Over the last 19 years since the last significant pro-independence protests in Tibet, the Chinese government has weathered a growing Tibet movement active, for the most part until this week, outside of the country’s borders. They’ve taken the occasional wrist slaps from world leaders over their rights policies in Tibet, suffered through the negative publicity of two damning Hollywood films ( Kundun and Seven Years in Tibet) and high profile concerts, dealt with the annoyance of protests whenever and wherever their leaders travel abroad, and grumbled loudly over the Dalai Lama’s continued popularity among world citizens and world governments.
But though they may grumble about the Dalai Lama and gripe about the relatively harmless – though consistent – nonviolent movement that Tibetans and Tibetan rights advocates have waged since 1989, Beijing has also benefited greatly from the Dalai Lama’s pacifist stance. For if anything over the last two decades has kept the Tibetan population from doing exactly what they did this week, it has been the Dalai Lama’s steadfast devotion to nonviolence and his insistence that his people maintain a similar moral high ground. If, for all these years, the Dalai Lama had been fomenting a violent uprising, Tibet – for better or worse – would be a very different place.
They say that life happens on the level of events, not words, and what has been for the most part a war of words for the last two decades has just been eclipsed by action. Propaganda has been replaced by reality. The elaborately constructed PRC notion that Tibetans are content under Chinese rule has been smashed; by a single rioter’s stone.
Right now in Tibet, Chinese tanks patrol the streets and loudspeakers blare Orwellian slogans urging Tibetans to ‘know friends from enemies’ and – in true Spanish-inquisition-style justice — to turn themselves in for ‘mercy’. In a clear violation of everything the Geneva Convention has to say about the treatment of prisoners, FOX News and the Times (UK) are reporting truckloads of Tibetan prisoners paraded through Lhasa with their heads forcibly bowed as a warning to other potential troublemakers to show restraint.
Certainly appeals for calm in any violent situation are warranted. As a lifelong Tibet activist — who saw firsthand the Chinese government’s violent reaction to the 1989 protests in Lhasa — I have been a champion of moderation and nonviolence for a very, very long time. But it speaks volumes to me that the first significant attention the Tibetan cause has received in 20 years has come not on the heels of the concerts I organized or as a result of the years of nonviolent protest the Tibetan people have undertaken, but as a result of violent uprising. After a painful stasis in which Tibetans inside and outside of Tibet have tolerated a political deep freeze that has deadlocked their nation, they are fed up, and tempers are boiling over.
The Dalai Lama — as is his spiritual requirement — has joined the voices for restraint. In fact, as a sign of his obvious frustration at being caught between the cronies in Beijing who accuse him of instigating dissent and his own people who accuse him of not doing enough, he has threatened to ‘resign.’ In his subsequent urgings for his people to remain nonviolent, he has stated that violence is not the solution, and even if 1,000 Tibetans die in violent uprising, it will do no good.
But the burden of restraint should not be on Tibetans, who have acted with restraint for over 50 years. Tibetans have, except for the very rare times when passions and frustrations flare, followed His Holiness’s lead, bit their tongues, and suffered the humiliation of colonization with nobility and grace. These Tibetans, who finally, after years of brutal occupation, are acting violently, are no mindless hooligans. It takes a lot to make a Tibetan pick up a stone and throw it at another person. A Tibetan, raised steeped in Buddhist morality and with a sense of absolute obedience to the wishes and words of the Dalai Lama, has to go through a pretty deep moral struggle in order to pick up that rock, as it represents not only rising up against their occupier, but rising up against their own cultural fabric of Buddhist nonviolence as well. They do not do this lightly.
And while no one wants to see violence, while no one benefits from the beating of random shopkeepers, the burden of restraint must be on the occupying force. Until China allows for free expression of views, they will continue to see Tibetans throwing rocks. As long as they continue to respond like five-year-old bullies – mercilessly berating the Dalai Lama, responding to basic expressions of free speech with soldiers and tanks, not allowing the true Tibet story to be told to any members of the press, they will have a big problem on their hands. As Nelson Mandela said, in the case of enduring conflicts between occupier and occupied, the occupier has the prime moral responsibility. The Chinese have set the terms of the occupation. It is their mess to figure out, and figure it out they ultimately will have to do. In the mean time, Tibetans should act exactly as they see fit. They are the occupied people, and are under no obligation to treat their occupier with a respect which they have not been granted themselves.
The only question that remains is if Beijing will finally be sensible and take a constructive approach to solving a situation that won’t go away, or if they will continue to act like the neighborhood bully, in which case they can probably expect a lot more stones.
GNN contributor Josh Schrei is a producer, writer, and nonprofit strategist living in New York City. Josh has closely followed the situation on the ground in Tibet for 19 years, writing numerous articles on the subject that have been widely published. Josh served as Campaigns Coordinator for the Milarepa Fund from 1996 – 2001 and on the Board of Students for a Free Tibet from 1999 – 2004.