Tibet: where even fiery resistance can be peaceful
INDIFFERENCE OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY TESTIFIES TO ITS APPROVAL FOR VIOLENCE?
By Vijay Kranti 31 January 2013
The resistance of the Tibetan people to their colonial masters has become too fiery to be ignored. On January 19, Jigjey Kyab, a 17-year-old Tibetan school boy of Shigtsang Pungkor town of Luchu in Eastern Tibet (now in Gansu province of China), was seen running in the street and shouting slogans demanding Tibet’s freedom from China and Dalai Lama’s return to Tibet. His clothes were doused in kerosene and he was holding a lighter in his hand. Had he been able to light the fire, he would have been the 98th in the ongoing spate of self-immolations across “China’s Tibet” since February 2009. But before he could do so, he collapsed and soon died. His hand-written suicide note later indicated that he had consumed a strong dose of some poison to ensure that he did not land alive into the hands of Chinese police if he survived the flames.
Jigjey’s fears about China’s Public Security Bureau (PSB), the equivalent of Hitler’s Gestapo in the Nazi era of Germany, were not misplaced. Well-recorded accounts of Tibetan immolations, as compiled by various Tibetan and independent international rights groups, present many cases when instead of saving the burning Tibetan self-immolator, the PSB agents kicked the victim with their boots and hit him with batons. In most of over 15 cases in which the immolator survived, their whereabouts are not known and the family members have had to go through serious problems with the police and administration.
In Ngaba, known for the famous Kirti monastery and a major centre of anti-China protests and self-immolations in recent years, two monks Tashi (21) and Lungtok (20) committed self-immolation together on 13 August 2012. While Lungtok died on the scene before the PSB agents arrived, they collectively kicked and hit Tashi before taking him away. Soon after Tashi was declared dead. PSB did not announce whether he died of burns or police beating.
On 7 October 2011, two other monks Choephel (19) and Khayang (18) set themselves on fire in Ngaba main town. Khanyang had quit Kirti monastery and Choephel had been expelled following self-immolation by another monk Phuntsog (21) earlier in March. Kirti was the scene of heavy anti-China public protests in March 2008 when Chinese police shot dead 13 Tibetan demonstrators. In another case a nun in flames screaming pro-Tibet slogans was practically stoned to death by a crowd of newly-settled Han Chinese.
Monks and nuns occupy over a fourth part of the list of self-immolators across Tibet for the reasons that strong police control and communist indoctrination in monasteries have left the monastic community in a state of utter frustration. As a part of compulsory “patriotic re-education” the monks must study communism and submit essays condemning Dalai Lama by name and also those who believe in Tibet’s historic identity as different from China as a nation.
Over the past two decades, Beijing’s dual policy of promoting visual aspects of Tibetan Buddhism, like monasteries, temples, fine arts and handicrafts to attract international tourism, and occupying Tibet’s religious hierarchy from within by stronger regimentation of the monasteries, has only further enraged the monastic community. Since the third meeting of the Work Forum on Tibet in 1994, a policy-designing group of China’s Communist Party to maintain control over Tibet, Chinese leadership had, for the first time in 43 years of Tibetan occupation, recognized the importance of religion over the Tibetan society and evolved this new strategy.
As a part of this strategy, Beijing established an official committee of Tibetan monks and Communist administrators in Tibet to search for the reincarnation of former Karma Pa in 1994 and later for Panchen Lama in 1995. However, Karma Pa, identified by the committee, later escaped to India to join the Dalai Lama. But the five-year-old Gedhun Choekyi Nyima was recognized as the new Panchen Lama incarnate by the Dalai Lama from exile before Beijing could take a decision. As a result he was taken into custody by China in 1995 and is since missing. Beijing installed another boy Gianchin (Gyaltsen) Norbu as the “real” Panchen Lama.
On 3rd August 2007, Beijing went a step further in the direction of controlling religion when the State Religious Affairs Bureau issued “Order No. 5″ which transferred the final authority of recognition of any “Tulku” (reincarnated high-ranking monk) from the Tibetan monastic community into the hands of the Communist Party and the administrators controlled by it. By implication, the next Dalai Lama will be considered as the “legitimate and real Dalai Lama” only if his rebirth is certified by the concerned Communist leaders of China. That explains the growing frustration among the monastic community of Tibet today.
China’s policy of finding the “last solution” to the “Tibetan problem” by changing the demographic character of Tibet has emerged as the biggest source of social frustration and helplessness among the Tibetan masses. They are living under Chinese occupation not only in the “Tibet Autonomous Region” (TAR), but also the other two Tibetan areas of Kham and Amdo, which were dismembered from Tibet and their parts integrated into adjoining Chinese provinces of Yunnan, Sichuan, Gansu and Qinghai.
Over the past two decades millions of Han Chinese have been brought and settled all across Tibet as a part of Beijing’s project, popularly known as the “Western Development Plan”. This has rendered local Tibetans into an almost meaningless minority in their own towns and the country as a whole. In Lhasa, traditionally a city of hardly 20 thousand residents in normal days and a hundred thousand during the month of annual prayer festival “Monlam”, the number of car registrations crossed the figure of one lakh (hundred thousand) in 2008. Today much over a million (exact figures not known) Han dominate the Lhasa landscape.
With most of the good lands being taken over for farming, new towns, expansion of cities and mining projects, establishment of new projects and business aimed at the skills and needs of migrant Han, overwhelming of the Tibetan language by Chinese Mandarin and resulting disadvantage to the Tibetan youth, and diminishing physical scope for expression of their socio-political concerns amidst a flood of Han migrants — all this has pushed the levels of Tibetan frustration to newer heights.
On 13 August 2012, Passang Lhamo, a 62-year-old Tibetan woman set herself on fire in Beijing in front of a government office. In hope of justice, she had travelled all the way from her house in Eastern Tibet, where local authorities had taken over her family’s land for reorganization following the earthquake, but had refused to compensate them for the grabbed land.
Similarly, on 27 June 2012, a 40-year-old Tibetan woman Dekyi Choezom set herself on fire during a public protest in Jaykundo, also in Eastern Tibet. A group of 70 Tibetan families were demanding their right over their own lands which were taken away in the name of reconstruction plan after the 2010 quake.
Recently, during one of my travels inside Tibet, I was shocked to see long stretches of hills along the Chengdu-Lithang route in Eastern Tibet with most of trees removed and hundreds of tree trunks lying on the slopes for drying or transportation. Various international estimates of timber taken away from Tibet to China put the figures at US $50 billion. And a good part is supposed to have gone to individual pockets of Chinese Communist leaders over the years.
The recent Chinese enthusiasm to “protect” the environment in these regions has spelt a new disaster for the nomad community of Tibet who form over a third of Tibet’s total population (six million by 1951 estimates). As a part of the new “scientific” campaign, the nomads have been ordered to quit migratory living and cattle-rearing and to settle down in pre-decided and newly developed colonies. Feeling uneasy in small matchbox-like brick houses and incapable of earning their living in the new urban system, many among them have taken to drugs, gambling, and alcoholism. On 26 November 2012, Kunchok Tsering (18) a married young man and a former nomad, forcefully resettled recently near Amchog town of Gansu, set himself on fire and died.
Interestingly, it is not only the Tibetans who suffer in today’s China or who are protesting against the Han colonial hegemony. Hundreds of protests from Xinjiang (“East Turkistan” until China walked in during 1949) and Inner Mongolia have been reported in recent years. It may be interesting for socio-political observers to note that not a single person among the 99 Tibetan self-immolators tried to kill or hit any Han settlers and occupants of their homeland against whose presence in Tibet they have been protesting. In contrast, when Chinese Han youths killed three Uyghur migrant workers in Guagdong in June 2009, the Turk Muslims in Urumchi and Kashgar hacked over 200 Han settlers and Chinese police. However, in the retaliatory actions organized jointly by the Chinese Police and Han settlers in Xinjiang, many more of the protesters were killed, and over a thousand Uyghurs were arrested.
A sad aspect of the ongoing self-immolations in Tibet today is the silence of the world community. In a world where one self-immolation by a Tunisian street hawker could lead to a chain of uprising in over a dozen countries, a century of lives ending in fireballs with no result does not give indication towards a peaceful future. Even worse than helpless kowtowing to the economic and military power of Beijing today, the world community is sending the unfortunate message to hundreds of struggling interest groups around the world that only violent expression of anger will win them world attention. If that is so, then the loss to the world community is going to be bigger than to the hapless Tibetans under Chinese colonial rule.
About the author : Vijay Kranti is a senior Indian journalist, photographer, and Tibetologist . He blogs at VjayKranti.com and he can be contacted at v.kranti(at)gmail.com.
By Vijay Kranti 31 January 2013
The resistance of the Tibetan people to their colonial masters has become too fiery to be ignored. On January 19, Jigjey Kyab, a 17-year-old Tibetan school boy of Shigtsang Pungkor town of Luchu in Eastern Tibet (now in Gansu province of China), was seen running in the street and shouting slogans demanding Tibet’s freedom from China and Dalai Lama’s return to Tibet. His clothes were doused in kerosene and he was holding a lighter in his hand. Had he been able to light the fire, he would have been the 98th in the ongoing spate of self-immolations across “China’s Tibet” since February 2009. But before he could do so, he collapsed and soon died. His hand-written suicide note later indicated that he had consumed a strong dose of some poison to ensure that he did not land alive into the hands of Chinese police if he survived the flames.
Jigjey’s fears about China’s Public Security Bureau (PSB), the equivalent of Hitler’s Gestapo in the Nazi era of Germany, were not misplaced. Well-recorded accounts of Tibetan immolations, as compiled by various Tibetan and independent international rights groups, present many cases when instead of saving the burning Tibetan self-immolator, the PSB agents kicked the victim with their boots and hit him with batons. In most of over 15 cases in which the immolator survived, their whereabouts are not known and the family members have had to go through serious problems with the police and administration.
