Mick Hartley

I know it’s all very wonderful that Steven Spielberg has withdrawn from any involvement in the Beijing Olympics, as a protest against China not doing enough to pressure the Sudanese regime over Darfur. It draws attention to Darfur, and it embarrasses the Chinese, so it can’t be bad. Who knows, it might even have some kind of effect. But really, if you’re going to boycott the Olympics for political reasons, why go for something which isn’t the direct responsibilty of the Chinese? Why not go for something closer to home, something that’s entirely down to them? There’s the overall human rights situation of course, but that’s maybe a little too vague. I’m thinking of something more specific: something like the destruction of a country and a culture that’s still going on, one of the great forgotten crimes of the 20th Century. You remember it, surely – what’s the place? Oh yes….Tibet.

So what’s happening out there? Are there any protests planned? A quick google search reveals that there’s a Tibetan Olympics:

The Tibetan Olympics is an initiative to offer a platform for young Tibetans to celebrate the spirit of the World Olympics being held in Beijing in August. The event will be held from 15 to 25 May, in Dharamshala, India, where the Tibetan government-in-exile is based.

Fighting talk!

An around-the-world torch relay has just started:

After the torch was lit to kick-start the around-the-world torch relay, all the participants walked for about 15 minutes. All the participants shouted “Victorious Tibet” several times.

The police had refused permission to do the event at Gandhi Samadhi (memorial tomb) at Raj Ghat as orginally planned. The symbolic torch relay culminated without any untoward public inconveniences.

Then there’s a Race for Tibet:

Join us in calling on China to:
* End Human Rights abuses in Tibet
* Directly engage the Dalai Lama to find a negotiated solution for Tibet

Make your voice heard by signing the petition urging China to improve its human rights practices and demanding integrity from the IOC and China.

If you get the impression that these efforts, worthy though they may well be, are pathetically inadequate to the task at hand – well, I couldn’t disagree. In a contest between on the one hand the full might of China, and on the other a few people shouting “Victorious Tibet” several times (without causing any untoward public inconveniences), there’s only going to be one winner.

It’s all over bar the shouting, and there’s not even much of that any more. Tibet’s hardly mentioned nowadays. Here, in a rare exception, is Tristram Hunt in the Observer a couple of years back, on the “the ongoing artistic, linguistic and religious genocide in Tibet”:

The terrible truth of Mao’s Cultural Revolution bears repeating. Between 1966-1977, an entire civilisation was gutted as 2,000 years of Tibetan history was razed. Prior to China’s invasion, there had been 6,259 Buddhist monasteries and nunneries; by 1976, eight remained. In the name of socialist purity, untold numbers of statues, artefacts, ancient manuscripts and paintings vanished.

A few high-profile palaces and temples were restored in the 1980s. But since 1994, the Chinese government has opted for an active programme of destroying the nation’s sense of its autonomous history….

In human terms, it has meant savage treatment of the monks and nuns who embody centuries of Buddhist teaching. The arbitrary arrest of religious leaders Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche and Ngawang Phulchung is just the tip of an iceberg of human-rights abuse. Currently, hundreds languish in jail without trial for ‘crimes’ including raising a Tibetan flag, while others suffer the hideous inventiveness of the People’s Liberation Army’s torture tactics.

With the people has gone the historic fabric. China is currently engaged in a wholesale demolition of the ancient neighbourhoods of the holy city of Lhasa. Despite its unique world heritage status and any number of objections from Unesco, the ancient architecture is being ruthlessly replaced with communist concrete.

Lhasa, a site of supreme significance for Tibetan Buddhists, is awash with brothels and barracks. The meditative rhythms of a monastic city have been replaced by the sonic blare of go-go bars and neon glare of tacky commerce. An aggressive, militaristic capitalism overwhelms the pacifist tradition of centuries. Meanwhile, in the schools, the Tibetan language is under sustained assault.

Perhaps the final indignity is that, under Chinese beneficence, some gutted monasteries are being restored, not as functioning religious sites, but as heritage attractions. An authentic culture is being transformed into faux ‘living history’. Tibet is being turned into a theme park.

I wondered, in a post at the time, why Tibet didn’t somehow excite the passions of the Left:

Is it because of a reluctance to criticise China? Hardly: all but the most entrenched Stalinists are willing to condemn much of Mao’s legacy. Is it because Tibet’s seen as some kind of feudal relic which isn’t worth defending? Perhaps. But there are two main problems as I see it: firstly, they picked the wrong religion. All this hippyish Buddhism, with the Dalai Lama eschewing violence and smiling at everyone: it just doesn’t grab the headlines the way that Palestinians suicide bombers do. If these people were really desperate, wouldn’t they be blowing themselves up all over the place? And it’s all so middle class. Celebs like Richard Gere support Tibet, for God’s sake – how uncool is that? You could imagine the Women’s Institute organising a Bring-and-Buy sale in support of Tibet. This is no cause for a serious dialectically-minded image-conscious young rebel to espouse.

The second mistake: they picked the wrong enemy. If they’d chosen a country like Israel, democratic, with a free press and accountable politicians, they’d be so much better placed. All they’d need to do – and all their supporters in the West would need to do – is switch on the TV, or read the papers: “Monastery Burnt by Chinese Troops, Priceless Manuscripts Destroyed – Chinese troops burnt down yet another monastery today, 50 miles west of Llasa, killing 20 monks in the process, and imprisoning a further 300…..” But the Chinese don’t bother with all that. Any idea how many hundreds of thousands have been killed by the Chinese in Tibet over the past 50-odd years? No? Nor me. Or how many have been tortured to death, or imprisoned for years for “anti-Chinese” crimes? They don’t give the figures out. And it works.

So there you go. Tibet is dead: long live the Tibet Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China.

Then of course there’s Xinjiang….