ABSTRACT: The banning of the Tibetan leader from the podium and the absence of any reference to abolishing the death penalty, in the final documents produced by the intergovernmental Conference and the NGO Forum, pointed up the actual limits of the meeting. The people's Vienna, and also the E.P. , were extremely disillusioned, as they have always pioneered these causes

(WORLDWIDE PARLIAMENTARY CAMPAIGN FOR THE ABOLITION OF THE DEATH PENALTY BY THE YEAR 200 - Radical party/International League for the abolition of the death penalty by the year 2000)

"I would like to say, and I am most serious about this, that human rights are not to be considered as the lowest common denominator of nations, but - on the contrary - as an irreducible human value which allows us to say that we belong to a single human family." It was with these words that U.N. Secretary General Boutros Guali opened the proceedings of the World Conference on Human Rights, as if he immediately wanted to scatter the clouds that had already started to gather over the Vienna Conference - the first to be held after the Teheran Conference- which took place 25 years ago. "This is why human rights are universal and not international." he contined. "Universality is not something decreed by law, it is not an ideology forced on the world by a dominant group of countries! The Secretary General nevertheless made it very clear that he was not referring to any member of the International Community in particular, but wished to emphasise the fact that human rights are, by their very nature, the product of t

wo interacting forces. They are indissolubly linked to the way in which countries govern their people, that is, to the way in which a more or less democratic regime operates.

As it was not possible to be more specific in his speech, his report was very systematic: he made a deliberate reference in his introduction to the considerable problems posed by countries, and by economic powers, that were presenting themselves at the U.N. for the first time. The accusation he then had to face was quite serious - and maybe the same one launched by Africa many years ago: are the human rights we are discussing really universal, or are they a product of a western culture, economy and political model?

This question was put by China, which sat at the U.N. Security Council table and which had exercised its power of veto -reserved for the largest economic powers - and denied Tibet the right to participate in the Vienna Conference.

Save Tibet

The man who told us all this, and more, was Tashi Wangdi, the Dalai Lama's Head of International Relations, whom we met in our tiny room at the Austria Center. Pietro Verni, who runs the Italia-Tibet Association, had very kindly organized the meeting from Rome. Tashi Wangdi informed us that the Dalai Lama was going to hold a press conference at the Hotel Intercontinental, and we told him, in our turn, that we planned to hold a demonstration at the start of the World Conference proceedings. We still did not know if we would be able to enter the enormous hall reserved for government delegations, nor did we know if the NGOs and other organizations present would be permitted to participate. What we did know was that we were extremely shocked by the Dalai Lama's having been excluded, and this seemed to bode very ill for the Conference: it was almost as if the Human Rights Conference had failed before it had even gotten started. If we succeeded in getting in, each one of us secretly carrying a poster bearing a let

ter of the alphabet, we would then communicate our message: "FREE TIBET". "No." Tashi Wangdi interposed, "It is no longer a question of China giving Tibet its independence - we have already given up all hope of that. The only thihng we can do now is to try to save the roof of the world from vanishing from the face of the earth; to save the Tibetan people and their culture from being annhilated." And so "SAVE TIBET" became the order of the day.

We were only able to attend the Dalai Lama's press conference on Tashi Wangdi's kind invitation, and finally we found ourselves in the presence of the Dalai Lama himself. Someone felt faint, as often happens on these occasions. His Holiness seemed to radiate a spiritual energy which was too overpowering for people who live as we do. He also laughed a great deal and answered reporters' questions very wittily, as if he did not take life at all seriously. Then someone asked him what the West could do for Tibet. He replied by saying that there were almost a billion and a half young people in China who were growing up in a consumer society and acquiring a weapons culture. They had no concept of religion or of nonviolence. His Holiness, the Dalai Lama was the only one who could awaken them: but the Chinese are exterminating his race and tearing down his monasteries. What will happen when the last Tibetan monk has been slain?

And what will happen when there are no more butterflies left on this earth?

We are Tibetan, Too

We succeeded in gaining entrance to the Conference hall with a ruse very similar to "Find the Lady". Only 56 NGOs were to be allowed in, and we did not enjoy that status. Nevertheless, we all got up really early and were among the first people at the Austria Center: we thought that maybe it would be a question of "first come, first served..." That's the way it worked, even though the organizers were still busy discussing the criteria according to which they would assign the places to those who were accredited. We all scattered and took up positions on different lines, ready to seize any opportunity that came our way. Lucio Berté had stayed up all night designing the nine letters on sheets of paper measuring 70 cm x 100 cm. We also had a good-sized symbol of the Radical Party stowed away, and a flag left over from the powerful demonstration featuring the electric chair. Three people returned from the queue for those who were accredited with seven tickets: they had stood on line twice, and one of them had been

a little smarter than the others. Ten of us needed to get in, however, and we still didn't have enough tickets. A first group of seven went upstairs to the Conference hall to see how strict the men on the gate were: if things went badly they would be the only ones to get in. But it seemed that no one was expecting any tricks at this Conference on Human Rights, and one of the members of our group was able to pass us enough tickets for all ten to enter.

We stood next to one another, and opened our letters, resting them on the top of the desks in front of us. They were so big nobody could see us and we, in our turn, couldn't see a thing! We got the feeling that nothing was happening, no one was looking - and also that the people behind us were getting angry because they could not see the Austrian President, as he delivered his opening speech. What a disappointment! We stood there for a couple of minutes longer, and then sat down and sadly folded our posters.

A few minutes later a security chief approached: they knew everything about us, as we had already been photographed by many international agencies. He informed us coldly that we would be asked to leave if we continued with our demonstration. We gave him our word that it was over.

That same afternoon, while we were waiting at the station for the train that would take us back to Rome, we happened to buy the Kurier, an Austrian paper. We opened it and there was our photo. The captions in all the newspapers, including Il corriere della sera, in which our photo appeared, all stated that the demonstrators were Tibetan. This made us very happy.