Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I second the excellent motion on Tibet moved by the member for Fisher. For 16 days last month we saw an unrelenting display of Chinese might—sporting, organisational and economic might. Unfortunately, the Communist Party machine is also unrelenting in its verbal war with the leader of the Tibetan people, the Dalai Lama. Many people, from human rights NGOs to Western governments—and, perhaps more dubiously, the IOC—had high hopes that the world spotlight would pressure China to make some genuine steps towards a just resolution of the Tibet question.

Amongst other governments who have raised the issue of Tibet with the Chinese authorities in recent months, as the motion indicates, the Australian government has been one of the most persistent—a fact I welcome. The Prime Minister, having already raised human rights issues in Tibet with China’s President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao in April, also raised human rights concerns again with Premier Wen on 8 August, prior to the commencement of the Olympic Games.

The Minister for Foreign Affairs and the Acting Prime Minister both met the Dalai Lama earlier this year. The Minister for Foreign Affairs has also called on China to respect the human rights of Tibetans, to allow greater access to Tibet and to engage in substantive dialogue before the end of the year. His Holiness the Dalai Lama had a highly successful function in Sydney with many new members of parliament when he was here in May.

It seems that calls for dialogue and a genuine attempt at resolution of the Tibet problem have so far fallen on deaf ears amongst the communist regime in Beijing. On 7 August, on the eve of the Olympics, New York Times commentator Nicholas Kristof published an article where he argued that he had found at a meeting with the Dalai Lama in June a more flexible and pragmatic position on the resolution of the conflict. Kristof argued that the Dalai Lama recognised that time was running out and was signalling a willingness to deal comparable to the way Richard Nixon sent signals to Beijing in 1972. According to Kristof, the Dalai Lama said he was willing to state that he would accept Communist Party rule in Tibet—something that Beijing has always demanded. In the words of the Dalai Lama:

The main thing is to preserve our culture, to preserve the character of Tibet. That is what is most important, not politics.

So this influential tribune of liberal Western opinion, Kristof, said China should reciprocate. Unfortunately, the events of the last year have shown that the current talks between the communist representatives and the Dalai Lama’s representatives are not making progress. Kristof’s view was that direct talks between the Dalai Lama and either the Chinese President or Prime Minister were the best way of ensuring that a deal could be reached.

Important concessions from the Chinese might have been to issue residential permits to stop the wave of Han Chinese migration to Tibet, to cease the restriction on monasteries and to allow the Tibetan language in government offices in Tibetan regions. Tibetan regions of China currently encompass several provinces. While the Tibetans have to concede their desire to create a central government, as Kristof suggests, a regional authority for Tibetan affairs could administer key aspects of life in all Tibetan areas, particularly education, culture and religion. This is the kernel of what would be a compromise. In terms of Tibetan concessions, the Dalai Lama said that he would play no political role after such a settlement and that other existing Chinese communist controls would remain in place. It would not be a one country, two systems approach, as exists in Hong Kong.

A successful deal would be beneficial to China’s reputation and the Tibetan people. The Dalai Lama is 73, and once he passes away a deal might be impossible as there is no Tibetan leader to unify the people behind such a plan. Frustrated Tibetan youth have in some cases already turned to violence against the Chinese. Prolonged repression along the current lines of China’s stance in Tibet without the Dalai Lama’s moderating voice is a powder keg with the potential to explode—in the form of greater violence and terrorism.

However, despite the potential for such an outcome, the Chinese stance has so far been very disappointing. On 21 August, in the full glare of the Olympic Games, the English language mouthpiece of the Chinese government, the China Daily, published a response to Kristof’s suggestions. Rather than seizing on dialogue or constructive criticism, they launched a tirade against the Dalai Lama in classic neo-Stalinist language, calling him ‘the so-called Dalai Lama’, ridiculing the fact that he talked through an American journalist et cetera, et cetera.

I agree with the member for Fisher: let us hope against hope that, at the resumed October session of the dialogue between Tibet and China, the regime in Beijing realise that, at the end of their economic boom, the West will still be there pressing for Tibetan cultural autonomy and that the Tibetan people deserve the right, guaranteed under the Chinese constitution, for Tibetans to practise their religion and culture without interference from the communist regime.

See this speech in context