Chinese Government: Vote for the Dalai Lama`s Peace Plan for Tibet!

The Peace Plan for Tibet was formulated by the Dalai Lama already in September 1987. The Chinese Government continues to ignore it, and to maintain its particularly repressive and violent policy in Tibet. Tibet definitely needs our HELP! So, please OPEN your HEART, sign this petition and SHARE it with everyone you know and any humanistic organization you can think of! It only takes a few seconds! The Dalai Lama`s Peace Plan proposes:

1. Transformation of the whole of Tibet into a zone of peace;

2. Abandonment of China's population transfer policy which threatens the very existence of the Tibetans
as a people;

3. Respect for the Tibetan people's fundamental human rights and democratic freedoms;

4. Restoration and protection of Tibet's natural environment and the abandonment of China's use of Tibet
for the production of nuclear weapons and dumping of nuclear waste;

5. Commencement of earnest negotiations on the future status of Tibet and of relations between the Tibetan and Chinese peoples.

THE TRAGEDY OF TIBET

Until 1950 Tibet was a sovereign state. The Tibetans knew themselves to be a distinct people with their own language, culture, religion, history and customs. In 1950 Tibet was invaded by the army of The People's Republic of China. It is occupied by the Communist Chinese to the present day.

The Tibetan people were unwilling to accept Chinese occupation. It is estimated that since 1959, 1.5 million Tibetans have died as a direct result of Chinese incursion into the country.

During 1959 many thousands of Tibetans, including the Dalai Lama, sought asylum in India. The exodus of Tibetans from Tibet continues to this day.

In 1960, after reviewing accounts of Chinese atrocities in Tibet, including the widespread use of summary execution, torture and general abuse that included the forced sterilization of women, the International Commission of Jurists found
that the Chinese were committing genocide and the 16 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were being violated. According to the Commission the Chinese were guilty of "the most pernicious crime that any individual or nation can be accused of, viz. a willful attempt to annihilate an entire people."

All but 12 of more than 6,000 monasteries were destroyed. A
thousand years' worth of priceless Buddhist literature, religious paintings and artifacts were either destroyed or have fetched millions of dollars on the international market.

Today, more than 200,000 Tibetans, including the Dalai Lama, live in exile in India, Nepal, Bhutan, Switzerland, the United States and Canada, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere.

In the last decade the Chinese have stepped up their efforts to re-populate Tibet. Today, Tibetans are a minority in their own country -- there are now about 7.5 million Chinese to
about 6.5 million Tibetans. The aim of this is to forcibly resolve China's territorial claims over Tibet by means of a massive and irreversible population shift. In May 1993, an official Chinese government document, indicated that the Chinese authorities
proposed another massive population transfer as one element in what they termed "a final solution" to their "Tibetan problem".

This large-scale population transfer has resulted in a 300 percent inflation rate in Tibet, a two-class society sharply
divided along racial lines, and unprecedented unemployment among Tibetans.

Tibet, once a peaceful buffer state between India and China, has been transformed into a militarized zone. There are at least 300,000 Chinese troops stationed there at any time, as are at least one quarter of China's nuclear arsenal of 350 nuclear missiles at 5 different missile bases.

It is believed that approximately 3,000 religious and political prisoners are held in prisons and forced labour camps where torture is common.

There are reports that Tibetan women are subject en masse to forced abortions and sterilization. Alexander Solzhenitsyn has
described China's administration of Tibet as "more brutal and inhumane than any other communist regime in the world."

There are strong concerns,voiced internationally, that China is using Tibet as a dumping ground for nuclear waste. Recently Tibetan farmers have complained that "fertilizer" they have
been forced to use on their fields is destroying crops and killing birds and animals.

Tibet's natural resources and ecology are being irreversibly destroyed. Wildlife, including the rare Tibetan snow leopard and the wild blue Tibetan sheep, has been decimated. Forests have been clear-cut and transported to China (since 1950, 68% of Tibet's forests have been felled, causing grave concern in
Bangladesh and India, now both frequently devastated by flooding.)

China severely restricts the teaching and study of Buddhism, an essential core of Tibetan culture. The Communist Party regulates the admission of monks and nuns into the monasteries and "political education" is compulsory.

China has shifted its religious policy to actively suppress and restrict further religious growth. This involves measures to halt unauthorized rebuilding of monasteries destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, setting limits on the number of monks and nuns in all monasteries, enforcing restrictions on youths
joining monasteries, prohibiting Tibetan Party members from practising religion, and strengthening the control of the government and the Communist Party over each monastery.

Last year the Chinese authorities reintroduced a ban, current during the Cultural Revolution but lifted in 1979, prohibiting pictures of the Dalai Lama from monasteries and temples. Recently this was widened to include schools and private homes and there are reports of house-to-house searches checking for possession of photographs of the Dalai Lama.

In 1995 the Chinese government kidnapped the six-year-old
Gendun Chökyi Nyima and his parents, shortly after he had been recognized by the Dalai Lama as the latest reincarnation of Tibet's second most important spiritual leader, the Panchen Lama. The Chinese authorities meanwhile have appointed another child as the "recognized reincarnation" of the Panchen Lama. In January 1996, nine monks in Tibet were arrested for openly protesting against China's choice.

And so forth...