TIBETSPACE

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.”

WOESER, SUICIDE & TIBET

As Spring arrives here in the United States, and as the Tibetan New Year passes with great incident and suffering, Woeser, the astute and talented Tibetan commentator in China, has posted a piece in The Epoch Times on the recent flurry of suicides in Tibet. 

Suicide, of course, is a distinctly human form of tragedy.  While all of the major world religions take a stance on it--Buddhism sees suicide largely as yet another destructive act that arises from delusion--for each of us, particularly for those of us who have lost loved ones to such an act of self-destruction, suicide often seems an authentic gesture of sorts, a final message that living, however miserably, could never deliver. 

And so on February 27, 2009, after the Chinese canceled the Great Annual Prayer Festival in Sichuan, a 24-year-old monk from Kirti Monastery lit himself on fire and ran through the streets carrying a photograph of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.  The Chinese police shot him repeatedly.  He was removed to a hospital, and as of several weeks ago, nothing was known about his health, or whether he lived or died.  (Read a brief report at The Huffington Post.)

His name was Tabey, and this was the message he delivered to the Tibetan people, the Chinese, and the world community:  life in Chinese-occupied Tibet had become impossible for him in this incarnation.

Was this a reasonable action?  Most of us, deluded as we are, are currently incapable of answering this question.  It is said that Quang Duc, the Vietnamese monk who was famously photographed by Malcolm Browne in 1963 in Saigon, was actually the second choice for the immolation.  The story is told that a much younger monk had set himself the task, and when Quang Duc learned of this, he said, "No, no, you're too young for this, you have much life left; let me do it."  And so, doused with gasoline, he sat down, and he delivered his message.

Perhaps true renunciation leads certain individuals to see the full consequences of suicide, to understand that a temporary, but fully conscious evacuation of this particular mind-body complex can lead to greater awareness among those of us who are left behind to witness it.  And perhaps greater awareness can ultimately lead to an alleviation of suffering . . .

Maybe.  I don't know; I'm certainly not qualified to make such judgments.  But I do know that our witness to these suicides is vitally important; and that our witnesses will range along a broad spectrum; and that this spectrum extends from the Tibetans who recently declared a hunger-strike to death in front of the Chinese embassy in Brussels to the casual reader who remarks the untimely and tragic death of a fellow humang being.

All of these responses matter, and all of them ultimately register at the subtlest level of our consciousness.

So it is vitally important that we witness these suicides in Tibet; that we grapple with them as each of us are able; that we do not forget the starkness and bleakness that arise when we contemplate them; that we transform this starkness and bleakness into an authentic and durable compassion for the suffering they reflect; and that we use this starkness and bleakness to develop the knowledge that reveals to us the causes from which this suffering springs.

Maybe that's obvious.  But in the face of suicide and hunger-strike--in the face of high-octane human suffering--it's worth repeating.

MARK YOUR CALENDAR, MARK YOUR HEARTS: LOSAR, 25 FEBRUARY

When Losar arrives this year, it marks the 60th anniversary of the Chinese invasion, the 50th anniversary of the ultimate occupation.  Special events are being planned.  And of course March 10, Tibetan Independence Day, is huge this year. 

So wherever you are, whatever you're doing, if you have an interest in Tibetan matters, simply pay attention.  Pay attention to the blogs, keep up with the Chinese media (remembering that state-controlled media offer up their own state-controlled form of truth, and that gives us essential information about the state's self-conception), write a letter or two, exercise your compassion.

It's all we can do, it's what we can do, and if we can do it consistently, mountains will move, things will change.

CHINA DETAINS 81 TIBETANS IN LHASA

China has "detained" 81 more Tibetans in Lhasa, renewing its Strike Hard campaign that originally began in 1983.  The campaign is activated by the Chinese whenever oppression is deemed necessary.  With the Tibetan New Year approaching in February, the Public Security Bureau, the overseers of Strike Hard, are sending a message to the Tibetans that there will be nothing new about the upcoming year.

The New Year, of course, is always a good time to consider human atrocity, and as I mentioned in an earlier post, The Tibetan Centre for Human Rights has published its annual Human Rights Report for 2008.  I've only glanced through the report, but it appears that very little has changed over the past twelve months.  I note in passing that 80 Drepung monks arrested during the March protests last year have yet to reappear.  Eighty families who have no information regarding their loved ones.  It's a small thing, right, in the face of the massive deprivations that totalitarian governments regularly impose on their citizens?  In the face of what the Tibetans have already faced?

Not really.  Human atrocity is viewed from two perspectives.  First, we view it by the numbers alone; the greater the number, the greater the atrocity. Eighty monks unaccounted for can't and shouldn't fall in the same category as six million murdered; statiticians of atrocity understand this innately, and our collective grief arises from those horrendously expansive numbers.  Sadly, the size of the number often has a direct impact on the force of our corrective response. 

