Editorial

Turmoil in Tibet

  Shades of the 1966–76 Cultural Revolution and the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacres have been invoked by the use of intemperate language to demonise the Dalai Lama who has dared to criticise China’s use of force against Tibetan civilians.
   During the Cultural Revolution, launched by Mao Zedong to consolidate his power base, a catch phrase used by his Red Guards was to describe critics as ‘Running Dogs of US imperialism’.
   The use of such colourful language may seem amusing some 40 years later, but at the time it was used as a signal to attack Chinese civilians, foreigners who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time and even foreign diplomats stationed in Beijing.
   It would be historically inaccurate to draw a parallel between the Cultural Revolution and the later Tiananmen Square protests with what is happening today in Tibet, but the official Party language used to describe protestors, including the venerated and Nobel Prize-winning Dalai Lama, is a reminder of the brute force still used to govern the People’s Republic.
   If a senior Communist Party official is to be believed, the Dalai Lama is no less than a ‘wolf in a monk’s robe’ and a ‘monster with a human face but the heart of a beast’. Zhang Qingli, head of Tibet’s Communist Party, added, ‘We are now engaged in a fierce blood-and-fire battle with the Dalai clique, a life-and-death battle between us and the enemy.’
   Such language is a throwback to an unfortunate past and unbecoming for representatives of a country that is poised to host the next Olympic Games and prides itself as the world’s newest superpower.
   Equally unfortunate and another throwback to the past is the way the Chinese authorities have stepped up their censorship of unrest in Tibet and neighbouring provinces of Western China. Foreign television crews in particular have been repeatedly stopped and delayed, ostensibly for their own security.
   China occupied Tibet in 1950. The noose was tightened in 1959 when a failed uprising, which forced the Dalai Lama to flee to India, was brutally suppressed by the Chinese authorities.
   10 March marks the anniversary of the 1959 uprising. There are regular annual protests, some more forceful than others, to mark the event. This year the protests led by monks rapidly degenerated into violence, although Chinese and Tibetan sources have each given different accounts of what happened.
   The Tibetans speak of a harsh clampdown on what were always intended to be peaceful protests. The Chinese speak of unprovoked attacks on ethnic Chinese individuals and institutions.
   Rival accounts of who attacked whom and where have been matched by rival estimates of casualties. By the third week of March the Tibetan government-in-exile estimated that some hundred people — most of them from Lhasa — had died in clashes with security forces. The Chinese authorities claimed only 13 deaths.
   Whatever the truth about the precise number of those killed, the effects of the violence have been widely recorded and reported. Western tourists in Lhasa reported a city deserted and in complete shutdown, as well as mob violence on the streets and buildings set on fire that transformed the Tibetan capital into a city of cinders.
   Security concerns meant that foreign tourists were not allowed to leave their hotels without an armed police or military escort.
At his annual press conference in Beijing Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao blamed the Dalai Lama and his followers for the violence, saying, ‘There is ample fact — and we also have plenty of evidence — proving that this incident was organised, premeditated and planned by the Dalai clique.’
   But Wen was also careful to leave the door for discussions open by telling his British counterpart, Gordon Brown, that he was willing to engage in dialogue, provided the Dalai Lama renounced violence and made clear he did not support the total independence of Tibet.
   For his part the Dalai Lama has repeatedly called for an end to violence, adding that complete independence for Tibet was ‘out of the question’. But significantly, he also stated, ‘Whether the (Chinese) government there admits or not, there is a problem. There is an ancient cultural heritage that is facing serious danger. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, some kind of cultural genocide is taking place.’
   Whether Tibetans will one day gain greater autonomy, perhaps even some form of independence, remains to be seen. In the short term the authorities in Beijing could do much to meet Tibetan concerns by restricting the emigration of ethnic Chinese and boosting investment in Tibet’s health, education and employment. A big country like China needs a big heart that it is unfortunately lacking.

                          
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