Tibet’s Agony: China’s Shame

By S.P.SETH

Tibet region of China is once again smoldering, with monks in the small town of Aba in Sichuan province and elsewhere self-immolating to protest against repression to sniff out Tibetan religion, language, culture and an age-old way of life. The number of monks who have set themselves afire is said to be more than twenty and rising. There are reports of some lay people taking to self-immolation as an act of solidarity with their monks and/or just out of plain frustration.

According to reports in the Guardian and Sydney Morning Herald, the town of Aba, the scene of the largest number of acts of self-immolation is ringed by a blanket presence of police and security people. As Philip Wen has reported in the Sydney Morning Herald from Aba, “Heavily armed police are set up at every intersection… beside army trucks full of soldiers in riot gear….”

According to Jonathan Watts in the Gaurdian reporting from Aba, “ Despite flooding Aba with security personnel, the protests continue.”

And he quotes Kate Saunders of the International Campaign for Tibet who said, “In Tibet, the monasteries serve the function of universities. What is happening now is like a military blockade of Oxford and Cambridge. It’s as if the UK tried to prevent students from studying anything except what the government wanted them to study.”

The unrest is also spread to Tibetan areas of Qinghai province.

Of course, with such massive show of force, the Chinese authorities will succeed in crushing the Tibetan unrest this time as they have done before. But shouldn’t it make Beijing pause and reflect why the Tibetan issue is not going away since Tibet was forcibly annexed in the fifties?

But that is not the way China’s communist government operates. To reflect about policies that are not working and might require a new approach is considered a sign of weakness. In dealing with Tibet’s seemingly intractable problem it is easy to simply deny that there is a problem.

They blame it all on the Dalai Lama for his remote-control hand to split Tibet from China. He is a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” talking of peace and reconciliation while doing just the opposite. Therefore, it is none of China’s fault.

Let us take the Dalai Lama’s role. He is the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people. He recently relinquished his political mantle to his elected prime minister. It would appear that the institution of the Dalai Lama might cease to exist after the present incumbent departs this world.

This will effectively deprive the Chinese government of foisting their own Dalai Lama on the Tibetan people. Beijing will still do it but their candidate will lack legitimacy and popular acceptance among the Tibetans.

China, therefore, might be well advised to enter into talks with the Dalai Lama, when he is still around, for a peaceful resolution of the issue. He has publicly said a number of times that he is not for a separate Tibet. He only seeks autonomy for Tibet, with Beijing retaining control of defense, currency and foreign affairs.

The on-off talks between the two sides have been off again for some time now.

Why is China not interested? Because: they don’t trust the Dalai Lama. They think it is his way of working towards a separate Tibet. It defies logic, though. For instance, how will an autonomous Tibet, with real control vested in the central government, be able to defy China?

What China obviously fears is that an autonomous Tibet will seek to preserve its religion, culture and traditional way of life. And this doesn’t suit China. With its policies of Han settlement of Tibet, where the Tibetans might soon become a minority with no say in how their affairs are run, Beijing is in no mood to grant autonomy. The Tibetans will soon, if they are not already, become strangers in their own land.

Indeed, by slicing off parts of the Tibetan region and attaching them to neighboring Han provinces, Beijing has already parceled out their land. And the herdsmen, removed from their traditional mountainous grazing lands, have been set up in ghettos to work as casual labor with whatever they can find to earn a living.

There is even a suggestion at higher Party level that the government should adopt a more overt assimilationist policy of doing away with ethnic “privileges” altogether, being an obstacle to national cohesion. In other words, Tibetans might cease be a distinct ethnic group.

No wonder such repressive policies are driving Tibetans to the wall.

It is now more than sixty years that China incorporated Tibet but Tibet is still seething. Isn’t it time for China to do some introspection about the failure of their policies and create an accommodative policy framework based on autonomy for Tibet?

According to Pico Iyer, an expert on Tibet and the Dalai Lama: “Over the decades I’ve known him, the Dalai Lama has always been adept at pointing out logically, how Tibet’s interests and China’s converge--- bringing geopolitics and Buddhist principles together….”

The Dalai Lama is saddened that China is single-mindedly pursuing greed and at some point, as Pico Iyer recalls his conversations with the Tibetan leader, is going to have to find something to support it at some level deeper than just growth rates.

But in the meantime, there is not much hope for Tibet’s agony.