Published by: World Tibet Network News, Thursday, Jun 06, 1996

By JOHN SWENSON

United Press International

June 5, 1996

The biggest rock event of the year, a two-day concert June 15-16 at the Polo Fields in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, brings together some of the top names in music to focus awareness of China's human rights abuses in Tibet.

The Beastie Boys, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Yoko Ono, Smashing Pumpkins, Fugees, A Tribe Called Quest, Bjork, John Lee Hooker, Skatalites, Hugh Masakela, Rage Against the Machine, Foo Fighters, de La Soul, Biz Markie, Beck, Pavement, Sonic Youth and Buddy Guy are among the acts scheduled to play the festival.

The festival is also a rallying point for an international boycott of Chinese goods for the month of June.

Proceeds from the concert will benefit the Milarepa Fund, a San Francisco-based non-profit organization co-founded by the Beastie Boys in 1994. Milarepa organized the concert along with Bill Graham Presents in order to raise awareness of the political situation and human rights abuses in Tibet and China by the Chinese government.

Since Tibet was invaded by China in 1950, over 1.2 million Tibetans have been killed, 6,000 Buddist monastaries have been destroyed and thousands of Tibetans have been imprisoned, according to Milarepa.

The dalai lama, Tibet's political and spiritual leader, fled to India in 1959, where he resides with the rest of the Tibetan government-in- exile and more than 100,000 refugees.

There currently are over 700 political prisoners in Tibet, including a young Fulbright scholar, Ngawang Chophel. The 6-year-old panchen lama (the second most important religious figure in Tibet) disappeared last year and is presumed dead or imprisoned by Chinese authorities.

Human rights abuses also are rampant in China itself. The U.S. State Department's 1995 report on human rights practices, citing Chinese prison officials, said there are about 200,000 people in "reeducation through labor facilities." Other estimates of such inmates, the report said, "are considerably higher."

Nevertheless, President Clinton recently endorsed a renewal of China's most-favored-nation trade status. A majority in both houses of Congress can override approval. Encouraging Congress to do just that is one of the goals of the Tibetan Freedom Concert.

Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys became aware of the Tibetans' plight in 1992 during a trip to Nepal.

"We bumped into this group of 60 refugees making their way out of Tibet," he said. "We were right in the middle of the Himalayas and we saw them coming over the mountains. There were little kids and old people, teenagers, on their way to Dharamsala, home of the dalai lama."

The Beastie Boys went on to sample chants of Tibetan monks on "Ill Communication," and set aside some of the royalties as a means to make an ongoing contribution to the cause.

Yauch reasoned that the concert will draw needed attention to Tibet's non-violent struggle against China.

"The reason that it's not being publicized at all is partly because American corporations have a chance to make a fortune and are moving their businesses in there," Yauch said. "All these corporations have put together a lobbying group called the U.S.-China Business Council, which are like 200 corporations like AT&T, Coca-Cola -- the list goes on and on...working together to put pressure on our Congress and our government to not tie the human rights issues with business issues."

Yauch hopes that the concert will mobilize music fans to boycott Chinese-made goods.

"The main point of the concert really is to not just educate people about what's happening in Tibet, but to also let people feel more aware of how much we affect what goes on in the rest of the world," Yauch concluded. "When you go into (a store) and buy a pair of pants, you don't really think about the fact that you might be putting on a pair of pants that some 7-year-old kid just made in a forced-labor camp."