Not the last tango in Tibet

Lhasa has not yet recovered from the jolts of the March uprising. Between economic prosperity and visible censorship, it's a deceptive Tibetan tangle

AMIT SENGUPTA/Hardnews/ LHASA

The silence here is deceptive. Authorities fear that early August, as China showcases the Olympic Games in Beijing, Lhasa might erupt again. The administration is anticipating a "silent conspiracy by the Dalai clique". Locals fear the authorities. There is an invisible censorship prevailing in every lane and bylane. The foreign media is not allowed to cover sensitive areas, especially after a group of monks defied the official diktat in March and "poured out the truth" to a ‘conducted tour' of journalists.
The provincial government of the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) says that a "handful of criminals and anti-socials instigated and organised the violence, burning, killing and destroying property, including shops, schools and public institutions". The Lhasa No 2 Middle School, with a majority of Tibetan students, was set on fire and destroyed, with children still inside the classrooms. "Those who target schools and children have no religion or god. They are criminals." The government argues that the majority of people are against the Dalai Lama and happy with the state of affairs. Only a handful want to spread "instability and chaos."
No one knows the number of dead, disappeared or detained. Here, the official claim is the only known source of information. No one knows the identity of the lead actors who have surrendered or are accused. While foreign journalists in Beijing, craving to report on the ‘Tibet tangle', are not being allowed by the Chinese government to visit Lhasa, a group of Indian and Italian journalists were taken on a ‘conducted tour' of Lhasa and the breathtakingly beautiful, protected ecological hot spot of Linzhi in the TAR. The idea was to showcase Tibet as a ‘national ecological and Buddhist treasure' patronised and pampered by the Chinese government with a huge overflow of funds, resources, benefits, housing, land, cooperatives, social security, economic prosperity and all the add-ons of modernisation. Indeed, China's richest provinces like Beijing, Shanghai, Fujian, Guangdong, directly ‘take care' of the social and economic well-being of several ‘administrative zones' within TAR.
That is, the Chinese government would like to convince us, that with almost 15 per cent growth, Tibetans are enjoying the freedom of faith and expression, and the windfall of the economic boom, and personal and collective democracy. And as always in China, and especially in Tibet, the ‘official truth', however genuinely authentic and closest to reality, is layered with deceptions. And there is no way to enter these layers, except to look between the lines.
Lhasa, the epicentre of the March uprising for ‘Free Tibet' by monks and ordinary citizens, is still simmering and wounded, even though everything is masked under an invisible siege of iron control. Journalists are given doctored press releases and fixed appointments and briefings with ‘official monks' and bureaucrats. Even a ‘Great Living Buddha' was showcased who looked so transparently fake and fraudulent that even Chinese officials felt embarrassed. The Great Living Buddha, very diabolical, dressed in black, looking sinister with his long side locks, lambasted the Dalai Lama and the March protests.
Journalists are not allowed to go to ‘the spot'. Some Indian reporters made several requests, including as a public speech in an official banquet hosted by the propaganda secretary of the communist party. They were told that it is not "safe" to venture out to these "troubled spots". This reporter pleaded that the government must trust our journalistic integrity and objectivity, and allow us to visit the sensitive monasteries and riot spots. "It's like covering an earthquake without visiting the epicentre," this reporter of Hardnews appealed. The provincial government of Lhasa refused to entertain these requests. "Many of the criminals who participated in the violence and instigated the riots are still underground. They have not been arrested as yet. They can instigate trouble. So it's not safe," we were told. Hence free movement was not allowed.
However, later, in Beijing, this dilemma was pointed out to State Council Director General Professor Dong Yunhu, he was refreshingly frank: "The provincial authorities in Lhasa have still not recovered from the March events," he told Hardnews. "Besides, they might be afraid that the visit by journalists might trigger fresh protests to draw attention of the world media."

