India, Aug. 11 -- When the Dalai Lama fled Tibet in 1959 after an uprising against Chinese rule, the United Nations responded quickly and clearly. Through Resolution 1353 (XIV), the international body expressed its deep concern for the "fundamental human rights and freedoms" of the Tibetan people and called for their protection.

In the early 1960s, two more resolutions, akin to moral rebukes of Beijing's conduct, followed. These were moral rebukes of Beijing's conduct and backed Tibet's right to self-determination.

Since then, the international community has urged China, with varying intensity, to loosen its iron grip on the plateau and stop its campaign to forcibly assimilate Tibetans into a Han-dominated state by suffocating their cul...