It is disappointing, on her first visit to China as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, that Mrs Mary Robinson should choose to limit and determine the media coverage of her activities. Tomorrow she flies to Tibet, accompanied by one journalist - Mr Charlie Bird of RTE - and a cameraman, having excluded The Irish Times's Beijing correspondent, Mr Conor O'Clery, from coverage of the visit.
Earlier this month, Conor O'Clery had been approved to accompany Mrs Robinson to Tibet by the Chinese Foreign Ministry. Readers of this newspaper will know that he is one of a very small number of resident correspondents in Beijing who have already visited the country in order to familiarise themselves with conditions there. The Chinese also granted permission for RTE's Charlie Bird to cover the Tibet visit.
Last week The Irish Times was advised that Conor O'Clery had been blocked from the Tibet visit at the specific request of the High Commissioner. According to her spokesman, Mr Jose Diaz, "it would send the wrong message" if she were to be accompanied only by Irish media. The High Commissioner, he says, wishes her Tibet visit to be seen as a UN, not an Irish event. This is not logical or credible, given that she seems perfectly happy to be accompanied by a Dublin-based TV reporter. If she is seeking a UN profile for the visit is it not more likely to accrue from coverage by a senior member of the international press corps based in Beijing? The Irish Times, it should be added, had offered to make Conor O'Clery's reportage available internationally in any way requested by the UN.
Of the many infringements of human rights in contemporary China, few are better documented than repression of the media. Editors and journalists in some numbers remain incarcerated in Chinese jails. What sort of message does Mary Robinson transmit to the Chinese, urging them on the one hand towards an acceptance of western-style press freedoms while, on the other, stage-managing the coverage of her own visit to Tibet by picking and choosing the journalists she will allow to report it? There is not a political leader in the world who would not be delighted to be able to select which journalists to deal with. But it is one of the fundamental working practices of the Western press that it is journalists and editors who should take these decisions, not the public figures who will be the subject of their reportage. Coverage of the High Commissioner's visit to Tibet now depends upon one journalist of Mary Robinson's own choosing. Charlie Bird is an accomplished correspondent but he would be the last to claim the specialised knowledge and experience of a colleague based in the region for the past two years.
Readers of The Irish Times in Ireland and the thousands of people who access the newspaper each day from around the world on the Internet will know nothing of the impression which Mary Robinson may or not make in her visit to Tibet. Her visit will not be susceptible to the observations and evaluation of a respected correspondent who knows the ground and who has reported the region over the past two years. This may or may not be what she wants - who knows? But it is the net effect of her decision. Belatedly and ineffectually, she suggested that if the Chinese authorities were prepared to permit a "more representative group" to travel to Tibet she would allow Conor O'Clery to be included. With less than 48 hours' notice of this request, the Chinese declined to respond - as might have been expected.
Whatever her rationale, Mrs Robinson has done a poor day's work for at least one of the principles which she seeks to further in her visit to China.
