_________________ WTN-L World Tibet Network News _________________
Published by: The Canada Tibet Committee
Editorial Board: Brian Given, Conrad Richter, Nima Dorjee,
Tseten Samdup, Thubten (Sam) Samdup
WTN Editors: wtn-editors@tibet.ca
______________________________________________________________________
Wednesday, June 21 2000
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ISSUE ID: 00/06/21 Compiled by Nima Dorjee
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Contents:
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1. Dalai Lama Seeks Help From Congress
2. The Dalai Lama in U.S. for 15-day visit
3. Sole police officer attends China protest hearing
4. China executes ethnic separatists
5. Massive water project revived
6. Non-communist parties' delegation visit Tibet
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1. Dalai Lama Seeks Help From Congress
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By SANDRA MARTINEZ, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) June 20 - The Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual
leader, said Tuesday that he was open to talks with Chinese leaders,
and he asked members of Congress to help initiate them.
``Anyplace, anytime, I am willing to meet with China leadership without
preconditions,'' the Dalai Lama said.
China opposes autonomy for Tibet and sees the Dalai Lama as a rallying
point for pro-independence forces. Officials have refused to meet with
him.
The Dalai Lama was invited to Capitol Hill by Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C.,
the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to discuss his
relationship with the U.S. government and the future political status of
Tibet.
He planned to meet with President Clinton later in the day.
``We are all getting older but our friendships are getting firmer,'' the
Dalai Lama said. ``I am here to see friends and thank them for
supporting Tibet. This is not a meeting for political or economic
reasons but for humanity.''
Asked about a World Bank proposal to move 58,000 Chinese and Muslims
into Tibetan lands, he said, ``Under the present circumstances this
would be the source of more problems. Therefore it is not the right
time.
``If the opportunity comes, as a Buddhist monk, it is my sole
responsibility to help them, to help them.''
The Dalai Lama fled Tibet in 1959 with thousands of supporters after a
failed revolt against Chinese rule. From his headquarters at Dharmsala,
in northern India, he has headed a nonviolent struggle for Tibetan
autonomy.
His U.S. trip also will take him to California. He planned to return to
Washington for Independence Day weekend to participate in the
Smithsonian Institution's Folklife Festival.
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2. The Dalai Lama in U.S. for 15-day visit
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June 21, 2000 Web posted at: 12:43 a.m. HKT (1643 GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Dalai Lama is in the United States for a 15-day
visit that will include a Tuesday meeting with President Clinton.
The exiled Tibetan leader is expected to ask the White House to renew
pressure on China to recognize Tibetan independence -- a point on which
Beijing refuses even to negotiate.
Two years after the Communists came to power in Beijing in 1949, they
sent troops to Tibet, in what Tibetans consider an invasion. China
insists that Tibet has historically been part of its territory. After a
failed Tibetan uprising in 1959, the Dalai Lama fled to India.
Since then, a military occupation of Tibet has been maintained by China,
which has moved hundreds of thousands of soldiers, government officials
and settlers to the region.
More settlers may be heading to Tibet
More settlers may arrive soon. While the Dalai Lama is in the United
States an independent inspection panel, hired by the World Bank, is
expected to release its decision on a plan to move 58,000 Chinese
Muslims to the territory.
The Dalai Lama opposes the plan, saying that the influx of Chinese into
Tibet represents a threat to the survival of Tibetans as a distinct
people.
Funding for the project was postponed last June after international
protests prompted an investigation by the World Bank's independent
inspection panel.
As the Dalai Lama arrived at his hotel on Monday, he paused briefly to
speak with a small group of people wearing traditional Tibetan garb.
They greeted him by burning incense and waving Tibetan flags.
The Dalai Lama is scheduled to speak on the National Mall July 2, as
part of the Smithsonian's Folklife Festival, featuring Tibetan culture.
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3. Sole police officer attends China protest hearing
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(New Zealand Herald, 8 June 2000)
By CATHERINE MASTERS
Janet Mackey, the chairwoman of the parliamentary select committee
looking into events surrounding the Free Tibet protest during the Apec
meeting last year, said she was concerned that only the officer in
charge of the venue was sent by police to the hearing in Auckland
yesterday.
She said there was a pattern emerging around the country where friendly
police established a rapport with protesters then along came another
group who were not friendly and whose responsibility it was to move them
on.
"We came to Auckland specifically to talk to the people who made the
decision that this inquiry is focused on and they didn't appear before
the committee and I think that's unfortunate."
The final day of hearings in Auckland resulted in the committee members
demanding police provide logs of the communication channels they used on
the night of a protest outside Government House, in order to figure out
"who said what to whom."
Shortland Street actor Liddy Holloway was one of a group of protesters
who stood outside the entrance to Government House when the Chinese
President Jiang Zemin was due to visit.
The group claim they were forcibly moved on by police in order to
prevent President Zemin from seeing them and want answers as to who gave
the order.
In her submission, Liddy Holloway told the hearing how initially police
were friendly - one doing "the lady from Shortland Street thing."
