cy movement prisoners, like their 1979 Democracy Wall colleagues, will face many years in jail.

Yet inevitably another democracy movement will rise up from the ashes of Tiananmen Square. Asia Watch favors tough sanctions against China, including limits and conditions on MFN, in the hopes that the authorities will think twice about destroying the next democracy movement in China.

Senator CRANSTON. Thank you very much. Your testimony provides some very useful information and ammunition for the debate we will be having in the Senate on most favored nations. Ms. Bohana.

STATEMENT OF MICHELE BOHANA, DIRECTOR, INTERNATIONAL CAMPAIGN FOR TIBET

Ms. BOHANA. I want to thank you for inviting us up here, Mr. Chairman. I realize it has been a long day.

I would like to, at the outset, associate the Campaign with Holly's remarks on MFN, and I would like to address the situation in Tibet as we know it today. The one thing, though, that we do ask for is suspension. We have submitted for the record a list of conditions, but we do support suspension of MFN.

I would like to say at the outset that Tibet has been under military occupation ever since the invasion of Tibet in the 1950's. Tibet has essentially been under military occupation since the Chinese took Tibet in 1950 and 1951. It has been 18 years of martial law for the Tibetans and I think there has been an overdue attention to the lifting of martial law in Tibet. Although we warmly welcome it this is not part and parcel, a solution to the problem of Tibet.

The salient features of colonial domination exist in Tibet today with respect to the Chinese presence. They include the forcible occupation of Tibetan territory, the use of armed force to crush resistance to its rule, discrimination against Tibetans based on racial, ethnic, linguistic and cultural differences, deprivation of human rights, including the freedom of movement, the freedom of speech, the freedom of assembly, the freedom of arbitrary arrest. Colonial administration of an occupied territory, the utilization of Tibetans in largely nominal positions of government or employment, the unmistakable differences in housing and living standards between the colonizers [the Chinese] and those who are being colonized [the Tibetans]. So, we have a case that after 40 years of occupation and colonial rule-I could go on, but we of course want to save us all some time, but you can well imagine the situation as it exists.

One thing that came to mind as Chai Ling was speaking, and I heard her speak so eloquently on the House side earlier, and that is when she said you can imagine, when you yourself, Mr. Chairman, asked the question about what is going on with the underground and the freedom fighters and the people with whom she is associated, her response was that we cannot imagine what is going on when in full view of public opinion and the full world we saw what they did to people when certainly it is their own citizens, and certainly the world was watching. So, I think that is an important and germane point to keep in mind concerning Tibet.

There is no media there for the Chinese to rough up at the moment. There is no media. There are no observers. We have called repeatedly through the legislative process and under your

leadership and that of Chairman Pell, Senator Helms and other members of the committee, for fact-finding missions, for human rights observers and monitors to check on the prisons and to check on the incredible reports of torture that we receive.

As best we can, Asia Watch, International Amnesty and the Physicians for Human Rights as well as other human rights organizations try to monitor the situation in Tibet. After 40 years, however, we still find that there is a paucity of information, and it is not because the Tibetans do not want to tell their story. I think all oppressed people want their story out. The paucity of information is because China refuses to allow people and observers to go into Tibet and China to bring that information out. As you well know, they refused to be held accountable by internationally recognized human rights standards, including internationally recognized standards with respect to arms and trade agreements.

As Senator Biden pointed out earlier, we have a lot of concerns regarding the situation of population transfer in Tibet. As you may recall, when the Dalai Lama came to Washington in 1987 he stressed the fact that this population transfer, which has been a successfully waged campaign against the peoples in East Turkestan and Mongolia have started in Tibet, and it seems to us that this is the most insidious culturally genocidal policy yet.

What it tells us is there is a wave and influx, if you will, of Chinese settlers coming onto the Tibetan plateau and with that wave of Chinese settlers there is a change in the demographic makeup of Tibet, historical Tibet as we know it. With that wave you have as an offshoot racial discrimination with that effect being education. Tibetans now receive Tibetan language only as a second language. It affects housing, where you have Tibetan ghettos and racially segregated areas between the Chinese settlers and the Tibetan inhabitants.

