28 The New European

EUROFILE

March 10-March 16, 2017

At nine years of age Phukang Rinpoche was faced with certain death: the novice monk found himself on a treacherous mountain pass with thousands of other

Tibetans fleeing a brutal crackdown being enforced by the Chinese military.

Troops from the People’s Liberation Army were beginning to outflank the bedraggled refugees whose only alternative was to climb further into the unforgiving Himalayan peaks. “We all stood there looking at each other, thinking we would have to wait for the Chinese and we would then fight and die,” said Rinpoche. “But one person had a good idea: All the yaks in the area were sent up the mountains to pave a way through the snow.”

For the young boy – not even a decade-old – the gamble paid off and he made his way into the relative safety of India. He was one of 100,000 desperate people who managed to escape Tibet in 1959 after mass protests by its people against a brutal Chinese occupation were met with a military siege and thousands of deaths. The initial protest, which took place 58 years ago today in Tibet’s ancient capital city, Lhasa, is commemorated every March 10. It is known as Tibetan Uprising Day.

Among the mass of escapees was the

Tibetan people’s spiritual leader – the Dalai Lama. Now revered around the world for his advocacy of Tibetans’ rights and of non-violence, the Dalai Lama was only 23 when he had to flee as heavily-armed Chinese troops entered Lhasa. The Chinese Red Army was waging a military campaign in an attempt to reassert control over Tibet, which had initially been invaded and occupied by the Chinese in 1950 but had never recognised or accepted Beijing’s rule.

“I remember it was a sunny spring day with a very bright blue sky,” said the Dalai Lama in the book Heirs to Tibet, where he outlined the situation on the ground in Lhasa on March 10 1959. “I could hear the noise of the crowd. I recall saying … suddenly: ‘Today might be a turning point in the history of Tibet. Maybe this is the beginning of a new era’. Of course I had no idea what was shortly to happen, but at that moment I was, I think, conscious of history as it actually occurred.”

History, as the expression goes, was on the side of the victors and by March 20 it was reported that in parts of Lhasa it was impossible to walk in a straight line amid the piles of corpses. The Tibetan-government-in-exile has estimated that, since the Chinese invasion of Tibet nearly 70 years ago, over one million Tibetans have

died as a result of the occupation.Tibet would be the world’s tenth-largest

nation if it were still a recognised country, but this land-locked giant has remained shrouded in secrecy since the Chinese guns fell silent – a silence which is intentional and enforced.

With the Himalayan mountain range in southern Tibet serving as a high-altitude Berlin Wall, the people of this region are denied the opportunity to speak out and remain virtual prisoners in an open-air jail. In its 2016 Freedom in the World report on human rights worldwide, respected US-based think-tank Freedom House ranked Tibet second only to Syria as the as the world’s least free place.

The Chinese state has continued to rule Tibet with an ever-clenched iron-fist and (while figures are notoriously hard to obtain) it has been estimated that most of the money China invests in Tibet is spent on control and coercion. Experts reckon that government and Communist Party administration alone makes up a staggering 13% of the region’s total economic activity.

In the Tibetan monasteries which survived the ravages of China’s devastating Cultural Revolution, and which the Chinese authorities continue to view with suspicion, it is not unusual for police surveillance cameras to be hidden in sacred Tibetan prayer wheels. Nowhere is off-limits.

One of the intended results of this ‘information air-lock’ is to marginalise the Tibetan people’s struggle from mainstream discourse – and it has been highly effective. Today many people around the globe struggle to recognise even the name of Tibet and in the United States (according to a crowd-funded opinion poll by ComRes on behalf of Free Tibet) 30% of those polled had no idea that Tibet was even a region or

country in Asia – some even thought it was the name of a mountain. In the UK, meanwhile, 52% felt they did not know enough about Tibet to have an opinion on the situation there.

The reality on the ground for those living in the high-altitude country (now designated by the Chinese government as either being part of Southwest China or the euphemistically-named Tibetan Autonomous Region) is a life of permanent subjugation. The United Nations’ Committee Against Torture found in its most-recent evaluation that the use of torture and ill-treatment was “still deeply entrenched” in China’s criminal justice system, reporting numerous credible reports of Tibetans subjected to torture.

Given the comprehensive nature of China’s controls, it is often only the testimony of those who have escaped to join the Tibetan diaspora – now estimated to be 250,000-strong – that bears witness to the horrors of military occupation. Tibetan monk and human rights activist Golog Jigme Gyatso is now exiled in India and bears the hallmarks of torture from his three-term stint in various notorious Chinese prisons. Golog Jigme was jailed, in part, for championing the preservation of the Tibetan language.

Known as the ‘Roof the World’, Tibet is home to a unique culture and religion, as well as over two dozen distinct languages. They are all at risk of being eradicated under China’s occupation. Mandarin Chinese has become the official language of education and business, while almost all of the senior government, police and military positions throughout Tibet are dominated by Han Chinese members of the Chinese Communist Party.

In February 2014, authorities forced a

Today marks a sombre date in the Tibet calendar, explains campaigner ELEANOR BYRNE-ROSENGREN. But as the struggle for freedom goes on, even here, the ripples from Brexit will be felt

FREEDOM’S STRUGGLE

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(1) Labrang (2) Horseman (3) Young woman (4) Soldiers Photos: Satoshi Uyghur . Falsalama / Ryan Gauvin

29The New European

EUROFILE

March 10-March 16, 2017

Tibetan-language competition in Ngaba, eastern Tibet, to be cancelled on the basis that “the Tibetan language contains words that can be used to express opposition to Chinese rule”. The authorities warned the organisers of “serious consequences” if they did not comply with their order.

