06 April 2000
House International Relations Panel Condemns China's Tibet Abuses
(U.S. says China should negotiate autonomy offer of Dalai Lama) (820) By Steve La Rocque Washington File Writer/Editor Washington -- China should negotiate with the Dalai Lama on his proposal of autonomy for Tibet under Chinese sovereignty, said Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues Julia Taft at an April 6 hearing of the House International Relations Committee. Taft, who serves as the State Department's "point person" on Tibet, told the committee the Clinton Administration brings up the issue of Tibet and the Dalai Lama's offer to talk with Beijing at every meeting with Chinese officials. But the Chinese response, she said, is that "'the time is not right.'" "It is very frustrating," she said. Taft noted that she had written six times to China's ambassador to the United States seeking an opportunity to meet with him to discuss Tibetan issues, but as yet had not been granted an appointment with him. China's own interests, she told the lawmakers, "could be advanced" by dialogue with the Dalai Lama and a negotiated settlement. China's treatment of Tibetans "for the last 50 years," Taft said, has been "inconsistent with international norms on human rights." The United States, she added, was working hard with other nations to get China's human rights record, including its record in Tibet, as part of the agenda at the Geneva meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Commission." Beijing should realize, Taft said, that widespread knowledge about its human rights abuses in Tibet affects China's dealing with its international partners. The Dalai Lama, she continued, is concerned over the marginalization of ethnic Tibetans inside Tibet under China's rule. The Dalai Lama's special envoy, Mr. Lodi Gyaltsen Gyari, quoted to the committee the Dalai Lama's call for "a peaceful and mutually acceptable solution to the Tibetan problem." The Dalai Lama's approach, he quoted, "envisages that Tibet enjoy genuine autonomy with the framework of the People's Republic (of) China." A positive response to the Dalai Lama, Gyari said, "would prove to the world that China not only is genuinely capable of respecting diversity within her territories, but that it has assumed the mantle of responsible regional leadership." Gyari called on the United States and other democracies to urge China to take on those "responsibilities of leadership." If, instead, he warned, the United States were to allow the communist regime "to act with impunity and escape international condemnation, we should not be surprised at the kind of leader China will become." Committee Chairman Representative Benjamin Gilman (Republican of New York) criticized China's harsh rule in Tibet in that meeting. He also claimed that China's presence in Tibet was part of an encirclement strategy against democratic India that the Clinton Administration seemed to be ignoring. "Conditions inside Tibet have been the worst since the Cultural Revolution," Gilman said in an opening statement. Beijing, he added, "fails to recognize the opportunity that His Holiness the Dalai Lama represents for a peaceful settlement to the problem." Gilman termed the Dalai Lama's offer of Tibetan autonomy within China, "a simple, moderate, workable solution to the status of Tibet." Chiding the communist regime's refusal to talk with the Dalai Lama, Gilman said, "we believe that Tibet deserves nothing less than the complete restoration of its full independence." He condemned the Beijing regime for its religious persecution and "the ridiculous image of atheists involving themselves in appointing religious leaders," which he said "is ludicrous and an embarrassment to the Chinese culture." Time, Gilman warned, "is not on Beijing's side. The Tibetan cause enjoys the global support that it does because it is a courageous attempt by a nation and a people who are trying to regain what is rightfully theirs by throwing off the repression of colonization." China's "gobbling up" of Tibet, Gilman charged, was the source of the tensions between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan. China, he said, with its long border with India, attempts to keep that democratic nation off-balance by "transferring nuclear weapons to Pakistan." While Pakistan, he said, "causes problems on India's western border, China has been currying favor with the Burmese military government on India's eastern border.... And on the southern tip of India, China overwhelmingly remains Sri Lanka's main supplier of arms." Representative Sam Gejdenson (Democrat of Connecticut), the committee's ranking minority member, joined in a bipartisan attack on China's record in Tibet, calling it a "continued attempt at cultural genocide." Representative Steve Rothman (Democrat of New Jersey) bemoaned what he called the "tragic occupation of Tibet," and scored the Beijing regime for its "efforts to erase Tibetan identity," saying it was "a crime against humanity." He warned that China's oppressive rule over Tibet "jeopardizes" the relations between the Chinese and American people. (The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: usinfo.state.gov)
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