China, the DL and the nose on your face

If the last years have accomplished anything in public awakening, it’s succeeded in equipping us with a ’sniffer’ — we can smell corruption and hypocrisy at the first whiff. We’ve come a long way — a recent post from Digby [about the historian’s perception of Bush] makes that point, and while ‘mainstream media’ may not have joined our ‘truth’ club, there’s no denying the resonance from ‘main street,’ as Obama would say.

If we sniff the air, that odor we detect as the Olympic torch makes it trek across the world stinks of ‘propaganda — surprisingly, not in the reporting — and it’s egregious enough to bring the crowds out to stop it; deep in the Chinese heart, you know they’d prefer a legion of Red Guard running next to the torch-bearer, keeping it safe and lit. Sadly, they’re not running it through their own climes, so they have to suffer the insult of objection; reports say they’re ‘mystified’ by all this fuss over a little mountain annex.

As we speak, three protesters have climbed the Golden Gate Bridge and are attempting to unfurl a giant banner. Light on their safety!

Let us not forget how perfected propaganda becomes under totalitarianism — easy to recognize, now that we’ve had a big dose of it in our own country. Absurd example of the day — the Chinese, ever posturing, have trained tens of thousands of “cheer leaders” for the games … all is Polished and Perfect in the Kingdom, believe it or perish.

Here are the latest reads on the travels of the torch — the nation’s uneasy with the games — an interesting piece on Dalai Lama’s successor, while the Panchen Lama remains kidnapped and swallowed whole by the Communist government.

I was recently told by a reader that I was shilling for the CIA by not exposing the Dalai Lama’s past [and reading through a number of blogs, found this writer had accused others of the same.] Over the years, there has been controversy about the DL’s doings, so I went to Google to grab some links [re: CIA, Pinochet, Jesse Helms, yadda] for you: here’s the website Disinformation with additional articles and links — and this one is a Youtube from Jon Stewart entitled ‘Dalai Meets A Cracker.’ Here is another that defines the peasant’s case for cruelty under the DL’s traditional rule, decades back. I don’t get a sense that any of these bits are ‘balanced,’ but they speak to the issue our blogger raised and seek to bust the DL mythology that salutes him as a man of peace.

I’m much less interested in defending the Dalai Lama to the world than in supporting the Tibetan right to self-rule, religious autonomy and cultural integrity; still, from the DL’s point of view, it seems to me that if I had to run in the night from an occupying army, I’d probably take whatever help I could get, including funds from the Central Intelligence Agency. As for the DL’s defense of Pinochet, who knows: the DL is inscrutable — I see him as an aging man of his times, truly spiritual but steeped in political, and thwarted, responsibility. He was plucked from his childhood to become a deity, bubbled and handled until he was ousted from his homeland, so let’s remember that was 60 years ago — TV was in its infancy, with a larger kiddy lineup than adult, transportation in many parts of the world had not moved into the 20th century and there was no ‘flat earth’ to bust up the old traditions. [It’s interesting that the train that has turned Lhasa into a tourist trap is at the center of this latest wrangle — you’ll find a read with mention, below.]

Dalai Lama has said time and again that China has brought modernity to his nation, and does not seek to withdraw from them. Charlie Rose had a round-table awhile back, and one participant said that she’d never known a man so “realistic.” I can’t imagine a realistic man … or even one with a modicum of compassion … interested in taking Tibet back to feudalism, so making him responsible for the long-gone social structure he was born into achieves little, in my opinion. And as for Pinochet and Helms, the ‘middle way’ renders no man ‘enemy,’ and maybe that was the DL’s intent … or maybe not — so trying to separate the political DL from the philosophical DL is up to you, today … Google if you want more.

The world is black and white at our peril; think gray, gray gray, and remember — Us/Them is passĆ©. It can’t pass the sniff test.

Here is a collection of very interesting reads; China is getting that black eye — the ‘control game’ is becoming more obsolete by the day. The grandest vision of democratic contest is at the heart of the Olympic tradition — it’s hard to think of it in the hands of those who do not value that vision. As well, this running of the torch began under the Nazi’s, bringing the Berlin games to mind — and linking our sniff test to past posturing and repression.

Jude

Officials extinguish Olympic torch twice amid protests in Paris
CandadianPress
4 hours ago

PARIS ā€” Security officials extinguished the Olympic torch three times Monday as protests against China’s human rights record turned a relay through Paris into a chaotic series of stops and starts.

Despite massive security, at least two activists got within almost an arm’s length of the flame before they were grabbed by police. Officers tackled many protesters and carried off some of them. A protester threw water at the torch but failed to extinguish it and was also taken away.

At the start of the relay, a man identified as a Green Party activist was grabbed by security officers as he headed for 1997 400-metre world champion Stephane Diagana, the president of France’s national athletics league, who was carrying the torch from the first floor of the Eiffel Tower. The man was tackled before he got close to Diagana.

