DEMOCRACY FOR CHINA/FREEDOM FOR TIBET-FAX No.76
Newsletter on the campaigns of the Radical Party for the freedom of Tibet
and the democracy on China.
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Issue 76, 1 June 1999 (Year IV)
Editors office: Massimo Lensi
Mailto: tibet.fax@agora.it
Distribution: Alberto Novi
Mailto: A.Novi@agora.it
7H250 - Rue Wiertz 60 - 1047 Brussels (Belgium)
Tel: +32-2-230.41.21 - Fax +32-2-230.36.70
Url - http://www.radicalparty.org
Telnet: Agora.stm.it
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Published in English, Spanish, French, Italian
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"I truly believe that individuals can make a difference in society. Since periods of great change such as the present one come so rarely in human history, it is up to each of us to make the best use of our time to help create a happier world".
Tenzin GYATSO, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, 1992
Published in English, French, Spanish and Italian.
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FLIES AND MOSQUITOS
China does not repent of the massacre committed on the Square Tien An Men 10 years ago.
Zhu Muzhi, Chairman of Chinese Society of Human Rights, defies the students killed on 4 June, 1989, as "flies and mosquitos" that had come taking advantage of the country's opening climate, it means of the "fresh air" of the reforms.
The conclusion of the 55th session of the UN Commission on Human Rights supports this definition. And placidly invites Beijing to follow this way, the way of the genuine transformation of the communist and dictatorial China into a democratic country for which there is no hope; endorsing also that cynical principle according to which "an opposition expressed freely is much less dangerous than an oppressed opposition", leaving unchanged the status quo and consenting the democratic chancellery of practising a "real-politik of ostrich". A policy which paradoxically consents them to condemn, with one hand, the human rights violations in China, Tibet, East Turkestan, Inner Mongolia, but with the other to draw-up profitable commercial contracts with the biggest dictatorship in the world.
Wei Jingsheng has reminded it in several occasions: only through a serious, meddling responsibility of democratic countries it will be possible to fight against Beijing dictatorship. In China, but also in Vietnam, North Korea, Afghanistan, Burma, Indonesia.... To explain better this principle, we publish on the "Second page" the letter to the democratic leaders written by Wei and Vladimir Bukovsky.
China is going through a period of economic weakness, recession and decrease of foreign investments (less than 9,5%). A weakness which is not, however, due to a more attentive policy of democratic governments and big economies on their investments in the country with the largest number of human rights violations. The inability of the local Governments of the "Economic Zone" and the Beijing Government to guarantee the insolvent credits of their investment agents is making the regime to sink. The policy of Dengian modernisations is actually demonstrating its limits. A real economical "boomerang" of the regime, even if some sharp observers think rather of a settlement of accounts inside the party among Jiang Zemin, Zhu Rongji and Li Peng. But one thing does not exclude another!
We conclude this issue of China-Tibet fax a couple of days before the tenth anniversary of the massacre on the square Tien An Men. A few words, but strict ones, in order not to forget that shame. In the morning of 4 June (1) the activists of the Radical Party will put the garlands of flowers onto the War Memorials in numerous European cities, in support of strong continuation of the nonviolent struggle of Chinese dissidents, Tibetan, Mongol, Uighur, Manciur friends and for inviting the democratic governments, international institutions to support concretely the real opening of a democratisation process in the People's Republic of China.
And for not forgetting.
Good reading.
(ml)
(1) For further information about the manifestations of 4 June, please contact
the Radical Party through e-mail pr.bruxelles@agora.it or on the fax number
+32-2-230.36.70.
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TIBET/WORLD BANK/PROJECT DULAN
CHINA-TIBET: THE WORLD BANK MUST NOT BECOME ACCOMPLICE AND COAUTHOR OF THE VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS
The World Bank Board will decide on 8 June this year on the concession to the People's Republic of China of a credit amounting 160 millions of USD in support of the "Project for Poverty Reduction in China", which, among other things, foresees the settlement of another 61.775 Chinese settlers, Hu, Tu and Salar in the Tibetan region of Dulan (in this region the Tibetan residents constitute already 11%, after numerous transfers that have taken place in the last years).
*Statement of Olivier Dupuis, Secretary General of the Transnational Radical Party and Member of European Parliament:
"If the World Bank took the decision to approve this project, it would do nothing less than become not only accomplice but co-author of the colonisation policy of Tibet (today, seven millions Chinese settlers placed in Tibet already outnumber 6 millions Tibetans) and of destruction of the ancient peoples and culture, carried out by the People's Republic of China during the last 50 years. Such a decision would force us to undertake all political initiatives in order that the share-holders of the World Bank withdraw their confidence in the actual leadership."
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55th UN COMMISSION IN GENEVA: USUAL MOCKERY.