We find also now, very recently, that up to 2 percent of Lhasa is now Tibetan. The rest is all Chinese, and the Chinese have been bulldozing parts of historic Lhasa that reminds us of things that their ally, Nicolai Ceausescu, did to the terror and fear of the Romanian people. So, we have some very grave questions and very grave problems that should be addressed.

I take a lot of exception-of course, I would have to when I hear Secretary Solomon waiver on the issue about the Dalai Lama when Senator Helms raised that point. I should note that in 1960 under a previous administration the then Secretary of State, Christian Herter, said that the American people have traditionally stood for the principle of self-determination, and he was discussing the question of Tibet as it was raised in the U.N. General Assembly. He further said that it is the belief of the U.S. Government that this principle should apply to the people of Tibet and that they should have the determining voice in their own political destiny.

I would like to add that when martial law is lifted in Tibet and over 300,000 troops remain we still have military occupation. What Holly mentioned as far as the arrests, that it is very difficult to maintain lists and so forth, we concur. We hear terrible tales of torture, disappearaces, and terrible tales of house-to-house arrests. What is germane to the MFN issue as far as the right to freely emigrate, Tibetans have no such right. I heard Chai Ling earlier on

the House side mention that a passport is a luxury in China and it is certainly not a right to obtain in China, so we can well imagine what that is like in Tibet. You are either kept in Tibet in bondage or you flee for your life through some of the most common routes; namely, Western Tibet and Nepal. It is our understanding that out of the maybe close to 40,000 Chinese students who are presently here, I would like to inform you that there are only two Tibetan students that had-that came through the normal legitimate channels and came into the United States holding Chinese passports, although they are ethnically Tibetan.

Solzhenitsyn has stated back in 1982 that Tibet is the most brutal and inhuman Communist regime that exists on the Earth today. So all in all, I do not want to really belabor so much of this since it is a late day, but I would also like to address that a lot of the atrocities that go on in Tibet, these are not done by local authorities. They are acts of considered decisions, acts of policy made by the central authorities in Beijing, and all of these decisions are made to stifle criticism of the Chinese presence and the Chinese Government in Tibet.

We find also that there is religious persecution that is sweeping Tibet that is unlike anything since the cultural revolution. We have incidences of monks and nuns, nuns who have reported being sexually abused with electric cattle prods. We know these electric cattle prods exist. They use them frequently on the students-the black African students who are studying in Nanjing Universityand we also know, of course, they are using them against the Chinese students and demonstrators in who gathered in Tiananmen

square.

We find that those who are most peaceably demonstrating, those monks and nuns who show any kind of allegiance to the Dalai Lama-they have been for 40 years nonviolent-those are the very same people that are being tortured mercilessly.

Beside that, I would like to also mention that the influx of this population transfer seems to be motivated at reducing Tibetans to a minority in their own country. We are very concerned about this, and this is something that is difficult to visualize. We have become very familiar with torture, and we have become very familiar, tragically, with human rights abuses, but we cannot familiarize and visualize ourselves what it is like to be under foreign subjugation, as you yourself mentioned, and have this large wave of Chinese coming onto your own homeland and making you a minority in your own homeland.

I would like to just submit everything else for the record. I just wanted to bring a few of these points to your attention.

I would like to also at this time say thank you to this committee, because if it had not been for the work of this committee, Voice of America Tibetan language broadcasts and 15 Fulbright scholarships, for Tibetans living in exile, may have never seen the light of day, and we are hoping that the Voice of America broadcasts will go forward in much the same manner that it went forward in China.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement and addenda of Ms. Bohana follow:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF MICHELE BOHANA

Good afternoon. My name is Michele Bohana. I am Director of the International Campaign for Tibet, a Washington-based human rights organization.