Detained Tibetan language advocate Tashi Wangchuk has paid with his liberty for championing his mother tongue and now faces a prison term of up to 15 years after featuring in a New York Times article which highlighted his attempt to ensure Tibetan children have access to indigenous language education.

Seized by the authorities in late January 2016 and held since in detention without trial, his efforts to save the threatened language began after local officials closed down Tibetan classes, leaving his close family without access to mother tongue learning. “My nieces want to become fluent in Tibetan but don’t know where to go … Our words will be lost to them,” he told the newspaper shortly before his arrest.

Tashi Wangchuk joins a long list of Tibetans harassed, detained, imprisoned and tortured for their language advocacy. In December 2013 Tibetan monk Khenpo Kartse, well known for his promotion of his language, was given a two-and-a-half year jail term following a closed trial.

For some the loss of their language is too much to bear and in March 2012, 20-year-old Tsering Kyi burned herself alive in a self-immolation protest after her school shifted from teaching in Tibetan to Mandarin Chinese.

In a further assault on Tibetan culture, in the summer of 2016 the Chinese authorities unleashed an army of earth-movers on the Tibetan Buddhist institute of Larung Gar, which is home to anywhere between 10,000

and 40,000 monks, nuns and students. Citing “fire risks” and “overcrowding” the authorities have now forcibly expelled over 6,000 of Larung Gar’s residents and reduced large areas of this religiously and culturally significant site to rubble. The demolitions were devastating for Tibetans and three nuns living at Larung Gar took their own lives in response. One of the nuns, Rinzin Dolma, left a note, in which she said that she could no longer “bear the pain of the endless Chinese harassment of innocent Buddhists who quietly studied at the institute”.

“Information can trickle out of Tibet,” says Free Tibet campaigner John Jones. “Sometimes it is slow and intermittent and other times, suddenly, flashes of illumination like sitting in a thunderstorm during a power cut.”

Founded in 1987, Free Tibet campaigns for Tibetans to be able to determine their own future. In its 30 years the organisation has seen the ebbs and flows of the Tibetan struggle for freedom.

Most recently the spotlight fell on Tibet in 2008. In the same year that Beijing hosted the Olympic Games, mass Tibetan protests were put down with brutal force by the Chinese military and security services, followed by a suffocating crackdown that left Tibetans feeling trapped and unable to tell the world of their oppression.

The frustration and rage felt across Tibet materialised in stark fashion when a number of Tibetans, from all manner of backgrounds, began to set themselves on fire in protest against the occupation. These self-immolations, which experienced a peak around 2011 and 2012, seized global attention. Over 140 Tibetans have carried out self-immolation protests since 2009, with most of them proving fatal.

The politically-charged self-immolations demand global attention, yet speaking out on Tibet carries real consequences. A superpower with a thin skin, the Chinese government has made it its policy to try and intimidate governments that raise human rights concerns in Tibet, or who even meet the Dalai Lama. China has considerable economic clout, which it has used to apply pressure on governments including France, Norway and South Africa, all of which rebuffed the Dalai Lama, apparently giving into pressure.

Last autumn, China cancelled trade talks with the Slovakian Prime Minister, Robert Fico, following a meeting between the country’s President, Andrej Kiska, and the Dalai Lama. Fico stated the meeting had “clearly damaged Slovakian-Chinese relations” valued at £5.4bn in 2015.

This economic intimidation has been accompanied by liberal use of soft power. China has launched initiatives such as the network of Confucius Institutes that facilitate the teaching of Mandarin, among other topics, in universities and schools around the world. China’s cultural reach – through film and, increasingly, tourism – has also played a role in putting a friendly face on a government that continues to keep six million Tibetans under occupation and crushes dissent with force.

The UK is not immune from Beijing’s pressure. A 2012 meeting between the Dalai Lama and former Prime Minister David Cameron led to relations between China and the UK being put, in the words of one report, in the “deep freeze”. Never mind that trade between the UK and China actually increased during this period, the lesson appeared to have been learned and the UK government has not met with the Dalai Lama since then.

Now the UK’s will to hold China to account risks diminishing further. As part of the EU, the UK has been able to put some pressure on China over Tibet.

Under the umbrella of the EU’s European External Action Service (EEAS) the UK has contributed to constructive statements while also being shielded from China’s direct anger. However, a post-Brexit Britain will no longer be shielded from Beijing’s anger should it speak out. In this new era, the UK government will need to work on its own to make these necessary interventions on human rights violations in China.

The UK government, in conjunction with its European partners, has made some modest but useful interventions on human rights in Tibet in the past, but that position is weakening. If the military trade deal Theresa May carved out with Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdo an sets a new precedent, then that is a real cause for concern.

Despite harsh and often brutal treatment, the Tibetan people, and their unique way of life, have shown a remarkable capacity for survival. This March 10, rallies to commemorate the 58th anniversary of the Tibetan Uprising will take place in cities worldwide, including London, New York, Delhi, Kathmandu and Sydney. They bear testimony to the tenacious character of a movement and struggle which has borne years of domination by a powerful and over-arching neighbour.

� Eleanor Byrne-Rosengren is director of Free Tibet, a UK-based group which is active internationally and works alongside its network of sister organisations in the global Tibet movement. It campaigns for an end to China’s occupation and for international recognition of Tibetans’ right to freedom

AT THE ROOF OF THE WORLD

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(5, 6) Soldiers (7) Monks escaping gunfire Photos: Ryan Gauvin / Prasad Kholkute / Fal-salama