DALAI LAMA, HOLLYWOOD IS NOT ENOUGH

Europe must push for the resumption of negotiations between Beijing and the Tibetan government

By Emma Bonino (*)

La Stampa, 27 October 1999

Division of labour among European socialists. In London Tony Blair, leader of the "third way", lays down the red carpet for Jiang Zemin, head of the last remaining communist empire, while the British police manhandle the Chinese dissident Wei Jingsheng and a small crowd of demonstrators. Fortunately, in Italy two authoritative followers of the third way, Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema and his party chairman Walter Veltroni, give an official welcome to the Dalai Lama, the symbol of Tibetan resistance against Chinese occupation. Protesting against Beijing on the streets of Rome, as always, are the Radicals. Why? In 1984, when no-one in the West was concerned with the issue of Tibet, it was the leader of the German and European Greens, Petra Kelly, who revealed to an absent-minded, forgetful Europe the suffering of a country ten times larger than Italy, a country that had "disappeared" several decades earlier, annexed and colonised by the Chinese colossus. A country of ancient, extravagant traditions, a country

of mountains, a part of the Himalayas, buried by snow, closed and mysterious. In 1988, Giovanni Negri, chairman of the Radical Party at the time, and Piero Verni imported the "lost cause" of Tibet from Germany to Italy, inviting a member of the Tibetan government in exile to the Radical Party congress. Since then, a lot of snow has fallen on the roof of the world, thousands of Chinese settlers have been transplanted to Tibet, thousands of Tibetans have been imprisoned, killed or forced to flee. Lhasa has become Lamaland, an exclusive destination for hundreds of thousands of Westerners in search of a new Eldorado of the spirit. A virtual Tibet has been born.

Emulating Pope Wojtila, the Dalai Lama has become a great traveller and a great communicator. The issue of Tibet has burst onto the world stage. It reached Hollywood while Petra Kelly was dying, forgotten, in Berlin. The Dalai Lama was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. Tibet entered parliaments all over the world. And after the virtual Tibet, the holiday brochure Tibet, the world discovered the real Tibet, with its ancient history. It discovered that Tibet is not China, and that since the Chinese invasion in 1949 over one million Tibetans - one fifth of the population - have died in the war of resistance and in the concentration camps. It discovered that the Tibetans have become a minority in their own country.

The Dalai Lama has never lost heart. He has never stopped calling for dialogue with the Chinese authorities, nor repeating that he does not want independence. He wants real autonomy. He wants to save the uniqueness of the Tibetan civilisation. This line gradually attracted widespread backing all around the world, inspired by the principle of nonviolence. Two imposing, unforgettable demonstrations were held in Europe: in Brussels in 1996, and in Geneva in 1997. Both organised by the "transnational" Radicals, by the Tibetans exiles and by a myriad of support groups. Over 1,500 parliamentarians from all countries signed a request to the governments of the free world: the commencement of negotiations without preconditions between the Chinese authorities and the Tibetan government in exile, under the aegis of the United Nations.

The liberating wave seemed to be overwhelming, and yet in 1997 it came to a halt. There was a resurgence of the old ideas of a number of "influential families", families of the Lhasa of the past and of the Dharamsala (the capital of the Tibetans in exile) of the present. Conservative ideas and interests in favour of taking part in and sharing out a new Tibetan power that helps to run the enormous "Dalaimania" business. Direct, secret negotiations between this establishment and the Chinese authorities is the line that has prevailed.

A thick mist enveloped the Tibetan question until a few months ago, when the Dalai Lama announced that the Chinese had called a halt to the secret negotiations. Closure and repression are the order of the day in Beijing, on Tibet, Taiwan and the Spratley Islands, as on the democratisation and liberalisation of the economy. The West, which had believed in the inevitability of the passage from economic reform to political reform, struggles to understand. Or perhaps it does not want to understand that many things have changed with the "rebirth" of China. In Beijing, certainly. But also, and above all, in the ambitions and behaviour of Beijing towards the rest of the world. The leopard cannot change his spots.

It is time we asked ourselves whether the whole Asian policy of the West, based on a "special partnership" with Beijing, should not be reviewed. Whether the idea of "smooth transition", based on modernisation, which has guided the decisions of Western diplomacy, has not ended up by consolidating the role of the party-state. For while it is true that an immense market has opened up, this market is neither free nor regulated, and we are only just beginning to understand the enormous political and social costs that this "growth without justice" involves. Only the worst of Communism survives in China. The technocratic system. State control of the mechanisms of industry and private enterprise. The repression of all forms of social and political conflict.

We must stop covering up our eyes. Real progress in terms of democracy and the respect for fundamental rights in China and in the occupied territories of Tibet, East Turkestan and Inner Mongolia must become the pivot around which Europe must base its economic, cultural and political relations with Beijing.

We are not proposing an abstract response to the failure of Western Realpolitik. Any proposal for economic sanctions or commercial "isolation" would remain on paper. We must, however, recognise that instead of continuing to support the current process (with the vague intention of limiting its excesses), we must turn it around. Beginning with the concrete case of Tibet. We must not entrust "negotiations" with the Chinese regime to national or parallel diplomacies, but make them the object of a fully-fledged international initiative.

For Tibet, as for the question of East Timor, we must start out from the United Nations, from the UN resolutions of 1963, 1964 and 1965 that condemned the occupation of the country by China. It is on this basis that Europe must push for the rapid commencement, under the aegis of the Secretary General of the United Nations, of negotiations between the Chinese government and the Tibetan government in exile.

(*) Member of the European Parliament