In resolution 21/130, the General Assembly decided that, in approaching human rights questions within the United Nations system, the international community should accord, or continue to accord, priority to the search for solutions to the mass and flagrant violations of human rights of peoples and persons affected by various situations.  The Assembly reiterated these views in the subsequent resolutions, including resolutions 37/199.

In its resolutions 1997/61, the Commission requested the Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, Mr. Bacre Waly N'Diaye, to continue monitoring the implementation of existing international standards on safeguards and restrictions relating to the imposition of capital punishment.

Mr. Chairman,
Although capital punishment is not yet prohibited under international law, the desirability of its abolition is strongly reaffirmed by this NGO.  In this context, we are concerned at the increase of the application of the death penalty in the USA, both at the state and federal levell, where the scope of this punishment has recently been dramatically extended.  Mr. N'Diaye in his report describes the use of the death penalty in the USA as unacceptable.

Mr. Chairman,
Equally, this NGO expresses gravest concern on the plight of African American prisoners held in American prisons up and down the country.  We are particularly concerned about the incarceration and grooming standards required of these African American prisoners.  We have received considerable complaints from "inmates" which include situations in which every appearl has been turned down.  This is in direct contravention to the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners and the United States constitution relating to fundamental rights.

Mr. Chairman,
We now turn to Europe.  Currently there is a major humanitarian catastrophe in Kosoovo.  Serbian forces equipped with heavy armor have targeted civilian Albanian populations, leveling entire villages, turning flourishing towns into rubble, socrching earth and laying land waste.  Ethnic Albanianns, men of fighting age, are rounded up and summarily executed.  Noncombatants, women, children and elderly are lined up and shot.  Abductions, mass detentions, torture, hangings and burnings of ethnic Albanians on lamp posts are some of the routines of the Serb army.  There have been large-scale massacres and mutilated bodies are being discovered all over.  Indeed, this is a sad and unacceptable situation in the "New World Order."



Mr. Chairman,
We now wish to draw the Sub-Commission's attention to the continued serious and gross human rights abuses in India.  Many of these abuses are generated by intense social tension, the caste system, deliberate and willful suppression of minorities, police brutality and ruthless excessive use of force against populations seeking liberation from India.

Extra-judicial killing is an endemic problem throughout India.  The Special  Raporteur on Extrajudicial killings in his report reveals 444 deaths in custody between April 1995 and March 1996, which is almost triple the number of custodial deaths reported over the same period 1994-95.  And the U.S. Department of State in its 1997 report discloses 888 cases of custodial deaths between April 1996 and March 1997.

The caste system even today, as we begin the new milennium, is as prevalent as it was 50 years ago.  Untouchability is an enduring apartheid in India.  Amnesty International, in a document submitted to the Human Rights Committee in July 1997 describes at length torture and degrading treatment sustained by Dalits (the "Untouchables").

Despite the attention given to the issues of bonded and child labor in recent years and the concern of activists within India, these practices continue to be widespread.  The large number of bonded and child labourers are not afforded adequate protection against exploitation by the police and state authorities.

The Indian armed andpara-military forces in the seven states of the north east engage in arbitrary arrests and detentions, abductions, torture and extra-judicial execution, as well as rape.  These states are Nagaland, Manipu, Assam and Tripura.

Mr. Chairman,
The people of Indian occupied Kashmir continue to suffer brutal repression through murder, torture, arbitrary arrests and detentions, molestation and rape by Indian armed forces simply because people there demand to determine their own political future.

Regrettably, the situation there has simply worsened.  The Amnesty International USA 1998 Report states:   "leaders of the All Party Hurriyat Conference... were increasingly subjected to arbitrary detentions and harrassment.  In November, scores of activists were arrested and detained under preventive detention provisions of the ordinary criminal law while peacefully protesting against human rights violations.

We are somewhat mystified at the Asia Watch Report that Indian occupation forces hire services of  "gangs" to commit serious human rights violations and place the blame on Kashmiris.  This needs to be noted and investigated.

India, the largest democracy in the world, is the largest example in the world of the violations of fundamental and human rights.  They believe, although foolishly, they have an excuse for this.  Perhaps, at this point it is most appropriate to use an abstract from the statement of Madame Claire Palley, your ex-colleague, when she moved a resolution against India, which states:  "Terrorism and the need to counter it  -- but this does not justify torture, inhuman treatment, letting people lsoe limbs by keeping them kneeling in the snow for 24 hours or more, rapes, beating, crushing legs with rollers, summary executions, disappearances, etc.  And it certainly does not permit victimizing most of the civilian population, as the water in which the fish can swim.  On that basis, with internal armed conflicts applying in a large number of countries in this world, and terrorism aplying throughout a large part of the world,  much of the world's populations should have no human rights.  I fear we, the Sub-Commission, as I indicated yesterday half-jokingly, are becoming the Sub-Commisison on the Preventing of Terrorism and the Protection of Governments, allowing our justifiable concern about gross terrorist violations of human rights to obscure our primary duty of monitoring gross violations of human rights by governments under item 2."

Mr. Chairman,
Human rights issues cannot be considered as internal affairs and the international community has a duty to remind states that do not respect international human rights standards of their obligation under international laws.

In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, we congratulate you on your elections and conducting these proceedings with skill and  that special measure of fairness.