Published by: World Tibet Network News Friday, November 21, 1997

Report Not Made Public To Avoid Embarrassing Visiting Chinese President

Press Statement by Canada Tibet Committee

Vancouver, November 20 - An official Canadian delegation to Tibet, led by Canadian Ambassador to China, Howard Balloch, has found that Tibetans are being marginalised in an economy that is increasingly dominated by Chinese businesses. This confirms reports by Tibetan refugees that Tibetans are not benefiting from China's economic policies. However, the Canadian Government is yet to make the report of the visit, which took place between May 26 and June 3, public possibly not wishing to embarrass visiting Chinese President Jiang Zemin. The Canada Tibet Committee was able to obtain a copy of the report only after filing a request under Canada's Access to Information and Privacy Act.

The report says, "Ethnic Tibetans are clearly not participating in this new economy to the degree their overall majority would imply." It gives the annual per capita income in urban Tibet as being 1200 RMB (Chinese currency) compared to that of urban China, which is 4,288 RMB.

The nine-page report deals with the issue of the status of Tibetan prisoners; religious freedom, and justice, as well as on the status of developmental projects in Tibetan areas, funded by the Canadian government.

The delegation found that the Tibetan people continued to regard the Dalai Lama as their leader. " It is clear that in spite of the efforts of the Chinese authorities the Dalai Lama remains for many a political symbol as well as a religious one," the report observed. The report said that there was an ongoing campaign to denounce the Dalai Lama. The delegation recommended that Canada encourage a dialogue between the Chinese authorities and the Dalai Lama, but only with the objective "of permitting the Dalai Lama to return to Tibet as a religious leader."

Despite urgings by the Canada Tibet Committee, the Canadian Government did not include a Tibetan translator in its delegation. The delegation, however, took along a Chinese translator.

While the report confirms several of the concerns expressed by Tibet supporters concerning the threat to the continuation of the Tibetan identity, it also supports the Chinese position on several other issues. The delegation visited the Drapchi prison in Lhasa. The visit to Drapchi, according to the report, was guided and "we were clearly aware that we did not see every inch of the facility." But the report concludes that this prison offers real hope that there is progress being made in the humane treatment of convicted Chinese." However, international monitoring groups, such as Amnesty International and recently released Tibetan prisoners tell a different story. Palden Gyatso, a 66-year-old Tibetan monk who spent many years in Drapchi, states that conditions have not improved.

"When I was a prisoner in Drapchi, we had to clean up for fact-finding missions such as this one," said Gyatso. He went on to say that on such occasions political prisoners were moved to locations inaccessible to visitors, new bedding was brought in and prisoners were promised reduced sentences if they told the fact-finders how well-treated they were.

Gyatso was tortured on numerous occasions during his incarceration, and monitoring groups like Amnesty International report that torture in Chinese

prisons is common. International human rights organizations reported that a 49-year-old Tibetan monk died this July in Drapchi after being denied medical care. A 19-year-old monk also died in Drapchi as a result of beatings by prison guards.

Glen Mullin, a Canadian scholar of Tibetan Buddhism who recently visited Tibet, discovered cases where imprisoned nuns have been stripped and tortured with cattle prods. U.S. Senator, Frank Wolf, after a recent unescorted visit to Tibet found that torture and religious persecution in Tibet are increasing.

Gyatso expressed his disappointment at the ambiguity of the document, which takes no strong stance on the issue of Tibet during this critical time.

Representatives of Tibetan organizations in Canada, United States and Australia are participating in the APEC People's Summit. To meet Palden Gyatso or other members of the Tibet delegation, come to the Tibet booth on the Mezzanine level of the Enterprise Hall, or call the Canada Tibet Committee at 732-9910."

Statement on Canadian mining in Tibet: At the session on mining in the Sustainability Issues Forum today, Tibetan delegation member Chokey Tsering

presented the following statement (drafted by the Tibetan delegation) concerning the proposed development of a silver-based mine in Kham, eastern Tibet, by the Canadian firm Breckenridge Resources.