Published by: World Tibet Network News Tuesday, September 30, 1997

By: John Nichols

Madison, WI, September 30, 1997 (Capital Times) -- At noon on Saturday, as the throngs of Farmers' Marketeers passed by the State Street entrance to the Capitol, a group of young women raised the outlaw banners of the once-free nation of Tibet.

In front of them, several hundred students pressed forward, raising posters that read "Freedom for Tibet," "Stop the Genocide" and "Tibet Can Be Saved."

This was the face of an international movement that is challenging the darkest of American foreign policy practices: This nation's economic and political support for Chinese genocide in Tibet.

The extent of the genocide has been well documented. Since China's invasion of Tibet in 1949, more than 1 million Tibetans have died from torture, starvation and execution; more than 6,000 Buddhist monasteries have been destroyed; Buddhist nuns have been systematically raped in Chinese prisons; and hundreds of thousands of Tibetans have been forced into slave-labor camps that benefit U.S. corporations.

So where is the outcry from the leaders of the United States?

Don't look to Bill Clinton or Newt Gingrich or most of the other men of power and position in Washington to stand for what it right. They long ago became defenders of Chinese atrocities -- choosing to serve the interests of U.S. corporations that do business with the Chinese dictators, rather than the interest of justice.

But, on Saturday, the campaigners for Tibetan freedom did not stand alone. There at the front of the crowd was U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold.

Feingold is in the midst of the most intense battle of his political life -- this week the Senate will debate the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill, bringing to a head a two-year-long struggle to restrain special interest influence on the political process. Yet, on a day when he could have been in Washington cajoling his colleagues, or plotting strategy with his co-sponsors, Feingold was talking about Tibet.

"Keep the pressure on," Feingold told the activists. "Keep up your efforts to show America its rightful place, not as a denier of human rights but as a defender of human rights."

Feingold spoke of his own efforts to withdraw China's most-favored-nation trading status, and to enact a bipartisan measure to impose targeted sanctions against the Chinese government.

And he pledged to press in coming weeks for a Senate resolution calling for postponement of a planned state visit by Chinese President Jiang Zemin to the United States until China ends its genocidal policy toward Tibet.

As Feingold spoke, Lodi Gyari, the special envoy of his holiness the Dalai Lama and president of the International Campaign for Tibet, said, "He is a special senator, this Russ Feingold. He has definitely come to be identified as a leader on human rights issues. He has been a friend to human rights, and to Tibet, when there have not always been enough friends."

In the days ahead, much will be made of Feingold's battle for a campaign finance reform bill that, while still commendable in some aspects, has been watered down and compromised in vain hope of gaining Republican support.

He will be hailed as a reformer. And he will be praised by the editorial pages of the New York Times, the Washington Post and other publications. It will be a heady time.

Yet, Feingold's most noble political act of this time -- his outspoken advocacy for justice for Tibet -- will garner far less attention. It will not go entirely unnoted, however. "The people of Tibet will know," says Gyari. "They will remember who has stood for human rights and for democratic freedoms. They will honor that stance across the years."

John Nichols is an editorial writer for The Capital Times.