Help Tibet

For the Tibetans the time is five to twelve. Their Buddhist culture, which is thousands of years old, is being threatened with extinction as Chinese settlers are planting an ever stronger stamp with their own culture. Every week several thousand settle down in Tibet. Lured by the promises of the Chinese government these uninvited newcomers are settling above all in the towns. There the 7.5 million Chinese are already dominating trade, services and administration. So the old Tibetan capital is increasingly losing its Tibetan character: Heinrich Harrer’s old Lhasa is becoming submerged, traditional Tibetan quarters have to give way to ‘socialist’ urban development. Fast-food restaurants, internet cafés and brothels are being set up, wide new streets and modern residential blocks are making it easier for the Chinese security forces to control the population. Han Chinese and Hui already make up the majority of the population in Lhasa. Pekings aggressive settlement policy is more effective that the forcible suppression of all resistance such as the arrest of protesting nuns and monks. For Tibet’s population structure has been changed and the 5.5 million Tibetans have become a minority in their own country.

For the Daalai Lama this Chinese domination is the greatest danger for the survival of Tibet. In an interview with the Society for Threatened Peoples he has asked our human rights organisation to warn of lthe catastrophic effects of the Chinese settlement policy. Our protests against the destruction of the world cultural heritage have contributed to the criticism on the part of the UNESCO, the culture organisation of the United Nations, of China’s ‘Sanierung with bulldozers’. Yet the creeping destruction of Tibetan culture continues more day by day.

Tibetan Culture is being destroyed

China boasts that it has rebuilt more than 1.400 Buddhist monasteries destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. But in these monasteries the Tibetans cannot practise their faith today freely. For China has systematically forced all nuns and monks to renounce in writing their religious leader, the Dalai Lama. 12.000 nuns and monks, who were not prepared to do so, had to leave their monasteries. The Chinese authorities set up in every monastery compliant abbots to make sure that there will be no more resistance to the Chinese hegemony in Tibet. People are no longer allowed to possess pictures of the Dalai Lama.

The pressure on Tibetan culture begins in school already. The Tibetan language is being taught less and less. The Chinese language is being systematically encouraged. Tibetan parents are being forced to have their children taught only in Chinese to allow them chances for a good education. The pressure on the Tibetans to become assimilated is increasing particularly in the rural areas. The UN special correspondent for education, Katarina Tomasevski, made the criticism recently that 39,5 percent of the population is still illiterate in Tibet.

Our appeals to the German Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, to use his influence to start a dialogue between the Dalai Lama and the Chinese leadership have remained unanswered. We are therefore addressing this request to the CDU chairperson Angela Merkel in the hope that she will conduct a new China policy with the governing principle of respect for human rights. The Tibet Resolution of 1996 of the Bundestag, with the appeal to the Federal government to stand up against the Chinese domination of Tibet, should at last be recognized.

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Dr. Angela Merkel

Deutscher Bundestag

Platz der Republik 1

11 011 Berlin

Fax: 030 227 76 533

Email: angela.merkel@wk.bundestag.de