenous rights made by indigenous peoples. Incidentally, we worked on that subject as well.
So I think we are, in fact, credible in that regard.
On the other question, surely we need to work and do work with other governments in many of these settings. The U.N. Human Rights Commission is in many ways the world body that you described. It needs to be reformed; it needs to be strengthened. In this administration, we helped create the new office of U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights. We would like to see that office strengthened, and I am pleased that the new U.N. Secretary General has shown interest in strengthening the human rights mechanisms of the United Nations.
We work with the OSCE and of course the Helsinki Commission, which the chairman co-chaired, and on which I also serve. The OSCE in Vienna is a very important instrument in democracy and human rights in that part of the world.
The OAS needs to be strengthened, and we are working actively with that regional organization.
So I think the thrust of your question is, should we be doing more in the multilateral area? The answer is yes, and we are stepping up our work in that area. We are not by any means doing this alone.
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Mr. HOUGHTON. If I can just follow up a second, Mr. Chairman, I thank you for letting me take this time.
I am going to make a statement that probably you are not going to agree with, but I want to try to get at the issue. You know, we do pretty well as far as war crimes; we have tribunals; we have enforcement; we really go at this pretty well. But when you get into the other areas where you are talking about accountability and deepening and broadening efforts and having offices and field coalitions, it just seems to me that what the World Trade Organization does for trade you do not have in terms of human rights, and maybe just a little more force rather than the jawboning might be able to be of help to you and certainly satisfying to us.
Mr. SHATTUCK. Well, if I can just in a way turn that around for a moment and say that I think this is why it is so important that the commitment that the new Secretary General of the United Nations was making to address issues of reform in the United Nations be responded to by our government by strengthening the United Nations. It is the United Nations which will be the principal instrument of this international human rights work that you are talking about.
The United Nations doesn't have the wherewithal to do that now, and our not having paid our dues for several years now is a serious, serious problem in the ability of these organizations to advance. So I would hope that this committee, and the Congress in general would work closely with Secretary Albright as she pursues this very important initiative.
Mr. HOUGHTON. So just let me understand this. And I agree with you, I think we are not paying our dues to the United Nations, but what you are saying in effect—and I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I want to understand it—but if we do pay our dues, we are out of arrears, that the mechanisms are there to have some enforcement over and above some of the things in the past.
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Mr. SHATTUCK. I believe we would be able to strengthen the offices in Geneva of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, the special rapporteurs of the United Nations, and the whole system of human rights compliance and advisory services that we now have. At the moment, our contributions are not sufficient, nor is the budget of the United Nations sufficient, to be able to do that.
Mr. HOUGHTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Houghton.
I yield to my friend and colleague from New Jersey, Mr. Payne.
Mr. PAYNE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Along the same lines that Mr. Hamilton was asking questions, I was just looking over your statement of yesterday reported in the Post today, and you go on in the statement, ''Every country is different in the world. Every country needs to be treated in our foreign policy with a particular approach,'' that there are many different interests in the United States and it would have different interests in different countries of the world.
Then it follows in the next paragraph where it says that business leaders and strategic planners apply this approach and it is a matter that is realistic, cuts are too important to have U.N. rights be a stumbling block.
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So I guess my basic question is, when you take winners and losers, I guess, and we are talking about a philosophy or a policy or a strategy, would you therefore conclude at this time anyway, since one has been de-linking of human rights in China to trade, there has been a looking the other way into some other strong allies?
Do you think that this new policy is that the strategic planners, the business leaders, the people who are applauding this new policy, have won and that we can expect more of that philosophy to reign and less of the old U.S. policy of, you know, protecting the weak against the strong and having human rights and all those things that have been learned about in school? I just wondered—perhaps it would only be your opinion—what philosophy is winning.
Mr. SHATTUCK. Well, Mr. Payne, let me answer categorically no, if you say the question is some philosophy that is contrary to the promotion of human rights winning. That is, there is no battle that is being lost for human rights.
Let me be very specific and concise about what I mean when I say every country is different. By that, I don't mean that there are whole countries in the world that should not be the subject of human rights policy by the United States and the rest of the world; to the contrary.
