[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 77 (Wednesday, May 10, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6458-S6459]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                     CHINA'S OBLITERATION OF TIBET

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, 7 years ago I visited Tibet, a land of 
striking beauty whose people are among the most inspiring and 
interesting I have ever had the privilege to meet. Most of the 
photographs of Tibet, I had seen before my visit, were of the jagged 
Himalayan Mountains, Buddhist monks, and a sleepy, poor country of 
subsistence farmers and their herds of yaks. There is another Tibet, 
which many people may not be aware of.
  It was with great sadness that I and my wife Marcelle saw first hand 
the effects of China's ruthless, systematic campaign to obliterate 
Tibetan culture and Tibetan life. We met some of the Tibetans who had 
suffered under Chinese occupation, and saw the empty palace of the His 
Holiness the Dalai Lama, who lives in exile in India and who I have had 
the honor of meeting several times. Since our visit, and despite 
international condemnation, China's campaign of cultural annihilation 
has steadily progressed.
  A recent article in Newsweek magazine describes the genocide. Tibet 
is being overrun by the Chinese. According to the article, Lhasa, 
Tibet's capital, is now at least 50-percent non-Tibetan. Buddhist 
monasteries have been destroyed, the Tibetan language is suppressed, 
and Tibet's natural resources have been plundered.
  There are 60,000 Chinese troops in Tibet, whose job is to instill 
fear and quell any dissent. Public gatherings are monitored with video 
cameras, and protesters are quickly arrested before they attract 
attention.
  Mr. President, Tibet is perhaps the most vivid example of why the 
Chinese Government is widely regarded as among the world's most 
flagrant violators of human rights. A decade from now, if current 
trends continue, the only thing left of Tibetan culture may be a 
memory. Even today it may be too late to prevent that result, since it 
would take a major, international campaign to turn back the Chinese 
tide. I, for one, would welcome such a campaign, because I believe we 
have a responsibility to try to protect endangered peoples whose 
existence is threatened with cultural genocide.
  I ask unanimous consent that the Newsweek article be printed in the 
Record.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                     [From Newsweek, Apr. 3, 1995]

                       China Invades Tibet--Again

                            (By Melinda Liu)

