Tibetan Freedom - A Toss-Up?
BY
HIMANI KUMAR
In
2001, women started going to school in Afghanistan and in 2005 the first free
elections were conducted in Iraq. These events were viewed as major human
rights accomplishments. Human rights seemed to be gaining ground. But over 50
years have passed and nothing tangible has been achieved by Tibetans, who are
still under the Chinese rule. The struggle to gain independence that started in
1959 is still in a limbo.
Sixty-two years
after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United
Nations, something still is missing and needs to be done. The Chinese have
oppressed the Tibetans in selective spheres - academic and economic. In the
guise of development that China has promised to the Tibetans, Tibet is being
subjected to wide-scale changes and Tibetans are being forced to give up their
religion and culture with attempts to neutralize support for the Dalai Lama. Nuns
and monks who dare protest or raise their voices have been imprisoned and have been sexually harassed in jails with
torture weapons and treated as badly as animals.
When
H.H. the Dalai Lama fled to India from Tibet in 1959 after the Chinese army
attacked Tibet, he took refuge in Dharamsala, in Himachal Pradesh in India. It
is no doubt that Tibetans call India their “second home.”
Not
that nothing has been done by Tibetans to raise awareness of their plight. The
March 2008 Tibetan uprising was against China’s failure to improve human rights
situation coincided with the Summer Olympic games in China.
Several organizations like
International Campaign for Tibet, Tibetan Connection, Friends of Tibet, Voice
of Tibet, Australia Tibet Council and Amnesty International have championed the
cause of Tibetans over the world. Celebrities like Richard Gere, Goldie Hawn,
and Annie Lennox have also raised their voices for Tibetan cause in the
international community.
The
7.1-magnitude earthquake on April 14, that rocked Yushu is in a
part of the Qinghai province bordering the Tibetan Autonomous Region historically
known as Amdo shows the plight of Tibetans. Tibetan Village Project is the first NGO to
arrive in Tibet to help.
Although
news stories in the media claim that China is providing adequate and timely help to the Tibetans, it is quite the opposite
Not much help has reached and the situation is quite unlike Haiti where help
was rendered immediately.
Most
press reports are like Mao-era propaganda, but according to an April 25, 2010 Newsweek article, the earthquake has
made the Chinese learn more about Tibetans- about their poverty and humanity. "In general, Chinese don't have a very
healthy, full view of Tibet," but the quake is helping change this, says
blogger and social commentator Yang Hengjun. If the tragedy destroyed homes, it
may also elicit a new sympathy that never existed before.
"It's very hard to see real
Tibetans" through the media, says Yang. "On TV, they're dancing all
the time, shaking hands with leaders, celebrating, or shown as troublemakers.
This is an opportunity to realize that Tibetans live and suffer like we
do." The earthquake has brought about unprecedented civic Tibetan-Chinese grassroots
understanding.
“On Friday April 16, Tibetans all over the world
prayed for the victims of the accident,” said Tsultim Ngabtak, president of
Buddhist View International in Chicago that spreads awareness about Tibetan
culture and human rights. “They do not issue visas to doctors and although Red Cross
and others are going, the Chinese are not letting the Tibetans get access to
aid.”
Ngabtak
added that innocent kids and children are dying and are very afraid and nobody
is helping. “The earthquake happened a week ago and nobody has gone there for
help. Haiti got so much help compared to this. Why did Tibet not get any help? Chinese say
that they are helping but technically there is no help.”
Old
buildings are there that crashed because climate is changing. Chinese do not
inspect new buildings that were built in Tibet in the name of development.
According
to reporter Cameron Stewart of The
Australian newspaper, in Nov. 2008, Bai Ma Cai, vice governor of the Tibet Autonomous
Region in an interview in Lhasa said that Australian premier Kevin Rudd’s
claims of significant human rights
abuses in Tibet were inaccurate. “As for the human rights situation in Tibet,
people enjoy full management of their own affairs,” Cai was quoted as saying.(2)
Such claims are common on behalf of
China.
Bhuchung
K. Tsering, vice president for special programs at International Campaign
for Tibet, writes on www. weblog.savetibet.org that the Chinese media has had good coverage
of how the Chinese government is assisting the victims and the expressions of
condolence by leaders around the world whose names the Tibetans in Yushu may
not have heard of. Tsering adds that the
Chinese media is silent on the message of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and about
his prayers, this single most important individual whose name means so much to
the Tibetan people and have instead criticized him by coming out with articles
about the “Dalai Clique.”
Many people have volunteered for the Tibetan cause
because they feel it from their heart. The movement has gained a strong
momentum in the United States and all parts of the world. The world over gives
support to Tibet and Tibetans are trying their best to put the word out there.
