THE PRESIDENT OF THE BASQUE PARLIAMENT'S SPEECH TO COMMEMORATE THE 37TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE NATIONAL UPRISING OF THE TIBETAN PEOPLE

Brussels, 10th March, 1996

As President of the Basque Parliament, the highest representative institution of the Basque People, I want to express publicly our support of the Tibetan People and bring to your attention the agreements which have already been reached to that end in our Parliament:

- Firstly, the Basque Counts recognizes the Tibetan People as an ancient people with its own history, culture, language and institutions, which has been forcibly assimilated into the Chinese culture since the invasion and subsequent settlement of the Chinese army, and has been, ever since, the subject of continuous Human Rights violations.

- We greet the Tibetan People and their institutions in exile and show then, both the solidarity and the respect of the Basque People.

- We support the Tibetan People's right to freely decide their own political, social, cultural and economic future.

- We offer our collaboration for all those projects meant to help the Tibetan People in exile, those who want to return to their country or which contribute to the development of the Tibetan nation.

- We ask the Member States of the European Unilon to call upon the Chinese Government to respect the human rights and freely expressed will of the Tibetan People and to find a solution to the Tibetan conflict through dialogue and negotiations.

- Finally, I would like to inform you of the setting up in the Basque Country of a group called '`Euskadi-Tibet" with over 100 elected representatives of the Basque provinces of Araba' Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa, together with parliamentarians from the Basque, Spanish and European parliaments.

Before leaving this podium, I would not like to finish without saying a few words In support of the Tibetan People in our own Basque language, one of the oldest in Europe' and probably the nearest to the language spoken long ago by the painters who decorated the caves of Altamira, Lascaux and ERain: Ikuspegi batez zein bestez, Tibet-eko herriaren burruka, Euskal herriaren Hahn beste edozein hizkuntz- eta kultur-gutziengorena bezalaxe, bere hil-ala-biziko burruka besterik ez da. Eta, hain zuzen ere, honako bilera hau ezin aukerakoagoa da Europaren aniztasuna onartzeko, ulertzeko eta defendatzeko, elkarmenpekotasuna gero eta nabariagoa den nazioarteko testuinguruan baina inork bere nortasuna galdu nahi ez duen garai honetan.

That is' over and above any other consideration, the struggle of the Tibetan People, just like the struggle of the Basque People, and of any other linguistic and cultural minority for that matter, is a struggle for survival. I am sure this is a forum which is capable of accepting, understanding and defending the plurality of Europe in an international context which is becoming more and more interdependent, but in which nobody wants to lose their own identity.

Gora Tibet askatuta!

Long live free Tibet !