The timing of the current Tibetan popular uprising might not be curious, but the viciousness of the anti-Chinese fury is unmistakable, contends Gamal Nkrumah Initially I was most reluctant to write about Tibet. This autonomous region of China is often used as a subterfuge to tarnish the image of the world's largest Communist country. It soon became apparent, however, that it made little sense to tell in detail the dynamics of the current Tibetan uprising without explaining who the Tibetan people are, why they were incorporated into the People's Republic of China and what the precise historical relationship with China was. Then came the realisation that the contemporary history of Tibet was inextricably intertwined with the history of not only Communist China, but Imperial China as well. Hollywood has produced a dozen films, at least, in support of Tibet. The Dalai Lama, the 1989 Nobel laureate, has assumed an iconic status conferred on him by all and sundry. United States President George Bush himself awarded the Dalai Lama with the Congressional Gold Medal, the top US civilian honour, last October. Incidentally, the accolade was conferred on the Dalai Lama in the midst of the US bombardment of Iraq and Afghanistan. Earlier this month, on their own initiative, Tibetan independence activists began a six-month march from their hideouts in India to the Tibetan border to coincide with the commencement of the Olympic Games in Beijing. The Dalai Lama urged them to halt the march, "Will you get independence? What's the use?" Instead he threatened to abandon his leadership of the struggle for Tibetan civil rights. He called on his followers in Llasa to refrain from violence, saying that if matters got out of control his only option would be to resign as leader of Tibet's government-in-exile. The Dalai Lama is a firm believer in the non-violent struggle for greater political autonomy and civil rights in Tibet. However, his protests of innocence obviously did not wash in Beijing. Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jaibao warned that the "Dalai clique organised, premeditated and masterminded" the Lhasa uprising to undermine the Beijing Olympic Games. It is interesting to note that even though a number of high-profile athletes have threatened to boycott the Olympics, along with thousands of pro- Tibetan activists, the International Olympic Committee opposes any boycott of the Games. The Chinese, ironically, are determined to carry the Olympic torch through Tibetan territory in May on its way to Beijing, even to the top of Mount Everest. There are a number of pertinent questions, including, why Tibet, thousands of kilometres from the Chinese capital, was incorporated into China, while Mongolia, which is far closer, was not. The other intriguing irony is that Tibet is a virtually impregnable mountain region; Mongolia is desert and steppe, much easier to invade and conquer. True, Inner Mongolia became part of China and today ethnic Han settlers outnumber the locals, and there is no considerable movement for independence or union with Outer Mongolia, an independent state. This contrasts with Xingyang (so-called East Turkestan) which is also far from Beijing, and where there is a strong independence movement by the Muslim Uighurs but who lack something vitally important for their struggle that Tibet has -- the Dalai Lama. The turning point in Chinese-Tibetan relations occurred in 1959, when Tibetans demanded independence from the now People's Republic of China, and their insurgency was ruthlessly suppressed. The spiritual leader of Tibet, the Dalai Lama, fled to India where he has been based in exile in Dharamasala, on the Indian slopes of the Himalayas ever since. What followed was seared into the Tibetans' soul as no other event in their history, with the wholesale destruction of monasteries and libraries and the murder of monks, part of Mao Tse-tung's Cultural Revolution. Tibetan activists in exile, both in India and in the West, understandably took up the mantra of "liberation struggle". Thousands of Tibetans perished in the ferocious onslaughts that followed. The Dalai Lama became an iconic figure both in the West and among Tibetan nationalists. As far as the Chinese were concerned, he was a traitor. "I am a spokesman for the Tibetan people, not the controller, not the master," the Dalai Lama humbly explains. But, many around the world and especially in China take these unobtrusive statements with a pinch of salt. It is true that individual tragedies were submerged in the mass horrors of the suppression of Tibetan independence. The Red Army fell on defenceless clusters of Tibetan monks and innocent civilians. Ethnic Han Chinese settlers came en masse, and clearly as the fortunes of the Han waxed, those of the indigenous Tibetans waned. However the reality to be remembered is that Tibet has not been an independent nation since the Middle Ages. Tibet was first united under the leadership of Sogtsan Gampo in the seventh century. The sad truth is that the Hermetic Kingdom, as the country was once known, ceased to be independent of Imperial China after the Qing Dynasty installed the Dalai Lama at the time as political head of the sprawling and inhospitable semi-autonomous region. The Chinese also instituted the Kashag government and continued to exercise some say in the running of the country, and especially the installation of Dalai Lamas sympathetic to the Chinese. The spiritual head of Tibet became not merely a revered figurehead, but a political leader as well. The imperial Chinese rarely interfered directly in the domestic affairs of Tibet and certainly made no effort to settle it with ethnic Han or to repress the cultural identity. On the contrary, the Qing Dynasty championed Tibetan Buddhism and came to the rescue as when neighbouring Nepal invaded Tibet in 1788 and again in 1791. Two years later, the Chinese Emperor Qianlong dispatched a large force to oust the Nepalese. The Chinese emperors, thereafter, decided to preside over the selection process of the Dalai Lama and other senior Tibetan officials. It is worthy of note here that the Tibetans happily obliged. For many centuries, the Tibetans rarely challenged the might of Imperial China. Tensions arose, however, with the scramble for central Asia between the British Raj in India, Czarist Russia and Imperial China. Matters came to a head when a British soldier, Francis Younghusband, led a force armed with the Maxim gun and overran Tibet. Yet another dose of British imperial poison for innocents abroad. The country was never to be the same again. It was only in 1949 that the Chinese People's Liberation Army "liberated" Tibet. The history of the Roof of the World was never fully understood by outsiders, partly because it was closed off to all but a few ethnic Han Chinese government officials, traders and military men. The Tibetans were not absorbed by the ethnic Han, and retained a strong sense of cultural identity. However, today, as in 1959, the Chinese military parade their strength, inevitably provoking resentment. The latest round of anti-Chinese sentiment has been expressed in violent rioting in the Tibetan capital Lhasa and other urban centres. The monasteries have, as always, been the nerve- centres of the current uprising. When the dust settled, the Tibetans said that 100 people were killed. The official Chinese version is that 10 were killed including at least one death resulting from the savaging of a Han Chinese by Tibetan nationalists. What the Tibetan protesters hope to achieve is still not clear. It is even not known whether they want genuine autonomy within China or outright independence. Then there is the dubious question of the silver bullet for the Tibetans -- Hollywood groupies (Mia Farrow, Steven Spielberg among others), Western baby-boomer intellectuals who have embraced Buddhism -- the Dalai himself has told the likes of them that Buddhism is not a religion, but rather a way of life, grounded in peace and non-violence. How such an ideology can help his followers in Tibet achieve independence or at least keep the Han colonisers at bay, with their hunger to fully incorporate Tibet into the current Chinese drive for consumerism, is most hard to understand. And which "side" to take in this sad story is equally hard to decide.
