TRIN-GYI-PHO-NYA, Vol. 3, No. 3
By Susan Mizrahi*
Canadian companies involved in the controversial Gormo-Lhasa railway, the cornerstone of China’s Great Leap West, which is now due for completion in 2006, have drawn fire from Tibet groups, the media and Canada’s Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade in recent weeks.
Bombardier Inc. and Nortel executives were met by vocal Tibetans and their supporters at their annual general meetings held in Montreal and Toronto, respectively, in June. While protesters outside shouted and held placards reading “Hors du Tibet! – Out of Tibet,” shareholders inside argued that the companies were in effect supporting China’s occupation and cultural genocide of Tibet. Their concerns were splashed across Canada’s daily newspapers the following day, with the companies’ proclamation of their innocence (“We don’t think it’s our responsibility to settle the political differences between China and Tibet”) simply serving to position themselves as case studies in corporate ethics – or lack thereof.
Indeed, Bombardier’s role in the railway projects contradicts the company’s own Code of Ethics and the International Union of Public Transport (UITP) Charter on Sustainable Development, to which the company is a “full signatory”. These breaches of 21st century-style corporate responsibility have been noted by Canada’s Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade who is calling for company officials and Foreign Affairs Minister to testify before the Committee in September this year.
“The Canadian Government is financially committed to Bombardier Inc. through a series of significant loan guarantees… [yet] serious questions have been raised by groups concerned that the Communist Chinese regime will use the railway for mass population movements,” stated the announcement by Stockwell Day, MP on behalf of the Committee.
Images of the railway smuggled out of Tibet* depict the scale of the project and give evidence for the first time of the enforced population relocation in the Chinese “land grab” of the railway. Reports filtering in from refugees arriving in Nepal, tell of Chinese authorities failing to keep their promises to adequately compensate Tibetan farmers for carving the new rail line directly through their properties.
Whether companies like Bombardier will recognize that their involvement in this Tibet project will have a direct and irreversible impact on Tibet’s land and people, and leave a permanent scar on their corporate reputation, or they pull out of the project remains to be seen. Some believe it is doubtful, especially since the company last month signed a lucrative 20-year agreement with the Chinese Ministry of Railways, thereby positioning it as the “preferred supplier” for China’s rapidly growing railways.
Despite China’s ability to allure western corporations by granting large contracts, Tibetans and their supporters are determined not to let Bombardier, Nortel, Powercorp and GE set a damaging precedent of powerful companies supporting China’s political objectives of Gormo-Lhasa railway project.
For more information on this campaign, go to: www.tibetnetwork.org/campaigns/railway/index.html. To view images of the construction of the railway, go to: www.savetibet.org/press.
*Susan Mizrahi is the Campaigns Coordinator for the International Campaign for Tibet. E-mail: susanm@savetibet.org
