(TibetanReview.net, Dec17’20) – United States Representative Scott Perry (Republican – Pennsylvania) has on Dec 16 introduced a bill to authorize the country’s president to recognize Tibet as a separate, independent country and also urged President Donald Trump to accord such recognition, said the Central Tibetan Administration on its Tibet.net website Dec 17.
Calling President Trump‘s reorienting of the national focus on the Chinese communist Party and the existential threat it posed to the US one of his greatest possible accomplishments, Perry has reminded him in his letter that while the Congress had recognized Tibet as an independent country in several legislations, but not in some others, the country’s former presidents had fully stuck to the erroneous one of not supporting independence.
Calling the default US view on Tibet’s status to be therefore ambiguous, Perry has asked Trump to act in favor of recognizing its independence as a matter of historical truth.
“Tibetans residing in Tibet’s original three province – Amdo, Kham, and U-Tsang – have lived independently or with significant autonomy for hundreds of years; Tibet was a de facto independent country until the People’s Republic of China chose to illegally occupy the country in 1951,” Perry has said in his letter to President Trump.
Referring to China’s more than 70 years of “uninterrupted, illegal occupation of Tibet,” he has said the time has come for the US to take a definite stand on the issue. “The Tibetan people deserve our support for a country that is still theirs. They deserve US recognition of their independence.”
President Trump is not particularly known as a defender of human rights and has in fact counted North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and initially Chinese President Xi Jinping also as his friends. While he launched a trade war against China, he has not been outspoken about the country’s human rights record, unlike his administration’s other top officials such as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
