Tibetan Parlimentary & Policy Research Centre

Luncheon Address by Alfredo Martinez Moreno

Ladies and gentlemen,

For a citizen of small country, who has discharged responsibilities in the executive and judicial, but not in the legislative, branches of government, it is a true honour to address a select group of parliamentarians from diverse parts of the world, about a subject which moves the most intimate fibres of all men of goodwill: that the holocaust of a people by any definition respectable — those of Tibet, that remote and legendary country situated in the high plateau beyond the Himalayas, inhabited by pacific people who during almost 1300 years had developed a "distinct and unique culture", based mainly on religious and spiritual values, until a little less than a half century ago when it was consumed by a totally unjustified aggression, before the passivity and indifference of the international community and in violation of the most sacred principles of the United Nations Charter. Specifically this was the violation of the principle of self-determination of peoples and the obligation of all states to refrain in their international relations from the threat and use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any other state.

If, since 1949, the Government of the Peoples' Republic of China, having consolidated its dominion over its own immense continental territory, began to further "the liberation of Tibet and other neighbouring regions", the aggression really began at the end of 1950, at the time the Fifth Session of the General Assembly was meeting and even though the civilised world reacted with horror before the armed invasion, neither the most democratic organ of the United Nations, the General Assembly, nor the organ directly in charge of maintaining the peace and security in the world, the Security Council, did anything to protect a virtually defenceless country.

In fact, on the 7th of October of 1950, an army of 40,000 men, with modern arms, attacked the city of Chamdo, the provincial capital of Eastern Tibet, and defeated a few thousand Tibetan militiamen, who, due to the pacific nature of its government, had neither been duly trained or adequately armed. One month after the outbreak of the hostilities, on the 17th of November of 1950, a distinguished diplomat of my country, El Salvador, Dr. Hector David Castro, a man of principles, formally requested that the theme of the aggression against Tibet be included in the agenda of the General Assembly, but the request was blocked by India and the United Kingdom, who believed that the interference of the World Organisation would complicate the situation, endangering the cold war and would give added pretext to the Peoples' Republic of China to increase its sending of troops to Tibet. A grave mistake! The lack of action on the part of the United Nations, at a time when the aggressor state aspired to be admitted to the Organisation, for which was required, according to Article 4 of the Charter, to be "a peace loving state which accepts the obligations of the present Charter and is able and willing to carry out these obligations", made possible that China terminated the sovereignty and independence of Tibet. I remember, with patriotic pride, that several north American newspapers, including The New York Times praised the worthy position of El Salvador. Thus The Journal American published an editorial, entitled "BRAVO, EL SALVADOR", which, among other comments, declare, "it was a grandiose and moving thing to see little El Salvador intervene in the matter and demand that the United Nations investigate, and if not, issue a resolution deploring the invasion of Tibet", and added that the Salvadorian delegate had been the "guardian of the international conscience".

The Government of Tibet, presided over by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, then made an impressive appeal to the United Nations, and upon the lack of reply, decided to send a delegation to Beijing to negotiate bilaterally with the new leader, Mao Zedong. The results was the imposition of an "Accord of Seventeen Points" [PDF 73K] upon the Tibetan delegates, which did not have clear powers to sign, and in which the military occupation and the administration of the foreign policy of Tibet was ceded to China, but nominally guaranteed the existence of the Tibetan political system and autonomy, and recognized the powers of the Dalai Lama and of the Panchen Lama, which theoretically respected the religious beliefs and customs of the subject people. Naturally, the Tibetan Government did not ratify a pact signed under duress and it is clearly known under customary international law and Article 52 of the Vienna Convention of the Right of Treaties that any treaty signed under threat or use of force is null and void.

The oppression of the Tibetan people has continued to deteriorate day by day and year after year in a permanent martyrdom, in which all human rights and fundamental liberties have been violated and has converted Tibet into an oppressed colonial state; that is, an independent state under occupation, in which a part of its national territory has been arbitrarily separated and included into neighbouring Chinese provinces and "in which its map has been redrawn by the aggressor state", and in which its population of six million inhabitants has been reduced by the expulsion or flight of more than one quarter, at the same time as there have been massive transfers of Chinese populations into Tibet so as to nullify the right of self-determination of its native people.

Before the cruel and discriminatory treatment in education, health and housing, before the destruction of its monasteries and centers of religious training, the deforestation of its woodlands, the contamination of its environment and the installation of nuclear bases; even against the pillaging of its harvests resulting in ravenous hunger, the Tibetan people, peaceful by nature and conviction, witnessed national uprisings in 1956 and 1959, which resulted in a repression which killed thousands of Tibetan monks, peasants and shepherds.

The world, shaken before the Chinese despotism, which has committed an extreme case of genocide, in which they have tried to destroy, "in whole or in part, a national, ethnical or religious group", but which, in this case is not the destruction of group or a minority, but of an entire people, which has suffered conditions of life calculated to bring about its total physical demise, the world press, the Congress of the United States of America, the European Parliament and those of Germany, Italy and Australia, the principal humanitarian institutions and defenders of human rights, have condemned and protested the aggression against, the submission, the massacres and the torture of the Tibetan people.

The General Assembly of the United Nations, in several session periods, has approved, by large majorities, resolutions "calling for the cessation of practices which deprive the Tibetan people of their fundamental human rights and freedoms, including their right to self-determination, and have pleaded for respect for their distinctive cultural and religious life". The UN Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination of Minority Rights, in 1991, has expressed concern for the violation of rights which threatens the religious and national identity of the Tibetan people.

