ABSTRACT: The text of the Motion on Tibet presented on the 15th of March 1989 to the Italian Chamber of Deputies by members of Parliament of different political groups

(Notizie Radicali n. 66 of the 25th of March 1989)

The Chamber of Deputies, granted that,

- on the 10th of April 1950 the troops of the People's Republic of China invaded Tibet, starting from then on a policy of occupation and of progressive restriction of the autonomy guarantees initially provided for the population of Tibet;

- the government of the People's Republic of China has long been carrying out a policy of massive transfers of Chinese population to Tibet and of forced "assimilation", so much that there are presently 7 and a half million Chinese settlers in Tibet, as compared to the six million Tibetans;

- over 80% of the forests of Tibet have been cut down, with no plans of reafforestation, to obtain timber to be exported;

- The People's Republic of China is allegedly planning to use Tibet, which already contains deposits of nuclear waste as a deposit for the waste produced in other countries as well;

- Owing to such a situation, the people of Tibet are seriously threatened in their culture, their own religious traditions and their language;

- Amnesty International, the international association for human rights, Asia Watch of New York and other authoritative organizations have denounced, providing ample evidence, the violations of human rights committed by the Chinese authorities in Tibet;

- The Dalai Lama, head of the exiled Tibetan government, in the course of 1988 presented, in different international institutions and especially in the European Parliament, a "plan of peace" in five points, which provides for:

1) the transformation of the whole of Tibet into an area of peace, with the subsequent withdrawal of the Chinese troops and with the commitment of the Indian government to withdraw its troops and dismantle the military installations at the borders of Tibet;

2) the relingquishement, on the part of the People's Republic of China, of any policy of "assimilation".

3) the respect of the fundamental human rights and of the self-decisive right to create a government based on free elections;

4) the rescue and the protection of the natural environment;

5) the start of serious negotiations on the future of Tibet and on the relations between the Chinese and the Tibetan population;

- The situation in Tibet risks getting even worse, while the Chinese authorities have recently admitted to having repeatedly ordered to open fire on the crowd of demonstrators in the ancient capital, Lhasa, and recently, after serious accidents hundreds of victims were reported among the civil population; in Tibet there is a majority, peaceful and non-violent culture, asking the right to exist and to be respected, but which risks being overwhelmed by extremist elements, owing to the lack of truly positive developments of the situations;

commits the government

1) to embark on any possible action to stop these violations of human rights, and the compromising of the Tibetan environment, and in order that a peaceful solution to the problem be reached as soon as possible, in the respect of the conditions of necessary autonomy of the area, and in the contextual safeguard of the interests of Peking as far as foreign politics issues and the defence of the People's Republic of China are concerned;

2) to intervene to solve this extremely delicate issue, not only within the competent international institutions, but also in the context of the political, economic and bilateral cooperation relations between Italy and the People's Republic of China.

THE SIGNERS

Rutelli, Radical Party; Sarti, Christian Democrat Party; Marri, Italian Communist Party; Boniver, Italian Socialist Party; Ronchi, Democrazia Proletaria; Andreis, Green Party; Pellicaṇ, Republican Party; Facchiano, Italian Social Democrat Party; Battistuzzi, Liberal Party; Caria, Italian Social Democrat Party; Scalfaro, Christian Democrat Party; Cristoni, Italian Socialist Party.