kagablog

nsa gallery, durban 2002

ian kerkhof, durban, 1982 (photo harry lock)

The whirling dervishes: What if word is wrong?
 
 
I will once have a dream. In this dream I am a child sitting opposite God.
We are having a conversation. At least, he’s trying. In this dream we are sitting on grass, it’s a natural environment, but somewhat slanted toward the idea of garden. We are seated in nature but there’s something deliberate about it, neat, an accent of flowers, a polite representation of weeds here and there. God has been speaking since before I arrived, addressing me. He has been speaking for a long time, even for God. I haven’t really made eye-contact but his image is clear – impeccably flowing white beard, neat white robe, relaxed posture, calm glint in blue eyes. He has been speaking forever in his calmity. I am absorbed in the adventure of a lone ant traipsing the green blades, willing an epic of insectile threats into its journey. Knowing its survival. I look up at God. I say: “I am growing”.
The silence is omniscient, volatile. I cut to
 
The thing with Art is, its thing, is the deliberate, subjective distortion of grammar. All Art is critical. Is revolt, hormonal, is the mad energy tragic epiphany-of-self.
 
Forced into context the Artist has none to express self with but the   strategic corrupting of medium-of-context. The Artist can never communicate self (its only goal), can but suggest its pattern in negative-space: the Artist communicates self in the suggestion of shadows – in the spaces afforded by the toppling of structures.
 
 
Chapter one: Word beyond Grammar.
 
 
The suggestion that a word ‘in-itself’ can be wrong, its consequentiality riddled by some secret disease, is very troubling.
Accusing anything fundamental to, or directly representative of language, of falsehood or deceit is tantamount to questioning the integrity, the fundamental health, of the human psychology.
 
This is no small charge.
 
Over the course of the last 150 yrs intellectual developments have honed in on the probla of Objectivity. Have increasingly, and from a disparity of disciplines flexing from arts to sciences, revealed its subtle, cancerous malice.
Born innocently, in the genius of Socrates, Objectivity, the Profound Error, has cast sinister the entire evolution of Western man.
 
In essence Objectivity is the philosophy of anti-life, the static.
Its model-language, that perfect tongue mathematics, is nothing other than a vocabulary of tautology, with its grammar of mirrors. All of mathematics, and the very premise of Objectivity, rests on the desperate legend of ‘1′.
But ‘1′ does not exist outside of mind, even there its extinction is veiled only by desperation. In the natural world there is only presence and tension (:the relationness of presence): pattern is defined in its perpetual interrelating with all. Even in the exactitude of technology any physical ‘unit’ is subject to the natural flux energy which results in the shifting of its atomic structure a la’ deterioration and appropriation of externa.
But these are examples presented in the view of Objectivity – within the frame of categorical consequentiality.
 
No pattern exists outside of perception, outside of the valuating energy of ego (that original, that ‘I’ which ‘1′ self-confoundingly attempted to represent):
What this means is that the scope and meaning of any given pattern exists only within, and is determined by, perception, which inevitably involves the bias of subject/ego. The self is organic, at once shifting and self-centred, and so adapts consequentiality to its own shifting self-bias.
Meaning, the shape of pattern, inevitably communicates the health of ‘I’, the nature of its interrelating with the all.
 
If language, through its ethics-of-conduct (grammar), and anatomy (words), is a formal representation (and it is.) of man’s valuation of self and environments, it should in the very least be suggestive of the essence of man: organic and highly subjective. Which it isn’t, not in its formality.
 
But then, as we know, ‘language’ isn’t language: ‘language’ is the Objective’s take on language. Language is most resonant in the expanse spaciae surrounding what neat and conscientious people refer to as ‘language’. The arch of her suppleness before the exlamation – that is language! The contours of her scent..; and beyond, before, withinwardout such obvious glints of linguistic – the incontingent smell of some forgotten fruit accompanying the mouthful of pasta; the dismembering intimacy with anatomical Self experienced when investigating the future bruise; the blind orgasm of listening to a composition of genius for the first time, its violent dimensions absorbed into future recollections and revisitations; the exaggerate extent of shape in every galaxy (:moment) of childhood; the blaring alienation of reciting the word ‘cat’ out of language – into specific and clipped meaningless of anterior-tongue-fore-palatial motion; any given breath, any taken breath
 
Is language.
 
