PhilPaine.com

While the world was pre­oc­cu­pied with the finan­cial cri­sis, the UK Gov­ern­ment took advan­tage of pub­lic inat­ten­tion to write off Tibet. In a lit­tle pub­li­cized par­lia­men­tary state­ment on Octo­ber 29, For­eign Sec­re­tary David Miliband claimed that Tibet has actu­al­ly “always been a part of Chi­na, and that it has no claim what­so­ev­er to be viewed in any­way dif­fer­ent­ly from the rest of Chi­na.” Every­one under­stands that the elect­ed gov­ern­ments of Europe and North Amer­i­can have nev­er had any seri­ous inten­tion of sup­port­ing demo­c­ra­t­ic reform in Chi­na, or of giv­ing any tan­gi­ble sup­port to the con­quered and colo­nialised Tibetan peo­ple. But, until now, a nudge-nudge-wink-wink pre­tense of con­cern for human rights has been con­sid­ered good pub­lic rela­tions. Appar­ent­ly, it is no longer de rigeur. Gor­don Brown’s gov­ern­ment in Lon­don seized on the dis­trac­tion of the glob­al finan­cial melt­down to sig­nal to Bei­jing that its impe­ri­al­ist con­quests are a‑okay, and gave it carte-blanche to pro­ceed with any human rights vio­la­tions it wants, against its own peo­ple, or others.

For the last six years, there have been “talks” between the Com­mu­nist con­querors and the Dalai Lama. These talks have pro­duced noth­ing for the Tibetan peo­ple. The only ben­e­fi­cia­ry has been China’s dic­ta­tor, Hu Jin­tao, who has been able to stage a pan­tomime that sat­is­fies the deco­rum pre­ferred by his chums among the pow­er elites of Europe and Amer­i­ca. The Dalai Lama has long oper­at­ed under a Bud­dhist-inspired pol­i­cy dubbed “The Mid­dle Way”, in which his exiled gov­ern­ment, based in Dharam­sala, only nego­ti­ates for some degree of “auton­o­my”, and not for out­right inde­pen­dence. He hoped that it might win enough inter­na­tion­al sup­port to con­vince Bei­jing to run the leash a lit­tle slack­er. It was a false hope.

At the most recent talks, this month, Bei­jing again reject­ed any degree of auton­o­my out of hand. The Dalai Lama, with unchar­ac­ter­is­tic despon­den­cy, acknowl­edged that years of efforts had failed to achieve even this mod­est degree of suc­cess. “As far as I’m con­cerned, I have giv­en up,” he said.

U. K. Prime Min­is­ter Gor­don Brown’s cow­ard­ly action has added insult to injury, in this tragedy. For decades, the Tibetan peo­ple have had only one card to play in the ruth­less game of world pol­i­tics. The Dalai Lama has used his rep­u­ta­tion for saint­li­ness to bring atten­tion to the plight of Tibet, and has remind­ed the world who the under­dog is. He has cul­ti­vat­ed sup­port from a lot of ordi­nary peo­ple around the world, who think that human rights issues mat­ter. He patient­ly meets with any­one who can influ­ence the cul­ture, giv­ing them the thrill of meet­ing an incar­na­tion of the Bud­dha of Com­pas­sion. A lot of this plays up to a cer­tain silli­ness among those who are attract­ed to caus­es. You would think that mere­ly being con­quered and oppressed would be suf­fi­cient to make the pub­lic be on your side, but that’s not how it works. Nobody is inter­est­ed in ordi­nary human beings being oppressed. They only take notice if you ful­fill some car­toon image of “spir­i­tu­al­i­ty” — the human equiv­a­lent of being a baby seal. As a reli­gious fig­ure with­in a Bud­dhist frame­work that requires paci­fism and mod­er­a­tion, the Dalai Lama could only serve his peo­ple by trot­ting around the world, impress­ing the pub­lic with his piety and good char­ac­ter. This at least won some pub­lic sup­port and cre­at­ed aware­ness of the Tibetan cause, mak­ing Bei­jing’s repres­sion embar­rass­ing. Tibetans have a much high­er glob­al pro­file than, say, those strug­gling against the same regime in Xin­jiang, or any­one suf­fer­ing under dic­ta­tor­ship in Africa. The Dalai Lama’s obvi­ous sin­cer­i­ty and good char­ac­ter made the Com­mu­nist Par­ty’s pro­pa­gan­da against him look absurd. This was not accom­plished with­out a gru­el­ing self-imposed work-load and, doubt­less, the sac­ri­fice of most of his per­son­al life.

But the Com­mu­nist Par­ty, with a record of mur­der­ing about 75,000,000 peo­ple so far, is not going to be dri­ven out of Tibet by embar­rass­ment. It has been pro­ceed­ing unhin­dered with its pro­gram of repres­sion and eth­nic cleans­ing. Its ulti­mate aim is the exter­mi­na­tion, or at least the com­plete assim­i­la­tion, of the Tibetan peo­ple, replac­ing them with a pop­u­la­tion of import­ed eth­nic Han. The “talks” have mere­ly been what Com­mu­nist offi­cials call tuõ yán zhèng cè (拖延政策) — “time wast­ing pol­i­cy”. It is clear­ly Hu Jintao’s tac­tic to waste time, and keep the Tibetan exile lead­er­ship busy in fruit­less talks, until the Dalai Lama dies. The assump­tion is that, with him dead, the pub­lic sup­port for Tibet will rapid­ly evap­o­rate. The Dalai Lama is ill. Sup­pos­ed­ly, it’s mere­ly gall-blad­der trou­ble, but the rumour mill around Dhar­masala sug­gests that it is more seri­ous. It is prob­a­bly no coin­ci­dence that, on Novem­ber 10th, the Bei­jing dic­ta­tor­ship announced that the talks were “fruit­less” and that no form of auton­o­my, no mat­ter how min­i­mal, would ever be tol­er­at­ed. It was even claimed that doc­u­ment­ed past promis­es of nego­ti­at­ing auton­o­my, made by Deng Xiaop­ing, nev­er hap­pened. It’s clear that Hu Jin­tao and his hench­men have cor­rect­ly inter­pret­ed the accep­tance of the Olympics as the glob­al pow­ers’ “green light” to do what­ev­er it wants in Tibet. They are prob­a­bly right, in this esti­ma­tion, if the U.K.’s recent slimy announce­ment is any indication.

