ETERAZ

Last month saw a series of protests and violent confrontations between Tibetans and Chinese security forces as sporadic clashes and violence spread across Tibet and the Tibetan diaspora within China proper, India and Nepal. After the initial riots of March 14 in Lhasa, tens of thousands of Tibetans within China undertook some 63 protests in solidarity with their compatriots. The violence not only engaged the China’s People’s Armed Police (PAP), which heavily populates Tibet’s main urban centers, but witnessed bouts of indiscriminate ethnic violence against Tibet’s considerable Han Chinese and Hui Muslim population -- in which innocent civilians were attacked and some 1000 Chinese businesses were set on fire and even more vandalized by rioters, resulting in large numbers of casualties.

Though media access was severely limited by Chinese authorities as the PAP began to move into Lhasa to confront rioters, the Chinese response appeared to be relatively restrained, compared with previous years. In December 1988 for example, the use of lethal force against protestors brandishing the Tibetan flag was not uncommon. Nevertheless, the exiled Tibetan government claims some 80 Tibetans were shot dead by Chinese forces in Lhasa alone. The main reason behind this newfound ‘restraint’ is of course, the Beijing Olympic Games, which has all the international community’s major players watching with bated breath to see how China will respond to this latest show of Tibetan malcontent.

It’s imperative to note that ethnic violence on this scale doesn’t simply occur in a vacuum, but has a long, painful and complicated history. A number of respected analysts have stated that these latest outbursts of rebellion in Lhasa were easily predictable, and to be expected in any city in which concerted efforts to affect a reversal in its traditional demography and cultural complexion have continued unabated, while local disagreement and deliberation have been curtailed. Much like the predominantly spontaneous and non-violent revolt, otherwise known as the Palestinian intifada -- which took place within the Occupied Territories against the Israeli Defense Forces in 1987 -- many Tibetans have simply had enough of the ongoing influx of Han Chinese and Hui Muslim migrants. Since 2006 the situation has been even further exacerbated with the opening of the Chinese railway line connecting Tibet to neighboring Qinghai Province, and the tacit encouragement of yet more Chinese migration into Tibetan towns. The Chinese migrants are seen as enjoying a privileged position vis-à-vis their indigenous Tibetan neighbors, 85 percent of which continue to inhabit the countryside and live on little more than a dollar a day; all while being forced, for fear of state reprisals, to stand idly by as their cultural and political autonomy dwindles away to virtually nil.

The revival of a more militant stance toward Beijing amongst Tibetan youth and laypeople, some have speculated, might well lead to a crisis in the Dalai Lama’s traditional authority, as the breach between a new generation of Tibetans on the ground, and their revered leader in exile begins to steadily widen. The Dalai Lama has even threatened to resign his position if the violence continues and renounced claims to Tibetan independence some 20 years ago. His objective in the present round of talks taking place between the Tibetan exiles and the Chinese government is for what he calls recognition of Tibet’s ‘meaningful autonomy’, which respects and acknowledges the distinctiveness of the Tibetan language, religion and culture -- previously ravaged and battered in the course of Mao’s Cultural Revolution in the latter half of the 1960s. The modest aim of partial self-governance and Tibet’s demilitarization is the dream to which he above all aspires. A war of attrition has continued to be waged by the central government in the campaign to undermine and ultimately extirpate the sources of Tibetan national character and nationalism. The recent protests are surely evidence of such a campaign’s abject failure, as Tibetan nationalism seems as fervent as ever.

The Dalai Lama is undeniably an iconic and inspiring figure with a unique place amongst foreign statesman on the international stage, possessing a truly remarkable admixture of both spiritual and political guidance, which stretches well beyond the confines of his homeland, and thus able to provide him with an unparalleled global reach and constituency. His jovial and humble manner certainly haven’t hurt him either, since the ubiquitous image of the Dalai Lama is of a sweet, eminently approachable, charismatic and likeable man, who reminds us of that gentle and loving grandfather we all had or at one time, wished we had. Unlike other world leaders, the Dalai Lama gives off a dignified air that transcends the partisan fray of petty and demeaning squabbles that so often consume the public image of our more traditional politicians. He’s an individual, whose stature perhaps finds its only living counterpart in Nelson Mandela, as an object of near-universal praise and devotion beyond the destructive battle for supremacy betwixt left and right. Such an appeal owes a great deal not only to the man’s patent courage and integrity, but as a number of his biographers have noted, to a life of exile and dispossession from his native Tibet.