Reciprocity – the sole argument for democratic language, formal, safe, mute, perfect road-worthy language – has never wanted to imply, as it formally does, symmetry. Essence is not exact, as the Objective wants:
Communication (which is language [Reality is language but we’ll leave that for not-quite-yet]), in specie-specific sense, is the interrelation of subjective experience – we communicate to expand finite self.
Taking essence (communion) for granted, language exists for the extension of given-self’s experience through communion with other self-experience.
 
‘Word’, in its contrivance of being itself and no more know less, is wrong.
Words are moments-for-launch. Approach meaning, validity, only in contexts that nudge them from their official meaning – through syntactic affection or the intimate idiosyncratic of code growing between intimates.
 
The question of point again.
What is my point?
We have not touched, not directly, on the issue of sex.
It all comes down to sex really, everything. Holy tension.
 
To summarise:
 
*Western man has betrayed the gift word, has betrayed its future/life:
  Language.
 
*Western man is ripe for friendly inquisition, aka conversation with Ontos.
 
*The self-deceit (that fundamental blasphemy:), Western ideology, is not a      
  question of gender so much as of un-gender:
  In as much as the feminine pattern has been silenced, the masculine pattern
  has been (neatly, conscientiously) super-castrated. Castration should only     
  be effected by female – exemplify hatred with its complex heart
  (:its speak of love betrayed..).
  It is right (in its vast bount colour of Wrong!) that man has castrated man:
  a vulgrast symptom of disease.
 
:::::::
 
 
There is much that needs to be said.
 
Much important perhaps that all which is ’said’ should necessarily be sensual.. sense-ous –
 
There is none but physicality.
The most profoundly abstract idea is sensual.
Embrace the repressed sensual of abstract abstraction
:
 
sensation.
 
[this take two of take one: the above and its predecessor are aimed at conversation. Structured in linear - that is, as casual munication, minus polish and pro quiver intent -   this awkward chronology-of-word exists only to be read in passing and commented/no-commented upon..
in sly it exists to explode silence/style into gwvuavering schpottles of raging comment/vicious dismissal]
 
there is only
 
Chapter two:
 
“The will to a system is a lack of integrity ”
or:
 
why Nietzsche knew what we can’t phonetisize..
 
****************
 
love is the sincerity of anticipation
 
much ciao
 
Mick

rotterdam, september 1984

london july 1982, the venue.
this concert by the birthday party changed my life.
it would become the standard by which i measured live music.
cave and bassist tracey pew were stoned immaculate, absolutely out there.

gustav geldenhuys, matthew oats and eric miyeni in nice to meet you, please don’t rape me! (south africa, 1994)
(photo derek bernstein)

A young South African film maker returns to his fatherland for the VPRO in order to make a film during the elections. Wat can be expected of him other than that he casts his vote? He will visit his family, test the opinions of old friends, visit an election meeting and film the queues in front of voting stations. Something of the sort.

One measly row of waiting voters, two posters with De Klerk and Mandela (over which somebody urinates): that is about all in CONFESSIONS OF A YEOVILLE RAPIST (nice to meet you, please don’t rape me!) by Ian Kerkhof that directly refers to the day of the historic elections. Kerkhof filmed in Yeoville, the suburb of Johannesburg in which he was born. Even filmed at his old school. But not to surprise the editorial board of the VPRO with a pleasant report.

Producer Bram van Splunteren had to submit the film to a careful scrutiny to see whether Kerkhof’s tough dialogues were permissable for broadcast. Amongst others he stumbled on a monologue with an anti-semitic tone but decided to broadcast the film uncensored because the texts were acceptable within the context of the feature film that Kerkhof had chosen to make about his country of birth.

Kerkhof does not take part in the folk lore of rapportage about South Africa, that is one of the few things that makes CONFESSIONS OF A YEOVILLE RAPIST clear. Kerkhof’s film will make many eyebrows wrinkle. Those who are familiar with Kerkhof’s work will know his dark fascination for sex, violence and death. He uses rape as a metaphor for what has happened to the South African people during the period of apartheid. Three actors, two white and one black, play an “unholy trinity”, a terrifying trio who collectively represent the Yeoville rapist, but then not as realistic characters, rather as demonic archetypes.

