Latest News & Info on Tibet

European Parliament Discusses Current Situation of Tibet

2010-03-27T00:11:00.001+05:30

Friday, March 26 2010 @ 08:34 am UTC

Brussels: During the Mini-Plenary session of the European Parliament in Brussels on Thursday, the Members of European Parliament (MEPs) held a debate on the current situation of Tibet reviewing the peaceful protests by Tibetans inside Tibet in 2008.

During the debate EU Commissioner and Vice-President of the European Commission, Mr. Maros Sefcovic said: "We have real concerns about the human rights situation in Tibet, about the fact that Tibet has remained largely closed to international media, diplomats and humanitarian organisations and also about the lack of progress in talks between the representatives of the Dalai Lama and the Chinese authorities."

"The EU position does not leave any room for misinterpretation. Therefore, let me stress: the EU respects the sovereignty and territorial integrity of China, including Tibet. We respect the ‘one China’ policy."

*However, we have always supported peaceful reconciliation through dialogue between the Chinese authorities and the representatives of the Dalai Lama. This dialogue has to be constructive and substantive, addressing all core issues such as the preservation of Tibet’s unique culture, religion and traditions and the need to achieve a system of meaningful autonomy for Tibet within the Chinese Constitution."

"The dialogue should also address the participation of all Tibetans in decision-making. For the EU, Tibet is a human rights issue. We have consistently passed this message on to our Chinese counterparts and listened carefully to their views, and we make every effort to understand their position in a spirit of mutual respect."

"But human rights are universal, and the situation in Tibet is a legitimate concern for the international community, a point that we regularly make to our Chinese interlocutors."

"In the Sino-Tibetan dialogue, the Tibetan side has recently submitted an updated memorandum on genuine autonomy for the future of Tibet. We welcome that the Tibetan side has reiterated its firm commitment not to seek separation or independence."

"We are also pleased that the Dalai Lama remains committed to the middle-way approach and to dialogue as the only means for achieving a mutually acceptable and lasting solution."

"The EU welcomes the fact that both parties continue to hold talks even if we note with regret the lack of results and the lack of momentum."

"Let me conclude by appealing to the representatives of the two sides to continue and intensify the dialogue with an open spirit and with a view to achieving a durable solution in Tibet. From our side I can guarantee the EU's wholehearted support to such a process."

MEPs Call For Appointment of EU Special Envoy For Tibet

While expressing concern over the current situation in Tibet the MEPs called for the appointment of an EU Special Envoy for Tibet, a meeting between High Representative Baroness Ashton and His Holiness the Dalai Lama and to send an investigation team to Tibet.

source tibet.net

Tibetan Buddhist Monk Gets Seven Years In Prison After Secret Trial

2010-03-27T00:06:00.002+05:30

By Robert Weller Beijing : China | Mar 25, 2010
Source: AllVoices.com

Monk Accused Of Leaking Information To Outside World

Sources in China say a 39-year-old Tibetan Buddhist monk has been sentenced to seven years imprisonment after a secret trial.

Tibetcustom.com reports that the monk, Ngagchung, has been held incommunicado since his arrest in July of 2008. The Web site quoted the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy.

The monk was tried by the Kardze Intermediate People’s Court in Sichuan Province.

No details were available on the trial. His family members have not been allowed to see him.

He was arrested on suspicion of leaking information about Tibet outside China. He is believed to be held in a prison near Chengdu.

As China prepares for post-Dalai Lama Tibet, what is India to do with the Tibetan Exiles?

2010-03-26T06:37:00.000+05:30

Abanti Bhattacharya

March 25, 2010
Source: IDSA

The post-Dalai Lama era is likely to be fraught with uncertainty and has profound security implications for both India and China. While China is afflicted with the Tibetan unrest, India has worries about the future of Tibetan refugees spread across the subcontinent. Relations between the two Asian giants are also greatly entwined with the Tibet factor. While India is yet to evolve a strategy to deal with the fate of the Tibetan refugees after the present Dalai Lama passes away, China is incrementally preparing to confront the Tibet problem in the post-Dalai Lama phase. Thus, Hu Jintao’s reconfigured Tibet policy based on promotion of Buddhism and creation of a new monkhood is aimed at confronting the security situation in the post-Dalai Lama era. It is also geared towards weakening India’s manoeuverability on the Tibet issue and bilateral border negotiations.

China’s latest move towards incremental preparation for the post-Dalai Lama era came on February 28, 2010, when it nominated its designated Panchen Lama, Gyaincain Norbu, to the Parliamentary advisory body, the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) as one of the 13 new members. Prior to this, on October 18, 2008, the Chinese government formulated plans to set up the first-ever academy of Tibetan Buddhism in southwestern China. Construction for the $11.7 million project began in October 2008. The purpose is to train “patriotic and devotional religious personnel”. In other words, the attempt is to build an officially approved cadre of monks in order to dilute the influence of defiant monks in Tibet, who have faith in the Dalai Lama. In fact, the signs for the creation of a new monkhood subservient to Beijing was witnessed in July 2007 when in a major diplomatic move the government in China passed a law on reincarnation -- Order No. 5 of China’s State Administration of Religious Affairs, Management Measures for the Reincarnation of ‘Living Buddhas’ in Tibetan Buddhism -- which required all reincarnate lamas to be approved by the state. Through this major tactical step China asserted its right to manage and select all reincarnate lamas of Tibetan Buddhism and thereby sought to choose its own Dalai Lama after the present one passes away. This is based on the assumption that with the exit of the present Dalai Lama the Tibetan problem would inevitably end.

Earlier from April 13 to 16, 2006, China organised for the first time a World Buddhist Forum in Hangzhou to espouse its leadership of the Buddhist world. It also provided an international platform to China’s own Panchen Lama to bolster his legitimacy both internally and globally. It may be recalled that China hand-picked Gyaincain Norbu as the 11th Panchen Lama in 1995, rejecting Gedhun Choekyi Nyima selected by the Dalai Lama. Since then, China has been steadily raising his profile. The Dalai Lama was not invited for this international forum in which over 1,000 monks and experts from thirty-seven countries gathered to participate in the discussion on building a harmonious world, because he was seen as “splitting the motherland and sabotaging the unity of ethnic groups.” As such, his participation would have caused “disharmony”, as reported by Xinhua.

More importantly, the Fifth National Conference on the Work of Tibet held in Beijing in January 18-20, 2010 indicates China’s policy direction on Tibet. This was convened especially keeping an eye on the future of the Dalai Lama. Evidently, the 2010 Work on Tibet came after the March 2008 Tibetan uprisings. The last Conference was held in 2001. During the 2010 Conference, Chinese President Hu Jintao made a very important statement on the need for lasting stability in Tibet, implying that Deng Xiaoping’s strategy of creating economic prosperity to mitigate separatism alone could not tame the restive Tibetan population. Identifying that “Tibet faces a special contradiction between people of all ethnic group and the separatist forces led by the Dalai clique,” Hu Jintao emphasised on the need for “leap frog development” and “lasting stability” as the major themes of the work of Tibet. The emphasis on “lasting stability” is particularly striking. The Work Report talks about adopting substantial measures to ensure “normal order of Tibetan Buddhism.” This perhaps signals the need to promote and preserve Tibetan Buddhism, which has hitherto been stifled or controlled in Tibet. Also, perhaps there is the realization on the part of the Chinese leadership that the forces of identity and nationalism cannot be eliminated through repressive measures. Conspicuously, this means that along with Deng’s policy of economic development in minority areas, Hu Jintao adds a major policy decision of promoting Tibetan Buddhism, which in some sense would mean upholding the Tibetan identity. Arguably, China is incrementally preparing for the post-Dalai Lama scenario. This momentous decision also has ominous implications for India.

First, it would certainly blunt Western criticism about China’s repressive policy in Tibet. Second, it would discredit the Dalai Lama’s criticism of cultural repression of the Tibetans as well as invalidate his demand for ‘Greater Tibet’ to promote and preserve Tibetan identity. Third, it would weaken India’s Tibetan card or in other words weaken the threat of re-opening the Tibet question as a kind of pressure tactic on China.

In the light of these developments, it is pertinent to ask how India is preparing for the post-Dalai Lama era. The presence of the Dalai Lama in India along with 120,000 Tibetan refugees spread across 39 settlements is leverage for India. But India has so far steadfastly avoided using the Tibetan card. In fact, while China has shown eagerness for the Dalai Lama’s return to China, it has categorically refused to take back the exiled Tibetan population based in India. Of course, the Dalai Lama has refused to go back to Tibet leaving his exiled-people behind. Quite clearly, China is not interested in resolving the Tibet issue. By constantly disparaging the Dalai Lama as a ‘splittist’ and involving his representatives in fruitless talks, China is simply buying time till the Dalai Lama passes away, after which, it hopes, the Tibetan movement would naturally fizzle out. In the meantime, through several measures, China is incrementally consolidating its hold on Tibet. Consequently, China’s Tibet policy is geared towards weakening India’s bargaining position on the border negotiations as the Tibet factor is entwined with the disputed India-China border.

In this scenario, India needs to raise with China the issue of the future of the exiled Tibetan population in India. This is pertinent since the long-term presence of Tibetans in India could prove to be troublesome in terms of internal peace. The 1999 Manali disturbance in Himachal Pradesh bears testimony to the fact that the growing presence of Tibetans and their engagement at times with illegal trade and business has brought them in collision with the local population. With time Tibetans are only likely to strike deeper roots in India, and a future Gorkhaland kind of a scenario could well become a reality.

Two Earthquakes Jolt Tibet

2010-03-25T08:21:00.001+05:30

2010-03-24 22:10:00
Lhasa, March 24 (IANS)

Two earthquakes measuring 5.7 and 5.5 on the Richter scale jolted the Tibetan Autonomous Region in southwest China Wednesday, the Earthquake Networks Centre said.

The first quake, magnitude-5.7, occurred around 10.06 a.m., while the second temblor, magnitude-5.5 occurred about 30 minutes later, both in northern Tibet's Nyainrong county, Xinhua reported.

The epicentre of the first quake was 32.4 degrees north latitude and 93.0 degrees east longitude at a depth of about eight kilometres.

The epicentre of the second quake was 32.5 degrees north latitude and 92.8 degrees east longitude at a depth of about seven kilometres.

The quakes hit a sparsely inhabited mountainous area, said Zhu Quan, director with the seismological bureau of Tibet. There was no report of casualties or damage after the quakes.

Reality behing Beijing Olympic Emblem & Torch Relay

2008-08-13T23:41:00.003+05:30

EVERY EMBLEM OF THE OLYMPIC TELLS A STORY

"We will have to repent in this generation, not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people." -- Martin Luther King

China's Tibet?

2008-08-13T18:57:00.000+05:30

China’s Tibet! Huh! Beijing should first of all hire a western PR agent. Sounds pathetic and unconvincing, China’s Tibet. Sounds as if Tibet is an object or article that is invented and owned by China! It's like saying, USA's New York or Canada’s Quebec.

Smith needs to be appreciated for writing a book on Tibet-China crisis, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that Beijing’s final goal for Tibet is to assimilate and sinicize it completely rather than giving it “autonomy”.

I don’t understand why we still cling to this illusion of securing “genuine autonomy” from the Chinese. Are our hopes based on a careful and objective analysis of China’s political and strategic considerations or are we playing into the hands of China's tactics of "buying time"? Or worse, are there some vested interests involved in pursuing “dialogue and negotiations”? I hope and pray that my doubts and cynicism are nothing but doubts and cynicism.

In dealing with the Chinese, we must ensure that Tibet’s vital interests are secured, no matter whatever heavy price we need to pay for it. Therefore the first step that we need to take is this: openly acknowledge and declare that talks with Beijing have not yielded anything for Tibet. Instead these talks have further tightened the noose on us to strive for our legitimate right to seek freedom and justice.

It's still not too late for Tibet. The most important thing is that we should not give up our struggle; our brothers and sisters in Tibet have not given up. Tibet can be resurrected. The other countries have done it. So why can’t we do it? We can do it. Former Soviet Republics, Balkan States, East Timor have all done it. South Ossetia seems to be doing it at the moment. Tibet could be the next, if only we believe in ourselves and not succumb to pressures from outside…

Always remember empires, even the mightiest of ones like that of Rome, fall and disintegrates. China is no exception!

--Tenzin Nyinjey

(The above write up was written after reading Jamyang Norbu's review of China's Tibet? Autonomy or Assimilation, authored by Dr. Warren Smith).

The Spirit call Tibet!

2008-06-23T17:09:00.001+05:30

Last night I had an appointment with a Polish Journalist. We talked about Tibet, Tibet and Tibet. In fact it was I who did all the talking. To have an objective discussion on Tibet is one of the most difficult thing to do in this world. This is because the issue, especially for us Tibetans, is a very emotional one.

Considering the precarious situation of us exiled Tibetans, the only pragmatic thing we can do for Tibet is talk and debate on it. In the process, we can hope to find a new way for Tibet. Some actions can also be taken, and is being taken by courageous Tibetans - some non-violent protests, every now and then.

Such campaigns have been initiated ever since we were driven out of our homeland – way back in 1949. Its been a long time back now. Fifty years might not be a long time for a national liberation struggle. They say India fought for two hundred years before it became independent. But then we should also remember that it took just thirty odd years to completely change the face of China. The country was one of the poorest in the world when it was established in 1949. But now it is considered as the future superpower, overpowering even the mighty United States.

Sadly, no concrete solution has been found for Tibet. Tibetans on both sides of the Himalayas continue to suffer severe repression and national humiliation. Democracy, human rights, economic development, global warming, rule of law, freedom, dignity – these are luxurious items for us.

We don’t even have a secure base. We are not sure of what will happen tommorrow. Despite such tough conditions, Tibetans have so far kept the issue of Tibet alive. It has remained steadfast to its struggle for national freedom. China keeps on lecturing on “peace and stability” in Tibet. This is a clear indication that so far it has not been able to pacify Tibet.

Although China controls Tibet physically thanks to its overwhelming force represented by the People’s Liberation Army and the People’s Armed Police, it has not been able to extinguish the flame of freedom that burns in the heart of every Tibetan. Be they communist cadres, monks, nuns, or common Tibetans, all of them know that Tibet is an occupied country. They know that the identity of Tibet can be secured only when the Chinese are driven out of Tibet.

And herein lies the significance. As long as the spirit of the Tibetans last, as long as the will and aspiration to resist Chinese colonialism continues, there is always hope for Tibet.

Tenzin Nyinjey

A POEM

2008-06-18T23:12:00.000+05:30

A poem is a cascade of pearly words
Flowing through the river of life
Mingling with the souls of humans
Describing their woeful pains
And voicing their cherished desires

A poem is the expression of flowering dreams
Rising from the earth in a lamentable world
Bringing fresh color to life
Ridding the world of deplorable misery
And silently dispelling the smell of despair

A poem is the flamboyant actor on stage
Showing off its many faces and colors
Giving the audience food for thought
Leaving them with questions answerable
While telling a tale of a thousand adventures

A poem is the messenger of natural forces
Rejuvenating the future of different courses
Resuscitating present circumstances
Redeeming past occurrences
While resurrecting inspirational yearnings

Tsoltim N. Shakabpa

EVER SAY NEVER?

2008-06-18T23:10:00.000+05:30

Ever say never?
Never say never
When it comes to your country's freedom
When it comes to saving your kingdom
Your freedom is your sacred right
Fight for it with all your might
Your kingdom is yours and only yours
Let not aggressors onto your shores
Beware of occupiers who come by force
With guns they will come and break down your doors
As they did with Tibet
Which today we regret
Still we Tibetans fight for our rights
And have independence in our sights
Still we Tibetans never say never
We have freedom in our minds forever
And we know one day for sure
We will regain freedom pure

Tsoltim N. Shakabpa - 2008
=================================
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PEOPLE TALKING, will soon be released by Paljor Publications in New
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Self Determination: A Case for Tibet

2008-06-11T15:45:00.000+05:30

Both by Chinese domestic law and international law, Tibetans have a legitimate right to self-determination which need not necessarily realise the Chinese fear of secession. Tsewang Phuntsok argues

The right of peoples to self-determination remains one of the sacrosanct principles of international law in the 20th century. From the American Declaration of Independence (1776) to the Treaty of Versailles (1919), the Charter of the United Nations (1945), the General Assembly's Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples (1960), the International Bill of Rights (1966), and the General Assembly's Declaration on Friendly Relations (1970), all have affirmed to the right to self-determination. Criticisms of its ambiguity and perceived restriction to the context of decolonisation notwithstanding, this right has been aspired to and practiced widely by various groups of people in their fight for political rights, ranging from autonomous status to complete independence in the post-cold war period. The right to self-determination can, therefore, be applied for both internal and external purposes.

The question therefore arises whether Tibetans are entitled to make a legitimate claim to the right to self-determination under international law? Will the realisation of this right for the Tibetans unilaterally lead to secession from the People's Republic of China? To address these questions, we need to understand the legal provisions in respect to the right to self-determination, both in Chinese domestic law as well as international law and to see whether the Tibetans qualify for the right to self-determination.

We also need to define the position of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and his Government-in-Exile to resolve the issue of Tibet.

Lenin's view of self-determination

The Chinese concept of self-determination was borrowed from the former Soviet Union. While the principle of self-determination has for long been associated with the popular, democratic will of people, the first half of the twentieth century - when anti-colonial nationalist movements were raging in Asia and Africa - saw anti-imperialist Marxist-Leninists redefining self-determination along the line of decolonisation. The emphasis was shifted from popular will to "national oppression" as a criterion, which implied that applicability of the principle of self-determination was restricted only in the context of colonialism.

Moreover, in Lenin's redefinition, national self-determination in a colonial context meant secession of a territory, while the same principle in a socialist context meant only self-government. This glaring contradiction and inconsistency however didn't stop the principle of self-determination from being enshrined in the Soviet Constitutions of 1924, 1936 and 1977 respectively, each of which recognised the right of each Union Republic "to freely secede from USSR".

The Chinese communists too, in their struggle against capitalist imperialism, imbued Lenin's redefinition of self-determination in their ideology. The principle of self-determination remained a part of the Communist Chinese ideology until 1934, prior to which it had in 1921 envisaged a separate federal republic for Mongolians, Tibetans and Uighurs; and in 1928 promised self-determination for non-Chinese social groups.

The Chinese Communist Party's position on national self-determination for minorities (or nationalities) is clearly reflected in the Constitution of the Chinese Soviet Republic formulated in November 1931: "The Soviet government in China recognises the right of self-determination of the national minorities in China, their right to complete separation from China, and to the formation of an independent state for each national minority. Thus the Mongols, Moslems, Tibetans, Koreans and others inhabiting the territory of China enjoy the complete right to self-determination, that is, they may either join the Union of Chinese Soviets or secede from it and form their own state as they may prefer."

The Nationalist China too, under the leadership of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, initially quite clearly supported the right to self-determination for nationalities inhabiting China. In the manifesto of the first Chinese Nationalist Congress published in 1924, Dr. Sun wrote: "The Kuomintang solemnly declares that the right of self-determination is recognised for all the nationalities inhabiting China; following the victory of the revolution over the imperialists and militarists there will be established a free and united (formed on the basis of a voluntary union of all nationalities) Chinese republic."

The Chinese Nationalists, however, completely abandoned this policy soon, both in theory and practice. Similarly, in the face of Japan's China attack and particularly after the ascendancy of Mao as the undisputed leader in 1934, the Chinese Communist Party's position on the right to self-determination departed from their earlier policy and from Lenin's stand and became closely associated with self-government or regional autonomy.

Thereafter, regional autonomy offered as a political substitute for self-determination has remained the basic policy for resolving the problems of nationalities. The primary driving force behind Mao's denial of self-determination to non-Chinese nationalities was his belief that the new Socialist China must inherit all the territories which were either ruled by imperial China or claimed by it, and that the Chinese are the most revolutionary people and only they can help the non-Chinese nationalities to a higher stage of historical development. Mao later used this stance of racist supremacy as an ideological justification for Chinese hegemony and Chinese expansionism in non-Chinese areas under the banner of autonomous status. Prof. Dawa Norbu argues that if the essence of "regional autonomy" in the context of Communist China is Han hegemony in the name of "Central leadership", and Han expansionism in the name of "development" of "border regions", then it constitutes a serious case of "national operation" (a basic Leninists' criterion for the claim of self-determination in the socialist context).

