14 November 2008
Dear Foreign Secretary,
I am writing to you in connection with your Written Ministerial Statement of 29 October in which you announced a change in Britain’s position on the status of Tibet.
Until your statement, Britain’s official position had recognised China’s “special position” in Tibet but fell short of recognising China’s full sovereignty. This position had held for 94 years. In the statement, however, you asserted that henceforth Britain would “regard Tibet as part of the People’s Republic of China”.
In justifying the change in Britain’s formal position on Tibet you characterised the previous position as an “anachronism” which had developed from an “outdated concept”.
Free Tibet considers such reasoning to be disingenuous and believes the change in Britain’s formal position on Tibet to have far greater significance than the mere tidying up of outdated language.
This is because Britain’s previous position on Tibet carried great weight: Britain was the only major power to have dealt directly with the Tibetan government before the Chinese invasion of 1950. These direct dealings included the signing of treaties. British India shared a border with Tibetand Britain maintained a diplomatic mission in Lhasa until 1947. Britain was therefore uniquely competent to judge the precise nature ofChina’s influence within Tibet and for 94 years Britain did not recognise Tibet as part of China.
Britain’s position meant that China was unable to claim that the entire international community viewed Tibet as a part of China because the country best able to judge disagreed.
The change of position has already had damaging consequences for the Tibetan people. With Britain now stating that Tibet is “part” of China, any incentive for the Chinese government to negotiate on the issue of autonomy has vanished.
With this in mind, Free Tibet is appalled that the change in Britain’s position was announced just two days before the eighth round of talks was due to take place between 31 October and 5 November. In that round, envoys of the Dalai Lama delivered a highly detailed memorandum, setting out the Tibetan case for autonomy. The memorandum had been specifically requested by China at the previous May 2008 round.Britain’s counter-productive diplomacy in recognising Tibet as a part of China just two days before the eighth round, ensured that the Tibetan memorandum on autonomy was stillborn.
Indeed, less than two weeks after you issued your statement, one of China’s chief negotiators in the Sino-Tibetan dialogue, Zhu Weiqun, held a press conference in Beijing in which he aggressively blamed the Tibetan side for what he regarded as the failure of the talks. Using aggressive language and accusing the Dalai Lama of “ethnic cleansing” Vice-Minister Zhu signalled that the talks had effectively collapsed.
In your statement of 29 October you asserted that “the British Government has a strong interest in the dialogue between the Chinese Government and the Dalai Lama’s representatives” and “long term stability, which can only be achieved through respect for human rights and greater autonomy for the Tibetans.” Free Tibet considers, however, that the change in Britain’s position on Tibet has ensured the opposite: the collapse of the Sino-Tibetan talks and China’s abandonment of greater Tibetan autonomy as a matter for negotiation.
The change of Britain’s historic position on Tibet represents a betrayal of the Tibetan people as well as an alarming weakening of the government’s position on Tibet; it has rewarded China with a prized concession in the very year that China has perpetrated its worst human rights violations in Tibet in decades; and more generally the British government, in successive rounds of talks, has failed to exert the sort of pressure on China that could have made the talks a success.
With the recent collapse of the Sino-Tibetan talks, you must now publicly announce how the British government intends to address the worsening crisis in Tibet.
Yours sincerely,
Stephanie Brigden
Director, Free Tibet
