"The working class, its role and
its mission today.
The tasks and concrete experiences of the Communist Party in the working class
and the trade union."
Brussels, 16-18 May 2008
www.icsbrussels.org , ics@icsbrussels.org
Tibet-China Resolution
1. Tibet has been an integral part of China for many centuries, whatever forms the relations between Tibet and the Chinese State may have taken in feudal times.
2. At the start of the twentieth century, the weakness of the Chinese central power made it possible for the imperialist powers to lay hands on certain regions. Thus, Great Britain temporarily attached Tibet to its Indian colonial empire, while Japanese fascism secured Manchuria.
3. The Chinese revolution freed the country from all foreign rulers and overthrew the age-old authority of the feudal classes. This revolution could, of course, not stop at the gates of Tibet, and this region was liberated in 1951.
4. An "independent Tibet" has never been recognized by any country. The official position, which is also that of the United States, has always been, until now, that "the Autonomous Region of Tibet is part of the People's Republic of China"1.
Hence it is not surprising that the Dalai Lama "denies being in favour of the independence of Tibet and only demands a greater autonomy". This is sheer hypocrisy. For he demands "the withdrawal of Chinese troops, a Tibetan constitution, the expulsion of Chinese citizens belonging to other nationalities", etc… He does not only speak about the Tibet Autonomous Region, but he refers to a "Great Tibet" consisting of the entire region inhabited by a Tibetan minority, i.e. 25% of present-day China (which comprises 5.4 million Tibetans, i.e. 0.4% of the total population). No Tibetan feudal administration has ever ruled over such a region; this "Great Tibet" never existed.
5. However, it is thanks to the financial, logistical and military assistance provided by the CIA that the Tibetan independence movement was set up in the days following the victory of the Chinese revolution in 1949. This movement was to be used from the start to undermine the communist rule and the People's Republic of China by threatening its unity, endeavouring to provoke internal disturbances. The central part played by the CIA in the disturbances that broke out in Tibet in 1959 is widely documented 2.
Tibetan militia trained by the CIA regularly made incursions into Tibet over the course of several years. The CIA's "Tibetan Task Force" was controlled by Roger McCarthy who subsequently ran similar operations in Vietnam and Laos. The CIA officially terminated its interventions in Tibet in 1974.
6. The (attempted) coups fomented by the CIA in several countries brought a fair degree of discredit on this US organization, and in 1983 former president Reagan set up the "National Endowment for Democracy" (NED). As acknowledged by its own founding fathers, all the NED did was to take over certain intervention and subversion operations which had previously been carried out directly by the CIA.
7. The Tibetan independence movement has regained strength since the stepping-up by the NED _ and other United States agencies _ of its multiform support under the presidency of G.W. Bush3. The Bush administration thus also drifts into hypocrisy when it declares "that Tibet is part of China" while offering its full support to the Dalai Lama and the openly independence-oriented Tibetan movement and its "government in exile".
8. The recent campaign which was launched by the independence-oriented Tibetan movement with the intensive support of the NED and other United States agencies led to criminal riots in Lhasa in March 2008. This campaign was set up over the course of two years, particularly during the fifth conference of "Tibet Support" held in Brussels in May 2007, which had been organized by the "Tibetan Government in exile" and which presented the 181 groups in attendance with a plan of action focusing on the Beijing Olympic Games of August 2008. At the same time, the NED has placed another one of its pawns on the chessboard, "Reporters sans Frontières", an organization headed by Robert Ménard. Numerous documents prove that RSF has been financed and sponsored by the NED from its very inception. RSF always stands out because of its heinous attacks, be it against Cuba or Venezuela. The UNESCO has decided to put an end to any collaboration with RSF in view of the latter's continuous lack of ethical behaviour4.
9. The virulence of the current "pro-Tibetan" and anti-Chinese campaign can be explained, first of all, by the growing crisis of the world capitalist system, particularly in the United States. Imperialism is looking more and more unfavourably upon the great strides forward made on the worldwide economic and political stage by the People's Republic of China while sticking to socialism.
G.W. Bush's United States openly bank on their military superiority to impose their order upon the world. However, mostly due to the heroic resistance of the aggressed populations, the American troops are bogged down both in Iraq and in Afghanistan. Today, the United States is not in a position to launch open military attacks against China. This is why it resorts to this type of aggression and subversion. It can be expected that Washington will step up its campaigns against China, just as it is resorting to subversion and aggression against any emerging power that hinders its hegemony.
10. Tibet is an autonomous region in the bosom of the People's Republic of China. China is still a developing country, a vast country which shelters more than one fifth of the world's population. In spite of the undeniable progress it has made so far, the People's Republic of China has never made any secret of the fact that it still has a long way to go. The demands of the Chinese people are those of the masses worldwide: the right to deal with their own affairs by themselves, freely and with sovereign rights.
11. The Olympic Games give the people an opportunity to get to know one another better and to establish friendly ties with one another beyond the reach of any partisan political campaign. Since March 2008, more than 100 countries have declared in one way or another their support to the People's Republic of China concerning the Tibetan question. They are opposed to any boycotting of the Olympic Games of Beijing. The vast majority of them are countries of the South which have themselves already been the victims of imperialist subversion and agitation.
12. We demand that the Western powers, first of all the United States, put an end to any interference in and menaces to, be it directly or indirectly, the affairs of the People's Republic of China. That they respect the sovereignty of the People's Republic of China over the Autonomous Region of Tibet as well as over other autonomous regions and the island of Taiwan. That they put an end to their support to separatist movements, Tibetan or others.
We request the athletes and the sportsmen who go to Beijing for the Olympic Games, to reinforce the friendly ties with the Chinese people as a whole.
1 Tibetan Policy Act of 2002, http://www.state.gov/p/eap/rls/rpt/20699.htm
2 See, among others, "The CIA's secret war in Tibet", 2002, by Kenneth Conboy and James Morrison (Modern War Studies, University of Kansas).
3 The same NED which prepared and accompanied the so-called orange "revolutions" in the Ukraine and other republics of the former USSR (The Ukraine 2004, Georgia 2003, etc )… which prepared and accompanied the coup against the Venezuelan president Chavez in 2002..
4 Cfr.: http://www.cubanews.ain.cu/2008/0313fracasaintento.htm . In spite of the fact that RSF was rejected from the UNESCO because of its more than dubious connections and practices, Robert Ménard was given the title of chevalier de la Légion d'honneur by the French president Nicolas Sarkozy on 23 March 2008!