THE NEW YORK TIMES "EDITORIALS/LETTERS"

Sunday, December 1, 1996

CHINA TRIES TO CLAIM TIBET, DISNEY .... ALL OF US

To the Editor:

Not only do the Chinese claim Tibet as part of China, but now they claim we are all a part of China. They try to censor the Walt Disney Company (front page and Arts pages, Nov. 26 and 27) by suggesting that its release of a film about the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan religious leader, would jeopardize Disney's business in China. Disney elected not to buckle under and will release the film. I have written a book on Tibet and recently returned from my third visit there in the last decade. The situation is worse than at any time since the death of Mao Zedong. Pictures of the Dalai Lama had been removed from all the monasteries. Absurdly, even the top of a photograph of the Dalai Lama in one of the rooms in the Potala Palace has been covered over, leaving only an English caption exposed. the few monks in the monasteries are subject to constant reeducation programs. They are required either to denounce the Dalai Lama or to leave the monastic order. The Tibetan quarters of Lhasa and other cities and towns in Tib

et are shrinking. Lhasa is looking more and more like a lumpen provincial Chinese capital. It is true that it is cleaner and more orderly than it was, but at what cost? It is also true that foreign companies like Mobil and Peugeot have offices in Lhasa. The removal of a few Dalai Lama pictures from monasteries is not enough to stop the flow of international commerce.

Jeremy Bernstein

New York, Nov. 27, 1996.