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THERE is an anti-China geo-political agenda behind the hypocritical US-, UK-, EU- and Australian criticisms of China over Tibet.
The most fundamental human right is the right to life.
According to data from the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) and the UN Population Division, China has made huge advances in dramatically reducing the mortality rate and infant mortality rate in both the Tibet Autonomous Region and in China as a whole, and to similar levels.
Thus the ''annual under-five-year-old infant death rate" is about the same (about 0.6 percent) in Tibet and China as a whole as compared to 6.2 percent for US- and Australia-occupied Afghanistan, 0.12 percent for occupier Australia and 0.16 percent for occupier United States.
The annual infant death rate in occupied Afghanistan (6.2 percent) is 51 times that in occupier Australia, 38 times that in occupier US and similar to the ''annual death rate" of 10.2 percent for Australian prisoners of war of the Japanese in World War II - a war crime for which key Japanese leaders were tried and hanged.
(The author is a Melbourne-based writer who has published some 130 works and can be reached at gpolya@bigpond.com)
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