It is time once again to express concern for those Tibetans, particularly Buddhist nuns and monks, who have been attacked as so-called “separatists” by the Chinese government.
Tibetan leaders, including the Dalai Lama, do not seek separation from China, but rather the end of Chinese colonization, including a domestic national constitution that protects Tibet’s linguistic, religious and cultural autonomy. This middle way, which would maintain Chinese control of foreign affairs and defense, but allow Tibetan domestic autonomy, is supported by Australia’s All-Party Parliamentarians Group for Tibet, of which I am the chairperson.
Tragically, there has been a deterioration in conditions on the ground for indigenous Tibetans in the past 12 months, together with a continuing international indifference to their plight and the deliberate erosion of their rich and ancient culture. Since my previous report a year ago, the growing anger and despair of Tibetans has led to increasingly deadly clashes between protesters and Chinese security forces. This is the most significant escalation of the conflict since the riots in Lhasa in March 2008, which saw the death of more than 20 Tibetans.
Recently, Lobsang Sangay took over from the Dalai Lama as the political head of the government-in-exile in Dharamsala, India. Following the latest outbreak of violence, he has called for the international community to send a UN fact-finding mission to the region.
“How long and how many tragic deaths are necessary before the world takes a firm moral stand?” he asked.
The most dramatic aspect of the conflict between indigenous Tibetans and the Chinese is the emergence of a new and appalling form of protest, self-immolation. The cycle of self-immolation began on March 16 last year, when a 20-year-old Buddhist monk, Lobsang Phuntsok, set himself alight in Sichuan Province, apparently to commemorate the 2008 uprisings. Since that date, at least 16 Tibetans, mainly Buddhist monks and nuns, have copied this terrible form of protest.
Those if us old enough can recall the actions of Thich Quang Duc, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk who self-immolated at a downtown Saigon intersection in June 1963. That moment was captured by a US photojournalist and reproduced on the front pages of newspapers worldwide. Like the Tibetan monks who have followed in his wake, he too was protesting the persecution of co-religionists. Duc’s last words, written in anticipation of his agonizing protest, sought not to incite hatred against his oppressors, but instead pleaded for their compassion and tolerance.
The dignity of his stance was enhanced by his stillness as the flames consumed his body. New York Times journalist David Halberstam, who witnessed the event, wrote that “as he burned he never moved a muscle, never uttered a sound.”
Forty-seven years later, Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian street vendor, self-immolated in the city of Sidi Bouzid following humiliating treatment from a municipal officer. This not only aroused the Tunisian public and fomented the subsequent revolution, but is also widely believed to be the catalyst for protests from Morocco to Bahrain. Former Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali stepped down after 23 years in power. As the Times editorialized when naming Bouazizi its Person of 2011, “his brief life and agonizing death are a fanfare for the common man.”
Why is there such a wide-ranging impact to these shocking acts of suicide? Perhaps because it draws a stark distinction from customary forms of political protest. Unlike the suicide terrorist, whose sole aim is to kill, it is an essentially altruistic decision that takes one’s own life, but not the lives of others. Although suicide is prohibited by Buddhism, altruism is a prominent feature of its belief system. Despite the intrinsic violence of the act, it is paradoxically founded in notions of non-violent resistance. In this respect it is more akin to the hunger strike, most famously popularized in the 1930s by Mohandas Gandhi.
The manifest desperation of these acts of self-immolation has necessitated ever-more desperate (and therefore absurd) diplomacy from the Chinese government. Unsurprisingly, and precisely as in 2008, the Dalai Lama has been blamed for the violent protests — once again labeled a separatist and a supporter of terrorism. In contradiction to his oft-stated and enduring adherence to non-violent protest and the sanctity of life, he has been accused as the principal promoter of self-immolation. In fact, the Dalai Lama has expressly condemned self-immolation as a form of protest. The Karmapa Lama, the third-highest ranking Tibetan Lama and a possible successor to the Dalai Lama, has also urged Tibetans to do all within their powers to preserve their lives.
Beijing has set in motion a self-fulfilling cycle of violence. Authorities have increased security measures following these protests, but the resultant crackdown has inspired further acts of self-immolation: The renewed sense of outrage erupts once more and the escalating cycle of violence begins anew. No clear-sighted view of this catastrophe can foresee a time in the near future when the ever-greater recourse to offensive firepower by the security forces will resolve China’s strategic ethnic problems.
Self-evidently, as Kirti Rinpoche, chief abbot of the Kirti Monastery, associated with many of the recent self-immolators, said to the US Representative Tom Lantos’ Human Rights Commission, “they are doing this because they’ve reached the end of their rope. They’ve tried everything else.”
Whatever the sovereignty issues between the Chinese and Tibetans, and however the Chinese view the strategic and nationalistic importance of Tibet as an incorporated region of China, the tension over Tibetan identity cannot be resolved. It is impossible to imagine a Tibet absent its Buddhist consciousness, iconography and artifacts.
As the Dalai Lama wrote to me in September 2010: “The Chinese plan is to turn the monasteries into mere showcases like museums, manned by only a few monks as caretakers. Such plans represent a systematic, long-term strategy to eliminate all remaining vestiges of Tibetan identity and cultural heritage.”
The ongoing protests will only end when Tibetans are offered the reasonable hope that their most precious religious, educational, economic freedoms and human rights will one day be restored. If nothing else, the resistance of the Tibetans, unabated over 50 years, reveals an astonishing resilience.
The international community must accept the futility of its indifference to the plight of the Tibetans, because surely they are prepared to continue their ceaseless and largely peaceful fight for self-determination. Is there anyone who does not believe that sooner is better?
Michael Danby is an Australian member of parliament and chairs the subcommittee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade.
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