ACTING with restraint to rioting against Chinese inhabitants of Lhasa on March 14, the Chinese government has refrained from excessive use of force, acted with proportionate firmness to contain the section of Tibetans misled by reactionaries resident abroad and took enlightened steps to expose malevolent propaganda by allowing a dozen representatives of foreign news agencies to visit the Tibetan capital and see evidence confirming its version of the events. It has thus checkmated the design of traditionally hostile lobbies from making a mountain of a molehill. Those who might have
been tempted to exploit the situation for self-serving propaganda appear to have realized that in dealing with powerful and dynamic China discretion is better part of misguided valour. President George W. Bush phoned President Hu Jintao for an amicable hour-long conversation. The United States has disavowed speculation about intention to boycott the Olympics. President Sarcozy of France who kept the option open last week is unlikely to pursue the idea.
Every decent person supports respect for human rights and every respectable state has an obligation to protect and promote equal rights of all citizens without discrimination on basis of race, religion, gender, nationality or language. This is part of rapidly evolving international law which has however to be taken to its logical conclusion in integral practice of legal principles by states. Meanwhile observers have to be objective. They have to appreciate that developing countries cannot be expected to achieve in one leap standards enunciated in the Universal Declaration and International Covenants on of Human Rights regarding civil and political as well as economic, social and cultural rights. China’s record is by far above the global average. No country in the world has ever lifted so many hundreds of people out of poverty as has the People’s Republic in the last thirty years. Buddhist People of Tibet and the Muslim Uighurs of Xinjiang are participating in spreading prosperity as also in progressive extension of personal freedom across China.
Lobbies with a history of hostility towards the People’s Republic of China tried to pounce on the unfortunate incidents in Lhasa to mount a campaign of defamation and vilification totally disproportionate to both the scale of reported unrest and the action taken by Chinese police in order to restore peace and normalcy. Foreign drum-beaters ignored the fact that Tibet is an integral part of Chinese territory, so recognized by the United Nations as also almost all countries of the world. States cannot forget their obligation under international law to respect China’s integrity and refrain from support, instigation or encouragement of separatism amounting to interference in internal affairs. Paradoxically those who were loudest in maligning China also suffer from convenient amnesia about the dismal human rights record of their own governments that fail to protect minorities and bring perpetrators of communal carnages to justice. They also forget history of aggression by their countresi against other states, massacres of thousands of people under their illegal occupation, torture of prisoners and brutal executions under detention. Cleary such practitioners of double standards cannot command credibility or make an impact on decent opinion int he world.
Take for instance the havoc perpetrated in Iraq since 2003. According to credible reports half a million people have been killed, a million or more have been forced to take refuge in Jordan and Syria, twice that number have been made homeless inside, power generation has been crippled by bombing and nearly half the total population is deprived of potable water. Still the President of the United States takes pride in bringing democracy to Iraq. Yet another contrast glares in the West’s annual commemoration of Tiananmen Square in their enduring neglect of Gujarat where thousands were butchered with the connivance of the state government. A hundred thousand people lost their lives in the Kashmiri struggle for the right of self-determination pledged to them by the Security Council but flag-bearers of freedom do not shed even a crocodile tear for them.
Convincing evidence of foreign interference in China has been documented in the book entitled CIA’s Secret War in Tibet by James Morrison and Kenneth Conboy. Richard Bennet of AFI in a timely research article in Asia Times has recalled that for two decades CIA funded subversion in Tibet and maintained close relationship with Indian intelligence. Dalai Lama has been allowed to use a base in India for waging a campaign to destabilize Tibet. Former senior Indian intelligence officer B. Raman has reported said that the March 14 uprising in Lhasa was preplanned and orchestrated from abroad.
Non-interference in internal affairs is an obligation under the universally recognized principles of international law sanctified in the United Nations Charter. States that violate this principle on the pretext of support for human rights in foreign countries in pursuit of narrow political gain cannot serve the cause they profess to champion. An objective if not sympathetic stance mindful of shortcomings at home is more likely to achieve the desirable goal and at the same time foster international peace and cooperation.
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