The issue is "The Dalai Lama and Tibet Awareness Day", or Assembly Concurrent Resolution 6, (ACR 6) a resolution sponsored by Assembly Member Sam Blakeslee. The resolution would recognize March 10 as "Dalai Lama and Tibet Awareness Day." It is non-binding, and would simply "educate Californians about the teachings of the Dalai Lama and his efforts to preserve the Tibetan culture." It would honor the Dalai Lama "for his contributions to world peace and leadership in seeking nonviolent solutions to international problems," and re-affirm that "freedom of expression, assembly, and religious beliefs are fundamental human rights that belong to all people," including of course, Tibetans. John Isom is executive director of Tibet Justice Center in Berkeley, Dechen Tsering is president of the Tibetan Association of Northern California, and Giovanni Vassallo is president of Committee of 100 for Tibet.
World peace? Non-violence? Freedom of expression, assembly, and religion? What's not to like about Dalai Lama and Tibet Awareness Day?
If you read Xinhua, China's state-run news agency, you learn that His Holiness the Dalai Lama is the diabolical mastermind of something called the "Dalai Clique," a splittist group that seeks to wrest Tibet from the Chinese "Motherland." Indeed, the Dalai Lama apparently wants to undermine China's "liberation" of Tibet (that is, its invasion of Tibet in 1950 and occupation to date). According to China's appointed leader in Tibet, Zhang Qingli, the Dalai Lama is "a wolf in monk's clothes, a devil with a human face."
China's leaders decided to invite our legislators to a private party at the Chinese Consulate. Who is on China's A-List legislative team in California? Assembly members willing to kill this resolution include Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives. They come from the north and south, the coast and mountains, our cities and rural communities. Often, these same lawmakers are, in other situations, supporters of human rights. (You can see the whole list of Assembly members and how they voted here: www.tibetjustice.org/acr6-vote.)
Do we really want the Communist Party of China dictating the content of our resolutions?
It doesn't have to be this way. Last week the U.S. House of Representatives, led by California's Nancy Pelosi, passed a resolution commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Tibetan people's uprising against China's occupation on March 10th. Despite the Chinese government's attempts to quash that resolution, it passed by 422 to 1.
So what next? At this point, it's unclear. The Assembly sent ACR 6 back to the Rules Committee, where it may die a slow death. But the Assembly now has to hold public hearings on the merits of the resolution, allowing our citizens to contribute.
Let's be clear: these are our public hearings, not China's. China can't have it both ways. When citizens around the world raise their voices against China's police-state crackdowns in Tibet, against imprisonment and torture of innocent bystanders, or the crushing of freedom to practice religion in Tibet, China tells the world that we should mind our own business: Tibet is an internal matter.
So how come China's dictatorship is free to meddle in California's internal affairs?
