Quote:
Originally Posted by 22ANDUK
What is your view on the status of Tibet? What stance should UKIP and Britain take on the issue?
Are you pro-Tibetan independence, or do you believe China has a right to the lands, and that Tibet is merely a province of the PRC?
What will happen when the 14th Dalai Lama dies?
And does the plight of the suppressed Tibetan people look ever more bleak as China's rapid surge in economic, military and political strength increases?
China has been resorting to underhand techniques to suppress the Tibetan people, such as importing thousands of ethnic Han Chinese as workers and then paying them sizeable monies to settle in the region. The Chinese government has also allowed more Tibetan Buddhist monks to worship and live in Beiijing - and have actively allowed and encouraged to roam the streets during the Olympics - to massage Western opinion when the influx of tourists and journalists arrive for the Games.
I wouldpersonally love there to be a free and independent Tibet, governed as a constitutional monarchy style sytstem (much like our own) with the Dalai Lama as a cermonial and spiritual head, and an democratically elected Prime Minister and Parliament.
The native British and Tibetans should build and share a bond - hopefully we can work closely together when we are both free from the yoke of the European Union and People's Republic of China respectively.
Some interesting links:
BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Fathoming Tibet's political future
BBC NEWS | In Depth
Free Tibet Campaign - Chinese occupation of Tibet | Tibetans' human rights
Tibetan Government in Exile's Official Web Site |
Besides the "free Tibet" slogan and wearing a "free Tibet" T shirt as a symbol of moral supremacy there are easily observable inconvenient truth in the Tibet situation.
The previous regime under Dalai Lama's associates was based on Tibetan feudalism, a rigid and opprssive system of class supression of the slaves rather than a spiritual world of shangri la.
Chinese communist partcipation in the overthrowning of the Tibetan feudalism was supported by the mass lower class as opposed to their divinely chosen leaders.
Tibetan HDI index rose tremendously for the past decades, including a sharp drop in infant mortality, increase in literacy rates, increase in the standard of living, market access to inland provinces facilitated by railways to the landlocked high plateau. GDP Infant mortality has dropped from 43% in 1950 to 0.661% in 2000, life expectancy has risen from 35.5 years in 1950 to 67 in 2000.
Dalai Lama was no saint in his argument for Tibetan's ethnic purity against the non-tibetan immigrants, considering the fact that there exists no means, either from democracy or communism, to stop internal migration of people within a nation other than a rigorous segregation policy of the pre-60s America.
The Pro-Tibet independence movement within the western society was a relatively "recent" emotional entanglement considering that none of them voiced opposition to the sovereignty in the 40s and 50s. Treaties signed by Britain and Russia in the early years of the twentieth century and others signed by Nepal and India in the 1950s , recognized Tibet's political subordination to China. The Americans presented their view on 15 May 1943:
“ For its part, the Government of the United States has borne in mind the fact that...the Chinese constitution lists Tibet among areas constituting the territory of the Republic of China. This Government has at no time raised a question regarding either of these claims".
"Free Tibet", like all other bargaining chips from the free world against the rest, lies in interest of realpolitk against "communist countries" such as Russia and China. The Council of Europe's parliamentary assembly voted to condemn the "crimes of totalitarian communist regimes", linking them with Nazism. It would be easier to take the Council of Europe's condemnation of communist state crimes seriously if it had also seen fit to denounce the far bloodier record of European colonialism - which only finally came to an end in the 1970s. This was a system of racist despotism and economic exploitation which dominated the globe in Stalin's time.
Last but not least, ironicaly the so called oversea "free tibet" Tibetans, who claim the rising China as an imminient danger to the cultural heritage of Tibetans, speak fluent English but barely Tibentan, protest in casual wear of the latest design of American Newyorker fashion and staging "Tibetan beauty contest"-A great taboo to the conservative elements of native Tibetan Culture. Singing songs of Universalism of American globalist popular culture which posts the greatest threat to any surviving native culture, our "Tibetan" advocates have been competing to see who can express the shrillest and most spine-tingling fears about the Chinese beast looming on the Eastern horizon.