The point is, no one-size policy fits all, and there needs to be an aggressive human rights policy by our government and by others with whom we work for every country in the world. I would argue that over the last 20 years, and certainly in the last 4 years, there has been more and more of a mainstreaming of human rights as an element of U.S. foreign policy, than ever before.
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There are two or three countries we are going to work on and everything else is just not of interest no matter how much suffering or human rights abuse may be.
I could take you through every country of the world and lay out for you what, in fact, is the human rights policy and the way in which we pursue it. But let's also be realistic. There are many countries in the world in which we have multiple interests. Human rights is never going to be downgraded so it is not one of those interests. There are U.S. strategic interests. There is certainly the whole question of our own welfare and well being of American citizens. That does not have to downgrade the importance of human rights, but it means that there are going to be other interests in those areas.
Human suffering, when it amounts to a human rights catastrophe, is quickly communicated through the media these days, and is something to which our government has consistently responded, maybe never as well as we would have liked, and, after tragically, thousands, hundreds of thousands, of lives are lost. It certainly took long for us to engage the way we did in Bosnia. It was, I believe, catastrophic that the world was not able to address the situation in Rwanda in advance; but it occurred and we aggressively engaged.
We need to constantly perfect ways of trying to prevent these losses of life and human rights catastrophes by working harder on conflict prevention and conflict resolution. That is one of the main focus points of our philosophy right now. The best way to avoid human rights catastrophes is to try to prevent the conflicts before they occur, and to try to encourage countries that are authoritarian to loosen their grip on their citizens. That is what we do everywhere.
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Mr. PAYNE. Let me ask this then. In your report, you indicated that one of the goals is working with regional organizations, and I think that is really great. But with our sort of Western allies, our European allies, do we try to suggest to them what we believe the righteous position should be on issues?
For example, right now in Zaire, Mobutu is very ill. I just came from eastern Zaire. You know, there is a possibility the country could disintegrate. Of course we have had a policy to support Mobutu because the answer that we got from the 9 years I have been here was that we don't know what will happen to Zaire if Mobutu wasn't there. And that was sort of a general answer from the experts dealing, say, with that region.
You know, no one is going to be here forever. Nine years ago there was some planning for 10 or 20 or 15; 5 years ago. They could be sort of in place, a plan of what do we do, why don't we do it now because we have got to do something after Mobutu—50 million people, a very large region. But now it looks like Mobutu is terminally ill, so we are at the point where there is no more Mobutu, and so now, rather than have a policy in hand that we worked out with our allies, there is still the potential of collapse and chaos, which, it seems to me, could have been prevented had people started working toward the day that there would be no more Mobutu.
I think we should have moved, you know, 90 years ago. But the State Department didn't think we should. Well, now it is going to be a crisis perhaps, an emergency.
And so I guess, getting back to my original point, do you have conversations with human rights people from the Western countries that have influence? For example, it is alleged that the French, for example, have mercenaries there, in his army, to try to retrain them, and South Africans have some more mercenaries getting ready to lay land mines to keep this rebel from coming more to the west.
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Do you talk to the French people or the Belgians to say that maybe human rights ought to be an issue like we try to do it, and how does that work?
Mr. SHATTUCK. Mr. Payne, there is very close coordination through the Great Lakes Working Group—with all due respect to Mr. Kucinich, it is the Great Lakes of Central Africa that we are talking about. The working group includes all of the major countries engaged in the area, certainly France, Belgium, Germany, the United Kingdom, and others, including most importantly, regional leaders.
Rwanda, Burundi, and Zaire are right now, as you quite rightly pointed out, in a very, very delicate and volatile phase. All of the refugee, political, human rights and ethnic conflicts are intertwined in the region, and therefore there is a great deal of coordination.
There is also, I think, a constantly changing situation, and therefore our policy can't ever be fixed for a long period. You have to review it based on what is going on.
For example, right now the issue of elections in Zaire is very much in our sights. The question of whether these elections can be satisfactory is important, but we believe that they are necessary because clearly, with the leadership vacuum you indicate, there is an urgency of addressing the leadership problems in Zaire.
