On the 65th Tibetan National Uprising Day, it is vital to remember the crimes that took place and are still taking place in Tibet at the hands of the Chinese communist regime. The international community must be mindful of the violence that the Chinese Communist Party represents historically. When the Red Army’s repression of 10th March 1959 crashed any residual autonomy of Tibet and the subsequent systematic eradication of religious, cultural, political identity of Tibet begun, the UN Convention for the Prevention of Genocide had already been created. The United Nations were existing for years. Customary law on crimes against humanity had already been enforced for years. The legal principles of the Nuremberg Tribunal were being applied for over a decade. International law continued to develop through the International Criminal Court and national jurisdictions signing up or ratifying the ICC statute, the rules-based order and the universality of such legal principles. Yet none of the above seems to apply to communist China. As Lenin said, “the capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them”. Indeed, as all of the speakers at the conference of 6 March noted, we seem not to have learned the lesson and we continue to depend on Chinese solar panels, Chinese electric batteries, Chinese electric cars, and by the generous subsidies that the Chinese Communist Party distributes to the academic sector through the Confucius Institutes and scientific partnerships lacking any guarantee of reciprocity, respect for intellectual property and our National Security.
Giulio Terzi