In Ngaba, known for the famous Kirti monastery and a major centre of anti-China protests and self-immolations in recent years, two monks Tashi (21) and Lungtok (20) committed self-immolation together on 13 August 2012. While Lungtok died on the scene before the PSB agents arrived, they collectively kicked and hit Tashi before taking him away. Soon after Tashi was declared dead. PSB did not announce whether he died of burns or police beating.
On 7 October 2011, two other monks Choephel (19) and Khayang (18) set themselves on fire in Ngaba main town. Khanyang had quit Kirti monastery and Choephel had been expelled following self-immolation by another monk Phuntsog (21) earlier in March. Kirti was the scene of heavy anti-China public protests in March 2008 when Chinese police shot dead 13 Tibetan demonstrators. In another case a nun in flames screaming pro-Tibet slogans was practically stoned to death by a crowd of newly-settled Han Chinese.
Monks and nuns occupy over a fourth part of the list of self-immolators across Tibet for the reasons that strong police control and communist indoctrination in monasteries have left the monastic community in a state of utter frustration. As a part of compulsory “patriotic re-education” the monks must study communism and submit essays condemning Dalai Lama by name and also those who believe in Tibet’s historic identity as different from China as a nation.
Over the past two decades, Beijing’s dual policy of promoting visual aspects of Tibetan Buddhism, like monasteries, temples, fine arts and handicrafts to attract international tourism, and occupying Tibet’s religious hierarchy from within by stronger regimentation of the monasteries, has only further enraged the monastic community. Since the third meeting of the Work Forum on Tibet in 1994, a policy-designing group of China’s Communist Party to maintain control over Tibet, Chinese leadership had, for the first time in 43 years of Tibetan occupation, recognized the importance of religion over the Tibetan society and evolved this new strategy.
As a part of this strategy, Beijing established an official committee of Tibetan monks and Communist administrators in Tibet to search for the reincarnation of former Karma Pa in 1994 and later for Panchen Lama in 1995. However, Karma Pa, identified by the committee, later escaped to India to join the Dalai Lama. But the five-year-old Gedhun Choekyi Nyima was recognized as the new Panchen Lama incarnate by the Dalai Lama from exile before Beijing could take a decision. As a result he was taken into custody by China in 1995 and is since missing. Beijing installed another boy Gianchin (Gyaltsen) Norbu as the “real” Panchen Lama.
On 3rd August 2007, Beijing went a step further in the direction of controlling religion when the State Religious Affairs Bureau issued “Order No. 5″ which transferred the final authority of recognition of any “Tulku” (reincarnated high-ranking monk) from the Tibetan monastic community into the hands of the Communist Party and the administrators controlled by it. By implication, the next Dalai Lama will be considered as the “legitimate and real Dalai Lama” only if his rebirth is certified by the concerned Communist leaders of China. That explains the growing frustration among the monastic community of Tibet today.
China’s policy of finding the “last solution” to the “Tibetan problem” by changing the demographic character of Tibet has emerged as the biggest source of social frustration and helplessness among the Tibetan masses. They are living under Chinese occupation not only in the “Tibet Autonomous Region” (TAR), but also the other two Tibetan areas of Kham and Amdo, which were dismembered from Tibet and their parts integrated into adjoining Chinese provinces of Yunnan, Sichuan, Gansu and Qinghai.
Over the past two decades millions of Han Chinese have been brought and settled all across Tibet as a part of Beijing’s project, popularly known as the “Western Development Plan”. This has rendered local Tibetans into an almost meaningless minority in their own towns and the country as a whole. In Lhasa, traditionally a city of hardly 20 thousand residents in normal days and a hundred thousand during the month of annual prayer festival “Monlam”, the number of car registrations crossed the figure of one lakh (hundred thousand) in 2008. Today much over a million (exact figures not known) Han dominate the Lhasa landscape.
With most of the good lands being taken over for farming, new towns, expansion of cities and mining projects, establishment of new projects and business aimed at the skills and needs of migrant Han, overwhelming of the Tibetan language by Chinese Mandarin and resulting disadvantage to the Tibetan youth, and diminishing physical scope for expression of their socio-political concerns amidst a flood of Han migrants — all this has pushed the levels of Tibetan frustration to newer heights.
On 13 August 2012, Passang Lhamo, a 62-year-old Tibetan woman set herself on fire in Beijing in front of a government office. In hope of justice, she had travelled all the way from her house in Eastern Tibet, where local authorities had taken over her family’s land for reorganization following the earthquake, but had refused to compensate them for the grabbed land.
Similarly, on 27 June 2012, a 40-year-old Tibetan woman Dekyi Choezom set herself on fire during a public protest in Jaykundo, also in Eastern Tibet. A group of 70 Tibetan families were demanding their right over their own lands which were taken away in the name of reconstruction plan after the 2010 quake.
Recently, during one of my travels inside Tibet, I was shocked to see long stretches of hills along the Chengdu-Lithang route in Eastern Tibet with most of trees removed and hundreds of tree trunks lying on the slopes for drying or transportation. Various international estimates of timber taken away from Tibet to China put the figures at US $50 billion. And a good part is supposed to have gone to individual pockets of Chinese Communist leaders over the years.
The recent Chinese enthusiasm to “protect” the environment in these regions has spelt a new disaster for the nomad community of Tibet who form over a third of Tibet’s total population (six million by 1951 estimates). As a part of the new “scientific” campaign, the nomads have been ordered to quit migratory living and cattle-rearing and to settle down in pre-decided and newly developed colonies. Feeling uneasy in small matchbox-like brick houses and incapable of earning their living in the new urban system, many among them have taken to drugs, gambling, and alcoholism. On 26 November 2012, Kunchok Tsering (18) a married young man and a former nomad, forcefully resettled recently near Amchog town of Gansu, set himself on fire and died.
Interestingly, it is not only the Tibetans who suffer in today’s China or who are protesting against the Han colonial hegemony. Hundreds of protests from Xinjiang (“East Turkistan” until China walked in during 1949) and Inner Mongolia have been reported in recent years. It may be interesting for socio-political observers to note that not a single person among the 99 Tibetan self-immolators tried to kill or hit any Han settlers and occupants of their homeland against whose presence in Tibet they have been protesting. In contrast, when Chinese Han youths killed three Uyghur migrant workers in Guagdong in June 2009, the Turk Muslims in Urumchi and Kashgar hacked over 200 Han settlers and Chinese police. However, in the retaliatory actions organized jointly by the Chinese Police and Han settlers in Xinjiang, many more of the protesters were killed, and over a thousand Uyghurs were arrested.
A sad aspect of the ongoing self-immolations in Tibet today is the silence of the world community. In a world where one self-immolation by a Tunisian street hawker could lead to a chain of uprising in over a dozen countries, a century of lives ending in fireballs with no result does not give indication towards a peaceful future. Even worse than helpless kowtowing to the economic and military power of Beijing today, the world community is sending the unfortunate message to hundreds of struggling interest groups around the world that only violent expression of anger will win them world attention. If that is so, then the loss to the world community is going to be bigger than to the hapless Tibetans under Chinese colonial rule.
About the author : Vijay Kranti is a senior Indian journalist, photographer, and Tibetologist . He blogs at VjayKranti.com and he can be contacted at v.kranti(at)gmail.com.
A BURNING TIBET CANNOT BE GOOD FOR CHINA
By Sutirtho Patranobis
For possibly most of China, Tibet, or what officially is the Tibetan Autonomous Region, is a serene sort of a place; a place where high mountains shadow vast open valleys, where colourfully dressed Tibetans lead a tranquil, pastoral lives going about their routines with their heads down and where antique monasteries are home to ancient mysticism.
A cheerful, young anchor from the national broadcaster CCTV — the wonderful parallel to our very own, homegrown Doordarshan — took his viewers across parts of TAR the other evening; it was in fact a cheerful journey full of flags flapping in distilled air, rugged terrain and jolly, welcoming people sharing hot cups of butter tea.
Wednesday’s China Daily carried a one-page feature — which reminded the-gullible-reporter in me of an advertorial — on “Tibet still on steady path to growth.”
The closest I have been to Tibet is Majnu ka Tila near Delhi University and my information is based on statements from human rights groups and the responses from the Chinese government. But maybe, just maybe the situation is not as tranquil in Tibet, which China considers inextricably its own.
Last week alone, seven ethnic Tibetans deliberately doused themselves with the nearest can of fuel and lit themselves; six lit themselves well enough to die of lethal burn injuries. They had nearly 50 other examples to follow of ethnic Tibetans who have self immolated demanding more freedom under Beijing’s hard-line rule and the return of their spiritual icon, Dalai Lama.
All the cases didn’t take place in TAR; ethnic Tibetans are also found in the four provinces of eastern China: Sichuan, Qinghai, Yunnan and Gansu.
The protest suicides are all but blacked out in the government-controlled media. When the state-run Xinhua does confirm the rare death, the reasons given for the suicides are not political; the reasons usually are domestic infighting, acting under the influence of alcohol or acting under the influence of alcohol because of domestic infighting.
Ironically, when questions about the suicides are raised at press conferences — like at the one last week — the spokesperson, any spokesperson for the day for that matter, are belligerent in blaming Dharamshala-based Dalai Lama in inciting the simple, rustic Tibetan. The self immolators are branded “terrorists.”
Do terrorists usually burn themselves to death after a fight with his wife? Or having too much chang? Or is he not brainwashed enough by outside forces to carry out a suicide attack on government forces and symbols? The terrorist, it seems, is brainwashed just enough to light a match stick, or maybe a made in China lighter, to his own oil-slicked body.
I agree completely with China Daily’s Thursday advertorial — err, perceptive feature stories — about the fact that “…TAR is on a trajectory to maintain stable and balanced growth thanks to a set of preferential policies from the central government and assistance across the country” and “income growth rate in double digits for the ninth consecutive year.” I am certain that as rest of China progresses, Tibetans too will have less chilly winds of progress blowing over their mountainous homes.
But maybe Chinese leaders should put their ears to the hard ground of eastern China to find out what’s actually happening. The sudden rise in protest suicides days before the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) is surely not coincidental; those protesting China’s rule know the world’s focus is on Beijing. It should also be remembered that the suicides took place in spite of heavy presence of security personnel. It can’t be great for China if its own citizens continue to burn themselves to death. For the new leadership readying to rule China, to douse the fire and make Tibet actually serene and tranquil should be a priority.