Self-determination in International Law

Since the American Declaration of Independence in 1776, the principle of self-determination has attained great prominence in international law and politics, so much so that it has been incorporated into numerous international legal instruments of the United Nations including the United Nations' Charter. Both the General Assembly's 1960 Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples and the first articles of the International Covenants, forming part of the International Bill of Rights, declare: "All peoples have the right to self-determination; by virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development."

However, the ambivalence of the provisions of the 1960 Declaration and the failure to define "peoples" both in the Declaration and International Covenants led to the advancement of alternative theories concerning the intended beneficiary.

In reality, the right to self-determination means the right of a people "to freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development", the exercise of which can lead to "the establishment of a sovereign and Independent State, free association or integration with an independent State or the emergence into any other political status freely determined by a people". Thus, the right to self-determination is, in fact, more of a procedural than a substantive right. The focus is on the voluntary nature of the decision-making process, rather than on the substantive result, as clearly reflected in the shift in understanding the scope of the right to self-determination and unprecedented events that have unfolded since the end of the Cold War.

As the Honourable Justice Minister Michael Kirby of the International Commission of Jurists has argued, the right to self-determination is not a right which belongs to governments or states, but one that belongs to the people as a "people". The UNESCO Experts Committee on Peoples' Rights holds that there are a number of characteristics by which the existence of a distinct "people" can easily be defined. In their final report and recommendations, the Experts Committee laid down four criteria: (1) A group of individual human beings who enjoy some or all of the following common features: a) A common historical tradition; b) Racial or ethnic identity; c) Cultural homogeneity; d) Linguistic unity; e) Religious or ideological affinity; f) Territorial connection; g) Common economic life. (2) The group must be of a certain number who need not be too large (e.g., the people of micro-states) but must be more than a mere association of individuals within a state. (3) The group as a whole must have the will to be identified as a people or the consciousness of being a people-allowing that groups or some members of such groups, though sharing the foregoing characteristics, may not have the will or consciousness. (4) Possibly the group must have institutions or other means of expressing its common characteristics and will of identity.

Self-Determination in Tibet's case

The Tibetan people have a long and undeniably rich common historical recorded tradition in the form of royal chronicles or ancient Tibetan chronicles (rGyalrab) and religious histories (Chos-'byung). There are also numerous authoritative historical works in English based on original Tibetan and other reliable sources. The Tibetan people as a race trace their origin to a monkey (father) and a rock ogress (mother) known in Tibetan as pha spre-wu byan-chub sempa, ma drag-srinmo; this is quite different from the Chinese who credit their racial origin to the "Yellow Emperor".

The Tibetan people enjoy not only a common culture, they also possess a unique civilisation comparable to any other great civilisation of Europe and the East. Tibet's rich culture is not only confined to its geographical boundary, but is spread also India (Ladakh and Sikkim), Nepal, Bhutan, China, Manchuria, Mongolia, and Russia (Buryatia, Tuva and Kalmykia). The Tibetan people enjoy a high degree of linguistic unity-a spoken Tibetan language with several regional dialects which are inter-communicable and an absolutely uniform script, derived from the Indian Gupta Devanagari script. The Tibetan people have a common religion known as Tibetan Buddhism. The multiplicity of schools within Tibetan Buddhism reflects a rich diversity. But all the schools are founded on the teachings in the two Tibetan Buddhist canons, bka-'gyur and bstan-'gyur. The Tibetan people have a common territory which is known in Tibetan as bod kha-wa sGang-chen gyi jong , the Plateau of Tibet (the Chinese now refer to it as Qinghai-Tibet Plateau). Within this geographical location, the Tibetan people over the centuries have created their common ethnogenic myths and historical tradition, cultural and linguistic identity, and common economic life. The Tibetan economy is based on highland agro-nomadic pastoralism, distinctly different from the rice-and-wheat-farming of the traditional Chinese economy.

As for the fulfillment of the remaining three criteria in the Tibetan case, The Tibetan population of six million (the number even acknowledged by the PRC) is a sizeable number to be entitled to claim to be a "people" under the international law; The Tibetan people have been expressing their common characteristics through the institution of bod bShung dGa lDen pho drang pyChokle rNam rGyal (the Tibetan Government) headed by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, their spiritual and temporal leader, since the year 1642; and as for the consciousness (or will of the people) of being a "people", even Tibetans who have been forced out of their homeland for nearly half a century remain deeply conscious that they are part and parcel of the Tibetan race and Tibetan tradition. A similar consciousness has also been demonstrated more strongly, at the risk of greater repercussion, by the Tibetan people inside Tibet.

The above facts clearly demonstrate that the Tibetans are a distinct people under international law, fully entitled to the right to self-determination. This fact was endorsed by the London Conference of International Lawyers on Issues Relating to Self-Determination and Independence for Tibet in January 1993. The United Nations Economic and Social Council resolution (1991/10) E/CN.4/1992/37 of January 5, 1992 not only endorsed that the Tibetan people are a distinct people under international law, but also observed that "Tibet is an occupied country" and "Tibetans are a people under colonial or alien domination".

Although the international legal instruments of the United Nations clearly state that "all peoples enjoy the right to self-determination, international law restricts the application of this right, at least as a peremptory norm, to peoples under colonial domination and exploitation or under alien subjugation.

The concept of alien subjugation has not been greatly explored by international legal experts, but in general it is accepted that the concept of alien subjugation is wider in scope than the classical decolonisation cases. The United Nations has applied the concept of alien subjugation in relation to the Palestinian people in the Israeli Occupied Territories, Cambodia under Vietnam, Namibia under South Africa, Kuwait under Iraq, all outside the context of European colonialism.

In the post-Cold War era, the Tibetan case has similarities with both Kuwait and the Baltic States. But while the people of Kuwait regained their right to self-determination and independence from Iraq with strong support from the United States in the form of military action, mandated by the United Nations Security Council resolution 678 (1990), the Tibetan issue has remain unresolved because China, which is a permanent member of the Security Council, easily vetoes any move challenging its interest. But, whatever the present situation may be, Tibet was an independent country on the eve of the Chinese invasion in 1949-50 and the Chinese occupation of Tibet is not only illegal, it also constitutes an act of "aggression" in the context of international law. Such illegal acquisition of territory is not permissible under the UN Charter, the 1970 Declaration of Friendly Relations, and the 1974 Definition of Aggression.

When the Baltic States seceded from the former Soviet Union, the international community viewed their situation as qualitatively different from other Soviet Republics, because of their prior existence as independent states-a status which was undone by a coerced treaty of annexation. Based on this argument, the Baltic people were able to define their circumstances as a form of alien occupation, adding a legal force to their political claims to self-determination. Likewise, Tibet had remained an independent state before the Chinese invasion and occupation, and it was annexed to China under a forced treaty.

Therefore, the concept of alien occupation and alien subjugation are very relevant to Tibet. In fact, Richard Falk, Professor of International Law and Practice and Fellow at the Center for International Studies, Princeton University (USA), strongly believes that the Tibet case is stronger than the Baltic Republics' case. Prof. Falk stated that reservations about the application of self-determination are irrelevant in the case of Tibet and the reality of Tibet as a country essentially occupied by a foreign power must be appreciated.

During the UN General Assembly debates on Tibet in 1959, 1961 and 1965, many delegates asserted that the Tibetans formed a distinct people whose traditional autonomy or independence was threatened by the alien rule imposed by China. In 1959, El Salvador denounced the "invasion of Tibet by foreign forces" and New Zealand referred specially to the prohibition against subjecting a people to alien subjugation, domination and exploitation. In 1961, Ireland considered the terms of GA resolution 1514 on the granting of independence to colonial countries and people applicable to Tibet as Tibetans constituted a people subjected to alien subjugation, domination and exploitation. In 1965, Costa Rica considered the situation in Tibet as one of neo-imperialism and called upon the UN to assist Tibet to "throw off the yoke of foreign domination". The Philippines, India, Thailand, Ireland and New Zealand also gave similar statements. These debates, and the 1961 UN General Assembly resolution on Tibet calling for the "cessation of practices which deprive the Tibetan people of their fundamental rights and freedoms, including their right to self-determination", show that the Tibetan question was considered in the context of a distinct people under alien subjugation and domination.

China's fear of secession and Tibetan Self-Determination

That Tibet was an independent country invaded by the PRC through military force and that its current status under international law is that of a country under alien subjugation remain without doubt. But, more important than the historical position is the popular will of the people, which has now become a new foundation of the political claim or the legitimacy of governmental control over peoples in the modern world. The Tibetan people have frequently demonstrated their will or consciousness through a series of peaceful pro-independence demonstrations in 1959, 1969, the 1980s and 1990s in Tibet. This in itself entitles the Tibetan people to make a legitimate claim to total independence or secession from the PRC.

However, responding positively to the 1979 offer of Deng Xiaoping to discuss anything "other than independence" and also considering the long-term benefit to both the Chinese and Tibetan people, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, spiritual and temporal head of the six million Tibetans, came out with the most modest, "middle-way" solution to the Sino-Tibetan conflict. In his 1987 Five-Point Peace Plan for Tibet announced on Capitol Hill in Washington DC, the Dalai Lama called for the conversion of Tibet into a zone of peace, respect for the Tibetan people's human rights and democratic ideals, protection of Tibet's fragile environment, a halt to the Chinese population transfer into Tibet, and earnest negotiations between the Tibetan and Chinese peoples. A framework for the negotiations on the future of Tibet was laid down in his speech to the European Parliament at Strasbourg in the following year; this later came to be popularly known as the Strasbourg Proposal. In the proposal, His Holiness the Dalai Lama demanded that "the whole of Tibet known as Cholka-Sum (U-Tsang, Kham and Amdo) should become a self-governing democratic political entity founded on law by agreement of the people for the common good and the protection of themselves and their environment, in association with the People's Republic of China". The proposal further stated that "the government of the People's Republic of China could remain responsible for Tibet's Foreign Policy". The Dalai Lama's Strasbourg Proposal demanded only internal self-determination and renounced the idea of separating Tibet from China.

Although the international community applauded the initiative as a reasonable approach, Beijing reacted negatively to the Strasbourg Proposal and the Five-Point Peace Plan announced earlier by saying that "both attempt to tamper with history, distort reality, and deny Tibet's status as an inalienable part of China's territory under Chinese sovereignty". Beijing labelled the Strasbourg Proposal "independence in disguise" and declared that "the independence, semi-independence, and disguised independence of Tibet will not do and the People's Republic of China will not make any concession on the question of sovereignty".

There may be some basis for the Chinese misgivings over the proposal. As "free association or associated statehood" is the basis of future relationship with China laid down in the Proposal, the United Nations' General Assembly resolution 742 (VIII) of 1953 and 1541 (XV) of 1960 clearly states that the people of an associated State retain the right to modify unilaterally its status by democratic means, presumably toward independence. But this inference should not pose any obstacle to Sino-Tibetan dialogues and should not serve as a basis for apprehension among the Chinese leadership. His Holiness has repeatedly made it public that he is "not fighting for complete independence or separation from China". He made it categorically clear at the Second International Conference of Tibet Support Groups in Bonn (Germany) in June 1996. He told his supporters that: "…if my main goal or objective were to pursue total independence then I could adopt a position of claiming independence for the areas governed by the Tibetan Government before 1950. But my main concern is the protection of Tibetan culture, because the Tibetan culture has the potential to create a peaceful human society, a compassionate society at peace with nature and the environment".

Similarly, in his March 10, 1999 political statement to the international public and the Tibetan people both in and outside Tibet, he stated clearly that: "I sincerely believe that my 'Middle Way Approach' will contribute to stability and unity of the People's Republic of China and secure the right for the Tibetan people to live in freedom, peace and dignity…a just and fair solution to the issue of Tibet will enable me to give full assurance that I will use my moral authority to persuade the Tibetans not to seek separation". These statements clearly indicate that His Holiness the Dalai Lama is serious, consistent and sincere in his terms.

Moreover, if Tibetans enjoy meaningful self-rule, a genuine form of autonomy, and if there exists a self-regulatory mechanism for the resolution of differences, then these safeguard internal self-determination in the fullest sense, which is what His Holiness the Dalai Lama is demanding for the six million Tibetans. His demand is genuine in the sense that the right to self-determination is not the right entitled to a State, but to a people. In other words, the Dalai Lama is willing to forego the demand for a complete secession from the PRC if all the Tibetans living on the Plateau of Tibet are given a genuine right to internal self-determination.

His Proposal reflects that he is a moderate and pragmatic leader, who is keen to resolve the Sino-Tibetan conflict peacefully bearing in mind the long-term benefit to both the Tibetan and Chinese peoples. Most importantly, he is the only leader who commands total loyalty of six million Tibetans and could persuade them to accept a settlement which falls short of total independence. In his absence, it will be very difficult to resolve the conflict through dialogues and negotiations. Thus, His Holiness the Dalai Lama is Beijing's best bet for resolving the Tibet issue without a separation from China.

Tsewang Phuntsok

Bird Lessons

2008-06-06T10:49:00.000+05:30

I have been thinking to write something on the pro-independence demonstrations that happened recently in our homeland Tibet. The demonstrations, which later turned to what the media called "riots", as expected and feared, were brutally suppressed by the Chinese regime without even an iota of hesitation and doubt. But before I decided to pick up my pen and write on this, my conscience admonishes me to write something that is not just an outpour of emotions and anger against the Chinese, not just an outright condemnation (which the whole world except the Chinese side seems to be doing) but rather something that can be of little help to further advance the just and legitimate cause of Tibetan freedom.

I believe one doesn't have to be a rocket scientist to realize that even a mild criticism, leave alone peaceful and non-violent independence demonstrations like chanting "Tibet is independent", "long live the Dalai Lama", against the Chinese regime will subject one to rigorous imprisonment and, worse, violent deaths from the whole apparatus of the PLA machinery. Still Tibetans in Tibet, knowing full well the grave consequences of their actions, rose up against the Chinese and sacrificed their lives so that the spirit of Tibet remains alive and our children live in peace, freedom and dignity.

Tibetans living in free countries have done a lot to show their solidarity by organizing all kinds of non-violent protests to highlight the attention of the world community to the killing mines in Tibet. However, the question that remains to be asked among ourselves is this: have we, as Tibetans living in free countries, done enough for our brothers and sisters back in Tibet? Can we Tibetans, who came into exile with the solemn pledge that we will work for Tibet's freedom, do more than what we are doing right now?

I have no doubt that the majority of us Tibetans in exile will have a negative answer to these questions. Deep down in our hearts and minds, whether we accept it or not, we know that we have not done enough for our cause. We know that we should do more, and wish to do more, but we seem to be, to quote His Holiness, helpless. In other words, our concern for Tibet remains just within the confines of our minds only!

Speaking from the context of a nation, Tibetans killed by the Chinese in recent protests were our brothers and sisters, members of a same family, sharing a same language, religion and culture, called Bhod. What should be our response when our own family members, be it our age-old parents or just a new born baby, is attacked by a rabies-infested dog? Should we counsel patience and compassion or should we strike the beast down without any show of mercy? I got my answer when I was watching a program on discovery channel last night. It was about what the biologists call defensive mechanism that is inherent in every species when they are preyed upon by powerful predators.

The program showed a bird guarding her chickens in the nest. A serpent suddenly pops up from nowhere to gobble up the little chicks. The mother, the bird, without any second thoughts about the venous snake, strikes back at the merciless predator!

Tenzin Nyinjey

In Hope

2007-12-27T22:03:00.000+05:30

It was a Saturday evening. It was quite late and I was dying for a cigarette. I had to search a while to find an open shop, as Dharamsala’s Kalachakra-bound citizens were yet to return. I walked up to what seemed to be a new grocery store and was pleasantly surprised to see an elderly Tibetan behind the counter. I purchased my merchandise and indulged in some small talk with the storekeeper.

“So what is the latest?” the elderly Tibetan asked. “We might soon have to return to Tibet and you, my old man might need to sell your things on discount”, I replied. “Its all due to the mercy of Chenrezig,” the man in reply closed his eyes and folded his hands. “It is an optimistic time,” he murmured as I bid good night.

A little too soon? For then the news came of Lobsang Dhondup’s execution.

Lobsang Dhondup was executed recently by the Chinese on flimsy charges. To date, neither the court nor the Beijing authorities have been able to substantiate or admit to the real reason behind this cruel act.

Lobsang Dhondup was probably shot in the back of his head at point blank range, to make the execution efficient and the result a surety. Probably his passing away was quick. Maybe it was painless. But I am sure it was terrifying. A close friend asked, “I wonder what was on his mind, right at that moment?” I shudder to think.

What would be going through the mind of a young man, condemned to die for something he did not do. Condemned to death for the sake of an occupying forces’ politics and power games. Sure, he is far from the first Tibetan to die for such reasons, and even further from being the first ever person to die in this manner, but when it is your life that is forfeit, I am sure that those facts are not the ones foremost in your mind at the time. Was he wondering why was he being executed? Why he was the one picked? Was he a victim of the new leadership in Beijing, wanting to send a clear political message?

What would it feel like to walk across the killing ground to the last place you would stand in this life? Or did they just come into his cell and end it there? Buddhism teaches the cycle of life, the turning path of our lifetimes, but as one not extensively trained in the high reaches of monastic disciplines, how much fear was there during his last moments, hours, days? Or in the end, did he see himself dying for his country and proud to offer literally everything he had for this cause?

The truth? Well, of course we will never know, or come anywhere close to knowing. I wondered about simpler things. Lobsang Dhondup’s young life was cut short by the Chinese - he was but 28 years of age He was just few months older than me, living in a country that I have never yet seen. What dreams might he have had? What plans? Where did he think his future was going to take him? To the gallows or to a Free Tibet? To a life later in exile, or a quiet existence watching his family grow up around him? Had he hoped to become a successful businessman, and if so, where would that have led him? Or was he content living each day as it came?

I have lived my life in exile, aware of the Tibetan situation since young. My hopes, my dreams; they may be similar to those of my friends’ here around me, they may not. How different are they though to those of my brethren living inside my unseen homeland? I have an education, many of them do not. I can speak out about what I think without fear of ending up incarcerated, or dead like Lobsang Dhondup. Many within Tibet are politically active, like us here, but run far greater risks. So how do our dreams, our thoughts, our lives differ? Do we see the same futures, the same dreams, but through different eyes? Or do we see different dreams and a different future through the same eyes? Will we meet in our current lifetimes? Will we ever get the chance to compare our thoughts, our hopes, our passions?

I have to believe that we will. I have to believe that all that we fight for, all the suffering that so many have endured, all that so many have sacrificed, will achieve what we aim for in the end, in the not too far distant future. I want to know that lives given have not been used up and thrown away, but are pebbles on the road to freedom. I believe that all the work that I, that my friends, that so many around the world have contributed, will succeed in the end. That the efforts, dreams, and deeds of thousands will prevail, that sanity and peace will return to the high plateau and deep river valleys. And that I will see my homeland, that I will meet my family, my unknown cousins, and my yet un-met friends. That one day we will sit together in the high, rocky mountains around my father’s village and discuss our thoughts, our dreams, and our new plans for the future.

Tenam

Tears of Regret Flow Uncontrollably

2007-12-18T09:41:00.000+05:30

When a girl of fifteen is not sent to school but is given over to the milk
cows;
When a charming, slender girl does not marry but is used by a swindler;
When a beautiful bride does not fit into her new household and is abandoned
to roam in unknown, distant lands-
Oh - how tears of regret flow uncontrollably from my eyes!

When a white-haired old man does not know the alphabet but recites mantras
for this life and the next;
When a white-toothed young man does not know the four vowels but adorns his
chest with gold ornaments;
When a pure-hearted monk does not know how to punctuate sentences but
conducts rituals in the home-
Oh-how tears of regret flow uncontrollably from my eyes!

When the children of farmers and herders aren't sent to school but spend
their time with flocks of goats and sheep;
When the schoolyard is empty of students but full of grass and weeds;
When the classroom walls crumble in the rain while the teacher revels in
drink-
Oh-how tears of regret flow uncontrollably from my eyes!

When the field of culture is trampled under the hooves of those who
disparage it;
When the flower garden of education withers in the drought of
conservatism;
When the peachlike face of literature is infested by swarms of ravenous
insects-
Oh-how tears of regret flow uncontrollably from my eyes!

