TIBETSPACE

VIDEO: THE LATEST SELF-IMMOLATION FROM TIBET

A new video from Tibet shows the reactions of monks and lay-people alike to the most recent self-immolation in Rebkong, Amdo.  Have a look at it.  And buckle your seat-belts.

Two things stand out to me when I watch this video.  First, the Tibetan people have suffered and are still suffering the consequences of China's brutal opposition, which has been continual since 1949.  Second, the Tibetans have used every means at their disposal to respond to this suffering in a constructive, nonviolent way.  China, by all odds, should have long ago silenced the Tibetan people, but they have failed to do so and seem, on a daily basis now, increasingly unable to do so. Whatever it is that I see in this brief film, however I want to describe this Tibetan spirit, I feel clearly that the Tibetans have revealed here a profound and unshakeable commitment to achieving a free state.  

They seem during this brief video a more stable, more commited, more powerful citizenry than anything China has so far mustered.

My hope is that China is beginning to register the same perception at some level, however secretly, however bureaucratically. 

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT TIBET. SERIOUSLY.

You might have read about the most recent self-immolation in Tibet: an eighteen-year- old monk who, as he was burning, exclaimed, "May His Holiness the Dalai Lama live thousands of years." And then he screamed, "Freedom for Tibet."

Note:  As the flames enveloped him, he did not scream, "Meaningful autonomy for Tibet." This is an important point because many Americans, rightfully respectful of His Holiness's opinions on all matters sacred and secular, have come to embrace autonomy as the only workable solution for the future of Tibet.  

But I believe we must exercise caution here.  Americans are accustomed to forming opinions about the development of other countries because we are accustomed to having a military that has traditionally made the development of other countries its major business.  

But take a moment and look around you.  Are you doing something now that Tibetans in Tibet cannot do?  Do you plan on shopping freely at the market?  Reading what you want to read?  Exercising your religious preferences as you wish?  Are you employed? Do you speak the language the police and  the military speak?  Examine your own freedoms, and the heavy price we paid for them.  

And then consider:  when we have strong evidence that many Tibetans within Tibet, as well as many of their brothers and sisters living in exile, are daring to dream of freedom, and are giving their lives with calls for that freedom on their lips, Americans must honor this very human urge:  to live in freedom and independence and to determine our own future.

And we must extend the same privilege to the Tibetans.  Their resistance to the Chinese oppression now is fierce.  Thupten Jinpa, the main translator for the Dalai Lama, recently tweeted that he felt a threshhold had been crossed.  And as we know, threshholds can be dangerous places.  But many Tibetans have obviously judged that crossing that threshhold is worth the risk.  And they, at least, deserve our support.

LIFE IN LHASA: TIBET, CHINA & HUMAN RIGHTS

We hear little in the West about life in Lhasa, and so it is helpful now and again to speak directly with Tibetans who are living there.  The problem is that few of us have the opportunity to do so.  

I recently was fortunate to speak with a young Tibetan woman who currently lives in Lhasa, and I thought I would share part of our conversation with my readers. 

She had a Masters Degree that she'd obtained from an institution outside of Tibet, was fluent in Chinese, was learning English, and was highly proficient in it already. She was also gainfully employed in Lhasa (because she spoke Chinese) as a teacher.  She has already returned, and she says she is doing fine.

She says this because she can say nothing else; her email is monitored, and were she to speak the truth about the conditions in Lhasa currently suffered by the Tibetan people, both she and her family would suffer dire consequences—this is what she told me during our conversation.

A couple of other things she mentioned.  Having a picture of the Dalai Lama was considered to be a serious crime and would always be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.  Pictures of him were available, and some Tibetans had them, but they were always viewed in an atmosphere of fear and terror.  Altars were allowed, but of course a Tibetan altar without the image of His Holiness is an incomplete altar indeed.  Religious freedom—to practice as you please—does not exist.

Random personal searches by the Chinese police occur regularly, and informers exist at every level of Tibetan society in Lhasa.  These informers report to the Chinese government, and they have created a sense of paranoia among the Tibetans that is debilitating.

Chinese students in classes with Tibetans in Lhasa are given preferential treatment; instruction in Tibetan is typically not allowed, although the Tibetan teachers who teach in this environment make every effort to encourage and at times instruct Tibetan students in their mother tongue.

The authoritative Buddhist teachers have largely left Tibet and settled within the monasteries and nunneries in India.  So a young Tibetan man or woman who wishes to become a monk or nun and get the authentic teachings must leave Tibet and their family and undertake the perilous passage over the Himalayan mountains into India.

In Lhasa, the unemployed class is almost wholly Tibetan because the Chinese who come to Lhasa come with jobs as an incentive, and Chinese is required for employment.  The mass migration of Han Chinese into Tibet and particularly into Lhasa is proceeding apace.

Finally, she told me that hunger in Lhasa is also a problem.  She cried as she remembered standing in line recently at a meat market in Lhasa.  An elderly Tibetan couple in front of her had waited patiently to buy a small parcel of yak meat, and when they were told the price, they realized they didn’t have enough money to buy it.  They were finally able to purchase the bone, after the meat had been trimmed off, and they told my friend that they would simply make a bone broth with it.  The prices are set, she explained to me, by the Chinese government, and they reflect the market prices in Beijing, hardly an index that Tibetans living in domestic exile in Lhasa can afford.

While the world is left aghast by the ten fire protests we have recently witnessed in eastern Tibet, we must also remember that the Chinese occupation has had a thorough-going and debilitating effect on the very fabric of Tibetan life, and this often escapes the headlines.  

Tibetan life, in all of its complexity and richness, is under constant assault by the Chinese.

That should be the daily headline.

 

ROBERT THURMAN, ONCE AGAIN, ON TIBET, CHINA, AND THE ENVIRONMENT

The indefatigable Robert Thurman on Tibet, China, and the simple question, 'Why the Dalai Lama matters.'  And atheism, and the political right, and anything else that crosses his mind and fall within the wide arena of Tibet and His Holiness.