Tseten Nor­bu, an MP in the Dharam­sala par­lia­ment, has remarked: “We’ve been talk­ing for 30 years and there has been no result at all. This is the big ques­tion mark. Now we have to think and strate­gise.” There has long been a divi­sion among exiled Tibetans between those who sup­port the Dalai Lama’s “Mid­dle Way” pol­i­cy, and those who feel that it’s time for the Tibetan Gov­ern­ment in Exile to pro­claim that true inde­pen­dence is what is being pur­sued and demand­ed by the Tibetan peo­ple. This vari­ant posi­tion is known in Tibetan as rangzen. The debate between the two posi­tions has some­times been ran­corous with­in the exile com­mu­ni­ty. It is par­tic­u­lar­ly com­plex because there are now Tibetans scat­tered around the world, and sev­er­al gen­er­a­tions who have lived out­side of Tibet. My impres­sion is that rangzen is the pre­dom­i­nant posi­tion among the younger gen­er­a­tion of exiled Tibetans.

Assert­ing the desire for true inde­pen­dence in no way com­pro­mis­es the doc­trine of non-vio­lence espoused by the Dalai Lama. Jamyang Nor­bu, one of expa­tri­ate Tibet’s most elo­quent schol­ars, has been argu­ing that the Dalai Lama him­self has been ques­tion­ing the cur­rent via­bil­i­ty of the “Mid­dle Way” pol­i­cy. He asserts that it has become a self-serv­ing doc­trine for many of those who hold sinecures in the exile gov­ern­ment in Dharm­sala. “Mid­dle Way,” in his view, is now more or less “sta­tus quo” and “don’t rock the boat” dressed up in Bud­dhist piety, some­thing which he feels was nev­er intend­ed by the Dalai Lama.

This divi­sive stress cul­mi­nat­ed in a grand con­fer­ence at Dharam­sala last week, to carve out a pol­i­cy. The result seems to have been an entrench­ment of the ortho­dox “Mid­dle Way” pol­i­cy, which I sus­pect is a pro­found error of judgement.

The Dalai Lama can­not live for­ev­er, and a sur­vival strat­e­gy that depends exclu­sive­ly on his per­son­al­i­ty for its jus­ti­fi­ca­tion and its vital­i­ty will be dis­as­trous, in the long run. Now, it has been the great­est for­tune for the Tibetan peo­ple that a man of his cal­iber of intel­lect and integri­ty turned up in his posi­tion (I will leave aside reli­gious inter­pre­ta­tions of this good for­tune, which I don’t share). How­ev­er, the pol­i­cy of renounc­ing a claim to inde­pen­dence, in favour of seek­ing auton­o­my, is not a com­mand from the first page of the Sut­ta Nipa­ta. It’s mere­ly a strat­e­gy that the Dalai Lama select­ed on a prag­mat­ic basis. His main con­cern was to min­i­mize the pos­si­bil­i­ty of loss of life among his peo­ple, and per­haps exploit what­ev­er shred of tem­per­ance and human­i­ty might exist with­in the Com­mu­nist regime. Time, how­ev­er, has demon­strat­ed that there is none.

At this stage, it is more log­i­cal to pro­claim out­right that Tibetans are strug­gling for true inde­pen­dence, not any form of “auton­o­my” (an utter­ly mean­ing­less con­cept in a Com­mu­nist dic­ta­tor­ship). The notion, cir­cu­lat­ing among many par­ti­sans of the old strat­e­gy, that this will alien­ate the friends that Tibet has acquired, does not stand up to log­i­cal analy­sis. All the rich and pow­er­ful of the world are agreed that Tibet should remain enslaved. They have nev­er been friends of Tibet. As the world’s most suc­cess­ful ultra-con­ser­v­a­tive regime, the Com­mu­nist dic­ta­tor­ship has the loy­al­ty and admi­ra­tion of every Con­ser­v­a­tive and anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic ele­ment on the plan­et. They are quite will­ing to see every last Tibetan die if it means that they will have con­tin­ued access to China’s wealthy elite. The slimy behav­iour of the British gov­ern­ment clear­ly demon­strates this.

By con­trast, those who actu­al­ly do sup­port Tibet’s strug­gle — on moral grounds — have always assumed that what Tibetans need and deserve is absolute, unfet­tered inde­pen­dence. Not a sin­gle true friend of Tibet will be lost if rangzen replaces an obvi­ous­ly out­dat­ed policy.

While an old­er gen­er­a­tion may be com­fort­able with the sta­tus quo, we can’t seri­ous­ly expect the younger gen­er­a­tion of Tibetans, both with­in Tibet and out­side, to main­tain enthu­si­asm for a cause that is con­fined in such a nam­by-pam­by con­cep­tu­al frame­work. You can­not ask peo­ple to risk their lives, exhaust their ener­gy, and invest their hope, mere­ly to achieve a slight­ly less degrad­ing form of slavery.