Keynoter Vows ‘No Retreat’ at Women’s Forum

Controversies over Chinese security gave way to debates over domestic and state violence against women as the U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women officially opened here Monday.

Declaring that women “are no longer guests on this planet,” the conference’s secretary general, Gertrude Mongella of Tanzania, announced to cheers and trills from thousands of women that “this planet belongs to them too. A revolution has begun.”

First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived in the Chinese capital overnight, joining other prominent female leaders--including Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and Bangladeshi Prime Minister Khaleda Zia--to try to create a new foundation for women’s advancement.

But despite the enthusiasm, the conference, which continues until Sept. 15, heralds less a revolution than a holding pattern. International delegates are digging in to preserve positions on abortion and sex education that were agreed on last year at the U.N. Conference on Population and Development in Cairo.

“There will be no unraveling of commitments--neither today’s nor last year’s, and certainly not this decade’s commitments,” said Mongella. “This revolution is too just, too important and certainly long overdue.”

As Mongella and others spoke inside the hall, South African representative Winnie Mandela and her entourage had been turned away from the ceremony because they arrived late. An ensuing clash with guards who shoved them from the steps of the building was the first example in the capital of the kind of confrontations between hyper-cautious security forces and activist women that have plagued a parallel forum outside the city.

Some participants at the Non-Governmental Organizations Forum on Women an hour north of Beijing have complained of being harassed, followed and intimidated by police who fear the women are hurting the interests of the country.

On Monday, nearly 1,000 women dressed in black and carrying candles scuffled with police three times as they marched to the edges of the forum site to protest violence and discrimination against women and the United Nations’ failure to back up their right to demonstrate there without interference.

Although prominent delegates have urged that women refocus on the issues of the conference and not on its host, China’s human rights record and strict family-planning policies constitute an electric undercurrent in conference discussions.

Bhutto emphatically condemned female infanticide, a practice reportedly still common in China, in her opening-day address.

“As we gather here today, the cries of the girl child reach out to us,” Bhutto said. “This conference needs to chart a course that can create a climate where the girl child is as welcomed and valued as a boy child, that the girl child is considered as worthy as a boy child.”

Joaquin Navarro-Valls, official spokesman for the Vatican delegation to the conference, commented: “I find it sad that people at the conference are talking about the problems of female [infanticide] in Africa but do not mention it here in China, where the practice is most widespread.”

Joining the official American delegation to the conference Friday was Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.), a leading anti-abortion member of Congress who has accused the Chinese of conducting thousands of “forced abortions and forced sterilizations” as part of the country’s strict family-planning program.

In the congressional debate leading up to the conference, Smith led an unsuccessful effort to cut off funding for the American delegation. After failing, he decided to join a four-member congressional delegation and has seized the opportunity to loudly condemn Chinese family-planning policy.

Smith urged Mrs. Clinton and U.N. Ambassador Madeleine Albright, who chairs the 44-member U.S. delegation, to speak out against the Chinese record on human rights.

“The Chinese coercive population-control program,” Smith said at a news conference here, “has destroyed more than 150 million babies since 1979. . . . To attend a women’s rights conference in Beijing without commenting on this would be like attending a human rights conference in South Africa 10 years ago without condemning apartheid.”

However, the three other members of Congress visiting the conference--all women--urged a more moderate approach. “I came here to listen and learn, not to lecture,” said Rep. Jane Harman (D-Rolling Hills).

Mrs. Clinton is scheduled to make two speeches during her two days in Beijing. This afternoon she is slated to address a special session of the women’s conference. Wednesday she will travel to Huairou, about 35 miles north of the capital, to deliver an outdoor speech to the more than 20,000 delegates to the non-governmental organizations forum.