UN
Tibet statement welcomed and
rejected By Carey L Biron
WASHINGTON - Human rights workers and
Tibet-focused activists are hailing a strongly
worded statement by the United Nations' top
official on human rights, drawing attention to
growing public discontent in Tibet just ahead of a
major leadership shuffle that will reverberate
throughout the Communist Party of China.
The statement, released Friday, was the
first time that the United Nations High
Commissioner for Human Rights had publicly
commented on the situation in Tibet, despite years
of lobbying by activist support groups.
"Social stability in Tibet will never be
achieved through heavy security measures and
suppression of human rights," the high
commissioner, Navi Pillay, said. "Deep underlying
issues need to
be addressed, and I call
on the [Chinese] government to seriously consider
the recommendations made to it by various
international human rights bodies."
The
Chinese government strongly condemned Pillay's
comments on Tibet, with Foreign Ministry spokesman
Hong Lei saying "We are dissatisfied with and
strongly opposed to the high commissioner's
statement." Hong told a regular press briefing
that people in Tibet are enjoying economic growth,
social stability and a settled life. Their
religious, political, economic and cultural rights
are guaranteed, China Daily reported on Monday. He
said China hopes the high commissioner will uphold
an objective, fair and neutral stance, and stop
issuing remarks interfering in China's domestic
affairs.
Pillay urged Beijing to allow
independent monitors into Tibet, while noting that
a dozen requests for invitations for UN special
rapporteurs still await Chinese government action.
"The UN matters to China, and this is an
important opportunity for China to be called out
in a public forum," Mary Beth Markey, president of
the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT), based
in Washington, told IPS.
"In recent years,
China has been very successful at containing
bilateral conversations on human rights in private
settings. Yet while the UN has been seen as a
major tool by Western states to strengthen their
human rights calls, they have been reluctant to
use it as well as they should."
Pillay's
statement also received immediate plaudits from
the Tibetan government-in-exile in northern India.
The head of the government-in-exile,
Lobsang Sangay, noted that his government was
"encouraged by the powerful statement". But he
also called on the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC)
to convene a special session on Tibet, "in view of
the desperate and unprecedented spate of
self-immolations by Tibetans due to China's
repressive policies and the continued
intransigence of the Chinese leadership to the
relentless efforts of UNHRC".
Seven a
week Pillay's statement came as a trend of
self-immolations has grown in recent weeks,
signifying strengthening public frustration with
the rigidity of Chinese rule on the Tibetan
plateau. On Sunday, a young Tibetan farmer became
the sixty-third Tibetan since 2009 to set himself
on fire in protest, according to ICT. The
government-in-exile puts the number even higher. A
traditional Tibetan artist, 25-year-old Dorje
Lungdup, was also reported to have killed himself
on Sunday when he set himself on fire in the
monastery town of Tongren, in western China's
Qinghai province, in protest against Chinese rule
in Tibet.
In her statement, Pillay
specifically referenced the extremity inherent to
self-immolation as a form of protest.
"I
recognize Tibetans' intense sense of frustration
and despair, which has led them to resort to such
extreme means," she said. "But there are other
ways to make those feelings clear. The government
also needs to recognize this, and permit Tibetans
to express their feelings without fear of
retribution."
Having risen to a rate of
seven a week by late October, the self-immolations
appear to have severely embarrassed the Beijing
government, which has reportedly stepped up the
security presence in Tibetan-strong areas.
On Monday, the Chinese government strongly
criticized Pillay's statement. Foreign Ministry
spokesperson Hong Lei turned the blame on
followers of the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual
leader living in northern India, blaming them for
"ugly and evil acts intended to achieve the
separatist goal of Tibetan independence".
The same day, while travelling in Japan,
the Dalai Lama noted his optimism that the
once-a-decade changes in Chinese leadership, set
to be announced on Thursday, would lead to
political reform. The aging monk, who formally
gave up his political role in 2011 and has for
decades rejected Tibetan aspirations for
independence from China, has repeatedly talked
against self-immolation, along with other forms of
violence, as a method of protest.
Yet the
polite refusal on the part of dozens of Tibetans
to heed the Dalai Lama's diktat on self-immolation
suggests that "these are clearly political acts of
standing up to the oppressor", ICT's Markey said.
"While much of Tibetan society remains
rooted in Tibetan Buddhist philosophy, these are
very clearly not acts of retreating to pray in the
monasteries," she continued.
"This is very
interesting, because the struggle [for Tibetan
autonomy] has for so many years been driven by the
Dalai Lama's leadership from the outside. Now
we're seeing Tibetans within Tibet acting within
the context of their own political life."
This new process, which can be traced back
to the unprecedented public demonstrations that
swept the Tibetan plateau in mid-2008, in the
run-up to the Beijing Olympic Games, goes well
beyond self-immolation, which has become its
strongest statement.
Increasingly,
however, a discussion is taking place within Tibet
on how to be Tibetan and to assert their ethnic
identity within the People's Republic of China.
The result has been a greater consciousness on the
part of Tibetans to emphasize their language
rights, wear Tibetan clothing or patronize Tibetan
shops. "Our own understanding of
self-immolations has developed over time, but it
seems now that Tibetans are in a new political
moment," Markey said. "There is a concerted effort
being made to make known that their situation can
no longer be tolerated. The Chinese have tried to
characterize these people as unstable, but it's
clearly something greater these are not mere
individual acts."
Rights-lite
campaign For the most part, however,
Western governments, including here in Washington,
have been slow to respond with any greater urgency
to the strengthened calls for reform from the
Tibetan public.
"We have consistently
expressed our concern about the violence in the
Tibetan areas, about the continuing pattern of
self-immolations, heightened tensions, and Tibet
in general," US State Department spokesperson
Victoria Nuland said in late October.
But
even as non-stop media coverage of the US
presidential election has continued for months
leading up to Tuesday's polls, the two
presidential contenders have had very little to
say about international human rights generally,
much less on Tibet. Indeed, while China has been
referenced repeatedly in the campaigns, it has
only been used to talk about trade, labor or
protectionism.
"Compared with past
campaigns, human rights in China have largely been
an afterthought," Frank Jannuzi, the head of the
Washington office of Amnesty International, a
watchdog, wrote last week. "China might now be
powerful enough that both candidates are reluctant
to raise human rights issues for fear of it
withholding cooperation in other areas."
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