The procession continued but, soon after, a crowd of activists waving Tibetan flags interrupted it for the first time by confronting the torchbearer on a road along the Seine River. The demonstrators did not appear to get close to the torch, but its flame was put out by security officers and brought on board a bus to continue partway along the route.

Less than an hour later, the flame was being carried out of a Paris traffic tunnel by an athlete in a wheelchair when the procession was halted by activists who booed and chanted “Tibet.” Once again, the torch was temporarily extinguished and put on a bus despite protesters’ apparent failure to get close.

Some 3,000 officers were deployed on motorcycles, in jogging gear and using inline roller skates. Still, police barely stopped the second rush at the torch, and the attempt to extinguish it with water. Other demonstrators scaled the Eiffel Tower and hung a banner depicting the Olympic rings as handcuffs.

The torch was extinguished for the third time when police interrupted the procession as a precaution because they spotted a crowd of demonstrators on a bridge they were approaching.

Police said they did not immediately have a count of the number of arrests. Mireille Ferri, a Green Party official, said she was held by police for two hours because she approached the Eiffel Tower area with a fire extinguisher. In various locations throughout the city, activists angry about China’s human rights record and repression Tibet carried Tibetan flags and waved signs reading “the flame of shame.”

Riot police squirted tear gas to break up a sit-in protest by about 300 pro-Tibet demonstrators who blocked the torch route.

France’s former sports minister, Jean-Francois Lamour, stressed that though the torch had been put out, the Olympic flame itself still burned in the lantern where it is kept overnight and on airplane flights.

“The torch has been extinguished but the flame is still there,” he told France Info radio.

Police had hoped to prevent the chaos that marred the relay in London a day earlier. There, police had repeatedly scuffled with activists angry about China’s human rights record leading up to the Beijing Olympics Aug. 8-24. One protester tried to grab the torch; another tried to snuff out the flame with what appeared to be a fire extinguisher. Thirty-seven people were arrested.

The torch will not travel to Canada with San Francisco the lone North American stop on its journey.

In Paris, police had drawn up an elaborate plan to try to keep the torch in a safe “bubble.” Torchbearers were encircled by several hundred officers, some in riot police vehicles and on motorcycles, others on skates or on foot. Boats patrolled the Seine River that slices through the French capital, and a helicopter flew overhead.

About 80 athletes had been slated to carry the torch over the 28-kilometre route that started at the Eiffel Tower, heading down the Champs-Elysees avenue toward City Hall, then crosses over the Seine before ending at the Charlety track and field stadium.

Across town, City Hall draped its building with a banner reading, “Paris defends human rights around the world.”

One torch bearer, two-time French judo gold medallist David Douillet, told RTL radio that he regretted the choice of China, “because it isn’t up to snuff on freedom of expression, on total liberty, and of course, on Olympic values.”

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has left open the possibility of boycotting the Olympic opening ceremony in Beijing depending on how the situation evolves in Tibet. Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said Monday that was still the case.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said last week that he doesn’t plan on attending the opening ceremony, but added that the decision was made before the unrest in Tibet.

Activists have been protesting along the torch route since the flame embarked on its 136,000-kilometre journey from Ancient Olympia in Greece to Beijing.

The torch’s round-the-world trip is the longest in Olympic history, and it is meant to shine a spotlight on China’s economic and political power. Activists have seized upon it as a backdrop for their causes, angering Beijing.

Beijing organizers criticized London’s protesters, saying their actions were a “disgusting” form of sabotage by Tibetan separatists.

“The act of defiance from this small group of people is not popular,” said Sun Weide, a spokesman for the Beijing Olympic organizing committee. “It will definitely be criticized by people who love peace and adore the Olympic spirit. Their attempt is doomed to failure.”

The torch relay also is expected to face demonstrations in San Francisco, New Delhi and possibly elsewhere on its 21-stop, six-continent tour before arriving in mainland China May 4. ++

Ueberroth to leave China early for U.S. torch visit
Janice Lloyd, USA TODAY
4/7/08

[open for additional links]

BEIJING ā€” The Beijing Olympic torch relay is a red hot problem.

United States Olympic Committee chairman Peter Ueberroth is cutting short his stay at the Olympic meetings to return to the United States, where the lone North American leg of the protest-plagued relay visits Wednesday. He will be the senior USOC official in San Francisco, which is expected to draw thousands of protesters.

Ueberroth leaves Tuesday in the middle of the International Olympic Committee’s summit about the Beijing Summer Olympics, following the angry demonstrations during legs in London and Paris. Protesters are demanding that Olympic organizers denounce China’s policies on human rights and Tibet and the communist government’s backing of the Sudanese military regime responsible for the killings in Darfur.

TORCH EXTINGUISHED: Officials put flame out, bring aboard bus

VIDEO: Protesters, police skirmish.

“They have a right to peacefully assemble and express their point of view, which we respect,” said Ueberroth. “Similarly, the rights of those who have been selected to participate in the torch relay should also be respected.”

