It Does Not Get Better

Today was the thirtieth day of the Tibetan hunger strike in front of the UN building in NYC. That's right - there are people starving themselves to death in Manhattan and you can go talk to them when you go in to see a show. They probably won't be able to respond very well, which is what comes with only drinking water for 30 days. There's only two left, as the third member was put in a hospital by the NYPD after he failed to stand up, reasons cited being his advanced age. Public safety laws in NYC are actually pretty tricky if the person poses no threat to other people or themselves (they're not trying to die, they're trying to get the UN's attention). But past the 30 day period it gets tricky, as the body's internal functions start to shut down and they run the risk of actually expiring on the sidewalk.

Their request is that the UN - or ANYONE - send an exploratory body into the Tibet to politely ask, "Hey, so China - what's with all these dead bodies and disappeared people?" China would say no, of course, but so far the UN hasn't really been upfront about asking, and only Australia has offered to do it by themselves, which immediately caused a diplomatic crisis with Beijing.

Haven't heard about this? Well, to be fair, you don't live in McLeod-Ganj, where it's really big news, and people check the papers in the morning to see if anyone has set themselves on fire in Tibet in the last 24 answers (as of this post the answer is no). And China has been really clear that it's not interested in other people's opinions. But the thing is, it COULD be interested, if people were to step up to the plate about it, something which Bush was perfectly willing to do but Obama is not.

We are major trading partners with China. They own a lot of our debt, though to be fair less than 10%. People say that we don't do anything because we owe them money, but it's far more complex than that. China still has a large portion of the population living just above the poverty line - the real one, not the American one - and it relies on American trade. There are an increasing number of developing countries, particularly in Asia, where we could take some of our business and do. Shirts that were made in China are now made in Malaysia; India is moving forward in the computer industry. Plus, hey, we're partners. Partners who share things - like trillions of dollars - should be able to say things like, "I've heard some of the news coming out of your country and it makes me uncomfortable about doing business with you."

I don't think boycotting China on a personal level does anything. In fact, I'm almost positive it doesn't. Plus, it's not really fair to ordinary Chinese workers who assemble the products we produce. So there's not much I can do, as an American, except vote for a politician I think will do something, which is pretty much never the case (or other issues take priority).

There's actually a lot of hunger strikes by Tibetans - most of them are in Delhi. They are not effective; the Dalai Lama has asked people to stop doing them, or did so when he was still the political leader of the Tibetan community. They're following in the tradition of Gandhi, except that people really cared if Gandhi starved to death, and basically no one cares if a couple Tibetan refugees starve to death. Also, his hunger strikes were not particularly effective, and usually only served as a temporary cure to the current situation. But that gets lost a little bit in mythologizing Gandhi, which people in India sure like doing.

I know people want to hear about daily life here, but this is kind of daily life here. It's a bit like living in Israel during the Intifada, when we were always wondering when the next pigua (terror attack) was coming. This is wildly different, even to Tibetans here, because there's no risk to their own lives, but there is a bombardment of bad news that you know will only be followed by more bad news. Like when you read your Google News in the morning, and you see that the AP has reported another self-immolation, and you have to scan the article to see if it's old and they're still talking about the one from a few days ago, or if it's a new person.

Unlike Israel I can step out of it fairly easily, which I will do next week when I go to Nepal and leave Dharamsala. I'm emotionally invested, but I can choose not to have it effect my life if I don't want it to. I can't bring myself to feel guilty for that; I'm already a rich white American who speaks English so that leaves me with pretty to feel guilty about in rural India.