From Tahrir Square to Tiananmen Square

Yesterday, I learned that the jasmine flower is believed to have originated from Tibet! If this is true, there is a poignant serendipity in the fact that "Jasmine" has come to be a term applied to the revolution in Tunisia, and now it has become a banned word in China. In fact, "Jasmine" has not only been banned as a word, but it's been banned also as a flower.

Last Sunday, when Chinese responding to an online call for a Jasmine rally turned up outside a McDonald's in Beijing, they were immediately arrested. A few Chinese were arrested for carrying jasmine flowers in their hands!

First they banned "Egypt." Then they banned "Jasmine." What will they ban next?

Click here to read a longer article I wrote in the Huffington Post, explaining why China is not immune to the winds of change blowing from the Arab world.

When Gandhi became an "Independence-wala"

I've been reading "Gandhi Wields the Weapon of Moral Power," an old book published in 1960, authored by Gene Sharp. I came across this interesting facet of the Indian freedom movement that many of us in the Tibetan struggle may not be aware of:

"The young men led by Subhas Chandra Bose and Jawaharlal Nehru wanted a declaration of independence to be followed by a war of independence. Gandhi suggested a two years' warning to the British before undertaking a campaign and issuing a declaration of independence. This would also be a period of preparation, involving constructive programme work, enlarging the nation-wide Congress organization and making it more effective and disciplined. Under pressure Gandhi settled for one year. Unless India had achieved her freedom under Dominion Status by December 31, 1929, Gandhi declared, "I must declare myself an Independence-wala (man). I have burnt my boats." The year 1929 was to be decisive."

This excerpt reveals the frustration the Indian leaders were going through at the time because the British rulers had not given India real Dominion Status, a form of internal autonomy for India within the British empire, an arrangement not unlike what the Tibetan government is asking for today within the framework of the Chinese empire.

But India's battle for freedom under Dominion Status was suddenly bolstered when the leaders gave the British an ultimatum, a deadline by which their demands for internal autonomy must be met. If the British did not honor India with real autonomy by December 31, 1929, the Indian leaders including Gandhi would declare independence as the goal of their struggle. No wonder 1929 proved to be a critical year in the Indian struggle for freedom.

In order to strengthen the position of the Tibetan government vis a vis China, it seems critical that Dharamsala's demands for genuine autonomy must be attached to a deadline. Without a deadline, Beijing will play the waiting game forever.

What if Dharamsala comes up with a deadline, such as, say, February 13, 2013? (the day that marks 100 years since the 13th Dalai Lama restored Tibetan sovereignty in 1913). What if Dharamsala warns that if China does not meet Tibetan leaders' demands for autonomy by this date, it will then declare independence as its goal? This would seriously shake many assumptions in Beijing, while bolstering the Tibet movement beyond imagination. In short, wouldn't that put China on the defensive?

Can 2013 become for Tibet what 1929 was for India?

With or without the zero

I am turning 31 in a few days. To be honest, it's much less exciting than, say, turning 20, or even 30! The number 31 just doesn't have the appearance or the feeling of a milestone. It must be the zero - or the absence of it - that makes a number look epic - or meaningless.

However, not every number owes its significance to the hypocritical and self-important zero. Take 1911 for example - a number with no zero.

1911 was a watershed year for Tibet. The 13th Dalai Lama was in exile in British-ruled India following the Manchu invasion of Tibet, when the Chinese revolution reached its peak and toppled the Manchu dynasty. The Tibetans seized the moment and expelled the Manchu forces from Tibet. Two years later the Dalai Lama returned to an independent Tibet.

2011 will mark a hundred years since the collapse of the Manchu empire and the birth of modern day independent Tibet. It's a year bursting with the potential to become another watershed moment for Tibet.

Today, Tibetans are blazing the way for mass dissent and civil disobedience, setting an example for the millions of disempowered Chinese pining for freedom and democracy. There are countless Tibetan heroes who are leading the movement at the grassroots level, and many who are giving a voice to the silenced multitude by writing essays and books. One such person is Dolma Kyab, a 34-year-old writer and teacher, who is serving a 10-year prison sentence because of his open critique of the Chinese government. Beijing is fast realizing that it can imprison Tibetans but not their ideas and words.

In light of the millions of restless Chinese peasants and migrant workers nursing their growing grievances against corruption, inequality, poverty, and repression, China is showing all the signs of a weak empire and a brittle state. Throw in the mix some wild cards like the internet and environmental devastation, and the Chinese Communist Party seems a hundred times more impermanent than the melting glaciers in the Himalayas.

So what will this mean for Tibet? We need to be ready to seize the moment -- just like the Tibetans of a different generation seized the opportunity in 1911. Which means, we need the Tibetan freedom struggle to be strong, fast, strategic, and resourceful.

Like many Tibetans, nothing is more dear to me than my wish to live in a free Tibet in my own lifetime. I am confident that the Tibetan people will be ready in the coming years - just like we were in 1911 - to seize the moment to restore Tibet's independence and take our rightful place in the global community of nations.

