Echo in Canada

To the Editor:

Your Nov. 26 front-page article on China's warnings to the Walt Disney Company over the release of its film on the Dalai lama has echoes for me. In 1991, I directed a documentary on the struggled by exiled Tibetans for the survival of their homeland. Entitled "A Song for Tibet", it was broadcast in many parts of the world.

During the films' editing phase, the Chinese cultural attache in Ottawa asked my producer at the National Film Board for a meeting. The attache arrived in our Montreal offices laden with gifts, although his message was far from charitable.

The board was warned that releasing film that ran counter ot the Chinese version of history could have consequences. The threat fell on deaf ears. It is clear that for China, no film project is too big or small when it comes to intimidation.

Anner Henderson

Montreal, Nov. 27, 1996

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To The Editor:

Not only do the Chinesse claim Tibet as part of China, but now they claim we are all a part of China. They try to censor the Walt Disney Company (front page and Arts pages, Nov. 26 and 27) by suggesting that its release of a film about the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan religious leader, would jeopardize Disney's business in China. Disney elected not to buckle under and will release the film.

I have written a book on Tibet and recently returned from my third visit it there in the last decade. The situation is worse than at any time since the death of Mao Zedong. Pictures of the Dalai Lama had been removed from all the monasteries. Absurdly, even the top of a photograph of the Dalai Lama in one of the rooms in the Potala Palace has been covered over, leaving only an English caption exposed. The few monks in the monasteries are subject to constant reeducation programs. They are required either to denouce the Dalai Lama or to leave the monastic order.

The Tibetan quarters of Lhasa and the other cities and towns in Tibet are shrinking. Lhasa is looking more and more like a lumpen provincial Chinese capital. It is true that it is cleaner and more orderly than it was, but at what cost? It is also true that foreign companies like Mobil and Peugeot have offies in Lhasa. The removal of few Dalai Lama pictures from monasteries is not enought to stop the flow of international commerce.

Jeremy Bernstein

New York Nov 27,1996

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