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World Tibet Network News Thursday, October 3, 1996

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2. This document damns China over Tibet (Guardian)

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The Guardian - London
3 October 1996

By Isabel Hilton

IT WAS National Day in the People's Republic of China this week, the annual
cele-bration of nearly five decades of achievement under the wise
leadership of the Communist Party. Nationalism was the theme: thousands of
people attended a dawn flag-raising ceremony in Tiananmen Square, and a
People's Daily editorial underscored, for those who had missed it, the
message of the moment.

"Nationalism... can bring into full play the potential of all
nationalities. [It] is the most effective way of cementing the strength of
all nation-alities . . . to create great undertakings that will shake
heaven and earth," it said. The People's Daily published a front-page
colour photograph of the eight-year-old child whom the Chinese govern-ment
have imposed upon Tibet as the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama, Tibet's
second-highest religious authority. The boy chosen by the Dalal Lama, the
Tibetans' spiritual leader, has vanished.

Beijing was trumpeting its achievements, but Tibet is suffering another
wave of politi-cal persecution as the govern-ment seeks to prise loose the
people's devotion to their ab-sent Dalai Lama. The Chinese say that the
late 10th Panchen Lama, who died in 1989, and his Party-sanctioned
reincar-nation are supporters of the Chinese Communist Party and the
Chinese occupation 9f Tibet, while the Dalal Lama is a traitor to Tibet
and, even less plausibly, to his religion. The fitting leader for Tibet,
the message runs, is therefore the Panchen Lama.

But a document that has remained secret for more than 30 years and which
has now come out of China reveals what the late Panchen Lama really thought
of the fate of his compatriots under the Chi-nese. It is one of the
longest, most detailed and most bitter descriptions ever written about the
devastation resulting from Chinese policies.

"In many parts of Tibet," he wrote, "people have starved to death. In some
places, whole families have perished and the death rate is very high. This
is very abnormal, horrible and grave. In the past, Tibet lived with a dark,
barbaric feudal-ism, but there was never such shortage of food."
The document is a 70,000-word letter the late Panchen Lama wrote to
Chairman Mao in 1962 in a desperate attempt to persuade Mao to modify the
policies that threatened to ex-tinguish a people and its culture. "If
language, clothes and habits are taken away," he wrote, "then a people will
van-is.... How can we guarantee that Tibetans will not be turned into
another race?"

The Panchen Lama was born in the north-west prov-ince of Qinghai, as was
the present Dalai Lama. After their victory in 1949 the Chi-nese divided
Tibet: one third they named the Tibet Autono-mous Region and promised it
would enjoy an earlier version of the one country, two sys-tems" style of
government that is now promised to Hong Kong. The rest was divided between
several Chinese prov-inces, including Qinghai. The Chinese agreed not to
"reform" the Tibet Autono-mous Region, but no such restraints applied to
the rest.

Qinghai has never recov-ered from what was done to it and its peoples in
the 50s: nomads were forcibly settled on the high plateau with its thin
soil. The result was mass starvation and desertification. Monasteries were
destroyed and the monks and nuns forced out. Rebellion followed, and was
savagely put down; thousands died in the Labour camps. It was the time Mao
declared that China could catch the West up in 15 years, if only his magic
prescriptions were followed. Some in the Communist Party hierarchy grew
worried and tried to restrain Mao and reverse his policies. They encouraged
the young Panchen lama, until then an admirer of the Chinese leadership, to
write ins report, hoping to use it against Mao. After a long investigation,
and over the protesting beads of close advisers, the Panchen Lama went
ahead.

BUT Mao won the inner party battle and the Panchen Lama paid for
his temerity with more than a decade and a half of prison. Even today the
Chinese gov-ernment continues to hide the truth about that era: millions
throughout China died of star-vation, but for decades it has been blamed on
"natural di-saster". And just as today the Beijing leadership claims that
Tibet enjoys religious free-dom, they also pretend that Tibet's rich
religious culture was decimated in the Cultural Revolution, now pronounced
one of Mao's "mistakes", rather than in the late 50s and early 60s. That
period has not been judged a "mistake" be-cause that judgment would stand
as a condemnation of Deng Xiaoping and the others who share the
responsibility for the millions of deaths and broken lives they caused.

The Chinese government claimed that the late Panchen Lama "loved the
party", but as the document reveals, alter only a decade of Chinese rule,
the Panchen lama was bit-terly disillusioned. It is more than 30 years
since his report. Tibetans are still being ar-rested, tortured and
perse-cuted for their beliefs. And in Beijing, the band plays on.

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Articles in this Issue:

1. Peking's poison fails to touch Tibetan hearts (Independent)
2. This document damns China over Tibet (Guardian)
3. Microsoft - Issued instructions on removing offensive Chinese slogans (WSJ)
4. Educational plans for Tibet slammed (UPI)
5. Tibet to establish schools in every town -report (Reuter)
6. Stocks stir capitalism in Tibet (Reuter)
7. Tibet Jinzhu to raise 76.2 mln yuan from issue (Reuter)

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