Tibet: Chinese sore point

Press, 23 July 1987, Page 13

Tibet: Chinese sore point

JONATHAN MIRSKY writes that Peking has accused the United States of using human rights to “smear social and political progress.*’

China has reacted violently to the two United States Congressional amendments. One calls upon Peking to respect the rights of all its citizens; the second states that in Tibet, China has imposed its rule on an unwilling people, who have suffered terribly. The Congressional action, which could be enacted into American law if the Senate concurs with the House, has stirred the Chinese into charging the Americans with using the human rights issue “as a convenient tool to smear social and political progress in China.” Tibet is a particular sore point with China. It is one of the few issues on which Taiwan and Peking agree: that Tibet is and always has been a Chinese region, and never independent But Peking’s leaders, beginning in 1980, have also admitted that after the invasion of 1950 and especially following the uprising that led to the fligh't of the Dali Lama to India, China treated Tibet badly for many years, especially, but not only, during the Cultural Revolution, 1966-76. But Peking has insisted that since 1980, Chinese behaviour in Tibet had improved, in religious, cultural and economic matters. The Congressional charges of oppression and bad treatment, therefore, provoked the party into calling upon certain reliable Tibetan leaders to join in attacking the American legislators. A high-ranking Tibetan member of the Chinese "popular front,” a body which provides the appearance of broad participation in Government affairs, said that “Tibet is an inseparable part of

Chinese territory and nobody can deny this fact” He pointed out that China has spent $5 billion in Tibet, that the standard of living is rising, and that there are many more Tibetans.

A Tibetan “living Buddha” was persuaded to say that although many temples were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, China has spent heavily to restore them. Nor were Tibetan Buddhists the only ones mobilised to attack the Congressional action. Catholic leaders have pointed out that before the Communist victory, the Church was controlled from abroad. Now that China has severed its links with Rome, Chinese Catholics “have regained their dignity and basic rights.” In the cases of Tibetan Buddhists and Chinese Catholics, apart from these official spokesmen, few would freely assert that Communist rule has provided them with dignity and basic rights. Until 1980 all religion in China was proscribed, many priests and monks were killed and imprisoned, and the remainder secularised.

Places of worship were universally destroyed or desecrated. The reversal of this policy, while welcome to believers, is held by many to be a device to reassure foreigners that China is once more an orderly society, worthy of travel and investment

Off the foreigners’ beaten track, say these sceptics, churches and temples remain in ruins, and the party continues to treat believers as potential subversives. Copyright—London Observer Sevice.