A protester managed to get by security at the lighting of the torch in Athens. The initial response by Olympic organizers to the torch situation had been standoffish, an attempt to prevent an escalation of the controversies. But as the protests continued and grew more violent, the reaction of Olympic leaders has changed. On Monday IOC president Jacques Rogge voiced his greatest concern about the situation in Tibet since the crisis emerged there several weeks ago.

“The International Olympic Committee has expressed its serious concern and calls for a rapid peaceful resolution in Tibet,” Rogge said. He added that violence protests, “for whatever reason,” would not be “compatible with the values of the torch relay or the Olympic Games.”

The flame arrived in Paris on Monday and then heads to San Francisco. Security officials in Paris extinguished the flame twice, escorting it onto a bus. The flame was being carried out of a Paris traffic tunnel by an athlete in a wheelchair when it was stopped because protesters booed and began chanting “Tibet.”

About 3,000 police had been called out to protect relay runners in Paris.

Political leaders, some of whom are also pushing for a boycott of the Games opening ceremonies, are joining in the fracas. Paris’ mayor said he intended to show support for human rights when relay runners pass by and San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom has not ruled out protesting. Organizers kept the route in San Francisco secret after troubles began, but released it last week.

On Sunday activists attempted to extinguish the flame with fire extinguishers and approached torch carriers in London.

Any controversy associated with the Olympics has always made the IOC and its sponsors nervous because it is seen as a way of diminishing the value of the Games. Coca-Cola, the U.S. sponsor of the relay, contributes millions to the Games, and is one of the primary sponsors for the Olympics.

Beijing organizers plan to go forward with a relay leg through Lhasa, Tibet, where unrest continues over the Chinese government’s refusal to recognize the exiled leader, the Dalai Lama, and also up to the top of Mount Everest. China has closed Everest climbs beginning May 1.

That effort is seen by Reporters without Borders and other activists as a way to squelch coverage of further protests and to thwart potential violence against the flame. It also betrays promises made by the government to open up the country before being awarded the Games in 2001.

Chinese organizers went to great length to ensure the flame will work on the famous Himalayan peak. Human rights activists are pushing to keep the torch out of the region. The Human Rights Watch has accused the IOC of operating in a moral void.

Beijing Olympic organizing committee spokesman Sun Weide told the Associated Press that he saw Sunday’s protests as “sabotage.”

“A few Tibetan separatists attempted to sabotage the torch relay in London, and we strongly denounce their disgusting behavior,” said Sun.

Last Monday, China sealed off the site of the famous site of 1989 pro-Democracy protest when the torch arrived at Tiananmen Square, its first stop in China.

Chinese officials also plan to prevent live television coverage from Tiananmen Square during the Games.

The torch will visit 21 international cities and every province in China before the Olympic flame is lighted at opening ceremonies on Aug. 8.

“The Olympic flame represents the unique power of the Olympic movement to inspire and unite people from every corner of the globe,” said Ueberroth, who is not carrying the torch. “Any time the Olympic flame visits your country, it is an honor.” ++

Sarkozy’s Olympics Visit Hinges on Human Rights, Le Monde Says
Heather Smith, Bloomberg
4/5/08

French President Nicolas Sarkozy will decide whether to attend the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games in Beijing based on three criteria concerning human rights, Le Monde reported, citing a junior government minister.

China must stop violence against the Chinese people and free political prisoners, investigate the recent events in Tibet and begin talks with the Tibetan religious leader the Dalai Lama, Junior Minister for Human Rights Rama Yade told the newspaper.

Sarkozy will watch how the situation in China evolves and consult with other members of the European Union before making a decision, the newspaper said. The Olympics will take place during Sarkozy’s term as president of the EU, it said.

Franck Louvrier, a spokesman for Sarkozy, didn’t immediately return a message left on his mobile phone requesting comment. ++

Go, Teams! Learning The Drill In China
Official Cheerleading Squads Taught Etiquette for Olympics
Maureen Fan, Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, April 6, 2008

BEIJING — When the Summer Olympics open to great fanfare in August, an estimated 500,000 foreign tourists will be here rooting for their home teams. The Chinese will be cheering, too. They’ve been trained for it.

In a decision that is highly unusual by Olympic standards, the Chinese government has trained hundreds of thousands of official cheerleaders. Most are former state employees drafted out of retirement. They have been taught when to roar their approval and why not to boo other teams, especially those from onetime enemy countries. They will be assigned to events based partly on the decibel levels desired, organizers say.

Athens and Turin, Italy, host cities in 2004 and 2006, each had small teams of Olympic cheerleaders, controversial for their bikinis and their lack of rhythm, respectively. But China’s effort is different in scope and ambition. The cheerleaders here, numbering more than 210,000 and growing, are a powerful symbol of how this country wants to be perceived by the rest of the world: united, strong and of one voice.

