The current dilemma and future path of Chinese regime is not that of a son is continuing the legacy of his father. But following a "dead man's dead legacy".
Dharamshala — The Chinese government is guilty of mass genocide against the Tibetan people and we must urge the international community, governments and individuals to openly stand by Tibet and its people. We are not saying all Chinese are bad, or guilty of killing 1.2 million Tibetans, just their current government.
The crime of genocide is defined in international law in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide.
"Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Article III: The following acts shall be punishable:
(a) Genocide;
(b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;
(c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;
(d) Attempt to commit genocide;
(e) Complicity in genocide.
The Genocide Convention was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 9 December 1948. The Convention entered into force on 12 January 1951. More than 130 nations have ratified the Genocide Convention and over 70 nations have made provisions for the punishment of genocide in domestic criminal law. The text of Article II of the Genocide Convention was included as a crime in Article 6 of the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
According to the Central Tibetan Administration, "Tibetans were not only shot, but also were beaten to death, crucified, burned alive, drowned, mutilated, starved, strangled, hanged, boiled alive, buried alive, drawn and quartered, and beheaded." According to The Black Book of Communism, the Chinese Communists carried out a cultural genocide against the people of Tibet. Jean-Louis Margolin states that the killings were proportionally larger in Tibet than China proper, and that "one can legitimately speak of genocidal massacres because of the numbers involved."
Adam Jones, another western scholar, from Canada specializing in genocide, notes that after the 1959 Tibetan uprising, the Chinese authorized struggle sessions against reactionaries, during which "...communist regime denounced, tortured, and frequently executed enemies of the people." These sessions resulted in over 92,000 deaths out of a population of about 6 million. These deaths, Jones stresses, may be seen not only as a genocide but also as 'eliticide' – "targeting the better educated and leadership oriented elements among the Tibetan population."
We must know that China is still a regime both authoritarian and totalitarian that violates not only the rights of Tibetan and Mongolian Buddhists and Muslim Uighur, but also its own Chinese citizens— increasing the sense of terror among the people and repressing any dissent. Some very heartbreaking attention-grabbing facts:
· 1.2 million Tibetans have been slaughtered since the Chinese occupation.
· Over six thousand monasteries and temples and historical structures looted and destroyed beyond repair.
· Tibet's ecosystem has been severely damaged: vast regions of forest have been removed whilst numerous wildlife species decimated just for food by the Chinese.
· Tibet's substantial mineral resources have been pillaged and continues to this date.
· One quarter of China's nuclear missiles are stationed in Tibet.
· China is using Tibet as a dumping ground for nuclear waste.
· Some four hundred thousand Chinese troops are based in Tibet.
· Over 8 million Chinese colonists have moved into Tibet in a step to dominate the Tibetans.
· A secret Chinese document in 1992 revealed plans to swamp the Tibetan population with even more Chinese.
· Forced abortions, many in late pregnancy, and sterilization of Tibetan women is not uncommon.
· Hundreds of Tibetan political prisoners are being held including the Panchen Lama.
· Over 150,000 Tibetans are in exile worldwide, including India and Nepal.
· In 1959, the international Commission of Jurists found that genocide had been committed in Tibet.
· Nomads are forced to end their traditional way of life.
· Chairman Mao wanted to blow-up the Potala - as they did with the Chakpori - to break the Tibetan spiritual spirit.
· Forced to denounce His Holiness the Dalai Lama, their own spiritual and temporal leader, his chosen Panchen Lama Gedun Choekyi Nyima; Tibetans must pledge their allegiance to the Chinese government. Failure to do so can result in imprisonment or other forms of severe punishment. Celebrating birthday celebration of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, commemorating anniversaries or festivals, and possessing an image of His Holiness the Dalai Lama or Tibetan flag is still illegal in Tibet today.
· More than 80% of Tibetans in Tibet still live below the poverty line. Trulku Tenzin Delek Rinpoche's case is one example of the human rights abuses being carried out the regime on the roof of the world.
We must fight for our fundamental rights that Tibet will rise again one day as the spiritual center of the world, but our struggle must be more practical and vigilant to the end.