When the broad heart of the snowy mountains is covered with filthy dust and
sand;
When the courageous peaks of the rocky mountains are split apart by
black-beaked crows;
When the wisdom of the grassy mountains' fertile slopes is undermined by
thousands of gophers-
Oh-how tears of regret flow uncontrollably from my eyes!

When the stallion of progress and knowledge is bound tightly by the hobbles
of domination;
When the white yak of freedom is chained by the nose to a hybrid yak-cow and
made subservient to her;
When the sheep of peace and happiness are exploited for profit and sheared
again and again-
Oh-how tears of regret flow uncontrollably from my eyes!

When incomparable geniuses wander as beggars in foreign lands;
When unprecedented idiots sit upon the thrones of brilliant scholars;
When savages control the wise and knowledgeable-
Oh-how tears of regret flow uncontrollably from my eyes!

When the pure river of an untainted history is contaminated with the salty
water of distortion;
When the unblemished vow on the face of a stone monument is defaced with
one-sided views;
When the incomparably white pool of the five sciences becomes the playground
for lying frogs-
Oh-how tears of regret flow uncontrollably from my eyes!

-- Lhagyal Tsering

Invasion of Tibet and fall of Chamdo

2007-12-13T18:23:00.000+05:30

On October 1, 1949 the People’s Republic of China was founded. Soon after, Radio Beijing began to announce that “the People’s Liberation Army must liberate all Chinese territories, including Tibet, Xinjiang, Hainan and Taiwan.” In response, the Tibetan Foreign Office wrote to Mao Zedong on November 2, 1949 to say that “Tibet has from the earliest times up to now been an independent country whose political administration had never been taken over by any foreign country; and Tibet also defended her own territories from foreign invasions.”(4) The Foreign Office letter asked for direct negotiations for the return of Tibetan territories annexed by China’s earlier governments. Copies of this letter were sent to the Government of India, Great Britain and United States. But these governments advised Tibet to enter into direct negotiations with China as any other course of action might provoke military retaliation.

In the meanwhile, the PLA marched into eastern Tibet and circulated a ten-point document, asking Tibetans to cooperate with China in “liberating” Tibet from foreign imperialists. This struck as a curious statement to the Tibetan government who knew that there were fewer than ten foreigners in the country. It responded by making a series of radio announcements stating that there were no foreign imperialists on Tibetan soil, that Tibet had never been part of China, and that if China invaded Tibet just as big insects eat small ones, Tibet would fight back even if it were reduced to the female population.(5)

At the same time, the Tibetan government decided to send a delegation, consisting of two senior officials—Tsepon W.D. Shakabpa and Tsechag Thubten Gyalpo—and five assistants to negotiate with the PRC in a third country, possibly the USSR, Singapore or Hong Kong. China suggested Hong Kong as the venue, to which the Tibetan government agreed and directed its delegation to discuss the Foreign Office letter to Chairman Mao Zedong and the threatening Chinese radio announcements about an imminent “liberation of Tibet”. The government also instructed the delegation to secure the Chinese assurance that the territorial integrity of Tibet would not be violated, and to drive home the point that Tibet would not tolerate Chinese interference.(6)

On March 7, 1950 the delegates reached Kalimpong en route to Delhi. On reaching Delhi, they ran into an unforeseen problem: the British would not issue them the visas to travel to Hong Kong, probably because they did not want to antagonise China as the visa would have to be stamped on the passport issued by the Tibetan government. Thus, in June 1950 the Tibetan government instructed its delegates to hold negotiations in Delhi. The Chinese did not want this and suggested that the Tibetans should come to Beijing after a preliminary round of talks in Delhi with their new Ambassador to India.(7)

In the course of the negotiation, the Chinese Ambassador, Yuan Zhong Xian, demanded that the Tibetan delegation accept a three-point proposal: i) Tibet should be recognised as part of China ii) Tibetan national defence will be handled by China; iii) Tibet’s political and trade relations with foreign countries must be conducted through China. They were then to proceed to Beijing in confirmation of the “agreement”.

The Tibetan government instructed the delegates to reject the Chinese proposal, particularly the first point. So the negotiation was suspended. By then China had already started its military offensive on Chamdo, eastern Tibet’s provincial capital. It happened on October 7, 1950 when Commanders Wang Qimei and Zhang Guohua led 40,000 PLA troops from the South-West Military Region in an eight-pronged attack on Chamdo. The Tibetan force, numbering 8,000 troops, engaged the PLA troops in fierce battles. By October 19 the Tibetans had fought 21 battles and lost over 5,700 men.(8) Chamdo fell to the PLA and Kalon Ngabo Ngawang Jigme, provincial governor, was captured.(9)

The Chinese aggression came as a rude shock to India. In a sharp note to Beijing on October 26, 1950, the Indian Foreign Ministry wrote: “Now that the invasion of Tibet has been ordered by Chinese government, peaceful negotiations can hardly be synchronised with it and there naturally will be fear on the part of Tibetans that negotiations will be under duress. In the present context of world events, invasion by Chinese troops of Tibet cannot but be regarded as deplorable and in the considered judgement of the Government of India, not in the interest of China or peace.”(10) A number of countries, including the United States and Britain, expressed their support for the Indian position.

Back in Lhasa, the Tibetan Government decided to secure the UN mediation on Tibet’s behalf. It wrote to the UN Secretary General on November 11, 1950, appealing for the world body’s intervention. The letter said, in part: “Tibet recognises that it is in no position to resist the Chinese advance. It is thus that it agreed to negotiate on friendly terms with the Chinese Government...Though there is little hope that a nation dedicated to peace will be able to resist the brutal effort of men trained to war, we understand that the United Nations has decided to stop aggression wherever it takes place.”(11)

The Tibetan National Assembly convened an emergency session and requested the Dalai Lama, only fifteen (12) at that time, to assume full authority as head of state and move his government temporarily to Dromo (Yatung), near the Indian border, so that he would be out of personal danger. At the same time the Tibetan Foreign Office issued the following statement: “Tibet is united as one man behind the Dalai Lama who has taken over full powers ... We have appealed to the world for peaceful intervention in (the face of this) clear case of unprovoked aggression.”(13)

On November 17, 1950 the Dalai Lama assumed power at a formal ceremony and wrote to Mao Zedong: “The relationship between Tibet and China has deteriorated during my minority. Now that I have taken responsibility, I wish to revive the past harmonious relationship between us.” The Dalai Lama asked Mao to release the Tibetan prisoners of war and withdraw Chinese troops from the Tibetan territory.(14)

On that very day El Salvador formally asked that the aggression against Tibet be put on the UN General Assembly agenda. However, the issue was not discussed in the UN General Assembly at the suggestion of the Indian delegation who asserted that a peaceful solution which was mutually advantageous to Tibet, India and China could be reached between the parties concerned. A second letter by the Tibetan delegation to the United Nations on December 8, 1950 did not change the situation.

Between homeland and exile

2007-12-12T22:47:00.000+05:30

An exile's return to his homeland is about the encounter between exile and homeland; it affords an opportunity to look at exile.

For the first time since the Chinese occupation, Tibet opened to the world in the early'80s. in the first year, probably more Westerner set foot in Tibet than had ever in all its history. For the first time after 30 years, relatives inside and outside Tibet were meeting. Like the Berlin Wall coming down, it was a very dramatic and exciting time.

I was a student in America then. I remember the small group of Tibetans gathering at he Office of Tibet to listen with great emotion to those who returned from visiting Tibet recounts their experience. Tibet was hardly ever in the media then, in the United States or anywhere else.

For me, awareness of who I was a Tibetan and an exile came relatively late, when I was in college in America. I had spent most of my childhood, most of 10 years, ensconced in a Presbyterian boarding school in Kalimpong near Darjeeling Dr. Graham's Homes had been founder for orphans of Anglo-Indians, so I grew up mainly with Anglo-Indians, but also Bhutanese, Sikkimese, other Tibetans, Nepalis, Nagas, Lushai, Khansi.

In college in America I read vociferously books about Tibet, and studied some Buddhist philosophy with Robert Thurman. It was with such bookish knowledge that I discovered and began to articulate my identity as a Tibetan. Sheer passion marked my knowledge for Tibet, albeit from a distance. And passion and distance often defines the exile.

In 1985, a few years after I returned to Kathmandu, my chance came to go to Tibet. Ironically, it was as a tour guide, an appointment that seemed to mock the gravitas of my exile identity.

At the outset of my trip an incident occurred that was to foreshadow my later journey to my hometown. I met my first Tibetans at a temple in Chengdu where we were sighseeing before flying into Tibet. There were crowds of Chinese tourists. Since religion had been banned for three or four decades, the Buddhist temple was an exotica. Out of the milling crowds emerged a Tibetan family. They were wearing Tibetan clothing, the woment's braided hair sported turquoise and amber. They were obviously exotic to the Chinese, who were following them. Someone from my group said, "Wow! Who are they?"

Excited, I approached them. To my utter surprise, they spoke to me in Chinese. I tried again they spoke back in Chinese. Finally, the man acknowledged in Tibetan that they were Tibetan, and then reverted to Chinese. I walked away disappointed, disturbed.

In 1987 I finally visited my hometown, Gyelthang. It is farflung in the southeastern tip of the Tibetan plateau, 1,600 km from Lhasa. Like most of Kham, it is now part of a Chinese province, Yunnan. It is close to Chinese lands, near the homes of numerous ethnic groups called "minority nationalities" by the Chinese. I didn't know much about Gyelthang for I had grown up in exile. The little I knew of it was from my mother- my father having died somewhat young- and my fellow Gyelthang people, who made up my community in exile.

I was going in with a certain notion of Tibet based on an image in exiles' minds. This identity largely subscribed to a hegemonic central Tibetan concept of the Tibetan nation. Thus, even we eastern Tibetans were likely to look to Lhasa, its mountains, monasteries, its lakes and rivers, central Tibetan songs and language, as constituting the components of Tibetan hood.

While the idea of a distinct Tibetan civilisation is powerful and alive, that of Tibet as a perfectly homogenised pan- Tibetan entity took root in exile, primarily a political condition. The identity I had come to assume was, in a sense, generic, shaped by a new kind of nationalism forged in exile.

This was fine and perhaps inevitable, except those outlying, marginal places like Gyelthang had peculiarities that didn't fit into this picture. Thus, aspects of our regional idiosyncrasies and our "local" history were given short shrift.

What the exile Tibetan encounters and reacts to most strongly when he or she sets foot in Tibet is the phenomena of sinicisation, which is all- pervasive- precisely because it shakes up some of our assumptions and idealisations. These features of sinicisation are encountered as part of the daily fabric of life by the Tibetans who took my mediocre Tibetan to be the Lhasa dialect. In the prefectural capital where people held secular jobs, they tended to speak more Chinese than they did Tibetan.

It was evident why that was so. The vehicle of sinicisation was potent, all pervasive, embodied in the institutions of State and society, of the affairs of the public domain, the work culture, schools, post offices, bus stations and bus timings. Because the vocabulary of everyday reality was in Chinese, even those who were fluent in Gyelthang language, more fluent than I was reverted or resorted to Chinese. As for the Gyelthang language, it had been relegated to the hearth, tucked within domestic confines, a reflection of a culture on the retreat.

During my three-month stay, I witnessed the 30th anniversary of the founding of the autonomous prefecture of Dechen, of which my hometown was capital. There was pageantry, a parade of troops in their full regalia; there were horse races, fireworks, openings of new buildings- some in exaggeratedly Tibetan style. Crowds came to the parade, to hear the speeches, to see the fireworks and the balloons, to see the props in technicolour. Exhibits were displayed to mark the progress and the targets to achieve by the year 2000.

I was unnerved by the seeming willingness of the Gyelthang and Dechen folk of partake. Could this be real? Tibetans celebrating the Chinese consolidation of their presence in Tibet? Could they not see through the bluff, I wondered. On the other hand, they seemed-light-hearted. Was it just a mela, a tamasha, as it might be called in India, a happening of no significance?

On my last night, at a family dinner, one of my cousins handed me a brightly wrapped package. It was from the head of the People's Association. It was a new picture book of Gyelthang released the day before, and pamphlets in Chinese about the region's progress. My cousin hesitated a moment. Then he said, "Don't mix with the wrong people in India."

I felt the blood to my face. When would they get it? I would return the package, make my point in front of them all. My gentle cousin, only the messenger, seemed to have no inkling of how I felt. It dawned on me that we belonged no to different systems but to different enclosures, entirely different realities. The chasm between us was immense. I was from the outside- wherever Tibetan exiles lived. China was the adversary, a cosmic one, a central point of reference in our self-definition, built on the premise of exile. The sad truth was that the occupation of Tibet, the determining reality for us, lay outside the angle of vision of my cousin and many Gyelthang folk. It was not that they were pro-china or anti-Tibet; rather, the political discourse that defined us did not have the same significance or simply registered minisculely for them.

Not surprisingly, where I felt most at home was where the real bastion of Tibetan culture lay, at the monastery. It was the clergy that had fallen drastically from grace, it was monks who had suffered the greatest violation of their worldview. The sinicisation I encountered made me decry the loss and the betrayal of things Tibetan. I had become the tradition-holder or defender of it, notwithstanding the shaky grounds of this position. On my first visit there, an uneasy quiet reigned. A few pilgrims went about hesitantly, as if unsure of the rituals of daily worship. The monks seemed furtive, like victims, or like fugitives on the run.

Like many in Tibet, Gyelthang's monastery had been razed to rubble during the state-endorsed hooliganism called the "Cultural Revolution". Lamas and monks had been tortured, killed; there had been wholesale destruction and looting of religious paraphernalia. Then in the '80s, following the touted religious freedom that came with Deng Xiaoping's reforms, the hill-site had come to life with the reconstruction of the monastery; there were now several hundred monks.

I met a monk whose passionate hatred of the Chinese authorities had nothing in common with the pasture of reasonableness the office-going Tibetans inhabited. "Our Gyelthang youth are blind. Because they read and write a little Chinese, they think they know it all. They think us fools".

I had met Thupten and his relatives en route to Buddhist sites in India. From his foray south of the Himalaya, Thupten had glimpsed in exile a radiant vision of Tibet. A vision of Tibet that seemed able to rebut the Chinese chauvinistic view of it. In exile, he had found Tibetan Buddhist tradition alive and flourishing and, most of all, spread worldwide. There were religious initiations, grand monasteries, a self-confident clergy, dharma books, foreigners clad in monks' robes, and foreign statesmen saluting the Dalai Lama. Millions followed the dharma, and there were lamas and dharma centres all around the world. The spirit of Buddhism outside Tibet was more powerful than anything he had ever seen. Thupten had carried these impressions back to the small world at the edge of the Tibetan plateau, to continue his uphill battle with the "enemies of the faith".

The enclosure of Gyelthang jolted me into seeing who the seeker was. It was there, when everything seemed upside down, that I saw how much "I " was made up of my own yearnings and sense of loss. I believed I could be alive only as a Tibetan exile, right to my bones, blood, senses. To be Tibetan, to be against the Chinese, the cosmic nemesis; to be Tibetan Buddhist, not American or European; I could partake of other worlds, yet remain separate; it was an advantageous, wonderfully elastic, identity, allowing more than one way of being.

I realised that much of my indignation and anger came because my experience in Gyelthang shattered the idealised notions of Tibet I had held. Doubly so because I myself did not meet this high idealisation. Only when I allowed it, did I see that their sinicisation and loss of tradition were aspects of their daily life, not ideological, part of the normalcy of their own enclosure. Theirs was not a pro-China position, as mine was not a disavowal of Tibetan culture. In both enclosures, inside Tibet and outside, profound changes had occurred, the claim of different nuclei, modernisation, the world itself. Forty years is a short time historically, a long time in anyone's life.

Kesang Tsetan has authored a book on his travel to Tibet. He has also written the script for Tsering Rhitar's Nepalese feature film, Mukundo

Aspects of Autonomy: a Study in Autonomous Arrangements Around the World

2007-12-12T22:43:00.000+05:30

How do you retain power under autonomous arrangements? US attorney Eva Herzer explores some formulas in international law

For over a decade, His Holiness the Dalai Lama has publicly stated that he seeks to negotiate "genuine self-government" or "genuine self-rule" for Tibet within the context of the Chinese state. His Holiness's position responds to the late Deng Xiaopeng's comments that everything is negotiable except for independence and takes into account the fact that time is running out for the Tibetan culture's survival in occupied Tibet. No doubt, His Holiness's decision to seek a resolution short of independence is strongly influenced by His assessment of the relative political and economic strengths of China and Tibet and the international community's long-standing failure to stand up for Tibetan independence.

Self-government of a people (such as the Tibetans) within the framework of a sovereign state is generally referred to as autonomy. Few political terms evoke stronger and more heated reactions in the Tibetan community than that of autonomy. This, of course, is not a surprise given that Tibetans have suffered unspeakable human rights violations and cultural destruction in the so-called Tibet "Autonomous" Region (TAR), where Tibetans have minimal rights to govern themselves in theory and virtually none in practice. On the other hand, the self-government or autonomy proposed by His Holiness, in His 1988 Strasbourg statement, provides for Tibetan control over most matters affecting Tibet. If autonomy can take such different forms, what then is autonomy?

Despite the fact that well over 40 autonomous arrangements have been created in the 20th century, the term "autonomy" has no generally accepted meaning in international law. One autonomous arrangement can be completely different from the next. Autonomy is a vague, if not meaningless, concept unless and until it is defined on a case-by-case basis as a particular distribution of governmental powers between two governments: The government of the people who seek self-government, usually referred to as the autonomous government, and the government of the sovereign or larger state, which I will refer to as the state government. Some of the major governmental powers which must be addressed in the drafting of an autonomous agreement are the power to control cultural affairs, education, the official language, national symbols, health and social services, the economy, taxation, natural resources, environmental policy, transportation, postal and telecommunication systems, law and order, administration of justice, currency and monetary policy, determination of citizenship, foreign policy, defense, passports and visas, customs, border control and immigration, as well as political rights.

By the same token, taking a position for or against autonomy is somewhat meaningless, unless the autonomy proposed or opposed is specifically defined as a particular distribution of governmental powers. This is because "autonomy" can provide for an allocation of power to the autonomous government that approaches virtual independence, as it does in the case of Liechtenstein and Andorra, or virtual subjugation, as it does in the case of the present Tibet Autonomous Region.

The International Committee of Lawyers for Tibet (ICLT) recently prepared a study of 34 autonomous arrangements and analysed the distribution of governmental powers in each case. To avoid any misunderstandings, I would like to make it clear that this study does not suggest that Tibetans should adopt one model of autonomy over another, for each situation is historically, politically, socially, economically and culturally unique. Nor does ICLT or I take the position that Tibetans should attempt to negotiate an autonomous arrangement with China, rather than pursue independence or other options. Rather, the intent of the study is to illustrate how autonomy has been practiced in various situations around the world, to show what distributions of governmental powers are possible and importantly to point out various issues which must be addressed if an autonomous arrangement is to be successful.

Tibetans, as a distinct people, have the right to self-determination, that is to decide on their future political, social and economic status. Pursuant to that right, Tibetans are entitled to choose a particular form of autonomy, independence, or they could theoretically opt to become fully integrated into the Chinese state. What options the Tibetans choose and how they make that choice, whether through their elected officials in exile, by decision of His Holiness the Dalai Lama or through a popular referendum, is up to them. It is important to note that the option is not between self-determination and independence, or between self-determination and autonomy (sometimes referred to as the "Middle Way" by His Holiness). Rather the option is between various forms of autonomy, independence or, theoretically, integration into the Chinese state. The right to self-determination is the legal basis for these options, not an option in itself. As Tibetans are well aware, unfortunately, rights under international law are not uniformly enforced and appropriate enforcement mechanisms have yet to be put in place. Thus even though Tibetans have the legal right to choose their future political status, this choice is restrained by the political realities of China and Tibet and by the political will of the international community.

Currently the Tibetan government is examining the option of some form of autonomy for Tibet and hopes to engage the Chinese government in negotiations in this regard. It is therefore important for Tibetans to inform themselves and to consider the various possibilities for division of governmental powers in an autonomous arrangement for self-governance. The following brief summary highlights the major governmental powers which must be considered in negotiating an autonomous arrangement and it highlights how other peoples have resolved the allocation of these powers.