Yeoville used to be considered a neighbourhood where the integration of black and white was successful. Until white women were raped by a black man. An innocent suspect, son of a prominent ANC member, is currently filing libel suits against newspapers who were greedy for a racist rape coup. “Finally here was proof that all black men want to rape white women” analyses Kerkhof. The suspect’s innocence was proved but the damage had been done. The trust and calm was gone from the neighbourhood.

“South Africa is racist and anti-semitic, only the liberals have an attitude of ‘not us!’” The South African variation of political correctness, positive intervention, which forbids negative images of people is according to Kerkhof “the new Stalinism”. “Everbody thinks that that now there is democracy in South Africa everything is ok. But a cross on a ballot paper doesn’t change anything.”

Experts that Kerkhof spoke to when researching the film maintained that the extreme levels of violence in the country were considered normal by many people, as was sexual violence. Every 83 seconds a woman is raped in South Africa. The predictions for the future are that that number would rise. “Meetings, ordinary day to day contacts are always coloured by the threat of violence. An ordinary exchange of ideas is almost impossible. All men are incredibly busy being men. Misogyny is a way of life, and that mentality isn’t changing. That goes for white racism and black anti-semitism too. I don’t believe that everybody is suddenly going to change. South Africans are in a psychotic crisis. South Africa has the best torturers and rapist in the world.”

In CONFESSIONS OF A YEOVILLE RAPIST Kerkhof turns the black and white stereotypes around, for example by getting the black actor to say “I’m Barend Strijdom” - the white murderer of 19 black people who received amnesty as a “political prisoner”. An actor with a mask of Verwoerd - architect of apartheid - rapes a showroom dummy. The three naked, chained actors sing “Everybody must get raped!”. A litany of names and events out of South African history are poured forth in the stream of hate filled agressive dialogues. Kerkhof, who claims to have looked at his fatherland with “a vagina’s eye view”, didn’t bother to vote.

HUIB STAM
VOLKSKRANT 1/6/94

wiro felix and aryan kaganof, johannesburg, 2003

Act 2

VAMPIRES OF THE WILL
(first night out)

The springtime of my life was by far
the happiest of any century.
As I started generating glimpses of my potentials –
all of a frightning beauty,
fragments of a structure assembled
like soldiers assemble for a parade.
And in the distance sounded
a quiet and sleepy prophecy of a long hot day.

As the sun rose,
waking the brain,
warming the skin,
caressing the hair,
and walking through a garden of dreams
I grew into adolecense,
faint and melancholy music filled the air –
like the smell of the wind,
caressing all but touching none.

A free spirit not yet summoned by its destiny,
and thus full of lust,
full of convidence, life and timelessness.
Powerfull in the now.
A meaningless force aroused by:

- skins untouched,
- lips wet and young,
- legs eager to spread,
- nipples longing to stiffen,
- limbs ready to shiver,

all for the cause of celebrating,

and then,
all of a sudden,
sadness enters the room.

ANIMALS & ANGELS

The angels were with us.
Silent as a shadow,
with listening eyes,
whispering ears,
and their feet just…
Ah!… just a little bit above the ground.

And the animals were with us.
Writing their profound warnings
in a language mistaken for instinct
and thus neglected.

The animals -
some enslaved and domesticated,
many living on other planets
on this planet,
microscopic lightyears away,
planets never to be concured,
species never to be enslaved,

The animals tried to warn us,
directing the clouds into signals,
winds into and audiable alarm
and shaking the earth with their little feet.

But.
We were brain.
Yes.
That is correct.
We were brain.
The walking brain.
Just as they were the walking food,
our cuddly sentiment,
our friends from a long gone past.
The animals were with us.
Trying to adopt their insticts to the walking brain,
as we introduced them step by step
to the mysteries of time.

INVINCIBLE

How could we loose with such allies?
How could we win from such foes?

And therefore,
the outcome of those battles already fixed
and uninviting,
we hit upon ourselves.
Hard.
Hard upon ourselves,
and became victorious.
Victorious in our love,
celebrating the New rizing up
from under the destructed past.

Sucking all the life out of
our surroundings,
we became vampires of the will.

And on top of histories’ largest wasteland,
we built our Utopias,
untill, ultimately,
Utopia itsself was wasted.
Wasted by itsself, for no society generates
so much shit,
as the good clean maiden of Utopia.

