Protest letter to the World Bank's funding of China's project in Tibet

Date: --------------------1999

To: James Wolfensohn

President, World Bank

1818 H Street, NW

Washington DC-20433

U.S.A

Fax: 001-202-522-0355

Dear Sir,

We strongly protest the World Bank's funding of China's WPRP project, located in Dulan (Tibetan: Tulan) in the Tsonub (Ch. Haixi) Mongolian and Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture on the Tibetan Plateau.

It is outrageous that the World Bank is involved in this project which facilitates the transfer of about 61,775 non-Tibetan settlers into the area. By involving in such a project, your Bank is not only violating its own environmental and social safeguard policies mentioned in its operational directives numbered OD 4.01, OP4.04, OP 4.12, and OD 4.20, but also is becoming an unwitting tool of the People's Republic of China in its attempts to swamp the Tibetans in a sea of Chinese. This is China's Final Solution to its Tibet problem.

This project in short supports China's hidden agenda (see map) to assimilate minority nationalities into the mono-ethnic Chinese Nation-State by transferring Chinese settlers into Tibetan areas, which also leads to the abasement of minority nationality autonomy. Moreover, it assist the Chinese in the penetration and exploitation of resource-rich Tibetan regions. The consequences are that it provides legitimacy to China's policy of population transfer by marginalising Tibetans and above all diluting and assimilating their distinct national and cultural identity. Besides this project has serious ecological implications in the form of land degradation, desertification, and loss of biodiversity.

Tibetans living in the project target area were denied participation in the project as this was planned and will be implemented by Chinese authorities. It therefore becomes our duty as Tibetans living in free countries and as friends of Tibet to express our concern to you.

You are perhaps aware of the fact that the decision you make on 8 June 1999 and thereafter will have far reaching socio-economic and ecological consequences for Tibetans and their children. Failing to make the right decision would well undermine the survival of Tibetan people as a distinct cultural and ethnic identity in the region.

We, therefore, appeal to the international community, especially the World Bank to Stop this Project Immediately!

Yours sincerely,