Again this year, the work of the 55th Commission on Human Rights in Geneva has been concluded by the vote approving the "No Action" motion presented by the Chinese delegation. And again this time, the fears and logic of the realpolitik of the world's chancelleries, those of the European Union on the first place, have prevailed. The human rights, freedoms of worship, political and civil rights and freedoms, have been placed in the second plan. The countries of dictatorial regime can give an expected sigh of relieve and come out of the battle, which has never taken place, as winners.
On 24 March, Olivier Dupuis, Secretary of the TRP and Member of European Parliament, stresses that "the scandalous decision of the European Union not to present in Geneva a resolution condemning systematic human rights violations in China constitutes undoubtedly a new victory for Sir Leon Brittan and for all those, dreamers like him, who believe in a "genuine" transformation without breaking off of the Chinese dictatorial communist system into democracy. The same, real and proper impostors, who do not hesitate to claim, as they did yesterday at the collapse of the Soviet regime, their eminent contribution to the downfall of the last communist empire."
The TRP, present in Geneva with a large delegation, has worked for a resolution of condemn. Wei Jingsheng, Chinese dissident, with 18 years of "laogai" on his own skin and member of the delegation, has taken the floor on 8 April. In his speech in the Commission, Wei has reminded that whatever secret dialogue with China on human rights favours literally the continuation of repression. Every dialogue must be supported by public pressures of various nature, but without them the role of internal opponents is destined to drain in long years of detention. Moreover, Wei has reminded for the umpteenth time that China, signatory country to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, should release the "prisoners of opinion".
In the same days the European Parliament has approved, on the initiative of the radical deputies, a resolution (B4-0238) "On the Priorities of European Union in the Occasion of the 55th Session of the Commission on Human Rights". Among various points of request the EP "considers that (...) the recent wave of persecution of dissidents shows the lack of respect to the principles provided for in the international covenants that China has signed and therefore requests the Council to assume China as a priority issue in the next session and to present a motion of resolution on human rights in this country".
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VISIT OF CHINESE PRESIDENT IN ITALY
"Stop lying, stop false promises". On 22 March, the activists of the Radical Party and Italian Greens have demonstrated with this slogan in front of the Quirinale in Rome (seat of the Presidency of Italian Republic) in occasion of the State visit of Chinese President Jiang Zemin.
The objective of the demonstration was to underline that any opening of a dialogue for the admission of the People's China into the WTO (World Trade Organisation) should be dependent on a radical change of Chinese policy concerning human, civil and political rights. A change imposed also as a formal condition to the drawing-up and ratification of any commercial agreement or contract on supply of first matters, advanced technologies, between democratic States and China.
During the manifestation the participants have constructed a big Statue of Liberty, the symbol of the revolt of the square Tien An Men and have reminded the genocide under way in Tibet, in Eastern Turkestan, in Inner Mongolia, as well as the denial of fundamental rights of all the citizens of the Chinese communist dictatorship. In the morning a press conference for presentation of the initiative was held with the participation of leaders of radicals and greens and with Wei Jingsheng.
< CINA TIBET TELEX >
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THE RESIGNATION OF THE DALAI LAMA ON KOSOVO
In a interview published in the Italian daily "Repubblica" on 4 April (by Raimondo Bultrini), the Dalai Lama fatally affirms that (like for Tibet) "the problem of Kosovo is the autonomy of a minority from a totalitarian power. (...) If one of the two sides is totalitarian, the alternative to violence is only patience".
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VIETNAM/ARREST OF GIANG
On 29 March, Olivier Dupuis, Secretary of Radical Party and Member of European Parliament, in occasion of the arrest of Giang, dissident of Vietnamese communist regime, has sent a letter to the President of Vietnam, Tran Duc Long. In the letter, the Secretary of TRP requests immediate release of Giang and all political prisoners and opening of Vietnam to human rights and to economical set-up of free market.
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NORTH KOREA/POLITICAL FAMINE.
On 28 April the TRP affirms in its press release that the famine which is killing millions of people in North Korea is also produced by the national-stalinist regime in power. If on one side appears - says the release - that the UN Member Governments respond to the appeal of WFP for saving millions of Koreans from the death from starvation, on the other side the same Governments must use all possible means to stop the madness of the Pyongyang regime, asking the UN to impose its international guardianship.
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NORTH KOREA/EP/REPORT TINDEMANS
Member of European Parliament and Secretary of TRP, Olivier Dupuis, has tabled numerous amendments to the Report Tindemans on North Korea. "The serious (Korean) economic crisis which spares no sector and - adds Dupuis - which derives essentially from the totalitarian, criminal, psychopatic nature of the North Korean communist regime".