For possibly most of China, Tibet, or what officially is the Tibetan Autonomous Region, is a serene sort of a place; a place where high mountains shadow vast open valleys, where colourfully dressed Tibetans lead a tranquil, pastoral lives going about their routines with their heads down and where antique monasteries are home to ancient mysticism.
A cheerful, young anchor from the national broadcaster CCTV — the wonderful parallel to our very own, homegrown Doordarshan — took his viewers across parts of TAR the other evening; it was in fact a cheerful journey full of flags flapping in distilled air, rugged terrain and jolly, welcoming people sharing hot cups of butter tea.
Wednesday’s China Daily carried a one-page feature — which reminded the-gullible-reporter in me of an advertorial — on “Tibet still on steady path to growth.”
The closest I have been to Tibet is Majnu ka Tila near Delhi University and my information is based on statements from human rights groups and the responses from the Chinese government. But maybe, just maybe the situation is not as tranquil in Tibet, which China considers inextricably its own.
Last week alone, seven ethnic Tibetans deliberately doused themselves with the nearest can of fuel and lit themselves; six lit themselves well enough to die of lethal burn injuries. They had nearly 50 other examples to follow of ethnic Tibetans who have self immolated demanding more freedom under Beijing’s hard-line rule and the return of their spiritual icon, Dalai Lama.
All the cases didn’t take place in TAR; ethnic Tibetans are also found in the four provinces of eastern China: Sichuan, Qinghai, Yunnan and Gansu.
The protest suicides are all but blacked out in the government-controlled media. When the state-run Xinhua does confirm the rare death, the reasons given for the suicides are not political; the reasons usually are domestic infighting, acting under the influence of alcohol or acting under the influence of alcohol because of domestic infighting.
Ironically, when questions about the suicides are raised at press conferences — like at the one last week — the spokesperson, any spokesperson for the day for that matter, are belligerent in blaming Dharamshala-based Dalai Lama in inciting the simple, rustic Tibetan. The self immolators are branded “terrorists.”
Do terrorists usually burn themselves to death after a fight with his wife? Or having too much chang? Or is he not brainwashed enough by outside forces to carry out a suicide attack on government forces and symbols? The terrorist, it seems, is brainwashed just enough to light a match stick, or maybe a made in China lighter, to his own oil-slicked body.
I agree completely with China Daily’s Thursday advertorial — err, perceptive feature stories — about the fact that “…TAR is on a trajectory to maintain stable and balanced growth thanks to a set of preferential policies from the central government and assistance across the country” and “income growth rate in double digits for the ninth consecutive year.” I am certain that as rest of China progresses, Tibetans too will have less chilly winds of progress blowing over their mountainous homes.
But maybe Chinese leaders should put their ears to the hard ground of eastern China to find out what’s actually happening. The sudden rise in protest suicides days before the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) is surely not coincidental; those protesting China’s rule know the world’s focus is on Beijing. It should also be remembered that the suicides took place in spite of heavy presence of security personnel. It can’t be great for China if its own citizens continue to burn themselves to death. For the new leadership readying to rule China, to douse the fire and make Tibet actually serene and tranquil should be a priority.
Two Faces of Hu Jintao
- by Vijay Kranti
ON THE CONCLUDING DAY OF HIS CAREER, HU WALKS OUT WITH TWO CERTIFICATES : A GREAT HERO OF CHINA AND A WAR CRIMINAL OF HIS COLONIES
The New York Times expose on Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's close relatives having amassed assets worth more than $2.7 billion could not have come at a worse time for poor Mr. Wen. In response he could only assert that he would leave office "with the courage to face history" and that "Ultimately, history will have the final say".
This is in sharp contrast to his senior Comrade Hu Jintao, the all mighty General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the President of China and the Chairman of the supreme power house of China viz. the Central Military Commission (CMC) despite the fact that the cupboard of his virtues holds a far larger mass of skeletons - literally, than all his peer comrades put together.
Mr. Hu Jintao's political career had its real breakthrough in March 1989 when he crushed the historic uprising of Tibetans in Lhasa with a firm, decisive hand. Only four months ago he had been appointed as the Party Secretary of Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) -- a post equivalent to the Governor General of India during the British Raj .
In routine power game of PRC, this assignment is reserved for a low profile leader whose main job is to maintain China's grip on Tibet and to keep informing his Beijing bosses that things are 'under control'. Hu, an ambitious communist leader, despised this assignment from beginning. Instead of shifting to Lhasa, he governed TAR from Chengdu in nearby Chinese province Sichuan and kept his family stationed in Beijing throughout his Tibet stint.
While any other leader in his place would have lost his head for 'misreporting' and for the surprising anti-China uprising of Tibetan youths in Lhasa, Hu converted this event into an impressive demonstration of his skills in crushing dissent. He used armoured vehicles and tanks to shoot down and crush the agitating Tibetan monks and youths; imposed Martial-Law in Tibet and; filled up all Tibetan jails beyond their capacities by arresting Tibetans by thousands. Pro-independence Tibetans and their supporters across the world held Hu responsible for killing of more than 140 Tibetan youths. But the real number of killings and arrests still remains a guess 23 years later. Since then Hu Jintao earned his nickname as the 'Buthcher of Lhasa' among Tibetan masses and their supporters abroad.
Only two months before the Lhasa uprising, Hu had attracted extraordinary international attention when Panchen Lama died in late January under mysterious circumstances following a public verbal duel with Hu in Shigatse in western Tibet. Hu's administration claimed that Panchen Lama died of some 'heart ailment'. But critics, who included some leading Chinese dissidents, alleged that he was 'killed' and that Hu was responsible for Panchen Lama's untimely death at a ripe age of 51.
However, China's helmsman Deng Xiaoping was so impressed by Hu's success in controlling the Lhasa uprising that he decided to use Hu's 'Lhasa Model' to effectively crush down the Chinese youths' democratic uprising which broke out two months later at Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Deng and his hardliner colleagues emerged victorious after the PLA guns, armoured vehicles and tanks killed over two thousand Chinese youths (2500 plus as claimed by the movement leaders).
This was first time that Deng spotted a potential successor of Jiang Zemin in Hu Jintao. Hu was soon plucked out of the party crowd and was promoted to the 7th position in the all powerful Standing Committee of the CCP in October 1992. By 2002 Hu became the General Secretary of CCP, President of PRC by 2003 and finally the Chairman of CMC in 2004.
China's yet another colony Xinjiang (Nee 'Republic of East Turkistan' until 1949) had a taste of Mr. Hu Jintao and the PLA under his command in mid 2009 when anti-China riots erupted across Xinjiang. Reacting to public lynching of 18 Uighur Muslim youths 3000 km away in Guangdong on 27th June, fiery Uighurs killed more than 120 Chinese settlers and policemen within a couple of hours in Urumqui, Kashgar and Kashi across Xinjiang a week later on 5th July. Unlike their Tibetan Buddhist counterparts who believe in Dalai Lama's way of non-violence (self immolation committed by Tibetan youths crossed 75 on the day Mr. Hu Jintao's successor was formally elected) the Uighurs present a different challenge to China's rule over their Muslim majority homeland.
Once again Mr. Hu and his PLA re-established the supremacy of Beijing masters over Xinjiang by killing around 800 Uighurs in a crackdown in next two days. It was first time when crowds of recently settled Han citizens played the role of an effective ally of the PLA and Public Security Bureau (PSB) in crushing the native Uighurs. This event also proved the efficacy of Mr. Hu's campaign of reducing the ethnic people of Tibet, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia into meaningless minorities in their own homelands through massive population transfer of Han Chinese.
On the colonial diplomacy front too, Hu shall be remembered by patriotic Chinese with a great awe for his skills. For, it was only Hu who could keep the Tibetan exiles and its friends engaged in an eight year long 'non-dialogue' only to win enough time to complete Chinese goals of taking railway line into Tibet, completing the enormous population transfer project in this Himalayan colony and winning laurels for a trouble free Olympics (2008) in Beijing.
It was again Mr. Hu who skilfully used Chinese muscle to make Spainish government to rewrite its laws to protect Mr. Hu and his fellow Chinese leaders from facing a public law suit of crimes against humanity in Tibet.
One more account on which a hydraulic engineer Mr. Hu is respected among the Han Chinese masses is his outstanding 'Scientific outlook on Development'. In addition to taking Chinese rail to Tibet, he also leaves behind a well oiled project of diverting Tibet's river waters to parched lads of northern and eastern China -- so what if this project has put at stake the lives of millions of people living in a dozen other countries along the flow of these rivers?
In the case of Mr. Wen Jiabao one is not sure what history of China holds for him. But in the case of Mr. Hu Jintao it looks sure that he is destined to walk out as a great hero of present day China's history. The history of civilized world might one day put him in dock for his crimes against humanity. But who is sure if it will ever happen in history? Does anyone know? Even if the answer is 'yes', who cares?
ON THE CONCLUDING DAY OF HIS CAREER, HU WALKS OUT WITH TWO CERTIFICATES : A GREAT HERO OF CHINA AND A WAR CRIMINAL OF HIS COLONIES
The New York Times expose on Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's close relatives having amassed assets worth more than $2.7 billion could not have come at a worse time for poor Mr. Wen. In response he could only assert that he would leave office "with the courage to face history" and that "Ultimately, history will have the final say".
This is in sharp contrast to his senior Comrade Hu Jintao, the all mighty General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the President of China and the Chairman of the supreme power house of China viz. the Central Military Commission (CMC) despite the fact that the cupboard of his virtues holds a far larger mass of skeletons - literally, than all his peer comrades put together.
Mr. Hu Jintao's political career had its real breakthrough in March 1989 when he crushed the historic uprising of Tibetans in Lhasa with a firm, decisive hand. Only four months ago he had been appointed as the Party Secretary of Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) -- a post equivalent to the Governor General of India during the British Raj .