CULTURAL AFFAIRS

Cultural preservation lies at the foundation of almost every struggle for self-determination. The power over cultural affairs is the only governmental function over which each and every autonomous government studied has control. In some cases, however, such as the TAR and Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, this control is a matter of right, but not of practice.

EDUCATION

In the great majority of the situations studied, education is entirely controlled by the autonomous government. Most autonomous governments insist on controlling education in order to guarantee survival of the native language and the cultural identity of their people. For example, the Swedish speaking Aland Islands, an autonomous province of Finland under the 1991 Act of Autonomy for Aland, administer their own schools, where instruction is in Swedish, with English as a second language. Finish is offered as an optional language.

Several examples underscore the importance of providing sufficient second language instruction, especially in remote regions, so as to open post-secondary school educational opportunities to students. In Micronesia, an associated state of the United States (US) under the 1982 Compact of Free Association, education is within the exclusive jurisdiction of the autonomous government. Students are taught in each of the applicable Micronesian languages and English is required as a second language. Due to the geographical isolation and the low quality of some of the English instruction, however, many Micronesians graduate without proficiency in English. Because relatively few books are available in the Micronesian languages, educational levels remain low and students are not adequately prepared for a college education, which is only available abroad.

The TAR is one of the few examples where the autonomous government does not have ultimate control over education. It may plan and implement educational programs but does not have ultimate control since all such programs must comply with Chinese state guidelines.

OFFICIAL LANGUAGE

Language is a key component of cultural identity and control over language is often critical to effective self-governance. In some autonomous arrangements the state's language is the sole official language, as in the TAR, where the official language is Mandarin. In others, the language of the people is the only official language, as in Kashmir where the official language is Urdu. Similarly in Quebec the official language is French even though the rest of Canada is English speaking. In some cases, such as the Aland Islands, the people's language is the official language, but translation from and into the state's language is available for certain official business. A number of autonomous arrangements provide for several official languages so as to meet the needs of the people and the state.Such arrangements are found in Hong Kong, the Cook Islands, Micronesia, Belgium, Greenland, Scotland, Tatarstan, Catalonia, the Basque Country and Puerto Rico.

NATIONAL SYMBOLS

To many peoples, national symbols, such as flags, seals and anthems, are a vital and critical part of their identity. Therefore, most peoples do have their own national symbolism. Prohibitions of national symbols are found only rarely, except in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, which entered into a peace agreement with Bangladesh in 1997, the TAR and Northern Ireland.

HEALTH AND SOCIAL SERVICES

In many cases, health care and social services are provided by the people's autonomous governments. For example, Hong Kong, Liechtenstein, South Tyrol, Kashmir, Tatarstan, Scotland, San Marino, Puerto Rico, the Netherlands Antilles, Basque Country, Catalonia, Andorra and Gibraltar all have exclusive control over these functions. An unsuccessful example of people's control over health care is found in Zanzibar which has insufficient funds to adequately provide for its population's needs. As a result there have been outbreaks of epidemics due to lack of potable water and inadequate sewage and electrical systems.

While health care and social services are inherently internal affairs issues, in many cases they are a function of the state, in part, for financial reasons. In Quebec health care is within the autonomous government's jurisdiction, but Quebec has transferred responsibility for health and social services to the Canadian federal government because the financial burden was too large for the autonomous government. Similarly, the Faroese have chosen to share that power with the Danish government in order to benefit from its technology and financial resources. Others, including the people of the Aland Islands, Cook Islands, Chittagong Hill Tracts, Micronesia and Northern Ireland, have sole control over health care delivery but with the support of the state by way of subsidies.

ECONOMY

Many autonomous governments have sole or substantial control over their economy. Development of and control of the economy is essential to building a financial base for self-governance. The study shows that there is a high correlation between an autonomous government's degree of economic control and the health of the economy, on one hand, and the level of self-governance exercised by the autonomous government on the other hand.

For example, Tatarstan's oil reserves and strong military industry positioned Tatarstan to successfully negotiate a bilateral treaty with the Russian Federation, which guarantees to Tatarstan substantial powers of self-governance not enjoyed by other members of the Russian Federation. Liechtenstein, though one of the smallest European countries, has highly profitable electronics, metal, pharmaceutical, ceramics and textile industries, as well as lucrative tourism. It is a sovereign state which has chosen a mutually beneficial associated statehood relationship with Switzerland since 1923.

Economic power can also be successfully shared. In Quebec, for example, intra-provincial business is controlled by Quebec, while inter-provincial trade is controlled by the federal government. In the Basque Country, Spain exercises control over foreign trade, banking and insurance, while the Basque autonomous government controls all other aspects of the economy. In some cases state subsidies provide autonomous governments with substantial economic control. The Aland Islands, for example, control their port and shipping industry but require and receive substantial economic aid from Finland.

Lack of a viable economy leads to dependency in many other areas, as demonstrated by the case of the Navajo Nation. Similarly, in the TAR, where the economy is controlled by the state, lack of local control over the economy, a weak economy and a low level of autonomy go hand in hand.

TAXATION

The power to tax is vital to the control of the economy and government services. There is a strong correlation between taxing powers and substantial autonomy. Hong Kong, Gibraltar, Micronesia, Liechtenstein, Greenland, Palestine, Puerto Rico and the Cook Islands have exclusive taxing powers. Some autonomous governments may levy taxes with respect to matters within their jurisdiction, while states often reserve the powers to tax on matters of state-wide interest. In an interesting twist, some autonomous governments use their taxing power to attract commerce by creating tax-free heavens within their jurisdiction. This is the case in Andorra. The TAR is one of the very few examples where virtually all taxing powers are within the control of the state. The TAR has the limited authority to grant tax exemptions and reductions in special situations.

NATURAL RESOURCES

Control over natural resources is an important factor in controlling one's economy and environmental integrity. Natural resources are the main source of actual or potential wealth for many peoples. By the same token, states desire full access to these resources and it is often difficult to persuade states that it is in their best interest to allow an autonomous government control over natural resources. However, the economic viability of the autonomous people is generally in the state's best interest. State concerns over potentially unsound management of natural resources can be addressed through joint regulation of natural resources linked to international standards and best practices.

Many of the highly autonomous peoples examined have control over substantial natural resources. The Aland Islanders, for example, control ownership over their land and the resources it contains and their government controls all natural resources. Such arrangements are also found in the Federated States of Micronesia and Puerto Rico. Scotland has control over its natural resources, except for oil and gas. Greenlanders have substantial control over their natural resources. However, the study, prospecting and exploitation of natural resources is jointly regulated by Denmark and the Greenland government. The people of the TAR have no control over their natural resources. This has deprived them of potential wealth and has led to environmental mismanagement.

ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY

Sound environmental policies are essential for a sustainable economy and for all beings within a territory. Further, environmental policies are of great importance to the larger state because environmental devastation often knows no boundaries. For these reasons both the people and the state usually have a stake in environmental policy.

South Tyrol, Greenland, Zanzibar, Andorra and Scotland enjoy complete control over their environmental policies. Similarly, in Hong Kong jurisdiction over environmental policy is vested in the autonomous government. In the TAR, on the other hand, the central PRC government controls environmental policy. Some autonomous arrangements, such as the Interim Agreement for Palestine, provide for adherence to international environmental standards and joint environmental impact assessments. Joint control is therefore not necessarily counterproductive, so long as it is tied to specific international standards.

TRANSPORTATION

Roads and other aspects of transportation can be of strategic and military importance and of vital importance to the economy. State participation in transportation may be beneficial to an autonomous government which lacks necessary financial and technological resources. However, issues of ultimate control over transportation must be considered very carefully since transportation and population influx often go hand in hand.

Only South Tyrol, Liechtenstein, the Aland and Faroe Islands, the Netherlands Antilles, Micronesia, Andorra and the Cook Islands have exclusive power over transportation. Transportation is controlled exclusively by the state in Gibraltar, Kashmir, Torres Strait Islands, the Navajo Nation, Northern Ireland and Scotland. Examples of shared control are found, for example, in the Basque Country and Catalonian where the autonomous governments have control over railways and highways which run completely within their territories.

POSTAL AND TELECOMMUNICATION SYSTEMS

Most states seek control over postal and telecommunications systems as they may have strategic and military significance. While most autonomous governments chose not to control these systems which are expensive to run, some exceptions exist. Hong Kong, the Cook Islands and the Netherlands Antilles, for example control their own postal and telecommunications systems. San Marino and Italy share a postal union but San Marino issues its own stamps which are collectors' items due to their small circulation and thus a major source of income.

LAW AND ORDER

Control over policing is essential, especially when the relationship between the people and the state has historically been hostile. In most autonomous arrangements, the people alone or jointly with the state control policing and law enforcement. For example, the Aland Islands have sole jurisdiction over their police forces and public order. So do Micronesia, Liechtenstein, Scotland, Puerto Rico, the Netherlands Antilles, Andorra and the Cook Islands.

The Faroe Islands have joint jurisdiction with the Danish government over law and order. The Faroe Islands government maintains a small police force and coast guard. The Basic Law provides Hong Kong with exclusive jurisdiction over law and order within its territory.

ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE

In most autonomous arrangements ultimate judicial control rests with the state. Sometimes, the people have jurisdiction over a limited area of justice administration. Only Micronesia, Andorra and Liechtenstein have an independent judiciary of their own with complete jurisdiction over all civil and criminal matters.

Some autonomous governments have their own judiciary which is linked in various ways to the state. While Puerto Rico, for example, has its own court system based on Spanish law, rather than the English law on which the US judicial system is built, the US retains some control by allowing final judgments of the Puerto Rican court to be appealed to the US Supreme Court.

In Hong Kong judicial powers are vested in an "independent" judiciary based on English common law. Hong Kong's judiciary, however, is not truly independent since the decisions of its highest court are reviewable by China's National People's Congress.

In some arrangements jurisdiction is divided. For example, the Inuit, under the 1991 Nanavut Land Claim of Canada, have control over the trial and appellate courts, while the Canadian Supreme Court has final appellate jurisdiction. Similarly, Scotland has civil and criminal courts but the highest level of civil appeals lies with the British court. In the TAR, the judiciary is entirely controlled by the PRC.

In negotiations for judicial powers consideration must be given to the quality of the judicial system of the state and to the traditional judicial system of the autonomous people. In other words, the legal system's process, its neutrality and its independence from political forces may be of more importance than the issue of who controls it.

CURRENCY AND MONETARY POLICY

Most peoples use the currency of the state. However, as with postage stamps, currency may be of symbolic significance. Some peoples have a separate currency which may be used interchangeably, at the same value, with the currency of the state, which controls the monetary policy. This includes the Holy See, Scotland, Liechtenstein, Gibraltar and the peoples of the Cook and Faroe Islands and the Netherlands Antilles. Hong Kong has its own currency which is independent of the Chinese currency.

DETERMINATION OF CITIZENSHIP

Citizenship can be of symbolic importance and can also be linked to other important issues such as immigration, land ownership, voting rights and access to state schools.

With few exceptions, autonomous arrangements provide that the autonomous people are citizens of the state. However, Tatars are citizens of Tatarstan and citizens of the Russian Federation. Similarly, the people of Zanzibar are citizens of both Zanzibar and Tanzania. Aland Islanders are dual citizens of Aland Islands and Finland. The people of Gibraltar, while not holding their own citizenship are British nationals and British Dependent Territory citizens. Hong Kong citizens and the people of the TAR are citizens of the PRC.

FOREIGN POLICY

Foreign policy powers can be held exclusively by the autonomous government, by the state or they can be shared. While there is often an assumption that all foreign affairs powers are matters of exclusive state concern, the study shows that foreign affairs powers can be successfully divided and shared.

The interests of the state and the autonomous governments can best be met if foreign policy powers are divided in a practical manner, so as to give the state and the autonomous government those foreign policy powers which complement the other governmental powers they each hold. Autonomous governments which enjoy a high degree of internal self-governance have a substantial interest in participating in matters of foreign policy which affect their areas of self-governance. By the same token, a state may have little interest in an area of foreign policy that is related to a governmental function within the control of the autonomous government. Thus, for example, where the state has no involvement in the economy of the autonomous people, it may have little interest in the power to enter into trade treaties affecting the autonomous territory.

San Marino, Liechtenstein, the Cook Islands, Micronesia, Andorra and Tatarstan, all are economically strong entities and enjoy the highest level of control over foreign policy within the entities studied. Liechtenstein, for example, is a sovereign state, but through an autonomous arrangement has authorised Switzerland to conduct most of its diplomatic affairs. However, it retains ultimate power over its foreign policy.

Some autonomous arrangements provide for limited participation of the autonomous government in foreign policy matters. In Hong Kong, for example, foreign affairs powers are vested in the PRC. The PRC nonetheless has authorised Hong Kong to conduct certain external affairs on its own in accordance with the Basic Law. Thus, under the name of Hong Kong China, Hong Kong may develop, maintain and conclude relations and agreements with foreign states and international organisations in the areas of trade, shipping, communications, tourism, monetary affairs and culture. Hong Kong is a distinct member of a number of international organisations, including the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund and the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation.

Palestine, though not yet independent has diplomatic relations with over 100 states and enjoys UN Observer status. However, the Interim Agreement of 1995 limits the foreign affairs powers of the PLO to the areas of economic, cultural, scientific and educational agreements with other states. Greenland and the Faroe Islands are subject to Denmark's exclusive jurisdiction over foreign affairs but Greenlanders and the Faroe Islanders have the right to enter into their own trade agreements.

In many other situations, however, the autonomous government does not share in foreign policy powers on a decision making level. Some people have the right under their respective autonomy arrangements to join relevant international organisations. The Inuit, for example, are a member of the Circumpolar Conference and the Aland Islanders, the Saami and the Faroe Islanders send their own separate delegations to the Nordic Council, a regional organisation of parliamentarians from the Nordic States. This type of involvement allows the people concerned to contribute their input and views to matters of foreign relations.

In the TAR and the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, foreign policy powers are held exclusively by the PRC's central government, with no involvement by the autonomous governments.

DEFENCE

In virtually all the autonomous arrangements studied the power of defense is within the exclusive jurisdiction of the state. Hong Kong and the TAR are examples of exclusive state control over defense. Some arrangements provide for demilitarisation of the territory inhabited by the people. A major provision of the 1991 Act of Autonomy of Aland, for example, provides that the Aland Islands will remain demilitarised. Similarly, Liechtenstein has been a neutral country since 1866 and is a demilitarised zone. Other autonomous arrangements provide for a reduction in military presence.

PASSPORTS/VISAS

Control over visas may have effects on economic development and tourism. Passports may be connected to issues of immigration and also may have symbolic significance for the autonomous people. Passports and visas are mostly controlled by the state. Exceptions are found in the Aland and Faroe Islands, where passports identify the people as citizens of the autonomous government and of the state. Citizens of the Federated States of Micronesia carry their own passports as Micronesian citizens. Hong Kong issues its own visas and passports, though Hong Kong citizens have become PRC citizens. The TAR, on the other hand, has no control over passports or visas.

CUSTOMS, BORDER CONTROL AND IMMIGRATION

In the great majority of situations studied, the state controls customs, borders and immigration of foreign citizens. These powers, though, can be exercised jointly or can be divided between the state and the autonomous government. Special attention must be paid to internal immigration and to residency requirements because immigration can have a profound impact on culture and can lead to cultural destruction, especially when citizens of the larger state immigrate into the autonomous territory.

The Cook Islands, the Holy See and the Federated States of Micronesia are exceptions as they have full control over customs, borders and all aspects of immigration. While Canada has power over borders and customs on Inuit land, the Inuit may exclude non-Inuits, Canadians and foreigners from entering their territory. Canadian military exercises require Inuit agreement. Further, the Inuit have exclusive jurisdiction over deciding who is Inuit. Similarly, the Navajo Nation controls entry into its territory as well as who may reside there.

In some situations these powers are divided between the state and the people. For example, in Palestine, Israel and Palestine jointly control the borders. The Hong Kong government administers and controls customs and immigration, subject to the ultimate jurisdiction of the PRC, while the PRC administers and controls these matters in the TAR.

POLITICAL RIGHTS

Adherence to human rights standards appears to be the litmus test of autonomous arrangements. In the majority of cases where the autonomous people hold substantial control over governmental powers international human rights standards are adhered to. Some newly-independent states and autonomous arrangements, including the Cook Islands, Gibraltar, Andorra and South Africa, have taken a preventive approach by expressly incorporating international human rights standards into their constitutions. Similarly some autonomous statutes, such as the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia, require the autonomous government to protect and promote human rights.

On the other hand, where the basic needs of the people are not met and where the cultural identity of the people is not furthered by the autonomous arrangements, political instability and human rights violations are prevalent. The TAR, which holds virtually no ultimate control over governmental powers, unfortunately exemplifies this problem all too clearly.

In stark contrast to the degree of autonomy now held by the TAR, His Holiness's Strasbourg proposal seeks a level of autonomy for Tibet by which Tibetans would control all governmental powers except defence and certain foreign affairs powers. While similar models have been highly successful elsewhere, the real challenge for Tibet is how to reach a mutually acceptable agreement with China and how to secure its enforcement. The latter poses a special problem because China does not have an independent judiciary which can force the Communist Party to adhere to its commitments. It is thus essential that mechanisms be explored by which potential post-agreement conflicts can be effectively addressed. This could be done through special non-modifiable constitutional provisions for conflict resolution or through international undertakings or guarantees. Tibet's interests could also be safeguarded through express contractual provisions which would make the autonomous agreement voidable at the option of the Tibetans, in case of breach of the agreement. Such provisions would act as an incentive for full implementation of the agreement. On the other hand, they would clearly allow Tibetans to terminate an agreement which does not deliver the promised control and benefits. While such matters are extremely complex and difficult to negotiate they are worth full exploration. If China truly seeks political stability, it should be willing to participate in negotiations for an enforceable agreement which provides for substantial Tibetan autonomy.

Eva Herzer is a founding member and former president of the International Committee of Lawyers for Tibet.

Younghusband: An imperialist or a luminous mystic?

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An extract from Patrick French's Younghusband: The Last Great Imperial Adventurer

The land called Tibet has a symbolic value in the Western mind which extends way beyond any experimental reality. Although Lost Horizon was not published until thirty years after Francis Younghusband set foot in Tibet, the mystical romanticism the book embodies bad been around since the reports of Jesuit missionaries appeared in the seventeenth century. Younghusband's obituary in the New York Times fittingly merged the man who led the British invasion with the Hollywood myth: "if as James Hilton strongly suggests in Lost Horizon, Shangri La is somewhere in Tibet rather than merely somewhere- anywhere…. Then Francis Younghusband probably came closer than anyone else to being Robert Conway".

Tibet's diplomatic isolation and physical inaccessibility helped the legend to develop. Here on the borders of British India was a huge country- the size of Western Europe-which was closed to the representatives of the King Emperor. Fantastic tales abounded among Younghusband's contemporaries of flying yogis, peculiar tortures, polyandrous practices, rare jewels, strange reincarnations, excrement pills, astral projection and even (myth of all myths) no wheels- except the prayer wheel of course. Unconquered kingdoms always hold a special excitement for great empires: at the turn of the century Tibet represented the ultimate in pure, virgin territory.

One of the few public figures to acknowledge Tibet's symbolic lure was the liberal politician Sir Henry Cotton. In an interview with the Daily News in December 1903 he stirred up a hornet's nest of imperial outrage by questioning the motives for the forthcoming invasion. When he had been in India, he said, there were countless youngmen " to whom the glamour of the Forbidden City was irresistible, to whom the romance attaching to the unknown formed the great temptation of their lives…". Cotton went on to claim that Curzon himself had fallen for the glamour of the myth, and was now'seeking the glory and world-wide fame of being "the Viceroy of India who opened Tibet and carried the British flag into Lhasa".

But far from 'unveiling' and thereby destroying the mystery of Tibet, the British invasion served to heighten it by stimulating world-wide interest. Over the decades after Younghusband's Expedition, countless travelling writers have continued ostensibly to uncover, discover and unveil this island in the sky.

