By Wendy Lubetkin
Washington File Correspondent

Geneva -- A U.S. congressional delegation traveled to Geneva April 9 to urge members of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights to condemn continuing human rights abuses in Cuba and the People's Republic of China.

Representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Republican, Florida), Chris Smith (Republican, New Jersey) and Lincoln Diaz-Balart (Republican, Florida), said the issue of human rights violations in the two countries has been a focus of the U.S. Congress for a number of months.

The group met in Geneva with High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, as well as with diplomats and non-governmental organizations.

Smith said it would be a "scandal" if the Commission on Human Rights failed to censure China and Cuba for ongoing human rights violations in the two countries.

Speaking at a press briefing with his congressional colleagues, Smith said he hoped the Commission will take action on Sudan, "where there is slavery and a war that has claimed the lives of two million people." Other areas of concern are Kosovo, Iran, Iraq and Chechnya, where "the Russians need to be held to account."

But Smith said the delegation's "prime concern" during its April 9 visit was to bring the Commission's focus on the People's Republic of China and Cuba "so that every person who today is languishing behind bars being tortured will know that they were not forgotten, that in Geneva, the delegates voted for their freedom and for their human rights.

"China is a big, very powerful and strong country, but it treats its own citizens with profound disrespect," Smith added. "Our hope is to stand with the oppressed, not with the oppressor." He noted that Congress recently passed a resolution censuring China for gross violations of human rights by a margin of 406 to 6.

And he also said "If the U.N. body that has the responsibility to speak the truth to a dictatorship fails in that responsibility, it is a very, very serious blow to the dissidents and those who struggle daily under repressive regimes."

Smith said the allegation made by the Cuban foreign minister in a recent address to the Commission that there "are no human rights abuses in Cuba" was "unmitigated nonsense."

Smith added that "We know for a fact that there are hundreds of political prisoners today being tortured in the Gulags of Cuba. We know there is no freedom of the press. We know that there is no freedom of worship or assembly... this kind of nonsense, this kind of lie, hopefully will not have any sway among the delegates as they meet here in Geneva."

Ros-Lehtinen cited the finding of the recent State Department Report on Human Rights that the Castro regime "continues to violate systematically the fundamental civil and political rights of its citizens."

Cuba has recently increased the arrest and harassment of dissidents, she said. "The regime maintains strict censorship of news and information to the public. The constitution punishes any authorized assembly of more than three persons, including those for private religious services in a private home, by up to three months in prison and a fine."

Diaz-Balart said he thought the delegation's meetings with diplomats and non-governmental organizations at the Commission had been "fruitful."

He said he expected a resolution on Cuba sponsored by the Czech Republic to be put forward at the Commission "imminently."

"I think that it cannot be stressed enough that it is very important for the political prisoners, for the dissidents, for the independent press, for the independent society that is emerging within the totalitarian state despite the oppression in Cuba," he said. "It is very important that the international community formally, by way of a resolution of the Human Rights Commission, speak and speak clearly."