But the answer to your question is, there is coordination. That is what multilateral efforts and conflict prevention are all about. And as you know, the United States has also taken the lead in proposing the establishment of an Africa crisis response force that might be able to address, in advance, some of the kinds of catastrophic situations that occurred in Rwanda in 1994.
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Mr. PAYNE. I think my time probably has run out. But I would certainly urge that in order to prevent the catastrophe and sometimes, with some of our allies, who seem to misbehave and are mischievous and do not help the general climate in areas sometimes if we could strongly urge them to be, you know, a little more cooperative, that it would, I think, help out especially those volatile regions like we just mentioned, the Great Lakes region.
I yield back the balance of my time, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Payne.
Mr. Kucinich.
Mr. KUCINICH. Thank you very much. I am appreciative to be here, and I want to thank the Chair for the Chair's interest and the Chair's line of questioning in defense of human rights. I think that we can have a bipartisan success in approaching this issue, and I certainly appreciate the chance to work with you on this committee.
In that spirit, Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, what I hear from this testimony and from Secretary Shattuck and in reading the report is that there apparently is a dichotomy which exists over our pursuit of economic trade interests and our desire to pursue the interests of human rights.
On one hand we have what I would call the lower, practical, even pragmatic concerns, real politic concerns, economic concerns, versus the higher, spiritual, and moral concerns of human rights, a kind of contrast between a ''live and let live'' policy on one hand that we may propose in human rights and let that policy on the other hand for those who want to link trade and economic concerns to the enforcement of human rights.
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What strikes me, Mr. Chairman, as a preface to the questions that I wanted to get into, is that we are here, in a sense, to cry tears for the victims, but they seem to be somewhat crocodile tears because we are so sad that our pet crocodile is eating people, and the question is, what do we do to discipline those pet crocodiles around the world?
So the first question I have relative to this report and specifically with respect to child labor: Has the State Department identified specifically, country by country, those countries that are practicing child labor? And specifically, have you identified the multinational corporations within that country who are marketing goods produced by children worldwide?
Mr. SHATTUCK. Let me make a general comment and then answer specifically the point about child labor.
The pursuit of human rights and democracy is absolutely critical to our economic interests. There is no conflict in that respect. It is fundamental to our long-term economic interests that China operate under the rule of law rather than some arbitrary regime, and that contracts are subject to enforcement, and international obligations respected. This is true for every country in the world. Those countries where we have the sharpest concerns about an authoritarian regime violating human rights are also countries where, over the long term, our economic interests will be undermined in the event that there is not more legal reform. For that reason the issue of legal reform in China is a very important one.
On the question of child labor, sections 5 and 6 of our Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, document the situation involving child labor—so you can get a screen of 193 countries on that issue by looking at the reports. Following up on those reports, we have done policy work in the last year, particularly with regard to two countries. One is Bangladesh, and the other is Pakistan.
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In Bangladesh, through some very creative work between our embassy and our ambassador, and the Government of Bangladesh, the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, the ILOI, IPEC and UNICEF, a program has been developed whereby children who are employed in child labor situations are now, through the offices of UNICEF, going to be given an opportunity for education and removed from their workplace situation. Bangladesh is a country where there is a huge amount of unemployment, so adult labor is available to replace the children.
This is a pilot project, but I think it is a very interesting one. A government has been willing to engage, together with corporate interests and a U.N. agency.
In Pakistan, we have been very disappointed in some aspects of Pakistan's response in this area and therefore have actually denied GSP trade benefits with respect to some of the apparel manufacturing and sporting goods manufacturing that is going on there.
So the issue of child labor is just beginning to get a lot of attention, and there is, frankly, not a lot of law on the subject. I think it is something that the Congress itself would want to look at, and we certainly have documented the issue.
Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Chairman, if I may ask a followup question, how does the Administration feel with respect to ensuring that American consumers, for example, would be able to be informed through labels that a rug or a soccer ball or an article of clothing was made by child labor? I mean, are you responsive to that type of approach?