The supposed transformative powers of Tibet have even been credited with changing Younghusband's own religious views and converting him to a belief in non-violence. Although it is true one of the two profound spiritual experiences of his life did occur in Tibet, he had strong mystical tendencies long before he led the invasion. There is even a surprising misapprehension, especially among admirers of Younghusband's later religious work, that the vibrations of Tibet somehow converted his Mission into a peaceful one. In a BBC radio interview the League of Nations enthusiastic and Classical scholar Gilbert Murray said that his friend Francis Younghusband 'wanted to penetrated Tibet because he so liked the Tibetans… he wanted to get into their country and talk with the lamas and to see if they had some real sympathy about religion'.

Rom Landau, a Polish-American sculptor and mystical writer, suggested in a memoir of 'Tibet Younghusband', as he liked to call him, that one particular event on the road to Lhasa was' the outstanding one of his life'.

That event took place toward the end of his mission (when) it was uncertain whether the small contingent of troops that he was leading would have to fight the Tibetans facing them. During one harrowing moment of uncertainly he suddenly 'saw' that God's will was not conquest by arms but friendship through mutual understanding…. He entered Lhasa without having to fire a shot and signed there a convention with the regent. When soon afterwards he had to leave Lhasa, he did so as a friend.

This extraordinary manipulation of the facts is typical of the way that Younghusband's identity has been colonised by his various chroniclers. Either he was a Boy's Own swashbuckling imperialist, or he was a peaceful, luminous mystic; or alternatively, he had a split personality.

The reality, as I came to perceive it, was both more complex and more human. Younghusband's experiences in Tibet were a formative part of an extraordinary journey of personal discovery and development. His rare, quirky, almost child-like view of life enabled him to go through an enormous range of apparently contradictory experiences, and encompass them all. As Jan Morris wrote in The Spectacle of Empire, Younghusband 'most nearly filled the part of Everyman' in the great imperial drama. He never stood still, never stopped changing.

Tibet in the last century

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1903: British India sends Younghusband Expedition to Tibet and defeats the Tibetan Army. The 13th Dalai Lama flees to Mongolia and China.

1904: The British army leaves Tibet after signing the Lhasa Convention, according to which Tibet is to refrain from entering into treaties with foreign powers and sanction the opening of British trade marts at Gyangtse and Gartok.

1907: British and Russia render recognition to China's nominal suzerainty over Tibet. The agreement violates the British government's erstwhile recognition of Tibet as an independent country.

1910: Manchu General Chao Erfang attacks Tibet, bringing down the final curtain on the centuries-old priest-patron relationship shared between the Manchu dynasty and the Dalai Lama escapes to India.

1912: An independence campaign led by the Dalai Lama results in the withdrawal of Chinese troops from Tibet's central province.

1913: The Dalai Lama issues proclamation of Tibet's independence after the last Chinese has been driven out from Amdo and Kham. He sets in motion the process of modernisation in order to make Tibet stronger.

1914: British India, China and Tibet enter into Shimla Agreement as independent powers. Chinese refusal to ratify the treaty results in the invalidation of China's nominal suzerainty over Tibet.

1933: the 13th Dalai Lama, Thupten Gyatso, passes away at the age of 54. Reting Thupten Jampel Yeshe appointed to Regency.

1935: The future 14th Dalai Lama is born in Amdo, Tibet's north-eastern province, to Choekyong Tsering and Dekyi Tsering.

1939: The boy, Lhamo Dhondup, is officially recognised as the 14th Dalai Lama in a hair-cutting ceremony presided over by Reting Rinpoche.

1940: The Dalai Lama is enthroned in the Potala Palace.

1947: Tibetan government felicitates India on its newly gained independence. Tibet is represented by its own delegation in the Asian Relations Conference held in Delhi.

1948: Tibetan government dispatches a high-level trade delegation abroad, led by Shakabpa, in order to demonstrate Tibetan independence. The United Kingdom and United States issue visas on Tibetan passports in recognition of Tibet's independence status.

1949: Alarmed by the Communists' declaration to "liberate" Tibet, the Tibetan Foreign Bureau writes to the British Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, seeking support. The Foreign Bureau encloses the copy of a letter that has been sent to Chairman Mao, which declares that Tibet is an independent country and that the new government should observe the established boundary. In December, the Kashag sends a telegram to the British Government requesting support for admission of Tibet into the U.N.

1950: 40,000 PLA troops attack Chamdo, eastern Tibet's provincial capital. Two days later, the 8000-strong Tibetan army is defeated and Chamdo Governor Ngaboe Ngawang Jigme held hostage. Indian Foreign Ministry sends a protest letter to the Chinese government. Britain and United States express support to the Indian position.

1951: Tibetan delegation is forced to sign the infamous "17-point Agreement in Beijing, despite the delegation not having the authority to enter into any agreement. Communist China affixes a forged Tibetan seal to the agreement. Lhasa becomes a marching ground to tens of thousands of Chinese soldiers.

1952: The 10th Panchen Lama arrives in Lhasa and meets with the Dalai Lama. The forced agreement sees its implementation with the formation of a Tibet Work Committee.

1954: With the signing of Panchsheel Agreement with China, India forsakes its recognition of Tibetan sovereignty. The Dalai Lama visits Beijing with an entourage of officials and dignitaries. Increasing number of refugees start arriving in Lhasa from Kham and Amdo with stories of Communist attacks on religion and religious institutions.

1956: The Dalai Lama journeys to India for the Buddha Jayanti celebration. He discusses possible asylum with Prime Minister Nehru, but is persuaded to return home by Premier Zhou Enlai of China on the promise that Beijing will rectify the deteriorating situation in Tibet. China sets up the Preparatory Committee for the Autonomous Region of Tibet (PCART) to replace the Tibetan government.

1958: The inaugural meeting of Chushi-Gangdrukis held in June with Andruk Gompo Tashi as its leader. A new yellow flag with two crossed swords is unveiled as the standard of the Tibetan guerrilla resistance movement. The CIA's first arms drop into Tibet is made in July. Tibetan guerrilla resistance movement. The CIA's first arms drop into Tibet is made in July. Tibetan guerrilla resistance has by now spread to central Tibet.

1959: Tibetan national uprising breaks out in Lhasa. China crushes the uprising killing 87,000 Tibetans. Tibetan Women's Association formed in Lhasa to challenge the Chinese occupation of Tibet. The Dalai Lama leaves for India, some 80,000 Tibetans following him into exile. Chinese Premeire Zhou Enlai announces the dissolution of the Tibetan Government. The Dalai Lama repudiates the "17th - point Agreement" on reaching Tezpur in Assam, northeast state of India. He says this "agreement" was thrust upon the "Tibetan Government in the exiles of Mussorie, north India hill station, the Dalai Lama declares, "Wherever I am, accompanied by my government, the Tibetan people recognise us as the Government of Tibet." The UN General Assembly passes its first resolution on Tibet, calling for "respect for the fundamental human rights of the Tibetan people and for their distinctive cultural and religious life".

1960: Unofficial Tibetan guerrilla base established in Mustang, Nepal, to continue covert armed resistance against Chinese occupation of Tibet. The Tibetan Government-in-Exile moves to Dharamsala, north-west India. The International Commission of Jurists publishes its first report on Tibet, criticising China of "wanton killing of Tibetans" and systematic disregard for the obligations under the "17-point Agreement of 1951". The Tibetan Parliament in exile is established.

1961: The UN General Assembly passes its second resolution on Tibet, recognising the right of the Tibetan people to self-determination.

1962: 97 percent of monasteries and nunneries in the "Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR)" and 99 percent of monasteries and nunneries outside the "TAR" are by now either depopulated or in ruins. Of 6,259 monasteries and nunneries in the whole of Tibet, only eight remains undestroyed. Panchen Rinpoche's "70,000 character petition" to the Chinese leadership testifies to this destruction.

1963: The Dalai Lama promulgates the democratic constitution for future Tibet.

1964: The Panchen Lama arrested in Lhasa after publicly supporting the Dalai Lama. 10,000 Tibetan students demonstrate in Lhasa against Chinese policy.

1965: The UN General Assembly passes its third resolution on Tibet, renewing its "call for the cessation of all practices which deprive the Tibetan people of the human rights and fundamental freedoms which they have always enjoyed".

1966: Mao's Cultural Revolution unleashes a further wave of death and destruction in Tibet. Panchen Rinpoche is arrested and sentenced to almost ten years of imprisonment.

1970: Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC), the largest non-governmental political organisation of the Tibetans in exile, established with its headquarters in Dharamsala.

1971: China stations the first nuclear weapons in Tsaidam Basin in Tibet's Amdo province.

1979: Following his announcement of a policy of liberation in Tibet, Deng Xioping meets Gyalo Thondup, elder brother of the Dalai Lama, in Beijing and tells him that China is willing to discuss and resolve with Tibetans all issues other than the complete independence of Tibet. The Dalai Lama sends the first fact-finding delegation to Tibet.

1980: The second fact-finding delegation visits Tibet. The third fact-finding delegation visits Tibet in the same year in July, while the fourth fact-finding delegation visits northeastern Tibet five years later.

1981: The Dalai Lama writes to Deng Xiaoping,stating that the three delegations have found the conditions in Tibet sad and that "genuine efforts must be made to resolve the problem of Tibet"" CCP General Secretary Hu Yaobang replies with "China's Five-point Policy towards the Dalai Lama" which practically seeks to reduce the Tibet issue to the question of the Dalai Lama's personal status.

1984: The three-member exploratory delegation visits Beijing for another round of talks, but without success in achieving substantive negotiations. Tibetan Government-in-exile announces the death of 1.2 million Tibetans as a direct result of Chinese invasion and occupation.

1987: The Dalai Lama addresses the US Congressional Human Rights Caucus and puts forward his Five-Point-Peace-Plan for resolving the Tibet issue through negotiations with the Chinese government. Two major independence demonstrations erupts in Lhasa a month later.

1988: Speaking at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, the Dalai Lama elaborates on the Five-Point-Peace-Plan and proposes talks leading to a "self- governing democratic political entity" for all the three provinces of Tibet. This entity, the Dalai Lama says, will be "in association with the People's Republic of China" and that Chinese government can continue to "remain responsible for Tibet's foreign policy and defence".

1989: The 10th Panchen Lama passes away while on a visit to Shigatse. A few days before his mysterious death, he publicly states that Chinese rule in Tibet has brought more harm than benefit. In answer to three years of protest demonstrations in Lhasa, all brutally cracked down, China finally imposes Martial Law in Tibet. The Dalai Lama wins the Nobel Peace Prize in October.

1990: The Dalai Lama introduces sweeping democratic reforms in the exile administration, empowering the popularly-elected Assembly of Tibetan People's Deputies (ATPD) to elect the Cabinet Ministers of the exile government.

1991: The ATPD adopts a new democratic constitution for the Tibetan Government-in-exile. US President George Bush signs into law, a congressional resolution declaring Tibet an occupied country.

1992: In the "Guidelines for Future Tibet's Polity and Basic Features of its Constitution", the Dalai Lama states that in a future, free Tibet, he will relinquish his powers in favour of a popularity elected government.

1995: The Dalai Lama announces Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, a six-year-old child in Tibet, as the reincarnation of the 10th Panchen Lama. China spirits away Gedhun Choekyi Nyima and enthrones an alternative candidate, Gyaltsen Norbu, as the 11th Panchen Lama. The whereabouts of the Dalai Lama recognised boy and his parents remain unknown to this day.

1996: China begins Strike Hard, Patriotic Re-education and Spiritual Civilisation campaigns, all aimed at coercing the Tibetan people, especially the monks and nuns, to renounce their faith in the Dalai Lama.

1997: The Dalai Lama visits Taiwan to a tumultuous welcome and a high-profile meeting with President Lee Tang-hui. The US Administration creates a new post in the State Department to oversee and report on Tibetan Affairs. Greg Craig is appointed the first Co-ordinator for Tibet.

1998: Six members of Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC) undertake an unto-death hunger strike in New Delhi to pressure the UN to implement the recommendations of the International Commission of Jurist' 1997 report on Tibet. One TYC supporter, Thupten Ngodup, dies from self-immolation.

1999: Three members of TYC undertake an unto-death fast in Geneva to pressure the 55th session of the UNHRD into censuring China on its human rights practices in Tibet.

A Call for Tibetan Independence

2007-07-21T21:22:00.000+05:30

As a son of a Lhasa-Newar, I too do feel that Tibet is never a part of China and find myself penning this feature article against the brutal occupation of Tibet. To put it frankly, Tibet is an independent sovereign non-aligned democratic kingdom. I am totally against the tyrannical Sinicization on Tibet instilled by the Communist Regime. The world should sharply help the innocent Tibetans remove Maoism from the Shangri-La. We are just aware that the authentic philosophy of Maoism belongs to China alone and does not apply to Tibet at all. Autonomy is not what the Tibetans demand but solid independence against the Chinese imperialism. Today Tibet is a Chinese colony; tomorrow it shall be liberated. Don't worry ! God shall help us all for a free Tibet. So let us all pray together for that particular optimism. It shall consume a bit of time of course.

Some say a long period back both Nepal and Tibet had been paying tribute to the Chinese Emperor back in Beijing. If that be the sheer case, why does Nepal alone remain separate and Tibet only annexed to the Chinese territory ? This is indeed a mockery towards a weak landlocked state ! What Beijing has exercised absolutely tallies with the old policy of "Might is right" which I am pretty sure won't last long. There arises a vast difference between mainland China and the Himalayan buffer-state of Tibet. The principal points that differ in a sound method include: history, geography, language, scripts, religion, culture, tradition, attire, money, flag, map, politics and the wonder as a world heritage site. As such Tibet is in a fitting position to be recognized a separate nation. They happen to pass through the formalities which are to be traced mandatory for any decent approach to the center of the United Nations Organization (U.N.O.).

The last Chinese Emperor, Dr. Sun Yat Sen and Chiang Kai Shek belonging to the Kumintang Regime all had been recognizing Tibet and Nepal as independent nations. What actually counts is a post-war situation. Past is past and no one should dare or bother to consider events that took place before Christ. It is very obvious to notice that China appears to be a greedy country practicing dirty principles only. Their stubborn gluttony wants to grab Taiwan also --- a republic which is no doubt purely a free island. The Maoists are highly obliged to quit not only Tibet but Manchuria as well.

A gloomy relation must have existed between India and China in the late forties. A new government took over India in 1947 with late Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru as its leader. Two years after a new government also took over China with Comrade Mao Tse-Tung as its leader. Well, Nehru proceeded to Beijing in 1949 and had a V.I.P. discussion with Mao face-to-face at a personal level with only two of them in the private chamber. China was to get hold of Tibet while India to get hold of Nepal. The political negotiation was duly sanctioned; both willfully agreed on the matter of top conspiracy. This also indicates that Tibet resumes not a part of China at all. Why did not Mao fire Nehru ? Instead the former gave in to his encouragement. With someone pushing the Chinese, Beijing did mobilize and started intruding the Tibetan territory most unlawfully since 1951 and in 1959 completely took over. Tibet is the tallest tableland in the globe. As the highest plateau on earth topographically it is also mountainous, very bitter and heavily windy. Thus it took nine long years for the Red Guards to capture it. Not so easy ! But down south India failed in occupying Nepal. They shall keep on lagging behind simply because Nepal is never a part of India. No way ! She fetched her earnest membership in the United Nations Organization in 1955 although had attempted or appealed in 1949 itself. A shame on both --- address it Indo-China affiliation or Sino-India affiliation. Both are merciless sinners for sure !

The majority of the Chinese was seen within the Tibetan soils right after 1959. Why had only a minority of them been living on the Tibetan grounds if Tibet was truly a part of China ? Concerning any bilateral relation with Tibet, the majority of foreigners who had been residing in the alpine kingdom for many centuries having Tibetan wives are none other than the Nepalese alone. Even amongst the Nepalese, strictly speaking, that particular Buddhist community having tied the nuptial knots is the Newar whose mother tongue sounds Tibeto-Burmese in nature. This strongly convinces that Tibet is also respectfully nestled in South Asia. All can clearly witness ten liberal countries to be mapped in South Asia including: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burma, Ceylon, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Tibet. China belongs to North Asia or the Far East, a profound conviction that nobody can deny. In other words North Asia is counted from the Sino-Tibetan border, you see. Justice never occurred in Tibet. Otherwise one Khampa can easily pin down four Chinese straight. Ten Red Guards with modern rifles surround a single Khampa --- what can he possibly do ? This is not fair ! Tibet is bound to get demilitarized as she is too a “Zone of Peace.” Let it not remain a lost horizon always.

The Chinese should either bear the guts to seize Nepal as well or to quit Tibet straight. One or the other ! Teach them to go the square way. The Chinese invasion of Tibet is but a serious offence against human rights. Down with the aggressive Reds ! They have hindered any social feelings; they have violated the Asian solidarity. I would like to congratulate the Chinese in a hearty manner for the relevant progress achieved in China proper, but condemn them for the direct occupation of Tibet seen evidently which their ancestors have never tried before. China, Tibet, Nepal and India constitute as four brothers, four sisters of Asia. They are indeed independent countries geographically and should live in perfect harmony ever after.

The Americans of the United States seem to appear cowards on Tibet issue. They helped liberate Kuwait, but why not help Tibet as well. Some comment Washington D.C. has ignored the case due to the dearth of gas supply. (Many have disclosed this agenda.) So what ! They have a lot of gold, musk, wool, etc. This is an unacceptable excuse whatsoever. It would be very absurd and too foolish as well to have Washington D.C. go after oil countries only. Chase the Yankees to love the Shangri-La. An ally party of multi-nation is desired to support the DALAI LAMA and fight off the obnoxious Reds. The U.N.O. is too acting a hypocrite instead of paying ardent attention to the real cause of the Tibetan society. Taiwan and Tibet must both be offered the due opportunities to enter the U.N.O. and obtain valid membership officially. It is high time for her to reveal the sublime truth. Dormant Tibet will soon be resurrected. Glory be the Roof of the World !

Amrit R. Tuladhar
Lost Horizon

Culture Vulture: Where is Humility?

2007-07-15T18:13:00.000+05:30

"Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." I have been governed by this these words, particularly after I brushed up on the fundamentals of conflict resolution: make observations, not judgments. However, at this moment, I just could not take my eyes off the prevailing "behavioral pattern" of the present crop of Tibetan youth--particularly with respect to the presentation of self to others.

As the saying goes, "you can take Tibetans out of Tibet, but you cannot take Tibet out of Tibetans." The Tibetan struggle as such will last until the last man standing. The real concern therefore may be the question of sustaining the Tibetan(ess) of the Tibetan people. In fact, the Tibetan struggle for freedom is often defined as a struggle to retain the Tibetan identity.

If one were to probe further, one may conclude that the mainstay of a culture is not its external manifestations--say, food, dress, customs, etc. The essence of a culture is in its visceral composition--like the spiritual and ethical (moral) values that are inherited from the forebears. And if the Tibetan cultural identity is to be sustained, the values that are supposed to be embedded in our genes, the values that supposedly shape our actions--deeds, words, omissions and desires--must survive in situ.

My contention, or observation, is therefore how the youth today, including folks of my age, are inculcating or coping with those values. A conspicuous element in the pantheon of Tibetan values could be the emphasis that we have traditionally put on the virtue of humility. This is evident from the rich array of sayings common in Tibetan parlance: a fruit-bearing tree is always hunched; the radiance of gold buried beneath the earth, lights the sky above, and so on.

A typical example could be how our elders usually give a talk--they always begin with a bit of self-deprecation: "I am not qualified enough to speak on this topic. My knowledge and experience are very limited. However, now that so and so has commanded me to speak on this matter, I shall venture some of my thoughts, hoping that they may have some use for you", or something to that effect.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, expressions of humility--like "I wouldn't know (much)", or "My knowledge is limited", etc.--appear to have become passé for the larger part of youth today, including those of my generation. Such decorum is treated as outlandish, totally out of sync with the newfound society—or a chore dismissed as the lingering residual of a bygone era when "public speaking was a refined art that demanded close attention to the laws of rhetoric and the niceties of delivery."

The young and upcoming are not without compelling reasons for this shortage of humility. To begin with, they are eking their living out in a world where there is no such thing as a free lunch--a world of one-upmanship, in which only those who are competent in marketing themselves are entitled to the highest of perks--a world where the operating principle is often not the survival of the fittest, but that of the loudest. It thus necessitates a lot of pruning and posturing. People as such take great pains in perfecting their skills of exuding an aura of all-knowing erudition, beginning with that trademark "I-know-what-I-am-doing" face. The compunction of maintaining a false pretence, I guess, never weighs heavily upon us.

