Tibet: A Cultural Tragedy
It was 1986 and I was in China. It hadn’t been easy getting into the country. A foreigner could only enter China as part of an organized group, supervised by a Chinese guide. But through the travellers’ grape vine I discovered I could obtain a student card certifying that “The bearer is a student in Taiwan studying Chinese.” Since China considered Taiwan part of China, the card was an entry into China itself. It allowed me to move freely among the Chinese, to travel with them, to find out information not available to tourist groups. That’s how I discovered that the doors to Tibet, which had been closed to foreigners for centuries, had suddenly been opened to individual travellers. This was little short of miraculous. Lhasa was known as the “forbidden city,” its secrets, its peoples, its way of life, shielded from the world, hidden within the formidable Himalayans. I made an instant decision to go.
I was with two friends, fellow travellers, and we were among the first Westerners allowed into Tibet by the Chinese occupiers, who, in need of foreign currency, experimented with an open door policy. The experiment didn’t last long. Soon the doors were closed again and the Chinese adopted the same supervised group policy as in China in an attempt to conceal their treatment of Tibet and its people from the rest of the world. But for those brief months we had unrestricted access and we made the most of it.
When we were there, Lhasa was a Tibetan city. We hardly came into contact with the Chinese. We stayed in a Tibetan guest house, ate with Tibetans, travelled with them, visited their monasteries and their homes. What immediately struck me was how different the Tibetans were from the Chinese. Not only were their features different, their language different, their clothing different, their architecture different, but their sensibilities were different; their aspirations, their values were poles apart.
Whereas in China we had been regarded with suspicion, gawked at from a distance, in Tibet we were greeted with smiles, embraced, welcomed with a good-natured generosity that was fundamental to their existence, to their beliefs. Whereas the Chinese seemed dour, humourless, the Tibetans were always ready to laugh, to celebrate, to have fun. The disparity in their lifestyles was evident even in simple comparisons, like their attitude to animals. In China animals were mistreated and abused. The markets were full of terrified animals waiting to be slaughtered. Cats in small cages, mewed pathetically, chickens were hung by their legs, still alive. Bears, in bear farms, paced their cages half alive, insane from confinement, their bellies stuck with tubes tapping their organs for ingredients used in Chinese medicines (which could be produced artificially). I hardly saw a dog in China as dogs were eaten. It was a delight to find well cared-for dogs in Tibetan villages; Yaks, obviously well looked after, proudly decorated with ribbons. Tibetans treat their animals with kindness and affection. It is part of their belief in compassion for all sentient beings.
The Lhasa I experienced was a city with a strong Tibetan identity. But not long afterwards came the Chinese takeover by stealth, insidious and relentless. This time not with guns, as in the 1950 Chinese invasion—when China occupied the historically independent Tibet—but this time with people. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese were dispatched to Tibet in an attempt to colonize it, to extract its minerals, to denude its forests, to decimate its wildlife, to construct nuclear missile bases, to dump radioactive wastes. They flooded into Lhasa, reducing the Tibetan section of the city to 5 per cent, making Tibetans a minority in their own city. They introduced “modernity”: bars, discos, casinos, prostitution, undermining the Tibetan identity. They ringed Lhasa with gun posts. They built a fun fair at the back of the magnificent Potala Palace, home of successive Dalai Lamas, the sacred centre for all Tibetans. They razed the Tibetan village at its base and replaced it with a Tianamen-style concrete square, decorated with military emblems, glaring lights and surveillance cameras, reducing the very symbol of Tibet to a quaint relic; an entertainment.
At present, the Chinese are outraged because the Dalai Lama accused the Chinese of cultural genocide. But that’s exactly what it is. They forget that as far back as 1960 the International Commission of Jurists concluded that the Chinese are guilty of genocide in Tibet, and when you kill the people you kill their culture.
In the recent turmoil, when Tibetans are protesting against Chinese occupation, protesting against the destruction of their culture, the Chinese refuse to accept responsibility for what they have done in Tibet. They have looted and razed over 6000 monasteries, irreversibly destroyed Tibet’s fragile ecology, imprisoned hundreds of religious and political prisoners who languish in jails and forced labour camps, tortured and oppressed. Instead they blame the Dalai Lama, for the current uprising, for stirring up violence, attempting to brand the most peaceful man on earth, the man awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, “a wolf in monk’s robes.” In truth, the Dalai Lama is so opposed to violence as to say he will resign as leader of his government in exile if the violence continues. On the other hand, the world is only too aware of China’s terrible human rights record. Only weeks ago, Steven Spielberg, the acclaimed film director, resigned as artistic advisor to the Beijing Olympics because of it.
The Chinese attempt to destroy the Tibetan soul by destroying its national identity, its language, religion, culture, customs, its heritage, even its dress, has not succeeded. Their “re-education” policy has failed, as have their attempts to instill materialism as a paramount value in Tibetan life. The Chinese claim that their occupation has benefited Tibetans by improving Tibet’s infrastructure in no way compensates for the cultural genocide it has inflicted. The Chinese fail to understand that materialism is not as high on the Tibetan agenda as it is on their own. Repression only leads to more violence. Dialogue is the only means to understanding, to resolving the present crisis. But while the Dalai Lama wants dialogue, the Chinese refuse. Tibetans are crying out to the world for help. We can’t afford to turn our backs on them.
Niema Ash is the author of Touching Tibet (TravellersEye: 2003).
www.niemaash.com
www.avaaz.org
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