Mr. SHATTUCK. We are responsive to that. I think certainly the rug mark approach is one that makes sense. This issue has only been on the screen internationally for the last couple of years. We need to look at a variety of different ways that this can be addressed, including working with business.
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And let me be very clear. One of the things that didn't probably come out enough in my opening statement is that we believe that we not only should, but can, work very closely with American business and other business interests, in a lot of these human rights areas. I am pleased to say there is quite a lot of development in that over the last 2 years.
Mr. KUCINICH. Well, if I may suggest this, Mr. Chairman? It seems to me that if we take the profit out of child labor, then perhaps that would be one way to start to apply some discipline into the marketplace, and one way that we could, and certainly in this country, is to give consumers an opportunity to enforce our own standards of human rights, because if we can look at an article of clothing and if it is labeled ''Made by child labor'' in whatever country, it then gives us the opportunity to reject participating as consumers in those policies.
So, you know, we recognize we have responsibilities too as citizens, and whatever the Administration would do in cooperating with Congress in trying to bring about that kind of a labeling practice I think would probably be more beneficial.
I want to thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Mr. Shattuck.
Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Kucinich, for raising that very important issue. And knowing of your interest, I certainly hope you will seek to get on the International Human Rights Subcommittee.
As Mr. Payne knows, we had in excess of 40 hearings in the last Congress on a myriad of important human rights issues, and one of the drawbacks of a hearing like this is that there are so many areas of concern, deep concern, that never get the kind of exposure and questioning that they deserve.
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Mr. Payne has been one of the most faithful members of our subcommittee at every hearing, asking very, very incisive questions and carrying it forward with legislation, including his sanctions bill with regards to this, and then worked with us last year to get language passed on Mauritania which was signed into law.
And on the issue raised of child labor, we held two hearings on child labor in the last Congress. Some of them were very high profile and generated a lot of publicity. But the important thing is the followup. I introduced, along with a number of cosponsors on both sides of the aisle, comprehensive legislation. One piece was a sanctions bill, which probably was a dead letter because of the Ways and Means Committee, in all candor. The other authorized an additional contribution to the ILO, which is doing magnificent work in trying to regulate this problem, and also would identify, as you were saying, each country and whether or not it is engaging in this egregious practice, and then would stop nonhumanitarian aid to that country so that we really can get a handle on this and say we have leverage and we ought to use it.
I would ask Mr. Shattuck, Mr. Secretary, if this child labor bill, which has been available now for several months, has the endorsement of your shop. H.R. 3812 was the first bill, and H.R. 4037 was the second, which did not have the sanctions, but the other did have the other provisions as well.
Mr. SHATTUCK. Well, as you know, Mr. Chairman, we do want to work with you on this.
If I can just return to one topic very briefly. It relates to a question you asked me about the Golden Venture cases, and I responded on the basis of those particular cases. I just want to clarify for the record. I understand that there are some additional cases of men who testified before this subcommittee who themselves claimed in their testimony forced sterilization, and those cases are in limbo.
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I am not sure exactly what their status is, but what I am suggesting is that the issue of their detention is something I will be happy to look into and respond further to you. I don't have any information that I could offer to you here this morning; I am sure we can get some additional information.
Mr. SMITH. We would very much appreciate that.
[The information had not been submitted at time of printing.]
Mr. SMITH. And I appreciate that information from your folks behind you—I was going to ask that followup because there are more cases than you originally mentioned. Again, foot dragging, not by you but by others such as the INS has been very, very disturbing, and those people have already paid such a price. For what? Having a baby and then having that baby cruelly ripped out of their bodies to be destroyed.
Let me ask a couple of other questions, if I could, first on the issue of refugees. And you may find this interesting, I say to my friend, the former mayor of the Cleveland, that our subcommittee also reviews refugee policy, which is very closely linked to human rights, generally speaking.
There is a statement made by Amnesty International, Stephen Rickard, that I would ask you to respond to, and it is kind of like a very strong criticism: ''The U.S. refugee and asylum procedures should take into account the serious human rights violations documented in these reports, but they do not.'' And he goes on to explain as to why that is not the case.
