B.RAMAN
“We shall not give up our struggle for preserving
our ethnic, religious and cultural identity. We shall not give up our reverence
for His Holiness the Dalai Lama. We will not lose hopes of his returning to our
homeland one day and guiding us again. We are Tibetans and we shall prevail.”
2. That is the message of defiance that the
Tibetans living in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan
and Yunnan have been sending loud and clear to Mr.Hu Jintao, the outgoing
General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and his successor Mr.Xi Jinping, who will be taking over next
week at the end of the 18th Congress of the CPC being held at
Beijing from November 8,2012.
3. The Tibetan people have reasons to be bitter
against Mr.Hu. He made his name as a party functionary in the TAR where he was
posted. His ruthless suppression of the Tibetans caught the eyes of Deng
Xiao-ping who had him brought to Beijing and groomed to be the General Secretary
of the CPC one day.
4. Hu Jintao was appointed Party
Secretary of the TAR on December 9, 1988, in replacement of comparatively
liberal-minded Wu Jinghua, belonging to
the Yi nationality, who was a protégé of Hu Yaobang. The next day, there was a huge demonstration
in Lhasa. People’s Armed Police Units opened fire on the demonstrators killing
many of them.
5. Hu arrived in Lhasa in mid-January 1989 and took
over as the Party Secretary. On January
23, 1989, Hu went to Shigatse, the seat of the Panchen Lama, to make a courtesy
call on him.Hu reportedly told the Panchen Lama that he "considered
himself a member of the Tibetan people" and "would share a common
fate with the Tibetan people and work wholeheartedly for their benefit." In
his reply, the Panchen Lama reportedly criticised in strong language the
Chinese rule of Tibet. A few days after the meeting, the Panchen Lama died
under mysterious circumstances in his Shigatse monastery. The cause of his
death was not established.
6.In March,1989, there were huge demonstrations
against the Chinese rule in Lhasa, which lasted three days. Over 40 Tibetans
were allegedly killed when People’s Armed Police Units repeatedly fired on the
demonstrators. On March 7,1989, Hu imposed Martial Law in Lhasa and had a large
number of Tibetans arrested. In a broadcast over Radio Lhasa on April 20,1989,
Hu referred to the March demonstrations as a "major event" and compared their significance with the March 1959 Tibetan
uprising and the 1962 Indo-China war. In
the summer of 1989 when martial law was imposed in Beijing in the wake of violence
in the Tiananmen Square, it had already been in effect in Lhasa for weeks. Hu
Jintao reportedly sent a telegram from Tibet to Prime Minister Li Peng and Deng
expressing his support for the crackdown in Beijing. In October 1990, after a visit by
Jiang Zemin, who had replaced Zhao Ziyang as the CPC General Secretary, to
Lhasa, Hu was transferred to Beijing to work under Jiang. Till 1992, he
continued to be designated as the Party Secretary in the TAR, but he was
working from Beijing. In October 1992, Hu handed over as the Secretary of the
TAR to Chen Kuiyuan.
7. Tibetan hopes that despite his ruthless record
in Lhasa, Hu, as the No.2 to Jiang and subsequently as the CPC General
Secretary from 2002, would follow a reconciliatory policy towards the Tibetans
were belied. He pushed forward the policy of Han colonisation of Tibet and
stepped up the economic development of the TAR hoping that rapid economic
development would reduce the alienation of the Tibetans.
8. This did not happen. On the contrary, the CPC’s
arrest of the successor to the Panchen Lama designated by His Holiness the
Dalai Lama in accordance with the Buddhist traditions and the imposition of a
Panchen Lama selected by the CPC aggravated the alienation. The situation
became worse following the refusal of the CPC under Hu’s leadership to
negotiate with the Dalai Lama on the grant of greater autonomy to the Tibetan
people and the unification of all the Tibetan areas of China spread across the
TAR, Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan and Yunnan. The CPC under Hu repeatedly made it
clear that any talks with His Holiness will be only on his future and not on
the future of Tibet. It also repeatedly rejected the demand for the
re-unification of all the Tibetan areas.
9. This added to the alienation of the Tibetan
people and a movement for the independence of Tibet started under the Tibetan
Youth Congress (TYC). There was a fresh outbreak of violence in the TAR and other
Tibetan areas in March 2008, before the Beijing Olympics to draw the attention
of the international community to the continued suppression of the Tibetans.
The uprising was ruthlessly put down by the Chinese security forces.
10. The crushing of the uprising led to a
reconsideration of the strategy by the Tibetan youth and monks who embarked on
a peaceful protest movement based on the satyagraha movement of Mahatma Gandhi
and Nelson Mandela. This was a two-pronged movement based on self-immolations
by monks and others in protest against the Chinese rule and peaceful gatherings
to preach the message “Be Tibetan, Speak
Tibetan, Eat Tibetan and Live Tibetan.”
11. The self-immolation movement that started in
the Kirti monastery of the Sichuan province in March last year was initially
concentrated in the Sichuan province. It has since been spreading to Qinghai,
Gansu and the TAR. Only the Tibetan areas of Yunnan have remained unaffected so
far. The Tibetans project the self-immolations as voluntary and spontaneous due
to resentment over the Chinese rule, but the Chinese authorities suspect that
the self-immolations are being orchestrated with the blessings of His Holiness
by a hitherto unidentified organisation. They have announced a reward for
anyone who will help in identifying the organisation.
12. As the CPC Congress approached, the
self-immolations have picked up momentum to draw the attention of the
international media who have gathered in Beijing for the CPC Congress to the
plight of the Tibetans. Since November 7, there have been six more
self-immolation attempts, with at least two of them turning fatal. The
self-immolations, which were initially started by the Tibetan monks, are now
being resorted to by young Tibetan youth. The simultaneous Tibetan identity
movement based on the concept of Gandhiji’s satyagraha has also been spreading.
13. The Chinese were able to suppress the violent
uprising of March 2008, within a few days, but they have not been able to
suppress the self-immolation and satyagraha movements for over 18 months. The
talks between the representatives of His
Holiness and the CPC are in a state of
suspension.
14. The Tibetans are hoping that Xi Jinping, who
comes from a liberal-minded family and who had not served in the Tibetan areas
in his career, might adopt a more conciliatory policy towards them. Xi, who
takes over as the CPC General Secretary next week, will be taking over as
the State President only next March.
There are expectations that even after handing over as the State President, Hu
will try to continue as the Chairman of the Central Military Commission (CPC)
of the party for some more months thereby retaining control of the PLA and
other Chinese security forces.
15. Even if Xi wants to follow a more nuanced
policy towards the Tibetans, he may not be able to do so as Hu retains control
of the PLA through his chairmanship of the Party CMC.
16. This may please be read in continuation of my
article of October 28,2012, titled “Tibetan Self-Immolations mount, spread
geographically as CPC Congress Nears” at http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/node/1030 (
10-11-12)
(The writer
is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi,
and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate
of the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com Twitter @SORBONNE75)
