Editorial
What is the Issue in Tibet?
For the past couple of weeks the news
media has been full of reports on Tibet, following the outbreak of anti-China protests
and riots in the region. The protests have been described by some as being in
support of Tibetan independence from China, while others claim that they are in
support of greater autonomy. Still others, such as the U.S. and Canadian
governments, have focussed on the issue of “human
rights”. The Chinese government claims that the protests were organized by the
Dalai Llama and that its police and security forces were merely responding to
widespread violence and property destruction perpetrated by lawless rioters.
The reports of tourists caught in Lhasa
during the rioting tend to bear out the claims of the Chinese authorities.
Despite loaded questions by reporters about “brutal repression” of “peaceful
protestors” by Tibetan police and the Chinese army, few eye-witnesses confirmed
such claims. Most spoke about the brutal attacks and murder of ethnic Chinese
residents and the burning of their property by Tibetan mobs. One Canadian
tourist told the CBC that, despite his sympathies with the cause of Tibetan
independence, he believed that the response of the Chinese authorities was what
one would expect in any country where angry mobs were burning, looting and
beating other citizens.
Whatever the objectives of the
protesters, which really are not very clear, what is
clear is that the protests have been seized upon by the U.S. and its allies to
destabilize and attempt to extract economic and political concessions out of
China. In fact, given the entire history of CIA involvement
in organizing and funding the Tibetan independence movement, as well as similar
anti-government movements in Ukraine, Georgia, Lebanon, and various Central
Asian republics, there is probably little doubt that the current protests are
the work of the U.S. and its intelligence agencies.
There is a massive amount of
disinformation spread concerning Tibet and its relationship to the rest of China.
Despite considerable evidence to the contrary, claims of cultural genocide and
widespread human rights abuses abound and are simply accepted and promoted as
the truth by the pro-American news media. On the other hand, the claims of the
Chinese authorities that their treatment of Tibetans and other national
minorities within China’s borders is beyond reproach are also suspect.
As any other nation, the nation of Tibet
has the right to self-determination, up to and including independence if its
people so desire. However, this is a matter between the Tibetan people and the
Chinese government. It is not the business of the United States, which has
never supported the right to self determination of any nation. In fact, the
history of U.S. foreign policy is a history of supporting the domination of
smaller nations, either by itself or its allies. It has never supported the
liberation of oppressed nations, and any support it has ever leant to national
liberations movements has been for the purpose of displacing the former
oppressors and taking over that role for itself. The people of the Philippines,
Puerto Rico, Cuba and most of Latin America and Africa can attest to this
truth.
The U.S. is also in no position to
lecture China regarding standards of human rights. When the U.S. shuts down its
torture chambers in Guantanamo, Iraq and various Eastern European countries;
when it withdraws its occupation troops from foreign soil; when it stops
organizing death squads in Central America; when it stops propping up warlords
in Africa, Afghanistan and other regions; when it stops treating its own
Aboriginal peoples, Blacks and Hispanics as second- and third-class citizens,
then maybe it will have the moral authority to criticize the human rights
records of other countries.
The Canadian government, which will not
even protest the torture and murder of its own citizens at the hands of the
U.S. imperialists, which supports the U.S. imperialist efforts to enslave other
peoples and which condemns hundreds of thousands of its own people, especially
Aboriginal peoples, to lives of extreme poverty and misery, is also in no
position to lecture others about respect for human rights.
The U.S. and Canadian governments could
care less about the human rights of the Tibetan people. Nor do they have any
illusions that they can succeed in separating Tibet from China and making it a
puppet of U.S. imperialism. Their only concern about the situation in Tibet is
to exploit it in order to maximize the damage to China, hoping to thereby weaken
it in its inter-capitalist rivalry with various U.S. and Canadian corporations.
The U.S. imperialists also hope to fuel ethnic tensions in all of China’s
western regions, further destabilizing China and threatening its access to the
vast energy resources of Central Asia.
The Canadian working class and people
should refuse to get caught up in these imperialist intrigues. The aspirations
of the peoples everywhere for genuine human and democratic rights will never be
achieved by lining up with one group of monopoly capitalists and imperialists
against another. In fact, they can only be realized through the complete
elimination of monopoly capitalism and the imperialist system of states.