A country oppressed: Tibetans have been abused by China's government for decades, but S.F.'s Milarepa Fund is trying to help.

SAN FRANCISCO'S MILAREPA FUND WORKS FOR TIBETAN FREEDOM AND AGAINST CHINA'S HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES.

July 10, 1996 - By Jenna E. Ziman

IT'S TOUGH BEING a small, nonprofit, nonviolent fish in the big, profit-hungry, violence-prone sea of Chinese-U.S. trade relations. But the San Francisco-based Milarepa Fund is growing larger daily with support coming from local exiled Tibetans and teenage Beastie Boys fans alike.

You'd never guess that Milarepa's modest North Beach office is the headquarters of the group responsible for socially conscious events such as the Tibetan Freedom Concert, which took place in Golden Gate Park June 15 and 16 and drew 100,000 concertgoers.

Chaos prevails inside the office: phones are ringing; Tibetan banners, prayer flags, and protest pamphlets are being unloaded; and the constant echo of voices resounds. The chaos is an indication that Milarepa which trumpets such messages as "Free Tibet!," "Stop Buying Goods from China!," and "End Cultural Genocide!" is doing something right.

Of the thousands of Tibetans who continue to flee the abuses of the Chinese government, about 250 to 300 have resettled in the Bay Area. They're escaping religious persecution, lack of freedom of expression, forced sterilization and abortion, public execution, abuse at the hands of the Chinese army and police, imprisonment in labor camps, and torture.

The Chinese government says there have never been any human rights violations in Tibet. Erin Potts and Adam Yauch (the latter is a member of the Beastie Boys) founded the Milarepa Fund in 1994 to educate the American public about what is happening and to protest the U.S. government's acceptance of the Chinese government's line.

The organization's three-member staff Potts, 24, John Dinusson, 22, and Andrew Bryson, 24 -- has come a long way in its fight to educate the public about the atrocities committed in Tibet and elsewhere by China, a country that enjoys Most Favored Nation trading status with the United States.

Milarepa works with other Bay Area groups including Students for a Free Tibet, Bay Area Friends of Tibet, and the International Committee of Lawyers for Tibet to raise awareness through benefit concerts, nonviolent protests, and educational efforts.

The recent Golden Gate Park concert featured musicians as diverse as John Lee Hooker, Bjrk, Yoko Ono, Sonic Youth, and De La Soul. Between sets, speakers gave firsthand accounts of the brutality of the Chinese government. Palden Gyatso, a Tibetan monk who was imprisoned for 33 years for seeking religious freedom, told of the tortures he endured in a Chinese concentration camp.

Money raised from concerts like this, along with private donations, is dispersed to various Milarepa programs. One sponsors Tibetan refugee children at the Namgyl school in Katmandu, Nepal; another donates money to the Tibetan government-in-exile office in Dharamsala, India. Both programs help resettle and educate newly exiled Tibetan refugees.

On June 17 Milarepa organized a nonviolent protest at the local Chinese Consulate, with 400 people showing up to seek a boycott of goods made in China.

"Economic action is the best strategy against the United States policy of de-linking trade relations with human rights violations in China," Potts said. "If we consider the success economic divestment has had in places like South Africa, we believe there is power in consumer responsibility."

Milarepa is working to make Tibetan independence an issue in the presidential election. The group has begun a letter-writing campaign directed at President Clinton in which participants sign letters that read, "When you chose to de-link human rights and trade in 1994, you said that the human rights situation in China and Tibet would improve through the presence of American business.... Yet since that time, State Department studies show that things have only gotten worse for the people of Tibet."