I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to testify today. I would also like to thank the members of the committee for supporting the Tibetan cause and trying, through the legislative process and hearings, to give some sort of redress to the Tibetan people who have suffered under Chinese occupied rule for 40 years. In particular, the campaign wishes to thank Chairman Pell, Senators Helms and the other Senators of the committee for their assistance in helping to authorize Tibetanlanguage Voice of America broadcasts as well as 15 Fulbright scholarships for Tibetan refugees residing in India and Nepal. It cannot be overestimated how valuable a contribution this is for those Tibetans living in Tibet and in exile.

I would like to turn your attention to the reason I sit before you today. As you know in 1950 and 1951, at the outset of the Korean war and while America's interest in China lay elsewhere, the Chinese People's Liberation Army marched into Tibet. Tibet has, essentially, been under military occupation ever since. It can be said that for the Tibetan people it has been decades-not 18 months-under martial law and colonial rule.

The salient features of colonial domination exist with respect to China's presence in Tibet: forcible occupation of Tibetan territory; the use of armed force to crush resistance to its rule; discrimination against Tibetans based on racial, ethnic, linguistic and cultural differences; deprivation of human rights including freedom of movement, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom from arbitrary arrest, due process, and freedom of religion; exploitation of the natural resources of Tibet; colonial administration of the occupied territory, utilizing Tibetans in largely nominal positions; and unmistakable differences in living standards between the colonizers (the Chinese) and the colonized (the Tibetans). The large scale population transfer of Chinese into Tibet, a policy by which China hopes to reduce Tibetans into an insignificant minority in their own country, is colonialism at its worst form.

In addition to the aforementioned human and civil rights, I would stress the political right to participate in one's own government. This is the freedom Tibetans want more than any other. It is the same freedom that has dramatically altered today's geopolitical world. The same freedom that the countries and peoples of Eastern Europe, Southern Africa, the Baltic States and even the Soviet Union's first colony, Mongolia, yearns for. And it is this freedom that is the stumbling block for the administration.

Our State Department has, in the past, recognized Tibetans' right to self-determination. On February 20, 1960, the U.S. Secretary of State, Christian Herter said: "While it has been the historical position of the United States to consider Tibet an autonomous country under suzerainty of China, the American people have also traditionally stood for the principle of self-determination. It is the belief of the U.S. Government that this principle should apply to the people of Tibet and that they should have the determining voice in their own political destiny." Later that year in December 1960, at the U.N. General Assembly, U.S. Delegate Mr. Plimpton confirmed: "The U.S. Government does not accept the contention that once a people are held in bondage in the Communist colonist empire they lose all further rights to self-determination. The United States believes that our objectives must include the restoration of human rights of the Tibetan people and their national right to selfdetermination." That was the administration's policy in 1960.

Now, three decades later, I find it baffling that the foundations of this Nation, the foundation from which this country draws its strength and legitimacy as leader of the free world can be overshadowed by the sensibilities of a ruthless government. In October 1982, Alexander Solzhenitsyn described the Communist Chinese regime in Tibet as "more brutal and inhuman than any other Communist regime in the world."

Why does the administration believe that the lifting of martial law in Lhasa is a responsive move toward U.S. concern for human rights? Lifting martial law while over 300,000 troops remain stationed in Tibet doesn't stop arrests and torture.

On May 23, the day before President Bush waived most favored nation for the PRC, granting China preferential trade status, my office received word that two Tibetans were sentenced to death and executed in Lhasa, on May 17, for "organizing a prison escape scheme in a planned way." The news of the executions was given on Lhasa TV on Friday, May 18, according to the Monitoring Service of the BBC. The sentences, according to Amnesty International, were reportedly announced at a sentencing rally held by the Lhasa Intermediate People's Court within the prison compound, apparently in the presence of other prisoners. At the same time, Dhundup

Tsering was sentenced to death with a 2-year stay of execution. A fourth prisoner, Tashi, was sentenced to 9 years' imprisonment and a further 3 years deprivation of his political rights.