The regime in Beijing permits no individual freedom and also seeks to subordinate all aspects of the individual's life to the authority of the government. Chinese dictator Mao Zedong coined the term totalitario between the late 1940s and the early 50s to describe the new fascist state of China, which he further described as: "CCP" and its's "control system." He drew almost everything from Soviet and other totalitarian states. After World War II, China's "totalitarian" regime had become synonymous with absolute and oppressive single-party government.
Unfortunately, as the governments of many countries today, when they focus on power, commerce, and self gain, without any further sense of concern towards the fundamental principles of democratic governance, Human Rights and freedom of expression— whether intentionally or negligently, they ignore millions of people who sacrifice their individual liberty for these principles, who inspired millions and millions of these free nations and societies.
At same time, as Tibetans, we must appreciate the love, friendship and supports we have received from the international community, including governments and individuals and remember their the long expressions of solidarity toward Tibet and its freedom cause. But we must continue to widen our freedom struggle that justice must one day prevail for the thousands of Tibetan people who have sacrificed their lives, to realise the dream of Tibet.
Many defense analysts argue that there is fears that China is using its rising military and economic might to threatening neighbors with might, as it repeatedly exerts its influence, including the South China Sea. China is often distinguished from dictatorship, despotism, or tyranny by its supplementing of all political institutions with new ones and its sweeping away of all legal, social, and political traditions.
The media in China is highly and strictly censored by a system in which the state holds total control over society and seeks to control all opinions of public. Therefore, there won't be official reports about unpleasant happenings and unsanitised views of events.
Tibetans, Uighurs and Mongolians are now the minority groups in their own countries, a very sad fact indeed. But we must be practical and recognize that merely expressing within ourselves is not enough and we will never succeed. If we fail, much of our purpose in living in exile is lost. Of course our struggle against Chinese repression and occupation must go hand in hand with Mahatma Gandhi's method of nonviolent resistance. We should always be ready for one goal that is in all reality practical and thus achievable — to show how peaceful solutions can work.
While meeting with Chinese scholars, students, and various representatives of organisations in the past decades, His Holiness the Dalai Lama repeatedly expressed that there is a growing understanding of the Tibetan issue and a growing interest in Tibetan Buddhism among the mainland Chinese.
China has a population of more than 1.3 billion people. There are around three million Buddhists in China and that the number is still increasing, that the understanding of the Tibetan issue as well as sympathy towards Tibetans among Chinese in mainland China is growing.
The 1.3 billion people, including Chinese, Tibetans, Uighurs and Mongolians must fight together against the totalitarian regime to liberate themselves from the backward-stricken system and society, in an effort to create real reform, openness, social policy and to join the free loving world. So that almost a quarter of world population one day will be able to enjoy social life of human rights, including the economy, education, art, science, private life, and morals of citizens.
However the general public in China knows their life is uncertainty and their future is unknown. Many leading scholars and activists, including writers, journalists, lawyers, educators, artists and rights advocates have expressed their disapproval over all the promises of government, regarding openness and political reform in China, saying "all are nothing but empty words." They also have expressed their passion for what they are doing. Without that passion, they think it will be like a fish on dry sand. We also know news and opinions spread in the Chinese internet swiftly in late 2008 and earlier 2010, despite their life-threatening risks involved, specially many censored post in different forums new posts appeared. So we also must remember those freedom-loving Chinese people who sacrifice for the sake of freedom of expression and democracy.
The world must remember the history that China is still a nation whose collective destiny is tied to the fate of former dictators, including Stalin and Mao— who perpetrated crimes against humanity and mass murder in the last 100 years. The current dilemma and future path of Chinese regime is not that of a son is continuing the legacy of his father. But following a dead man's dead legacy— Stalin and his Soviet Communism; who's collapse was hailed by the free world as a great victory for freedom. The Soviet's failure to become a world power proves a point that China must take notice to: without justice, freedom, morality, dignity and equality, the dream of all those hardliners in Beijing, who dare to seek the world's superpower status, will surely never come true.
In our struggle for freedom we must remember this history and realize that China's authoritarian and totalitarian practices have an expiration date, just like the Soviet Union, it's a ticking time bomb waiting for collapse. As history tells us, a state cannot thrive while denying the rights of its citizens. So while we cannot allow China to get away with the mass genocide of 1.2 million Tibetans, and we must continue to push the free world to stand for the values they flaunt, only time will speak the truth.
