Think that the ‘Free Tibet’ campaign is a noble cause? Think again, says columnist Gearóid Ó Colmáin
One political topic that continues to resurface is the question of Tibet. Pity those poor Tibetans cowering under the yoke of Chinese tyranny, we hear people say. ‘Free Tibet!’ we hear them cry.
The western hysteria regarding China’s nefarious governance of the region is not too surprising, given the barrage of propaganda from Hollywood and the music world, and the attention attracted by the Dalai Lama’s globetrotting. Most people in the west, when asked, will express sympathy with the Tibetan separatists, and almost everyone loves the Dalai Lama.
But what was Tibet like before those terrible Chinese communists invaded in 1951? A pristine land of prayer and tranquillity, high living standards and deep communal wisdom? A bastion of democracy? I’m afraid not.
Until the Chinese came along, Tibet was an absolutist theocracy. Over 90 per cent of the population were serfs who were forced to labour for the country’s spiritual and political leader, the Dalai Lama (not the present one) and his clerical aristocracy.
The conditions of the ordinary Tibetans were among the worst in the world when the Chinese communists ‘invaded’ in 1951. The serfs had no rights and lived in abominable living conditions; torture, rape and execution were the norm. All the while the Lamas enjoyed a Sybaritic lifestyle at the expense of the entire population.
This was the brutal autocracy of Tibet, the hideous reality which the fanatics of the ‘Free Tibet’ campaign routinely ignore. When they talk about the sovereignty of the ‘Tibetan people’, what they unwittingly espouse is the sovereignty of the Tibetan oligarchy.
Sure, the Dalai Lama claims he wants a democracy in Tibet and he talks about peace and love. But he also supported the US-led war in Iraq and Afghanistan, just as he supported the Nato bombardment of Serbia. He even intervened on behalf of the former Chilean dictator and mass murderer Pinochet when he was being protected by Margaret Thatcher, lobbying for him to be released without trial.
The Dalai Lama is the darling boy of the US Congress, receiving the prestigious Congressional Medal for his untiring service to ‘human rights’ throughout the world. But his real service to human rights has been to transpose the hideous cruelty of Lama rule in Tibet into a national liberation struggle against the People’s Republic of China.
In fact, there may be signs that the extraordinarily successful propaganda campaign against China is coming to an end. In 1998 The Los Angeles Times reported that the Dalai Lama had been on the CIA payroll for years, with an annual salary amounting to a handsome $186,000. He has also received funding from the George Soros Foundation and Indian intelligence. So much for the simple life of Buddhist anti-materialism!
So that’s the Dalai Lama. But what about the human rights abuses committed by the Chinese government against the Tibetan people?
On 18 March 2008 rioters took to the streets of Llasa, looting shops, burning schools and attacking innocent civilians throughout the city. Chinese state television showed horrific pictures of Tibetan rioters stoning people to death. The Tibetan hooligans set fire to over 200 residential houses and shops and more than 80 vehicles. Even the Chinese fire fighters became objects of Tibetan aggression.
Meanwhile, our so-called ‘free press’ was presenting the Tibetan aggression as a violent ‘crackdown’ by the big bad Chinese government on the ‘peaceful‘ Tibetan protestors. The BBC and CNN allegedly manipulated images to portray the Chinese police as the aggressors. Germany’s RTL television went even further to make their point by reportedly publishing a picture of police aggression in Nepal! Hard to distinguish those Asians, isn’t it?
When the Chinese People’s liberation army ‘invaded’ Tibet in 1951, the country’s serfs were liberated from centuries of brutal Lama tyranny. The Chinese communists built schools and hospitals, the people were given land to farm and living standards improved. If anything, the Chinese invasion was the liberation of Tibet from theocratic tyranny. To be sure, the Chinese government is no paragon of freedom and human rights. But the Dalai Lamas were far worse.
The French socialist senator Jean-Luc Mélanchon is one of the few politicians to have debunked the myth of Tibetan freedom in public. Tibet, he says, is and always was part of China’s multicultural society.
So when will the west stop interfering in other countries about which it knows little and cares even less?