HE IS RIGHT. Lhasa has still not recovered from the jolts of early May, especially the volcanic upsurge on March 14 and after, and the consequent crackdown. Officials admit that tourism has gone down drastically, "though it is fast picking up, hence proving that the criminals have not been successful in pushing their violent agenda". Tourism has dried up, as is routine festivity around the famous Jokhang Monastery near the open air market at Barkhor Square, the ‘Tibetan quarter' of the city and the epicentre of the early March uprising. Monks from this monastery were actively involved in the protests.
Protesters had burnt shops, cars, military vehicles and at least one tourist bus at the market and around the nearby Ramoche Temple because of friction between Tibetan and Han Chinese traders. Fires erupted near the Ramoche Temple and elsewhere in the market. Monks from the temple had come out on the streets and clashed with police officers. Police and army cars were burnt. Hundreds of people, including monks and civilians joined the protests, as it spread across Lhasa and beyond to the Sera Monastery, other monasteries and residential areas.
This reporter (in an ‘independent' visit) saw rows of shops cum residences burnt at the empty market, which now shuts just before twilight, unlike earlier times. Not a single foreign tourist was around. This was the spot where the first violent upsurge occurred, when Han Chinese shops were attacked. Even Tibetan shops were attacked. Reporters are not allowed to visit this area. It's impossible to enter the ‘homes' and ask for details. "What happened?" And you face a meaningful silence, or blank faces. Others give a standard reply: "We were not in Lhasa." "We are not from Lhasa." "We don't know anything."
Indeed, this self-imposed silence itself is meaningful, despite the official version of events. People are tight-lipped. A monk near the Jokhang smiles and runs away the moment you identify yourself from India. The monastery gates are firmly shut. The papers are State-controlled, so are most monasteries.
Lhasa is limping back to normalcy, everything seems well-settled, children are playing on the streets, women are out there shopping and the monks are chanting their mantras. But a deceptive sense of disquiet prevails, especially because no one is ready to speak.
At the Sera Monastery an hour away from Lhasa, (which was put under an army siege in early March), life goes on. The monks are chanting non-stop. Official briefings by monks repeat the same story in yet another ‘conducted tour'- how the Chinese government has helped the institution financially, the flourishing cooperatives and educational centres.
Did the monks participate in the March protests? "Yes," said a ‘spokesperson monk', "some young monks and student monks went to Lhasa to participate." Do other monks agree with them? "Buddhism teaches us to search for inner peace and hear our inner voice. It does not teach us to break the law and do politics," he said. Do you agree with the dissenting monks? "No." Did they return? "No." How many of them?
No one knows. No one is ready to speak. At Sera, where peaceful monks were brutally beaten up by the army, and from where young monks joined the street protests in Lhasa, not one Tibetan is ready to testify. No one knows where the young monks who participated in the protests have disappeared. Are they alive or dead? Are they imprisoned? It's obvious that they have been picked up, but their own monastery has disowned them. And the uncanny truth is this could be a reality in several monasteries. Some of those who have surrendered or were arrested have come back, whisper locals, but there is a question mark on the fate of others.
The TAR Vice Chairman, Baima Chilin, in a monologue at a press conference in early July at Lhasa rattled of statistics. Lawless monks and others went berserk from March 11 to 14, attacking, burning, looting, smashing, beating people, using ‘fire bottles,' rods, knives. More than 84 cars were burnt/damaged, seven schools attacked, five hospitals and 10 banks attacked/destroyed, 1, 360 stores destroyed, 120 homes completely destroyed, 20 buildings severely damaged and 300 places set on fire. Besides, 18 innocents were burnt or killed, including thee Tibetans and a one-year-old child, 382 people injured, 58 seriously wounded, 600 rescued including school kids, 241 policemen injured, one dead, 23 seriously injured. The total loss 320 million yuan ($1 is about 6.8 yuan). "We showed great restrain to ensure stability," said Chilin.
"It was not a popular uprising," said the vice chairman. "It was the work of a handful of criminals." He again reeled of statistics: 953 jailed/detained, 362 surrendered, 1,157 freed, including petty criminals, 116 "criminal suspects" are waiting for trial. The 953 figure is significant - "they directly participated". Of the accused, 30 have been "brought to justice" through an open trial in a Lhasa Intermediate People's Court.
According to reports, of the 30, three people were sentenced to life, including a monk. Seven were sentenced to 15 years in prison, and 20 received sentences between three and 14 years. The China Daily reported that a total of 42 people have been jailed, but no one has been given the death penalty. Sentences for the first 30 were handed down on April 29, and 12 others were sentenced on June 19 and 20 by four courts at Lhasa and Shanan Prefecture. Exiled Tibetans and other reports claim that the unofficial figure of the death count is 200 plus, that several people were shot dead, that their bodies disappeared. And no one knows how many more were forcibly compelled to surrender. Besides, hundreds have been picked up and packed off to unknown detention and torture centres.
Indeed, at the press conference, questions followed. Was a due process of law and justice used in these ‘open trials' and what was this process? How was the evidence proved and will it be made public? How were the accused identified and did they have any defence and can the media and their friends, relatives and lawyers have access to them? What are the fundamental rights of the accused? Can the charges and evidence be verified by an independent and impartial body, including perhaps an international body? And how many monks are still in jail, officially?
Vice Chairman Chilin refused to answer. He ‘shut' the press conference and walked off.

