Some Information on Tibet

This week we have been lucky enough to watch one documentary on Tibet and to have had two speakers come and talk to our group. All of this information I am repeating from the film and speakers ; I did not have time to back check every fact and figure. So please, if you are moved to do so, look further into some of these statistics and let me know where I can make adjustments.

The film gave a brief history of China’s occupation of Tibet, some of their lies and human rights atrocities, and most of all gave a clear vision of how Tibet has a very rich culture of its own, in contrast to China’s claims that Tibet belongs as a part of China. Bagdro La, a monk and a former political prisoners suffering in a Chinese prison in Tibet, spoke to us of his personal experiences. Lhasang Tsering, a local bookstore owner, among other things, in his lifetime has been a guerilla fighting for the Tibetan cause, a teacher, a government server, the president of the Tibetan Youth Conference, and a stroke victim. Tsering was an incredibly intelligent man and his fears and pessimistic outlook at Tibet’s future were disheartening and heart wrenching to hear coming from his heart with so much passion. Unfortunately, he has sufficient reason to feel pessimistic.

Since China decided that Tibet (a country with a different culture, language and script, geography, and history) was part of China in 1949, 1.2 million Tibetans have died, 1/6th of Tibet’s total population. A country of only 6 million people (less than the amount of people living on the island of Manhattan) may seem respectively small and insignificant, but these people inhabit a country of 2.5 million sq. km (over one-forth the size of the USA) in the center of Asia. Their importance geographically alone is huge. As “The Roof of the World,” Tibet and its mountains are the source of much of Asia’s drinking water, with one river alone supplying drinking water for 1 in 12 Chinese. Tibet is in the center of Asia, historically acting almost as a peace zone. Tibet’s historic boundaries separate China and India, the world’s two largest populations, together accounting for nearly one-half of the world’s population. With a free Tibet there would be 5,200 km between these two powers, easing tensions and their very real arms race.

The Tibetan culture is strategically being destroyed. Tibet was a distinct nation by all modern standards. Over the centuries, other surrounding nations attempted with varying amounts of success to exert control over Tibet, but the same is true with the majority of today’s nations (many European countries were taken over by other countries just in the 20th century, and we do not question their right to be independent nations today.) From 1919 to 1949’s Chinese invasion, Tibet was an independent state by modern standards. Since then, Tibetans in and of former Tibet have struggled to regain their freedom and keep their culture intact. China has forced a large-scale population move of Chinese peasants into Tibet—a serious violation of the Geneva Conference of 1949 if Tibet is in fact occupied illegally— offering the immigrants incentives such as jobs. Tibetans are now a minority and are reduced to second class citizens on their own land, unable to find jobs because they are first given to Chinese. Now, also, Chinese charge tuition for education; the amount for one child is more than the average Tibetan family makes in a year. In years before Chinese occupation, most Tibetans were either monks or farmers: the monks were received constant education, and have knowledge of how the mind works that would make the West seem in the dark, while the average Tibetan peasant received no formal schooling but learned from his family. Now, however, with an enormous population influx from China, living off of the land is no longer an easy option for many Tibetans and in order to compete in a job market with Chinese who are already preferred, they must have an education.

Over the years, many tactics have been attempted to regain Tibet’s independence. His Holiness the Dali Lama has called for peaceful struggle consistently, and he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for his efforts in the struggle for the liberation of Tibet by advocating peaceful solutions based on tolerance and mutual respect. Unfortunately, peaceful methods have had little success and after the Dali Lama and the Tibetan government fled to safety in Northern India in 1959, nearly 80,000 Tibetans have managed to follow into exile with over 8,000 living near His Holiness in Mcleod Ganj.

At a time, the US was aiding in Tibet’s struggle against Chinese imperialism, with the CIA helping to train Tibetans exiles. However, when Russia began to be perceived as a greater threat, the US cut off aid to Tibet in order to begin to forge a relationship and alliance with Mao’s China. Today, it seems that our economic relations and interests in China are important enough to override the human rights atrocities that China allows (I could have an entire essay on this one for you, one day, as well.) China has an unfair advantage in the world market (among many other reasons) because it uses prison labor in its occupied territories such as Tibet, Manchuria, Eastern Turkistan, and “Inner” Mongolia. They do not pay these territories for stripping natural resources from them, and the cost of forcing their prisoners to work and feeding them little to survive is very low. This unfairly cheapens goods in competition with the rest of the world (compare U.S. scissor making company paying workers minimum wage to Chinese forcing political prisoners in Tibet to make scissors without pay. Sorry, U.S. company; you’re out of luck, people would rather cheaper scissors at Walmart, the world’s number one purchaser of Chinese made factory goods.)

Another example specifically in Tibet’s case: the Chinese found mass quantities of uranium in Tibet. They began to extract and sell it at a price well below that of the world market average and then offered to buy back the highly toxic uranium wastes (typically a burden for the country that purchased it to dispose of.) Uranium has no use to a country like Tibet and is only sought by rich countries. So Tibetans have to suffer from the destruction of their landscape in the extraction of the uranium and then again when China uses Tibet as a dumping ground for the highly dangerous Uranium waste. With China haphazardly dumping these wastes in a country still seismologically active and the foundation of much of Asia’s drinking water, an earthquake could let out uranium waste into the source of much of Asia’s drinking water, proving an environmental and human catastrophe.

This destruction of the environment is widespread. Chinese projects are filling Tibet with roads and railroads and deforestation, mining, and the building of dams are further altering the country’s landscape. Currently underway is the building of the largest dam ever undertaken by mankind which will create the world’s largest inland sea. Such a manmade attempt to control nature could alter the temperature of Tibetan plateaus, affecting the flow of rivers out of Tibet and affecting the monsoons, in turn affecting many countries. This, of course, will not prove to be the first time that China greatly miscalculates nature. The years of Mao’s crop reorganizing proved to be a catastrophe in which 30 million Chinese died of food shortages. During this time, Tibetans were forced to grow wheat—prefered by the Chinese—in place of their traditional grains, and when much of this wheat crop died in Tibet’s harsh climate, many Tibetans starved, as well.

Lhasang Tsering was passionate about the damage that has been done to Tibet and not opposed to using any means necessary to take back what rightfully belongs to Tibetans. When asked about violence as a solution, he replied, “kicking a rapist between the legs is not violence. Because no one is helping the rape victim, this is not terrorism. The weak cannot terrorize the strong. China is the aggressor, and at this point it is either “do or die” before Tibet’s culture disappears for good.”

At this point, we all had tears in our eyes…and there were no more questions.