Tempted we were,
to confuse the barren gangraped land
with the pristine valleys
of a just only half-awoken paradise.
Tempted we were,
and rewarded for this temptation.
For such are the rules and regulations of Utopia.

Painting it in watercolors,
and molesting it with steel.
On ourselves now - on our first night out.
Fist Night Out.

Hormones translated into babble,
leaving the brain,
entering the mouth,
leaving the mouth and entering the brain.
Turning smalltalk into slogans, hormones do.
And slogans into ideals.
Ideals into meaning.
Meaning into action.
Action into… well… sex in the first place.

THE GOOD CLEAN MAIDEN OF UTOPIA

So, there SHE was.
Dressed in skintight elegance.
The attitude of a girl,
the routine of a whore.
And we all fucked her.
This good clean maiden of Utopia,
we fucked her all.
In Vienna, St. Peterburg and Berlin.
Couldn’t take our eyes of of her.
At night on the Sjanghai docklands,
In good old stubborn Madrid, in London
and the remote and transparent nothingness
of the Africa’s and Asia’s.
Her youth and beauty being irresistable,
we ALL fucked her.
“I’ve had them all,” Bettina a nineteen year old
Viennese protitute claimed.
“Der Adolf, und der Jozef Stalin und der Ivan Oeljitsch.”
Spreading her legs and with that gesture, spreading the syphyllus that could be traced back to the testicals
of a certain German Philosopher,
like a good girl.
Spreading her legs.

ELDORADO

And so, the first day had passed,
and the second day had passed
and we celebrated the birth of our own history.

Still a very comprehendable history
compared with the overwhelming Istobe
of time to come
and time to be conquered.
This Istobe,
posing in a mirror of expectations,
as an El Dorado of muscle and thought.

But, sleep now.
Sleep, and dream of histories to come.

LEBO MATHOSA

Lebo Mathosa is one of the hottest female singers in South Africa. Her professional dance act, sexy look and unique sound, which is a fusion of R&B, African music, dance and funk, has set new standards in the local music industry.
Lebo shot to fame in 1994 as front vocalist and dancer for the multi-Platinum success story, Boom Shaka. In 2000 she launched her solo career with her debut single Intro, a track that features on her debut solo album Dream. Four weeks after the launch of Dream, the album went Gold and in 2001 Lebo won Best Dance Album for Dream, Best Dance Single for Intro and Best Female Vocalist at the coveted South African Music Awards.
In 2001 Lebo performed at the South African edition of the North Sea Jazz Festival in Cape Town, the Celebrate South Africa concert in London’s Trafalgar Square, on tour in Malaysia and Singapore and for the Malaysian queen. Back home she performed to over 16 000 people at Nelson Mandela’s 85th birthday bash, to thousands of fans on Youth Day and Heritage Day. In 2002 Lebo performed at an Aids benefit concert in Botswana and Swaziland, for the showing of The Vagina Monologues and on tour in the United States.
Most of her performances have been broadcast nationally and internationally. She has shared the stage with world class musicians and recorded tracks with local and international artists, including with Keith Sweat on his Africa only album release. Lebo is known for her acting and singing roles in top South African television shows Generations, Backstage and Muvhango. She won the 2001 Style Best Dressed Woman of the Year Award and was nominated by FHM Magazine as one of Africa’s sexiest women. Lebo has been on the cover of almost every local magazine and is regularly in the society pages of South African newspapers.

lebo died tragically in a car accident on the morning of 23 october 2006.
Lebo Mathosa: I started off at the age of seven, I started singing at church and at the age of fourteen when I moved to Joburg and boarding school that’s when I got involved in the music industry and at first it used to be called bubblegum music. And we actually changed the whole thing I was involved in a group called Boom Shaka we were one of the groups which started the whole controversy about the changing of the music which we call kwaito. At first it was Gong but then they said no we want a better name so it was kwaito and I guess I took it from there. I’ve been in the industry for ten years now and I’ve recently just done my solo project which is totally different from kwaito so I don’t classify myself as a kwaito artist at all. With Boom Shaka yes, we did kwaito music but what I’m doing now it’s totally different from what I used to do. I do a mixture of everything, which is African rhythms and house beats and a little bit of R&B and pop in it.

aryan kaganof: In what way was Boom Shaka different from the bubblegum music that came before it?

