UN Watch urges UN to discuss human rights violations in Tibet

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Washington DC: A UN monitoring organization, UN Watch, has urged the United Nations Human Rights Council to consider the issue of China's violation of human rights in Tibet as it holds a special session on the situation in Darfur.

In a statement before the 3rd regular session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on December 1, 2006, Elizabeth Cassidy, Assistant Executive Director of UN Watch, said, "UN watch welcomes the special session on Darfur, and urges the Council to consider the human rights situations in the other 16 countries and 3 disputed territories that are listed by the leading NGO Freedom House as being the world's worst." These include," the statement said, "repression of political dissent and of the media in China, as well as human rights violations in occupied Tibet."

"We hope that at least some of these very grave situations will be among the Council's next priorities," the UN Watch statement concluded. UN Watch is a non-governmental organization based in Geneva whose mandate is to monitor the performance of the United Nations by the yardstick of its own Charter.

Outgoing UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan

Appreciating the work of UN Watch, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan is quoted on the organization's website as saying, "I deeply appreciate the valuable work performed by UN Watch. I believe that informed and independent evaluation of the United Nations' activities will prove a vital source as we seek to adapt the Organization to the needs of a changing world."

The Freedom House report, referred to in the UN Watch statement, was released on September 6, 2006 and was titled, "Worst of the Worst: The World's Most Repressive Societies 2006: A special report detailing the world's most repressive societies, drawn from Freedom in the World 2006, Freedom House's annual global survey on political rights and civil liberties."

Tibet is listed as a disputed territory by Freedom House and gets the lowest ranking both in political rights and civil liberties in the 2006 report. "Since 1972, Freedom House has published Freedom in the World, an annual comparative assessment of the state of political rights and civil liberties in 192 countries and 14 related and disputed territories. Widely used by policy-makers, journalists, and scholars, the 700-page survey is the definitive report on freedom around the globe," Freedom House said.

You can view the full report on www.freedomhouse.org.

  (www.tibet.net is the official website of the Central Tibetan Administration of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.)

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