Sir, - Beijing has announced that Premier Zhu Rongji will answer any questions on human rights when he visits Dublin in a week's time. May we hope that at least one of our Ministers will ask him the following:
1. Why is the young Panchen Lama, Gendun Choekyi Nyima still a political prisoner? And why is no-one allowed to meet him to ascertain his well-being?
2. Why is Chadrel Rimpoche, instructed by Beijing to find the Panchen Lama's re-incarnation, still in prison, three months after the end of a six-year prison sentence, imposed for announcing the finding of Gendun Choekyi Nyima?
3. Why is Ngawang Choephel, a Tibetan-American traditional music researcher still in prison "for stealing state secrets", though critically ill.
4. Why was teenage Tibetan nun Ngawang Sangdrol sentenced to 21 years in prison for singing a Tibetan freedom song?
5. Why, given that torture is banned by the Chinese constitution, have over 280 Falun Gong members been tortured to death in custody over the past two years?
6. Why, given that Beijing insists the right to survive is the basic human right, are country-dwelling Tibetans and Uighyurs among the world's poorest people, while the immigrant Han Chinese in the cities of Tibet and Xinjiang are among the most heavily subsidised of all China's population.
7. Why, given that freedom of religion is enshrined in the Chinese constitution, are Tibetan Buddhists, Uighyur Muslims, Falun Gong, other "heretical" Qi Gong schools, and non-"patriotic Christians" so brutally suppressed? And why was the utterly non-political monastic settlement of Larung Gar in Sichuan demolished last month?
In the wake of the Panchen Lama debacle, Beijing announced: "Any legitimate religion invariably makes patriotism the primary requirement for believers." Premier Zhu Rongji is often portrayed as the moderate face of the Beijing regime, a reformer and economic liberaliser. However, central control is still the dominant characteristic of China's not-so-free market economy. State-owned enterprises still employ 41 per cent of China's urban workforce, use 53 per cent of its industrial fixed assets, but produce a mere 28 per cent of China's total output. And SOE's still make massive losses despite colossal state-enforced, non-performing bank loans. A Ministry of Finance investigation in 2000 found that 99 per cent of SOE's faked their accounts to produce the figures Beijing required.
With the failure of Maoist socialism, and the unpredictable times of WTO membership looming, Han nationalism is the only "ideal" left as a means to rally the Chinese people. At the time of Taiwan's March 2000 elections, Premier Zhu Rongji rattled his sabre loudly, and promised: "The Chinese people will definitely safeguard the motherland's re-unification and national dignity with their own blood and lives."
Should Ireland be supplying IT technology to a regime that will certainly use it for totalitarian ends? - Yours etc,
Anthony O'Brien, Tibet Support Group Ireland, Ailesbury Road, Dublin 4.