Tibet is not China and never has been. All these troubles come from China’s illegal invasion, conquest and colonization of Tibet – a country that, by the admission of China’s last representative in independent Tibet, functioned as an independent country having its own language, stamps, currrency, law, justice, distinct religion and history – in short a people occupying a distinct territory.
Although Tibet has suffered foreign interference from its agressive neighbors in its long history it has never surrendered sovereignty. China’s arguments stemming from the Yuan dynasty are specious and beyond weak.(China does not claim sovereignty over Tibet by right of conquest). Even if one were to accept them (!)Tibet declared independence in 1912 after the fall of the last Manchu. Ever heard of the right to self-determination? If Poland and the countries of Eastern Europe are free (not to mention Kosovo and East Timor)why not Tibet? The International Commission of Jurists concluded in the early 1960′s that China’s policy in Tibet was “genocide”. The Dalai Lama terms China’s current policy as “cultural genocide”. Alexander Solzhenitsyn stated that China’s regime in Tibet is the cruelest in the communist world. To dismiss this sad history as “colorful” reveals more about the speaker than reality.