But the other perspective, the perspective of the family who loses a single loved one, and never hears from her again, is equally compelling, and from the perspective of the oppressor, equally effective in the broad demoralization that gradually saps organized resistance.  In fact, to the surviving family, the difference between one dead and a million dead is, in periods of deepest darkness, negligible.  The loss of one loved one comes to equal in the grieving imagination the loss of one million.  Security forces, levying their grim tax on human life, understand this, and apply this understanding at the business end of their rifles, their straps, their cattle prods.

Eighty-one missing in Lhasa.  A conceivable number?  Let's hope not.  And that's a prayer.

 

SPERLING DISCUSSES HISTORIC TREATY AND OTHER ITEMS

Elliot Sperling, professor of Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University, spoke briefly about the Tibet-Mongolia Treaty of 1913 that has long been a sore spot for China apologists who have difficulty denying the frank implication of Tibetan independence that underlies the very treaty's existence.  A new copy of it emerged recently and stands to have an impact on the talks in Dharamsala. 

China is also lashing out at the meetings in Dharamsala slated for next week, as well as at India for allowing them to happen. 

Some things never change, and so the deliberations that recently occurred in China between the Chinese and the Tibetans reportedly yielded no results.  This is unsurprising, sobering, and instructive, particularly in light of the the upcoming conference in Dharamsala. 

With a bang or a whimper?  . . .  How will the meetings next week conclude?

GETTING READY FOR THE MEETING IN DHARAMSALA

As the November 17th meeting in Dharamsala approaches, there are several things that we might read to prepare ourselves to understand whatever resolutions are reached on that fateful day.  I've already recommended Shadow Tibet, and I'll recommend it again:  there are essential pieces posted there.  Also, much discussion has appeared recently concerning rangzen (independence), the Middle Way approach, and the Dalai Lama's role in leading the Tibetan people through the coming months and years.  The following website contains both clear explanations of the relevant ideas, and it also has helpful links at the bottom of the page to the original speeches where His Holiness articulated his founding ideas (click here). 

'CHINA-WATCH' ADDED TO TIBETSPACE

An article of faith:  I believe that mindlessly opposing China and Tibet damages the Tibetan cause in the long run, while at the same time hindering movements within China for an open society.

Another article of faith:  I also believe that awareness of human rights violations and our capacity to do something constructive about these violations begins with information.  Clear information, divorced from political motivation, broadens our consciousness concerning human suffering.  Period.  And this, in turn, increases our fundamental stores of compassion.  Luckily, there's a one-stop website that will help us with our task of increasing awareness:  Human Rights Watch.  Stop by often, subscribe to its feed, read its stories, imagine that the characters of those stories are your family members. 

The fact that they happen to be other people's family members, after all, is simply an accident of birth.

To add my own small effort to the global project of raising awareness, I have added a new feature to TIBETSPACE that I have named China-Watch.  Here I will post links that highlight China's increasing use of preemptive anger, the kind of anger that gives rise to those ominous pronouncements promising China's stern disapproval if a certain course of action is undertaken by a member of the international community.  Particularly actions regarding Tibet or human rights.

These threats, of course, reveal many things about China's aging leadership:  their paranoia, their bullying mentality, their neurotic obsession with Tibet and His Holiness--particularly with his universal popularity--and their fear of other countries deciding to support many of the concerns that are central to his platform:  human rights, non-violence, egalitarianism, and compassion. 

And of course these domineering qualities are part and parcel of all totalitarian regimes. 

But in this case, one of the victims of Chinese oppression--the Tibetan people--have something that many such victims do not have.  They have an international voice, and it is in the spirit of deepening the context for that voice that I offer China-Watch.

INTERNATIONAL DAY OF FASTING & NON-VIOLENCE DRAWS NEAR

His Holiness has agreed to join an international non-violent action on Saturday, August 30 sponsored by the Tibetan Solidarity Committee.  (See full story here.)  The movement begins at 7:00 a.m., and will come to a close 12 hours later.  Participants may choose to fast in whatever way is most amendable to them--they may avoid all food and liquid for the 12-hour period, or varying degrees thereof, but all are encouraged to spend the day reflecting upon those who are currently suffering under oppressive regimes.  Fasts of this sort, particularly in America, allow us to develop, however minutely, a sympathetic awareness of deprivation.  And if this seed develops into a stronger commitment to alleviate human suffering within our own orbit, then so much the better for all of us.

"We consider this as extremely important non-violent action taken by Tibetans under the leadership of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in a very critical period for Tibet, particularly the post-Olympic period," Kalon Tripa Prof Samdhong Rinpoche said.

CHINA'S ON A ROLL: 'RE-EDUCATING' ELDERLY WOMEN & JUST SAYING NO TO PEACE & iTUNES

With the closing ceremonies for the Beijing Olympics clearly in sight now, China has gone into a frenzied suppression of all people and all things that might potentially spoil its bid to enter the modern world.  Two elderly women, for example, who were forcibly evicted from their  homes in 2001, have applied five times to stage a protest in the approved 'protest zones.'  Yesterday, these women, aged 77 and 79, were interrogated for ten hours, and ultimately sentenced to one year of re-education through labor (see story here).  I suppose, as the bumper sticker reads, the beatings will stop when the attitudes improve?  And in another report, you'll learn that China has blocked access to the iTunes online store after it was discovered that Olympic athletes were actually downloading the CD, Songs for Tibet, which I mentioned in yesterday's posting.  Silly athletes, in need of re-education.

