BRUSSELS, 10TH OF MARCH 1996: INTERVENTION OF THOMAS NAGANT, ON BEHALF OF THE TIBET SUPPORT GROUPS

Dear friends,

In the name of the Tibet Support Groups, of which the amount and the motivations continue to grow throughout Europe, I also wish to thank you for your presence and for your enthusiasm.

The happening today, you can be sure of it, is only a first step of a mobilization that will expand each month until justice is rendered, until Tibet can take part, as a free country, in the big debates about the world to be. To reach this goal, we all have to play a part while the Tibetan question concerns all of us.

In fact, we, members of the TSG or other supporting groups, we are in solidarity with the Tibetans. We live on the same planet and we strive together after more justice and more harmony in this "fin de siecle", where chaos seems to be in the lead again in the relations between nations... We say it with force: those who are indifferent to the sufferings of Tibet are indifferent to themselves and to their own future.

That's why we come up with vigor against the words the governments try to make us swallow, entirely delivered to their unbridled competition to fight for the parts of the Chinese market in spite of every consideration of the most elementary rights of the human being. They make us believe that commerce is the way to bring China to mitigate its politics; that we can't ignore the cultural differences between Europe and Asia; that the fundamental rights are not applied in the same way everywhere; and that consequently we don't have to have scruples... But there are no human rights for Europe and human rights for Asia; and there are no rights for people peculiar to Europe and rights for people peculiar to Asia that would be different! An invasion stays an invasion, a tortured man stays a tortured man, whatever history, culture or context leads these extortions! This hypocrite way of lowering the flag towards the commercial command isn't worth Europe and isn't worth the democratic ideals governments are supposed t

o incarnate.

But this Friday I've red with interest the conclusion of the annual report of the American State department that recognizes the evident failure of the promotional politics of the human rights trough only commercial exchanges. Thus is confirmed what we've been thinking since ever: to act the right way, is not to negotiate with those who are predisposed to injustice.

They look pretty now our first ministers and presidents of the fifteen, who came back from Bangkok with quivering voices evoking the brilliant future of populations that we were going to help to develop by intensification of our commercial relations with, among others, the government of Li Peng. They look pretty now our salesmen who have been ordered not to ask grievous questions and who resigned themselves to it.

... Or do they more resemble carrier-pigeons, who cannot or don't want to perceive the game they play is dangerous. In expectation, we should prove we belong to the party, not wound the susceptibilities of the Chinese authorities thus cut everything that soils the landscape, in particular when it concerns the Tibetan fate! Thus we understood the meaning of the pressure the Belgian government, trough the voice of the Minister of the Interior, wanted to bear upon the municipalities that accepted to hoist the Tibetan flag today. This, we can't accept. The invasion of Tibet is not an unhappy episode of the past: it's a burning question that needs to be arranged, in supporting its independence. Failing that, our own values would be in danger and starve little by little under the pressure combined with the insipidity of the state and the orders of profit.

Moreover, this is the other message of the Tibet Support Groups to the public opinion: if we don't care about the Tibetan people, and about other people without liberty throughout the world, we endanger our own future and the one of our children. There is this famous physical law which says that a butterfly that spreads its wings at one side of the Atlantic, causes a storm at the other side: that's exactly what happens in Tibet.

Ms and Mr,

Dear Friends,

The Tibetan people risk to die of our silence. If they really died, it would be part of us that would fly away. Only our entire and non-violent solidarity with the Tibetans can still avoid the fatal issue that stands out.

Thus we all have to try! Because, as says so well the French philosopher Michel Serres:"... in the country of all rarities, trough the most improbable circumstances, towards the highest peaks in the world, you will meet a race in danger, that risks to disappear tomorrow, and on which you will change your judgement: the human race..."