Mr. Lobsang Nyandak's Statement to the WCAR

Joint Statement delivered by Mr. Lobsang Nyandak, Executive Director, Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in collaboration with International Campaign for Tibet, Worldview International Foundation and International Fellowship of Reconciliation.

World Conference Against Racism

31 August - 7 September 2001

Agenda Item 9 (Victims of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance)

Thank you, Mr./Madame Chairperson,

Allow me to begin by conveying my warmest greetings, on behalf of the six million Tibetan people, to all the participants to this Conference and also to the people and government of South Africa.

This joint statement relates to PP30 and OP33 in the draft declaration that affect the lives of millions of people under foreign occupation, alien domination, colonialism and institutionalised racism. We can all recognise that foreign occupation creates an environment under which some of the most horrendous forms of racism and related intolerance take place.

Ladies and gentlemen, the distinguished Vice-Foreign Minister of the People's Republic of China, in his statement in this room, correctly pointed that the heinous crimes caused by foreign occupation and colonialism should never be repeated. We welcome this call! However, we wish to alert this conference that the conduct of the Chinese authorities in Tibet, Eastern Turkestan and Inner Mongolia, if judged from an independent analysis, involves the same crimes, which the distinguished Vice-Minister has asked this World Conference to avoid.

For instance, institutionalised and cultural discrimination implemented and encouraged by the Chinese government against the Tibetan people is both a cause and a consequence of: the occupation of Tibet by a foreign power; the continuing implantation of Chinese settlers into Tibet; coerced birth control against Tibetan women; discrimination in education, health and employment; efforts to exploit Tibet's natural resources for the benefit of China; and the perceived need to assimilate Tibetans culturally in order to control them politically. China is now even gone as far as to implement a campaign to transform Tibet into an atheist region to propagate the so-called "spiritual communist civilisation".

Mr./ Madame, Chairperson, The final Declaration of the NGO Forum has now recognised "institutionalised forms of racial discrimination", in Tibet and that "illegal population transfer of Chinese settlers into Tibet as one aspect of the colonial occupation and a further cause of the racial discrimination against the Tibetan people."

In conclusion, we appeal to the III WCAR to recognise that Tibet is a de facto colony of China and Tibetans are denied their right to self-determination by the Chinese authorities. Such factors place the problem of racial discrimination and related intolerances in Tibet in a category that warrants immediate scrutiny by the World Conference. If country specific references are made in the Declaration of this Conference, we request all delegations to include China for the widespread and institutionalized racism committed against the Tibetan people during the past fifty years.

Finally, we wish to extend our solidarity with the people of China who suffer various forms of discrimination under the present totalitarian communist regime. We, in particular express our deepest concern on the growing discrimination faced by internally displaced Chinese.

I thank you for your attention.

Note: Tibetan Youth Congress, Human Rights in China, Tibetan Women's Association and Colonialism and Foreign Occupation Caucus of the NGO Forum associate themselves with this statement.