Giving Liu Xiaobo the Thangka Treatment

Last Friday was a historic day for Chinese, Tibetans, Uyghurs, and other people living under the yoke of the Chinese empire. Liu Xiaobo, a little known writer-activist in China who will now become a household name around the world, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In New York we held an event to honor Liu's contribution to humanity, where Tibetan artist Rigdol and Chinese artist Zhang Hongtu created a Liu Xiaobo portrait in the form of a thangka. I call it, "Giving Liu Xiaobo the thangka treatment," for his unparalleled efforts to promote human rights and democracy in China.

Below is an adapted version of a speech I gave on Friday to a group of media outlets gathered at the Ralph Bunche Park -- mostly to see Richard Gere, not me.

"Good morning and welcome.

Barely two hours ago, Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo as millions of people tuned in to watch this historic moment on television, on the radio, and on the internet. But a fifth of the world’s population, living in the Chinese empire, did not get to share this moment with the rest of the world. The Chinese government, blacked out all broadcasts of the ceremony. To some this is a display of Beijing’s power; that it can control all the televisions and all the media outlets in China. But in reality, it’s a display of Beijing’s weakness and brittleness, Beijing doesn’t have the confidence and the courage to let its own people decide what they watch and to share in a moment cherished by the rest of the world.

We stand here this morning to celebrate the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo, a writer, an intellectual, a poet, an activist, a reformer. But above all a compassionate individual whose love of life, humanity, freedom, democracy and his nation is far greater than what China's current leadership can ever match.

As a Tibetan exile whose parents fled Tibet to escape from Chinese government persecution following the invasion of my country, I know that Liu Xiaobo has a special place in our hearts. He is one of the first Chinese intellectuals to support the Tibetan struggle. He has expressed in his essays a profound understanding and a deep empathy for the Tibetan people.

As early as 1996, Liu Xiaobo wrote a letter to Jiang Zemin, in which he argued that the Chinese government must respect the Tibetan people’s right to self-determination and open dialogue with the Dalai Lama. One of Liu Xiaobo’s closest friends, Woeser, a Tibetan writer living in Beijing writes.

“I have known Mr. Liu Xiaobo for many years, in fact, I have never referred to him in such a formal and distant way. I still remember that night when he asked me in his stammering voice on Skype to please sign my name under “Charter 08” as a sign of trust towards him and in memory of his long-standing support for the Tibet issue. I signed my name without any hesitation. Shortly afterwards, he was arrested in his home and one year later, concealed by the haze of Christmas celebrations, he was sentenced to 11 years of imprisonment. We will never forget when journalists from international media asked his wife Liu Xia how she felt and she replied: “I think one day would already be too long. How are 11 years justified?”

I feel a deep sense of loss for Liu Xia, who is being condemned to spend the next 11 years without her husband at her side. I feel a great sense of outrage that the Chinese government has deprived Liu Xiaobo of 11 years of his life and freedom. And I feel even greater outrage that the Chinese government has deprived the world of 11 years Liu Xiaobo's presence.

But I'm hopeful that in the end it will not be for 11 years, because the Chinese government will not last that long. Endemic corruption, environmental disasters, grassroots pressure, global isolation, and too many other factors are shaking the Community Party's foundations.

We are standing at this busy road across the United Nations; we’re also standing at a historic crossroads. One line in Charter 08 reads, “The future of China hangs in balance.” I believe the future no longer hangs in balance; the balance of history has tipped toward democracy and freedom. And with it Chinese imperialism will end and people like Liu Xiabo will take their rightful place in history.

I thank you for joining us today and hope that you will continue to speak out for human rights and freedom in China, in Tibet, and indeed throughout the world."

Cough up a Yuan for every Chinese word

Tibetans in Zachukha are taking matters into their own hands. As Chinese authorities attempt to further marginalize the Tibetan language by replacing it with Chinese as the medium of instruction in schools, Tibetans in Sershul Monastery have hit upon a brilliant idea to protect their language from Chinese invasion.

The plan works like this: everyone makes an effort to speak in pure Tibetan in the monastery. Every time someone utters a Chinese word, they get fined a yuan!

"...Chinese government officials including the County leaders and an official from the local United Work Front Department arrived at Sershul monastery and confiscated boxes containing money collected as fine for speaking “Drak kay”, a reference used to describe mix of spoken Tibetan and Chinese languages. The government officials told the monks that the system of levying fine on people over spoken language must be stopped. The monks told them that they had forced no one to comply with the fine system and that the people of the area had voluntarily agreed to be fined if they spoke “Drak kay”."

The news article in Tibet Times goes on to say that since 2008, "Tibetans in the area have been following a rule of sorts to levy penalty of one Yuan on anyone who does not speak pure Tibetan."

It appears that this new self-imposed rule is spreading through other parts of Tibet. It's hard to imagine a better way to preserve our language.

The Tongue of Our Mothers

Tibetan as a language has a great history and a rich literature. For centuries it evolved on the Tibetan plateau, its influence often flowing down into other Himalayan cultures such as those of Ladakh, Bhutan, Sikkim, Tawang and so on. Scholars and researchers maintain that Tibetan is the only language today in which one can access the full body of Buddhist literature, including all the root texts and the commentaries.

