NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #1/NN_1993_1.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/9807

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TIBET  - CONQUERED PEOPLE CONTINUE TO HOPE

*    Propaganda has made world forget Chinese occupation

<<Calgary Herald  December 22, 1992 on Background Page (Op Ed) >>

By John McMurtry

Although the world has not yet forgotten the massacre of students and
workers in Tiannamen Square in 1989, the Chinese government's claim to
"freedom from foreign influence in its internal affairs" and the lure
of the most populous market in  the world have together muted the moral
outrage of western leaders.

But a far more barbarous violation of human right by the Chinese
government, and a criminal violation of a host of international laws to
which the Chinese government is a signatory, has continued now for
decades with hardly a ripple in diplomatic relations or aid assistance
- the military invasion and occupation of neighboring Tibet, the
killing of 1.2 million and the destruction of its culture and
institutions.

It is a backhand tribute to China's omnipresent propaganda apparatus
and the international clout that it can still pretend to the world that
its Stalinsque crime in Tibet are a "liberation of the Tibetan people
from a backward feudal autocracy" and an "assertion of China's integral
part of the motherland's territory."

Propaganda works by tireless repetition, however false its claims.
Yet, in fact, China has no right whatever under international law to
Tibetan territory, and no international legal body or court has ever
supported this contention of China's rulers.

Tibet has existed as an independent state since its unification in the
7th century.  Besides conquering large parts of China during its
subsequent history, its international relations with other countries
were invariably conducted as a sovereign state until its invasion by
revolutionary Chinese troops in 1949-50.

In a 1960 report to the secretary-general of the International
Commission of Jurist in Geneva, its legal inquiry committee concluded:
"Tibet has demonstrated the conditions of statehood as generally
accepted under international law.  In 1950, there was a people and
territory, and a government which functioned in that territory,
conducting its own domestic affairs free from any outside authority."

The report found the Chinese government guilty of "religious genocide"
(bombing and destruction of 6,000 monasteries and their inhabitants),
"acts of murder, rape and arbitrary imprisonment," "torture and cruel,
inhumane and degrading treatment on a large scale," "denial of freedom
of thought, opinion, conscience and religion," and "violation of the
right of assembly and association."

It further found that "economic, social and cultural rights" of
Tibetans were denied while "the economic resources of Tibet were used
to meet the needs of the Chinese" (an estimated $54 billion of timber,
for example, has been removed to date from Tibet in the massive
deforestation of the "autonomous territory" for Chinese consumption).

The report also charged that the Chinese government was imposing forced
"labor under harsh and ill-paid conditions," prohibiting Tibetans from
"participating in the cultural life of their own community,"
"compulsorily indoctrinating children" and -perhaps most far-reaching
of all - was transferring ever-increasing numbers of Chinese occupiers
in Tibet, leading to the situation today where Chinese citizens now
outnumber Tibetans in their own country by 7.5 to six million.

So much for the Chinese government's claim to "liberate" Tibet.  So
much for the worth of its signature to international laws and
agreements governing relations between nations.

When I came recently to the Himalayan region of Dharamsala where the
Tibetan government-in-exile and its increasing tens of thousands of
Tibetan refugees have settled under the leadership of the Dalai Lama, I
had no idea what to expect.  What I found was a social success story of
a refugee population that I can think of no equal to since the Jew's
exodus from Egypt thousands of years ago.  The Tibetan community, under
the leadership of the Dalai Lama and driven by an immense energy of
social co-operation and individual willingness to work, has achieved a
synthesis of old and new, spiritual and material and even communist and
capitalist.  It is an example for the rest of the world -certainly for
China.

There seems little doubt that the Tibetans' in exile has been the
crucible of fire within which this social miracle has been fashioned,
but why not also in the refugees centres of Palestine or Central
America or Eastern Europe?  Perhaps the key here lies in the
combination of profound spiritual belief binding the community together
and its carry-through into social infrastructure.

In a part of the world where the annual per-capita income is in
hundreds of dollars a year, the Tibetans have centres housing their
rich intellectual and artistic culture near everyone, public health and
welfare offices and networks in every area, to most inclusive and vital
educational base I have seen in more than 70 countries, including total
live-in support for the orphaned and the poor, growing and thriving
small-family businesses and no jarring gap between rich and improvised,
powerful and powerless on any level.

The beggars, rootless unemployed, disaffected youth and hungry homeless
one sees now almost everywhere in the world are not to be found in the
Tibetan community.  Protection of the environment is a concern, and a
practice of everyday life.

The Dalai Lama told me that "one of the main problems of the world is
that people do not smile and laugh enough," and his conversation is
liberally punctuated with infectious bursts of both.  This is not
because his or his peoples' lot is easy.  They are, as he says with a
break in his voice, "suffering genocide," but he "cannot afford the
luxury of the idea of an independent country until I can do something
about the killing and the destruction of my people now."

A man without an iota of the affection of power and with an acute and
learned mind fuelled by deep commitment to "the working people of the
world," he is that almost impossible combination of statesman and saint
we have not known since Gandhi.  And like Gandhi, he rejects armed
violence.

This is the leadership and the people that the Chinese government says
is "incapable of governing themselves."  Such outlandish arrogance is
traditional with Chinese imperial posturing, but never before has it
been so extravagantly false.  The final problem is that such a politics
of total lie, backed by total force, touches all of us.  If it is
permitted to continue in the wake of short-term strategy and mega-
market illusions, we might ask ourselves what will be acceptable next?

<<McMurty, a philosophy professor at the University of Guelph, (Canada)
is on a seven month tour of Asia.>>