The Chinese authorities choose to execute these two Tibetan immediately after sentencing and while the U.S. Congress, the administration, and human rights organizations were debating the whole MFN question.

The ending of martial law in Lhasa means that soldiers on the streets will be replaced by armed police known in Chinese as the Wu Jing, a paramilitary force feared for their lack of discipline and restraint. Though martial law was lifted on May 1, many of the provisions denoted in the six martial law decrees remain in effect. These include the issuing of identity cards and restrictions on access to the city for Tibetans from other parts of the country.

I would be remiss if I did not, at this time, refer to and thank Asia Watch for their recent publication entitled: "Merciless Repression: Human Rights Abuses in Tibet." As ever, Asia Watch categorically summarized the growing human rights violations existing in Tibet today. Undoubtedly, Holly Burkhalter, Director of Human Rights Watch will update you on the contents of this report.

Two weeks before martial law was lifted, in a clear attempt to avoid unrest, the authorities expelled a number of politically active monks from the major monasteries around Lhasa. The Tibet Information Network, a London-based independent monitoring organization, reported that eyewitness accounts stated that on April 16, 37 monks from Drepung Monastery and 18 monks from Ganden Monastery were expelled from their monasteries and order to return to their home villages.

A number of other events took place that have not received attention:

On April 28 police paraded 43 "criminals" in the main street of Lhasa and promised "stern actions * * if anyone claimed ignorance."

On April 30 a six-point decree announced that the police would “resolutely crackdown on activities that oppose the socialist system." Later that night a senior official announced on television that the organizations of the people must "deal with the enemies of the people with the iron fist of the people's democratic dicta

*

On May 7 the deputy secretary of the government announced that all foreign visitors would have to apply in advance to the Lhasa government for permission to enter."

On May 10 the head of China's Armed Police Force announced that his troops in Tibet would be issued with "the finest riot control equipment."

On May 19 100 soldiers of the PLA were sent to do unspecified "repairs" to the Potala Palace, furthering longstanding Tibetan fears that unknown damage is being done to their most famous building.

On May 20 Xinhua announced that another 1,500 Tibetan schoolchildren will be sent to spend their entire secondary school careers in China, hundreds of miles from family and home.

On May 23 a new 25-clause law was passed in Lhasa prohibiting "any religious or other activities that will endanger the state's unification or destroy * social stability.'

These events are not acts of individual officials or rushed responses to a crisis situation. It is important to emphasize that they are all acts of policy, the considered decisions of the Central Chinese authorities. The unifying factor of all is the desire to stifle criticism of the Chinese Government and of the Chinese presence in Tibet. Tibetan Buddhism is the cornerstone of Tibet's unique cultural heritage. Whatever slight improvements concerning religious freedom in Tibet, since the dark days of the Cultural Revolution, are marred when viewed in the context of Chinese motive-to bring in hard currency in the form of tourist dollars-and the treatment generally reserved for monks and nuns who display allegiance to His Holiness the Dalai Lama and/or affiliation with Tibet's independent cause.

There is a new wave of religious persecution sweeping Tibet today, the likes of which has not been seen since the Cultural Revolution when the Chinese tried to literally wipe out all vestiges of Tibetan Buddhism. It is the monks and nuns, who fully embody the Dalai Lama's peaceful, nonviolent approach, who are bearing much of the brunt of the current repression.

Two Buddhist nuns who just escaped to India tell of unimaginable tortures inflicted upon them. One reported: "Dogs were set on us while we were naked. Lit cigarette butts were stubbed in our faces, knitting needles jabbed in our mouths." From there her testimony described even more sadistic and horrible tortures including sexual abuse. Many nuns have testified that they were violated with electric cattle prods. These accounts are consistent with ones documented in recent reports by Amnesty International, Asia Watch, and Physicians for Human Rights.