Visitors to Beijing should not expect to see armies of Chinese 20-somethings in communist-red tights. The cheerleaders are more likely to look like a sorority of grandmothers, wearing matching T-shirts and equipped with props such as flags, handkerchiefs and “cheering sticks,” inflatable, oblong plastic balloons that generate thunderous applause.

“Higher, higher! Faster, faster! Stronger, stronger!” hundreds of state workers and retirees chanted in deafening unison at a recent practice session, as they slammed the balloons together in neatly choreographed steps.

In some ways, it’s a scene straight out of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, the crusade against intellectuals that used mass songs, “model operas” and “loyalty dances” to rally ordinary citizens and whip up support for the Communist Party.

Late last year, a cheering competition was held to improve the “standardization” of the cheering teams and to motivate team members.

According to the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games, training sessions for cheerleaders serve an important purpose.

“The Chinese don’t know very much about baseball, archery, handball or water polo. Part of this is an exercise to teach organized cheering that can be used at events they have no experience at,” said Jeff Ruffolo, a spokesman for the committee.

“This also goes hand in hand with the etiquette program,” Ruffolo added, referring to a citywide campaign to get Beijing residents to stop cutting in line, spitting and booing. “It’s to remind people that it’s great to have fun but it’s also important to be an example to your capital and your nation.”

The Beijing Federation of Trade Unions is organizing retirees, government employees, white-collar office workers and even members of the army into a cheering team, the largest being assembled. Across the capital, women’s associations and youth groups are also helping recruit participants. Middle schools have been partnered with schools in cities overseas — Tokyo and Manchester, England, for example — and students will wear the national colors of whichever country they are assigned to cheer.

To inspire the cheerleaders, team posters will use national colors and calligraphy “to demonstrate the enthusiastic spirit of the people,” according to organizers.

China’s political culture places a unique emphasis on group performance. It’s an emphasis that starts as early as kindergarten, dominates the work lives of state employees and is used to demonstrate collective passion where it might otherwise not exist. To many Olympic visitors, the impulse to script and stage-manage everything might seem odd. But China has long emphasized ceremony and propriety.

“Organized cheering groups show the strong ability of the government to call on ordinary people for help,” said Beijing sociologist Guan Kai. “In the West, it’s unimaginable.”

Officials say training is also instilling the spirit of good sportsmanship in fans. It’s a quality that can be lacking at some sporting events. At a soccer match in February at the East Asian Championships in Chongqing, Chinese spectators threw plastic bottles and sticks when Japanese players greeted their supporters. (After the Chinese team lost, fans also hurled rubbish at the Chinese team bus.)

At the Olympics, the Chinese have a new chance to put on a good face before old foes. Organizers plan to make the best of it.

“In our instructions, we especially emphasized this. They should cheer for both sides in order to show that the Chinese are very tolerant,” said Yuan Xuzhong, secretary of the organizing committee of the federation’s Beijing Workers’ Cultural Progress Cheering Team.

Retirees, not necessarily the rowdiest of sorts, so far seem happy to comply.

“We’ll listen to our leaders and follow their instructions,” said Li Mei, 50, a retired steel company worker. “We volunteers are organized by the state, so there’s no need to worry.”

Not everyone here appreciates the stage-managed approach. Some critics say organized cheerleading illustrates China’s emphasis on presentation over substance, an approach that has hampered its ability, they say, to deal with many Olympic-size problems, such as the traffic that is expected to overwhelm Beijing and the pollution that may make it harder for some athletes to compete.

Other critics have argued that the Communist Party is less interested in embracing Olympic ideals of freedom and openness than in bolstering its own legitimacy before a domestic audience.

“Cheering should be voluntary and not imposed by the state,” said Zheng Yefu, a sociologist at Peking University and author of several books about soccer.

Dissident author Wang Lixiong, who, along with his wife, Tibetan essayist Tsering Woeser, has been under house arrest in Beijing since before the riot in Lhasa last month, was struck by the parallels between the cheering sessions and the Cultural Revolution.

“It reminds me of the bound-foot grandmothers who performed ‘loyalty dances,’ ” he said. “Although the contents are different, the root cause and logic are the same.” ++

News researchers Zhang Jie and Liu Songjie contributed to this report.

Beijing’s Reality Intrudes on Shangri-la
Don North, ConsortiumNews Special Report
April 5, 2008

(nice pictures at this link)

“Wreathed in the romance of centuries, Lhasa, the secret citadel of the undying Grand Lama, has stood shrouded in impenetrable mystery on the Roof-of-the-world, alluring yet defying our most adventurous travelers to enter her closed gates.”

~ L. Austine Waddell, Lhasa and its Mysteries, 1905

As the Beijing-to-Lhasa train pulls out of Golmud in western China, starting the long climb into Tibet, it passes through an archway with a debatable slogan in Chinese characters: “The railroad is to create happiness for the people of all nationalities.”

