Le Monde des religions, July-August 2008 —
Occurring just months before the Beijing Olympics, the riots in Tibet last March brutally thrust the Tibetan question back into the international spotlight. Faced with public outrage, Western governments unanimously called on the Chinese government to resume dialogue with the Dalai Lama, who, contrary to the wishes of most of his compatriots, no longer seeks independence for his country, but simply cultural autonomy within China. Tentative contacts have been established, but all astute observers know they have little chance of success. The current Chinese president, Hu Jintao, was governor of Tibet twenty years ago, and he so violently suppressed the riots of 1987-1989 that he was dubbed the "Butcher of Lhasa." This earned him a meteoric rise within the party, but also instilled in him a deep resentment against the Tibetan leader who received the Nobel Peace Prize that same year. The Chinese leadership's policy of demonizing the Dalai Lama and awaiting his death while pursuing a brutal policy of colonization in Tibet is extremely risky. For contrary to their claims, the riots of last March, like those of twenty years ago, were not instigated by the Tibetan government-in-exile, but by young Tibetans who can no longer tolerate the oppression they suffer: imprisonment for their opinions, the prohibition of speaking Tibetan in government offices, numerous obstacles to religious practice, economic favoritism towards Chinese settlers who are becoming more numerous than the Tibetans, and so on. Since the Chinese People's Liberation Army's invasion of Tibet in 1950, this policy of violence and discrimination has only strengthened nationalist sentiment among Tibetans, who were once quite rebellious towards the state and who experienced their sense of belonging to Tibet more through the shared identity of a common language, culture, and religion than through a politically motivated nationalist sentiment. Nearly sixty years of brutal colonization have only reinforced this nationalist sentiment, and an overwhelming majority of Tibetans wish to regain their country's independence. Only a figure as legitimate and charismatic as the Dalai Lama is capable of persuading them to relinquish this legitimate claim and reaching an agreement with the authorities in Beijing on a form of Tibetan cultural autonomy within a Chinese national space where the two peoples could attempt to coexist harmoniously. On March 22nd, thirty dissident Chinese intellectuals living in China published a courageous op-ed in the foreign press, emphasizing that the demonization of the Dalai Lama and the refusal to make any major concessions to Tibet were leading China into the dramatic dead end of permanent repression. This repression only reinforces anti-Chinese sentiment among the three major colonized peoples—Tibetans, Uyghurs, and Mongols—referred to as “minorities” by the communist authorities, who represent only 3% of the population but occupy nearly 50% of the territory. Let us hope that the Beijing Olympic Games will not be Games of shame, but rather Games that will allow the Chinese authorities to accelerate their opening to the world and to the values of respect for human rights, beginning with the freedom of individuals and peoples to self-determination.