BTColumn – Behind the smiles of Tibet

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by this author are their own and do not represent the official position of the Barbados Today.

by Adrian Sobers

“These were unmentionable topics inside China. [The CCP] had effectively criminalized any public displays of affection for the Dalai Lama.” – (Barbara Demick, Eat the Buddha)

One of Ms. Demick’s stories nicely illustrates what some folks have trouble distinguishing between: the Chinese people, and their government. She tells a story about clashes between the Chinese police, Tibetans, and a young Buddhist named Tsepey: “She was no older than twenty, he thought.

Her hair was cut shoulder length and matted with blood. More blood, thick and pasty, covered her forehead. A gash ran vertically from her hairline to her nose, which he figured must be a bullet wound.”

She continues, “Until then, his anger at the Chinese government was vague and unfocused. He hated the way they condescended to Tibetans. […] That you could be sent to jail for reading a banned book or pamphlet, that Tibetans were forced to learn the language of their oppressors, and that they had to go to lectures in which the Chinese government defamed His Holiness the Dalai Lama. But Tsepey hadn’t felt anger toward the Chinese as individuals — he had many Chinese friends and had dated Chinese women.”

His anger was directed, not at people, but their government. Thank God for journalists. As the Beijing bureau chief of the Los Angeles Times, Ms. Demick is aware of realities on the ground that are different from the tourist view one gets at political pressers where words are carefully calibrated.

Leading up to the Olympics, contrary to the CCP’s “promises about improving human rights and opening the country to journalists”, much of the country remained off-limits to reporters. Among the most impenetrable was Ngaba.”

Eat the Buddha is an especially important work given a recent report which revealed that Beijing is extending its repression and using the techniques from Xinjiang in Tibet. One of the policemen told Tsepey, “The Communist Party has control of the sky and the earth. You can’t run away.” That statement rings true today in Tibet where “Beijing reportedly has begun sending rural Tibetan workers into “military-style” vocational-training centers, where they receive ideological instruction and become factory labourers.”

Responding to Reuters, a Chinese official said, “What these people with ulterior motives are calling “forced labor” simply does not exist. We hope the international community will distinguish right from wrong, respect facts, and not be fooled
by lies.”

Since Beijing bans foreign reporters from Tibet, and journalists are not free to roam Xinjiang, the CCP’s statements ring hollow. For now, we have to thank God for journalists and be content with Ms. Demick’s work.

A work where she tells the story of how the government forces were trying to “starve them [monks] into submission.”
A work where she tells the story of the CCP’s campaign of forced merriment.

One particular thought is worth sharing in detail, “A peculiarity of Chinese rule over Tibet is the government’s insistence that Tibetans are happy, so happy that they while away their days singing and dancing. This ruse grows out of the Chinese Communist Party’s historical posturing as the defender of the oppressed.”

She continues, “To absolve themselves of the sins of imperialism, it was essential that they show the Tibetans’ enthusiastic acceptance of Chinese rule.

To this end, government propagandists devote inordinate effort to disseminating photographs, pamphlets, and books that show Tibetans with smiles stretched across their faces. State television regularly publicizes supposed polls that claim Lhasa is China’s ‘happiest city.’” It is anything but.

I leave you with the words of a song titled, 1958–2008: “The year nineteen fifty-eight / The year when the bitter enemy arrived in Tibet / We live in terror of that year / The year two thousand and eight / The year when innocent Tibetans were tortured / The year when the citizens of the earth were killed / We live in terror of that year.”

The word from the world is mum on these issues because, for the most part, it remains spellbound by racecraft, applied postmodernism, and critical Theory. (More on that later.)

For now, we thank God for journalists, even as Tibetans get ready to add to the aforementioned song, “The year twenty-twenty […].”

This column was offered as a letter to the Editor.