The Chinese government could not stop Human Rights in China (HRIC), an international Chinese human rights advocacy group, from participating in the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).
Based in New York City, because the Chinese government does allow them to operate in China, HRIC was set up 14 years ago to address human rights violations in the Asian country. With contacts inside China and a research department in Hong Kong, HRIC tries to improve the human rights situation in a country with the largest population in the world.
Through much maneuvering and months of sheer determination, the organisation is in Geneva. They hope to raise awareness of human rights violations happening in China and the plight of, among many others, Internet journalists arrested by the Chinese government for publishing information that portrays the state in a negative light.
‘We are not accredited,” shouts HRIC executive director Sharon Hom, ‘we are not supposed to be here, but we are here.”
Hom said China has always been opposed to human rights and China’s participation in any human rights meetings and lobbied not to have the organisation accredited. ‘They use their political and economic strength and, in this particular case, direct influence to recommend and to make sure that we were not accredited,” says Hom.
HRIC applied for accreditation in August and were initially told by the executive secretariat of WSIS that their application had been completed and waited to hear more. When no further news came from the WSIS executive secretariat, they called the offices and were informed that their application had been forwarded to China for review.
‘Since then we have never, even up to today, been contacted by the executive secretariat, never been informed that we were not accredited and never been informed why,” says Hom. ‘The only reason we found out we were not recommended for accreditation was through other NGOs at PrepCom 3 [the third Preparatory Committee meeting]. They called us and emailed us and said you are not on the list for accreditation. We then mobilised and tried to raise the issue, but we still did not hear anything.”
Determined to have a voice at the WSIS, Hom and her colleagues finally obtained accreditation through other NGOs they are affiliated to. ‘The lesson of all this for the Chinese government is that they think they can deny and silence independent NGO voices, but in the end they really can’t,” says Hom. ‘Rather than spending their energy trying to exclude us from these forums they should rather engage and talk to us.”
The HRIC has written to the secretariat and asked, ‘in the interest of transparency and accountability”, to be given specific reasons as to why they were not accredited. Says a frustrated Hom, ‘Not one of the Taiwan NGOs or independent Chinese NGOs got accredited for this summit. Only the China Internet Society got it because they work with the government. Their mission statement states that they are responsible for reporting to the government.”
‘I think what this demonstrates is that the accreditation process is not transparent. It is a politicised process and this must be addressed before Tunisia. Accreditation must be inclusive and transparent or it will undermine the legitimacy of both the process and the outcome,” she says.