Afro-Asia Opposes Chinese Imperialism

...Meanwhile, the executive committee of the convention's permanent council has met to pass the resolutions on to the United Nations as indicative of the views of Asian and African peoples...

...The representatives also warned India and the world that Tibet was but an incident in a calculated "push" toward the Indian border, with the next foreseeable stage a deliberate attempt to carry Communism over the border into India...

...It was pointed out that the negotiation and formulation of a 17-point treaty between China and Tibet in 1951, although accepted by the Dalai Lama under duress, implied negotiation with a sovereign country...

...The warning, backed by evidence presented by Indian jurists who have been studying the Tibet question for over a year, and by Tibetan Khampa rebels who were able to give a first-hand account of continuing resistance, could not have been better timed...

...The Chinese, blowing hot and cold, appear to have the Indian Government deeply puzzled, despite the fact that Peking's latest note to India shows absolutely no change of attitude...

...At an unofficial convention assembled here last month, representatives of 19 free nations from Japan to the Belgian Congo, from the Philippines to Iran, told the world—and incidentally their more reticent individual governments as well—that Communist China had committed an act of naked aggression and genocide in Tibet...

...It asks that this matter receive the urgent attention of the UN's Human Rights Commission...

...It sought to prove that Chinese suzerainty over Tibet, as accepted by India and Great Britain, has little or no validity and that in fact the Chinese did not exercise it between 1885 and 1950, when India voluntarily withdrew its military mission from Lhasa and its trading posts from other Tibetan centers...

...Countries represented included: Japan, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Thailand, South Vietnam, Malaya, Pakistan, Burma, Ceylon, India, Nepal, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Kenya, the Congo and the Indian protectorate of Bhutan...

...Moreover, since the term of this bilateral Treaty was unilaterally repudiated by China, the agreement between the two countries stands revoked...

...The council will have its headquarters in New Delhi, with Narayan as its first chairman...

...And it is of some significance that this mobilization took place on the soil of a country whose official policy of neutrality, in the past, has sought to gloss over that threat...

...Nehru's government made the original mistake of not explaining to the Chinese that democracy in a democracy means something quite different from democracy in a totalitarian state...

...Indian delegates told Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru that he had handed over a small, friendly and helpless neighbor to a large, aggressive marauder on a silver platter...

...By Sharokh Sabavala AFRO-ASIA OPPOSES CHINESE IMPERIALISM Delhi meeting mobilizes opinion against Tibetan aggression NEW DELHI AFRO-ASIA HAS left the Peoples' Republic of China in no doubt as to what the two continents think of its actions in Tibet...

...The Kenyan delegates staged a walk-out because "the convention showed signs of watering down resolutions affecting our continent...

...In concrete terms, the convention succeeded in setting up a permanent council to pursue its objectives—exposure of colonialism and aggression in Asia and Africa—with two representatives of each participating country serving on it...

...For it came just before Chinese Premier Chou En-lai's visit to India last week...

...Another, fixing the status of Tibet as a sovereign nation, points to the act of aggression committed against it...

...While public opinion here has rejoiced in the conference's demonstration of solidarity, the Indian Government, if anything, appears to be embarrassed by it...

...While there appeared to be complete unanimity on Tibet, the convention was by no means united on various colonial issues in Africa and Asia...

...Fortunately for the Government, Indian public opinion, now further reinforced by the findings of the convention, has no doubts about Chinese intentions—Chou's cool reception in New Delhi made it very apparent that he is a most unwelcome guest, from whom nothing can be expected but more trouble...

...The convention was primarily the result of the work done by veteran Indian Socialist leader Jayaprakash Narayan, who consistently has held that no act of aggression should be passively accepted anywhere, and that Indian and world opinion should be further mobilized on the behalf of Tibet...

...The UN also is to be informed on the opinions expressed about the struggle for freedom in various parts of Africa and their attempted suppression by member nations...

...The existence of this note has not yet been denied officially, although there is no readily available record of it in the Indian archives...

...One of the resolutions states that in Tibet genocide was committed in all its varieties and forms, as mentioned in Article 2 of the UN convention on genocide...

...Similarly, prolonged wrangling and much heated discussion preceded a resolution condemning the continued denial of freedom to the Algerian people...

...My recent conversations with Chinese newspapermen convince me that China genuinely does not understand the difference and consequently Nehru's incapacities in this particular context are dubbed "blatant hypoc-ricies...

...They put the blame for the Chinese military expedition against Lhasa squarely on a secret note allegedly sent by New Delhi to Peking in 1950, in which Nehru unilaterally renounced India's traditional positions in Tibet without even previously informing the Dalai Lama and his administration...

...The convention was held in New Delhi, but without Nehru's approval...

...On all these questions there was a degree of discord, but, as Narayan pointed out, what was striking was the very large measure of accord among non-official, and therefore completely unfettered, representatives of so many different countries in so many different phases of political and economic development...

...The original resolution had specified France by name as a wager of war in Algeria, but this was subsequently omitted, to the resentment of some African delegates...

...Apart from taking these rather negative positions, the convention seems to have managed successfully to represent mobilized opinion among free Afro-Asian peoples against the new imperialism threatening the territorial integrity and way of life of their areas...

...The representative of South Vietnam wanted the unification of his country to be embodied in a resolution, while the Pakistani delegates drew pointed attention to the deprivation of the right of self-determination in Kashmir...

...For Peking is always prepared to disbelieve New Delhi's plea that it cannot control or restrict freedom of expression and association in India...