H-2347.1                  _______________________________________________

                                             HOUSE JOINT MEMORIAL 4023

                              _______________________________________________

State of Washington                              53rd Legislature                             1993 Regular Session

By Representatives Jacobsen, R. Fisher, Ogden, Brown, Jones, Pruitt, Anderson and J. Kohl

Read first time 04/23/93.  Referred to Committee on State Government.

Petitioning Congress to place Tibetan human rights conditions on China's most favored nation trade status.

          TO THE HONORABLE BILL CLINTON, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, AND TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE SENATE AND THE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, AND TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES, IN CONGRESS ASSEMBLED:

          We, your Memorialists, the Senate and House of Representatives of the State of Washington, in legislative session assembled, respectfully represent and petition as follows:

          WHEREAS, The People's Liberation Army of China invaded and overran Tibet in 1950, ending centuries of independence and threatening a distinct two thousand five hundred year old culture--which has its own religion, language, and government--with extinction; and

          WHEREAS, After forty-three years of deliberate genocide, including more than one million killed or starved to death, the Chinese now outnumber Tibetans in Tibet, owing to a deliberate policy of immigration coupled with deprivation of health care and encouragement of tobacco and alcohol abuse; and

          WHEREAS, China has now declared Tibet an "open economic zone" to encourage additional immigration of Chinese, who are displacing Tibetans from their traditional livelihoods and is now even removing Tibetans from the government of the so-called "Tibet Autonomous Region" who had been in league with the communists, in favor of Chinese cadres; and

          WHEREAS, China has a rapidly growing trade surplus of eighteen billion three hundred million dollars a year with the United States, second only to Japan, based on low- and even slave-labor production methods--a surplus being used to vastly expand its military and its coercive influence over all of Asia;

          NOW, THEREFORE, Your Memorialists respectfully pray that the Congress of the United States enact stringent human rights conditions on any continuation of China's "most favored nation" trade status, including language calling for an end of population transfer into Tibet, for an end of human rights abuses there, and for China to begin good faith negotiations with the Tibetan government in exile, headed by the fourteenth Dalai Lama, winner of the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize.

          BE IT RESOLVED, That copies of this Memorial be immediately transmitted to the Honorable Bill Clinton, President of the United States, the President of the United States Senate, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and each member of Congress from the State of Washington.

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