lebo mathosa: The difference was with us, like I say, we were the most controversial group in the country. The first thing is we changed our national anthem, and we put a dance beat in it. No one is allowed to do that but we were able to pull that off so that actually shows you how much power Boom Shaka had behind the music scene itself. We sang in our African languages and when you added a little bit of house to the mix of African melodies and rhythms it became kwaito. It was kwaito because we didn’t want to be categorised with the old artists who sang bubblegum music, people like Brenda Fassie, Kamazoo, Senyaka, they were the top people in the music industry before we came up. So the youth wanted to have something totally different from what the others had done before. And kwaito was also different from any international music, so it was something the youth could represent themselves as. Kwaito has been going for as long as I’ve been in the industry now, it’s been more than ten years. If I had to change anything about kwaito music it would be the lyrics in order for the foreign countries as well to be able to understand. They call it kwaito because it is more of the kasi music, I mean the kasi tongue, we speak in our tsotsitaal, and different languages according to how you grew up. So I would change it into something that everyone would be able to relate to and understand and they would be able to sing and say the words that we are singing. Most things that we sing about are more fun things, it’s nothing seriious, nothing political, nothing out of this world that you wouldn’t understand. It’s the same thing that you hear over and over again from other different types of music but now the difference is that we’re doing it in our own language, in our own mother tongue, our own tsotsitaal, the way we were raised in our loxion kulchas. So we’re trying to change things now because the language that most people speak is English so if I spoke my tsotsitaal in English you would be able to understand it.

aryan kaganof: What is loxion kulcha?

lebo mathosa: I would say it is more the youth that have grown up in the ghettos, we have our own kind of life that we live and we call it our kulcha because only you can be that or live that even if they take you out of that loxion, I mean loxion means location, even if they take me out of that location of Soweto or Daveyton or whatever, and put me in the suburb, but you can’t take out what I’ve always lived as out of me. So I will always be that loxion kulcha because I was raised and born in the ghettos. It’s the taal in a way. It’s the youth kind of way of talking.

aryan kaganof: There has been a boom of pride in the past decade among black South Africans.

lebo mathosa: Yes. If you check out old musicians from the fifties, the Kofifi time, they were doing almost exactly the same thing that we’re doing now but the difference is that theirs was more original than ours because now we’re trying to modernise everything.

aryan kaganof: How do you feel about the increasingly dominant influence of America on our South African youth culture?

lebo mathosa: Well I can say the whole world is influenced by different cultures, it doesn’t matter whether it’s American or African or European or Asian, it’s not that exactly. It’s what people like out of what they see, if you come and present something that the people love that they want to listen to and that they get interested in the whole world will love it. Like now most South African artists have never gotten the opportunity to explore their talents and to teach the world about how we make our music. This is because our industry is a very small industry, not as big as the European and American industries. So we have less and they have more. We are original Africans that actually have something to share and show to the world.

aryan kaganof: Kwaito seems to be a male dominated form on every level.

lebo mathosa: Yes yes yes. I can say years ago it was very difficult for women to get involved in the music industry whether you wanted to be a producer or whatever, because you’d get some kind of harrassment in a way, it could be sexually or it could be moneywise or mentally. It all happens in different ways. So most women here at home aren’t very much exposed to the industry and the ones that have made it are the ones who have stood up for themselves and I must say it’s very very difficult because every producer that you meet in our country is male there isn’t even one female producer that you could say ok I like that record that is produced by so and so. But it’s not such a problem for me because I have made it through ten years of the industry and looking up to women like Miriam Makeba and Brenda Fassie that have made it before me. Miriam Makeba has made it all over the world, but she’s the only one you see and Busi Mhlongo has made it all over Europe but not back here at home. Only now that she has come back home has she started making it big here. And if you look at all the musicians who have made it overseas they are all old musicians, like Hugh Masekela and Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

aryan kaganof: But isn’t the sexism in the music industry merely a mirror of the general societal trend?

lebo mathosa: As you know South Africa is the country with the highest figures for rape and women abuse, I mean we have issues like that. I mean in this industry you have to sleep with someone to get into a recording studio so when you came up in my days you were very lucky because at that age I was like fourteen years old and the people who produced the album that I worked on it was old musicians like Don Laka and Oscar who had been in the industry a long time before me and I think Thembi (Thandy) and I were the only two girls in kwaito at that time. But we kept Boom Shaka in the public eye because of our controversial dancing, of the way we dressed, the sexy way of dancing. It was not easy for people to accept that because I think the elders found it very dangerous because of their past experiences.

