A FITTING PRIZE FOR PEACE
Author:
Date: Sunday, October 8, 1989
Page: A30
Section: EDITORIAL PAGE
The Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the Dalai Lama confers international
recognition, not only on the spiritual and political leader of the Tibetan
people, but also on the values and ideals that he represents.
As it did when selecting Andrei Sakharov, Lech Walesa and Bishop Desmond
Tutu, the Nobel committee honored the Dalai Lama for his devotion to the
principles and methods of nonviolence. "The Dalai Lama in his struggle for the
liberation of Tibet consistently has opposed the use of violence," said the
committee in its citation. "He has instead advocated peaceful solutions based
upon tolerance and mutual respect in order to preserve the historical and
cultural heritage of his people."
At the end of a century that has seen millions of innocent men, women and
children murdered by zealots of one totalitarian credo or another, while duped
or dishonest intellectuals approved the proposition that the ends justified
the means, it is fitting that a prize for peace be given to those rare figures
who refuse the corrupting influence of violent methods. Like Tutu, Sakharov
and Walesa -- and Martin Luther King before them -- the Dalai Lama has
sanctified his cause by accepting the discipline of peaceful means.
The Nobel Prize also recognizes that cause. The committee's allusion to
''the liberation of Tibet" represents a political judgment, an implicit, yet
unmistakable, rebuke to the Chinese communist regime that has colonized and
terrorized Tibet.
The testy response from officials of that regime, who denounce foreign
interference in the internal affairs of China, has a familiar ring. The Nobel
prizes accorded to Tutu, Walesa and Sakharov incited similar displays of
displeasure from Pretoria, Warsaw and Moscow. In each case the prize afflicted
powerful regimes, making it more difficult for them to violate the human
rights of their subjects with impunity.
In its citation of the Dalai Lama, the Nobel committee evoked a principle
that distinguishes the plight of Tibetans from that of black South Africans,
supporters of Solidarity or Soviet citizens yearning for free speech and the
rule of law. The Dalai Lama, as the committee noted, fights "to preserve the
historical and cultural heritage of his people."
Like the Kurds in Iraq, Iran and Turkey, Tibetans are not only denied their
human rights; they also are threatened with cultural extinction. The
International Commission of Jurists found in 1960 that the Chinese committed
acts of genocide "in an attempt to destroy the Tibetans as a religious group."
The toll of Tibetans who perished by executions, torture, starvation and
the exactions of prison and forced labor camps has been estimated at more than
a million. The agony of Tibet moved Alexander Solzhenitsyn to call Beijing's
reign there "more brutal and inhumane than any other communist regime in the
world." The Nobel committee has made it much harder for the regime in Beijing
to conceal its brutality against Tibet.
BERGER;10/05 NKELLY;10/10,16:03 EDALAILA
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