The World of Religions, July-August 2008 —
Occurring a few months before the Beijing Olympics, the riots in Tibet last March abruptly brought the Tibetan issue back to the forefront of the international stage. Faced with public emotion, Western governments unanimously asked the Chinese government to renew dialogue with the Dalai Lama, who, against the wishes of most of his compatriots, is known to no longer be demanding independence for his country, but simply cultural autonomy within China. Some tentative contacts have been made, but all informed observers know that they have little chance of success. The current Chinese president, Hu Jintao, was governor of Tibet twenty years ago and so violently suppressed the riots of 1987-1989 that he has been dubbed the "Butcher of Lhasa." This earned him a significant rise within the party, but also left him with a deep-rooted 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 colonization policy in Tibet is highly risky. Because, contrary to what they claim, the riots last March, like those of twenty years ago, were not the work of the Tibetan government in exile, but of young Tibetans who could no longer bear the oppression they were subjected to: imprisonment for crimes of opinion, a ban on speaking Tibetan in government offices, multiple restrictions on religious practice, economic favoritism in favor of Chinese settlers who were becoming more numerous than Tibetans, etc. Since the invasion of Tibet by the Chinese People's Army in 1950, this policy of violence and discrimination has only strengthened nationalist sentiment among Tibetans, who were once quite rebellious against the state and who lived their sense of belonging to Tibet more through the identity of a common language, culture, and religion than through a political sentiment of the nationalist type. Nearly sixty years of brutal colonization have only strengthened nationalist sentiment, and an overwhelming majority of Tibetans want to regain their country's independence. Only a figure as legitimate and charismatic as the Dalai Lama is able to make them swallow the pill of renouncing this legitimate demand and reach an agreement with the authorities in Beijing on a form of Tibetan cultural autonomy in a Chinese national space where the two peoples could try to coexist harmoniously. On March 22, 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 impasse of permanent repression. This only reinforces anti-Chinese sentiment among the three major colonized peoples—Tibetans, Uighurs, and Mongols—called "minorities" by the communist authorities, who represent only 3% of the population but occupy nearly 50% of the territory. Let us express a pious hope that the Beijing Olympic Games will not be the Games of shame, but those that will allow the Chinese authorities to accelerate openness to the world and the values of respect for human rights, starting with the freedom of individuals and peoples to self-determination.