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We have had a number of hearings in our subcommittee over the last 2 years and legislation that I have offered, some of which has passed, some of which has not, dealing with the issue of forced repatriation, the issue of returning Vietnamese to Vietnam camps.
I went and visited the camps myself, and was convinced many of those were real refugees that were improperly screened out through an infirm procedure that was in place by the UNHCR, particularly by the host countries.
In looking at the Country Reports—if you want to respond to that, I would appreciate that—but in looking at the Country Reports, you seem to accept uncritically what UNHCR officials and others have said regarding the status of those who have been forcibly repatriated which they claim is not forced.
Do you have in your shop, in your bureau, independent verification and analysis of information, or do you pretty much accept as truth what some of these people say, however well meaning they may be, as well as the U.S. consular offices that provide you with that information?
Mr. SHATTUCK. We have actually undergone some major revision of the way in which our asylum review process is conducted, and I think it is a very positive development.
I have directed our asylum office, in preparing country profiles on some 60 countries where most of the asylum applications come from, to sharpen the analysis, draw directly from the Human Rights Report, and focus in particular in recent months on the issue of religious persecution. That will enable us to highlight that as a topic that we want to bring to the attention of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Then when they have these individual cases which we do not rule on, they will have much more sharply focused human rights information. That information will reflect what we have in the Country Reports as well as some additional material that is relevant specifically to asylum in the area of, right now, religious persecution.
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On the question of UNHCR and its role in resettlement, as you know, I think, Mr. Chairman, we have been very active, especially in the refugee section of the State Department, in not only working on this comprehensive plan of action for Southeast Asia, but also on the new program for re-interviewing individuals who want to assert refugee status even after having returned to Vietnam or other countries. This is the so-called Rover program.
Having looked at that from a human rights standpoint, I am satisfied that it is a way, a very effective way, of providing in-country monitoring of returnees in terms of the human rights situation. It is also a very effective way of giving those who have rethought the situation an opportunity to be re-interviewed. I think that is a very positive development.
Mr. SMITH. Could you tell the Committee how many people have been interviewed?
Mr. SHATTUCK. I could get you that information; I don't have it available.
Mr. SMITH. Our understanding is—and this is an ongoing problem that we have been having with the Administration—that it is zero. Nobody has agreed. Many thousands have returned under the promise that they could receive this.
Mr. SHATTUCK. Well, I am now speaking in part from memory from some of the vast material sitting in front of me, but I am not sure where the document is. I think it was on January 26—i.e., just 4 or 5 days ago—that the final conclusion of the Rover process, getting it fully authorized and established, occurred.
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I may be wrong about that, and I am happy to give you a further answer in writing. But it is a program for monitoring and reviewing returnees which I would be happy to provide more information about.
Mr. SMITH. Again, our information is that nobody has been re-interviewed. I have raised this to the NSC and others as time to get there and have action——
Mr. SHATTUCK. Yes.
Mr. SMITH. Because these people were promised.
In terms of the monitors, we have heard from witnesses, from refugees, from organizations, and a monitor himself that—and I say this, you know, regrettably—when the monitors go to a particular hamlet or village, they are accompanied by somebody from the government who happened to be the secret police. Who, in their right mind, when someone comes in and says, ''How are you doing? Is there any harassment?'' is going to be completely up front when they are right next to somebody who can make life miserable?
It seems to me it is almost like those who have made their way from Hanoi during the Vietnam war and asked the prisoners of war if there is any torture. He said, ''If I say there is torture, I go back and I get my legs broken.'' It is very serious—we have had several reports. It is hard to get this information about people having repercussions visited upon them upon their return, and so the monitors that you have provided us more information about your understanding as to whether or not it is an unfettered access to a person or whether or not somebody is in tow from the government.
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Mr. SHATTUCK. I would be happy to do that.
[The information had not been supplied at time of printing.]
Mr. SHATTUCK. I would just point out that we have initiated a regular high-level human rights dialog with Vietnam, and the next session of that dialog is going to take place in Vietnam in March. Certainly this topic, to the extent that we want to look at the mechanics of the monitoring situation, could be on the agenda.
