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Notizie Tibet
Sisani Marina - 23 novembre 1997
Tibet Leaders to Visit Europe (TIN)

Published by: World Tibet Network News Monday, November 24, 1997

Tibet Information Network

London, 23 Nov (TIN) The Chinese government is due to send a high-level delegation from Tibet to visit London next week in order to improve Britain's understanding of Tibet and its history, but is reportedly facing tough conditions from the British authorities. The visit comes as further signs emerge of success by hardline leaders in a power struggle in Lhasa.

The delegation will be headed by Ragdi, the Executive Deputy Secretary of the Tibet Communist Party and the highest ranking Tibetan in the Tibet Autonomous Region. Last week Ragdi declared public allegiance to the Tibet Party leader Chen Kuiyuan, who is unpopular because of his attacks on Tibetan culture and religion.

The delegation is also reported to have asked France and Germany for permission to visit, and a similar team under Gyaltsen Norbu, the Governor of the Tibet Autonomous Region, is due to travel to Spain, Portugal and Scandinavia.

The planned visit to London, due to begin on 2nd December, was announced on Friday night by the British Government, who said that the Chinese Embassy had not yet confirmed that the trip will go ahead.

London is understood to have said the visit can take place go ahead only if Ragdi agrees to meet a cross-section of organisations, including the two main pro-Tibet lobby groups in Britain and a group of British parliamentarians who support the Dalai Lama. A Foreign Office spokesman refused to comment on the reported conditions, which are believed to be unprecedented.

"The visit is still to be finalised," said the Foreign Office spokesman, who emphasised that Britain had not invited the mission and was not contributing towards its expenses. "If they are going to be here anyway, we offered to assist in arranging a programme for them and to set up meetings. As we regard it, this is an opportunity for us to express our concerns about the human rights situation in Tibet."

If the Chinese accept the conditions for the visit, Ragdi - whose name is transliterated by the Chinese as Raidi - will get to give a speech at the prestigious Royal Institute of International Affairs in London and will meet the junior minister at the Foreign Office, Derek Fatchett.

Provincial delegations from China usually travel as cultural or economic missions, and it is unusual for the delegation, which aims to "spread understanding of the Tibet situation and history", to announce a purely political objective. "This is taking us into uncharted waters," commented one western diplomat.

The visit, which appears to be connected to a Hollywood feature film, "Seven Years in Tibet", which opened in London on Friday, reflects China's extreme sensitivity to historical issues. The film describes Tibet as an independent country and compares the Chinese advance on Lhasa in 1950 to the seizure of foreign territory by the Nazis ten years earlier.

Another major US film, Martin Scorsese's "Kundun", due to open in New York on 11th December, also presents Tibet as an independent country. Most previous high-profile western criticisms of Chinese policy in Tibet have focussed on human rights issues rather than on historical questions.

- First Tibet Delegation since 1948 -

Britain is central to China's concerns about its historical claim to Tibet because the British, who had treaty dealings with the Tibetans and a mission in Lhasa until 1947, accept Chinese "suzerainty" but have not formally stated that Tibet is part of China. "Our position and that of successive administrations is that Tibet is autonomous and that we recognise the special position of the Chinese authorities there," the Foreign Office said on Friday.

The last delegation from Tibet to visit Britain was in 1948, when a team of the ministers from the Tibetan Government, then headed by the Dalai Lama, was given a red-carpet welcome at Victoria Station and taken to Buckingham Palace to meet the King.

The 1948 delegation was also received by the Prime Minister at Downing Street and travelled on Tibetan passports, despite strong Chinese protests. Tibet was invaded by China two years later and the Dalai Lama's Government was disbanded after a failed uprising in 1959.

- Ragdi, Cultural Revolution Survivor -

"We have never stopped struggling against the Dalai clique since its armed rebellion in 1959 was put down. The way to fight, however, varies with different stages," Mr Ragdi said on 25th July this year, according to the magazine "China's Tibet". "We should publicise Tibet justly and forcefully," he said.

"Internationally, the Dalai separatist clique went all out to trumpet "Tibetan independence" [and] because we didn't do enough in publicising our progress, many people overseas rate the fallacy as truth. This is why they wag their fingers at us, accusing us of "violating human rights" and "eliminating religion"," he said. "How to secure a foothold in the international public opinion arena by introducing Tibet to the world objectively became a very urgent task for us."