In routine power game of PRC, this assignment is reserved for a low profile leader whose main job is to maintain China's grip on Tibet and to keep informing his Beijing bosses that things are 'under control'. Hu, an ambitious communist leader, despised this assignment from beginning. Instead of shifting to Lhasa, he governed TAR from Chengdu in nearby Chinese province Sichuan and kept his family stationed in Beijing throughout his Tibet stint.
While any other leader in his place would have lost his head for 'misreporting' and for the surprising anti-China uprising of Tibetan youths in Lhasa, Hu converted this event into an impressive demonstration of his skills in crushing dissent. He used armoured vehicles and tanks to shoot down and crush the agitating Tibetan monks and youths; imposed Martial-Law in Tibet and; filled up all Tibetan jails beyond their capacities by arresting Tibetans by thousands. Pro-independence Tibetans and their supporters across the world held Hu responsible for killing of more than 140 Tibetan youths. But the real number of killings and arrests still remains a guess 23 years later. Since then Hu Jintao earned his nickname as the 'Buthcher of Lhasa' among Tibetan masses and their supporters abroad.
Only two months before the Lhasa uprising, Hu had attracted extraordinary international attention when Panchen Lama died in late January under mysterious circumstances following a public verbal duel with Hu in Shigatse in western Tibet. Hu's administration claimed that Panchen Lama died of some 'heart ailment'. But critics, who included some leading Chinese dissidents, alleged that he was 'killed' and that Hu was responsible for Panchen Lama's untimely death at a ripe age of 51.
However, China's helmsman Deng Xiaoping was so impressed by Hu's success in controlling the Lhasa uprising that he decided to use Hu's 'Lhasa Model' to effectively crush down the Chinese youths' democratic uprising which broke out two months later at Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Deng and his hardliner colleagues emerged victorious after the PLA guns, armoured vehicles and tanks killed over two thousand Chinese youths (2500 plus as claimed by the movement leaders).
This was first time that Deng spotted a potential successor of Jiang Zemin in Hu Jintao. Hu was soon plucked out of the party crowd and was promoted to the 7th position in the all powerful Standing Committee of the CCP in October 1992. By 2002 Hu became the General Secretary of CCP, President of PRC by 2003 and finally the Chairman of CMC in 2004.
China's yet another colony Xinjiang (Nee 'Republic of East Turkistan' until 1949) had a taste of Mr. Hu Jintao and the PLA under his command in mid 2009 when anti-China riots erupted across Xinjiang. Reacting to public lynching of 18 Uighur Muslim youths 3000 km away in Guangdong on 27th June, fiery Uighurs killed more than 120 Chinese settlers and policemen within a couple of hours in Urumqui, Kashgar and Kashi across Xinjiang a week later on 5th July. Unlike their Tibetan Buddhist counterparts who believe in Dalai Lama's way of non-violence (self immolation committed by Tibetan youths crossed 75 on the day Mr. Hu Jintao's successor was formally elected) the Uighurs present a different challenge to China's rule over their Muslim majority homeland.
Once again Mr. Hu and his PLA re-established the supremacy of Beijing masters over Xinjiang by killing around 800 Uighurs in a crackdown in next two days. It was first time when crowds of recently settled Han citizens played the role of an effective ally of the PLA and Public Security Bureau (PSB) in crushing the native Uighurs. This event also proved the efficacy of Mr. Hu's campaign of reducing the ethnic people of Tibet, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia into meaningless minorities in their own homelands through massive population transfer of Han Chinese.
On the colonial diplomacy front too, Hu shall be remembered by patriotic Chinese with a great awe for his skills. For, it was only Hu who could keep the Tibetan exiles and its friends engaged in an eight year long 'non-dialogue' only to win enough time to complete Chinese goals of taking railway line into Tibet, completing the enormous population transfer project in this Himalayan colony and winning laurels for a trouble free Olympics (2008) in Beijing.
It was again Mr. Hu who skilfully used Chinese muscle to make Spainish government to rewrite its laws to protect Mr. Hu and his fellow Chinese leaders from facing a public law suit of crimes against humanity in Tibet.
One more account on which a hydraulic engineer Mr. Hu is respected among the Han Chinese masses is his outstanding 'Scientific outlook on Development'. In addition to taking Chinese rail to Tibet, he also leaves behind a well oiled project of diverting Tibet's river waters to parched lads of northern and eastern China -- so what if this project has put at stake the lives of millions of people living in a dozen other countries along the flow of these rivers?
In the case of Mr. Wen Jiabao one is not sure what history of China holds for him. But in the case of Mr. Hu Jintao it looks sure that he is destined to walk out as a great hero of present day China's history. The history of civilized world might one day put him in dock for his crimes against humanity. But who is sure if it will ever happen in history? Does anyone know? Even if the answer is 'yes', who cares?
MAKE IT A BURNING ISSUE
- by Jamyang Norbu ( Tibetan writer & critic )
Seventy Tibetans have, one after the other, in relentless and purposeful succession, set themselves on fire for the cause of their people’s freedom. If anything so heroic, selfless, spontaneous, non-instigated, and entirely non-violent* had happened anywhere else in the world, especially in the West or in places important to Western interests, like the Middle East or North Africa, these self-immolations would not only have become headline news but would have been discussed to death (if you will forgive the expression) in TV news-shows, chat-rooms, newspaper op-eds, editorials, blog-rooms, think-tank forums and so on. The issue could even have come up in the American presidential elections, and Tibetan TV viewers watching the foreign policy debate might have been amused by the vision of Mitt Romney scolding president Obama for ignoring the immolations in Tibet and “apologizing” to China – or its equivalent in this alternate reality.
But, of course, nothing of the kind has happened in our space-time continuum. Far from being the subject of international discussion the world media has given the Tibetan immolations the absolutely minimum attention it is possible to give to a major news story, without actually opening itself to the charge of deliberately and cynically ignoring the issue altogether.
All I’ve seen in the last couple of years in the New York Times, America’s proclaimed “newspaper of record” are a few bare-bones reports and the mandatory two-sentence synopses in its international news briefs. Recently a longer story appeared on Kirti monastery, with passing mention of the immolations, but one got the impression that the story was written largely because American ambassador Gary Locke paid a visit there. Tibetans everywhere are angry and frustrated, but not, I think, completely puzzled by this craven attitude of the world media and world political leadership. It doesn’t require great political sophistication to realize that China’s economic power has compromised many individuals, institutions, even nations in the free world. At the same time I am not sure that everyone is aware of how deeply the rot has set in.
For about a year now, every once a month or so, in the center of it front section, the New York Times has published a full double-page spread from the China Daily, the state-owned English-language newspaper of China, called “China Watch.” One issue of this was devoted to the Diaoyu/Senkaku dispute, featuring possibly the largest ever photograph of these tiny Islands ever published. Of course the coverage was straight-up Beijing propaganda. It should be noted that the Times does, once in a while, publish full-page issue-based statements from individuals and organizations, but these, are clearly paid-for advertisements and are indicated as such, and also evident in their lay-outs.
But for America’s “newspaper of record” to near regularly reprint a center-fold color spread from the official Chinese Communist propaganda organ, was bizarre enough that the New York Observer came out with a report on this oddity on August 26 last year, where it remarked on the misleading lay-out of China Watch in the New York Times. “It is marked as an advertisement (the gray blur in upper right and left corners), but otherwise resembles a newspaper layout.” The Observer also noted that “It even has an ad-within-the-ad that says that China Daily is launching a US weekly September 2.”
But of course no matter how craven (or money-grubbing) one feels the New York Times is being here, it is still, of course, not the People’s Daily or the old Pravda. The Times just came out with a major story on corruption within Chinese premier Wen Jiabao’s family, though I wondered why they did it just a month before Wen would be out of power, and not earlier? Wen Jiabao had been in office since 2003 and the stories of corruption in his family were not really new. But perhaps I am nitpicking.
I must make it clear that I am not saying that the New York Times, the BBC or CNN have not reported the immolations. Clearly they have all done so, though only to the minimally acceptable extent – CNN being the worst offender. Even the tone of the published reports have been uniformly clinical and impersonal as weather reports. But the big evasion in these reports is the lack of discussion on the fundamental cause for which these Tibetans burnt themselves.
And on this matter we cannot just assign blame on the international press and political leadership. The entire Tibetan exile leadership and many individual exiles and groups are also complicit in this knee jerk prevarication – this beating around the bush, whenever another immolation is reported. Of course, the Dharamshala administration through the Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) has regularly distributed reports on the immolations, and everyone down the line has made the appropriate remarks on how deplorable it all is. Prayer services, candle-light vigils and demonstrations are held. The Tibetan Parliament launched a major project, the “Flame of Truth” relay, modeled after the Olympic torch relay, to draw public attention to the immolations. The torch is, incidentally, a traditional butter-lamp (choe-gung) with a metal handle stuck at the bottom and a fake plastic flame rising from the top.
But on the issue of why people in Tibet are burning themselves everyone in Dharamshala invariably and skillfully skirts the issue with non specifics. In one instance the immolations were described as “… acts of protest against China’s policies in Tibet”. Which is so incredibly vague as to be ultimately meaningless.
What the Tibetan immolators have been calling for is the freedom and independence of Tibet, a message that was clearly put forward in the very recent immolations of two cousins Tsepo and Tenzin, in front of a government building in their village in Biru county north of Lhasa. All reports noted that they “called for independence for Tibet as they set themselves ablaze”. The call for Tibetan independence has also been made on other occasions in earlier immolation though more general calls for freedom (rangwang) have also been made. But most of the calls made have been for “The return of the Dalai Lama to Tibet.” This last slogan has allowed the immolations to be interpreted as essentially an issue of religious freedom which could be settled if China conducted negotiations with the Dalai Lama and allowed him to return.
In fact during a lecture I gave at McLeod Ganj this summer, a young monk in the audience, a Middle Way supporter, politely asked me this question: that since many of the immolators in Tibet had called for “the Dalai Lama’s return to Tibet”, wasn’t it more important for Tibetans to seek a way for the Dalai Lama to return to Tibet, than to keep up the struggle for Rangzen? It was a legitimate question. I had been thinking on this issue for quite sometime and I was glad for that opportunity to voice my conclusions in public.
