05/08/2001

THERE'S NO shortage of analysis of what the United States did wrong to lose its seat after a half-century on the U.N. Human Rights Commission, and no shortage of advice on how it should set itself straight. Some have attributed the U.S. defeat to President Bush's positions on climate change or missile defense. On the facing page today, Harold Koh, an official in the Clinton State Department, urges the Bush people to participate more actively in international forums on AIDS, racism and democracy.

We don't necessarily disagree, but when Mr. Koh describes the passing of an "era of automatic global deference to U.S. leadership on human rights," we have trouble remembering such a time. It seems to us that the fight for human rights has always been uphill work. It also seems to us that last week's vote wasn't really about the Kyoto treaty on global warming or nuclear nonproliferation or even supposed Bush unilateralism but on, not surprisingly, human rights. The United States, though often too circumspect, is one of the more forthright nations in calling attention to human rights abuses. The abusers, a powerful bloc in the United Nations and on the commission itself, don't like that; neither do some democratic nations that generally prefer to kowtow rather than make impolite remarks. France and China sounded similar themes as they crowed about the U.S. defeat. France won its seat due to its foreign policy "founded on dialogue and respect," the French U.N. ambassador said. China's government said the United States had "undermined the atmosphere for dialogue."

What exactly do the Chinese mean by "dialogue"? Presumably they're not looking to talk about Liu Yaping, a Chinese American businessman who was dragged off a street in China by security forces on March 8. Mr. Liu has been held incommunicado ever since, though his brother has been handed hospital bills for treatment of vomiting, slurring of speech and loss of vision, the New York Times reported yesterday. Is he a victim of torture? No, he's in "good health," police say. Nor are the Chinese interested in dialogue on the Princeton-trained demographer Li Shaomin, a U.S. citizen also being held for unknown reasons; nor about Gao Zhan, the American University researcher who is in detention and whose 5-year-old also was hauled away for a month. They're not looking for fruitful exchange on the 79-year-old Catholic Bishop Shi Enxiang whom they've imprisoned, the churches they've razed, the Falun Gong practitioners who have died in jail, the Tibetan monks who are locked up, the Democracy Party activists in labor camps.

These, presumably, are some of the matters France believes should be approached with more "respect." Fellow commission members Sudan, Libya, Cuba and Vietnam no doubt agree. And when Denmark once supported the United States in trying to raise such issues at the U.N. commission, China predicted that the issue would "become a rock that smashes on the Danish government's head. Denmark, the bird that pokes out its head, will suffer the most." That kind of talk has an effect.

None of this means the United States should, or can, give up on the United Nations; as Mr. Koh argues, it must keep working there. That the Bush administration was blind-sided last week reflects badly on its preparations and professionalism. But if the administration learns from this defeat that it should get along more collegially with those governments that bully and abuse their own citizens, or with those that don't much care, it will have learned the wrong lesson.