Speech by General Secretary Marino Busdachin

First of all, I would like to say that it is an honour and a privilege to be in a panel with such important and committed human rights defenders; Mrs. Rebiya Kadeer, Ms. Tsering Jampa and the Venerable Lobsang Dorjee.

Fifteen years ago, Uyghurs and Tibetans were among the founders of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO), and since then, their inspiration and efforts has markedly progressed the work of UNPO. I would be delighted to elaborate more about UNPO and the work of the organisation. However, that is not the purpose of my participation here tonight.

I will try to do my best to give you a picture, a sketch of the situation. Time limitation; however, will not consent an extensive and detailed introduction. - So, let me get straight to the point.

Within the People’s Republic of China 56 ethnic groups have been identified and recognized. The populations of these ethnic groups differ greatly.

In addition to the Han ethnic group, which constitutes the largest part of the Chinese population, there are 55 other ethnic groups, relatively small and customarily referred to as “ethnic minorities”.

According to a census conducted in the year 2000, these 55 ethnic minority groups total 104.5 million and account for more than 8 percent of the entire population of China. Minority areas occupy over 60% of the country’s total landmass, primarily along international borders, and are often located in resource-rich regions.

Around 40, of the 55 groups, have ethnic counterparts abroad, and this fact makes the assurance of their loyalty a strategic concern to the Chinese government.

The Constitution and the 1984 Regional Ethnic Autonomy Law guarantees numerous rights to groups identified as minorities, including self-government within designated autonomous areas; proportional representation in the government; freedom to develop own language, religion, and culture; and power to adjust central directives to local conditions.

The Laws also guarantee minorities; greater control over local economic development, than what is permitted in non-autonomous areas; the right to manage and protect local natural resources; and the right to organize local public security forces.

It is crucial to note that the implementation of the Regional Ethnic Autonomy Law has varied greatly across China.

The Chinese government systematically denies some minorities their legal rights and carries out arbitrary arrests of their members for exercising legally protected freedoms.

The government has particularly failed to uphold the legal rights of minorities living in the Tibetan Autonomous Region, the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous region.

Spoken and written languages

By the end of the year 2003, 22 ethnic minorities in China used 28 written languages. These written, as well as spoken languages are widely used in the fields of law and justice, administration, education, political and social life, and other areas. If more than one language can be used for such official duties, it is the language of the ethnic group exercising regional autonomy that is to be used primarily.

Yet, instead of some improvement the situation seems far from satisfactory.

China’s constitution guarantees protection of “normal religious activity”. Despite this guarantee, the state’s requirement that religion be congruent with patriotism has led to widespread repression of religion.

In Tibetan and Uighur areas, where separatists - or rather - peoples who try to exercise their rights to self-determination; and where separatist sentiment often is interwoven with religious conviction, state repression of religion is particularly harsh. Chinese authorities do not clearly distinguish between the peaceful expression of separatist sentiment and terrorism, creating additional pressure on religious practices that do not embrace Chinese nationalism.

Religious freedoms in China are by far denied. Many major human rights violations are continuously reported to the UN Commission for Human Rights in Geneva.

50 Million Protestant Christians, 12 million Roman Catholics, 20 million Muslims, and the entire Tibetan Buddhist peoples, are de facto denied the right to exercise their fundamental human rights, to practice in freedom their religion.

The current Chinese government and the Chinese Communist political system has less tolerance for autonomous social or political groups compared to any other point in time in Chinese history. A history not noted for any such tolerance.

Despite the policy on autonomy, history reveals that China in its relations with its frontier minorities pursued assimilation, while previous regimes had assimilationist policies but where unable to achieve their goals, thus allowing autonomy in such places as Tibet where Chinese authority did not fully extend.

China’s recent policies in regard to all its separatist issues, in Tibet, East Turkestan, Hong Kong and Taiwan, are consistently hard line. Rather than regarding this as a temporary situation, due to perhaps factional infighting within the CCP, it is probably more accurate that autonomy itself can only be a temporary condition within a centralized, unitary, nationalistic Chinese state.

China, today, greatly feared that self-determination could become a new norm in international relations. China feared that the doctrine of “humanitarian interventionism” was supplanting the doctrine of state sovereignty.

Since 9/11, the international war against terrorism has firmly re-established state sovereignty as the predominant principle in international relations. China has exploited the war against terrorism to justify its repression in East Turkestan- Xinjiang, and in order to soften criticism and protest of the International Community for its policies in Tibet and Taiwan.

Despite some small scale progress on the implementation of the rights of minorities, the Chinese Government failed to achieve a minimal standard of minorities protection in the most important and crucial areas of China.

Are changes going for better or worse? It depends on whether you like to see the glass half empty or half full. My opinion is that the glass is still fully empty.