Burma Related News

By Sai Wansai, Bangkok

The unrest in Tibet has been thrust into the international limelight because the stakes are unusually high, both for the occupying Chinese regime and oppressed Tibetans.

This is mainly due to the timing of the forthcoming Olympic Games to be held in Beijing within a few months.

While the Chinese view the Olympics as a vehicle to upgrade the country's standing as a world power, the Tibetans see this as a rare opportunity to make their stand and air their grievances concerning their just struggle for the right to self-determination in front of an international audience.

At the heart of the problem lies the classical clash of notions concerning "territorial integrity" and the principles of "non-intervention" against the right to self-determination.

Rightly or wrongly, most influential international stakeholders seem to embrace the Chinese claim of Tibet having been part of China since time immemorial, while the Tibetans view themselves as having lived in an occupied nation since the Chinese invasion in 1950.

It is foreseeable that the Tibetan uprising will be ruthlessly crushed like the one in Burma and the seemingly normal atmosphere would soon be restored, which in turn will become accepted generally and life will go on as if nothing ever happened.

The core argument, or reason behind, this conflict would, however, remain until it is accepted that Tibet and China are two different nations and that China's treatment of Tibet as a colonial possession is unacceptable and should be appropriately addressed.

To do this, international stakeholders should consider defining colonialism in a broader sense.

Points of discussion should include, among others:

l The maintenance of former, largely European colonial, boundaries as irreversible and sacrosanct national state boundaries should be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This is an unending source of ethnic conflict affecting international stability.

l The question of geographical separateness or "The Salt Water Doctrine" between coloniser and colonised should not be the sole factor, but cultural, ethnic, linguistic and historical factors should also be taken into account in determining the "alien-ness" of the coloniser.

l Cases of one colonial regime replacing another are also contributing factors to many of the existing conflicts in the world today. A large number of oppressed and non-state nations are experiencing this type of colonialism, in which one dominant ethnic group took over the mantle of the former coloniser and monopolised state power at the expense of other ethnic groups.

Failing to address the nature of the conflict in a wider context and the refusal to accommodate the rights of self-determination of Tibetans would only postpone China's need to deal with the issue for a while. It will definitely return to haunt the Chinese rulers.