Returning to how the grownups began their talks by playing themselves down, I caught hold of a book, The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking. The blurb on its cover says, "The most brilliant book of its kind"--reprinted 50 times, translated into 11 languages. Expounding on how to express yourself logically, persuasively and convincingly, the author, Dale Carnegie, noted that, "The surest way to antagonize an audience is to indicate that you consider yourself above them...On the other hand, modesty inspires confidence and goodwill. You can be modest without being apologetic. Your audience will like and respect you for suggesting your limitations as long as you show you are determined to do your best."

The author cites Edmund S. Muskie, then US Senator from Maine, as demonstrating this in a speech. "I approach my assignment this morning with many doubts," he began. "In the first place, I am conscious of the professional qualification of this audience, and question the wisdom of exposing my poor talents to your critical view...Facing these doubts, I feel very much like the mosquito who found himself unexpectedly in a nudist colony. I don't know where to begin." Indeed, writes Carnegie, one of the best ways for a speaker to endear himself to the audience is to play himself down. So much for our elders being outlandish and out of sync!

If this article sounds too preachy, or prissy for that matter, it is not meant to be. I have made a habit out of always learning my life lessons the harder way. The lesson on modesty, which I had while in high school, was particularly the hardest of all--at times when my lack of humility begins to turn into hubris, the incident churns up in my mind scene by scene, making me cringe with embarrassment. That year, after the winter tests, I was home on vacation. My test performance was good, in fact so good that I went cock-a-hoop, literally jumping for joy. And I seldom missed a chance to brag about it before my friends and family. One day, tired perhaps of my infantile braggadocio, my elder brother asked me,

"So, how are you in math?"

"First class," I bragged--I was the math topper.

"How much did you score?"

"30," I said.

The fact that I was the topper was ridiculously meaningless, for just as the rest of the class, I had failed that test. To pass a test one must score at least 33 out of 100 points. But that minute detail never bothered me. All I cared for was "I am the topper." Then, just as my elation had subsided, my brother told me what was to be indelibly etched in my memory--"You see Dhundup, there are three kinds of first class: The first class of the first class; the first class of the second class; and the first class of the third class. And you my friend, are the first class of the third class." Period!

Dhondup Gyalpo

Speaking of beggars

2007-07-12T16:50:00.000+05:30

IF THERE IS such a thing as a bumper sale on acquiring meritorious karma, it is on the 15th day of the fourth Saka month of the Tibetan lunar calendar - marked as the day of the Buddha's birth, enlightenment and parinirvana. Tibetans believe that any meritorious deed performed on this sacred day yields far greater results than those on any ordinary day. It is equivalent to buying one, getting many thousands free. Because of this multiplying effect, even those who are usually lackadaisical in exerting themselves for meritorious karma are tempted to make a stab at chanting mantras, circumambulating temples, or simply doling out alms to beggars.

As was usual every year, when I went for linkhor on this auspicious day - which this year fell on 31 May - a long sprawl of beggars dotted the entire length of the ring of the path girding the hill of His Holiness the Dalai Lama's residence and the Tsuglakhang. The army of beggars reminded me of a model paragraph that I had mugged up at school. It went something like: There are two kinds of beggar: voluntary beggars, and those who are victims of misfortune. Its punch line was that we should keep the first type at an arm's length, while being sympathetic to the latter.

As I started doling out one rupee coin to a select few of the hapless lot, including the children and the lepers, the moral of that paragraph never bothered me - not even when one of the "voluntary beggars" asked me, "Babu, do you want change...for 50, 100...?" He might have raised the stakes to 500, had I kept listening to him!

I went on, but my pockets dried up even before I had gone half-way. For the rest of my linkhor, whenever someone raised their bowl towards me, their expectant looks made me feel ill at ease, but did not bother me much. Years of experience, I guessed, had made them professionals in the business of begging, for they knew whom to nag and whom to ignore.

As I proceeded a little further, I noted that the beggars were tribes or clans from certain impoverished areas of the neighboring states. None of them were Tibetan - not even the few junkies that we occasionally bumped into at McLeod Gunj had marked their presence there. But strange as it may sound, I felt no pride in that thought.

My reason takes me to a noted writer-columnist—Kushwant Singh. Once when he appeared as guest on the TV show "Movers & Shakers" (the Indian version of "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno"), Mr Singh was asked why most of his jokes are about his Sikh community. He responded by saying that only those who have full faith, confidence and pride in their people are capable of making fun of themselves. As a concrete proof of the Sikh community's self-pride, he then said, "Have you ever seen a [turbaned] Punjabi begging on the road?"

Mr Kushwant Singh, I really envy you on that, for I cannot say the same for my people. Beggars today are a common sight in all over Tibet. The images of Lhasa on this 15th day of Saka month showed its streets choked with thousands of Tibetan beggars. The capital city of the Land of Snows, a land that has never in its entire history known something remotely as a famine, has been reduced to dire poverty in just about half a century of Chinese occupation.

Even as China continues to dazzle the world with its economic boom, Tibet appears to have been shut out of it - if the growing number of Tibetan beggars is any indication. A report published in 1998 quoted a beggar saying that there were more than 3,000 beggars in Lhasa. The figure now is 8,000, according to media reports. This figure also includes an increasing number of Chinese beggars. Since the Gormo-Lhasa railway hit the tracks - which was supposed to enable Tibetan beggars to beg in rich Chinese cities - it has instead opened a floodgate of Chinese migrant workers, prostitutes and beggars into Tibet.

The new influx of Chinese beggars means the daily ordeal of Tibetan beggars has gotten a lot worse. A veteran Indian journalist, Vijay Kranti, following a visit to Tibet, once noted that the domination of Chinese people is visible even in the case of beggars. "When you visited the Lhasa Jokhang temple, the best sites for begging were always allotted to the Chinese beggars, while the Tibetan beggars were driven to the periphery."

The Tibetan people's ability to be self-reliant is articulated in many of our common adages: A Tibetan who has even a nail-sized piece of land will never die of starvation. However, given the years of Chinese colonial economic policies, coupled with the great influx of Chinese migrants, an overwhelming number of Tibetans in all walks of life have been edged out to extreme penury. For them, begging is not an option, but a necessity of the last resort.

Dhondup Gyalpo

The Epilogue to LOST HORIZON

2007-07-11T11:46:00.000+05:30

-- James Hilton

It was in Delhi that I met Rutherford again. We had been guests at a Viceregal dinner-party, but distance and ceremonial kept us apart until the turbaned flunkeys handed us our hats afterwards. “Come back to my hotel and have a drink,” he invited.

We shared a cab along the arid miles between the Lutyens still-life and the warm, palpitating motion picture of Old Delhi. I knew from the newspapers that he had just returned from Kashgar. He was one of those well-groomed reputations that get the most out of everything; any usual holiday acquires the character of an exploration, and though the explorer takes care to do nothing really original, the public does not know this, and he capitalizes the full value of a hasty impression. It had not seemed to me, for instance, that Rutherford’s journey, as reported in the press, had been particularly epoch-making; the buried cities of Khotan were old stuff, if any one remembered Stein and Sven Hedin. I knew Rutherford well enough to chaff him about this, and he laughed. “Yes, the truth would have made a better story,” he admitted cryptically.

We went to his hotel room and drank whisky. “So you did search for Conway?” I suggested when the moment seemed propitious.

“Search is much too strong a word,” he answered. “You can’t search a country half as big as Europe for one man. All I can say is that I have visited places where I was prepared to come across him or to get news of him. His last message, you remember, was that he had left Bangkok for the northwest. There were traces of him up-country for a little way, and my own opinion is that he probably made for the tribal districts on the Chinese border. I don’t think he’d have cared to enter Burma, where he might have run up against British officials. Any how, the definite trail, you may say, peters out somewhere in Upper Siam, but of course I never expected to follow it that far.”

“You thought it might be easier to look for the valley of Blue Moon?”

“Well, it did seem as if it might be a more fixed proposition. I suppose you glanced at that manuscript of mine?”

“Much more than glanced at it. I should have returned it, by the way, but you left no address.”

Rutherford nodded. “I wonder what you made of it?”

“I thought it very remarkable---assuming, of course, that it’s all quite genuinely based on what Conway told you.”

“I give you my solemn word for that. I invented nothing at all---indeed, there’s even less of my own language in it than you might think. I’ve got a good memory, and Conway always had a way of describing things. Don’t forget that we had about twenty-four hours of practically continuous talk.”

“Well, as I said, it’s all very remarkable.”

He leaned back and smiled. “If that’s all you‘re going to say, I can see I shall have to speak for myself. I suppose you consider me a rather credulous person. I don’t really think I am. People make mistakes in life through believing too much, but they have a damned dull time if they believe too little. I was certainly taken with Conway’s story---in more ways than one---and that was why I felt interested enough to put as many tabs on it as I could---apart from the chance of running up against the man himself.”

He went on, after lighting a cigar. “It meant a good deal of odd journeying, but I like that sort of thing, and my publishers can’t object to a travel book once in a while. Altogether I must have done some thousands of miles---Baskul, Bangkok, Chung-Kiang, Kashgar---I visited them all, and somewhere inside the area between them the mystery lives. But it’s a pretty big area, you know, and all my investigations didn’t touch more than the fringe of it---or of the mystery either, for that matter. Indeed, if you want the actual down-right facts about Conway’s adventures, so far as I’ve been able to verify them, all I can tell you is that he left Baskul on the twentieth of May and arrived in Chung-Kiang on the fifth of October. And the last we know of him is that he left Bangkok again on the third of February. All the rest is probability, possibility, guesswork, myth, legend, whatever you like to call it.”

“So you didn’t find anything in Tibet?”

“My dear fellow, I never got into Tibet at all. The people up at Government House wouldn’t hear of it; it’s as much as they’ll do to sanction an Everest expedition, and when I said I thought of wandering about the Kuen-Luns on my own, they looked at me rather as if I’d suggested writing a life of Gandhi. As a matter of fact, they knew more than I did. Strolling about Tibet isn’t a one-man job; it needs an expedition properly fitted out and run by some one who knows at least a word or two of the language. I remember when Conway was telling me his story I kept wondering why there was all that fuss about waiting for porters---why didn’t they simply walk off? I wasn’t very long in discovering. The Government people were quite right---all the passports in the world couldn’t have got me over the Kuen-Luns. I actually went as far as seeing them in the distance, on a very clear day---perhaps fifty miles off. Not many Europeans can claim even that.”

“Are they so very forbidding?”

“They looked just like a white frieze on the horizon, that was all. At Yarkand and Kashgar I questioned every one I met about them, but it was extraordinary how little I could discover. I should think they must be the least-explored range in the world. I had the luck to meet an American traveler who had once tried to cross them, but he’d been unable to find a pass. There are passes, he said, but they are terrifically high and unmapped. I asked him if he thought it possible for a valley to exist of the kind Conway described, and he said he wouldn’t call it impossible, but he thought it not very likely---on geological grounds, at any rate. Then I asked if he had ever heard of a cone-shaped mountain almost as high as the highest of the Himalayas, and his answer to that was rather intriguing. There was a legend, he said, about such a mountain, but he thought himself there could be no foundation for it. There were even rumors, he added, about mountains actually higher than Everest, but he didn’t himself give credit to them. ‘I doubt if any peak in the Kuen-Luns is more than twenty-five thousand feet, if that’ he said. But he admitted that they had never been properly surveyed.

“Then I asked him what he knew about Tibetan lamaseries---he’d been in the country several times---and he gave me just the usual accounts that one can read in all the books. They weren’t beautiful places, he assured me, and the monks in them were generally corrupt and dirty. ‘Do they live long?’ I asked, and he said yes, they often did, if they didn’t die of some filthy disease. Then I went boldly to the point and asked if he’d ever heard legends of extreme longevity among the lamas. ‘Heaps of them,’ he answered: ‘it’s one of the stock yarns you hear everywhere, but you can’t verify them. You’re told that some foul-looking creature has been walled up in a cell for a hundred years, and he certainly looks as if he might have been, but of course you can’t demand his birth certificate.’ I asked him if he thought they had any occult or medicinal way of prolonging life or preserving youth, and he said they were supposed to have a great deal of very curious knowledge about such things, but he suspected that if you come to look into it, it was rather like the Indian rope trick---always something that somebody else had seen. He did say, however, that the lamas appeared to have odd powers of bodily control. I’ve watched them,’ he said, ‘sitting by the edge of a frozen lake, stark naked, with a temperature below zero and in a tearing wind, while their servants break the ice and wrap sheets round them that have been dipped in the water. They do this a dozen times or more, and the lamas dry the sheets on their own bodies. Keeping warm by will-power, so one imagines, though that’s a poor sort of explanation.’ ”

Rutherford helped himself to more drink. “But of course, as my American friend admitted, all that had nothing much to do with longevity. It merely showed that the lamas had somber tastes in self-discipline…So there we were, and probably you’ll agree with me that all the evidence, so far, was less than you’d hang a dog on.”

I said it was certainly inconclusive, and asked if the names “Karakal” and “Shangri-La” had meant anything to the American.

“Not a thing---I tried him with them. After I’d gone on questioning him for a time, he said: ‘rankly, I’m not keen on monasteries---indeed, I once told a fellow I met in Tibet that if I went out of my way at all, it would be to avoid them, not pay them a visit.’ That chance remark of his gave me a curious aide, and I asked him when this meeting in Tibet had taken place. ‘Oh, a long time ago,’ he answered, ‘before the War---in nineteen eleven, I think it was.’ I badgered him for further details, and he gave them, as well as he could remember. It seemed that he’d been traveling then for some American geographical society, with several colleagues, porters, and so on---in fact, a pukka expedition. Somewhere near the Kuen-Luns he met this other man, a Chinese who was being carried in a chair by native bearers. The fellow turned out to speak English quite well, and strongly recommended them to visit a certain lamasery in the neighborhood---he even offered to be the guide there. The American said they hadn’t time and weren’t interested, and that was that.” Rutherford went on, after an interval: “I don’t suggest that it means a great deal. When a man tries to remember a casual incident that happened twenty years ago, you can’t build too much on it. But it offers an attractive speculation.”

“Yes, though if a well equipped-expedition had accepted the invitation, I don’t see how they could have been detained at the lamasery against their will.”

“Oh, quite. And perhaps it wasn’t Shangri-La at all.”

We thought it over, but it seemed too hazy for argument, and I went on to ask if there had been any discoveries at Baskul.

“Baskul was hopeless, and Peshwar was worse. Nobody could tell me anything, except that the kidnapping of the aeroplane did undoubtedly take place. They weren’t keen even to admit that---it’s an episode they’re not proud of.”

“And nothing was heard of the plane afterwards?”

“Not a word of a rumor, or of its four passengers either. I verified, however, that it was capable of climbing high enough to cross the ranges. I also tried to trace that fellow Barnard, but I found his past history so mysterious that I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he really were Chalmers Bryant, as Conway said. After all, Bryant’s complete disappearance in the midst of the big hue and cry was rather amazing.”

“Did you try to find anything about the actual kidnapper?”

“I did. But again it was hopeless. The Air Force man whom the fellow had knocked out and impersonated had since been killed, so one promising line of enquiry was closed. I even wrote to a friend of mine in America who runs an aviation school, asking if he had had any Tibetan pupils lately, but his reply was prompt and disappointing. He said he couldn’t differentiate Tibetans from Chinese, and he had had about fifty of the latter---all training to fight the Japs. Not much chance there, you see. But I did make one rather quaint discovery---and which I could have made just as easily without leaving London. There was a German professor at Jena about the middle of the last century who took to globe-trotting and visited Tibet in 1887. He never came back, and there was some story about him having been drowned in fording a river. His name was Friedrich Meister.”

“Good heavens---one of the names Conway mentioned!”

“Yes---though it may only have been coincidence. It doesn’t prove the whole story, by any means, because the Jena fellow was born in 1845. Nothing very exciting about that.”

“But it’s odd,” I said.

‘Oh, yes, it’s odd enough.”

“Did you succeed in tracing any of the others?”

“No. It’s a pity I hadn’t a longer list to work on. I couldn’t find any record of a pupil of Chopin’s called Briac, though of course that doesn’t prove that there wasn’t one. Conway was pretty sparing with his names, when you come to think about it---out of fifty odd lamas supposed to be on the premises he only gave us one or two. Perrault and Henschell, by the way, proved equally impossible to trace.”

“How about Mallinson?” I asked. “Did you try to find out what happened to him? And that girl---the Chinese girl?”

“My dear fellow, of course I did. The awkward part was, as you perhaps gathered from the manuscript, that Conway’s story ended at the moment of leaving the valley with the porters. After that he either couldn’t or wouldn’t tell what happened---perhaps he might have done, mind you, if there’d be more time. I feel that we can guess at some sort of tragedy. The hardships of the journey would be perfectly appalling, apart from the risk of brigandage or even treachery among their own escorting party. Probably we shall never know exactly what did occur, but it seems tolerably certain that Mallinson never reached China. I made all sorts of enquiries, you know. First of all I tried to trace details of books, et cetera, sent in large consignments across the Tibetan frontier, but at all the likely places, such as Shanghai and Pekin, I drew complete blanks. That, of course, doesn’t count for much, since the lamas would doubtless see that their methods of importation were kept secret. Then I tried at Tatsien-Fu. It’s a weird place, a sort of world’s-end market town, deuced difficult to get at, where the Chinese coolies from Yunnan transfer their loads of tea to the Tibetans. You can read about it in my new book when it comes out. Europeans don’t often get as far. I found the people quite civil and courteous, but there was absolutely no record of Conway’s party arriving at all.”

“So how Conway himself reached Chung-Kiang is still unexplained?”

“The only conclusion is that he wandered there, just as he might have wandered anywhere else. Anyhow, we’re back in the realm of hard facts when we get to Chung-Kiang, that’s something. The nuns at the mission hospital were genuine enough, and so, for that matter, was Sieveking’s excitement on the ship when Conway played that pseudo-Chopin.” Rutherford paused and then added reflectively: “It’s really an exercise in the balancing of probabilities, and I must say the scales don’t bump very emphatically either way. Of course if you don’t accept Conway’s story, it means that you doubt either his veracity or his sanity---one may as well be frank.”

He paused again, as if inviting a comment, and I said: “As you know, I never saw him after the War, but people said he was a good deal changed by it.”

Rutherford answered: “Yes, and he was, there’s no denying the fact. You can’t subject a mere boy to three years of intense physical and emotional stress without tearing something to tatters. People would say, I suppose, that he came through without a scratch. But the scratches were there---on the inside.”

We talked for a little time about the War and its effects on various people, and at length he went on: “But there’s just one more point that I must mention---and perhaps in some ways the oddest of all. It came out during my enquiries at the mission. They all did their best for me there, as you can guess, but they couldn’t recollect much, especially as they’d been so busy with a fever epidemic at the time. One of the questions I put was about the manner Conway had reached the hospital first of all---whether he had presented himself alone, or had been found ill and been taken there by some one else. They couldn’t exactly remember---after all, it was a long while back---but suddenly, when I was on the point of giving up the cross-examination, one of the nuns remarked quite casually, ‘I think the doctor said he was brought here by a woman.’ That was all she could tell me, and as the doctor himself had left the mission, there was no confirmation to be had on the spot.

“But having got so far, I wasn’t in any mood to give up. It appeared that the doctor had gone to a bigger hospital in Shanghai, so I took the trouble to get his address and call on him there. It was just after the Jap air-raiding, and things were pretty grim. I’d met the man before during my first visit to Chung-Kiang, and he was very polite, though terribly overworked---yes, terribly’s the word, for, believe me, the air-raids on London by the Germans were just nothing to what the Japs did to the native parts of Shanghai. Oh, yes, he said instantly, he remembered the case of the Englishman who had lost his memory. Was it true he had been brought to the mission hospital by a woman? I asked. Oh, yes, certainly by a woman, a Chinese woman. Did he remember anything about her? Nothing, he answered, except that she had been ill of the fever herself, and had died almost immediately…. Just then there was an interruption---a batch of wounded were carried in and packed on stretchers in the corridors---the wards were all full---and I didn’t care to go on taking up the man’s time, especially as the thudding of the guns at Woosung was a reminder that he would still have plenty to do. When he came back to me, looking quite cheerful even amidst such ghastliness, I just asked him one final question, and I dare say you can guess what it was. ‘About that Chinese woman,’ I said. ‘Was she young?’”

