The New York Times

Nov. 39, 1996

BEYOND THE MOVIE

by A.M. Rosenthal

And now maybe we should think a bit about Tibet -- the country, not the movie.

The Chinese Government tried to blackmail the Walt Disney people into scrapping an almost-finished movie about the Dalai Lama, occupied Tibet's spiritual and national leader, its one voice to the world.

Disney would like to kill the film or risk its dreams of expansion in China -- theme parks, and all that. Disney executives deserve credit for refusing to obey, and for being sensible enough to avoid the denunciation and boycotts that would have broken about them had they surrendered.

But all companies doing business in China or asking for more already know that they are subjecting themselves to Beijing's blackmail.

Sometimes that means accepting such items as governmental birth control -- the monitoring of menstrual cycles of women workers in plants built and directed by foreigners. And always it means shutting totally up about slave labor camps, torture or the occupation of Tibet.

For many years American Government and business have known that Beijing uses economic pressures against foreign enterprises to tighten its oppression of its subjects -- have known and submitted.

And for as many years, Washington and U.S. companies have refused to try to ease oppression, even by one thumb screw, by using America's far greater economic clout -- including the fact that Chinese sales to the U.S. dwarf America's sales to China by ever increasing billions.

So let's wipe the shocked look off our collective face because Mickey Mouse got his tail caught sniffing after Chinese cheese.

The Disney picture was never expected to be shown in China. But since obliteration of the reality of Tibet is a goal of the occupation, Beijing did not want the world even to think about Tibetan reality. Let's just do that.

The occupation of Tibet has now lasted a hideous half-century. The Chinese set about obliteration methodically, slicing off part of the country and incorporating it into China proper.

They called what was left an "autonomous" region of China but allowed it no taste to autonomy.

Everywhere they sent Chinese in, moved Tibetans out. There were about six million Tibetans when China invaded and there are still about that many. But with the partitioning, transfers and the colonizing Chinese, Beijing thinks it can get away with counting them less than two million. Still, in some districts that even Beijing designs to call Tibetans, the Communists concede there are more Chinese than Tibetans.

Despite the deportations, murders, prison tortures and the relentless carnage of their monasteries and degradation of their religion, the unarmed Tibetans did not understand that they were supposed to be obliterated. They are not too naive to understand -- just too faithful to themselves and their country.

Si in July 1994 Chinese leaders met in Beijing to update their strategy: even harsher steps against religion, punishment of Tibetan officials conceivably harboring dissident thoughts, and an all-out campaign against the political and religious influence of the Dalai Lama -- including a plan to "restructure" the Tibetan religion to eliminate his role.

More Chinese were dispatched to Tibet, more Tibetans deported and arrested. It has not worked. Tibetans remain a nation alive, worshiping and resisting, with a leader they have loved through the 40 years he has sought help for them abroad.

The Dalai Lama is a man of good heart. All over the world, men and women have listened to him and responded to him with their own good hearts. The nations have not, because they want to do more business with the occupiers.

In Hollywood, actors like Richard Gere and Harrison Ford and directors like Martin Scorsese have shown respect for him, and tenderness. To Tibetans they gave the gift of remembering their torments -- aloud. Their own American Government, meanwhile, has used its power not to help Tibetans but to betray them, lest an act of succor bring Chinese trade restrictions.

By "delinking" human rights and trade, Mr. Clinton broke his promises to Tibetans and to the Chinese victims of Beijing. That decision will be among the political monuments to his Presidencies. But how to depict it in marble I cannot imagine.