All the immolators, indeed all Tibetans everywhere, absolutely want His Holiness to return to Tibet. But right now? With unprecedented security and military clampdowns throughout Tibet – and with troop strength, organizational capability, resources and technology many hundreds even thousands of time more than the PLA ever had in 1959, what would happen if the Dalai Lama returned to Lhasa and something went wrong. His chances of escaping would be absolutely nil. Furthermore there would be no armed resistance force like the 4 Rivers 6 Ranges that we had in ’59, nor the remnant of the old Tibetan army that spearheaded the Lhasa uprising and kept the Chinese forces in Lhasa pinned down for the few crucial days that allowed the Dalai Lama to escape. World opinion? What about international support for the Dalai Lama? Don’t count on it. Remember the obscene haste with which everyone rushed back to do business with China after the Tiananmen massacre.
No. I have too much respect for the intelligence and integrity of the immolators to think they were actually asking that the Dalai Lama return to Tibet right now. I think these people are using a kind of religio-historical metaphor, to personalize a broad political ideal and make it more immediate and meaningful to the common Tibetan. We should remember that Andrugtsang Gompo Tashi successfully used his project of building a golden throne for the Dalai Lama as a means of uniting various groups of Tibetans to ultimately form a resistance movement to fight for Tibet’s independence.
Political movements often use symbols and symbolic language . A relevant example from recent history would be the resounding slogan of the anti-apartheid movement in the eighties and nineties – “Free Nelson Mandela!” Nearly all the dramatic posters of that period had the graphic “Free Nelson Mandela, with a secondary message “Abolish Apartheid. or “Free South Africa”. A number of famous African signers and songwriters Johnny Clegg, Hugh Masekela, Brenda Fassie, Majek Fashek came out with songs with this message “Bring Him Back Home” and “Free Mandela” etc. The British musician and songwriter Jerry Dammers wrote “Free Nelson Mandela” which reaching No.9 in the British charts and became very popular in Africa.
Of course the ANC and the leaders of the anti-apartheid Movement were not saying that if Nelson Mandela were released then the problem of South African freedom was solved. What they were doing with the slogan “Free Mandela” was taking one of all too many political (and humanitarian) causes in Africa and the world, and giving it a unique and accessible brand; providing a distinctive human face, the face of a charismatic leader whose incarceration could symbolize the injustice and brutality that millions of blacks in South Africa were suffering under white rule.
It is vital for all Tibetans, supporters and the exile administration to appreciate the slogan “the Dalai Lama must return to Tibet” in this larger visionary spirit, and let the world know that Tibetans in Tibet are calling for a nothing less than the return of their sovereign ruler to his independent homeland. And that call is clearly not just a rhetorical one. The unbelievable courage, resolve and selfless sacrifice of the seventy self-immolators have so fundamentally changed the political dynamics in Tibet and so exponentially altered the revolutionary climate, that although His Holiness is now quite old at seventy-seven and has retired from office, it might be a good idea for his official biographer to hold off writing the final chapter on the Dalai Lama’s political legacy, at least least for the next five years.
________________
* Gandhi told his American biographer, Louis Fischer, that German Jews ought to commit collective suicide, which “would have aroused the world and the people of Germany to Hitler’s violence.” After the war he justified himself: the Jews had been killed anyway, and might as well have died significantly. In 1942, he urged non-violent resistance against a Japanese invasion, he was ready to admit that it might cost several million deaths. We also know that Mahatma Gandhi was absolutely prepared to die when he undertook his hunger strikes.
Seventy Tibetans have, one after the other, in relentless and purposeful succession, set themselves on fire for the cause of their people’s freedom. If anything so heroic, selfless, spontaneous, non-instigated, and entirely non-violent* had happened anywhere else in the world, especially in the West or in places important to Western interests, like the Middle East or North Africa, these self-immolations would not only have become headline news but would have been discussed to death (if you will forgive the expression) in TV news-shows, chat-rooms, newspaper op-eds, editorials, blog-rooms, think-tank forums and so on. The issue could even have come up in the American presidential elections, and Tibetan TV viewers watching the foreign policy debate might have been amused by the vision of Mitt Romney scolding president Obama for ignoring the immolations in Tibet and “apologizing” to China – or its equivalent in this alternate reality.
But, of course, nothing of the kind has happened in our space-time continuum. Far from being the subject of international discussion the world media has given the Tibetan immolations the absolutely minimum attention it is possible to give to a major news story, without actually opening itself to the charge of deliberately and cynically ignoring the issue altogether.
All I’ve seen in the last couple of years in the New York Times, America’s proclaimed “newspaper of record” are a few bare-bones reports and the mandatory two-sentence synopses in its international news briefs. Recently a longer story appeared on Kirti monastery, with passing mention of the immolations, but one got the impression that the story was written largely because American ambassador Gary Locke paid a visit there. Tibetans everywhere are angry and frustrated, but not, I think, completely puzzled by this craven attitude of the world media and world political leadership. It doesn’t require great political sophistication to realize that China’s economic power has compromised many individuals, institutions, even nations in the free world. At the same time I am not sure that everyone is aware of how deeply the rot has set in.
For about a year now, every once a month or so, in the center of it front section, the New York Times has published a full double-page spread from the China Daily, the state-owned English-language newspaper of China, called “China Watch.” One issue of this was devoted to the Diaoyu/Senkaku dispute, featuring possibly the largest ever photograph of these tiny Islands ever published. Of course the coverage was straight-up Beijing propaganda. It should be noted that the Times does, once in a while, publish full-page issue-based statements from individuals and organizations, but these, are clearly paid-for advertisements and are indicated as such, and also evident in their lay-outs.
But for America’s “newspaper of record” to near regularly reprint a center-fold color spread from the official Chinese Communist propaganda organ, was bizarre enough that the New York Observer came out with a report on this oddity on August 26 last year, where it remarked on the misleading lay-out of China Watch in the New York Times. “It is marked as an advertisement (the gray blur in upper right and left corners), but otherwise resembles a newspaper layout.” The Observer also noted that “It even has an ad-within-the-ad that says that China Daily is launching a US weekly September 2.”
But of course no matter how craven (or money-grubbing) one feels the New York Times is being here, it is still, of course, not the People’s Daily or the old Pravda. The Times just came out with a major story on corruption within Chinese premier Wen Jiabao’s family, though I wondered why they did it just a month before Wen would be out of power, and not earlier? Wen Jiabao had been in office since 2003 and the stories of corruption in his family were not really new. But perhaps I am nitpicking.
I must make it clear that I am not saying that the New York Times, the BBC or CNN have not reported the immolations. Clearly they have all done so, though only to the minimally acceptable extent – CNN being the worst offender. Even the tone of the published reports have been uniformly clinical and impersonal as weather reports. But the big evasion in these reports is the lack of discussion on the fundamental cause for which these Tibetans burnt themselves.
And on this matter we cannot just assign blame on the international press and political leadership. The entire Tibetan exile leadership and many individual exiles and groups are also complicit in this knee jerk prevarication – this beating around the bush, whenever another immolation is reported. Of course, the Dharamshala administration through the Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) has regularly distributed reports on the immolations, and everyone down the line has made the appropriate remarks on how deplorable it all is. Prayer services, candle-light vigils and demonstrations are held. The Tibetan Parliament launched a major project, the “Flame of Truth” relay, modeled after the Olympic torch relay, to draw public attention to the immolations. The torch is, incidentally, a traditional butter-lamp (choe-gung) with a metal handle stuck at the bottom and a fake plastic flame rising from the top.
But on the issue of why people in Tibet are burning themselves everyone in Dharamshala invariably and skillfully skirts the issue with non specifics. In one instance the immolations were described as “… acts of protest against China’s policies in Tibet”. Which is so incredibly vague as to be ultimately meaningless.
What the Tibetan immolators have been calling for is the freedom and independence of Tibet, a message that was clearly put forward in the very recent immolations of two cousins Tsepo and Tenzin, in front of a government building in their village in Biru county north of Lhasa. All reports noted that they “called for independence for Tibet as they set themselves ablaze”. The call for Tibetan independence has also been made on other occasions in earlier immolation though more general calls for freedom (rangwang) have also been made. But most of the calls made have been for “The return of the Dalai Lama to Tibet.” This last slogan has allowed the immolations to be interpreted as essentially an issue of religious freedom which could be settled if China conducted negotiations with the Dalai Lama and allowed him to return.
In fact during a lecture I gave at McLeod Ganj this summer, a young monk in the audience, a Middle Way supporter, politely asked me this question: that since many of the immolators in Tibet had called for “the Dalai Lama’s return to Tibet”, wasn’t it more important for Tibetans to seek a way for the Dalai Lama to return to Tibet, than to keep up the struggle for Rangzen? It was a legitimate question. I had been thinking on this issue for quite sometime and I was glad for that opportunity to voice my conclusions in public.
All the immolators, indeed all Tibetans everywhere, absolutely want His Holiness to return to Tibet. But right now? With unprecedented security and military clampdowns throughout Tibet – and with troop strength, organizational capability, resources and technology many hundreds even thousands of time more than the PLA ever had in 1959, what would happen if the Dalai Lama returned to Lhasa and something went wrong. His chances of escaping would be absolutely nil. Furthermore there would be no armed resistance force like the 4 Rivers 6 Ranges that we had in ’59, nor the remnant of the old Tibetan army that spearheaded the Lhasa uprising and kept the Chinese forces in Lhasa pinned down for the few crucial days that allowed the Dalai Lama to escape. World opinion? What about international support for the Dalai Lama? Don’t count on it. Remember the obscene haste with which everyone rushed back to do business with China after the Tiananmen massacre.
No. I have too much respect for the intelligence and integrity of the immolators to think they were actually asking that the Dalai Lama return to Tibet right now. I think these people are using a kind of religio-historical metaphor, to personalize a broad political ideal and make it more immediate and meaningful to the common Tibetan. We should remember that Andrugtsang Gompo Tashi successfully used his project of building a golden throne for the Dalai Lama as a means of uniting various groups of Tibetans to ultimately form a resistance movement to fight for Tibet’s independence.
