RFA
Por Tsering Woeser (*)
16 December 2012
PHOTO: Tibetan writer Woeser in an archive photo.
The Tibetan poet describes the experience of entering the capital city of the region
The Qinghai-Tibet train is packed with tourists from all over China on its way to Tibet, singing songs from several years, among others “On the train to Lhasa”. A train guard in Hubei anxiously asks me: “¿What is the security situation in Lhasa??” “Very safe for you (Han Chinese)” I tell him, deliberately emphasizing the “you.”. Some young people with Beijing accents sit nearby and ask me about it. "There is an army, and police and private officers lined the streets” I tell them.
The train guard is quite smart and asks: “¿Tibetans feel very oppressed? Another young man intervenes: “¿Does this have something to do with those Tibetans who have committed self-immolation?”
Therefore, Some people know about Tibetan self-immolations, despite the Party's deafening silence on the issue. Party organs at all levels prevent people from speaking openly about it.
I look at them as if they were strange beings from another land: “These are not isolated incidents.” I say. “More than 50 Tibetans have self-immolated, throughout the Tibetan region, even some in exile”.
Someone continues with a question: “¿Why do they want to set themselves on fire??” But others are already moving away, turning their heads to look at the landscape.
I am very aware of the language barrier, even though we all speak Chinese. I think self-immolation is hardly a strange tragedy these days, but while a culture could understand why a person sacrifices themselves in their own name, can't see why anyone would do it in the name of an ethnic group. But I want to say a little more about that., and tell them about the last words spoken by some Tibetans who have committed self-immolation.
Maybe some people won't want to hear anything else.. Going to Tibet on vacation is the dream of many Chinese, and maybe… they just want to be well and use the 10 vacation days that you have carefully saved. They are mostly concerned with seeing the scenery., and “Tibetan tourist places” previously chosen by your travel agency. They don't care about local residents who have nothing to do with tourist attractions, like Tibetans who set themselves on fire.
Disembarking
Buddha's enlightenment teaches us that all living beings are equal. But actually, there is a world of differences; particularly among different ethnic groups. When our train, filled with many living beings, up to Lhasa station, most non-Tibetan passengers move lightly, very excited to go to different parts of Lhasa, and they seem very happy, even those who are immediately attacked by altitude sickness.
About a dozen Tibetan passengers, on the contrary, They are detained by armed police and their identity cards checked with a device similar to those used to swipe credit cards.. When I hand in my card, I am arrested with words, “Woeser ¡stay behind!”
¿What can Tibetans who are detained like this do?? We are all taken to the police station near the train station. I can't help but think of all the Tibetans in Lhasa who were sent to “study classes.”” for brainwashing after they traveled to India earlier this year to attend an initiation led by the Dalai Lama. ¿Were they as nervous as I am when they were taken from their homes by the police or when they were intercepted on their way home??
Two young Tibetan women from the southern part of Qinghai province will be sent home the next day, because they do not have a “permit to enter Tibet”. The police who treat Tibetan women pay little attention to their requests, repeatedly telling them that “permission to enter Tibet” must be issued by police departments at the county level or higher. The really funny thing is that one of the young women, that looks a little Chinese, She tells the police that she is really a fake Tibetan, what surprises them, and they ask why. She says she changed her nationality from Han to Tibetan to take advantage of the positive discrimination offered to ethnic minorities in the university admissions process.. “This is now a big annoyance for me.” dice, admitting that he deeply regrets that.
Those Tibetans who do have a “permit to enter Tibet”” They have their identity cards photocopied and are asked to indicate the address where they will be staying in Lhasa, the reason for your trip and your identity, and also have them sign and add their fingerprints in blood red ink. I do not have “permission to enter Tibet”, but as a special person required to be out of Beijing for the duration of the 18thº Party Congress, I also give them my fingerprints.
When the two young women from Qinghai and I are finally allowed to leave the police station and enter Lhasa, they say to each other, between sobs, “¿who would have thought it would be so hard for Tibetans to enter Lhasa?”.-
(*) Tsering Woeser is an activist, Tibetan poet and blogger living in Beijing.-
