Mr Miliband will speak for Tibet today in China

Miliband must speak up for Tibet

Miliband must speak up for Tibet

11 March 2010

Dear Urgent Action Member Foreign Secretary David Miliband is scheduled to travel to China this weekend to meet with his Chinese counterparts. Please email him today, before he leaves for China and urge him to: Make a public statement of concern over human rights in Tibet during his visit to China.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband is travelling to China at a very sensitive time. The month of March marks the 51st anniversary of the Tibetan people’s brutally crushed national uprising against Chinese rule. It is also two years since the crackdown on peaceful protesters in 2008 which resulted in the deaths of many Tibetans. Today, an overt Chinese military presence in Tibet is enforcing restrictions on movements and communications, all aimed at preventing any expression of dissent.

In 2008, without parliamentary oversight, the Foreign Secretary changed the British government’s position on the status of Tibet, stating, for the first time, that “Tibet is a part of the People’s Republic of China”. The British government had until then, for 94 years, recognised Chinese “suzerainty” in Tibet but not Chinese sovereignty, regarding Tibet as having a ‘special position’.

Britain was the only major power to have dealt directly with the Tibetan government before the Chinese invasion of 1950. Therefore Britain’s long held position was significant as it 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.

Miliband claimed that the change of position, a historic concession to China, would remove obstacles for the British Government’s engagement with China on human rights.

However no returns were actually secured. The human rights situation in Tibet has in fact worsened.

If the Foreign Secretary remains publicly silent on Tibet while in China, it would demonstrate the British government’s tacit endorsement of China’s intensifying crackdown in Tibet.

Please write to Mr Miliband. You can use the sample letter provided below. Email: private.office@fco.gov.uk When sending this email, please add your name to the foot of the message. NOTE: If you are using a web-based email service like Hotmail or Gmail, the link above will not work: simply copy and paste the message below into an email to the foreign office. Dear Foreign Secretary As a supporter of human rights of the Tibetan people, I urge you to make a public statement of concern over human rights in Tibet while you are in China. You are travelling the week when Tibetans inside and outside Tibet are mourning all those killed in the National Uprising in Tibet of 1959 and in the peaceful mass protests of 2008.

While you have claimed that the historical change of Britain’s position on Tibet would remove obstacles from engaging China on human rights, no such improvements have been made.

The government’s policy of constructive engagement has failed. The situation in Tibet has worsened. Torture is ‘routine’ and ‘widespread’ in China and Tibet (UN 2008); thousands of Tibetans were detained without charge following the 2008 demonstrations, at least one thousand Tibetans still remain unaccounted for; two Tibetans were executed just weeks after Foreign Minister Ivan Lewis’s trip to Tibet in November 2009, the first executions in Tibet for six years; and the Sino-Tibetan dialogue has not produced any results. Your visit to China presents a vital opportunity for you to honour your stated commitment to improve the human rights of Tibetans and to make amends for handing over a prized concession to China with no human rights gains in return. Silence is consent to the everyday crimes the Chinese government commits in Tibet.

Yours sincerely