With close to 50 years living in exile, and the very real possibility that he may never return home, have propelled the Dalai Lama out of his formerly cloistered existence to travel and interact with a slew of world leaders and disparate peoples, cultures, religions and climates, to popularize both the plight of the Tibetan people in their quest for recognition and autonomy, and the spiritual vision embodied in the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism. Despite the Dalai Lama’s famed congeniality, it was his state of exile that afforded the hitherto unheard of opportunity to gain a global audience, and observe first-hand, all the trappings of the rapidly evolving scientific and technological revolutions, well underway by the time he fled Tibet.

Tenzin Gyatso, better known as the fourteenth Dalai Lama, was the fifth child of sixteen, born to a farming family in the village of Taktser, Qinghai province. He was discovered by monks who had been scouring the whole of Tibet upon the death of the thirteenth Dalai Lama in search of the latter’s reincarnate personage. Upon his discovery, Tenzin Gyatso was only two years old. On November 17, 1950, at the age of 15, he was enthroned as Tibet's Dalai Lama; thus becoming Tibet's most important political ruler, only a year prior to the invasion of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army at the behest of Chairman Mao Zedong.

As a child, he was always thought to be a very curious and gregarious little boy, but due to his sacrosanct status was forced to make do with a rigorously controlled and filtered access to the outside world. As a young boy, and later as an adolescent, he regularly day-dreamed of traveling the world and embarking upon all sorts of adventures, characterized by a profound longing to experience and explore the world beyond the realm of all that had been familiar. Such longing was destined to be fulfilled, but at the devastating cost of never being able to return to the beloved world into which he had been born.

After initially ratifying, under military pressure, the 1951 Seventeen Point Agreement which sealed Tibet’s annexation by China, the Dalai Lama continued to nominally rule Tibet. Eight years later, Gyatso escaped Tibet for India following the failed uprising and collapse of the Tibetan resistance movement in 1959. It was in his newly adopted home of Dharamsala, India that he committed himself to the establishment of a Tibetan Government in Exile, and openly repudiated the infamous Seventeen Point Agreement to the chagrin of the Chinese government, and has since endeavored to preserve Tibetan culture and education among the thousands of refugees who followed him into exile. The Indian Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, welcomed and provided basic support for the Tibetan government, but refused to recognize it, as did the United Nations, for fear of antagonizing China. Some years later, in 1963, the Dalai Lama drew up a democratic constitution and in a move that upset many Tibetans, even stipulated a clause for his impeachment should it ever become necessary.

The recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, the Dalai Lama has continued to propagate a message of compassion, spirituality and non-violence by lecturing and delivering talks around the world some nine months out of every year. The Dalai Lama is widely revered as an exemplary spiritual leader in a world where spirituality has been largely eclipsed by the modern world of science, technology and economic individualism. And it is in this respect that celebrities such as Richard Gere and others have sought out his council regarding modern spirituality. It is often forgotten however, that the Dalai Lama is also the political leader of the Tibetan people. It is this role that has taken center stage as a result of the recent ethnic unrest and violence when protestors flooded the streets of Lhasa, to commemorate and coincide with the forty-ninth anniversary of the unsuccessful revolt against Chinese rule in 1959.

The Olympic Games, which are to begin this August in Beijing, were originally touted as the ideal opportunity to give greater impetus to ‘the great opening up’ of China, which began all the way back in 1972 with the much feted meeting of Richard Nixon and Chairman Mao. This was in fact one of the arguments proposed by the Chinese Olympic Committee in favor of their bid to host the Games. It seems however, that in light of recent events, perhaps the Chinese government’s fanfare after winning the Olympic bid, was somewhat premature and in their eagerness to host the games failed to realize that with the world’s spotlight shining down on China, those groups and parties who’ve felt marginalized and oppressed, might be emboldened and jump at the chance to broadcast their plight to an international audience and embarrass Beijing.

The Games clearly had great potential to convey an image of China as a vital and valued member of the international community, to be both admired and emulated. But all seemingly great plans usually harbor beneath the surface unexpected and damaging repercussions. The Achilles heel, so to speak, of China hosting the Olympic Games is that domestic and international dissent and anger at both Chinese domestic and foreign policy, which had been heretofore quietly bubbling beneath the surface, are finally out of the box. The question of course is whether China will ever be able to once again rein in the darker under belly of its ‘economic miracle’ back from whence it came. China’s colonization of Tibet and support for the Sudanese government complicit in the genocide taking place in Darfur are hardly bound to leave the international stage any time soon. But how China’s leaders will weather the criticism is the pointed question on everyone’s lips.

Footnotes

Thunder from Tibet, Robert Barnett, The New York Review of Books, Volume 55, Number 9, May 29, 2008

2 Ibid