Getting the World to Listen : U.N. Alternative Gives Millions of People an International Voice and a Say in Their Own Fate

As a 12-year-old living in Hong Kong, Michael van Walt devoured every book he could find describing the Chinese invasion and occupation of Tibet. Outraged, he wrote a letter to the Dalai Lama, the spiritual and political leader of the Tibetan people, and pledged to do something about it.

“I think children of that age are often very determined with what they want to do,” says Van Walt, now a wiry, restless man with angular features and a hybrid European accent. “They’re very serious about issues that intrigue them. And I was.”

The ensuing years witnessed the strength of Van Walt’s convictions: Moving from country to country with his family--his father was a Dutch diplomat--he continued to study the situation in Tibet. As a teen-ager in New Zealand, he created an organization to help Tibetan refugee children. Returning to the Netherlands, he founded a Tibetan advocacy group and published the Tibetan Messenger, a successful magazine.

By age 21, he had met the Dalai Lama, and when the spiritual leader, then little-known, expressed a desire to visit Europe, Van Walt did the groundwork, organizing the Tibetan monk’s first trip to the West in 1973.

Today, Van Walt, 41, is the sole legal counsel to the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government-in-exile. But his youthful commitment to the “land of snows” has broadened, and he is also the co-founder and general secretary of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization, a sort of alternative United Nations that seeks to revolutionize the notions of self-rule and sovereignty.

“I find it absolutely unbelievable,” Van Walt declared during a recent speech at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club, “that people like the Tibetans, the Kurds and the elected leaders of Burma are not included in international discussions about their own fates. Each nation should have the right to decide its own destiny and to manage its own environment.”

Van Walt has focused his considerable energies on assisting peoples and nations that have, despite their history and cultural integrity, virtually no representation on the international scene. UNPO gives a voice to the needs and aspirations of such nations, many of which have emerged over the past two years, but whose cultures, environments and human rights remain under the control of the countries that have absorbed them.

Fourteen nations and peoples, including Latvia and Estonia, made up UNPO’s original roll. Today, the organization counts 26 members, representing nearly 350 million people. The largest member nation is Kurdistan, with a population in the Middle East of 25 million; the smallest, according to UNPO’s San Francisco office director, Julie Berriault, is probably Belau, a tiny island protectorate in the Pacific with a population of 14,000.

What these nations and peoples have in common, and what served as one of the prime incentives for the founding of UNPO in February, 1991, in the Netherlands, is a keen sense of frustration.

“The representatives of these various peoples felt they were not being given a fair hearing,” says Van Walt. “It was virtually impossible for them to speak to governments within the United Nations system--even about human rights, the environment or other issues that affect them. . . . So it was decided to create a organization that would develop dialogues, attract attention and get governments to listen without using violence.”

In addition to the frustration, many small or isolated nations and peoples simply do not have the resources to play hardball in the global arena. UNPO, along with providing an international forum, addresses this handicap by assisting member nations with diplomacy training, media relations and conflict resolution skills.

One person who has found such training tremendously useful is Erkin Alptekin, leader of the Uyghur (pronounced WEE-gur) people in East Turkestan.

Known in the West as the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of northwestern China, East Turkestan was invaded by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in 1949, a year before the takeover of Tibet. Since then, an estimated 360,000 of Alptekin’s countrymen have been killed. The region now holds 29 labor camps, with nearly 80,000 prisoners, most of them prisoners of conscience, Alptekin asserts. The area’s natural resources (mostly minerals) are being diverted to Beijing, while the transfer of Chinese into the territory threatens to make the Uyghurs a minority in their own land.

“Before joining UNPO, our hopes were slim,” says Alptekin, 52, a personable and articulate man with expressive eyes in a round, remarkably unlined face. “The Uyghurs have no one like the Dalai Lama, who is well-known throughout the world. We are Muslims, but the Islamic countries could not support us; they had their own problems. And most Islamic countries have a close relationship with China.

“We didn’t have many opportunities to propagate our cause in the West,” he adds. “The UNPO helped us bring the plight of our people to the attention of the U.N. Human Rights Commission. And this visit to the United States has provided an opportunity for me to speak with senators and congressmen--and to help raise funds. This is really the only source of hope for our people.”