At 16,640 feet above sea level, the train crosses through the Tanggula Pass into the so-called Tibet Autonomous Region. Three diesel locomotives power the rapid ascent of the highest rail line in the world.

Young Chinese Army recruits filling three of the train cars gulp as they inhale pure oxygen that is pumped from tanks and pours into the coaches as a light mist. The soldiers laugh at the novelty of breathing the oxygen as a diversion from the long trip rather than any health necessity.

So many battalions of the Chinese Army have taken the new train line into Tibet there is a separate terminal for them at the railroad station in the capital of Lhasa.

The railroad is an astonishing feat of engineering. Completed last July at a cost of $4.5 billion, more than half of its 710 miles is built on ground constantly in flux, sometimes frozen sometimes not. With the ground sinking and rising as much as one foot during a winter freeze, liquid nitrogen is pumped around the rail bed to keep it stable.

The Beijing government describes the railway as the centerpiece of its western China development strategy to bring economic levels comparable to those along China’s wealthier eastern seaboard.

“Jacky Chan and the Warriors of Xian” plays full time on the flat screen TV in each compartment. Breakfast of porridge and fried eggs is served for $3 in the restaurant car.

As seen through the window of the new high train to Tibet, Yak herds graze before a background of jagged peaks. Photo by Don North.

Through thick windows that block the intense ultra-violet rays, you watch the Tibetan tundra, the grazing yak herds and jagged peaks in the background. There is an unreal quality to the scenery as if painted on a wide canvas.

In the evening, the mostly Chinese travelers hunched over card games shout toasts “Ganbeii” as they quaff Tsing-Tsau beer for $1. My ticket to Lhasa in a first-class soft bunk cost me $175. The trip took 48 hours from Beijing.

Lhasa at Last

In 1963 as a young trekker-journalist in Asia, I taught English to Tibetan “Tulkus,” young monks at an ashram, or school, in Dalhousie, India. The school looked out at the high mountain peaks of Tibet to the north.

The school was run by a British Buddhist nun Freda Bedi. Many of the Tulkus had fled into exile with the Dalai Lama on March 31, 1959.

Upon learning English, they regaled me with mysterious tales of Tibet, planting in me a lifelong fascination with the enigma that is Tibet. It took me over 40 years to fulfill my youthful dreams of visiting Tibet.

When I arrived on Dec. 9, 2007, Lhasa was calm and serene in the warm winter sun. There were few Chinese or foreign tourists.

A Tibetan pilgrim swings a prayer wheel as other pilgrims circumambulate the Potala Palace in Lhasa. Photo by Don North.

Colorful Tibetan pilgrims flocked into the city to prayerfully circumambulate the imposing Potala Palace, home of the Dalai Lamas since the 13th Century. But there were whispers of gathering clouds regarding Tibet’s often tumultuous relationship with China.

My tour guide, who was rewarded with a college education in England for saving the life of a wealthy British mountain climber, began to speak freely to me after a few days. He described the anger of Tibetans toward their exploitation by the Han Chinese.

Visiting the Drepung Monastery a few miles up a steep mountain from the city, he told me with great glee about an incident there in October when resident monks celebrated the award of the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal to the exiled Dalai Lama.

After the monks learned of the award through YouTube, clashes between the monks and over 1,000 police broke out.

In retaliation for President George W. Bush honoring the Dalai Lama at the White House, Chinese authorities refused to let the USS Kitty Hawk dock in Hong Kong at Thanksgiving.

But there were few police or Army in the streets during my visit the next month. Tibetans who spoke English approached me constantly to chat about life in Lhasa and how the new train was affecting their lives.

“The Chinese now want to make Tibetan culture profitable rather than defunct like Chairman Mao did,” laughed one man who said he was an English teacher.

Turning more serious, he complained of the railway bringing in thousands of Han Chinese settlers. He said he was angry about the restrictions and rules governing monks in the monasteries and constant demands that holy men denounce the exiled Dalai Lama.

He was reflecting concerns expressed by the Dalai Lama recently that the new train enabled numbers of homeless people, the unemployed and prostitutes, to arrive in Lhasa from China, eroding the character of the city and marginalizing its Tibetan residents.

China’s Historic Claim

My tour guide, who will remain nameless for his own safety, had a more charitable view.

“Many of the 2,000 Chinese who arrive by train every day come from Sichuan Province, one of the most populated areas in China, and are only trying to escape poverty. Tibet is a pressure valve for all the unemployed Chinese.

“Tibet may be paying the price for China’s problems, but those problems are not the fault of the people coming to Tibet to make a living. But our culture has been packaged for tourism. Business is booming, but we Tibetans do not benefit.”

Shopping for souvenirs in the “Bokhara” at the heart of old Lhasa, I noticed most goods on sale were made in Beijing or Nepal.

My guide conceded that the railroad and new roads to remote mountain areas gave pilgrims a better chance to visit Lhasa, but he quickly noted that the illiteracy rate remains four times that of neighboring Sichuan province and there are fewer vocational schools per capita than in the rest of China.

