What to do with the Tibetan question?

Now we see why the Chinese government was of so little help during the crisis in Burma last September and October. If those monks in Rangoon had succeeded, it would have strongly encouraged Tibetan monks to do likewise. Even in failure, the Burmese example must surely have inspired their Tibetan counterparts to launch their own series of marches this month from various monastaries towards the Tibetan capital Lhasa. The intended visual, of maroon-robed monks chanting and marching peacefully, cannot but be compared to last year's scenes from the streets of Yangon and Mandalay.

This was a planned and coordinated campaign. A column of exiled monks in India started off around March 10 from the Kangra district that surrounds Dharmsala, the Tibetans' capital-in-exile, attempting a months-long march to reach Lhasa in Tibet as the Beijing Summer Olympics gets underway. Meanwhile other columns started off from monasteries located within Tibet itself, including the Drepung monastery near Lhasa. More recently, we're hearing reports that Tibetans -- I'm not sure whether they're monks or lay people -- in various towns of Gansu, Sichuan and Qinghai have also demonstrated in the streets.

In all these instances, the Chinese government cracked down severely, a not unexpected response. CNN showed video of rioters in Lhasa throwing stones, breaking into buildings and setting a few alight, but it is not clear if these were what provoked the authorities, or if such anger followed the authorities' clampdown. In other words, don't be too quick to assign cause and effect.

The ability of the Tibetans to communicate secretly and organise something as bold as this must have taken the Beijing government by surprise. No totalitarian government likes its intelligence network to be shown up as flat-footed. Not only does the timing of these protests once again highlight human rights abuses in China in the lead-up to the Olympics, the National People's Congress, China's rubber-stamp parliament, was holding its major five-yearly meeting in the capital this very week. It must have infuriated Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao. At the time of writing, the situation remains very tense. However, very little information from within Tibet is coming out -- the Chinese government being far better at plugging travel and communication loopholes than the Burmese junta -- and so it is hard to say how the situation is developing.

The Indian government, on their part, stopped the Kangra march a few days after it got started; clearly, they would not want the Tibetan exiles to provoke a diplomatic crisis with China at the border. There were some ugly scenes of Indian police dragging away the Tibetan protestors. India too, had not given much support to the Burmese exiles last year.

Even the Western powers seem much more muted in their support of these protests compared to their vociferous words when the Burmese rose up. Obviously, their strategic calculations are quite different this time: China is a huge trade partner, its sovereign wealth fund bulging with money, and plenty of Western companies are inextricably involved in its fast-growing market. It is also a nuclear power and has a veto in the UN Security Council.

To be purist or to be realistic?

For those of us who have an abiding interest in seeing liberty take root in more and more places, it is easy to adopt similarly purist positions as we did last year when the Burmese crisis unfolded. Just as we supported the Burmese in their quest for "freedom", so should we support the Tibetans today.

Yet, how can we shake off the realpolitick? How realistic is it? In any case, what do we mean by "freedom" in the context of Tibet?

In fact, a closer examination reveals some interesting distinctions between Burma and Tibet. The Burmese were fighting for liberty, democracy and better governance for their own country. They had clearly expressed a preference for Aung San Suu Kyi in previous elections, elections whose results were annulled by the military junta because they were not to their liking.

On the face of it, the Tibetan cause looks similar. Here is a people yoked under a totalitarian communist government dominated by the Han Chinese and based in far-away Beijing. But there are actually two separate demands wrapped together: One is for cultural autonomy and the other for independence from China. Human rights and democracy are assumed to be part of the mix, though I have noticed that these are not articulated that clearly.

The Dalai Lama's position is not to seek independence, but only maximum autonomy and cultural space, in other words, something akin to the position of Hong Kong within China's political structure. On the other hand, the young turks within the Tibetan movement are demanding independence and in this, they are beginning to challenge the "defeatist" agenda of the Dalai Lama. For example, CNN showed Tenzin Tsundue, one of the leaders of the march in the Himalyan foothils of India, saying unequivocally that he disagreed with the Dalai Lama when it comes to objectives. Having said that, the Dalai Lama couldn't have been upset that the Tibetan movement has garnered the press attention that it did with the recent events. He probably even knew beforehand that these protests were being planned, which may explain Wen Jiabao's statement in a press conference in Beijing that behind these demonstrations was the "Dalai Lama clique".