Mr. SMITH. Let me just say, the report said that a man jumped from a roof and died. This was the Thai military's version of the story, uncritically accepted by the United States and any ARC people in the region would be involved in repatriation. But I have seen the picture and my staff has looked at the picture, and the man appears to have been beaten to death, rather than falling off that particular roof. Have you looked into that case?
This is reminiscent of something that I remember was carried on page one of The Washington Times of a man who was being nonforcibly returned from one of the camps to Vietnam, being carried by several rather stocky and strong police officers with obvious swelling all over his face, and this was supposed to be a nonforced repatriation. So I would ask that you get back to us on that particular point.
[The information appears in the appendix.]
Mr. SMITH. On the issue of the Clinton-Castro agreement on repatriation or on returning migrants to Cuba, during your appearance here last year, we discussed, you may recall, what steps the United States was taking to monitor Cuba's performance under the 1994 Clinton-Castro agreement. As a followup to that discussion, you provided us with this information: It says, as of April of last year, we have returned 324 migrants of Cuba under the Joint Statement. Of those 324, 16 were in prison, but, according to your office, on charges unrelated to their attempts to leave Cuba.
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Why wasn't this information in the reports? We looked for it and didn't see it. How many more people have returned to Cuba since then? How many of the total number of returnees are now in prison? How do we go about monitoring Cuba's treatment of returnees, how many monitors do we have, what kind of access, how often do we get to meet with the returnees who find themselves in prison, and how do we confirm that imprisonment of returnees is genuinely unrelated to their attempts to leave Cuba?
Mr. SHATTUCK. Well, as I indicated last year, Mr. Chairman, we cover human rights through our interest section in Havana. We have engaged in a process of looking at returnees as they arrive. I do not have data with me this morning. I will be glad to provide you the same kind of information that I provided last year and we could certainly make that a part of the record, obviously.
Mr. SMITH. We look forward to seeing that. I do appreciate last year you getting back to us.
[The information appears in the appendix.]
Mr. SMITH. Many of us are concerned that in dictatorships, and I know you know this, that they always find some other reason for putting somebody into prison, even though the real reason is that they wanted to leave or they didn't practice their religion as they saw fit or made a call for democracy.
According to the report, Mr. Secretary, the use of plastic bullets is banned in the United Kingdom. Detainees are granted the right to have lawyers present during the interrogation, except in Northern Ireland. The accused in the United Kingdom have a right to a trial by jury for certain terrorist-related charges except in Northern Ireland where such offenses are tried by a diplock court. And warrants are normally required for a police search of private premises, except in Northern Ireland where armed forces, or policemen, may enter and search any premises.
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As you know, this double standard is a result in part of the Northern Ireland Emergency Provisions Act and the Prevention of Terrorism Act which many human rights groups have criticized over the years. What is the Administration doing specifically above and beyond the ongoing peace talks to encourage the British Government to eliminate the discrimination and double standards, and extend the same rights it grants to most people to those of Northern Ireland?
Mr. SHATTUCK. Well, the report is as candid in that area as it is in others, as you point out, Mr. Chairman. I have myself visited Northern Ireland on one of my many human rights missions and had an opportunity to meet with officials as well as nongovernmental organizations working in both a human rights and reconciliation context, but not directly as part of this peace process, and I intend to continue to follow that approach. I think it is very important that we engage directly on this subject and we certainly plan to do so.
Mr. SMITH. Let me jump back for a moment. In her testimony, Holly Burkhalter from Human Rights Watch suggests one plan of action or course of action is that we evaluate weapons transfers, that the State Department Country Reports should be closely linked to the approval for all weapons transfers, and either aid credits or licenses for commercial sales. Governments that do not meet a minimum human rights standard should not receive any military support. This is a recommendation from Human Rights Watch.
We know that there are problems in Turkey with the razing of villages, particularly the Kurdish villages, and presumably this is being done with some of the U.S. military hardware. Saudi Arabia now is apparently going to request a rather significant number of purchases of M–16s from Lockheed Martin, and in Mexico, where increasingly the National Human Rights Commission has complained that torture involving authorities has increased dramatically in the last year. And we have only one human rights monitor, if my information is correct, in our Embassy. It seems like we should have more.