Also:  not a single protest has been approved in China during the Olympic games, even though promises were made to allow them in the approved areas (a policy that is often in effect in this country as well, although here they are more routinely approved.)

There's more, and I couldn't make this up:  While French President Nicolas Sarkozy declined to meet with the Dalai Lama during his 12-day visit to France because the Chinese--let's face it--told him he couldn't, the job has been handed to the French Human Rights Minister Yama Rade. 

Who? 

Qin Gang, a representative from the Chinese Foreign Ministry, stated that "we hope the French side respects China's concerns and will deal carefully with the important and sensitive issues." 

Read:  We know that the French Human Rights Minister will refuse to speak of the continuing human rights abuses in Tibet and the oppression of the Chinese dissidents in Beijing and elsewhere, particularly during the run-up to the Games, whose essential spirit--if you believe in essential spirits--we have thoroughly and triumphantly violated.

I need to state this clearly for my own benefit: Beijing gets the Olympics and steps up its human rights abuses as protests mount; the IOC remains not only silent, but supportive of the oppressive regime; and China begins a regular, thorough, and unrelenting program of propagandistic abuse of those heads of state who have enough nerve (Nicolas Sarkozy didn't; Gordon Brown didn't) to meet with one of the world's leading ambassadors of peace and tolerance who happens to have under that robe of his a Nobel and Congressional Gold Medal . . .

Does anyone find this cheeky, or bullying, or troubling, or manipulative?

But not to worry:  His Holiness, while in France, will meet with Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, heiress, international super-model, and Madame President of France. 

O to be a fly on that wall . . .

THIRD WAVE OF HUNGER STRIKERS GO BACK ON THE BLANKETS

The third group of Tibetans resumed their hunger strike today, as the second group was forcibly removed to an Indian hospital to receive food and water.  (See the full story here.)  The resumption of the strike was doubly significant as it came on the heels of Indian Independence Day, a day that provides us the opportunity to examine the extraordinary relationship that is developing between the Indian and the Tibetan people.  "August 15th is a moment of joy," a representative of the Tibetan Youth Congress said, "of happiness for Indians, a nation, a race that for the past 50 years has been providing us asylum, has given us a second life, a home away from home."

Central to that asylum, of course, are a number of individuals, but none are more important than Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India's republic.  Consider:  here is a man who spent the first part of his career working closely--and tolerantly--with Mahatma Gandhi and passed the latter part of his life--he died in 1964--assisting the Dalai Lama as he acclimated to his new home in India.  Since 1959, 120,000 Tibetans have settled in India, and as we watch the Indian police forcibly removing the Tibetan hunger strikers to the hospital, we are witnessing the engagement of two deeply spiritual cultures, and we aren't wrong to see the deeper symbols that are activated by that engagement.  On the one hand, the Indian people, motivated by their radical reverence for life, will not tolerate the willful loss of human life, while on the other hand, the Tibetan hunger-strikers have embodied the Gandhian philosophy of self-sacrifice in the name of truth, or satyagraha, as Gandhi named it.  Both actions, salvation and sacrifice, issue from long-standing spiritual traditions, and both spiritual traditions have deep roots in the Indian philosophy.

So we are left with the paradoxical descriptions of India that saturate the travelogues:  a country of mind-numbing poverty and chip-busting technology; of radical pacifism and nuclear deployment; of extreme tolerance and inexplicable religious violence . . . all of these qualities reside in abundance in India. 

And now the Indians have the Tibetans, or perhaps, more accurately, the Tibetans now have the Indians, a more important ally for them than the Tibetans are for the Indians.  At any rate, I spoke this summer to a nomad from eastern Tibet who had been in India for three years, and while he told me that he hadn't learned until he was 17 years old that that His Holiness had even left Tibet (he is in his mid-twenties now), he wanted to come to India because he felt that India must be the land of the gods.  After all, Buddha was born in India, and so India indeed must be a special place.  When I asked him how he felt when he learned that His Holiness was residing in India, he told me that he really didn't blame the Dalai Lama for wanting to come to such an extraordinary country.  Having spent several years in India, his idealism had waned a bit--Shangrila is always too good to be true--and he was making plans to return to Tibet because he missed his family, but India had clearly changed him.

So as India celebrates the 61st anniversary of its independence, those of us who have become involved with the Tibetan cause should take a moment to recognize the generosity of the Indian people and their government.  When the Tibetans most needed a home, India provided them with one, and set an example for all countries who are concerned about the long-term effects of genocide, human rights abuses, and population displacement. 

So happy birthday, India!  Many happy returns, and thank you for the generosity you have extended the Tibetan people.