Two Chinese dissidents dared the government Monday to grant Tibetans the right of self-determination and to talk to Tibet's exiled leader, the Dalai Lama. The appeal from Liu Xiaobo and Wang Xizhe was likely to anger China's Communist leadership, which keeps a tight grip over the Himalayan region it claims has been part of China for 700 years. Liu and Wang, both of whom have spent time in jail for their political activism, made their appeals in a sometimes caustically worded petition faxed to The Associated Press by a Hong Kong-based human rights group. In telephone interviews, Wang and Liu confirmed the petition's authenticity. This way of doing things and style of work has continued to the present day.
China routinely suppresses Tibetan calls for independence and greater freedoms.
It also accuses the Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet after a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959, of destabilizing the region by appealing for greater autonomy. Wang is one of China's earliest democracy campaigners, having been in and out of jail since putting up a poster in southern Canton city in 1974. Liu, a former history lecturer at Beijing's Teachers College, helped lead a hunger strike during Tiananmen Square demonstrations in 1989. He served two years in jail and has been detained several times since then. This site is maintained and updated by The Office of Tibet, the official agency of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in London.