Much before US Senators moved bills on Tibet, India rankled China by carving out Ladakh as UT in August 2019

Mumbai: The Chinese may have been rankled with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Leh on Friday, but this is certainly not the first time that they have been annoyed. They had been irritated when Indian Parliament abrogated Article 370 and Ladakh was carved into a Union Territory on August 6, 2019, almost a year ago.

Piloting the bill to abrogate Article 370, Union Home Minister Amit Shah had then remarked that the government treated Gilgit-Baltistan and Aksai Chin as part of India. Reacting to the creation of Ladakh as a Union Territory without a legislature, China had merely murmured that the move was “unacceptable”.

If that was not enough the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) on May 6, 2020 had issued weather forecast for Ladakh. The IMD had expanded its Met sub-division of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh to include Gilgit-Baltistan in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK).

Gilgit-Baltistan region forms tri-junction of connectivity providing access from Xinjiang region (in China) to Afghanistan and Central Asia. The daily weather forecast has weather forecast for towns of Muzaffarabad, Skardu and Nilam located in Gilgit-Baltistan. In other words it was also a message to China which is building the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) in PoK.

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Recently, China once again protested to Prasar Bharati for All India Radio’s (AIR) airing Tibetan World Service program on June 18 earlier last month. It is being seen as recalibration of our policy towards Tibet which had recognised Chinese suzerainty over the region.

China invaded Tibet and annexed it in 1950-51. In the bloody repression carried out under the leadership of Chairman Mao Zedong more than 10 lakh Tibetans were either killed or forced to flee and over 6,000 monasteries were destroyed. Although India gave asylum to Dalai Lama in India, on April 29, 1954, India signed the “Agreement on Trade and Intercourse with Tibetan region”, better known as the “Panchsheel Agreement”.

As a gesture of goodwill towards China, India under the Panchsheel Agreement “relinquished all the extra-territorial rights in Tibet exercised by the British government in India under the treaty of 1904, and recognised Tibet was a region of China”.

According to previous Sino-British treaties, China could not enter into any treaty with Tibet without the consent of the British government, in good faith to secure for the Tibetans the autonomy which they had enjoyed throughout and to ensure cultural and religious freedom for them.

As per the Sino-Tibetan agreement of 1951 which is also referred to as ‘The 17 Point Agreement’, the British had made it clear once more that their (Tibetan) interest arose from its proximity to India and that interest was now vested with the Indian government.

It is much later now that United States of America has begun to turn the pressure on China by raising issues of freedom for Tibet and Hong Kong, and unseating of China at the UN and being replaced by Taiwan.

Republican Senator from Pennsylvania, Scott Perry on May 19, 2020 moved a bill titled “Free Tibet Act”, “authorizing the US President to declare the Tibet Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as a separate, independent country, and for other purposes”. He also moved three more bills on the same day – one titled the “Free Hong Kong Act”, the other recognizing Taiwan as the real China at the United Nations Organisation (UN) and the other unseating China from the World Health Organisation (WHO).

In his legislation on Hong Kong, Perry has urged the “US President to recognize the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) of the PRC as a separate independent country, and for other purposes”. The statement of policy in the legislation states “territorial claims of PRC over HKSAR as ‘invalid’ and without merit”.

Whereas, in his third legislation regarding recognizing Taiwan instead of China at the UN, Perry called upon the “US to stop all assessed and voluntary contributions to the United Nations Organisation until such time as the membership in the United Nations of the People’s Republic of China is ‘terminated’ and the Republic of China (Taiwan) is afforded full rights, privileges, and responsibilities as a Member State in the United Nations, and for other purposes.”

In order to achieve this, Perry in his legislation calls upon the US President to direct US Permanent Representative at the UN to use the voice, vote, and influence of the US at the UN to encourage member states of the UN to take actions identical or similar to action described in the legislation (that is to terminate China’s membership at the UN and replace it with Taiwan).

Senator Scott Perry has not stopped at that and has also moved a fourth legislation calling upon the termination of China’s membership at the WHO and replacing it with Taiwan’s membership. This follows US President Donald Trump stopping US contribution to the world health body accusing it of siding with China in its cover-up bid in the aftermath of the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic.