ABSTRACT: The participation at the Congress of Gyaltzen Gyaltag, official representative of the Dalai Lama for the Centre and South of Europe, was of great importance in the search to lay down the foundations for a start to concrete common initiatives.

(THE NEW PARTY, MARCH 1993)

The violation by China of the territory of Tibet has been denounced as an act of aggression by all the countries of the free world, and judged to be a clear violation of international law. The occupation and the repression of Tibet, begun in 1949/50 by the troops of the Chinese People's Republic, culminated on 10 March 1959 when a national uprising was put down by the national liberation army. Around 1,200,000 Tibetans have died during the Chinese occupation. Around 6,000 monasteries, temples and historic monuments have been devastated and destroyed. The violation of religious freedom - China forbids the study and practice of Buddhism - which began for reasons of propaganda, continues to this day. Tibet, once a peaceful state between India and China, has now been turned into an enormous military base which contains around 300,000 troops and a quarter of all China's missiles.

Current Chinese policy is a mixture of demographic manipulation and discrimination, and aims to suppress the Tibetan question once and for all by changing the characteristics and the identity of Tibet and its people. 7-8 million Chinese people have settled in the country, 6 million more than the Tibetans. The Chinese authorities have actively encouraged Chinese people to move to Tibet, helping them to take control of the main centres of economic, social and cultural power. In 1960 the international commission of jurists discovered that acts of genocide had also taken place in Tibet, and that 60 articles of the Declaration of Human Rights had been violated. The General Assembly of the United Nations approved three resolutions condemning China for the violation of the fundamental human rights of the Tibetan people, asking China to respect the right of the Tibetan people to self-determination, as well as their other rights. On 23 August 1991, the UN Sub-Committee on Human Rights adopted a resolution entitled "t

he situation in Tibet". It stated its concern at the violation of the fundamental rights and liberties of man which threatened the national, religious, and cultural characteristics and identity of the Tibetan people.

The Tibetan people have always refused to submit.

The Dalai Lama, the Tibetan head of state and the country's spiritual leader, believes in nonviolence, and tried for years to co-exist peacefully with the Chinese. The Dalai Lama, the members of the Tibetan government - which has been re-organized on the basis of democratic principles and is considered the only legitimate government of Tibet - and thousands of Tibetan people have been forced to flee the country and live in exile. There are now 120,000 refugees outside Tibet. The Tibetans are tortured, imprisoned, and killed. Despite this, they have never accepted the occupation of their land by China. In September 1987 there were more than 100 demonstrations against the Chinese occupation, leading to around 400 deaths and the imprisonment without trial of thousands of Tibetans.

"If we allow China to continue this policy - said Gyalyzen Gyaltag at the Radical Congress - the result will be the disappearance of the Tibetan people and the destruction of their culture. Tibet will simply be another province of China and the Tibetans will be reduced to an insignificant minority. For as long as China governs Tibet, the Tibetans will continue to demonstrate their opposition by nonviolent means. Moreover, the problem of human rights cannot be solved in this case without considering the national aspirations of the Tibetann people, whose fundamental rights and liberties are continually violated."