[Buddha-l] A sobering read

[Weng-Fai Wong]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/22/opinion/22french.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=patric
k+french&st=nyt&oref=slogin

Op-Ed Contributor
He May Be a God, but He's No Politician 

 
By PATRICK FRENCH
Published: March 22, 2008
London

NEARLY a decade ago, while staying with a nomad family in the remote
grasslands of northeastern Tibet, I asked Namdrub, a man who fought in the
anti-Communist resistance in the 1950s, what he thought about the exiled
Tibetans who campaigned for his freedom. "It may make them feel good, but
for us, it makes life worse," he replied. "It makes the Chinese create more
controls over us. Tibet is too important to the Communists for them even to
discuss independence."

Protests have spread across the Tibetan plateau over the last two weeks, and
at least 100 people have died. Anyone who finds it odd that Speaker Nancy
Pelosi has rushed to Dharamsala, India, to stand by the Dalai Lama's side
fails to realize that American politics provided an important spark for the
demonstrations. Last October, when the Congressional Gold Medal was awarded
to the Dalai Lama, monks in Tibet watched over the Internet and celebrated
by setting off fireworks and throwing barley flour. They were quickly
arrested.

It was for the release of these monks that demonstrators initially turned
out this month. Their brave stand quickly metamorphosed into a protest by
Lhasa residents who were angry that many economic advantages of the last 10
or 15 years had gone to Han Chinese and Hui Muslims. A young refugee whose
family is still in Tibet told me this week of the medal, "People believed
that the American government was genuinely considering the Tibet issue as a
priority." In fact, the award was a symbolic gesture, arranged mostly to
make American lawmakers feel good. 

A similar misunderstanding occurred in 1987 when the Dalai Lama was
denounced by the Chinese state media for putting forward a peace proposal on
Capitol Hill. To Tibetans brought up in the Communist system - where a
politician's physical proximity to the leadership on the evening news
indicates to the public that he is in favor - it appeared that the world's
most powerful government was offering substantive political backing to the
Dalai Lama. Protests began in Lhasa, and martial law was declared. The
brutal suppression that followed was orchestrated by the party secretary in
Tibet, Hu Jintao, who is now the Chinese president. His response to the
current unrest is likely to be equally uncompromising.

The Dalai Lama is a great and charismatic spiritual figure, but a poor and
poorly advised political strategist. When he escaped into exile in India in
1959, he declared himself an admirer of Mahatma Gandhi's nonviolent
resistance. But Gandhi took huge gambles, starting the Salt March and
starving himself nearly to death - a very different approach from the Dalai
Lama's "middle way," which concentrates on nonviolence rather than
resistance. The Dalai Lama has never really tried to use direct action to
leverage his authority.

At the end of the 1980s, he joined forces with Hollywood and generated huge
popular support for the Tibetan cause in America and Western Europe. This
approach made some sense at the time. The Soviet Union was falling apart,
and many people thought China might do the same. In practice, however, the
campaign outraged the nationalist and xenophobic Chinese leadership. 

It has been clear since the mid-1990s that the popular internationalization
of the Tibet issue has had no positive effect on the Beijing government. The
leadership is not amenable to "moral pressure," over the Olympics or
anything else, particularly by the nations that invaded Iraq.

The Dalai Lama should have closed down the Hollywood strategy a decade ago
and focused on back-channel diplomacy with Beijing. He should have publicly
renounced the claim to a so-called Greater Tibet, which demands territory
that was never under the control of the Lhasa government. Sending his envoys
to talk about talks with the Chinese while simultaneously encouraging the
global pro-Tibet lobby has achieved nothing. 

When Beijing attacks the "Dalai clique," it is referring to the various
groups that make Chinese leaders lose face each time they visit a Western
country. The International Campaign for Tibet, based in Washington, is now a
more powerful and effective force on global opinion than the Dalai Lama's
outfit in northern India. The European and American pro-Tibet organizations
are the tail that wags the dog of the Tibetan government-in-exile.

These groups hate criticism almost as much as the Chinese government does.
Some use questionable information. For example, the Free Tibet Campaign in
London (of which I am a former director) and other groups have long claimed
that 1.2 million Tibetans have been killed by the Chinese since they invaded
in 1950. However, after scouring the archives in Dharamsala while
researching my book on Tibet, I found that there was no evidence to support
that figure. The question that Nancy Pelosi and celebrity advocates like
Richard Gere ought to answer is this: Have the actions of the Western
pro-Tibet lobby over the last 20 years brought a single benefit to the
Tibetans who live inside Tibet, and if not, why continue with a failed
strategy?

I first visited Tibet in 1986. The economic plight of ordinary people is
slightly better now, but they have as little political freedom as they did
two decades ago. Tibet lacks genuine autonomy, and ethnic Tibetans are
excluded from positions of real power within the bureaucracy or the army.
Tibet was effectively a sovereign nation at the time of the Communist
invasion and was in full control of its own affairs. But the battle for
Tibetan independence was lost 49 years ago when the Dalai Lama escaped into
exile. His goal, and that of those who want to help the Tibetan people,
should be to negotiate realistically with the Chinese state. The present
protests, supported from overseas, will bring only more suffering. China is
not a democracy, and it will not budge. 

Patrick French is the author of "Tibet, Tibet: A Personal History of a Lost
Land."