IN THE ‘EXEMPLARY Tibetan villages' next to the blue flowing beauty of river Lhasa, sturdy sprawling houses, often built by the government, flaunt the red flags of the Communist Party of China. Inside every home there is the same calendar on the wall, often garlanded: a threesome portrait: Mao, Deng and Jiang Zemin. These are prosperous villages where farmers have been given huge tracts of fertile land according to the size of their families, after the collectivisation model had been dumped during privatisation of agriculture. Of course, some farmers are richer then others. Some own bigger lands, but they are not landlords but they can hire the ‘landless' or others as wage labourers, or give their farms on contract.
The State has pitched in by building their homes with huge financial incentives, also in independent trade, cooperatives. They also do part-time work in Lhasa and elsewhere. The March 14 violence disrupted this process and impacted the village economy. Otherwise, the farmers, most of them members of the communist party, are well-off and happy, including women who head families and run the show. They are all Buddhists, but no one wants the Dalai Lama back.
Across Lhasa, Linzi and other parts, a large section of the 2.84 million Tibetans are content with the economic boom. "It's a myth --- this shifting population rumour," almost everyone repeats like a recorded statement. "The Han Chinese are not invading Tibet and settling down here. We are still 95 per cent Tibetans, with five per cent Hans and others." Authorities say that the government pushes Han Chinese migration but only for "institutional assistance" - as teachers, doctors, engineers, technical staff, nurses."
The one-child norm of China does not apply to Tibet. Most of the vast ecological zone of sparsely populated Tibet is still inhabited by shepherds, herdsmen and farmers. They can have as many children as they want. Indeed, while Chinese officials in Lhasa have to follow the one-child norm, Tibetan officials are given a concession - they can have two children.
Communist officials argue that the State "genuinely" takes care of Tibetan sentiments. They can inherit and preserve their own culture, architecture, religion, rituals monasteries, village societies, habitats, agriculture, art and craft, professions and trades. And they are free to enjoy the massive gains of modernisation. "So why should they want to return to the feudal-religious regime of Dalai with its oppressive serfdom, poverty and slavery of the past," asks Dong Yunhu. "The March events prove that this reactionary clique is afraid of modernisation and the seeds of prosperity which have bloomed everywhere. Why should people return to a feudal past and mass poverty and reject the fruits of freedom and modernity?"
Agrees a Tibetan woman leader who works with the community. "There is women's empowerment and education in Tibet now. We are the vanguard. There is peace and prosperity." But, what about ‘Free Tibet' and the Dalai Lama?
"Why not," she laughs. "He too can return. He too belongs to this place. But if he wants to split China and its sovereignty, then, sorry, no, he has no place in Tibet."

Conversation with a Professor of Philosophy

At the brand new and sprawling Lhasa University at Lhasa, yet another lavish gift of the government of China to the Tibetan people, neither teachers nor students are choosing to speak on the March uprising. As if nothing happened. That few know English helps to sustain this organised censorship. Indeed, those who know English, they too start speak in riddles, so omnipresent is the fear of the State. Excerpts from a conversation with a philosophy teacher while climbing down the stairs of the fourth floor of the university.

What do you teach?
Philosophy. Buddhism. There are big Indian influences on Tibetan Buddhism.

Do you teach Marxism? Mao's Red Book?
Yes, we teach Buddhism, western philosophy, Marxism. It's part of the course content in the campus.

How are students and teachers reconciling the synthesis of Buddhism and Marxism? Is there a synthesis?
They are separate subjects, taught according to the curriculum.

Was the university affected by the March protests in Lhasa? Was it shut? Did the teachers and students participate?
I can't pre-empt this question. I can't consider this question for a suitable answer.

(Long silence)

It's all in the mind isn't it?
Yes, it's all in the mind. Everything is in the mind. If you are able to control the mind, then there is inner peace. That is what Buddhism teaches.

Do you have inner peace?
It's in the mind.

What if the mind hides realities from its own self?
The mind has to be in control.

What if the mind knows and pretends not to know?
(Smiles) The mind knows everything.

Does your mind know everything?
Some things.

Is your mind hiding something? Does the mind know what it is blocking?
The mind can hide if it wants to hide a certain thing.