“I rose to salute him and watched him enter his car. The next minute it was all over. The car was on fire and there was dense smoke all around,” said Manmohan of the Punjab Armed Police. The 41yearold head constable was on duty at the X-ray machine close to the VIP entrance of the secretariat here.
Later he lay in the emergency ward of the general hospital, both his arms bandaged from shoulder to fingers, with his wife at his bedside, “The bomb exploded just as chief minister Beant Singh put his right foot inside the car,” he said. “He was wearing white kurtapyjamas and turban, a cream jacket with the buttons open and black Punjabi shoes,” he recalled clearly.
“The explosion was deafening, there was thick smoke and we could hardly see anything even as splinters of glass hit us in the face and chest.” said 35yearold constable Bakshish Singh, who was Manmohan’s colleague at the X-ray machine organization behind the blast and described the claim by the Babbar Khalsa chief Wadhawa Singh Babbar as unsubstantiated.
Hillary Clinton Decries Abuse of Women Remarks taken as not so veiled message to China on rights Hillary Rodham Clinton inspired a packed house at a U.N. women’s conference Sept, 5th, issuing are sounding call for women’s rights and sternly rebuking China for curtailing the freedoms of women attending a forum nearby. “If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference,” she said, “Jet it be that human rights are women’s rights and women’. rights once and for all. And among those rights are the right to speak freely and the right to be heard.” Clinton’s pointed speech, delivered at the UN. Fourth World Conference on Women, represented a departure from the past: It is believed to be the first time a U.S. dignitary has delivered a speech about human rights while visiting China. Although she never uttered the host country’s name, Clinton’s remarks were widely understood to refer to China—and in particular, to the heavy surveillance that many women complain has created an intimidating atmosphere at a forum for nongovernmental organizations that parallels the conference. “It is indefensible that many women in nongovernmental organizations who wished to participate in this conference have not been able to attend—or have been prohibited from fully taking part,” she said. Clinton’s speech was cheered by human rights activists and called a “home run” by Madeleine Albright, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Some observers wondered whether the speech was so tough that it would set back U.S. China relations, which have been strained in recent months by the Clinton administration’s decision to grant a visa to Taiwanese President Lee Tenghui and by China’s two month detention of Bay Area human rights activist
Harry Wu. But Albright said it was just part of the dialogue the U.S. has been insisting on, “The Chinese leadership knows very well what our views are,” she said.
“Our views are not changed.’ it Chinese officials did not immediately comment on Clinton’s speech, and the state run Xinhua News Agency, which has carried reports one very other major
rights are human speech at the conference, ignored it. Just weeks ago, Clinton was under pressure to boycott the conference because of China’s arrest of Wu, But he was released on August 24, clearing the way for the first lady to travel to Beijing as cochairman of the U.S. delegation.
Article extracted from this publication >>September 8, 1995