Then it changed, she said. Protesters were asked to move to the other
side of the street, out of sight.
She said protesters were not there to make trouble and stepped off the
kerb to do as instructed but came up "against a wall of giant
policemen."
They all had a hand on their truncheons: "The message is clear, they're
fired up and looking for trouble. This is unexpected, oppressive and
frightening."
A ready response police team lined up shoulder to shoulder and the group
- including elderly people and three small children - were herded and
pushed along, she said.
Once there, she said a police van appeared from nowhere and was parked
to mask the protesters.
"The thing that disturbed me mostly was that we had a legitimate permit
to make this protest and somebody, somewhere, stopped it ...
"It was very, very fast and very frightening."
Representatives of Students for a Free Tibet said police had used
unnecessary and often threatening means to communicate with protesters
engaged in peaceful, lawful protest.
They told how there appeared to be two groups of police operating - one
group was "normal" and the other they described as the "riot police."
"Suddenly, with a click of the fingers, the whole atmosphere changed,"
said Auckland protest co-ordinator Joanna Hathaway.
The students also told of seeing Chinese officials putting pressure on
police to remove protesters.
They were often "given the fingers" by Chinese officials at protests,
they said.
Joanna Hathaway said protesters questioned police about their legal
grounds to move them and one officer repetitively stated that if they
did not move they would be moved forcibly, or arrested.
They decided to move but one protester was thrust in the chest with a
police baton and several others were pushed, she said.
She claimed that a police officer told her that "what they are doing to
you is totally illegal."
Police obstruction here and at other protests represented "an external
wish to shelter Chinese officials from our presence at the expense of
our rights."
Thuten Kesang, the chairman of Friends of Tibet, said he wanted the
committee to establish why buses were brought in front of law-abiding
protesters to shield them from seeing the President and on whose orders.
He was "positive" that instructions came from Chinese security
officials.
Superintendent Alistair Oliphant Beckett told the committee he was in
charge of the Government House venue - responsible for the security,
safety and protection of the dignity of guests.
He said he had given the order to move protesters because their numbers
were swelling and he was concerned for their own safety, and that of the
Chinese President.
He admitted pressure from the Chinese officials was at the back of his
mind, but said that was not the reason for moving them.
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4. China executes ethnic separatists
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(The Australian, 21 June 2000)
LYNNE O'DONNELL China correspondent
FIVE men accused of terrorist activities in the far northern Chinese
region of Xinjiang were executed last week immediately after being tried
and found guilty at a public rally, according to state media reports.
The five men, all ethnic Turkic Uighurs native to the region, were found
guilty of committing a range of crimes, including splitting the country,
a reference to anti-Chinese activism.
After the Urumqi City Intermediate People's Court handed down its guilty
verdict, the men were taken to an execution ground, state radio said.
The hundreds of people who attended the public sentencing applauded the
people's court for severely punishing the criminals, it said.
Many Uighurs in the region who have long fought for an independent East
Turkestani homeland are often the target of brutal repression by the
Chinese authorities.
Muslim Uighurs now represent about 40 per cent of the province's 16
million people and have been largely excluded from economic development
of the region by Han Chinese who have migrated there to exploit its
natural resources, which include vast reserves of oil and gas.
The summary trial, sentencing and execution of the five men last
Wednesday was typical of the way many cases against accused separatists
are prosecuted.
Human rights watchdogs have accused Chinese authorities in the region of
widespread and systematic torture, and in some cases arbitrary
executions by police, of Uighurs suspected of involvement in
independence activities.
Amnesty International said yesterday that another man accused of helping
separatists, Zulikar Memet, had been secretly executed on Wednesday
after being held in isolation since his arrest in mid-1998.
The group cited reports that Memet had been severely tortured during
interrogation and that his conviction and sentence were based on a
forced confession.
The whereabouts of his brother and two other men who were extradited to
China after fleeing to neighbouring Kazakhstan was unknown, Amnesty
said.
Executions of Uighur political prisoners, branded as separatists or
terrorists by the Chinese authorities, have continued unabated In
Xinjiang during the past year, Amnesty said.
Death sentences In such cases are usually passed after secret or summary
trials, with convictions usually based on confessions extracted under
torture, it said.
The brutality shown to Muslim Uighurs appears to have had little effect
in quelling the instinct for self-determination.
Last month, exiled Uighur leader Erkin Alptekin issued a chilling
warning that a violent terrorist campaign against Chinese rule was set
to explode.
Mr Alptekin, who heads the Eastern Turkestan Freedom Organisation based
in Germany, said that a militant groundswell was gathering among
disaffected Muslim youth in Xinjiang as a result of the systematic
oppression by Chinese forces.
"They live in great fear that in the coming decade they will lose their
cultural identity. Population transfer, birth control the systematic
'Sino-isation' of the Uighur language, unemployment - these kind of
policies are driving people into a corner now," Alptekin said.
"During the night in counties, towns and cities, Chinese flags are torn
down and Uighur national flags are hung up. There is not a day something
is not happening Xinjiang."
