‘Games over, Free Tibet’ is one of the really good slogans coming out of the Free Tibet campaign. The campaign has got a lot of press recently. Mostly, of course, because of the useful insistence of the Chinese on parading the Olympic flame through cities in which there are a bunch of Tibetan exiles and Free Tibet campaigners. People throwing themselves physically at Chinese security on camera will always make headline news.
Between the Dalai Lama and Richard Gere, the Tibetan cause has had some good press over the last 10 years, during which time the cause went from obscure to cult fashionable to mainstream. These are the words of Patrick French, in his book Tibet, Tibet (Harper Perennial Publishers, 2003). I love the whole idea of Tibet. Most of my knowledge of Tibet comes from climbing books. (Books about climbing, not clambering up piles of books).
I don’t climb, but I love a well–written account of frostbite, fear, and brewing tea at 8000m. I think mostly this is because some days it seems brewing tea in my kitchen isn’t that different from 8000m, give or take a bit of oxygen.
Be that as it may, solemn Sherpas, burning juniper bushes, passing chortens clockwise, and prayer flags flapping are the backdrops to many of the high altitude accounts I have read. But it seems I may have been misled. The point made by French very poignantly is that this ‘Tibet of the mind’ is gone, and maybe never was. He subtitles the book ‘A personal history of a lost land’, and describes his travels through a place which is both a tourist attraction, and a place of death and suffering. He tries at one point to work out how many Tibetans died as a result of the Chinese invasion. He makes it 500 000. Apparently this is less than is sometimes said. It seems enough.
Even in exile, the Tibetans he describes are very far from the selfless other worldly stereotype. He writes with genuine awe of the Dalai Lama, whose kneeling and greeting of French’s five-year-old son he describes as deeply moving. But he also describes Tibetans in Dharamsala caught in a web of patronage to rich foreigners who try and buy their way into a way of life that is worthless as soon as it is for sale.
He doesn’t seem to think the Free Tibet campaign is going to work, partly because the Chinese will never accept it, and partly because you cannot free something that has been crushed to death already. I hate that idea. I want there to be somewhere in the world like Tibet, where people put yak butter in their tea, and prayer wheels spin and spin, and monks with saffron robes chant ceaselessly.
And if I can’t have that, then can’t I at least have a good campaign, where people climb the Golden Gate bridge, and hang up banners calling for freedom? French seems to feel that such a campaign may make me feel better, but not necessarily contribute to freedom in Tibet. It may only contribute to oppression and fear, and a further clampdown. He says the only realistic hope is to work within the Chinese system, and wait for reform in Beijing.
However, there are talks reported to be taking place between the Chinese government and the Dalai Lama, or his representatives. He will apparently not be asking for a free Tibet, but more autonomy for Tibetans. He would, no doubt, say that we must treat the Chinese with compassion, and believe they are capable of good. As another icon said, in every speech I heard him give, “There are good men and women everywhere.”
The Chinese have yielded a little. I think they might yield more. There is place for people working within the system, but there is also place for pressure from the outside. So, on the premise that there are good men and women everywhere, I think I have joined the Free Tibet campaign.
The Chinese are the children of the God. So are the Americans. Both great nations can together build a new world that is free from war, starvation, hunger and exploitation. The Chinese have suffered enough from the years of deprivation as a result of the rule from lesser men. The Tibetans are protesting that their culture are slowly fading due to development as China progress. It’s not a human genocide by all counts as the population of the Tibetans has actually increased from a million to 3 millions now. Let us now not try to smear each other for the anger that is not worth the damage. The world is facing global-warming that we see, and hear but yet we do nothing over it. Humanity is facing calamity when the leaders of today are minnows in their words and deeds. Are we, the children of the God, humble enough not to cast the first stone when you yourselves have sinned. Forgive those who fought blindly for Tibetans for shouting to the world they lost their culture when millions of Iraqis have been killed so far. Forgive the author who wrote this artile, Almighty God.
Is this yet another anti-Chinese piece of garbage ny a white persom who supports the domination of white America over the world economic system?
China should let the Tibetans go back to their impoverished and animal like existance as was the case before the Chinese liberated them. If they want to be the Lama’s slave as was and will be the case, then so be it. Of course, when they do become fall into a state of poverty and despair ater the mnks have their way, they’ll probably blame China.
However, before the Chinese allows the Tibetans their wish to be enslaved under the monks, they should make sure that all Chinese people should be relocated and all Tibetans who wants to live in prosperity and free from enslavement, should be given an oppertunity to be reloacted in China.