In the new millennium, when the Tibetan language is thriving in places like Bhutan, Ladakh and, curiously, on the internet, it is coming under systematic attack in Tibet.

Watch this short video from Reuters reporting on how Tibetans in Tibet fear the loss of their mother tongue because of China’s education policies as well as cultural and economic imperialism in Tibet. I hope that the strength of our language and our spirit will withstand China’s effort to forcibly assimilate us.

Beijing: In Power, But Not In Control

21 years after the Chinese Communist Party massacred thousands of peaceful protesters in Tiananmen Square, the same thugs are still ruling China and its occupied territories. They are still in power no doubt, but are they in control?

The answer to this question can be found in the Tiananmen Mothers, the fearless critics of Beijing's denial of history. Ignoring the threats of arrest from the police, the Tiananmen Mothers continue to demand that the government apologize for killing their sons and daughters on June 4, 1989. Last week they published a moving essay to commemorate their children who have been denied even their death.

The answer can be found in Tibet, where virtual martial law and surveillance cameras and rooftop snipers have not silenced the creative minds who continue to write about freedom, sing about their imprisoned friends, and call for Tibetans to observe civil disobedience to weaken the regime's hold over Tibet. Beijing has increased internet police and shut down cyber cafes, but that hasn't stopped the Tibetan blogosphere from churning out an endless stream of words affirming Tibetan identity, investigating Tibet's history, and advocating Tibet's future.

The answer is so simple it can be posed as a question: If Beijing cannot control a dozen elderly mothers, if Beijing cannot control six million Tibetans, how can it ever control one billion Chinese?

It's time to disengage China

May be this is the year. May be it was always going to take a giant like Google to unravel an empire like China. Or may be not. But one thing is clear: China will never be the same again.

We might never know exactly what the Chinese government did that incensed Google enough to reverse four years of colluding with Beijing's censorship. But we can be sure that Google's recent decision to stand up to Beijing's dictatorship has a set a new standard for corporate practice.

All these years, the conventional wisdom was that we must choose between human rights and China's emerging market, implying that we can't have both. But now Google's experience shows that doing business with China is not only bad for human rights, it's bad for business too.

This is only a symptom of the larger problem that the Chinese empire represents. China does not honor international law. It does not respect human rights. And now we know it's stealing intellectual property from corporations. It's time to disengage.

Lobsang's Last Wish

This RFA news article provides a window into some of the details behind the closed-door trial of Lobsang Gyaltsen, who was recently executed by the Chinese government for his involvement in the 2008 Tibetan uprising: http://www.rfa.org/english/news/tibet/execution-11162009094256.html

On the morning of his execution, Lobsang expressed his last wish to his mother:

“I have nothing to say, except please take good care of my child and send him to school…”

What should the Uyghurs do about China?

Don’t ask “What should China do about the Uyghurs?” The ultimate question is: “What should the Uyghurs do about China?”

The root cause of the unrest goes beyond the economy, stupid. The economic gap and the discrimination and the cultural assimilation are merely symptoms of the fundamental evil that is China’s illegal occupation of the Uyghurs’ homeland.

Freedom struggles - or secessionist movements, depending on how you see it - are not popular these days since the decolonization wave is considered a thing of the past. But one should remember that colonizers don’t always come in the color white. The Chinese government is the most ruthless colonizing, terrorist state in today’s world.

Half a century ago, the population of Xinjiang (or East Turkestan) was 6% Chinese; today it’s at least 40% Chinese. Population transfer of Chinese settlers into Xinjiang is only one of the many policies aimed at systematically reducing the Uyghurs into a disenfranchised, impoverished minority in their own homeland. Given the violent crackdown against any sign of dissent, the choices that any Uyghur has to make are limited: silence, prison, or exile.

But to answer the question I asked at the outset, “What should the Uyghurs do?” The Uyghurs should unite in nonviolent activism with other peoples like the Tibetans, who’re also oppressed by the Chinese government. The power of strategic nonviolent action is yet to be explored fully by both Uyghurs and Tibetans in our fight for freedom.

China in its current incarnation is not going to last. To believe that this Chinese empire would last is to forget the lesson of history: no empire has ever lasted no matter how strong. The Mongol empire stopped at the gates of Vienna. The British raj, whose democratic institutions and political foundations were far stronger than that of the Chinese government, finally saw the sun set on its empire. It is absolute madness to think that the Chinese empire will last forever.

However, simply because the Chinese empire will crumble doesn’t mean the Uyghurs and Tibetans will gain our freedom automatically. While we work to speed up the end of the Chinese empire, we will also have to work even harder to secure the freedom of our people and control of our own homelands through strategic nonviolent action.

The Chinese raj can handle riots. But it cannot handle the power of Uyghurs and Tibetans (and the Chinese democracy activists) united in civil disobedience and civil resistance.

Eventually, oppression too is impermanent.

Posted by Gen Sherap on NYTimes Room for Debate