TEN WAYS TO FREE TIBET (8-10)

Below, I've listed the last three of my Ten Ways to Free Tibet.  For the other seven, see the previous two postings.

8.  Avoid double-barreled, dualistic thinking.  Often, the way we conceive of a problem directly shapes the kinds of solutions we envision for that problem.  Clearly, in the Tibetan struggle, we view the Tibetans as the good guys and the Chinese as the bad guys.  There’s good reason for doing that, particularly when one well-armed culture has already slaughtered 1.2 million citizens of another culture and destroyed thousands of its temples and sacred artifacts in the process.  But to conceive of this struggle as essentially Sino-Tibetan, as pitting the Tibetans against the Chinese, will never allow a successful resolution from the Tibetan perspective.  And so for the last half-century, the Dalai Lama and his people have been slowly gaining allies in many countries, developing a multi-faceted response to Chinese aggression.  There is, of course, disagreement within the Tibetan community about what should be done, and viewing Tibetans as having a monolithic voice, most often a voice in agreement with His Holiness’s voice, is yet another problem of dualistic thinking.  Tibetans good and always in agreement about their goodness, Chinese evil and always committed to their evil—of course, it’s not that simple.

The interface between Chinese and Tibetan culture is changing.  Young Tibetans arriving in Dharamsala often speak Chinese and are conversant with Chinese culture, for better or worse.  I met a young Tibetan last summer in Dharamsala who’d arrived in India in 2005, who spoke Chinese, and claimed to have many young Chinese friends in eastern Tibet who are as unhappy with the PRC as the Tibetans are.  He argued forcefully that the future of the Tibetan struggle within Tibet lay partly with the Tibetans’ ability to make alliances with the younger Chinese generation.  In this country, for example, at the University of Virginia and at Harvard, conferences have been recently held between young Tibetans and young Chinese aimed simply at historical understanding and dialogue.  Totalitarian governments, of course, depend upon human oppression, but human oppression is the common denominator for successful political liberation. 

So if we familiarize ourselves with the Chinese dissidents who are living heroic lives in China; if we learn a little more about the reform movements in China that are constantly facing debilitating opposition from the PRC; if we begin to see the human rights struggle as a global initiative with national concentrations, and to see human rights as the common denominator that runs across national boundaries, then perhaps we will begin to find realistic solutions that reflect more accurately the nature of our involvement with the Tibetans and their current struggle with the Chinese.

9.  Understand the technology and get creative with it.  The revolution will be tweeted.  As many of you know,  in Moldova a mass demonstration was organized instantly through Facebook and Twitter, and much of what happened in Tibet before the Olympics was exposed through video and camera phones.  (Read an insightful piece here on Twitter.)  A cell phone is now more dangerous to totalitarian governments than an AK-47.  One of the many things we learned from the Obama election is that viral technology empowers large groups of people who previously had no access to power.  And once empowered, they vote.  If you spend any time on Facebook or Twitter, you also have learned something else:  that the new technology reflects the strengths and foibles of the cultures that adopt it.  The point is that the same mind-numbing technology that allows people to tweet about what their dogs are doing or what sort of coffee they just ordered or what the sunset looks like from a condo on a beach is also the very same technology that strikes fault lines through the Moldovan government.   These “social networks,” as they are called, have enormous organizational and information-spreading potential.  They’re waiting to be developed, applied, and targeted.  We’re at a pivotal moment, I believe, as we’re learning just how influential these networks can become . . . they’re clearly on the radar of most oppressive regimes, and they’re clearly one of the most significant threats these regimes have seen in a long time.

10.  Conceptualize, organize, and contact.  Finally, after all is said and done, nothing replaces political organization, if you live in a country where political organization is viable, and nothing leads to political organization like an old-fashioned petition.  Check out the Care2petition site; there, you can find examples of successful petitions and by clicking on “create petition,” you can design and create your own.  If you want a handbook for political organization, one that lists both strategies and online resources, have a look at Naomi Wolf’s Give Me Liberty.  It’s a good place to begin.

In my next posting, I’ll offer an overview of the logic behind these “Ten Ways to Free Tibet.”