The Third Tibet Conference in Berlin to Step Up International Campaigns

Activists to devise strategies and campaigns to focus attention on deteriorating human rights situation in Tibet

BERLIN, 11May ---His Holiness the Dalai Lama will address 300 participants

of the third International Tibet Support Group conference on 14 May in

Berlin. "The conference of Tibet supporters around the world will discuss

strategies and campaigns to bring China to the negotiating table to solve

the issue of Tibet peacefully and for the benefit of the Tibetan people and

China itself," said Kalon T.C. Tethong, minister responsible for the

Department of Information and International Relations (DIIR) of the Central

Tibetan Administration based in the north Indian town of Dharamsala.

The Tibet Support Group movement is one of the best organised movements of

its kind in the world and is looked upon as an example by similar movements

as diverse as the pro-democracy Chinese movement, the Burmese democracy

movement, the Democratic Progressive Party of Taiwan, which won the recent

elections on the island, and the Uighurs of Xinjiang.

"In this way, the success of the Tibet movement will have international

ramifications for similar movements," Kalon T.C. Tethong said. "The Tibet

Support Groups around the world are vital components of the worldwide Tibet

movement and the strategies they formulate in Berlin will be critical to

the development of the Tibet movement and its ability to change the fate of

the long suffering people of Tibet," the Tibetan minister said.

"In the summer of 1998, during the summit meeting in Beijing between

President Bill Clinton and the Chinese President Jiang Zemin, there was a

flicker of hope that China will re-start talks with His Holiness the Dalai

Lama in its efforts to solve the issue of Tibet peacefully. Since then,

China has all along been playing a waiting game," Kalon T .C. Tethong said.

"In this context, the deliberations of the Tibet supporters in Berlin will

prove critically important in devising strategies and campaigns that will

focus international attention on the issue of Tibet and on the

deteriorating human rights conditions in occupied Tibet," the minister said.

There will be Chinese participants in this conference. The fact that an

increasing number of Chinese people are demonstrating better awareness of

the issue of Tibet should indicate to the Chinese leadership that the

people of China realise that our issue is based on the principles of truth

and justice.

"Communist rule in China is coming to an end," said Cao Changqing, author

of Tibet Through Dissident Chinese Eyes: Essays on Self-determination, who

lives in New York and who will be attending the conference. "This does not

necessarily mean, however, that the Tibetan issue can be automatically

resolved. It would be a blasphemy against freedom if, on the one hand, the

Chinese insist on democracy and freedom for themselves but, on the other

hand, did not respect the Tibetans' right to choose self-determination,"

said Cao Changqing, who was a deputy editor of the outspoken Shenzhen Youth

Journal but was ousted from his job in 1987 when he demanded that Deng

Xiaoping retire.

The Berlin Tibet Support Group conference to be held from 11 to 14 May will

attract Tibet supporters from 52 countries. Their actions in the past have

contributed enormously to raising the awareness of the tragedy that is

going on on the roof of the world. The Tibet Support Groups have campaigned

successfully, in the past, in denying Beijing the 2000 Olympic Games, in

focusing media attention to the nine exile Tibetan women who brought

forward the appalling condition of women in Tibet during the UN World

Women's Conference, Beijing in 1995.

The Tibet Support Groups more recently launched one of its most successful

campaigns when they protested the World Bank's involvement in the Tulan

project in Amdo. This project aims to settle about 60,000 Chinese farmers

on to a traditionally nomadic area of Tulan in the North-eastern Tibetan

province of Amdo. Their sustained campaign brought the biggest public

relations disaster in the World Bank's history and it was compelled to

institute an inspection panel to judge the merits of the project and

whether the project will undermine Tibetan culture as argued by Tibetans

and their supporters.

The third Tibet Support Group Conference also comes in the wake of the

decision made by China to invest more than 60% of state capital outlay in

"western China", a euphemism which includes Tibet. This will shift the

focus of China's economic development from the coastal areas to ethnic

areas like Tibet. Economic activities on the Tibetan plateau are

increasingly attracting hordes of Chinese settlers to Tibet and it

accelerates the official goal of greater economic integration whose logical

end result will be to swamp the Tibetans in a sea of Chinese migrants.

The first Tibet Support Group conference was held in Dharamsala in 1990 and

the second in Bonn in 1996, which was sponsored by the Friedrich-Naumann

Stiftung, a German non-governmental organization dedicated to promoting

democracy and liberalism around the world. The third Tibet Support Group

Conference is also sponsored by the Friedrich-Naumann Stiftung. This

conference is convened by the Department of Information and International

Relations of the Central Tibetan Administration, based in Dharamsala, in

co-operation with the Friedrich-Naumann Stiftung.

The media is welcome to attend the inaugural ceremony of the TSG Conference

which starts at 8: 15 AM on 12 May. Please make contact at the telephone

number given below.

Conference Venue

Preussischer Landtag (Berlin State Parliament House)

Niederkirchner Strabe, 3, D-101 17 Berlin. Tel: (49) 3023250