'Shameless' pact backs China's Tibet stance<\/p>\n
By Bill Smith<\/p>\n
BEIJING (DPA): The Dalai Lama was just 15 years old when his
\nenvoys signed the 1951 pact that sealed Tibet's \"peaceful
\nliberation\" from \"feudal theocracy\" by Chinese Communists.<\/p>\n
The adolescent spiritual head of Tibet heard the news in a
\nTibetan language broadcast by Radio Beijing.<\/p>\n
\"I half expected bad news, but nothing prepared me for the
\nshock when it came,\" the Dalai Lama wrote in his autobiography
\nFreedom in Exile.<\/p>\n
\"A harsh, crackling voice announced that a Seventeen-Point
\nAgreement for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet had that day been
\nsigned\", he said.<\/p>\n
He returned to the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, telling Tibetans he
\nmet on the way \"how we had been invaded by a foreign army but how
\nthe Chinese were proclaiming friendship\".<\/p>\n
Fifty years later, the state-run Tibet Daily called the May 23
\nanniversary of the signing of the agreement a \"rare chance\" for
\n\"broad and penetrating ideological education\".<\/p>\n
Tibetan officials, community groups and schools have been
\ngiven \"an important political responsibility\" to join the
\ncelebrations, the London-based Tibet Information Network says.<\/p>\n
Heavy security is likely in Lhasa and other Tibetan towns as
\nChina marks the 50th anniversary of the agreement which the Dalai
\nLama calls a \"shameless invention\".<\/p>\n
Signed under duress in Beijing on May 23, 1951, the agreement
\nguaranteed Tibet's cultural and political autonomy.<\/p>\n
But even this protection evaporated after a 1959 uprising
\nagainst Chinese rule prompted a military crackdown, and the Dalai
\nLama fled to India.<\/p>\n
\"Tibet was at the very least a de facto independent state when
\nthe Agreement on Peaceful Measures in Tibet was signed in 1951,
\nand the repudiation of this agreement by the Tibetan Government
\nin 1959 was found to be fully justified,\" the International
\nCommission of Jurists, a Geneva-based human rights organization,
\nsaid in a 1960 report which examined the legal status of the
\nTibetan government.<\/p>\n
\"In 1950, there was a people and a territory, and a government
\nwhich functioned in that territory, conducting its own domestic
\naffairs free from any outside authority,\" the commission said.<\/p>\n
Exile support groups estimate that 1.2 million Tibetans have
\ndied at the hands of Chinese soldiers and police in the past 50
\nyears, many of them during the \"ten lost years\" of the Cultural
\nRevolution (1966-1976) when troops sacked Tibet's Buddhist
\nmonasteries.<\/p>\n
The repression has driven the public face of the Tibetan
\nindependence movement outside the Chinese region.<\/p>\n
The Dalai Lama, who won the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize for
\nadvocating non-violence in seeking freedom for the Tibetan
\npeople, lives in exile in Dharamsala, India.<\/p>\n
He now favors greater autonomy for Tibet, rather than
\nindependence from China.<\/p>\n
\"The Dalai Lama is close to China\", having sent his brother to
\nBeijing last year, and \"he has a calming influence\", said a
\nTibetan scholar who did not want to be identified because, like
\nmany pro-independence Tibetans, he fears arrest by China's State
\nSecurity police.<\/p>\n
\"Some people say they are willing to die for the cause (of
\nTibetan independence) but they are willing to listen to the Dalai
\nLama\", the scholar said.<\/p>\n
Yet Chinese state media last month accused the Dalai Lama, of
\ncontinuing \"to make political deals in a religious robe,
\ncollecting funds for the purpose of splitting the motherland\".<\/p>\n
This year China began an ambitious project to link Lhasa to
\nthe national rail network by 2005, a move which would almost
\ncertainly accelerate the pace of migration into the remote area.<\/p>\n
The number of non-Tibetans living in the Tibet Autonomous
\nRegion more than doubled from 1990 to 2000, reaching 205,200 out
\nof a total population of 2.6 million according to census results,
\nthough Tibet also has a large number of Chinese military
\npersonnel who are not counted in census figures.<\/p>\n
The US$2.4 billion rail project has \"great significance for
\nthe acceleration of economic and social development in Tibet,
\n(and) for the increase of economic and cultural exchanges\",
\nPremier Zhu Rongji said when China's top leaders approved the
\nline.<\/p>\n
The government hopes the railway, first proposed by Mao Zedong
\nin the 1950s, will help Tibet's GDP grow 12 percent annually to
\n2005.<\/p>\n
Tibetan exile groups and other critics say it will only hasten
\nChina's economic and cultural assimilation of Tibet.<\/p>",
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