Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization

A human rights group on Friday beat back a campaign by Vietnam to bar it from taking part in the work of United Nations bodies for three years on grounds it had links to terrorism. The 54-member U.N. Economic and Social Council rejected 20-22, with 11 abstentions, a resolution that would have suspended the Rome-based Transnational Radical Party from consultative status with the world body for three years. The vote was a setback for a growing number of U.N. members -- such as China, Cuba, Libya and Zimbabwe, themselves targets of human rights groups -- that have banded together to exclude Western human rights groups from accreditation. Some 2,000 grass roots or advocacy groups, known as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), have consultative status with the Economic and Social Council that enables them to give expert advice to various United Nations bodies and international conferences. In recent years, the NGOs have been increasingly active in fields as diverse as international law, the environment, arms control and women's rights. But the council and its committee charged with monitoring NGO participation are known for using politics to decide memberships. A recent report by a special U.N. panel, led by former Brazilian President Fernando Cardoso, recommended an accreditation process that depended less on politics than on skills and expertise. 'TERRORIST' OR RIGHTS CHAMPION? In the case of the Transnational Radical Party, Vietnam accused it of repeatedly including Kok Ksor, president of the Montagnard Foundation, in its delegation to annual meetings of the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva. Ksor, who lives in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and his Montagnard Foundation champion the rights of the Montagnard people of Vietnam's Central Highlands, who accuse the Vietnamese authorities of political persecution. "Kok Ksor is a terrorist, pursuing a subversive agenda toward Vietnam," Le Long Minh, Vietnam's U.N. ambassador, told the council, accusing him of campaigning for decades for an independent Montagnard state in the Central Highlands. But Dutch Ambassador Dirk van den Berg, representing the European Union, said there was "no reliable evidence" to uphold the allegations. "Neither Mr. Ksor nor the Montagnard Foundation appears in any U.N. or European Union list of terrorist individuals and associations," he said. "If they suspend the Transnational Radical Party, that means their accusations that I am a terrorist will be true with the government, and it will give them a license to kill those in Vietnam who support my cause," Ksor said before the vote. The Transnational Radical Party is a former Italian political party that is now an umbrella organization for rights groups. It is headed by Italian Emma Bonino, a former European commissioner and a current member of the European Parliament. "What we are seeing here is countries from the nonaligned movement getting stronger and stronger and able to block a range of human rights issues," said Matteo Mecacci, the group's representative at the United Nations. "If they can convince the United Nations that someone is a terrorist and should not be allowed to participate, you will soon see many human rights experts excluded," he said.

Source: Reuters