The Chinese consider Tibet to be a part of China, in their view as much as Texas is to the United States.

But the history of the Chinese state is complex. The non-Chinese territories that now make up the western third of the nation ā€“ the deserts of Muslim Xinjiang and the plateau of Tibet ā€“ were not conquered by Chinese, but by the Mongol empire that swept across China in the 13th Century.

The Ming Dynasty took little interest in Tibet. However, when the Manchus conquered China in 1644, they too brought Tibet under Beijing’s rule. When the Manchu dynasty was overthrown in 1911, Tibet experienced independence for the next 40 years.

When the Communists took power in 1949, they invaded Tibet claiming “what was once ours is ours forever.”

So, there is about as much chance that Beijing would consider independence for Tibet as Washington would sanction independence for Texas. Even the Dalai Lama does not insist on independence.

Mystique in the West

“Through all ages Tibet has held a paramount position among those regions of the world which have been popularly invested with a veil of mystery because they are inaccessible and unknown,” wrote Sir Thomas Holdrich in 1906.

This infatuation with Tibet in the West puzzles the Chinese. Jiang Zemin, when he ruled China, complained that he could not understand why the West, where education in science and technology has developed to a high level, could have any truck with backward and superstitious Tibet.

Orville Schell, former Dean of Journalism at Berkeley, in his brilliant book Virtual Tibet, explains why the West is enamored of Tibet: “It was the dream of Shangri-La itself that was at stake. For many Westerners who had allowed themselves to dream the dream of Tibet, Chinese rule represented a paradise lost.”

Schell’s book traces the power of the Tibetan myth, the books, the movies and the Hollywood stars that have taken up the Tibetan cause.

“When James Hilton’s 1933 novel, Lost Horizon, was released as a film in 1937, it was the apotheosis of Tibet as fantasy realm. With it, the notion of that land as the paradisiacal Shangri-La entered both the imagination and the vocabulary of Western popular culture, becoming one of the most powerful utopian metaphors of our time.”

Interviewing a Tibetan monk who had been an extra in the film “Seven Years in Tibet” starring Brad Pitt, Schell was told:

“This movie portrays what used to be. Then, people might have been poor and dressed in skins and rags, but they were proud and happy. But now this old Tibet is completely lost, except for here on these sets. Under the Chinese, maybe some Tibetans have electricity and cars, but they have lost their dignity and identity.”

Dalai Lama

The Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, 72, now considered to be in his 14th reincarnation, perpetuates the iconic image of Tibet through a careful combination of spirituality and political acumen. He keeps the dream alive.

And the more the Chinese denounce him, call him a “splittist,” and the more they chastise countries, such as Germany and the United States, for honoring him, the more they empower him.

The Dalai Lama’s criticism of China’s actions in Tibet continues to be tempered by his insistence that opposition must be non-violent. His appeal that the Tibetan struggle be peaceful contributed to his winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989.

When the Dalai Lama dies, it is highly unlikely Beijing will allow monks to freely find a 15th incarnation in some humble household on the Tibetan plateau with a young boy who fits the mysteries that are used to pick out the next Dalai Lama.

Chinese authorities will want to pick the next Dalai Lama. China’s long-term strategy, which the recent violence may have reinforced, is to wait for the Dalai Lama to die in the belief that the government can control his successor.

In 1995, China arrested the Panchen Lama, the number two in Tibetan Buddhism, a six-year-old, Gedun Nyima. He has not been seen since, but many Tibetans told me they believe he has fled to India.

China authorities named another Tibetan youth, Gyaltsen Norbu, the son of Communist Party members, as the designated replacement for the Panchen Lama. The government controls his education and public duties.

Tibetans call the youth the “Gya Panchen,” meaning Chinese Panchen. Traditionally the Panchen Lama names a new Dalai Lama, which would give the Chinese government control over the Dalai Lama’s succession.

The controversy around China’s installation of a “patriotic” Panchen Lama over the choice of the next Dalai Lama has for many Tibetans come to epitomize China’s domination and even desecration of Tibetan Buddhism and upon the Dalai Lama’s death will no doubt cause new trouble.

The Dalai Lama has suggested he might return as two Dalai Lamas or choose his own successor or even come back as a woman.

Donald S. Lopez Jr. in the 1998 book, Prisoners of Shangri-La, notes that incarnate lamas are being discovered more frequently in Europe and America.

Recently even action film star Steven Seagal was identified as the reincarnation of a Tibetan lama.

Lopez wrote, “In this way Tibetans have literally incorporated foreigners into their patronage sphere through their own version of colonialism. Rather than taking control of a nation, Tibetans are building an empire of individuals who, inhabited from birth by the spirit of a Tibetan saint, become, in effect Tibetans, regardless of ethnicity.”

Violent Protests

On March 10, open protests began in Lhasa to mark the 49th anniversary of the failed Tibetan revolt against the Chinese Communist occupation and the Dalai Lama’s flight into exile.