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The United States has loaned helicopters and given training to the Mexican military. Ought there be human rights preconditions to military sales? Do you think that the Human Rights Watch report here is a good one? And again, specifically, as it relates to these four countries.
Mr. SHATTUCK. This is an area where we have been quite active in the last several years.
The United States has a global policy of restricting conventional arms sales for the purpose of maintaining regional stability. And I listed in my opening statement more than 20 countries, including some of the ones that you just mentioned, in which that policy has been enforced. That is the first-time central policy ever developed by the United States.
Pursuant to the legislation establishing the Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights, we use security assistance policy proposals so that human rights can be taken into consideration when considering arms sales. There may well be other considerations. Clearly, strategic interests of the United States are extremely important. Human rights will always be taken into consideration. Frankly, in an open setting, I don't want to get into the details of particular arms sales, because of their sensitivity. But, I can certainly assure you that on that list of more than 20 countries that I gave you in my opening statement, there are a number of very close allies and there are a number of arms sales where human rights issues are being taken very closely into consideration.
Mr. SMITH. What is your assessment of the Mexican record on human rights? Has it gotten worse as some would suggest over the last year? And is the military sufficiently under civilian control to assure that weapons we might provide are not misused to terrorize?
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Mr. SHATTUCK. There are certainly severe human rights problems in Mexico, as the report documents. There have been human rights problems in Mexico for a long time. In some measure, over the last several years, there has been an improvement in the areas of basic democracy and some institutions of human rights protection, including the Mexican Human Rights Commission.
But the problem of impunity remains very great, and the failure to actually prosecute those who have engaged in severe human rights abuses is one of the main problems there. And I think that certainly is an element of our overall policy toward Mexico.
Mr. SMITH. Let me ask one final question and then yield to my good friend, Mr. Payne.
On the issue of the United Marines Charter Act, which we passed twice in the House, I offered it one time, we authorized the bill and it did pass, but it eventually got into an appropriations bill; it is now the law. There is still no overlaying proof for the provision of medical or humanitarian supplies to Armenia.
Is the Administration going to implement that section of the law, section 629, which is the Humanitarian Standards Act, vis-a-vis humanitarian aid?
Mr. SHATTUCK. That is not in my area, but I am happy to make sure that you get an answer to that, Mr. Chairman.
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Mr. SMITH. I appreciate that, because again, in Armenia, people are dying because our medical supplies and humanitarian goods are not allowed over to that group, and a mass of supplies are needed.
[The information appears in the appendix.]
Mr. SMITH. Mr. Payne.
Mr. PAYNE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I just have a followup to one of the questions of our new colleague.
I was extremely impressed with the former mayor's comments regarding child labor, and I just wonder whether the Administration ever decided to think of new approaches. For example, since many of these items are allegedly made through child labor efforts which are used in sports, for example, it would appear that a new approach may be to talk to the commissioner of the NBA or NCAA or the NFL. I know Mr. Tagliabue is always looking for in the NFL new ways to be more responsive to the community, and it may be that if some of those big users of sportswear would come together and that might be an additional kind of a leverage, since most teams now wear some emblem or some type of sneaker or whatever.
I think we need, since the government is reluctant to push, we may need to look at new approaches and maybe some way to get citizens more involved. I would just like to throw that out as another suggestion.
You related earlier about elections in Zaire, and I would hope that you might look at the fact that rebel leaders or many people who have been under the Mobutu regime for 30 years feel that the government is an illegal government and it is going to be very difficult. Mr. Kabila mentioned it to me 2 weeks ago, that how can you have elections when it will be run by an illegal government? Strong supports from the United Nations or the European Community and the United States and anyone else coming in supervising, he feels that that is the only way it can work.
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But he also suggested that there may be a new interim government or at least a commission that is appointed with all parties involved so that there could at least be a possibility of a fair election. I think that if it is going to proceed, and if elections are going to be respected by the individual groups, that there would have to be a new provisional government or at least a new provisional electoral commission made up of all of the Tutsis, the Kabilas, and people from even the current government, but it cannot succeed if the current government is going to call a