Mr Alptekin said the Uighur people stood at a crossroads between
peaceful resistance and violent action.
"There are people who say to me 'Do we roll over and disappear, or do we
stand up and fight'," he said
Following Mr Apltekin's warning, police in Hong Kong said they had
received intelligence that a Muslim grouping planned to target their
anti-Chinese campaign at People's Liberation Army facilities in the
former British colony.
Three years ago Beijing faced down a co-ordinated bombing campaign
against its government in Xinjiang, which occupies one-sixth of Chinese
territory and borders half a dozen countries, including Russia,
Mongolia, Pakistan, and India.
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5. Massive water project revived
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[WTN News Comment: China's current drought has revived plans to dig a
canal connecting the Yangtze to the Yellow river. One of the three
routes under active consideration, the western route, is entirely in
Tibet, in Amdo, would cost billions of dollars, involve tunnelling
through mountains, would bring massive Chinese settlement/work force
into Tibet. Many independent experts suggest a far cheaper alternative
is to charge Chinese irrigation farmers on the parched Yellow River the
actual cost of providing water, which would dramatically cut their
wasteful water use, and make such dramatic schemes unnecessary. However,
the Party leaders, most of them engineers, are keen on mega-projects.
Gabriel Lafitte, research consultant, Australia Tibet Council]
06/21/2000 By: LIANG CHAO, China Daily staff Copyright(c) by China Daily
[China Daily is an official publication of the People's Republic of
China]
Water experts are dusting off one of China's most ambitious blueprints
to divert water from the flood-prone Yangtze River basin to the thirsty
north which suffers from chronic drought.
"The project could be completed within the next six to eight years if
construction is kicked off in the 2001-05 period, the government's 10th
Five-Year Plan," a senior official with the Ministry of Water Resources
said at a recent press briefing.
This was the latest announcement on the proposed project since 1995 when
200 experts last discussed it.
The plan, first proposed in 1952 by the late Chairman Mao Zedong, has
been on the back burner since the initial proposal, sources close to the
ministry said.
Following nearly 50 years of research, the 100 billion yuan (US$12.1
billion) project, designed to channel water from the water-rich south to
parched lands in the north and northwest, will hopefully be turned into
reality in the coming years, analysts say.
Zhang Guoliang, director of South-to-North Water Transfer Planning and
Design Administration under the ministry, confirmed that the Yangtze
River water will be channeled through three alternate routes in the
west, middle and east regions.
Experts said some issues such as the price of water channeled to the
north should be settled before the project is started.
An outline on the overall planing of North China's water resources is
expected to be submitted to the central government by the ministry this
September, Zhang said, adding that "the compendium can provide a basis
for decision-makers in the 10th Five-Year Plan."
On the price of the water, Zeng Zhaojing, deputy director of the design
administration, said the government should fix different prices for
different water users, indicating that higher prices for industries and
urban users would be reasonable.
Also a portion of the water to be diverted through the east line is
likely to be below the State-set standards for drinking, experts say.
The long-awaited plan, a controversial one second only to the on-going
Three Gorges project, is becoming urgent with the ever-worsening crisis
of water resources in the north, particularly after this spring's
blanketing sandstorms.
It is also a must for China to support its development in the arid and
semi-arid western region, Zhang said.
Zhang and his experts made it clear that the project "is the most
challenging to optimize China's water resources, featuring unbalanced
distribution of water resources both geographically and seasonally."
Annually, about 1,000 billion cubic metres of water from the Yangtze
runs into the sea while the Yellow River continues to dry up.
"In the north, there are hardly any potential water sources, which has
restricted the region's economic development," said a report released by
Zhang's agency.
The report says the proposed diversion would alleviate the worsening
water crisis in northern China, one of the country's most important
political, economic and cultural centres, and help further the
sustainable development of a national economy.
Zhang said that China has both the economic strength and technological
know-how to construct the east and middle transfer line.
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6. Non-communist parties' delegation visit Tibet
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(Xinhua) (06/21/2000)
(Xinhua is the official press agency of the People's Republic of China)
A delegation of leaders of non-communist parties and the All-China
Federation of Industry and Commerce (ACFIC), as well as public figures
without party affiliation, visited the Tibet Autonomous Region from June
4-21.
The trip, organized by the United Front Department of the Communist
Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, is aimed at determining the role
Tibet will play in the central government's plan to develop China's
economically-backward western areas.
The delegation was led by Jiang Zhenghua, a vice chairman of the
National People's Congress Standing Committee and chairman of the
Central Committee of the Chinese Peasants and Workers Democratic Party.
The group visited villages, factories, schools and hospitals in Linzhi,
Shannan, Shigaze and Naqu prefectures and the regional capital of Lhasa.
In talks with local officials, Jiang said non-communist parties, ACFIC
and non-party-affiliated figures are firmly behind the central
leadership's decision to develop western areas.
Jiang said, "It is our duty to contribute to the development of Tibet
and the well-being and prosperity of the Tibetan people."
(Xinhua)