Political movements often use symbols and symbolic language . A relevant example from recent history would be the resounding slogan of the anti-apartheid movement in the eighties and nineties – “Free Nelson Mandela!” Nearly all the dramatic posters of that period had the graphic “Free Nelson Mandela, with a secondary message “Abolish Apartheid. or “Free South Africa”. A number of famous African signers and songwriters Johnny Clegg, Hugh Masekela, Brenda Fassie, Majek Fashek came out with songs with this message “Bring Him Back Home” and “Free Mandela” etc. The British musician and songwriter Jerry Dammers wrote “Free Nelson Mandela” which reaching No.9 in the British charts and became very popular in Africa.
Of course the ANC and the leaders of the anti-apartheid Movement were not saying that if Nelson Mandela were released then the problem of South African freedom was solved. What they were doing with the slogan “Free Mandela” was taking one of all too many political (and humanitarian) causes in Africa and the world, and giving it a unique and accessible brand; providing a distinctive human face, the face of a charismatic leader whose incarceration could symbolize the injustice and brutality that millions of blacks in South Africa were suffering under white rule.
It is vital for all Tibetans, supporters and the exile administration to appreciate the slogan “the Dalai Lama must return to Tibet” in this larger visionary spirit, and let the world know that Tibetans in Tibet are calling for a nothing less than the return of their sovereign ruler to his independent homeland. And that call is clearly not just a rhetorical one. The unbelievable courage, resolve and selfless sacrifice of the seventy self-immolators have so fundamentally changed the political dynamics in Tibet and so exponentially altered the revolutionary climate, that although His Holiness is now quite old at seventy-seven and has retired from office, it might be a good idea for his official biographer to hold off writing the final chapter on the Dalai Lama’s political legacy, at least least for the next five years.
________________
* Gandhi told his American biographer, Louis Fischer, that German Jews ought to commit collective suicide, which “would have aroused the world and the people of Germany to Hitler’s violence.” After the war he justified himself: the Jews had been killed anyway, and might as well have died significantly. In 1942, he urged non-violent resistance against a Japanese invasion, he was ready to admit that it might cost several million deaths. We also know that Mahatma Gandhi was absolutely prepared to die when he undertook his hunger strikes.
Mainstream media and Tibetan Self-Immolations
Why isn't the western press more outraged?
- from the Asia Sentinel ( http://www.asiasentinel.com )
The number of Tibetans who have self-immolated crossed 50 last week as the struggle against the Chinese rule inside Tibet continues unabated. Since 2009, the same ghastly image of a burning Tibetan, most likely to be a monk or a nun in his or her 20s, has been repeating ad infinitum on the Tibetan plateau.
The global media, however, has remained relatively silent, even though the reports and images of the self-immolations have spread among social networking sites, generating both controversy and confusion.
The media's relatively muted coverage partly explains the lack of international response to the crisis unfolding inside Tibet. Scholars have often pointed out the correlation between media coverage of international events with the foreign policy priorities of the given nations.
Does the lack of coverage shows the Western world’s relative lack of direct material stake in Tibet and the growing influence of China? Or is it because Tibet is simply inaccessible to journalists, practically locked down to outside observers?
Such incidents have historically gained much bigger coverage in the past. The case of self-immolation of Vietnamese monk Thich Quang Duc who died protesting against the persecution of Buddhists by Vietnamese Roman Catholics in 1963 was reported by The New York Times – filed by its noted correspondent David Halberstarm – on the front page for several days.
In the case of Tibet, British papers have so far been slightly better, with the Guardian and the Economist writing about the issue. It is not Western writers who have written about it, however. Author Patrick French was one of the first to write about self-immolation in the context of Tibet when he opened his book Tibet, Tibet: The Personal History of a Lost Land with the image of Tibetan Thupten Ngodup who killed himself in 1998 in New Delhi, protesting against the Chinese rule in Tibet (“turning the violence inwards, killing himself and protecting others.”)
In the meantime, the Tibetan leadership based in exile is caught between a rock and a hard place. Supporting self-immolators send a major ripple effect across the Tibetan communities while the opposite is seen as insensitive if not weak by the Tibetan people.
"We have made several appeals to Tibetan people not to resort to drastic actions like self-immolation but it continues today,” said Lobsang Sangay, the prime minister of the Tibetan government-in-exile. “It brings sadness to Tibetan people and as Buddhists we pray for them."
Such measured responses by the Tibetan leadership have not gone down well with some segments of the Tibetan cause. Yet both the Tibetan leadership and the Tibetan people remain unified in their concern over the Western mainstream media’s indifference over the Tibetan fiasco.
The media’s role in highlighting the situation inside Tibet is not to be underestimated, particularly if seen from the critical role played by the press and social networking sites during the revolt in the Middle East. The death of Tunisian Mohammed Boazizi and media reports of it touched off the Arab Spring. There is a definite link between the media’s silence on Tibetan self-immolations and the lack of international response towards it. (The economist Amartya Sen, for instance, had noted how famines have never occurred in a functioning democracy with a vibrant media.)
Quite ironically, the mainstream media’s mild response shows precisely why Tibetans were forced to take such drastic measures to win sympathy for their cause, as suggested the title of the Prime Minister Sangay’s own op-ed piece in the Washington Post in June of this year – headlined “For Tibetans, No Other Way of Protest.”
“Denied the right to less extreme forms of protest,” he wrote in the piece. “Tibetans are setting fire to themselves as political action.”
Indeed, much discussion centers around whether the self-immolation is a religious ritual or political protest as illustrated by a seminar organized by a consortium of French Asian-studies departments in Paris in May 2012: “Tibet Burning: Ritual or a Political Protest?”
Both it seems are true. But the question why the self-immolation is occurring is less important than asking what effects they are likely to have. And for outside observers, it is of course difficult to understand the exact motivation of the self-immolators.
Except for the letters left behind by the protesters, it is hard to access the thoughts of those carrying out self-immolation. Nonetheless, the commonplace thesis is that for Buddhist Tibetans, denied any recourse to protest, self-immolation offers the easiest means of non-violent political protest.
“Traditionally, ascetic practice targeted an inner enemy: selfish clinging, vanity, enmity,” wrote a professor of Tibetan Buddhism Janet Gyatso of Harvard University in journal Cultural Anthropology, earlier this year. “Today the target of Tibet’s recent self-immolations is an outer enemy: an intrusive, repressive, unsympathetic state.”
Yet the state is not an easy enemy. Pictures on the Internet blogs show masses of Chinese policeman walking around Lhasa armed with fire extinguishers, aimed to deny the Tibetan protesters the right to determine their own death.
Luckily, as the cases of self-immolations in Tibet grow, there has been a slight increase in media coverage. Reports also point out that situation might change for the better with the upcoming leadership shuffle in China. Also on September 1, China announced Ling Jihua, an ally of president Hu Jintao would take over the powerful United Front Department, the body in charge of dealing with negotiations with the representatives of the Dalai Lama.
Observers believe it is too early to say if Ling could break the impasse in China-Tibet negotiations that had persisted under his hard-line predecessor Du Qinglin.
A change in key leadership has also taken place in Tibet’s exile government. Earlier this year, the Dalai Lama’s long-time envoys to Beijing, Gyari Lodro Gyaltsen and Kyalsang Gyaltsen have stepped down – and the Tibetan administration is yet to fill in the vacated posts. Later this month, members of the exiled Tibetan community are to gather in Dharamsala to brainstorm how best to move forward with their negotiations with China and map out a unified response to the crisis unfolding inside Tibet.
The media is a powerful force of political change – as we saw in the Middle East and elsewhere – and its role could not be emphasized more, especially in a place as heavily censored as Tibet.
(The writer is a Tibetan writer and journalist based in the US.)
Why isn't the western press more outraged?
- from the Asia Sentinel ( http://www.asiasentinel.com )
The number of Tibetans who have self-immolated crossed 50 last week as the struggle against the Chinese rule inside Tibet continues unabated. Since 2009, the same ghastly image of a burning Tibetan, most likely to be a monk or a nun in his or her 20s, has been repeating ad infinitum on the Tibetan plateau.
The global media, however, has remained relatively silent, even though the reports and images of the self-immolations have spread among social networking sites, generating both controversy and confusion.
The media's relatively muted coverage partly explains the lack of international response to the crisis unfolding inside Tibet. Scholars have often pointed out the correlation between media coverage of international events with the foreign policy priorities of the given nations.
Does the lack of coverage shows the Western world’s relative lack of direct material stake in Tibet and the growing influence of China? Or is it because Tibet is simply inaccessible to journalists, practically locked down to outside observers?
Such incidents have historically gained much bigger coverage in the past. The case of self-immolation of Vietnamese monk Thich Quang Duc who died protesting against the persecution of Buddhists by Vietnamese Roman Catholics in 1963 was reported by The New York Times – filed by its noted correspondent David Halberstarm – on the front page for several days.
In the case of Tibet, British papers have so far been slightly better, with the Guardian and the Economist writing about the issue. It is not Western writers who have written about it, however. Author Patrick French was one of the first to write about self-immolation in the context of Tibet when he opened his book Tibet, Tibet: The Personal History of a Lost Land with the image of Tibetan Thupten Ngodup who killed himself in 1998 in New Delhi, protesting against the Chinese rule in Tibet (“turning the violence inwards, killing himself and protecting others.”)
In the meantime, the Tibetan leadership based in exile is caught between a rock and a hard place. Supporting self-immolators send a major ripple effect across the Tibetan communities while the opposite is seen as insensitive if not weak by the Tibetan people.
"We have made several appeals to Tibetan people not to resort to drastic actions like self-immolation but it continues today,” said Lobsang Sangay, the prime minister of the Tibetan government-in-exile. “It brings sadness to Tibetan people and as Buddhists we pray for them."
Such measured responses by the Tibetan leadership have not gone down well with some segments of the Tibetan cause. Yet both the Tibetan leadership and the Tibetan people remain unified in their concern over the Western mainstream media’s indifference over the Tibetan fiasco.
