Return to 1997 CHRISTMAS Index
Return to 1997 CHRISTMAS Index
It appears that the people of Tibet are suffering the consequences of events in Hong Kong. There are reports of widespread suffering as a result of the Beijing inspired euphoria and patriotism, which has accompanied the return of Hong Kong to "the motherland".
10,000 people apparently attended celebrations in Lhasa to mark the handover after "local neighbourhood committee officials went into houses and selected people at random who were then obliged to attend the festivities" reports one local. The Potala and even the Jokhang were festooned with Chinese flags. With its customary subtlety, "Tibet Daily" spelt out to the people of Tibet the lesson that should be learned: "the old line capitalist British Empire of former times that bloodily slaughtered the peopleof Tibet and hatched plots to split Tibet off from the great family of the motherland, with its history of oppressing the Chinese the Chinese people and occupying Chinese territory, along with its blighting of our Chinese dream, is gone forever" - phew!
The opportunity given by the Hong Kong handover to settle scores with the British has renewed interest in the Younghusband Expedition of 1904. In one of the more inexplicable and woefully thought out adventures of the imperial age, the Empire Office gave the go ahead to Captain Younghusband to invade Tibet with 800 men, 1000 ponies and 2000 yaks. At lease 2,700 Tibetans and fewer than 40 British soldiers died. The evidence of Russian influence in Tibet, the alleged "casus belli", was never found.
This unhappy chapter in British imperial history is being visited again by the Chinese, with relish. An American recently in Gyantse reports of an "Anti-British Pavilion" in which the story of the invasion along with Britain's other sins against China are displayed in graphic form. "If the British ambassdor got to see it", said my source, "there would be a diplomatic incident." Along with the Pavilion, the Chinese are said to have spent about £1 million on funding their version of the story in the film, "Red River Valley" in which most of the parts, monks and soldiers included are played by units of the People's Liberation Army. "It is the best film I have see since taking up my post" enthuses Sun Jiazheng, China's Minister of Radio, Film and Television, "it has caused a patriotic sensation in China."
All this would be faintly amusing if it could be dismissed as historical revisionism and imperial posturing. But the people of Tibet are suffering the consequences of the wave of feeling which Sun describes as "patriotic sensation". The post- handover self-confidence and triumphalism is being directed in new attacks against the Dalai Lama. Communist party leaders in Lhasa have declared that the return of Hong Kong is proof that the efforts of the Dalai Lama and his "Western friends" are doomed to failure. "The only exit for the Dalai Lama", says the Tibet Daily, "is to go with the historic tide of unifying the motherland and totally abandoning plans of splitting it".
The new campaign against His Holiness includes the continued banning of his photographs and a rigorous campaign of re-education in all monasteries which is being conducted with a fervour and violence not seen in Tibet since the Cultural Revolution. A number of tourists have reported the sight of armed police forcing monks and nuns to denounce the Dalai Lama as "the head of the serpent and the chieften of the international forces opposed to China." Many monks have been detained and three hundred have fled into Nepal, nearly three times the number who fled across the border last year.
Along with the assault on the monasteries, the incidents of forced sterlislisation and arbitrary imprisonment continue. The Office of Tibet report that 308 Tibetan women were forcibly sterilised in one month in one district in Lhasa city alone. The total for the entire country must run into four figures. Latest crime statistics to be issued by the Chinese authorities say that nearly 600 people have been tried for poltical offences in the last eight years. Many more may have been detained without trail and sent for "re-education through labour" in China's Laogai, forced labour camps. More ominous still, a recent International Campaign for Tibet sponsored trip has come back with photographs of a new, modern prison on the outskirts of Lhasa. It differs from Drapchi, say the informants, in that there is virtually no outdoor space for and exercise yard of gardens, suggesting that it is a high security prison.
A survey of the human rights situation in Tibet produces a grim catalogue of despair and yet there is one cause for celebration. Holiday Inn is at last pulling out of Lhasa after a long campaign by the Free Tibet Campaign. From October this year wealthy tourists can no longer languish in the comfort of the Chinese run mausoleum on the edge of Lhasa or enjoy yakburgers in the "Hard Yak Cafe". For the time being at least, visitors will have to rub shoulders with the natives and more discerning trvavellers in the Tibetan run "Yak" and "Balakshaw" hotels.
And there is more good news, although of an as yet untried nature. American Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has said she plans to appoint a new "special coordinator" in the State Department to "see that the religious freedom of Tibetans is promoted and that their ethnicity is respected". Along with the new "ethical" foreign policy announced by the British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, could we be seeing at long last a willingness in Washington and Whitehall to defend Tibetan rights and risk the wrath of China? We can but watch and hope.