Rutherford flicked his cigar as if the narration had excited him quite as much as he hoped it had me. Continuing, he said: “The little fellow looked at me solemnly for a moment, and then answered in that funny clipped English that the educated Chinese have---‘Oh, no, she was most old---most old of any one I have ever seen.’”

We sat for a long time in silence, and then talked again of Conway as I remembered him, boyish and gifted and full of charm, and of the War that had altered him, and of so many mysteries of time and age and of the mind, and of the little Manchu who had been “most old”, and of the strange ultimate dream of Blue Moon. “Do you think he will ever find it?” I asked.

WOODFORD GREEN
April, 1933

Tibetan Poetry Down the Ages

2007-05-02T19:19:00.000+05:30

As the foremost of human literary arts is said to be lyrics, the Tibetan people also have had various lyrics of different rhymes--extempore songs of kings (sgur), oral folksongs, etc.--from the earliest of times.

Mythical tales (lha-sdrung), stories (sdrung) and allegorical writings (gap-tsig) also abound from times as far back as of King Nyatri Tsenpo (127 B.C.).

During the reign of King Songtsen Gampo (617 A.D.), Minister Thumi Sambhota wrote a eulogy for the King after inventing or reinventing the Tibetan script. The poetry at the preface of that eulogy is deemed historically by many as the first Tibetan poetical composition.

In the 13th century, Sakya Pandita Kunga Gyaltsen translated into Tibetan, poems and verses of early Indian poets along with some of the structural and rhythmic rules of writing poetry into Tibetan, and compiled them in Gateway to Scholarship (Khaipa-la-jugpai-sgo). Sakya Pandita however left the translation incomplete as the contemporary intellectuals turned hostile to his translations because it was of "Indic origin, alien and non-Buddhist".

The unfinished task of translation initiated by Sakya Pandita was later taken up by Tibetan scholar Shongten Dorjee Gyaltsen, who translated the whole poetic works of Acharya Dandi, foremost among the Indian poets of the 7th century, into Tibetan, Mirror of Poetry (Nyen-ngag Melong-ma).

Pang Lotsawa Lodoe Tenpa, a contemporary of Shongten, edited and added his own commentaries to the works of Shongten, and began formally tutoring them. Thenceforth, the Mirror of Poetry, which was purely of Indic origin, gradually became not only the tradition of Tibetan poetry, but also the root text for the future poets.

Following the rules of Indic traditions, poetry flourished in Tibet like the proverbial swell of summer’s ocean, producing a colossus mass of poetic works down the ages.

However, the tragedy of 1959 proved catastrophic to Tibetan literature. To put in the words of a Tibetan poet: "it literally took the breathe out of Tibetan literature." All publishing in Tibetan language ceased and literary activities were reduced to mere translation of Chinese propaganda.

Relatively relaxed environment of the early eighties afforded some space for the Tibetan literati to flex their intellectual muscles while remaining within the limited confines of Party policy. This ushered an era of "modern Tibetan literature", the period which saw a renaissance in Tibetan publications when Tibetan journals and magazines "blossomed like spring flowers".

Tibetan literature was further enriched and elevated by pioneering works of modern Tibetan writers like Dhondup Gyal, Jangbu and Tsering Dhondup who introduced new usages and genre of Tibetan literature that diverged from past traditions.
However, the increasingly stringent control imposed since 1994 on the works of Tibetan writers has effectively muzzled the creative energy that has been oozing from the early eighties.

Dhondup Gyalpo

A colonial sport....finds takers among the Tibetan youth!

2007-04-02T13:36:00.000+05:30

I couldn't control myself from having a good laugh at those people who inadvertently blurt out, 'How did our team play?', whenever there is an Indian match going on especially during the on going world cup cricket.

These second and third generation Tibetans, born and brought up in exile, have also acquired the love of this game from their host country.I wonder how this phenomenon came about!!

I find my younger brother as equally interested in the English premier league matches as he is with the fortunes of the Indian cricket team.These young teenagers all have their own favourite teams but everyone don't mind admittting their love and support for the Indian team and sometimes even referring to it as 'our team'.

Is it due to the excessive exposure given by the various news channels? I can't help but admire the power of this medium; since cricket is not in any Tibetan schools' co-curricular activities and moreover, we don't have a cricket culture in our community like the Indians. So,the only cause of this phenomenon can only be attributed to the 'Idiot box'.

Maybe there really is some magic in this game that attracts these teenagers towards this game. And this love for the game is not just limited to watching it but they also love playing it. Like football, you don't need a big ground and space to play it, even a small narrow alley is enough and you can play with just a bat and a ball. Maybe, they like the idea of hitting something..out of sight..and the harder you can hit, the better!!

I find small kids,who can't possibly understand all the rules of cricket, playing it with gusto-just with a ball and a bat-which can be of any material...ranging from plastic to wooden planks lying here and there!!!

Its so funny to see a sport that can arouse so extreme a feeling among all sections of the people! People maybe indifferent to all kinds of sports-be it football, basketball, hockey etc.-but when it comes to cricket they are very vocal about their views.' They either love it or hate it!' I have never heard people around me say they hate football,but I have heard many of them voice their anger at cricket, whenever it is mentioned. And at the same time, I have also seen passionate and diehard fans who don't mind staying up late at night even on a weekday just to watch India play or Australia and South Africa play. Love it or hate it..it seems no one can ignore it!!!

Tibet of yore was never a sports oriented country; so maybe we can look at this trend as a positive one. As it is said, A sound mind can only exist in a sound body.We can only hope that this growing craze for cricket among the Tibetan youth is not just limited to watching the sport and becoming a couch potato, but it also extends to playing it on the ground!

History repeats itself over and over again-we never learn our lessons!!

2007-03-23T23:05:00.000+05:30

George Bernard Shaw said, "Must then Christ perish in torment in every age to save those that have no imagination?" Likewise, should one nation or the other; one community or the other always be the 'sacrificial lamb' so as to wake up the whole humanity every half century!!

Our school History textbooks are replete with various instances of horrific bloodshed and repression that happened over the ages. I was never a great fan of history as a subject until I got introduced to contemporary history. I got completely engrossed in the world wars and their various effects and consequences.

And I was most moved by the repression and the massacre of Jews by the Nazis. Maybe, its because being a Tibetan myself I emphathize with what the Jews went through during that period. I still find it so hard to believe that the whole world can remain so deaf, dumb and blind, all at the same time. when fellow human beings were slaughtered and exterminated like some disease causing pests. I still shudder at the thought that countries like England and the USA, who could have made a difference, turned their backs at this hour of need of their neighbouring continent-Europe.

Only when destruction and death knocked on their doors, did they felt the pinch! How many deaths could have been avoided by a timely intervention!!

It really despairs me to realize that millions died in a war caused by the whims and fancies of a single man-Hitler and his idealism-Nazism. More than half a century has passed and though the earth has aged in these years, man has not grown any wiser. Humanity is still the same.

One country 'China, and its idealism-communism is day by day and year by year creeping nearer and nearer towards the domination of a continent' and maybe someday on to the world!!! And in the process they don't care a hoot whether they trample underneath their ever-widening strides, a nation with an ancient and a precious civilization, a nation boasting of the purest people and environment!!

The whole world, as long as they attain their materialistic gains doesn't care whether a nation and its identity is being erased off the face of the world and earth. Haven't they learned from history that whatever happens in the neighbourhood doesn't happen in isolation-sooner or later everyone feels the repercussions???

George Bernard Shaw said, "Must then Christ perish in torment in every age to save those that have no imagination?" Likewise, should one nation or the other; one community or the other always be the 'sacrificial lamb' so as to wake up the whole humanity every half century!! Is man evolving towads the attainment of his better and perfect self or this evolution is leading us towards our own destruction??

The whole world turned a blind eye when Hitler carried on his heartless regime of hatred. Then, it was the Jews who had to lay down their lives. Now, Is it the turn of the Tibetans to take on that mantle???

Millions will have to redden this earth with their blood, then only will the world wake up from this self-induced sleep. Will the whole world stare blindingly at the creeping snake until its sitting on its chest-ready to sting its poisonous sting?

According to His Holiness in his Memoirs, the invasion of Tibet is the first step taken by communist china towards the domination of Asia and then on to world domination.

Except for India, China holds the reins of most Asian countries which are unstable like Pakistan, Nepal, Burma, Sri-lanka, Bangladesh and North Korea. Invading Tibet has already brought them right next to India's borders. And now the Golmud-Lhasa train has made their imperialistic ambitions easier and also more clear to everyone. India is at present surrounded by hostile nations and moreover the so-called 'Maoists' are also creating lots of problems and destructions inside of India. India's neighbours are ruled by more or less puppet governments and leaders whose connection with the Chinese government is no longer hidden from the eyes of the world.

If I, a mere lay person can see all these, then what are all these big and powerful nations doing?? The so-called leaders of the free world!! Just being mere spectators to the imperialistic designs of a greedy nation!! They are more busy with pointless wars over 'oil' and their 'egoes'.

‘The Mother of the Land of Snows’

2007-03-20T22:39:00.000+05:30

For [43] years, I have devoted my life to children. I do not know anything about politics and I am certainly not a politician. I do not work for honours or for a monument to be erected in my memory. I want to remain honest to myself and to my religion, Buddhism. I sincerely want to serve the children and this is my contribution to the Tibetan cause.1

In 1961, when Jetsun Pema first arrived in Dharamshala, she found “a place withdrawn from the world, far from civilization”. The scene at McLeod Gunj was “one of complete chaos: three buildings, just one shop, and canvas tents everywhere. The Tibetans were in rags, children were crying and trembling with cold, and the women seemed stunned by the weight of their misfortune. What suffering must they have gone through before arriving at this town of misery?”

Some 80 thousand Tibetans had followed His Holiness the Dalai Lama, when he escaped to India in 1959, and relocated the Tibetan administration in Mussoorie, and then, Dharamshala in 1960. The main tasks before the exile administration were rehabilitation of Tibetan refugees in exile and restoration of freedom in Tibet. However, other than relief supplies, finding work for the Tibetan refugees proved to be a tall order; most of them, being peasants and nomads, lacked professional skills. The immediate solution was road building in the hilly regions of Kullu and Jammu, where gangs of two to three hundred Tibetans were dispatched.

Besides, “The children have been a special anxiety2,” His Holiness writes in his memoirs (My Land and My People, published in 1962). “It is even harder for children than for adults to be uprooted and taken suddenly to an entirely different environment, and many of them died in the early days from the change of food and climate. We had to do something drastic to preserve their health—and their education was also a matter of great importance.

”Traditional Tibetan education, despite all its virtues, had failed to catch up with the sprinting world outside Tibet. His Holiness therefore could not agree more when Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru told him that the education of children is Tibet’s hope for the future. With generous assistance from the Indian government, boarding schools were thus established, first at Mussoorie on 3 March 1960, and later at Darjeeling, Shimla, Kalimpong and Dalhousie.

Excluded still were the preschool infants, who suffered “most of all from the climate of India, and the exposure to infections which hardly exist in Tibet. Their parents knew only too well that they could not look after them properly.” Many children moreover were orphaned or separated from their families during the arduous escape across the Himalayas. Writes His Holiness, “So, I offered them all my personal protection. I decided to set up a Nursery and place it in the hands of my elder sister”, Tsering Dolma Takla, since a batch of 51 children had arrived from Jammu on 17 May 1960, after Tibetan officials had fanned out in various road camps, urging the refugees to enroll their children under the administration’s care.

“The result was somewhat overwhelming,” says His Holiness. “Almost before we knew where we were, 800 tiny children had been handed over to our care. My sister and her voluntary helpers had to improvise the barest necessities of life for this enormous family. We still cannot afford to give these little children the slightest luxury, but we can make sure that they are loved and kept healthy and happy—insofar as the children of refugees can ever be happy.”

For this, the Government of India, generous as ever, rendered three disused bungalows in gradual succession—Conium House, Egerton Hall and Kishore Nivas. “After gathering the children in Dharamshala, my sister kept the youngest with her and sent those who were over eight, in groups of between 20 and 50, to the various boarding schools, according to where rooms were available,” writes Jetsun Pema in her memoir (Tibet: My Story, published in 1996, out now in ten different languages). But then, “Soon these five schools were full, so we had to keep the children in the then ‘Nursery for Tibetan Children.”

When Jetsun Pema, after appearing for the Senior Cambridge exams at Loreto convent in Darjeeling, first set foot in Dharamshala, the sheer gravity of the situation “drove [her] to action rather than to despair”. “My sister had the greatest need of me. The children had to be washed, dressed and given their meals. Several elderly Tibetans volunteered to help. I served as an interpreter for the doctors and nurses of the Swiss Red Cross.”

After surviving the first months of exile in Dharamshala, she left for further studies in Switzerland and England. When she returned in 1964, some improvements had come to pass in what was by then a virtual village, with over 800 children and 100 staff. “Tsering Dolma now had an office, even though it was only a narrow room, with a typewriter and a few chairs.” But 1964 turned out to be “a black year”, doomed for damnation, as only months after a car accident nearly did her in, her sister, Tsering Dolma Takla, passed away in a prolonged battle with cancer. She was 44.“

Tsering Dolma had devoted her life to the children in exile,” Jetsun Pema recalls. “She had created from scratch the structures which had enabled hundreds to avoid almost certain death and, after the first urgent medical care, to receive little by little a sound education in a climate of love, tenderness and understanding.”

Although ashes of the deceased are normally consigned to mountains or rivers, hers are still preserved in an urn by the village. “Perhaps one day, when we return to Tibet, we will take them with us.”

Jetsun Pema knew what her entire family expected of her in the wake of Tsering Dolma’s demise. So when His Holiness called upon Jetsun Pema—the name bears the hallmark of being the first ever name given by His Holiness3—to carry forward her sister’s endeavours, she simply “rolled up her sleeves and got on with it”. But, a heavy responsibility, it nonetheless was, especially for a young woman of 24. “I felt completely lost.” Every day presented a new challenge to surmount with bare minimum resources at her disposal. And often when faced with a conundrum, she would avail of His Holiness’ sagacity. “Although sometimes he must have had enough of my coming in to ask for yet more advice, he never showed it.”

Meanwhile, year in, year out, children kept pouring in, in droves, as did the amount of cheques dispatched by various organizations and individuals from across the globe. But with each year passed in exile, the odds against a speedy return to Tibet stacked up. And in order to hold out for the Tibetan cause, the need of a strong base in exile began to sink in. The plan then was not to build merely houses, but homes with virtual families. As the scheme of “sponsoring a child at 10 dollars” hit the ground running, Jetsun Pema relentlessly pursued building more homes—beginning in 1966, when the first home for 25 sponsored children was built at the cost of 20,000 rupees.

“This home system worked wonders”, for only in such an environment could the deep emotional wounds and mental anxiety common in the children of refugees be healed or “exorcised”. In order to revamp into “a fully integrated community where children under its care would receive not only the warmth and security of a home and a mother to share with brothers and sisters, but also a good education”4,the Nursery for Tibetan Refugee Children registered under the new name of the Tibetan Children’s Village (TCV) in 1971. In the same year, it also became a full-fledged member of the SOS Kinderdorf International, Vienna, which has since continued to provide “the backbone support for all the major projects of the TCV”.

With a sound financial standing, the village could provide a better, holistic modern education, firmly entrenched in Tibetan religion and culture, and also, upgrade the level of school curriculum from Secondary to Senior Secondary (10+2). The village also had considerable freedom in adapting its education programme, especially in the primary and middle levels, to suit the actual needs of the Tibetan people. In 1985, inspired by the Indian policy that every child should receive primary education in their mother tongue, the village began the pioneering task of “Tibetanising” the primary education by changing the medium of instruction from English to Tibetan (which was later successfully replicated in all the present 80-odd Tibetan schools across India and Nepal).

In just about half a century, from a modest crèche of 51 children to a multi-state juggernaut of over 15,000 children and 1,200 staff, “The TCV grew out of sheer necessity”, along with the swelling tide of orphans and destitute children in exile—especially the glut of children in the 1980s, when thousands escaped into India, following relatively relaxed Chinese policies. In between 1980 and 1982 alone, “more than 1,000 managed to reach Dharamshala”. Several hundred of which went straight into the fold of the TCV. “There was absolutely no question of us turning away children from Tibet...they represented not just our only hope but also the only hope for their parents,” Jetsun Pema wrote. New children’s villages, schools, youth hostels, technical and vocatiowitnal training centres were thus established across the length and breadth of India, from Ladakh in the North to Bylakuppee in the South.

“A tragedy is revealed”, when Jetsun Pema leads the third fact-finding delegation to Tibet in 1980—after the Chinese paramount leader Deng Xiaoping conveyed that anything but complete independence is negotiable, and that the Tibetan exiles could visit Tibet and bear witness to its actual progress. However, after a three-month long journey, the findings of what was an “educational delegation” only proved that “even the notion of education is a farce in Tibet”. Wherever they went, the Chinese officials bombarded them with rosy figures of “permanent lies and deceit”. “In some villages, the Chinese even went so far as to create a school just for the duration of our visit.” Crestfallen, the delegation returned to Dharamshala with a sackful of letters, or petitions—about 7,000 in total, most addressed to His Holiness—which were discreetly handed to them during their journey across Tibet.

After a series of landmark changes ushered in the process of democratizing exile Tibetan polity, in 1990, Jetsun Pema became the first woman to be elected as Kalon in the exile history, or in fact, the entire Tibetan history. Her enduring legacy as the Education Kalon5 was the “Tibetanization” of education in all Tibetan schools, including those directly under the Indian Ministry of Education.

Surprising as it may though appear, when it came to her being a Kalon, she had been brutally self-deprecating, claiming she was “a bad choice at a time when Tibet had so many problems. In my opinion, the community already had a sufficient number of talented people. I had no idea about politics; my only talent lay in the field of education.” She offered to resign four times; His Holiness accepted her resignation finally in 1993. Even in an interview last year to Tibetan World, when asked if she could be the next Kalon Tripa, she conveyed the same message: “Oh not at all!...I think if you are action-oriented, it’s better to be at the grass roots level than higher up there.”6

Even as Jetsun Pema is 66 today, she continues to persevere with her knack to remain “hands-on” and “action-oriented”—evident from the modest fact that all her three children have had their schooling not in some privileged, “English schools”, but in the TCV, just as its orphans and destitute children.

“My retirement doesn’t mean I will just sit back and chant mantras,” she was quoted as saying, after handing over the presidentship to the then executive director of the village, Tsewang Yeshi, who was democratically elected by the members of the governing body, in a conclave on 5 August. In her new role as chairman of the newly inducted, seven-member executive council, the highest decision making body of the village, which will supplant the erstwhile nine-member governing body, Jetsun Pema continues to remain committed to the larger goals of the TCV, and its mammoth undertakings like construction of a Tibetan college in Bangalore.

Although not yet in the twilight of her career, Jetsun Pema’s accomplishments thus far have been extolled from a wide spectrum of perspectives: from the lyrics of “Ama Jetsun Pema la”, the song of the year 2004, in which an ex-TCV, sophomore in the Delhi University pours his heart out in gratitude for his “loving and compassionate mother”; to the honorary title of the “Mother of the Land of Snows”, conferred by the Assembly in 1995, “as an expression of gratitude for [then] over 35 years of her selfless service to the Tibetan cause”, adding that “The TCV is the greatest of tangible accomplishments achieved under the leadership of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.” The best, perhaps, was in the citation of her recent nomination for the prestigious World Children’s Prize for the Rights of the Child7: “Her tireless work has saved lives and given tens of thousands of Tibetan refugee children a home, a family, education and hope for the future."

Footnotes:

(1) Tibet: My Story, Jetsun Pema
(2) My Land and My People, His Holiness the Dalai Lama
(3) Just days after she was born, His Holiness named her Jetsun Pema. His Holiness was only five years old.
(4) “Caring for the Weakest: The Children’s Villages” by Jetsun Pema, published in Exile As Challenge: The Tibetan Diaspora, 2003
(5) She was also the Kalon for Health
(6) Tibetan World, July 2005, Vol. II, Issue 1
(7) The World Children’s Prize, founded by the Swedish organization Children’s World, conferred the World Children’s Honorary Award to Jetsun Pema on 20 April 2006, in Sweeden

Dhondup Gyalpo

Another 10 March - Another Mandatory Function?