The media’s role in highlighting the situation inside Tibet is not to be underestimated, particularly if seen from the critical role played by the press and social networking sites during the revolt in the Middle East. The death of Tunisian Mohammed Boazizi and media reports of it touched off the Arab Spring. There is a definite link between the media’s silence on Tibetan self-immolations and the lack of international response towards it. (The economist Amartya Sen, for instance, had noted how famines have never occurred in a functioning democracy with a vibrant media.)
Quite ironically, the mainstream media’s mild response shows precisely why Tibetans were forced to take such drastic measures to win sympathy for their cause, as suggested the title of the Prime Minister Sangay’s own op-ed piece in the Washington Post in June of this year – headlined “For Tibetans, No Other Way of Protest.”
“Denied the right to less extreme forms of protest,” he wrote in the piece. “Tibetans are setting fire to themselves as political action.”
Indeed, much discussion centers around whether the self-immolation is a religious ritual or political protest as illustrated by a seminar organized by a consortium of French Asian-studies departments in Paris in May 2012: “Tibet Burning: Ritual or a Political Protest?”
Both it seems are true. But the question why the self-immolation is occurring is less important than asking what effects they are likely to have. And for outside observers, it is of course difficult to understand the exact motivation of the self-immolators.
Except for the letters left behind by the protesters, it is hard to access the thoughts of those carrying out self-immolation. Nonetheless, the commonplace thesis is that for Buddhist Tibetans, denied any recourse to protest, self-immolation offers the easiest means of non-violent political protest.
“Traditionally, ascetic practice targeted an inner enemy: selfish clinging, vanity, enmity,” wrote a professor of Tibetan Buddhism Janet Gyatso of Harvard University in journal Cultural Anthropology, earlier this year. “Today the target of Tibet’s recent self-immolations is an outer enemy: an intrusive, repressive, unsympathetic state.”
Yet the state is not an easy enemy. Pictures on the Internet blogs show masses of Chinese policeman walking around Lhasa armed with fire extinguishers, aimed to deny the Tibetan protesters the right to determine their own death.
Luckily, as the cases of self-immolations in Tibet grow, there has been a slight increase in media coverage. Reports also point out that situation might change for the better with the upcoming leadership shuffle in China. Also on September 1, China announced Ling Jihua, an ally of president Hu Jintao would take over the powerful United Front Department, the body in charge of dealing with negotiations with the representatives of the Dalai Lama.
Observers believe it is too early to say if Ling could break the impasse in China-Tibet negotiations that had persisted under his hard-line predecessor Du Qinglin.
A change in key leadership has also taken place in Tibet’s exile government. Earlier this year, the Dalai Lama’s long-time envoys to Beijing, Gyari Lodro Gyaltsen and Kyalsang Gyaltsen have stepped down – and the Tibetan administration is yet to fill in the vacated posts. Later this month, members of the exiled Tibetan community are to gather in Dharamsala to brainstorm how best to move forward with their negotiations with China and map out a unified response to the crisis unfolding inside Tibet.
The media is a powerful force of political change – as we saw in the Middle East and elsewhere – and its role could not be emphasized more, especially in a place as heavily censored as Tibet.
(The writer is a Tibetan writer and journalist based in the US.)
Tibet's political future lies in 'Middle Way'
By Lobsang Sangay
August 2011 was a notable month for democracy for the peoples of Thailand and Tibet. On August 5, Thailand voted in its first female prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra. On August 8 last year, I was inaugurated as the first Tibetan political leader to be democratically elected and took over the leadership under a new governing system in which the Dalai Lama ceased to have political authority.
Although Tibet and Thailand share Buddhist culture, our traditional political cultures have been different. Whereas in Thailand the king was the temporal ruler, in Tibet for around 400 years the Dalai Lama was the temporal, as well as spiritual, leader.
In 2011, despite impassioned appeals by many Tibetans, His Holiness the Dalai Lama officially relinquished his political power, to remain only the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people.
His Holiness voluntarily gave up his power to dismiss the Tibetan parliament, judiciary and executive; to sign or veto bills; and to summon emergency meetings. This change surprised many, but in fact His Holiness has been quietly moving the traditional Tibetan governing system towards democracy for many decades.
The democratically elected "Kalon Tripa" (the office I currently hold) is now the political leader of the Central Tibetan Administration - the India-based governing administration of Tibetans-in-exile.
As Tibetans mark the anniversary of the democratic transition, we also reflect on a year marked by anguish and tragedy due to a wave of self-immolations by Tibetans in Tibet protesting against Chinese government policies. This form of protest was rarely seen in the past. Since last year, the scale has become shocking. The first immolation in recent times took place in 2009 when a young monk, Tapey, set himself on fire at a marketplace near Kirti Monastery (Sichuan) in eastern Tibet.
But these incidents were just the beginning. Since August 2011, 43 Tibetans have set themselves on fire while shouting slogans for the return of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to Tibet and crying of freedom for Tibetans. Most were young and included monks, nuns, nomads and students. The majority have died.
These self-immolations have continued despite the fact that His Holiness the Dalai Lama has always emphasized the sanctity of human life, and despite repeated appeals by the Central Tibetan Administration to refrain from such drastic actions.
Self-immolation may seem incomprehensible, but such acts must be viewed in its context.
Most of the self-immolators were current or former monks and nuns. It is impossible not to see repressive Chinese government policies as the root of their despair. "Management Committees", dominated by Chinese cadres, have been rigorously instituted in all monasteries. These committees dictate what monks and nuns should do, how they should pray, and who should be allowed into monasteries. All monasteries must display pictures of Mao Zedong and China's current president, Hu Jintao, and fly the Chinese flag.
In numerous monasteries, forced patriotic re-education campaigns are underway. Monks or nuns refusing to cooperate with Chinese policies are evicted from monasteries or arrested. According to the abbot of Kirti Monastery, the government not only installed surveillance cameras but deployed as many as 800 security officials inside monastery in 2011.
Under the "Strike Hard" campaign monks and nuns are forced to denounce the Dalai Lama and to stamp on his photo, which is banned all over Tibet.
But it is not only the religious community that face injustice. Far from the promised "socialist paradise", Tibetans suffer under political oppression, social marginalization, and cultural assimilation, while the so-called "development" policies have seriously degraded the Tibetan environment.
In such conditions, hopelessness can set in among religious and lay Tibetans, especially when they feel that their suffering is not being noted, let alone addressed. Self-immolation is a way of making their voices heard.
On becoming Kalon Tripa I committed to the "Middle-Way" policy initiated by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. This policy does not seek independence - an enormous concession for Tibetans who believe Tibet was always independent prior to 1951 - but genuine autonomy for Tibet within the People's Republic of China. Under the Middle Way, China would be responsible for defense and Tibet's foreign affairs, but Tibetan people would manage other affairs pertaining to Tibet, such as religion and culture, education, economy, health and environment protection. US President Barack Obama and the European Union among many other voices in the international community have expressed support for the Middle Way concept.
The Middle Way policy does not seek to "split the motherland", and it does not undermine the dignity of China and the Chinese people. Indeed, I believe accepting the validity of the policy would greatly raise China's moral standing in the eyes of many.
People who feel respected and in control of their destiny do not set themselves on fire in acts of protest.
About the author : Dr Lobsang Sangay, a former senior fellow at Harvard Law School, is the Kalon Tripa (chief political leader) of the Central Tibetan Administration.
China’s top two obsessions — loyalty and Party
By Claude Arpi
In recent times, China has had two obsessions: stability and loyalty to the Party. China watchers know that when Beijing’s State machinery starts hammering a certain issue on the masses, it usually means that the leadership has a serious predicament.
Take the example of general Guo Boxiong, Politburo member and vice chairman of the powerful Central Military Commission (CMC); he recently reiterated that the armed forces “must resolutely follow the Party’s command and remain absolutely loyal and reliable”.
The senior-most PLA general said the Party must have “absolute leadership over the armed forces”, adding: “this will ensure that the armed forces ideologically, politically and in action resolutely follow the command of the Party”.Does it mean that some of the PLA think differently? Probably. Xinhua also reported that Zhou Yongkang, member of the all-powerful Politburo’s Standing Committee in charge of Security, who was recently in the news for his association with Bo Xilai, the disgraced Party boss of Chongqing, told a national conference in Beijing that maintaining stability was “the highest priority for the Party and government organisations at all levels”.
Tibet has been another obsession. Apparently, several high-level Party meetings were held, as for the first time the top leadership realized that the Dalai Lama’s demise will not solve the restive region’s issue. Zhou Yongkang specifically mentioned Tibet: “Campaigns against separatism and terrorism should be deepened and any sabotage attempts by domestic and overseas groups must… ensure the stability in key regions such as Beijing, Xinjiang and Tibet”.
The Tibet trip of Standing Committee member Li Changchun, who is in charge of the propaganda, should be seen in this perspective. One of Li’s initiatives is to re-popularise Marxism with Chinese characteristics. As chairman of the CPC Central Guidance Commission for Building Spiritual Civilisation, Li is also responsible for the Party’s propaganda. It’s not an easy job, because he has to censure more than 550 million netizens. Li’s visit to Lhasa is the second in a year by a member of the Standing Committee (vice president Xi Jinping visited in July last year). It shows the interest that the bosses of the Middle Kingdom have in Tibet, especially after the 44 self-immolations, mainly by monks in the Tibetan-inhabited areas of Sichuan, Gansu and Qinghai.
Xinhua reported: “[Li] has stressed ethnic unity and cultural development in southwest China’s Tibet Autonomous Region, as well as building an ideological basis for anti-secession and stability maintenance.”
When China’s propaganda boss visited the headquarters of The Tibet Daily, the local mouthpiece of the Party, he asked the staff to “introduce a real and changing Tibet to the whole world”. Well, that it not easy, when Tibet is still closed to foreign tourists. Logically, if Tibet was ‘changing’ for the best, as Li pretends, why not open it for all to see these changes?But perhaps, more importantly for India, Li Changchun was the second member of the Standing Committee in one year to visit ‘Southern Tibet’ and particularly Nyingchi Prefecture, north of the McMahon Line. He is said to have visited the local villages in Lunang county, near the Yarlung Tsangpo (Brahmaputra) gorges.
