by A.M. Rosenthal (New York Times - Tuesday, October 24, 1995)

"Please Do Not Die"

On the tenth day, one diplomat leaves the United Nations headquarters and walks toward the people lying on the sidewalk, across First Avenue on the corner of 47th Street.

There are six of them, one a young woman. He kneels by her, because he has heard that of this small band taking no food since October 14, just water, she is the weakest, most in danger. He kneels by her, touches her shoulder and says: "We are sorry for what has been happening in your country. Please do not die. My country will do its best to help Tibet."

Then he rises and starts across the avenue. I am happy and hopeful because I recognize him as an American diplomat. I know he could not have crossed the avenue to the Tibetans lying in a hunger strike unless the President had so ordered.

I knew that from this moment America would begin at last to fulfill its own and the U.N.'s promises to help Tibetans win some surcease of the murders, arrests and torture by the Chinese occupiers, some movement toward living and praying in freedom.

When he is halfway back across First Avenue I stop my daydream and so he vanishes. I starts to tell a Tibetan friend what I had been dreaming. But I don't, out of embarrassment for my wishfulness, for the U.N. and my country and their unfulfilled promises.

Three times the General Assembly now sitting across that avenue in 50th birthday celebration and representing all members passed resolutions on Tibet. These "solemnly" expressed repugnance at the "violations of fundamental human rights" by the Chinese in Tibet, and called for an end to such things, also "solemnly."

That was in the first and second decades of the occupation, which began three years after the U.N. was founded. In those decades the Chinese Communists were not rich enough, as they are now, to stifle any such expressions by the U.N.

The U.S. had a vivid interest in Tibet in the 60's, when Washington thought Tibetan patriots in exile might be of some uses, and briefly gave a few of them military training in Colorado. Interest in Tibet waned as U.S. commerce with China beckoned and grew.

Still, the current American President did promise to help Tibetan human rights. He did it in a Presidential executive order soon after he was elected. The only thing is, he tore it up a year later.

The broken promises of the U.S. and the U.N. increased the terrible Chinese Communist repression in what had been a peaceful, unified and independent Buddhist nation of six million. Territory was annexed and prisons filled. One million died.

With its land carved up, its people slaughtered and its leader, the Dalai Lama, unable to get the Chinese to talk with him, time is running out for Tibet. Foreigners sometimes say that. Sometimes so do Tibetans. In their moments of total exhaustion.

But they cannot really believe that. So the Dalai Lama keeps traveling the world looking for private people who will care. He finds such people in America, as everywhere.

But they cannot overcome the one motivation that has persuaded their governments to renege on their promises to Tibet. The motivation is money. They fear that Chinese would reduce trade with any country that helped Tibet in the slightest.

At home, unarmed, Tibetans, go on resisting. The price is execution for some, years creaming under torture for the less fortunate resisters.

Abroad, Tibetan exiles - 120,000 in India and Nepal, a scattered few thousand in the West, including 1,800 in the U.S. - struggle with what is left to them: their minds, voices, prayers and sometimes their bodies.

That is why six Tibetans living in the U.S. are fasting on 47th Street, to get attention paid Tibet. They say they will fast until the U.N. lives up to those solemn resolutions of its members; if not, until death.

The message of U.N. member nations and officials to them is the same as to Tibet: Then die.

Not a single diplomat crosses the street. After the daydream, all I can do is kneel myself by one of the people on the sidewalk, a young man, and whisper: "But please do not die."