2007-03-11T05:25:00.000+05:30

Another 10th March is here and another mandatory function will be held and a march will be undertaken for a Free Tibet. But today more than ever before, the dream of a Free Tibet is getting farther and farther and almost turning into a mirage for the freedom thirsty Tibetans...always there in front of us but never reaching us.

Our grandfather and grandmothers' generations were the ones who can look back on this day and say that: "Yes!!! they rose for what they believed and against a foreign invasion on their own soil, risking their lives and a lot more. Our parents suffered the real repurcussions of a life in exile. But for our generation; born and brought up in exile....Tibet was our motherland and we its future generation and it was our duty to get our freedom back. We were never made to forget by our elders about this load on our shoulders and the ever popular rebuke about the "R" on our foreheads whenever they thought we strayed out of line.

I still remember those Uprising Days commemorated during our school days. The long line that was made for the march till the market centre. People from all walks of life participated-students, teachers, parents, old people, sweater sellers etc and etc. At the start of the march we would feel quite conscious of the people around watching the long procession of shouting Tibetans.But gradually we would be carried away by the historical relevance of the day and we would be shouting ourselves hoarse. I still remember those slogans: "UNO we want justice","Bhago Bhago- Chinese Bhago", and the most catchy of all-"Jaan bhi dhenga,Khoon bhi dhenga Desh ki mitti kabhi na dhengei". And at the end of the procession most of us would find ourselves with a bad sore throat. But with a great satisfaction in our mind.Whether it made any difference or not, but we felt like we had done something for our nation. And it was a very good feeling because being far from one's nation we never got any chance of showing off our patriotism and nationalism.

Time have gone by and we find our place of being the future generations of Tibet has long been taken by a new set of generation. A generation that finds itself farther from their motherland than our generation. And the one day that we, during our days, got to get in touch with our nation's struggle for freedom by shouting ourselves hoarse....has become another mandatory function and a holiday for this new generation.They can't feel the difference between a peace process and passivity. So it isn't any wonder that we find most of our youth so passive. They feel helpless and when given the opportunity they go to extreme lengths as can be seen by the self immolation attempt by Lhakpa tsering in Mumbai during last years Hu visit.

They don't get an outlet to express that silent rage and the emptiness they feel for being a nationless people. Once it was almost unthikable not to attend any function commemorating 10th March and now we find people finding it another formality to be observed which is of no use.

Once we felt proud of being called the future seeds of Tibet and responsible for making our nation free and take our free nation into modernity. Now when I tell the young kids that they have to get our freedom back..they shoot back without batting an eyelid, "It was our grandparents generation who lost it and now we have to get it back.Its not fair!!!" I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

I can't blame them either. The passive nature of our freedom struggle and the ongoing cynicism of their elders lead to them being disbelieve in a future Free Tibet. I had a talk with someone the day before and his take on returning to a FreeTibet is--'Firstly we will never get back our freedom and if we did then its a loss for us exile borns to go to Tibet .we won't get anything.All will be taken by those in Tibet!"

I don't know which led to which...the change in policy to this cynicism or is change in time and mindsets responsible??

Maybe rooting for an Independent Tibet is more fulfilling for most Tibetans however impossible it may be; rather than asking only for an autonomy and waiting on the beck and call of a conscience less opponent!

--Conscience

Politics in Sports

2007-03-08T09:06:00.000+05:30

"The sportive, knightly battle awakens the best human characteristics. It doesn't separate, but unites the combatants in understanding and respect. It also helps to connect the countries in the spirit of peace. That's why the Olympic Flame should never die."

Guess who was speaking?

Before you rack your brains any further, redeem yourself, for it was Adolf Hitler, commenting on the Olympics hosted by Nazi Germany in 1936. For those who say, "politics and sports may be uncomfortable bedfellows, but they are inseparable", Hitler's Games continue to reign as the master of Olympic scandals, or as a most famous politicization of sports.

The pomp and pageantry that characterize the Olympics today are believed to have been the legacy of the Berlin Games, which the Nazi regime exploited to bedazzle the world with the newly resurgent Germany in the aftermath of World War I. Ironic as it may seem, Hitler’s Olympics was also the first to feature the torch relay from the ruins of Olympia in Greece to the host city—a ritual faithfully performed at every subsequent Games.

A popular belief has it that Hitler’s abuse of the Games to demonstrate the superiority of the “Aryan” race was famously scuttled by black American athlete Jesse Owens, who scored a string of golds. But then, in the final analysis, Hitler must have been gratified by the Berlin Games, as Germany raked in more medals than all the other countries combined. Which is why, according to historian Richard D. Mandell, the 1936 Olympics marked "an important episode in the establishment of an evil political regime".

Just as the Games hosted by Nazi Germany was opposed by the United States and many Western democracies, the host of 2008 Olympics, yet another authoritarian regime, also faced international outrage, led chiefly by the Amnesty International. In fact, one of the reasons why China won the bid to host the 2008 Games was that it has pledged to address environmental concerns, human rights grievances, restrictive press laws, and censorship of Internet.

For instance, Wang Wei, secretary general of the Beijing Olympic Bid Committee was quoted by China Daily, 13 July 2001, as saying: "We will give the media complete freedom to report when they come to China. [...] We are confident that the Games coming to China not only promotes our economy but also enhances all social conditions, including education, health and human rights."

Rest assured, in the lead up to the Olympics, we will be hearing an earful of how China failed to live up to its promises—particularly as the world's biggest jailor of journalists for the seventh year running, is required to allow foreign scribes to report across the country, without the official permission previously required.

For now, as Beijing is spruced up for hosting the world’s first “Green Olympics", it is about time we whizzed through the politics of sport in China. In Training the Body for China: Sports in the Moral Order of the People’s Republic, Susan Browell contends that, “sports were emptied of their muscular Christian moral content and replaced with contents that suited the needs of the politics and tenor of the times in China. The muscular Christian morality (sic) of fair play, citizenship, and democracy was replaced over time with Chinese discourses about national prestige and international competition”.

“While the physical structure of modern sports is fixed by international rules, there is quite a room for variability in the cultural beliefs that accompany them. An example of this variability was the importance of logic of ‘face’ in Chinese sports and the difficulty of translating the concept of ‘fair play’ into Chinese.”

Just as the Berlin Games changed the face of what was until then “modest affairs”, one can only hope that the Beijing Olympics will be anything but “different”—particularly given that China is a veteran in the game of mixing sports and politics—notably since the ping-pong diplomacy of the 1970s. To cite another instance, following the death of Mao and the overthrow of the Gang of Four, when Deng Xiaoping came into power, he celebrated it with the grandest national games up to that time.

Many contend that following the demise of the Cold War and the global IT boom, the Olympic Games increasingly serve as the arena for debate about modern nationhood and international relations. According to John MacAloon, "Being a nation, having a culture, are the chief requirements for claiming a rightful autonomous place in the global system." And, "to be a nation recognized by others and realistic to themselves, a people must march in the Olympic Games Opening Ceremonies procession." This is precisely why, Susan Browell sums it up: “The Olympic games have become the world’s largest single event for the production of national culture for international consumption.”

The Tokyo Olympic Games in 1964 and the Seoul Olympic Games in 1988 marked respectively the emergence of Japan and Korea as world powers. Now, how will the Beijing Olympics inaugurate the “sleeping giant” onto the global stage?

The Olympic Charter may oppose any political abuse of sports and athletes, but the truth of the matter is, just as the original Olympics had their origins in the politics of the time, the modern Olympics have been the arena for wars, boycotts, protests, walkouts and terrorist attacks.

One therefore cannot fault Li Wei, the director of China’s Counter-terrorism Studies Centre, who was recently quoted by the state media as saying: "Nowhere can be 100 per cent safe, especially as terrorism is now a global issue and the Olympics will offer a mouth-watering opportunity for groups such as Al-Qaeda to spread terror."

Mr Li of course is spooked by the thought of the 1972 Munich Games, in which a group of militants, claiming to be members of the Palestinian organization “Black September”, slipped into the Olympic Village, killed two Israeli team members, and took nine other members hostage. Later, in a botched rescue attempt, all nine hostages were also killed in a shootout between the militants and the West German forces.

“The Munich attack," according to an author specializing in conflict studies, "was one of the most significant terrorist incidents of recent times, one that thrust the Palestinian cause into the world spotlight, and set the tone for decades of conflict in the Middle East.”

As they say, every opportunity has its pros and cons—not least of all the Olympics, which has a long history of being a double-edged sword, for both the host and its hostages. It thus appears Mr Li Wei will have his hands full, at least until the Games are over.

Dhondup Gyalpo

Could Tibet be the next Palestine?

2007-03-05T12:46:00.000+05:30

While I watched images of "The Arab world's only true democracy"--as Palestinians would call themselves--tottering on the edge of a civil war, and while the shadow of Yasser Arafat haunts the Palestinian people, as they grapple with the need for a leader who could articulate their collective aspirations with some degree of international "acceptance", I was reminded of our own predicament, if the issue of Tibet is not resolved during the lifetime of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama.

"There will not be a single Tibetan leader who can keep the Tibetans together and make them agree to the kind of solution that His Holiness has proposed. It would be impossible," Special Envoy Lodi Gyari was quoted as saying in an interview before the 5th round of Sino-Tibetan talks.
He further added, "Today the Chinese have the opportunity to deal with one single individual. In the absence of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, they will have to deal with hundreds of solutions, with hundreds of individuals, none of them able to deliver a solution."

Could Tibet then be the next Palestine?

As one tries to compare and contrast the Palestinian and Tibetan struggles, the most glaring contradictions between the two may be the (present) modes of their struggle--while the former is fraught with extreme violence, the latter has a surfeit of extreme non-violence. However, are these differences circumstantial, as such temporary; or visceral, as such permanent?

I recall a BBC radio phone-in programme, following the screening of the documentary We Are No Monks, in which one commentator dismissed the notion that the Tibetan struggle could ever turn violent (even if the Sino-Tibetan problem continued to fester indefinitely.) He gave two reasons: violence is against the Tibetan religion and culture, and secondly, extremism or terrorism is successful only in a democratic country, not under a ruthless authoritarian regime. I was quite appreciative of both these reasons, as they did not exaggerate the altruistic portion of the Tibetan psyche. This, however, does not take away my total rejection of those comments as mere speculations.

First of all, non-violence is no more against the Tibetan culture than it is to any other civilization of the world. (I reckon even the devils would love their peace.) Likewise, all cultures are equally capable of not only tolerating or condoning violence, but also engaging in or patronizing it, at particular times of mitigating circumstances--say at times of war, when the national or collective well-being is in jeopardy.

In those circumstances, violence assumes, at least for its handlers, the hallowed form of a "crusade", "jehad", "dharma yudh", or in our case, Tensung (protection of dharma). That is why people say, "one country's terrorist is another country's freedom fighter". [This, however, does not mean that I am glorifying violence. Far from it, I believe that if the peaceful Tibetan struggle turns violent, it would be a catastrophic tragedy for not only Tibetans and Chinese, but also for the whole world, as Tibet would then have become an epitome of the failure of non-violence as a means of freedom struggle.]

I agree with the second comment, but only in part. The main reason why extremism, or terrorism, is said to be effective (only) in democracy may be due to its institutions like the constitution, rule of law, free press, free elections, independent judiciary, active civil society, etc., which prevent or check the state from suppressing, denying or curtailing the rights and freedoms afforded to all its citizenry--while the authorities of a totalitarian state would have a virtual carte blanche to act with full impunity.

This notion is also not without exceptions. In this age of global terrorism, most democratic countries facing problems of extremism have introduced new laws that equip the state for circumventing or overriding legal and even constitutional restrictions, in the name of "national security". In fact, the arguments and justifications put up by the democratic countries for suppressing the fundamental rights and freedoms of their subjects are now effectively replicated by the totalitarian regimes. Besides, if one were to listen to Mr. George W. Bush, then the war on global terrorism is increasingly being underlined as a clash between democracy and authoritarianism, that terrorism is a result of lack of democracy--albeit I find it hard to believe that democracy reduces terrorism.

Coming back to the non-violent nature of the Tibetan struggle, I recall a feisty debate with a friend, who viewed that the Tibetan struggle is non-violent because it cannot afford to be violent. I begged to differ lock, stock and barrel. I told her that non-violence is not an act of desperation--it is not like the Indian satirical verse, Majboori ka nam Gandhi (literally, the second name of desperation is Gandhi).

Furthermore, His Holiness also often reiterates that non-violence is a conscious choice, based on the belief that violence ultimately begets only more violence, and despite the temptation of readily employable non-violent methods.

I further told my friend that today you do not need an army or sophisticated weaponry to fight a war--certainly not in the aftermath of 9/11, when even a handful of people, armed with pocket knifes, could wreak havoc upon even the mighty super power. But to no avail, she refused even an agreement to disagree on this issue. I eventually end up asking her how big an army would she need to unscrew one bolt of a railway track? Disgusted by the idea, almost incredulous, she indignantly blurted out, "But that would kill so many people."

"Now you are talking!"

Dhondup Gyalpo

The Mega Concert of the year 2007

2007-02-22T00:13:00.000+05:30

The last few days, everyone could witness all over Mcleod the posters advertising “ The Biggest Music Concert of 2007” with the poster choc a bloc with about 16 artists who would be performimg on the day of the concert—the 4th day of losar.

Everybody was quite excited about the show because it looked like a grand show. Losar at Dhasa is quite a boring affair. In fact, Mcleod looked more alive and exciting the 2 or 3 days before losar. The streets were full with all kinds of people shopping for losar and sellers selling every kind of things…most from Tibet selling Chinese clothes, shoes, bags, sweets etc.

It’s quite ironical to see these things of Chinese origin being sold and bought with great glee right under the nose of the Tibetan govt. in exile and the office of the TYC. And the funniest thing was both the buyers and sellers are of Tibetan origin. Maybe this can also be considered as a step towards maintaining an atmosphere for peace negotiations to go forward between Tibetan govt. in exile and the Peoples Republic of China!!

The three days of losar was quite uneventful affair ;maybe because we couldn’t get the blessing of His Holiness. So, everyone was quite excited about this musical concert. No one minded much about the 100 Rs. ticket.

On the 21st, the day of the concert the weather gods turned mischievous. It was cloudy, and raining off and on the whole day…and not to mention the bitter cold. But still nobody minded.

Everyone waited for 6.30pm to arrive so as to enjoy the concert. We arrived at about 6 pm at TIPA-the venue for the concert…the ground was already teeming with boys and girls. The weather was still not behaving but the concert was still to go on in the open. So we waited …it was a long wait.By that time the ground became almost full with boys and girls.

I wondered where have they all come from because whenever there is some sort of demonstration in support of freedom of a political prisoner or against the Chinese Policy then we can almost count on our 10 fingers the young boys and girls participating in such things.

That was quite a sad thing to realize. Even in this cold and inhospitable weather we bear all hardships just to have a few moments of fun but I wonder how much of these same people will turn up if it was announced there is going to be a peace march or gathering of support for our own nation. It is quite heart rending to even think on it because I fear that not even a single boy or girl at the concert will turn up for such a thing. That’s quite a terrible thing for a nation’s youth to be doing!!

The weather gods were also not pleased , I think ,with the Tibetan youth –although the rain couldn’t deter the spectators from turning up but it was successful in spoiling the concert by making the mike system unworkable in this weather. So we all returned home disappointed and upset. The organizers promised another show the next day…lets see whether that too gets washed down by the rain!!

The highlight of the disappointing concert was that non-Tibetan foreign woman singing in pure Tibetan without any trace of her mother tongue's accent!! The contrast was so glaring ..but I wonder if anybody noticed at all!! There she was looking so beautiful in the traditional Amdo chupa (Amdo being the region where His Holiness belong to) singing an Amdo song.And there on the same stage were our own youth singing in Tibetan but sounding more like a foreign version; what with the rappings and the beats at every pause and wearing clothes probably inspired by those rappers being shown on MTVs and its ilk!

Will that be our future one day? Our culture and tradition being presented to us by non -Tibetans who take more interest in them than our own people… one day we have to go to these same foreigners to learn about our own culture!!

I hope His Holiness never gets to see such a day…how heartbroken he will be!!

Losar-Bringing together a scattered nation and its people

2007-02-18T21:54:00.000+05:30

During our childhood, losar was the highlight of our school’s winter vacation. And most of the time losar would be on the last fortnight or week of February…just before we would return back to our school!!

It was always a fitting end to a well-enjoyed and for most a very soon ended 2 and half months vacation. After spending losar returning back to school was not so disappointing. We could wear new clothes, eat the most delicious food, and entertain ourselves in any way we wished…and the best thing was we were not rebuked nor scolded by our elders and parents for doing so!!

I see the kids in their bright shiny clothes..laughing and so happy! And I miss those carefree and stress free childhood days of mine when I so wanted to grow up soon. When you are a kid , you must enjoy it fully because childhood won’t last long; it will finish in a jiffy and you will be tossed in this harsh and cruel world of reality. So one must enjoy life when it is so small, simple and innocent before you grow up and realize that your childhood vision of life was only an illusion!

Losar in my college life was not as exciting.Being in a college far from any Tibetan settlements, we had trouble even knowing and remembering which date it falls on since Tibetans followed the lunar calendar, the dates were never the same.We had to attend our regular classes just like any other normal day…that’s when you realize you are an outsider in a foreign country! I hope the students in colleges remember to celebrate this day...even if they have to attend their classes ..I hope they will remember to be happy on this day!!

Now I am no longer in school nor in college. I don’t feel that excitement I used to feel when I was a kid nor do I feel it is a sacrilege to have forgotten Losar and nor worn anything new on this day like I felt when I was in college.

Losar now is such a big headache…what with the shoppings, the cleanings, the cookings to be done!! But when the Big day arrives ,though this place is the same ,you are the same…everything is the same .....but there is a certain buzz in the air that you feel so different and new as well ! You go outside and see all these Tibetans in their best clothes ,in shiny faces and best of all …with their whole family visiting the temple!! It is so moving to see how Losar brings together not only a family together but each and every Tibetan! And what better way to start a new year then by seekimg the blessings of your god with your loved ones!

We visit the temple and see others in their best clothes and smile and laugh …and remember to be happy even if for 3 days only! We all feel like one…we forget our normal differences and dislikes. And I realize the importance of such a day for us.

Tibetans all over the world though seperated by geographical distances become one through the celebration of this day in the same way and in the same joy! In that way we keep alive “Tibet’.

A"very Public" personal diary

2007-02-15T16:27:00.001+05:30

This is my “very public” personal diary.

A mind of a person works in a very funny way. It wants to hide its feelings from the whole world but it also looks for acceptance from fellow beings as well. It wants assurances that what he or she is feeling is not a lone case but there are others as well who feel the same.You want to be sure that you are not alone in this wide world. Man is really a social being,he can never dwell in solitary. Even those who are self proclaimed loners cannot stay away from people for long.

Its so funny how one can feel so alone in a very crowded place like a hospital. I visited the hospital to get my medical fitness certificate. I was glad I was not sick . To be sick is the worst thing in the world…never will you feel more alone in this world!! I looked around the waiting lounge and saw various stages of the human life. The baby that has just entered this world…so joyfully ignorant of this puzzle called Life…so peacefully asleep in its mother’s lap…peaceful and protected only for now!!The young man eaten away by his disease…his dreams and hopes from his life …put on the back burner for now..as he had yet to cheat death to resume what’s left of his life. The old couple without any help in sight…the children who would have been their walking sticks when they couldn’t walk any longer no longer by their side.Having long forsaken them for a better and an easier life for themselves..never realizing it is a life his parents have provided him with.

It’s not a good sight to view the harsh realities of life with your own eyes. But life will not always be a bed of roses. If I want the roses I also must accept the thorns which comes with it whether I want it or not! I have had my share of thorns in my life…that’s why I respect life and happiness so much. I never take them for granted because I know when there’s happiness there’s bound to be unhappiness just round the corner and when there’s life …there’s death also!!!