Police blocked monks from the Drepung Monastery from marching into the city. When protesters with Tibetan flags joined the monks, 15 were arrested. It was a fairly typical protest and police response, but tempers continued to build on rumors that monks had been beaten.

The next day, March 11, police stopped another protest by monks from the Sera Monastery. Then, on March 12, the monasteries were closed to visitors.

By March 14, as the police confronted minor protests from monks at the monasteries, tourist eyewitnesses say they saw a Tibetan man wielding two knives jump up on a police vehicle shouting and slashing. The vehicle was upended and set on fire.

A Swiss tourist said he saw an elderly Chinese man clawed off his bicycle and his head smashed with a large rock. A crowd of about 100 protesters, including what tourists described as “five people in monks’ robes,” attacked Chinese restaurants and a mosque.

During the riots, looters set fire to a clothing store, burning to death five employees. A Chinese hotel owner, Zhang Bing Quan, watched the riots from his roof:

“At 3 p.m., I heard a high-pitched sound and saw a gang of 30 swing into my street howling. I was surprised to see that most in the mob were young women who had masks over their mouths and were wearing backpacks. They were attacking even more fiercely than the boys.”

Such militant and orchestrated violent protest is not typical in a Buddhist society and may indicate foreign coordination, although Chinese authorities have not identified ringleaders other than to vilify the Dalai Lama in exile.

While the center of Lhasa descended into chaos, the vastly outnumbered police and firefighters beat a retreat. Authorities claim that 19 Chinese were killed and over 600 injured.

Despite strict controls over the flow of information out of Tibet, the Chinese government could no longer deny the violence spilling over into surrounding areas. Riots spread to the neighboring province of Gansu with demonstrators storming a government office.

In the Tibetan-populated areas across western China, mostly peaceful protests erupted in 49 cities. Tibet’s government in exile has said 140 people were killed in the rioting, while China has claimed a total of 22 deaths, 19 of them in Lhasa.

The Chinese government accused the Dalai Lama of orchestrating the riots to wreck Beijing’s Olympic games. On March 20 in Dharamsala, India, the Dalai Lama called for calm and said he was prepared to meet with Chinese leaders, stating that he wants autonomy, not independence for Tibet.

Countdown to Olympics

Looming over the conflict is the fast approaching Beijing Olympics. Human rights activists have long made it known that they intend to use the Olympics to draw global attention to the Chinese government’s record of human rights abuses.

At the torch lighting ceremony in Olympia, Greece, the first official event of the Olympics, protesters broke through heavy security to unfurl a banner showing the Olympic rings as handcuffs. They also tried to stop the torch’s relay as it was carried from the site.

In May, plans call for the torch to be carried through Lhasa. Human rights activist Wei Jingsheng wrote in the Washington Post that Beijing risks this Olympics being remembered like the 1936 games in Berlin, as a massive public relations event for an oppressive regime.

My friend Peter Arnett, who seems to have survived as many reincarnations as the Dalai Lama, is now a visiting Professor of Journalism at Shantou University in southern China. Arnett writes:

“I noticed from the beginning my students were all too willing to accept the government side of the case, and referred to Tibetan rioters as ‘terrorists.’ There is clearly a strong nationalist element to their thinking.

“Some Chinese faculty members fault the government for not being more aware of the potential for trouble in Tibet as the Olympics approach. They also believe that more should have been made of the ‘unprovoked’ Tibetan attacks on the Han Chinese businesses in Lhasa.

“All the Chinese around here seem to be putting the success of the Olympics above any requirement to resolve the Tibet issue by negotiations.”

On March 30, German Chancellor Angela Merkel became the first world leader to announce she would not attend the Olympics in Beijing. Donald Tusk, Poland’s Prime Minister, and President Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic also announced a boycott.

“The leadership could be riding a real tiger with the Tibet issue,” says David Shambaugh, director of the China policy program at George Washington University. “Various and sundry nongovernmental human rights activists smell blood, and they will all be using Tibet to press their causes.”

Shambaugh characterizes the governments attempt to manage its image in the aftermath of Tibet violence as “heavy handed” ā€“ resorting to vilification of the Dalai Lama and questioning motives of foreign critics.

“The Chinese government is not particularly adept at public diplomacy, as they define it as external propaganda, and pursue it as such.”

Hopeful Motto

The hopeful motto of the 2008 China Olympics ā€“ “One World, One Dream” ā€“ dominates the skyline of every city in China but may become a mockery unless China can effectively deal with world opinion that has been fired up by the Tibet problems.

Those concerns about China extend to its policy on the Darfur violence and to domestic human rights issues. Officials in Beijing seem to fear that enhancing the political autonomy of Tibet could incite demands from dozens of other ethnic or religious groups in China.

An unprecedented appeal by a group of 30 Chinese intellectuals in the wake of the Tibetan protests has urged the government to rethink its response to protest movements.

