URGENT: DEMOCRACY FOR CHINA - FREEDOM FOR TIBET

Brussels, May 2nd 1996

Dear Colleague,

with 27 votes against 20, the Committee of Human Rights of the United Nations, has decided last week in Geneva to approve a "no action" motion, which was presented by the People's Republic of China. This way, it subscribed the thesis of Beijing according to which no serious violation of the Human Rights would have taken place in China nor in occupied Tibet. This shameful decision has a lot to do with the lack of real will-power of the Union that didn't know, or didn't want, to create a consensus - as our Parliament however invited to in an urgent resolution approved by a large majority during the April-session - on a resolution that it had presented.

There, the policy of Beijing, invited to be pursued de facto, as well in China as in occupied Tibet, with its policy of violation and infringement of the Human Rights and of the fundamental liberties without having to justify itself to the International Community.

Furthermore, the recent events in the Gulf of Taiwan, as well as the Chinese-Russian reconciliation and their agreement of nonintervention (Tibet and Taiwan against the Chechen Republic) can only reinforce the worries of those for whom the promotion of a democratic development of this part of the world is near the heart.

These reasons and many others plead for a more determined action of Europe in favor of the democracy in China and the freedom in Tibet, as well as these questions to be affronted inside the United Nations.

It is in this spirit that more than 450 European parliamentarians have subscribed an appeal that invites the Secretary General of the United Nations to receive as soon as possible the Dalai Lama to determine the possible ways of a pacifist regulation of the Tibetan question.

Hoping that you will support this initiative, dear colleague, I send you my sincere regards.

Olivier Dupuis

(Secretary of the Transnational Radical Party)

MEP

(fax. 284.91.97 - 284.91.98 - 230.36.70)