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BURMA/RESOLUTION OF EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT
On the initiative of, among others, deputies of ERA Group (European Radical Alliance), the EP has approved a resolution on the situation in Burma (B4-0375). The EP, by repeating its call for full freedom of movement for Aung San Suu Kyi, sustains "once again the decision of the Council not to accept the participation of Burma in the meetings of EU-ASEAM and ASEM as long as significant improvements in the human rights and democracy sector in that country will not be ascertained".
< SECOND PAGE >
We publish in the "Second page" the full text of the letter which Vladimir Bukovsky and Wei Jingsheng have sent to democratic leaders of the world in occasion of the conclusion of work of the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva.
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AN OPEN LETTER TO THE LEADERS OF THE DEMOCRATIC WORLD
Vladimir Bukovsky and Wei Jingsheng
As far back as twenty years ago Alexander Solzhenitsyn published an essay entitled "The Error of the West" in which he urged Europe and America to open their eyes to the reality of communism, be it Soviet, Vietnamese, Cambodgian, Cuban or Chinese. He wrote: "Communism will neither be kept in check by any artificial d'tente nor by any negociation: only by an external force or by internal disintegration." He even added: "It will be fatal for the entire world if America saw potential allies in the leaders of China." The context then was of course different from the context we find ourselves in today: the number one enemy then was the Soviet Union, and it was necessary to employ all the methods of the Cold War, including alliance with China, in order to "contain" it.
Today the United States is proposing a resolution condemning violations of human rights in China before the Commission on Human Rights of the United Nations in Geneva. We support this initiative and encourage all democratic countries to join in this condemnation. But we insist, once again, in order to remind everyone of what the true nature of the regime they are dealing with is. A communist regime cannot progress towards democracy by itself. To do so it must constantly be put under both internal and external pressures, and, in order that these pressures have any effect at all, they must all be pushing in one and the same direction, that is to say, the message they try to get across must not be obscured by statements that contradict one another.
But today contradictory messages abound. On the one hand the United States urges its allies to join it and vote for the resolution and condemn China, but on the other President Clinton delivered, on April 7, 1999, a speech encouraging the Chinese goverment to allow its dissidents to express themselves freely, supposedly because "freely expressed opposition is much less dangerous than a repressed opposition." Is he saying this in order to help the Chinese leaders keep their dictatorial regime in place to the ends of time?
The two of us are living examples of the odious bargaining dictators engage in: when external pressure becomes too great, they expel one or two dissidents to the West at the same time they continue the repression by arresting a few new spoilsports until their "market value" is high enough so that they, too, in their turn, can be exchanged for those signs of legitimacy that the dictatorial regimes are so in need of: a solemn state visit, the entry into the WTO or the holding of the Olympic Games in their capital.
This time China has not even taken the trouble to expel new dissidents in order to "prove" its new-found liberal tendencies. It has simply accepted, in responding to a request by the American government, to adjourn the trial of a former high official of the Party, Fang Jue, who has been kept in solitary confinement since last July, but who is officially said to have been under arrest for less than a month (since March 22) for "fraud and illicit commercial practices." In fact Fang Jue is the author of a remarkable document that appeared in the West at the beginning of 1998 and that sketches in the principal democratic reforms that will be essential if China wants to develop harmoniously, enjoying the respect of both its own people and of its allies. The requests put forward by Fang Jue, requests that had been ratified by dozens of high officials in the Party, were logical and reasonable. They all go in the direction of China's and the rest of the planet's best interests. In refusing to liberate Fang Jue purel
y and simply, and proposing only to adjourn his trial, the Chinese government is again showing its true face, for it reserves the right to condemn heavily a sincere and peace-loving reformist once the threat of a condamnation by the United Nations of its iniquitous behaviour was over.
Let the reader make no mistake: Fang Jue is not an isolated case. There are others, thousands, tens of thousands who rot in Chinese prisons because they have expressed a claim, a criticism, for having attempted to organize a group in conformity with what is authorized by the law, encouraged to do so because the Chinese leaders have accepted to sign an international convention that guarantees economic, cultural and social rights. The Chinese people and with it the Tibetans, the Uighurs, the Mongols, need the constant and indestructible support of the West in order to overcome the most powerful dictatorship of this century. Every passing year makes it even more difficult to get out of a system that only fans the flames of social, racial and international hatreds. In voting in Geneva on the 23rd of April for the resolution condemning the violation of human rights in China the democratic nations will show that they have, for once, understood that their true allies are on the side of the oppressed peoples and not
on the side of unscrupulous dictators.
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(1) Wei Jingsheng has been expelled from China in November 1997. He is now based in New York, U.S.A. -Vladimir Boukovsky has been expelled by the U.S.S.R. in 1977. He is now based in Cambridge, U.K.
All documents mentioned in this issue of "Cina-Tibet Fax" are on disposal on Internet, in numerous languages, on http: www.radicalparty.org
