The Canada Tibet Committee today released 68 pages of declassified federal government’s documents, including a 1950 legal opinion from the department of External Affairs that concluded from the point of international law, Tibet qualified for recognition as an independent state at the time Chinese forces invaded the country. “No matter how zealously the Chinese government tries to rewrite the history, 50 years after the 1959 Tibetan National Uprising, history will not be erased,” said CTC Executive Director Dermod travis.
The documents prepared
between 1944 and 1969, posted at the CTC website (www.tibet.ca),
include memorandums updating the Canadian government on Chinese
military aggression in the area, a 1950 National Defence document "The
Strategic Importance of Tibet", and a 1961 letter from His Holiness the
Dalai Lama to Prime Minister John Diefenbaker.