Ragdi, age 59, the son of a serf from the nomadic area of Nagchu in Northern Tibet, is only known to have travelled on foreign missions twice before - once to Romania in 1981 and once to Austria as part of an animal husbandry delegation in 1987.

He first rose to power with his appointment to the Tibet Revolutionary Committee in 1968, during the Cultural Revolution, a period when only leftists were promoted. Between 1979 and 1984 most Cultural Revolution leaders in China were replaced by more moderate leaders except in Tibet, where Hu Yaobang, then the Party General Secretary in China, said Ragdi could stay on because the Tibetan had "shown great affection for the revolutionary generation". The two had met at a Party Cadre School training course in 1975.

- Drubkhang Rinpoche Criticised, House Burnt Down -

At least one of Ragdi's colleagues in the delegation also comes from Nagchu - Drubkhang Thubten Khedrub, a 42 year old lama who heads the Religious Affairs Committee in Nagchu and who has been rapidly promoted since 1995 as a public critic of the Dalai Lama.

In May last year he denounced the Dalai Lama as the "root cause" of chaos in Tibet, according to Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, on 24th May 1996. "The Tibetan people have been a member of the Chinese nation for more than 700 years," he noted. "I think the unification of the Chinese nation is the common aspiration of the Chinese people, including the Tibetans, and that it is the best choice of the Tibetan people," he said.

In the same month he called for strong action against members of the "Dalai clique" involved in explosions and "terrorism". "The Public Security and Law practising departments at every level must strike relentless blows at those who sabotage the public order and commit serious crimes," he told the Political Consultative Conference at a meeting in Lhasa. "At the same time they must improve the efficiency of striking hard and gather intelligence about the evil doings of the Dalai clique", he said, according to an internal publication obtained by TIN.

The following month police arrested three monks from Zhabten monastery in Amdo county, Nagchu, 350 km north of Lhasa. The monks, Chadrel, age 37, Che- de, age 33, and Lobsang Ngodrub, had put up 28 or 29 posters calling for Tibetan independence. Drubkhang is the head of Zhabten monastery.

Two Tibetans from Nagchu named Nyima and Dawa were arrested also in June last year after they burnt down Drubkhang's house. "It is said that Drubkhang Rinpoche was denouncing His Holiness the Dalai Lama, so the public in the region do not like him, and that is why they burnt down his monastery house," said a Tibetan from the area, interviewed in Nepal in August. The sentences given to the two men are unknown.

The seven person delegation from the Tibet Autonomous Region includes as its deputy leader Lhagpa Phuntsog, a vice-governor of the region and a former head of the Tibet Academy of Social Sciences. There are two Chinese officials - Li Liguo, Secretary-general of the Communist Party in Tibet, formerly a leader of the Communist Youth League in Liaoning Province, and Ju Jianhua, a deputy director of Tibet's Foreign Affairs Department.

- Ragdi Gives Support to Chen in Power Struggle -

The visit comes as further details emerge of a power struggle within the TAR leadership. On 17th November Ragdi gave a speech, broadcast on Tibet TV on the same day, declaring support for his immediate superior, Tibet Party Secretary Chen Kuiyuan.

"The speeches made by Comrade Chen Kuiyuan are the concentration of the collective wisdom of the regional party committee as well as his own incisive views. To promote various work in Tibet, we must have correct views and courage as Comrade Kuiyuan has," said Ragdi. Public praise for other leaders is rare in Tibet, and supports earlier reports of a struggle in the Tibet Party Committee to oust Chen from the leading position.

"The regional party committee has united as one and held steadfast regardless of resistance or interference from various sides," said Ragdi. "The intimate unity between leading members of Tibetan and Han nationalities of the regional party committee is a good example for cadres in the whole autonomous region," he added, according to a translation by the BBC Monitoring Service. He also announced that "adjustments" had been made "to reinforce a number of leading groups at prefecture and county levels" in the Tibet Autonomous Region, an indication of personnel changes among middle level leaders in the Tibet Party.

On 7th November Chen described rumours of a pending change in the Party leadership in Tibet as "groundless". The opposition against Chen Kuiyuan is believed to centre on his hardline views on Tibetan culture and religion, which he has ruled are connected to the pro-independence movement.

Tenzin, a Deputy Secretary in the Tibet Party regarded as relatively supportive of Tibetan culture and education, has not been reported in public since 10th September, according to records compiled by the BBC Monitoring Service and by TIN. Tenzin is usually highly visible and had appeared on average at least twice a month this year until September.

 
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