Been in the news an awful lot recently. I have a question and for some reason can’t seem to google the answer.
Some time ago I saw a Penn & Teller Bullshit episode about Tibet and they seemed to suggest that the Dalai Lama etc. was just Beijing-lite when it came to regard for human rights (their argument was based on pre-invasion Tibet and how it was hardly a nice place for non-monk civilians).
Does the campaign want Tibet to become a full democracy with western style regard for human rights or are they simply campaigning for the Dalai Lama to regain political power? Would the people of Tibet be swapping Chinese repression for a theocratic dictatorship?
It took about two minutes to find the site for Free Tibet. It’s not a “front” for the Dalai Lama.
The group seems to be campaigning against specific abuses, involving political prisoners, cultural & environmental matters. On the link page, on sees words like “democracy.”
One doesn’t just “swap” governments. There’s not a theocracy ready to move in.
I urge anyone with an interest in this subject to read Tibet, Tibet by Patrick French, former president of the Free Tibet movement. He resigned for ethical reasons, based around his feelings about what should be the pragmatic, rather than the ideological, manner in which the lot of the Tibetan people can be improved.
The conclusions I drew from this book were as follows:
The Chinese invasion was unforgiveable.
The treatment of the Tibetan people during the occupation, and particular the massacres and social engineering during the Cultural Revolution were unforgiveable.
The lack of political human rights in Tibet is unforgiveable - though they may worship and associate freely, contrary to some stuff I’ve heard in the west. 4. The Chinese will never leave.
On the flipside:
Chinese thinking on the subject is often based on millenia - and Tibet (via the Mongols) once occupied much of what is now China.
They see the countries intertwined and the invasion of Tibet as a reuniting.
Tibet under the Dalai Lama was a violent and poverty-stricken place.
The Chinese see the invasion also as a liberation.
Importantly, many of the Communist apparatchiks in Tibet are as Tibetan as the Dalai Lama.
In conclusion:
The Chinese people and government simply do not believe a word of what the west says, so propagandised are they.
Every time the Chinese state/people/government are made to lose face in public, their policies become more entrenched.
Every time there is a western protest, like is going on at the moment, the Chinese crack down on Tibetan autonomy.
The Chinese government, undemocratic as it is, simply doesn’t understand democratic protest.
Therefore the approach needs to be gentle persuasion and positive inforcement, rather than hard protest.
I apologise to Mr French if I have misrepresented him, but that’s what I took away with me. That, and a visit to Tibet in 2005, has really changed my thinking. It’s such a complex subject, and the soundbyte approach we get here is facile and counterproductive.
I haven’t much to add, except that the Chinese government seems poised to bureaucratize Tibet’s tradition of religion out of existence. I’ve read that when it was time to choose the lama second to the exiled Dalai Lama, the government chose him. That choice had always been made among the lamas. The government also issued an order that no one could be reincarnated without first filing for a permit. The Dalai Lama has traditionally been a reincarnation of the previous one. Will the next Dalai Lama be imprisoned as soon as he is revealed? I’m not an old China hand, so I can’t even guess.
A lot of people have good reason to protest about all sorts of things the Chinese government do and when are you ever going to get a better chance to attract media coverage than in the months before the Beijing games?
They feel for the athletes, but they feel for the Tibetans more. Tibetans are a peace loving Buddhist people who’s struggle has largely been ignored by the world. They suffer oppression on a scale that is hard to imagine. They have had their country and their freedom taken from them. And the world chose to look the other way. Why? Because China represented the largest emerging market of the next century. Human rights be damned show us the money.
China has committed horrendous acts against these people. Tore down thousands of monasteries that had been standing since the time of Christ. Imprisoned or disappeared endless nuns and monks, desecrated their holy places. There are now more Chinese in Lhasa than Tibetans. They are dumping their nuclear waste in these peoples beautiful Himalayan valleys.
The Tibetans have this one chance to make the world look into the face of this horrific situation. I would like to think that any athlete would be able to put aside their lust for a gold medal to help these people and their cause get the headlines and attention it deserves.
After all it’s not like there aren’t other athletic competitions, there always are. Why isn’t winning at the world wrestling, or world skiing or whatever competition enough. Really, thirst for Olympic gold should not carry enough cache to ignore the screams for freedom of an oppressed people.
You know that whole separating the politics things would be great, if it had ever happened.
Remember the Olympics in Mexico City (I think it was) when black American athletes raised their fists in support of the civil rights battle. That was a political statement (though I may have the details wrong), and one that I don’t think the world should have missed.
This culture deserves protection. Without it, it could disappear from the earth just about the time we all figure out it’s true value.
One sentence? That might be difficult, but I’ll try to give you a few short ones.
The Beijing government has a history of terrible human rights abuses (they run over peaceful protesters with tanks, remember?). I don’t believe that should be “rewarded” by allowing them to host the games. Also, as an athlete, I would not want to compete there for a couple of reasons. One is the air quality- Beijing has some of the worst air pollution in the world. Two would be the idea that allowing them to host the games seems to send a message that the world is “okay” with China’s various problems.
I don’t want to derail the conversation, and I agree that China’s policies towards Tibet have been somewhat reprehensible, but could I ask where you’re getting this from? I was always under the impression that Buddhism was popularized in Tibet during the 9th and 13th centuries CE.
In 1968, Mexican students tried to use the world’s pre-Olympic focus on their country to protest certain policies. On October 6th, in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas, government forces fired on demonstrators & bystanders. The government claimed that four people died. Some say thousands did–but probably “only” a few hundred people were killed.
The Mexican government tried to hush up this atrocity, but there were investigations, years later. Look up The Tlatelolco Massacre.
I may be wrong, but I understood that many of the monasteries were built on sites which dated back to the Christian era, becoming Buddhist when it swept through beginning in the 7th century.
But I can’t find a cite so will happily retract that comment and replace it with ‘centuries old Buddhist monasteries’.
They’ve taken are of long-term problems already. Millions of Chinese have immigrated into Tibet since the invasion. For a few decades now the “Chinese” population has out-numbered the “Tibetan” population by a fair number. Even if China did, tomorrow, remove itself from Tibet, it’d still be Chinese population-wise. To “Save Tibet” you’d have to physically remove millions of Chinese settlers.
This is why the “Save Tibet” campaign is flawed; Tibet was lost decades ago.
Spezza, it can seem as if the Tibetan cause for autonomy is “lost”, but that is also why the protests are happening now: it’s at the point that the World’s eyes might open towards the situation in Tibet, and this is a desperate point to gain some focus on it.
For those who don’t want the Tibetan cause to “ruin” the Olympics with politics; this is perhaps the only window of opportunity they will have in the next decade to have some good attention paid to the cultural genocide that has happened in Tibet since 1959. The history between China and Tibet is long and complex, but the current occupation has been one of destruction and terror to the Tibetan people. Desperate times require extreme means, and this is a time when Tibetans want to speak out against injustice. Especially the younger generation of Tibetans, who have been raised in forced diaspora, in Europe and the US, and see how it is to live in more free situation. Coupled with the current Dalai Lama’s age, it’s a last gasp for the Tibetan culture.
We went into what was seen as an oppressive situation in Iraq, to encourage Freedom and Democracy, but have turned a blind eye to an abusive situation for four decades in Tibet. With a well-educated expatriate leader, the Dalai Lama, who welcomes a more democratic government to be set up in Tibet. It’s reached a boiling point, and , this is a chance to get some needed help there.