All black people should be aware that we do not share this racist anti-Chinese view and to support the Chinese is to further the prosperity of the developing world. We live in a pro-Chinese country so don’t let the anti-Chinese white media convince you otherwise.
I think, as an anthropologist, that the Western audience and public have often missed the overall reality of Tibet and its revolt.
As I have tried to explained in my post , since the revolt in Tibet, the majority of the mass media (with few exceptions) have based their reports of the Tibetan uprising through their myopia of the reality of Tibet. The stories report the revolt principally as a struggle for independence from the oppressive power of China which started in October 1950. Surely, there is some truth in this. But the mass media, as unfortunately academics, and even anthropologists specialised in Tibetan Buddhism, have hidden what I call the ‘dark ethnic side’ of the revolt:
The National-ethnic factors involved in this revolt. Tibetan Buddhists have attacked Tibetan Muslims in order to disrupt their economic activities in the hope of a free, ethnic pure Tibet: not a religious struggle, although lamas are involved, but an economic one.
Gabriele
I believe that the Tibetans have not been treated fairly, although they are far better off from their days in slavery before 1959. Sure, the Chinese has not been sophisticated in dealing with minorities, leading to clashes and conflicts with them. But problem like this does not exist in China alone and I agree with Janman that there are people far more miserable and mistreated than the Tibetans are in this world; the Chinese authoritarian government is not the worst kind and is on its way to reform itself.
Why this glaring Free Tibet cause holding a prominence in international spot with huge money pouring in for more than a decade then? This is a classical case in that to a large extent what it appears to be is not what it really is about.
Free Tibet….
Tibet and China have been at war since the 800′s. Tibet colluded with the Mongols in a priest-patron relationship and where in that relationship of mutual respect and dual responsibility when the Tibet/Mongol alliance invaded and subjugated large parts of China and Asia.
China was thus subjected to illegal rule by the Tibet/Mongol CHO-YON agreement. The priest party of the CHO-YON provided moral legitimacy to the mongols to rule over China amongst others.
After the fall of the mongols, the Dalai Lama established another CHO-YON relationship with the Manchu Dynasty which again conquested China and subjected it to illegal rule. When the Manchu Dynasty collapsed, Tibet suddenly declared itself independant of a ruling regime which it had instigated to conquer China. By conquering China with it’s CHO-YON agreement and joint responsibility arrangement, Tibet made itself a part of China – hence the formal decision to declare independance when it’s ally and hence it’s influence , collapsed.
Britian it appears invaded Tibet twice before the Chinese, and as the Chinese lost the opium wars they where forced by the dominant british army to sign a document waiving chinese sovereignity over Tibet — why oh why , would the British government recognize Chinese Sovereignity over tibet?
You will find that the US and british government have been trying to split the great land of China for decades. George Bush and the CIA invested thousands of Dollars with the University of hawai to examine whether ethnic tensions in china would result in a split of the country. Dissapointed with the results the US resorted to military training and support for rebels in these areas, mongolia, tibet, Xianjing, and the Coastal areas of China leading to a the 1959 Tibet rebellion.
The US announced in 1949 that is was ready to accept Tibet as an independant state. neither the US or Britian viewed it as such prior to this, and did everything in their power to get Tibet to Split from China.
The full history is tedious to be sure….but once again, after meetings between the Dalai Lama and the USA, tension breaks out in Tibet.
These are the snippets I have, more insight would be welcomed. In 1951 The Chinese army merely reclaimed it’s territories and did not invade anything. Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet and the tensions surrounding these are a product of British and US imperialism, and the meddling thereof in nations affairs for commercial and military gain.
During the repression of China, the issue lay dormant — As china re-emerges as a regional power the USA, and Britian again see fit to stoke the fires of this division…preferring a much smaller and less influential China.
@Liansky
What a pathetic assertion. Ascribing anti chinese commentary on the Tibetan issue to “whites”.
Many notable African and Asian countries have voiced similar sentiments on Tibet.
Given that critics need to examine the facts, given that Chinese sovereignty over Tibet cannot be disputed, given that Britain and the US are complicit in stoking the tensions there. What basis do you have for branding whites as anti-Chinese, and in favor of Anglo-American imperialism?
More important than a Free Tibet is peace in Tibet.
And equality between the Han Chinese and
Tibetans.
According to the Chinese Embassy wants the Dalai Lama
a large Tibet and get all Chinese to Tibet.
If Russians in Latvia and Latvians live together peacefully should also be possible in Tibet.