Imprimir
Israelis have good reason to be suspicious when Yasser Arafat calls for U.N. intervention to «protect» his people from Israel. The Palestinian leader, despite his violent career, has always enjoyed preferential treatment at the world body, even as the U.N. consistently shows antipathy toward Israel. But this isn’t just a preference for the «freedom fighter» over the «occupier.» The moral absurdity can be truly appreciated by comparing the U.N.’s coddling of Arafat with its treatment of the Dalai Lama, rightly considered an icon ofpeaceful resistance to occupation.
The contrast between the two leaders could not be greater. The Dalai Lama was born to a poor farming family in Tibet, was exiled to India after the Chinese invasion, and with scant resources conducted peaceful resistance to China’s occupation ofhis land. Arafat, as his biographers have noted, was born to a prosperous family in Cairo, was never made a refugee and, enjoying the generous assistance of an entire regional bloc, launched an international campaign of violence to «free his land.» Yet the two have one thing in common: both have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. By awarding Arafat the prize, the committee sent a message to the Tibetan people: Like the PLO, they could have hijacked airplanes, bombed embassies or committed other brutal acts of terror to achieve the same level of international recognition and legitimacy. But it is within the halls of the U.N. that the disparity is clearest between the ways the world has treated these two leaders. In 1959, Chinese troops crushed a Tibetan uprising, killing over 87,000 in Central Tibet alone and transforming 80,000 Tibetans into refugees in India. Seeking to suppress the Tibetan culture, China transferred many of its own nationals to Tibet, allowing them to exercise control over political, cultural, religious and economic life. Thousands of monasteries, temples and historic structures were looted and razed while the U.N. remained silent.
The U.N. never explicitly condemned China’s occupation of Tibet. While the General Assembly adopted three resolutions on the Tibet issue (in 1959, 1961 and 1965), none contained the words «invasion» or «occupation.» China was not even mentioned by name. Nor was the Tibetan question ever discussed by a U.N. body between 1965 and 1992. The assembly never adopted a resolution validating a Tibetan «right of return,» nor did it create a refugee agency to deal exclusively with the Tibetan exiles.
Compare this silence with the dozens of resolutions the U.N. adopted on the «Palestinian question» and with the establishment of UNRWA to deal exclusively with the Palestinian refugee problem. Moreover, when the U.N. decided to apply the 4th Geneva Convention — for the first time since its establishment — it did so not to very real and blatant Chinese human rights violations, but rather to those which Israel supposedly committed during its occupation of «Palestinian territories.» And the Dalai Lama can keep dreaming that someday the U.N. will establish a Committee for the Inalienable Rights of the Tibetan People.
No «International Day of Solidarity with the Tibetan People» has ever been observed under the auspices of the U.N., contrary to that which is almost religiously commemorated for the Palestinians since 1977. The U.N. has neither created special committees to publicize information about the Tibetan cause nor given the Tibetan people permission to organize exhibits on U.N. premises. This, while the Palestinian people have been able to count on the assistance of three units within the United Nations, enjoying a several-million-dollar budget set aside for spreading essentially anti-Israel propaganda.
Unlike Arafat, the Dalai Lama has never enjoyed the rare privilege of taking part in the commemorative picture of world leaders at the U.N., and contrary to the PLO, the Tibetan Government-in-Exile has never been inscribed in the «Blue Book» of permanent missions to the august body; it has not even been granted «observer status.» The Dalai Lama has never been invited to speak before the General Assembly or any special agency or U.N. institution, save a one-time lecture before UNESCO in Paris in 1998. The Tibetan leader’s absence is even more striking when compared to Arafat’s frequent appearances at U.N. headquarters in New York, not to mention the instances in which the entire General Assembly packed its bags and temporarily moved to Geneva just to hear what the Palestinian leader had to say when he was denied entry to the United States (the consequence of a U.S. law forbidding known terrorists to cross its borders).
It is thus hardly surprising that the Dalai Lama was also conspicuously absent from the recent U.N. Millenniun World Peace Summit and had no option but to join the event «in spirit» from India. Arafat was a welcome invitee at the Millennium gathering; he must have listened with satisfaction to the chorus of Arab leaders ignoring the poverty of their own people to focus on his cause.
The sorry history of the U.N.-PLO-lsrael triangle only highlights the unfair treatment the body has also accorded to a peaceable Tibetan monk. Indeed, the U.N.’s absurdly discriminatory practices sadly confirm the prescience of writer Paul Johnson, who back in 1975 described the world organization as «rapidly be coming one of the most corrupt and corrupting creations in the whole history of human institutions.»
Julian Schvindlerman is a freelance journalist living in Jerusalem.