Writer Brabara Yaffe wrote this morning’s Vancouver Sun, Canada should stand up for Taiwan. She wrote although we have trade interests to protect, we also have moral obligation to stand by our values in support of democracy and to promote peace.
I keep hearing about “values”, especially Canadian values.
What would we call the ‘values’ that kept silent for over 50 years, when China invaded TIBET and annexed it as their own? Why wasn’t anyone helped or even send troops to protect Tibet?
Tibet was an independent nation.There are proof that tibetans even invaded china and won the war.During the reign of King Ralpachen (815-36) the Tibetan armies won many victories and in 821-2 a peace treaty was concluded with China. The inscription of the text of the treaty exists in three places: One outside the Chinese Emperor’s palace gate in Ch’ang-an, another before the main gate of Jokhang temple in Lhasa and the third on the Tibetan-China border at Mount Guru Meru
Even the mongolian army when they reached Lhasa, withdrew after the leader Kublai Khan converted to Buddhism. He gave Tibetan king Sakya Phagpa full sovereignty over “the three provinces of Tibet : U-Tsang, Dhotoe and Dhome”.
In 1642, the Fifth Dalai Lama, Ngawang Lozang Gyatso, assumed both spiritual and temporal authority over Tibet. He established the present system of the Tibetan Government, known as the Ganden Phodrang, “Victorious Everywhere”. After becoming the ruler of all Tibet, he set forth to China to demand Chinese recognition of his sovereignty. The Ming Emperor received the Dalai Lama as an independent sovereign and as an equal. It is recorded that he went out of his capital to meet the Dalai Lama and that he had an inclined pathway built over the city wall so that the Dalai Lama could enter Peking without going through a gate
A treaty was signed between Tibet and Great Britain on September 7, 1904. During the British invasion Tibet conducted her affairs as an independent country. Peking did not so much as protest against the British invasion of Tibet.
In January 1913 a bilateral treaty was signed between Tibet and Mongolia at Urga. In that treaty both countries declared themselves free and separate from China
In September 1949, Communist China, without any provocation, invaded Eastern Tibet and captured Chamdo, the headquarters of the Governor of Eastern Tibet. On November 11, 1950, the Tibetan Government protested to the United Nations Organisation against the Chinese aggression. Although El Salvador raised the question, the Steering Committee of the General Assembly moved to postpone the issue.
On November 17, 1950, His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama assumed full spiritual and temporal powers as the Head of State because of the grave crisis facing the country, although he was barely sixteen years old. On May 23, 1951 a Tibetan delegation, which had gone to Peking to hold talks on the invasion, was forced to sign the so-called “17-point Agreement on Measures for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet”, with threats of more military action in Tibet and by forging the official seals of Tibet.
The Chinese then used this document to carry out their plans to turn Tibet into a colony of China disregarding the strong resistance by the Tibetan people. What is more, the Chinese violated every article of this unequal ‘treaty’ which they had imposed on the Tibetans.
On September 9, 1951 thousands of Chinese troops marched into Lhasa. The forcible occupation of Tibet was marked by systematic destruction of monasteries, suppression of religion, denial of political freedom, widespread arrests and imprisonment and massacre of innocent men, women and children.
On March 10, 1959 the nation-wide Tibetan resistance culminated in the Tibetan National Uprising against the Chinese in Lhasa. The Chinese retaliated with a ruthlessness unknown to the Tibetans. Thousands of men, women and children were massacred in the streets and many more imprisoned and deported. Monks and nuns were a prime target. Monasteries and temples were shelled.
On March 17, 1959 the Dalai Lama left Lhasa and escaped from the pursuing Chinese to seek political asylum in India. He was followed by unprecedented exodus of Tibetans into exile. Never before in their history had so many Tibetans been forced to leave their homeland under such difficult circumstances. There are now more than one hundred thousand Tibetan refugees all over the world.
http://www.friends-of-tibet.org.nz/tibet.html
Taiwan.history
1624 and 1662, Taiwan was under Dutch rule.. Then it didn’t belong to any country, just a land occupied by aborigenes and traders. In 1887 Ching Dynasty annexed Taiwan to Manchu empire
In 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki, in which China ceded its sovereignty over Taiwan in perpetuity. The Treaty was signed in April 1895, at the end of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894, in which the modernized Japanese imperial army defeated the antiquated Chinese Ching dynasty army.
Tibet was never part of China, however Taiwan was and in fact 100 years ago China gave up Tibet to the Japanese.
It irkes me, when western writers write article to gain cheap publicity and mileage and speak about democracy and moral obligation. What moral obligation can we speak, when we have been silently watching the atrocities committed on Tibetans and still wanting to stand up for Taiwan?
Whern I asked the author the same question she wrote
“let me get your point straight. It’s not legitimate to speak out on behalf
of Taiwan, which is in the news now, because I am not at the same time
writing about Tibet?
Get serious”
Ofcourse she can speak for the Taiwanese. But What moral right does one have to speak about oppression and democracy and how Canada should act, when all these while no one bothered about the right of Tibetans to have democracy and freedom from oppression? What isn’t good for Taiwanese shouldn’t be different for Tibetans? ISn’t what isn’t good for goose is also not good for gander?