From: Human Rights Coordinator <hrcoord@igc.org>
Newsgroups: soc.rights.human
Date: 25 Jul 92 14:02 PDT
Subject: Tibetan Nightingales
Nf-ID: #N:cdp:1476700266:000:3184
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!hrcoord    Jul 25 14:02:00 1992


From: Human Rights Coordinator <hrcoord>
Subject: Tibetan Nightingales

From amnesty@acs.ucalgary.ca Sat Jul 25 13:01:13 1992

<< editorial - The Globe and Mail - Canada's National Newspaper>>
July 1, 1992

TIBET'S CAGED NIGHTINGALES

An old trick of totalitarian governments is to mask their
repression of cultural minorities at home by celebrating them
abroad. So it was that scores of Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Kazakh
and Uzbek cultural troupes danced, juggled and sang their way
across Canadian stages during the days of the Soviet empire,
living proof of the joyous brotherhood of the Soviet peoples
under the hammer and sickle.  And so it is that the Chinese
government has dispatched the "Tibetan Performing Arts Troupe of
China" to entertain Canadian audiences this summer.  In a series
of cross-country shows, which began in Vancouver, Calgary and
Edmonton, continued in Toronto early this week and end at the
International Folk Festival in Drummondville, Que., the troupe
will perform Tibetan folk dances and sing traditional Tibetan
songs - dogged at every stop by protesters shouting "Bod
rangzen:" free Tibet.

Apart from the ersatz nature of the material, what upsets the
Tibetan Canadian protesters most about these entertainments is
their hypocrisy.  Suppressing Tibetan culture, in particular
religion, has long been a cornerstone of China's Tibet policy. 
Chinese authorities have reportedly sent people to jail simply
for wearing Tibetan national dress or singing Tibetan songs. 
Human rights groups say that one teacher recently received a
five-year term for writing a "reactionary" song on a blackboard.

The strength of Tibetan culture has led the Chinese to extremes
of brutality.  An intensely spiritual people, the Tibetans were
ruled for centuries by the Dalai Lama, head of the Tibetan
buddhist religion.  In 1950, China invaded the mountain kingdom
and began an escalating campaign of cultural assimilation.  This
led to a nationalistic uprising in 1959, put down amid much
bloodshed, and the flight of the present Dalai Lama, who has
since been living in exile in India.

The 1960s saw new atrocities when Chinese Red Guards, in the heat
of the Cultural Revolution, smashed religious relics, massacred
monks and destroyed as many as 6,000 Tibetan monasteries.  While
nothing since has approached that level of barbarity, Amnesty
International says that Chinese authorities continue to employ
torture and arbitrary detention against Tibetan Buddhists.  Since
the beginning of this year, authorities have reportedly arrested
at least 69 monks and others for pro-independence agitation.

The international response has been tepid at best.  Two years
ago, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney refused to meet the Dalai
Lama, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, when he visited Canada. 
Against this backdrop, it is no surprise that China has chosen
Canada as a place to display what protesters called its "caged
nightingales."  Ottawa, which does not challenge China's
sovereignty over Tibet, is unlikely to do anything about it.  Nor
should it, lest it be accused of censorship.  But Canadians
should recognize that the song these nightingales sing is false. 

<<end>>



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