Message-Id: <199710101302.PAA24180@agora.stm.it>
Date: Fri, 10 Oct 1997 14:00:45 +0200
From: Tibet Bureau X-cc: diir@dsala.tibet.net
To: Multiple recipients of list TSG-L Dear Friends,
Heres the text the press statements issued as a result of a successful meeting between Chinese, Mongolians, Tibetans and Uighurs in Germany which was organised by Society for Threatened Peoples and TSG-Germany,Hamburg Section. The next meeting will be hosted by Eastern Turkestan Union in Europe from 24 to 26 April in Munich.
Tashi delegs,
Ngawang C. Drakmargyapon
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PRESS STATEMENT
Co-operation instead of Confrontation:
Chinese, Tibetans, Uighurs and Mongolians
Favour Non-Violent Conflict Solution
Malente, Germany
6 October, 1997
For the first time, exile representatives from Tibet, Eastern Turkestan, Inner Mongolia and the Chinese Democracy Movement met to discuss joint initiatives together with German support organisations. The meeting was held from 2 to 5 October, 1997 in Germany. The 16 organisations expressed their concern about the increase of human rights violations and appealed to the German Parliament to send a delegation to China every year. They explicitly welcomed the September 1997 visit of the Sub-Committee for Human Rights and Humanitarian Assistance of the German Parliament to Beijing and Lhasa and stressed the necessity to investigate into the human rights situation in Eastern Turkestan and Inner Mongolia more thoroughly. The participants of the four day conference further called on the German federal government to lend support to the Chinese Democracy Movement.
The invitation to this consultation in the northern German town of Malente was issued by Society for Threatened Peoples, Goettingen, the Hamburg regional office of the Tibet Support Group Germany, and the Gustav-Heineman-Educational Institute, Malente. The organisations resolved to jointly advocate the nationality rights of Tibetans, Uighurs and Mongolians guaranteed by the Chinese Constitution and the United Nations Conventions singed by China to be finally implemented. The participants conveyed their convictions that democratic change was the best precondition to end the human rights violations and to reach self-determination of the peoples. There is an urgent need to immediately stop the destruction of culture, religion and language as well as any form of discrimination based on ethnicity, they said. The Federation for a Democratic China (FDC) promised to contribute to the removal of prejudices between Chinese and the other nationalities and to inform and educate also inside China. The representatives of
all organisations appealed to the government of China and to the nationalities to solve the existing conflicts in Tibet, Inner Mongolia and Eastern Turkestan by peaceful means. To intensify the co-operation that was begun so successfully, the FDC, Paris, the Inner Mongolia League for the Defense of Human Rights, Cologne, the Eastern Turkestan Union in Europe, Munich, and the Tibetan representatives from Germany and Switzerland decided to meet in the future on a regular basis.
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Note: The Tibetan participants were: Ngawang C. Drakmargyapon (Tibet Bureau, Geneva), Mr. Ngodup (Tibetan Community in Germany), Mr. Tenzin Emchi (Tibetan Community in Switzerland), Ms. Tenzin L. Drongshar (Tibetan Women's Organisation in Switzerland) and Mr. Jigme Risur and Mr. Lhawang Desam (Tibetan Youth Association in Europe).