One question bound to arise in any discussion of the rights of nations and peoples not represented by the United Nations is: What exactly is a nation? What constitutes “a people”? What, for example, prevents the owners of 1966 Mustang convertibles or “Star Trek” fan club members from deciding that they, too, are a distinct people with rights and privileges of their own?

“A feeling of solidarity and commonality really is the determining factor,” Michael van Walt says. “But that feeling must be based on objective criteria such as a common language, history or ethnic background. What defines a nation--as distinct from a people--is the degree of political organization, legal status and history of having been a separately governed entity.”

Along with its 26 full members, UNPO also welcomes “observer” nations, any of which may decide to apply for membership. The criteria, Van Walt explained, are fairly straightforward.

“Any organization which claims to represent a people and wants to join UNPO must reject the use of terrorism as an instrument of policy,” he says. “Secondly, they may only use UNPO for the purpose of promoting an agenda which is an alternative to violence. We will not help or support violent activities.”

Last August, at UNPO’s most recent General Assembly, 10 observer nations participated, among them American Indian groups: the All-Indian Pueblo Council, based in New Mexico; the Mohawk nation and the Lakota nation, which took the extraordinary step of declaring its independence from the United States in 1991.

“Indians everywhere, on the 70 million acres of their land, are discussing . . . detailed plans for the renewal of their nation,” David Seals of the Lakota Sovereignty Committee wrote in a 1991 magazine article. “They see this as no more preposterous than what Lech Walesa dreamed about 10 years ago or the Baltic leaders have said this past year.”

The bottom line for UNPO, of course, is credibility: Will mainstream governments take the agenda of upstart nations and peoples seriously?

A partial answer arrived in Estonia last January, when UNPO conducted an unprecedented international conference on the issue of population transfer. Ten European and Eastern European governments were represented, taking part on an equal basis with UNPO’s member nations.

“For many of these representatives of peoples,” Van Walt notes with pride, “it was the first time they were sitting at the same table with high-level government officials. In the past, you see, most governments have found it politically impossible to meet with representatives of governments that they consider to be opposition groups.”

The organization has also drawn increasing acclaim from international observers and others.

“The philosophy and goals of the UNPO are most praiseworthy,” California Democrat Tom Lantos announced to the House in a speech last September. “These peoples have the right to participate democratically in determining their fate, and to pursue their economic, social and cultural development,” the congressman said.

UNPO’s next appearance on the world stage will be at the huge Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in June. The hope is that large governments will be moved to look at environmental issues from indigenous peoples’ points of view and to realize how closely such issues relate to human rights and self-determination.

“The decisions that the member nations make at the summit will be theirs, not ours,” says Julie Berriault. “We’re not in the business of making decisions for them.”

With its growing credibility, the largest obstacle to UNPO’s long-term success may be hard, cold economics. So far, funds have come from foundations and private donors, with a small portion contributed by progressive governments, mostly in Northern Europe. Each member nation must contribute a yearly fee of $1,000--a largely symbolic sum waived in the case of extremely poor nations. The full-time staff of UNPO consists of, incredibly, just five: four in the international headquarters in The Hague and one in San Francisco.

But what UNPO lacks in financial solvency, it compensates for in the enthusiasm of its members and employees.

“These issues are cutting edge,” observes Berriault, who single-handedly manages UNPO’s Western Hemisphere activities. “A year ago, people were chuckling when they heard the name of our organization--now, people are really perking up their ears.”

Michael van Walt acknowledges the tremendous work--and financial risk--involved in keeping UNPO afloat. But the rewards, he insists, are commensurate with the trials.

At the first UNPO General Assembly, he recalls, “each member said something in their own language, to their own people. A telecast of the event was shown--probably by mistake--in Indonesia. The people of West Papua (occupied by Indonesia since 1963) saw their delegate announce, ‘We will accept slavery no more!’ And dancing broke out in the streets of West Papua.

“It’s a very real thing for them,” he says reverently. “That’s what motivates me and the staff to do this. We’re not just playing around with lofty ideals and theories. For the members of UNPO, these are life-and-death struggles.”