During his last visit to Nyingchi, vice president Xi Jinping had described Tibet “as an important national security screen for the country”. Two members of the Standing Committee visiting the border areas in one year! It is a first. India should watch carefully.
This comes at a time when, according to the weekly India Today, the Research and Analysis Wing prepared a report indicating that there was a possibility of a skirmish or an incident triggered by China on the Line of Actual Control (LAC). India Today said that the note mentioned that “Beijing was contemplating such an action to divert attention from its own domestic trouble”. The RAW substantiated its claim by pointing to increased Chinese activity along the LAC.
The note would have taken into consideration the fact that Beijing believes that the Dalai Lama is ‘fomenting trouble’ in Tibet, particularly the self-immolations. The report apparently concluded: “A prolonged conflict is, however, unlikely”.
Though it is not clear what China would gain from a Kargil-type operation in Tawang area or in Ladakh, there would certainly be a strong response from Delhi. Even though India may not be able to take on China on an equal basis, Indian retaliation could definitively hurt China; first and foremost the image of a dependable, trustworthy power with who one can deal, would be shattered. The fact remains that stability of the border areas and unquestionable loyalty to Party will continue to be the refrain for the months to come, at least till the new leadership takes over China.
About the author : Claude Arpi regularly writes on the geopolitics of the two sides of the Himalaya and the Indian sub-continent, environment and Indo-French relations. He blogs at ClaudeArpi.blogspot.com.
By Lobsang Sangay
August 2011 was a notable month for democracy for the peoples of Thailand and Tibet. On August 5, Thailand voted in its first female prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra. On August 8 last year, I was inaugurated as the first Tibetan political leader to be democratically elected and took over the leadership under a new governing system in which the Dalai Lama ceased to have political authority.
Although Tibet and Thailand share Buddhist culture, our traditional political cultures have been different. Whereas in Thailand the king was the temporal ruler, in Tibet for around 400 years the Dalai Lama was the temporal, as well as spiritual, leader.
In 2011, despite impassioned appeals by many Tibetans, His Holiness the Dalai Lama officially relinquished his political power, to remain only the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people.
His Holiness voluntarily gave up his power to dismiss the Tibetan parliament, judiciary and executive; to sign or veto bills; and to summon emergency meetings. This change surprised many, but in fact His Holiness has been quietly moving the traditional Tibetan governing system towards democracy for many decades.
The democratically elected "Kalon Tripa" (the office I currently hold) is now the political leader of the Central Tibetan Administration - the India-based governing administration of Tibetans-in-exile.
As Tibetans mark the anniversary of the democratic transition, we also reflect on a year marked by anguish and tragedy due to a wave of self-immolations by Tibetans in Tibet protesting against Chinese government policies. This form of protest was rarely seen in the past. Since last year, the scale has become shocking. The first immolation in recent times took place in 2009 when a young monk, Tapey, set himself on fire at a marketplace near Kirti Monastery (Sichuan) in eastern Tibet.
But these incidents were just the beginning. Since August 2011, 43 Tibetans have set themselves on fire while shouting slogans for the return of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to Tibet and crying of freedom for Tibetans. Most were young and included monks, nuns, nomads and students. The majority have died.
These self-immolations have continued despite the fact that His Holiness the Dalai Lama has always emphasized the sanctity of human life, and despite repeated appeals by the Central Tibetan Administration to refrain from such drastic actions.
Self-immolation may seem incomprehensible, but such acts must be viewed in its context.
Most of the self-immolators were current or former monks and nuns. It is impossible not to see repressive Chinese government policies as the root of their despair. "Management Committees", dominated by Chinese cadres, have been rigorously instituted in all monasteries. These committees dictate what monks and nuns should do, how they should pray, and who should be allowed into monasteries. All monasteries must display pictures of Mao Zedong and China's current president, Hu Jintao, and fly the Chinese flag.
In numerous monasteries, forced patriotic re-education campaigns are underway. Monks or nuns refusing to cooperate with Chinese policies are evicted from monasteries or arrested. According to the abbot of Kirti Monastery, the government not only installed surveillance cameras but deployed as many as 800 security officials inside monastery in 2011.
Under the "Strike Hard" campaign monks and nuns are forced to denounce the Dalai Lama and to stamp on his photo, which is banned all over Tibet.
But it is not only the religious community that face injustice. Far from the promised "socialist paradise", Tibetans suffer under political oppression, social marginalization, and cultural assimilation, while the so-called "development" policies have seriously degraded the Tibetan environment.
In such conditions, hopelessness can set in among religious and lay Tibetans, especially when they feel that their suffering is not being noted, let alone addressed. Self-immolation is a way of making their voices heard.
On becoming Kalon Tripa I committed to the "Middle-Way" policy initiated by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. This policy does not seek independence - an enormous concession for Tibetans who believe Tibet was always independent prior to 1951 - but genuine autonomy for Tibet within the People's Republic of China. Under the Middle Way, China would be responsible for defense and Tibet's foreign affairs, but Tibetan people would manage other affairs pertaining to Tibet, such as religion and culture, education, economy, health and environment protection. US President Barack Obama and the European Union among many other voices in the international community have expressed support for the Middle Way concept.
The Middle Way policy does not seek to "split the motherland", and it does not undermine the dignity of China and the Chinese people. Indeed, I believe accepting the validity of the policy would greatly raise China's moral standing in the eyes of many.
People who feel respected and in control of their destiny do not set themselves on fire in acts of protest.
About the author : Dr Lobsang Sangay, a former senior fellow at Harvard Law School, is the Kalon Tripa (chief political leader) of the Central Tibetan Administration.
China’s top two obsessions — loyalty and Party
By Claude Arpi
In recent times, China has had two obsessions: stability and loyalty to the Party. China watchers know that when Beijing’s State machinery starts hammering a certain issue on the masses, it usually means that the leadership has a serious predicament.
Take the example of general Guo Boxiong, Politburo member and vice chairman of the powerful Central Military Commission (CMC); he recently reiterated that the armed forces “must resolutely follow the Party’s command and remain absolutely loyal and reliable”.
The senior-most PLA general said the Party must have “absolute leadership over the armed forces”, adding: “this will ensure that the armed forces ideologically, politically and in action resolutely follow the command of the Party”.Does it mean that some of the PLA think differently? Probably. Xinhua also reported that Zhou Yongkang, member of the all-powerful Politburo’s Standing Committee in charge of Security, who was recently in the news for his association with Bo Xilai, the disgraced Party boss of Chongqing, told a national conference in Beijing that maintaining stability was “the highest priority for the Party and government organisations at all levels”.
Tibet has been another obsession. Apparently, several high-level Party meetings were held, as for the first time the top leadership realized that the Dalai Lama’s demise will not solve the restive region’s issue. Zhou Yongkang specifically mentioned Tibet: “Campaigns against separatism and terrorism should be deepened and any sabotage attempts by domestic and overseas groups must… ensure the stability in key regions such as Beijing, Xinjiang and Tibet”.
The Tibet trip of Standing Committee member Li Changchun, who is in charge of the propaganda, should be seen in this perspective. One of Li’s initiatives is to re-popularise Marxism with Chinese characteristics. As chairman of the CPC Central Guidance Commission for Building Spiritual Civilisation, Li is also responsible for the Party’s propaganda. It’s not an easy job, because he has to censure more than 550 million netizens. Li’s visit to Lhasa is the second in a year by a member of the Standing Committee (vice president Xi Jinping visited in July last year). It shows the interest that the bosses of the Middle Kingdom have in Tibet, especially after the 44 self-immolations, mainly by monks in the Tibetan-inhabited areas of Sichuan, Gansu and Qinghai.
Xinhua reported: “[Li] has stressed ethnic unity and cultural development in southwest China’s Tibet Autonomous Region, as well as building an ideological basis for anti-secession and stability maintenance.”
When China’s propaganda boss visited the headquarters of The Tibet Daily, the local mouthpiece of the Party, he asked the staff to “introduce a real and changing Tibet to the whole world”. Well, that it not easy, when Tibet is still closed to foreign tourists. Logically, if Tibet was ‘changing’ for the best, as Li pretends, why not open it for all to see these changes?But perhaps, more importantly for India, Li Changchun was the second member of the Standing Committee in one year to visit ‘Southern Tibet’ and particularly Nyingchi Prefecture, north of the McMahon Line. He is said to have visited the local villages in Lunang county, near the Yarlung Tsangpo (Brahmaputra) gorges.
During his last visit to Nyingchi, vice president Xi Jinping had described Tibet “as an important national security screen for the country”. Two members of the Standing Committee visiting the border areas in one year! It is a first. India should watch carefully.
This comes at a time when, according to the weekly India Today, the Research and Analysis Wing prepared a report indicating that there was a possibility of a skirmish or an incident triggered by China on the Line of Actual Control (LAC). India Today said that the note mentioned that “Beijing was contemplating such an action to divert attention from its own domestic trouble”. The RAW substantiated its claim by pointing to increased Chinese activity along the LAC.
The note would have taken into consideration the fact that Beijing believes that the Dalai Lama is ‘fomenting trouble’ in Tibet, particularly the self-immolations. The report apparently concluded: “A prolonged conflict is, however, unlikely”.
Though it is not clear what China would gain from a Kargil-type operation in Tawang area or in Ladakh, there would certainly be a strong response from Delhi. Even though India may not be able to take on China on an equal basis, Indian retaliation could definitively hurt China; first and foremost the image of a dependable, trustworthy power with who one can deal, would be shattered. The fact remains that stability of the border areas and unquestionable loyalty to Party will continue to be the refrain for the months to come, at least till the new leadership takes over China.
About the author : Claude Arpi regularly writes on the geopolitics of the two sides of the Himalaya and the Indian sub-continent, environment and Indo-French relations. He blogs at ClaudeArpi.blogspot.com.