EU PARLIAMENT CONDEMNS CHINESE OVER TIBET.

By Gillian Handyside

March 13 1997, Reuter

The European Parliament on Thursday accused China of unrelenting human rights violations in Tibet and urged Beijing to end its

refusal to negotiate Tibet's future with the Dalai Lama.

Euro-deputies from across the political divide backed a resolution reiterating their "condemnations of the continuing human rights violations by the Chinese authorities in Tibet".

Their attack came three days after some 1,000 supporters of Tibet protested against China's rule outside the United Nations in Geneva as the U.N. Human Rights Commission opened its annual meeting on Monday. Hundreds more people staged a pro-Tibetan rally near the U. N. in New York on Monday, 38 years exactly after the Chinese suppressed an uprising against their occupation of Tibet. The European Parliament echoed the demand for Tibetan autonomy and self-government made by the Himalayan kingdom's spiritual leader in exile, the Dalai Lama. Euro-deputies pointed to a report by the human rights organisation Amnesty International condemning China for "systematic and continuous breaches of human rights". "One can only conclude that the Chinese aim is to cause the extinction of Tibetan culture," British Conservative James Moorhouse told the parliament in Strasbourg. The EU's commissioner for Asia, Manuel Marin, told the assembly the EU would continue to speak out against any attempts by China to suppress freedom of

expression or worship in Tibet. The EU's executive had repeatedly raised the issue of human rights and Tibetan identity in its talks with China, Marin said, and had tried -- albeit unsuccessfully -- to get

Beijing to hold direct talks with representatives of the Tibetan people. Chinese troops occupied Tibet in 1951 and suppressed a rebellion in the mountainous region in 1959 that forced the Dalai Lama, and thousands of followers to seek exile in India.

Reuters Limited 1997