Students promote awareness with Free Tibet festival

Monday, November 23, 1998

Students promote awareness with Free Tibet festival

RESPONSE: UCLA chapter to reveal human rights abuses, ethnic
genocide

By Yiloc Lai

Daily Bruin Contributor

In a Nov. 10 meeting with President Clinton, the Dalai Lama –
Tibet’s spiritual and political leader – disclosed his intention of
opening talks with the Chinese government in hopes of gaining a
greater degree of autonomy for the Chinese-occupied province.

The UCLA chapter of Students for a Free Tibet (SFT) is
responding to the Dalai Lama’s visit to America by tentatively
planning a Free Tibet Film Festival, featuring a collection of
documentaries and feature films, and a freedom concert to educate
students on what it sees as the Chinese government’s flagrant
violations of the Tibetans’ human rights.

Currently, SFT plans on showing four documentaries about Tibet
for the festival, which it hopes will take place at UCLA’s James
Bridges Theater in late January.

In recent years, the international movement to expand the human
rights of Tibetans has gained momentum and attracted a younger
audience.

Rage Against the Machine, the Beastie Boys, Smashing Pumpkins
and Sonic Youth came together for last year’s Tibetan Freedom
Concert. Movies such as the 1997 releases "Kundun" and "Seven Years
in Tibet" have also raised awareness in America of Tibet’s
political situation.

Melissa Hardy, president of the UCLA chapter of SFT, took
interest in the issue during last year’s freedom concert in San
Francisco, when Tibetan monks spoke of their experiences.

"It hit me when I saw people hearing about such atrocities and
still only caring about such the trivial things as (the performance
of) Rage Against the Machine," Hardy said.

"SFT is here to educate others of the human rights violations
and cultural genocide in Tibet so that they may carry those ideals
(of universal human rights) into their professions."

Human rights violations ranging from political repression and
religious intolerance to forced abortions or sterilization have
been reported by the U.S. State Department and the United Nations
since the People’s Republic of China assumed control of Tibet in
1959, forcing the Dalai Lama into exile in India.

"Chinese government authorities intensified controls on
religion, and on freedom of speech and the press, particularly for
ethnic Tibetans," stated the U.S. State Department’s 1996 report on
human rights in China.

To ethnic Chinese, who were raised with the notion that Tibet
had always been a Chinese province, however, the Tibetans’
insistence upon greater autonomy for the expansion of their human
rights is unfounded.

"The Chinese have neither treated Tibet as well as they claim,
nor as badly as the Dalai Lama has claimed," said John Jiang, a
first-year computer science and engineering student. "China has
tried to improve the condition of the Tibetans but in a different
way that (Westerners) can’t, or don’t, appreciate."

SFT has also published literature claiming that China has
kidnapped the Panchen Lama, a child thought to be the spiritual
reincarnation of a high Tibetan priest. The current Panchen Lama
disappeared over a year ago.

China maintains such tight controls over Tibet because of
Tibet’s "rich natural resource deposits, strategic military
location in central Asia, (which enables it) to station missiles
directed toward India, and its racially motivated imperialist
policy," according to literature published by the SFT.

Tibet’s strategic position is what concerns the SFT most.

"(Deciding) whether the rape of a nun or the forced
sterilization of a pregnant woman is worse is like choosing between
the lesser of two evils," Hardy said. "Realizing that the Tibetans
can’t continue living under such brutal conditions is what’s
important."

Chinese authorities have yet to respond to the Dalai Lama’s
request to open negotiations, despite Chinese President Jiang
Zemin’s June promise to open the "door to negotiations" for a more
autonomous Tibet upon the Dalai Lama’s acknowledgement of Chinese
sovereignty over the region, according to a New York Times
article.

The Dalai Lama originally acknowledged the notion in the hope
that it would lead to an expansion of the Tibetans’ human rights
and the protection of their distinct culture through the lessening
of Chinese control, according to statements released by his
government in exile.

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