Free Tibet Blog
Robbie Barnett's NY Times op-ed essay: Did Britain Just Sell Tibet? 2008-11-25 09:10:23
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
November 25, 2008
Did Britain Just Sell Tibet?
By ROBERT BARNETT
THE financial crisis is going to do more than increase unemployment,
bankruptcy and homelessness. It is also likely to reshape international
alignments, sometimes in ways that we would not expect.
As Western powers struggle with the huge scale of the measures needed
to revive their economies, they have turned increasingly to China. Last
month, for example, Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, asked
China to give money to the International Monetary Fund, in return for
which Beijing would expect an increase in its voting share.
Now there is speculation that a trade-off for this arrangement involved
a major shift in the British position on Tibet, whose leading
representatives in exile this weekend called on their leader, the Dalai
Lama, to stop sending envoys to Beijing — bringing the faltering talks
between China and the exiles to a standstill.
The exiles’ decision followed an announcement on Oct. 29 by David
Miliband, the British foreign secretary, that after almost a century of
recognizing Tibet as an autonomous entity, Britain had changed its
mind. Mr. Miliband said that Britain had decided to recognize Tibet as
part of the People’s Republic of China. He even apologized that Britain
had not done so earlier.
Until that day, the British had described Tibet as autonomous, with
China having a “special position” there. This formula did not endorse
the Tibetan claim to independence. But it meant that in the British
view China’s control over Tibet was limited to a condition once known
as suzerainty, somewhat similar to administering a protectorate.
Britain, alone among major powers, had exchanged official agreements
with the Tibetan government before the Chinese takeover in 1951, so it
could scarcely have said otherwise unless it was to vitiate those
agreements.
After the People’s Republic of China joined the United Nations in 1971,
British politicians refrained from referring to their country’s
recognition of Tibet’s autonomy to avoid embarrassing Beijing. But that
didn’t make it less significant. It remained the silent but enduring
legal basis for 30 years of talks between the Dalai Lama and Beijing,
in which the Tibetans have called only for autonomy and not
independence — a position that a conference of Tibetan exiles in India
reaffirmed on Saturday.
Mr. Miliband described the British position as an anachronism and a
colonial legacy. It certainly emerged out of a shabby episode in
colonial history, Francis Younghusband’s cavalier invasion of Tibet in
1903. But the British description of Tibet’s status in the era before
the modern nation-state was more finely tuned than the versions claimed
by Beijing or many exiles, and it was close to the findings of most
historians.
Britain’s change of heart risks tearing up a historical record that
frames the international order and could provide the basis for
resolving China’s dispute with Tibet. The British government may have
thought the issue of no significance to Britain’s current national
interests and so did not submit it to public debate. But the decision
has wider implications. India’s claim to a part of its northeast
territories, for example, is largely based on the same agreements —
notes exchanged during the Simla convention of 1914, which set the
boundary between India and Tibet — that the British appear to have just
discarded. That may seem minor to London, but it was over those same
documents that a major war between India and China was fought in 1962,
as well as a smaller conflict in 1987.
The British concession to China last month was buried within a public
statement calling on Beijing to grant autonomy in Tibet, leading some
to accuse the British government of hypocrisy. It is more worrying if
it was a miscalculation. The statement was released two days before the
Dalai Lama’s envoys began the eighth round of talks with Beijing on
their longstanding request for greater autonomy, apparently because the
British believed — or had been told — that their giveaway to Beijing
would relax the atmosphere and so encourage China to make concessions
to the Dalai Lama.
The result was the opposite. On Nov. 10, China issued a damning attack
on the exile leader, saying his autonomy plan amounted to ethnic
cleansing, disguised independence and the reintroduction of serfdom and
theocracy. The only thing that China will henceforth discuss with the
exiles is the Dalai Lama’s personal status, meaning roughly which
luxury residence he can retire to in Beijing.
The official press in China has gleefully attributed European
concessions on Tibet to the financial crisis. “Of course these European
countries are at this time not collectively changing their tune because
their conscience has gotten the better of them,” announced The
International Herald Leader, a government-owned paper in Beijing, on
Nov. 7. It added that the financial crisis “has made it impossible for
them not to consider the ‘cost problem’ in continuing to ‘aid Tibetan
independence’ and anger China. After all, compared to the Dalai, to as
quickly as possible pull China onto Europe’s rescue boat is even more
important and urgent.”
Britain’s concession could be China’s most significant achievement on
Tibet since American support for Tibetan guerillas was ended before
Nixon’s visit to Beijing. Including China in global decision-making is
welcome, but Western powers should not rewrite history to get support
in the financial crisis. It may be more than banks and failed mortgages
that are sold off cheap in the rush to shore up ailing economies.
Robert Barnett, the director of the Modern Tibetan Studies Program at Columbia, is the author of “Lhasa: Streets With Memories.”
ciekawe zdjęcia 2008-11-21 11:04:04
Time udostępnił archiwalne zdjęcia na google, m.in Taktser Rinpocze, starszy brat Dalajlamy w Nowym Yorku w trakcie obrad Zgromadzenia Ogólnego ONZ w 1959 r:
http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?q=Tibet+source:life&imgurl=ea9be6c29820a393
Oraz zdjęcia z pierwszych obozów uchodźców tybetańskich w Indiach:
http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=979430e9627b2f79&q=tibet+source:life&usg=__ru3_Os_-CMRLGH7fJERz0rMJedI=&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dtibet%2Bsource:life%26hl%3Den
Wieści z Tybetu 2008-10-01 10:35:17
Miłość i nienawiść 2008-09-08 13:21:51
Tsoltim N. Shakabpa, 2008
Kocham samochody
Nienawidzę prowadzić
Kocham paliwo
Ale nienawidzę wysokich cen
Kocham pierdzieć
Ale nie nawidzę smrodu
Kocham palić
Ale nienawidzę dymu
Kocham rozsądek
Ale nienawidzę rozsądzać
Kocham politykę
Ale nienawidzę polityków
Kocham demokrację
Ale nienawidzę demokratów (jestem republikaninem)
Kocham nadzieję
Ale nienawidzę opierać się na niej
Kocham dostatek
Ale nienawidzę nierówności
Kocham biednych
Nienawidzę ubóstwa
Kocham niebiosa
Ale nienawidzę umierać
Kocham przyjaciół
Ale nienawidzę fałszywych przyjaciół
Kocham ciebie
Ale nienawidzę twojego IQ
Kocham siebie
Ale nienawidzę swojego ego
Kocham Chińczyków
Ale nienawidzę komunistów
Kocham Tybet i Tybetańczyków
I nie mam nic przeciwko nim.
1984 2008-09-05 08:01:22
Tsoltim N. Shakabpa, 2008
Kiedy Orwell pisał „Rok 1984”
Przewidział w Chinach
Obywateli ściśle kontrolowanych na każdym kroku
I wolne słowo zarzynane brutalnie
Jakie to smutne dla tych, co poddali własną wolność
Dla osiągnięcia światowych korzyści i kieszeni pełnej pieniędzy
To nawet smutniejsze, kiedy dotyczy przyjaciół
Powoduje, że możemy przyglądać się z boku i cicho siedzieć
Dlatego płaczę i płaczę
I prowadzę święto wojnę przeciwko hydrze
O demokrację w komunistycznych Chinach
O odzyskanie dawno utraconej wolności Tybetu
I o odzyskanie prawowitego królestwa