aryan kaganof: You mentioned earlier that your new material is not kwaito, is this just a temporary move or are you leaving the kwaito scene for good?

lebo mathosa: Kwaito is one two three music, it’s like those three words kind of songs, where you sing “ai wena uh uh uh ai wena uh uh uh” and then it’s a beat and it just carries on until the song stops. It’s just little things, short phrases. But I’m more of a writer, I sing and I write my own songs. I love R&B, I listen to all kinds of things, I love jazz music I love Gong and my voice doesn’t allow me to stick in the limitations of a vocal style that only allows me to sing three words at a time. I like to explore my voice’s potential more than just singing an ABC song. I can do kwaito but my voice is versatile and I can do so much more, I can do deep African soul sounds, jazz, ballads. Lately I’ve been given the opportunity to perform on stage with people like Puff Daddy and I have a dream as an artist to qualify to be a world artist. A song is a very important thing to me, if I have to sing a song it has to be good lyrically, musically, in every kind of way. Kwaito is too limiting for the international audience to get into. African music and African rhythms that express the spirits of our ancestors, now I get that kind of feeling when I’m onstage, that’s what I can give international audiences. That African beat that comes through me onstage, well I’m a totally different person onstage from the person that you see sitting in front of you right now.

aryan kaganof: Who is your favourite kwaito artist at the moment?

lebo mathosa: I would mention somebody who says he is a kwaito artist but I think his music could fall under any other category, pop, R&B or maybe house with an African mix in it, call it what you want, it’s Kabelo. Kabelo has made a huge difference in his latest album, Rebel With A Cause, and he’s really pushing the kwaito sound way out of its limits. I don’t know what Kabelo’s music is but I don’t think that it’s kwaito because it’s too good to be kwaito. I recently asked him to write me a song, because he’s a good writer. What I love in Kabelo I can listen to his songs and learn from them because he doesn’t repeat his lyrics over and over again, for me he’s on the same level as Ja Rule, Puff Daddy, any of the international well known rap artists. Kabelo delivers in his own African way the way we can understand and no one can do it that way, except maybe some of the older musicians who did bubblegum before, and actually Kabelo is taking us back and telling us that music is not just about getting in the studio and singing the ABC but you have to live it, you have to be in it, you have to write music that will be able to heal people and m,ake them want to share the experience with the rest of the world. His music is not just for dancing, not just for kids, like most kwaito artists write music for young kids. Kabelo has set a great example in his album, he calls it kwaito music but I don’t think so. I think it’s way better than kwaito, way better than bubblegum, but you can see that it was taken from bubblegum.

in general a Korean has a problem with
“r” so that “rice” is “lice”
“f” so that “full” is “pull”
“the” so that  “this” is “jis”
and “zip” is  “jip” or “chip”

she eats lice three times a day
polished lice well cooked
she is fond of well cooked polished lice

but please do not say that she is clay chi
bahba lick
if you do
she will call you
a mujah puckah
and even scream
puck you!

another absolutely gratis noise loop from hymie delay and the african noise foundation. use it and abuse it!
download melodicbeat

There is a rare and defining moment in human history when a crushing and
seemingly permanent tyranny reveals on the surface of its implacable
structure the first tiny cracks of impending collapse — allowing the first
stirrings of hope among long oppressed peoples and subjugated nations.
Such a transition was heralded in Eastern and Central Europe and parts of
Central Asia by the fall of the Berlin Wall.

For the people of Inner Mongolia, East Turkistan and Tibet such a moment
may be at hand. China’s economic boom has created enormous and
irresolvable problems and conflicts that threaten to tear Chinese society
apart. Endemic official corruption, desperate peasant uprisings,
large-scale labour unrest, harsh religious repression, ever-widening
economic disparity, ecological devastation, absence of legal recourse to
justice and the almost non-existence of civil society, have been the
cause, according to official Chinese reports, of over 45,000
demonstrations and riots, many violent, all over China in the last year.

