The march in Dharamsala was massive and woke me up, which was good because I wanted to see it. (No pictures because of Shabbos) The whole thing, led by monks and followed by lay people, took 15 minutes to pass my apartment complex. It started with people carrying makeshift stretchers with the Tibetan flag for the 25 people who've set themselves on fire (confirmed) in the past four months, and then the usual bits of people marching with flags, painted faces, and signs telling China to get out of Tibet. The women were mostly in traditional clothing and the men were mostly not. A few shaved their heads to write "Free Tibet" or "Save Tibet" on their skulls. There were people plastered with stickers of the 25 martyrs, or gruesome pictures of the deadly riots in January (yeah, that happened too) where policeman shot into crowds and beat people to death with clubs, which is obvious in the photographs (the Chinese government said they were acting in self-defense). The most consistent call was for the UN to help, and for China to get out of Tibet NOW, because there was an immediacy to it from the protestor's point-of-view.
It was all very depressing.
Not because of the pictures of people beaten to death or burning alive, because that's part of life. The whole spectacle of the day. I have to see this from an Israeli POV, because as a people, the Jews have a homeland, and we didn't get it by peaceful protest. Admittedly we had to give up part of our souls, and it began a prolonged struggle with our neighbors and created an impossible situation with the Palestinians which nobody fails to bring up when I mention this, but we have a country. We wandered for 2000 years, bought some guns, and now we have a country. Food for thought.
What the rally did:
(1) Strengthened the sense of community among Tibetan exiles around the world - Yes. This was the main purpose. There's a clear goal, a sense of purpose, a sense that the world hasn't forgotten about them and they haven't forgotten about themselves, and that they're getting something done, which is important to feel even if it's not true. They need to express themselves and they're in a country now where they have a certain right to do it, provided it's not near the border, or a Chinese embassy, or blocking too much traffic, or too visible to embarrass India. And they did it in Times Square, which got some attention from the AP.
(2) Showed solidarity with the six million Tibetans in Tibet - Yes and no. The Tibetans not in exile do follow events in India and other places, but are understandably more concerned with their own situation, and they have good reason to have little faith in the Tibetan gov't-in-exile, which has not been successful in doing anything for them. The Tibetans at home want the Dalai Lama to come back, and either don't know that he's stepped down as temporal ruler or don't care. (The Dalai Lama, BTW, was not at the rally, and has stepped down from politics in favor of an elected Prime Minister) Also, arrested Tibetans are almost always accused of being agents of foreign forces, particularly "the Dalai Lama's illegal government" so getting tortured for a government you didn't vote for, having nothing to do with, and isn't even run by the Dalai Lama anymore is no fun.
(3) Publicized the recent events in Tibet - Not really. The world has, at this point, decided how much it's going to care about Tibet, which is not a whole lot. There was a brief period of real concern in 2008, but China made it clear that (a) they would not listen to other people's opinions and would be highly offended by anyone expressing them, and (b) expressing such opinions will cause trade relations to be cancelled and financial losses incurred. When Hillary Clinton made her first visit to China as Secretary of State, she made a point in her speech of saying that "financial rights" were the most important issue, implying heavily that human rights were not, for which I was very disappointed in her as a person, as she had previously been a bit of crusader for women's reproductive rights in China. But there were practical reasons for doing it, like not letting the US economy take a blow so that some dissidents could be freed. You have to weigh your options, and the world has realized that our economies are two interconnected to upset one another.
(4) Given China any reason to consider giving Tibet any more freedom - No. The opposite, actually. China has a standard procedure of clamping down on any revolutionary actions within the country and a very xenophobic fear of outside influences seeking to undermine China's greatness (they are, for serious, still not over the Opium Wars of the 1840's). The very idea that there are outside forces seeking to disrupt the harmony that is the People's Republic of China is a great excuse to blame any internal dissent on outside forces and arrest homegrown Chinese protesters as spies for the West. Tibetans who are arrested are regularly tortured into giving up names of outside contacts they actually don't have, which prolongs the torture sessions because the prisoner is NOT a foreign agent, but that doesn't mesh with China's script about the Dalai Lama being behind every protest in Tibet, so the police just torture them more and give them a longer sentence for being uncooperative.
(5) Helping Tibet become independent - No. Even the Dalai Lama gave up on this in the 1980's, asking instead for the autonomy he was promised by Chairman Mao in the 1950's and is still included in the Chinese agreement with Tibet and the Chinese Constitution - the ability of Tibetan areas to control their own culture, religion, and language while China controls them financially, militarily, and otherwise. The fact that this initial promise didn't end up being true was WHY the Dalai Lama fled for his life to India and followed by 80,000 Tibetans, after ten years of trying to negotiate with the Chinese. China isn't about to give up a third of its landmass to anybody, much less some refugees wandering around some mountainous suburbs in India. It was about the equivalent of a Delaware Liberation Front marching for independence for Delaware on a football field in New Jersey while no one was around but the groundskeeper. Even the Indian cabbies didn't bother to stop running their cabs down the one-lane road for 20 minutes, cutting instead through the entire parade and forcing elderly marchers to the side of the cliff to wait for the cars to pass.
It's not all bad news. The Dalai Lama, often accused of inaction by condemning any effective methods of hassling the CCP (like, say, violence, or even boycotts), is clearly taking the long view. Tibet has withstood periods of cultural domination before. There was a three-hundred year period, from the reign of King Ling Darma in the 800's to the 1100's, when the Tibetan Empire collapsed and Buddhism was almost extinguished by the native Bon religion and local warlords. The Buddhism that emerged in Tibet - the religion the Dalai Lama, as a monk, is more concerned about than political borders - after that period was stronger and more diverse, leading to a golden age that produced some of Tibet's greatest thinkers. Politics are temporal and temporary. Human suffering is not ended by restoring creature comforts but by the realization of the truth - that desire causes suffering and a righteous life can lead to Enlightenment. He's looking to a future where all of humanity has achieved some level of enlightened consciousness and he believes that with everyone united by technology and trade and increasing education and understanding of each other, this is increasingly possible. If we know about each other we're more likely to care about each other, and if we care about each other, we'll stop working against each other. This is why he's very optimistic about China, because the PRC's artificially communist society only exists with misinformation and massive state controls, and those floodgates are going to open soon, maybe in his lifetime. Since he is concerned with every sentient being, even those in China, he can look to the future with a good deal more hope than the parade inspired.
But most people are not monks concerned with every sentient being. They are people concerned with their own suffering and the suffering of the people nearest to them, and the people in their lost homeland. I wouldn't be honest if I didn't end this post by saying that, in all honestly, those people would get closer to a free Tibet if next year they marched not to Lower Dharamsala but the Tibetan border - and they brought guns. Lots and lots of guns.
[Full disclosure: I'm not advocating an armed uprising, I'm just saying that it's a more likely route to a politically independent Tibet than any other I can see]
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