The organizer, Beijing writer Wang Lixiong offered a novel suggestion:

“The most efficient route to peace in Tibet is through the Dalai Lama, whose return to Tibet would immediately alleviate a number of problems. Much of the current ill will is a direct result of the Chinese government’s verbal attacks on the Dalai Lama, who for Tibetan monks has an incomparably lofty status. To demand that monks denounce him is about as practical as asking that they vilify their own parents.”

China’s leadership under Deng Xiaoping decided in 1989 that their put-down of protests in Tiananmen Square and Tibet was worth suffering humiliation abroad. The difference now is that China wants to play a different role as hosts of the Beijing Olympics ā€“ the role of a modern country embracing the world.

“One World, One Dream” is in jeopardy unless the leaders of China can effectively and openly deal with growing demands for reform ā€“ in Tibet and elsewhere. ++

Don North is a veteran war correspondent who has covered conflicts around the globe, from Vietnam to Central America, from the old Yugoslavia to Iraq.

AFTER THE DALAI LAMA
Tibetan Buddhism’s next leader?
Barbara Crossette, IHT
April 7, 2008

The recent outburst of Tibetan rage against the Chinese government not only demonstrated once again the fear and anger among Himalayan Buddhists living under the cultural insensitivity of Beijing, it also illuminated the crucial role of the Dalai Lama, navigating skillfully between restive Tibetan exiles and an Indian government under Chinese pressures to stifle their protests. What will happen when he is gone?

The West is about to get its first glimpse of that possible future.

In mid-May, a serious young man of 22 who is revered as the 17th Karmapa - now the second-most-important figure in Tibetan Buddhism - will make his first visit to the United States. The trip comes eight years after his dramatic flight to India from a monastery near Lhasa at the end of 1999, when he was just 14 years old.

This is the first time that a skittish India has allowed him permission to travel abroad. His flight from Tibet was a considerable embarrassment to China.

The Karmapa Lama, spiritual head of the Kagyu order of Tibetan Buddhism, is now the only major Tibetan lama recognized as a reincarnation of his lineage by both the Dalai Lama and the Chinese government since it overran Tibet in the 1950s.

The Panchen Lama, the third of a triumvirate and previously the second-highest ranking among the three lamas, vanished into Chinese custody as a boy in 1995 and has been replaced by Beijing’s own political appointee.

In a thriller that is already a legend among Buddhists, the Karmapa and two fellow monks drove in secret from Tsurphu Monastery, north of Lhasa, to the remote and rugged border of Mustang, a former Buddhist kingdom now part of Nepal. From there he and his companions made a dash by horseback to the nearest Nepali airport, from which they were able to fly unnoticed via Katmandu to Delhi. The Karmapa, born Ogyen Trinley Dorji, arrived unannounced in Dharamsala, the Dalai Lama’s base, in January 2000, and has remained under the watchful eye of the Tibetan leader since.

Because of fears in the United States that India, bowing to Chinese pressure, will prevent this trip abroad at the last moment, the Karmapa’s visit is expected to be low-keyed and not political. His comment on a pre-trip video that “The United States is one of the world’s most powerful countries” has been excised from an online transcription of his remarks, which dwell instead on his hope of meeting “many American friends.” The trip was planned before the protests in Tibet.

This is a significant milestone for Tibetan Buddhists and a momentous one for Western practitioners. The young lama’s predecessor, the 16th Karmapa, visited the United States on numerous occasions and had established in the 1980s a part-time American seat in Woodstock, New York, at the Karma Triyana Dharmachakra center. After the young Karmapa’s flight from Tibet, the Woodstock monastery immediately geared up to welcome him, even designing furniture to match his sturdy frame. Then they waited, and waited and waited. He will now finally get to see their work. The Karmapa’s American followers would like to have him establish his base in the United States, making him the first Asian religious leader of that magnitude to live in the West.

The Karmapa could serve as a possible unofficial, transitional successor to the Dalai Lama, who is now in his 70s. Because the Karmapa leads a different order of Tibetan Buddhism - the Dalai Lama is a Gelugpa monk - the young Karmapa cannot inherit his title. A future reincarnate to that position has yet to be born after the Dalai Lama’s death.

The young Karmapa, who is described by those who have met him as a serious, even stern, young man, is also recognized as a compelling religious teacher and budding literary scholar, even without the Dalai Lama’s magnetic charm and sense of humor. The Karmapa could well be the stopgap spiritual leader Tibetan exiles will someday need to hold together their fragmented diaspora, while at the same time assuming a larger role as a religious teacher for Buddhists of all nationalities and schools.

For the moment, these two Tibetan leaders are a complementary pair, the wise older man and the vigorous young lama who now has the chance to show the wider world if he can muster a universal appeal. ++

Barbara Crossette, a former New York Times correspondent in Asia, is the author of “So Close to Heaven: The Vanishing Buddhist Kingdoms of the Himalayas.”

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

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