       Chip * * * chip. That's the sound of Tibetan civilization 
     being hacked away. Below Lhasa's imposing Potala Palace, home 
     of the exiled Dalai Lama, Chinese stonemasons chisel granite 
     that will pave a vast new plaza with government monuments. 
     The ancient downtown, some of it dating from the seventh 
     century, has already suffered a terminal face-lift. The 
     1,000-room Potala is now surrounded by hair-dressing salons, 
     chain-smoking prostitutes and karaoke bars blaring Madonna 
     music. Streets that once housed traditional Tibetan tea shops 
     have given way to rows of greasy Chinese eateries run by 
     recent arrivals from China's interior. Just outside the 
     capital, young Tibetan boys scavenge at a new open dump piled 
     high with trash. ``The Chinese keep coming,'' complains one 
     Lhasa resident, ``especially those who can't find jobs 
     anywhere else.''
       The Chinese are invading Tibet--again. Four decades after 
     the People's Liberation Army seized the kingdom and crushed 
     an uprising by the followers of the Dalai Lama, Beijing has 
     found a more effective method of conquest: money. In 1992 the 
     government lifted controls on Chinese migration to Tibet, 
     then made it worthwhile by offering jobs that paid two or 
     three times the rate of the same work in China's interior. 
     Last year alone Beijing invested some $270 million in 62 
     projects--including the plaza near the Potala and a solar-
     powered radio and TV station that will broadcast Communist 
     Party propaganda in Tibetan. As a result of these 
     inducements, Lhasa's population is now at least 50 percent 
     non-Tibetan, according to Western analysts.
       Locals might not mind so much if they thought they were 
     getting more of the economic benefits. Tibet--which means 
     ``Western treasure house'' in Mandarin--has long been 
     plundered for its gold, timber and other resources and 
     remains unremittingly poor. Many Tibetans still live a 
     nomadic hand-to-mouth existence. Working herds of shaggy yaks 
     in the summer and retreating to the capital in the winter to 
     seek alms until the winter snows subside, they earn less than 
     $100 per year. But now maroon-robed monks compete with 
     Chinese beggars for spare change. Lhasans also grumble that 
     most new entrepreneurial opportunities go to outsiders. 
     Government funds are ``inextricably linking Tibet's economy 
     with the rest of China,'' argues Prof. Melvyn Goldstein, a 
     Tibet scholar at Case Western Reserve University. ``This has 
     also resulted in non-Tibetans controlling a large segment of 
     the local economy at all levels, from street-corner bicycle 
     repairmen to electronic-goods-store owners and firms trading 
     with the rest of China.''
       Gawking nomads: Newcomers have a significant advantage over 
     locals--connections in the Chinese interior. In landlocked 
     Tibet, the best consumer goods were smuggled in from Nepal 
     only a decade ago. Now Chinese Muslim (Hui) peddlers in the 
     vegetable market hawk chicken eggs trucked in from Gansu 
     province, bananas from coastal Guangdong and Lux soap made in 
     Shanghai. Chinese shopkeepers prefer to sell to other Chinese 
     and seem openly disdainful of Tibetans, sometimes grabbing a 
     broom to shoo out gawking nomads who spend too much time 
     fiddling with the merchandise.
       The tension inevitably erupts. Recently a local sat down in 
     a Hui restaurant to a meal--and pulled from his plate of 
     dumplings what Xinhua news agency called ``a long 
     fingernail.'' The disgusted diner shouted to his friends, 
     ``They're serving human flesh!'' After the enraged 
     restaurateur attacked 
      [[Page S6459]] them with a metal bar, some Khampas from 
     eastern Tibet joined the brawl. The fighting spilled into the 
     street for a while, and resumed the next day. When it was 
     over, several Hui shops had been vandalized; a dozen Tibetans 
     were arrested. The provocations continue. On Lhasa's streets, 
     Chinese vendors sometimes prepare dog meat in plain view of 
     passersby--an outrageous affront to Tibetans, who believe 
     that dogs are reincarnated as people. ``The potential for 
     overreaction,'' says a Western diplomat in Beijing, ``is 
     great.''
       Government officials dismiss the idea that China is 
     obliterating Tibetan culture. ``That's sheer fabrication,'' 
     snaps Raidi, deputy Communist Party secretary of Tibet, who 
     is Tibetan. He claims that Chinese people constitute less 
     than 3 percent of Tibet's population of 2.2 million--
     neglecting to mention the 60,000 PLA troops and 50,000 or 
     more migrants in the region. The official press blames 
     Tibet's troubles on a ``psychology of idleness.'' There are 
     now more monks and nuns than high-school students, the Tibet 
     Daily, a Communist Party mouthpiece, recently pointed out. 
     ``Such a huge number of young, strong people are not engaged 
     in production. * * * The negative influence on economic and 
     ethnic cultural development is self-evident.''
       But Beijing continues to undermine Tibet's self-
     sufficiency. Designated as an ``autonomous region,'' Tibet is 
     anything but. Its religious life, as well as its economic and 
     political fate, depends entirely on Beijing. Chinese 
     authorities recently dropped a commitment to mandate the use 
     of the Tibetan language in government offices. ``Tibetans can 
     speak Tibetan at home and at work,'' says a Lhasa 
     intellectual who has a government job. ``But in order to get 
     ahead, you must speak Chinese.''
       The influx of Chinese people has a political purpose, too--
     to muffle calls for independence. Many Lhasa residents blame 
     Hui shopkeepers for harboring police during separatist 
     demonstrations back in 1989, and for supporting the brutal 
     crackdown that followed. Today, closed-circuit video cameras 
     monitor activities at major intersections in the Tibetan 
     quarter, around the markets near the fabled Jokhang temple, 
     even in the altar rooms of the Potala Palace. Police pounce 
     on protesters before they can attract crowds. The 
     intimidation seems to be working. ``The Chinese are more 
     clever than we Tibetans,'' says an educated Lhasan. ``So they 
     get all the good jobs. They work very hard, even moving 
     mountains when they want to.'' Beijing's most potent weapon 
     is to make Tibetan culture seem worthless--even in a Lhasan's 
     eyes.
     

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