By Lobsang Sangay
Published on 14 July in The Washington Post
Empty original: For Tibetans, no other way to protest
Lobsang Sangay is the Kalon Gut or Prime Minister of Tibet, the head of the Tibetan Government in Exile.
From the 2009 Forty-three Tibetans have committed self-immolation shouting slogans for the return of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to Tibet and calling for the freedom of Tibet.. Among them are, monks, nuns, nomads and students. Two of them were mothers. All, excepting 11, have died and yet their actions and the Tibetan cause have not generated the attention and support they expected. On the contrary, The Chinese Government puts all the blame on these Tibetans and refuses to study the real causes of these actions.
Despite repeated appeals from the Central Tibetan Administration, based in India, for these drastic actions to stop, Tibetans persist in self-immolations. Besides, In the Tibetan administration we believe that it is our sacred duty to make the cries of the protesters heard by all the people of the world who believe in justice. Tibetans around the world have offered their prayers for those who have given their lives.
The Chinese Communist Party has classified these self-immolations as acts of terrorism. This is absurd. Within Buddhist philosophy there is complexity about whether inflicting harm on oneself is a violent act or if the motivation for the act, more than the act itself, determines its nature. However, What is clear is that the intention of these protesters was not to harm anyone but themselves..
To understand these acts, It is crucial to know that within China there is no kind of freedom of expression or any form of conventional protest. The person who participates in a demonstration runs a high risk of being imprisoned, tortured and even killed. When the Chinese celebrated their new year in February, Hundreds of Tibetans protested in Drakgo regions, Serta and Ngaba (traditionally known as Amdo, now Qinghai province). The Beijing government responded by shooting protesters. six died.
Having been denied the right to carry out less extreme protests, Tibetans are immolating themselves as a political action. Almost all of those sacrificed are less than 50 years. This means that they were born and raised within occupied Tibet. Occupation that has lasted since 1959, when the government of the People's Republic of China promised a “socialist paradise”. These Tibetans were to be the “main beneficiaries” of the Chinese political system and its education, economy and culture. However, What has happened is that they clearly criticize the failure of the Chinese government's policy in Tibet. Policies founded on political oppression, social marginalization, cultural assimilation and environmental destruction. These are the true causes of the demonstrations and deaths. If the Chinese Government offered to resolve the Tibet issue peacefully through dialogue, These self-immolations would end immediately.
The Chinese Government has closed Tibet to foreign tourists and journalists and expelled Tibetans from outside the Tibet Autonomous Region.. A Chinese intellectual commented at the beginning of the year that in the region's capital it seems that "there are more Han Chinese than Tibetans.", “more soldiers than monks and more surveillance cameras than windows”. Unfortunately there are more weapons than our traditional butter lamps for the dead.
Tibetan immolations are part of a global historical phenomenon. It is well known that Vietnamese monks self-immolated in protest against the Vietnam War and that Quakers in the United States immolated themselves in an act of support for this cause.. in 1969 A man immolated himself in Czechoslovakia to protest against communist rule. In Tunisia at the end of the 2010 An unemployed fruit seller set himself on fire and was the catalyst for the Jasmine Revolution. During the uprising, similar acts took place in Tunisia and Arab countries.. Even in China there have been some immolations by Chinese protesting against the government.
What makes Tibet a unique situation is that the number of tragedies is terribly high. Despite the fact that many of our Tibetans have resorted to self-immolation as the only possible means to protest, The international response bears no resemblance to the outpouring of support generated by the anti-Vietnam war campaign or the powerful network of support displayed during the Arab Spring. Of course, Tibetans appreciate statements of support from the international community, such as that recently expressed by the North American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, calling on the Chinese to resume dialogue with the Tibetans. However, concrete action is needed to help end the tragedy in Tibet.. The time has come when the world must silence the noise caused by Chinese influence and listen to the cries of the Tibetans: The repression is unbearable and unacceptable. Voices in Tibet cry out to see their leader, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, exiled since 1959. Millions of people around the world have access to His Holiness but not his own people within Tibet.
Since we know that the democratic countries of the world recognize human rights and fundamental freedoms as universal values, We ask the international community to intervene before our situation deteriorates further. This month in its annual dialogue with China, The US State Department should urge the Chinese to immediately relax restrictions in Tibet and request fact-finding delegations to determine the reasons for the high number of tragic self-immolations in Tibet.