The Tibetans, the Uyghur people of East Turkistan and Mongols have
traditionally desired only to live in freedom in their own independent
homelands, but this desire has been thwarted and crushed by Communist
China for over fifty years. It is a matter of history that Communist China
invaded Tibet in 1949-50 overpowering and smashing a small Tibetan army
defending its homeland. It is also the case that East Turkistan and Inner
Mongolia were forcibly occupied by Communist troops in 1949. In no case
did Communist China’s rule in these countries come about through the
consent of the people or even through an accident of history.

Since then China has systematically undermined the ancient way of life of
these peoples, first doing away with their legitimate governments, and
then imprisoning, torturing and executing many of their traditional
rulers, chieftains and spiritual leaders. When the people of these nations
refused to accept these injustices and depredations, the Chinese Communist
army and State Security organs crushed all such resistance with
overwhelming violence. Millions of Tibetans, Uyghurs and Mongols were
killed. Millions more were imprisoned or deported to forced labour camps
(laogai). The people in these lands had, in the past, enjoyed a
sufficiency in basic needs, but now the policies of the Communist
government caused widespread crop failure, recurring famines and mass
starvation where millions of people especially women, children and the
elderly perished.

Under the slogan of revolutionary “struggle” (douzheng), the Communist
administration in these regions coerced and forced the people to spy on
and inform on each other, often employing even children to report on their
parents and participate in public denunciations and “struggles”. All
customary, in fact universal, human values of friendship, hospitality,
trust, respect, tolerance, peace and compassion were regarded by the
Communist authorities as “feudal” and “counter-revolutionary”.

During the years of the “Cultural Revolution”, people were compelled to
destroy their own temples, monasteries, and mosques. Nearly all buildings
and monuments of historical, cultural and religious importance in these
countries were demolished and their treasures and art objects looted and
shipped to China for their precious metals or for sale on the Asian art
market. The mineral wealth, forests, water and other natural resources of
these lands have, especially in the last couple of decades, not only been
systematically exploited to benefit China, but have also been
thoughtlessly wasted and the environment devastated because of the extreme
policies of China’s leadership.

Right now China’s population transfer policy has flooded Inner Mongolia,
East Turkistan and Tibet with Chinese migrants, completely marginalizing
the indigenous population and making them a minority in their own
homelands. Native craftsmen, small businessmen, workers and even labourers
have been near completely displaced by Chinese immigrants, causing
tremendous social problems, and psychological distress among the native
population.

All the while, the informers, the various organs of State Security
(gongan), the State Psychiatric Units (ankang) and the “People’s
Liberation Army” are relentlessly going about their task of spreading
terror throughout these lands and forcing the submission of their peoples.

We individuals and our organisations assembled here today are firmly
behind all the Tibetans, Uyghurs and Mongols who in their homelands are
standing up and demanding independence, and we mutually pledge to fully
support those inside who risk everything, including their lives, in the
quest for a free and democratic homeland. We appeal to the global
community of nations as to the rectitude of our intentions and do thus
declare that Tibet, East Turkistan and Inner Mongolia are absolved of all
political connections to the People’s Republic of China, or any future
Chinese state and government, and shall henceforth be free and independent
nations, each irrevocably committed to a democratic system of government,
established by the free will of the people, and based on the rule of law
and the primacy of individual freedom.

In the case of Taiwan we have a travesty of international justice where a
fully independent, prosperous and democratic nation, is not recognized as
such by other nations, primarily out of concern for displeasing Communist
China. Taiwan may have once been a part of China, but most member states
of the United Nations Organization were at one point or another in their
history a part of another nation or empire. Taiwan was only a province of
China briefly for eight years between 1887 and 1895. Taiwan was, by the
treaty of Shimonoseki (1895), ceded, in perpetuity, to Japan. Whatever the
ramifications of its varied history the people of Taiwan have the right,
as do all peoples in the world, to self-determination; and furthermore
through their successful efforts in creating a progressive and prosperous
democratic state have more than earned the right to nationhood. China’s
numerous and increasingly belligerent threats to invade Taiwan must be
condemned by the international community and Taiwan’s right to
independence recognized.

We call upon individual nations of the world and the United Nations
Organization to support the inalienable right of Uyghurs, Mongols,
Tibetans and Taiwanese to independent homelands. We appeal to the United
States of America, the first liberal democratic nation in the world, to
give due recognition to the rightful cause of these peoples and aid them
in their noble quest for independence, freedom and democracy.

19th September 2006, Conference Room HC-9, U.S. Congress, Capitol Hill,
Washington D.C.