France Komorske, who has been a volunteer
for Tibet since the 1970s, thinks that the current situation in Tibet is
deplorable. “His Holiness still has hope, so I do too.” Komorske studied at Indiana university in America where the Dalai
Lama's brother was a professor.
“Down here I've been on the committee of
Friends of Tibet (New Zealand) for almost 10 years. During that time my husband
and I drove the Tibetan Freedom Torch from the bottom of the South Island to
the top of the North, and helped with visits from people and groups and like
the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan Institute for Performing Arts, etc., attended a
number of protests and demonstrations, and anything else we can to help the
cause.”
The
Chinese government has consistently delayed negotiations with the Dalai Lama by
stating that His Holiness has not declared Tibet as part of China. This is
practically the same as asking him to distort the history of Tibet. That Tibet
is an independent nation cannot be denied. According to Shen, the last Chinese
official Representative in Tibet, Shen Tsung-Lein, admitted that “since 1911,
the Tibetan government in Lhasa has to all practical purposes enjoyed full
independence.”
There
are many stories that go to prove that Tibet was once an independent nation. It
goes back to history.
According
to Snow, when Mao Zedong himself passed through the border regions of Tibet
during the Long March, and was given food and shelter by local Tibetans
remarked: “This is our only foreign debt, and some day we must pay the Mantzu
and the Tibetans for the provisions we were obliged to take from them.” (Red
Star over China , Edgar Snow, New York, 1961)
When
Nepal applied for UN membership in 1949 it cited its diplomatic relationship
with Tibet -- especially its 1856 treaty
with Tibet, to prove that it was a sovereign nation. The UN recognized this
argument effectively and gave recognition to the sovereign status of Tibet.
At
the time of invasion by China, the studies conducted by the International
Commission of Jurists, the United States Congress and the German Bundestag and
many other independent bodies also confirmed to Tibet’s independent status at
that time.
Tsering
suggests that despite political differences between Taiwan and China, China has
been trying to promote relations between Taiwan and China but has a bias
against Tibet, even though the basis is more or less similar. Tibetans, who
desire to go to India and Nepal are not
issued passports easily. He suggests
that the United States should take a holistic approach and attempts to improve
human rights need to be incorporated with solving the broader political problem
in Tibet.
But
in February 2009, Secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton drew fire for saying that human rights should
not “interfere” with U.S.-China relations. Some people say that U.S. should do
more on its part. President Obama postponed his meeting with the Dalai Lama when he came to the U.S.
in early October last year, and promised to meet him after his China trip. This
move was not welcomed by some who saw this as slighting the monk who has been
regularly dropping in the White House since 1991. Later despite Chinese
objections, Obama met Dalai Lama in February. Several hurdles still stand in
the way because China is a major economic power to the United States and is a
powerful ally.
But
nothing concrete has been done and a quiet diplomacy is still going on with
Obama promising to talk with China and so it has been for years with world
leaders just wanting to “talk” with Chinese leaders, who have been deferring
talks.
As Elliott Abrams, deputy
national security director for democracy in George W. Bush's second term and
now a senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations, states, “It seems
clear to me that the Obama administration has no human rights policy. That is, while in some inchoate sense they would like
respect for human rights
to grow around the world, as all Americans would, they have no actual policy to
achieve that goal — and they subordinate it to all their other policy goals.”
The
newly-formed Human Rights Council in 2006 vowed to improve the situation.
However, the United States declined to
participate in the council, but later joined it. The council is seen by some as
unsound. And during a recent Larry King live interview, H. H. the Dalai Lama,
said that he has a “middle-way approach” and does not like China’s policy of
religious repression. Tibet wants to be a part of China and not separate from
it but only wants some autonomy in fields like religion and culture. Tibet is a
landlocked country and Tibetans want to modernize. They want the development
that China has given them but not give up their cultural heritage in the
process.
For years now, the Dalai Lama,
the leader of the Tibetan people, has been urging for talks with China for an
autonomous Tibet, though not an independent one. Although some meetings have taken place, the
talks are in a limbo and China has decided that it will not budge from its
Communist stance. China has been eluding to conduct talks with Dalai Lama and
now with young Chinese leaders ruling China, as opposed to an older generation
of leaders before, the question as to whether Tibet will ever attain freedom is
difficult to answer. For the freedom movement to be a
success, Tibet needs some strong support from the world community to put its
voice through and thus gain traction and
its independence that is so deserves and has been deprived of for all
these years. With timely international help and consistent negotiations Tibet
could surely have the last word.
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