By Renato Palmi
South Africa – So much for our 10-year-old rights-based, freedom-loving South African democracy: this week, during his official visit to our country, China’s Vice-President Zeng Qinghong praised the South African government for blocking a recent United Nations debate on China’s human rights record.
This amounts to South Africa’s unequivocal condoning of the death of over 1,2 million Tibetans during China’s 54-year-long illegal military occupation of Tibet, and the relentless oppression and persecution of Tibet’s sovereign nation.
Ironically, our Presidential Office and Foreign Affairs Ministry frequently and publicly supports violent liberation movements that subject thousands of innocent men women and children in other regions to bombings, mutilation, starvation and rape, but will not show any support for the Tibetans’ peaceful freedom struggle. What a short memory our hard-won democracy seems to have!
For example, President Mbeki stated this week that there could be no meaningful discussions relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without the inclusion of Yasser Arafat. Why is the same level of support and respect not given to the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual and political leader? Surely it is not pure cynicism on my part to believe that the answer resides in China’s economic power, and its insistence that its trading partners fall in with its own version of what it calls a “New World Order” – one that clearly allows no room for human rights.
