The Dalai Lama used to be the chief representative of the Tibetan feudal serfdom, which is an anti-democratic and anti-human rights system. After he began his life in exile, he suddenly became a champion of human rights, who claims to want to set up a democratic regime in Tibet after it wins "independence." But in his "Tibetan constitution," it is said that Tibet will be made into a "free and democratic" country based on a combination of politics and religion.

The Dalai Lama has called the Han people who go to Tibet for business or work, immigrants. According to this logic, Europeans, Americans as well as Japanese and Koreans who rush to China for business are also immigrants.

Huge investment

Since 1980, the Chinese Government has input a lot of money to improve Tibetan people's living condition and help them enjoy a modern material lifestyle. Today's Tibetans, especially the youth in cities, prefer electric lamps to ghee lamps, they like to use gas stoves instead of burning cow dung, they prefer Western suits to Tibetan traditional clothes, prefer leather shoes, Nike and Adidas, to traditional Tibetan boots, enjoy Western food over finger mutton, and prefer beer to highland barley wine. The Dalai Lama says these new habits are the results of a Chinese Government conspiracy of hanization of the Tibetan population and destruction of the Tibetan culture.

In September 1993, I attended a seminar on Tibet that was organized by the United States Institute of Peace. An American professor said he had just been to Tibet and found the streets were filled with Han people, almost finding no sign of Tibetans or traditional Tibetan clothes. He saw Han-style construction everywhere but found no trace of Tibetan construction. He believed this was solid evidence that China is practicing the hanization of Tibet and destroying Tibetan culture. I at once took out an American newspaper, which showed pictures of "Tibet independence" demonstrators in Lhasa, capital of Tibet Autonomous Region, on May 24 of the same year and told him that those who he believed to be Han people were actually Tibetans in Western suits. In today's China, both Han people and Tibetans, especially the young in urban areas, all like wearing Western suits. Shops in Lhasa are tall concrete buildings with flat roof tops. Concrete buildings are not the invention of Han people but Westerners. So those are not Han-style buildings but Western-style buildings. Today, a lot of people in Asia and Africa wear Western suits and live in concrete buildings, which shows that the West is destroying cultures in Asia and Africa. The professor was rendered speechless.

More ridiculous is U.S. Congressman Frank R. Wolf. On August 9-13, 1997, he made a private visit to Tibet. After returning to the United States, he told his colleagues in the House of Representatives and the media that the Chinese Government was demolishing Tibetan culture by repairing the Potala Palace and providing new houses free of charge to Tibetans who had their dilapidated old Tibetan-style houses pulled down. Does preserving Tibetan culture mean you have to let people continue to live in dangerous houses?

In the March 14 riots this year, "Tibet independence" supporters attacked shops, houses, schools and banks and killed 17 Han people (including an eight-month-old baby) and one Tibetan girl. Despite this, the Dalai Lama still claimed that they were having a "peaceful protest." When the Chinese Government apprehended the mobs so as to protect the personal safety of local people, the Dalai Lama called the action "violently oppressing a peaceful protest" and "seriously violating Tibetans' human rights."

In the eyes of the Dalai Lama and some Western human rights advocates, to kill and burn to death ordinary Han people, including a baby, is not a violation of human rights. I'd like to know whether it is a violation of Tibetans' human rights when the mob burnt a female Tibetan shopkeeper named Cering Zholgar and pushed a female Tibetan shop owner named Ma'ah Yinshe from a building, causing a lumbar fracture (possibly paralysis)?