But these well-intentioned resolutions have been totally innocuous. Not a single governmental body or entity has taken a clear position regarding the right of self-determination of the Tibetan people, as the Conference of International Lawyers on Issue relating to the self-determination and Independence for Tibet established. This conference, held in London in 1993, following the definition of "a people" in international law affirmed by UNESCO experts, declared that the Tibetan constituted a true and distinct people, for they have the following common features:

Consequently, the Tibetan people are entitled to their right of self-determination. If nothing is done in the near future, the unique and admirable culture of these noble people is going to disappear: it is a culture in imminent danger of extinction.

That which is happening in Tibet, I repeat, is an authentic genocide, a spectacle of horror before a totally insensible and vacillating international community. When the Soviet Union sent its troops and tanks into Hungary, to stifle the libertarian rebellion of its people, who by the thousands fled or were expelled from their country, the voice of deep human sentiment of Mrs. Eleanore Roosevelt protested against what she correctly called "genocide by deportation". And when, a few years ago, hundreds of Chinese students were massacred in Tiananmen Square, the entire world condemned the barbarity. But now, what has been done in the face of the expulsion and flight of a fourth part of the total population of Tibet? What has been done in the face of a million and a half persecuted people for its adhesion to a national identity and its respected religion? What has been done in the face of the murder and torture or more than a million Tibetans? And what has been done to counter the virtual suppression of Buddhism and the prohibition of its millennial language, or in the face of the destruction of more than six thousand monasteries, now reduced to less than a dozen, some left exclusively for touristic purposes?

I understand that the Peoples' Republic of China represents the greatest existing potential market for the industrial nations and I also know that, according to a North American magazine, that nation has purchased more than forty two billion dollars of United States Treasury Bonds, and that international commerce is important for world stability and the development of its peoples. But the community of nations cannot, for moral imperatives ignore the principles and values of international peace, solidarity and the dignity of man, enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations itself, which seeks the establishment of the rule of law in the world.

Even without provoking a confrontation, the great powers have the means, diplomatic and even coercive, to detain the destruction of a millenary culture which has contributed to the dignification of mankind. It is an inescapable moral obligation.

A confederated world, organized under the rule of law, is eventually inevitable, I believe. We cannot know when it will become reality, but the need is every day more palpable and a durable peace is becoming even more dependent upon it. The visionaries, prophets, and poets have, from ancient times, seen its advent.

The aggression and domination by large, powerful and often wilful nations, over smaller and indefensible states-often tolerated in the name of geopolitical expediencies and commercial interests, is manifestly the war-engendering residue of empire building and of "national self-interest" gone totally irresponsible in a world still emotionally attached to these fetishes of national destiny and colonialism. That the international community and especially some major powers have proved again to be indulgent with these outrages, in the name of not upsetting an intimidating power, will be seen in a less nationalistic, less aggressive and more just future as unconscionable and hypocritical in the extreme.

The smaller nations long for the time when "the wolf also shall dwell with the lamb and the leopard shall lie down with the kid", and I believe that precisely this justice, respect and sensitivity in the relations of nations large and small is what is meant in the vision of Isaiah.

We are present today in a nation organized in accord with the highest standards of civilised human beings. We venerate the memory of Washington, Jefferson, Marshall and Lincoln — who in the midst of the Civil War inspired those principles of the conduct of war known as the Lieder Declaration, so as to soften the intensity of conflict and promote the humane treatment of the combatants. A country, which after the Second World War so generously assisted the reconstruction of Europe and of its defeated nations.

Here today are parliamentarians of many nations animated with the hope of achieving peace through the rule of law. To them, to you, I respectfully ask, supplicate, that you take an interest in that the community of nations, the civil society, and especially the United Nations, rise above lyric declarations and fulfil the obligation of rescuing a people which secularly has been a lover of peace and of human brotherhood.

It is now time that the worthy parliamentarians of clear mind and noble sentiments, demand that their respective governments, especially those of the major powers, which too often have, by vacillating actions, impeded the approval of concrete and efficacious resolutions, step down from the empyreal of their good intentions to face the anguished reality of a people abandoned to its agony.

For example, it is necessary that the Secretary General of the United Nations name a personal envoy to investigate the situation of Tibet, for he has the faculty to do so; that the United Nations Commission for Human Rights, at the earliest possible, name a "Special Rapporteur for Tibet", to annually report to the organs of the United Nations-and to the world community at large-the human rights abuses in Tibet, as the Permanent Tribunal of Peoples has asked, and that the General Assembly "expand the mandate of the Special Committee on Decolonisation to include Tibet in its mandate", as the Conference of International Lawyers recommended in its London statement in 1993.

There are many other exertions which can be made, as a matter of urgent priority, to help the Tibetan people to regain their respectable culture and religion.

As a citizen of a small nations, of deep Christian convictions, "with malice toward none and charity for all", to use the Lincolnian phrase which belongs to the spiritual heritage of mankind, I finally repeat and share the words of His Holiness the Dalai Lama trying to catch a glimpse of the future Tibet, which would again be a peace-loving state, adhered to the principle of ahimsa (non-violence) and to spiritual values. It would have a democratic system of government, bound and engaged to preserve a clean, pure and beautiful environment in a totally demilitarised nation. In other words, with the forceful support of the international community, the illuminating and eternal Tibet, pride of the world.