It is one thing to support calls for greater liberty and democracy anywhere on this planet, but it may be another to be so quick to support independence. Even when it comes to Burma, it is one thing to support the overall struggle for liberty, but another to support separatism by the Shan, the Kachin and various other ethnic groups. Of course, democratic self-determination may lead to a demand for full independence, when such is the overwhelming desire of a people occupying a discrete territory, for example, in Kosovo. But when populations are mixed, then it gets harder to make out any clear moral case.

The futility of appealing to history

Some will argue that the population of Tibet today is mixed because of the Chinese "conquest" of 1959 -- the year the Chinese army moved in after an uprising by the Tibetans for independence, resulting in the flight of the Dalai Lama to India -- and so the immigrants, having settled only post-1959, should not be counted in arriving at the "morally right" position. But this appeal to history, like any appeal to history, is easily leapfrogged by other appeals to history. For example, one may ask: Why was there a "pro-independence" uprising in 1959? Because the Chinese government was already in some sort of control, as previous Chinese governments had been before.

A book I read recently about the first British diplomatic and trade mission to reach Lhasa via Bhutan in the late 1700s described how complex the relationship was between Lhasa and Beijing even then. The Tibetan Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama were paying tribute to the Qianlong Emperor, making arduous overland trips to do so. At Beijing, the Tibetan Lamas were treated with much pomp, like heads of one of the state religions of China, kind of like the way the Queen of England would honour the Archbishop of Canterbury, a highly prestigious honour, but doubtless a subordinate one. Given the technology of the age, the Chinese didn't control Tibet the way we think of "control" in the modern sense, but historically, Tibet was seen as part of the Chinese imperial order, which the Tibetan leadership seem to have acquiesced to quite willingly. Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao's latest re-assertion that Tibet had historically been part of China is not without foundation.

However, I am not saying that history should determine the future. I am just pointing out that appeals to history are never going to be definitive. If one chooses to highlight one history, someone else will come along and trump you with another. Instead, we should simply use the present as the starting point and in this respect, the Dalai Lama's position is just more realistic, as he himself has pointed out to his own young turks. It is inconceivable for China to give up Tibet, and no foreign power will meddle on Tibet's behalf. I would add that it is not inconceivable however, for China as a whole -- from Beijing to Wuhan to Urumchi to Lhasa -- to get steadily more responsive to its people's demands for greater freedom, and this includes respect for regional agendas and ethnic cultural heritage where they reside.

Nationalism and independence

Breaking away from existing boundaries is a much more serious business than pursuing liberty, creating as it does a host of strategic recalculations by neighbouring countries. It is generally a destabilising move, setting in train a cascade of unpredictable consequences. It should not be embarked upon lightly. Very often, nationalistically-driven independence creates new disaffected minorities in place of the old and the cycle of separatism carries on merely with new actors. Even Kosovo, with its large Albanian majority cmaking up 90% of its 2-million population, is not able to escape this enduring reality. The 10% Serbs in the newly-declared state have refused to recognise the new government and are beginning to resist NATO and EU peacekeepers stationed in the little country. Where the Albanian Kosovars were unhappy being dominated by Serbs in a larger Serbia, now the Serbs are unhappy being dominated by the Albanian Kosovars in the new state.

This reaction should surprise no one, for nationalism has not always been a friend of liberty. Embedded within much nationalist rhetoric is a strain of communitarianism -- "society before self" -- that can easily turn dismissive of individual liberty and the freedom to dissent, and very often atavistically hostile to minority concerns. Hence, to the extent that separatism is often predicated on nationalism, I would approach such demands with care.

One of the weaknesses of the Western pro-Tibet movement is not to see this. There is instead a tendency to see the Tibetans as "noble savages", innocent, pure, unadulterated by the pollutions of modernity, trampled by the big bad guys of the Chinese Communist Party. It is more a Western post-colonial guilt trip than a true appreciation of the complexities of the issue. Does anyone for example, ask what the restoration of "Tibetan freedom" really means? A return to theocratic rule by Buddhist monks? A luddite rejection of development, in the name of restoring a mythicially pristine Shangri-la?

No, I argue for more modernity, not less. More post-modern liberty, not a return to nationalism. I would argue for greater liberty, human rights and democracy for all parts of China, at the same time recognising that as a vast country with plenty of regional differences, that freedom should also be modulated by a kind of federalism. But changing boundaries? That is a minefield I see no compelling reason to touch at the moment.

© Yawning Bread 

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