Torch Relay Protest in Bangkok

It was a small but dedicated group of about 300 protesters (and perhaps as many members of the media) who turned out to protest the Olympic Torch Relay in Bangkok outside the United Nations building.

Before the torch arrived, several small groups of Chinese people came running towards us and gathered in front of the UN building after we had been pushed back by police. There was such a tangible sense of anger coming from them as they yelled “One World, One Dream, One China” and “We love Tibet.” When they sang their national anthem, it sounded like this fiercely nationalistic “in your face” jeer.

After many minutes when the police were obviously nervous about the two sides clashing, the pro-China group was forced to the other side of the boulevard. As we looked across at the Chinese group, it was striking how few police were scattered along their line compared to the solid police line in front of ours.

When the torch finally came, the Chinese were more of a threat to the smooth passing of the relay. They all flooded into the street, surrounding the torch and blocking it almost completely from view. The one Tibetan in the group with tears in his eyes almost jumped the police fence, with others ready to follow. But we remained in our place – much to the surprise of the police and the media – and continued to yell “No Torch in Tibet.”

Throughout the whole event, Chinese people kept walking through our group, yelling things in Chinese that sounded so mean. They made one protester cry with their angry yells of “One China” right in her face. The Chinese government and media have been criticizing pro-Tibet protesters as being violent, but the pro-China people at the torch relay today were much more violent and confrontation in their message than we were.

Many of the pro-Tibet protesters were left feeling angry and frustrated that the Chinese protesters really didn’t understand why we were there. We were not angry at them – although they definitely seemed angry at us. We were merely criticizing their government’s brutal crackdown and policies in Tibet. After dinner of momos amongst new friends, our mood lightened. We all agreed that the whole world is talking about Tibet for yet another day, and so our protest was a success. Our rag tag team raised our glasses and yelled “Bho Rangzen”. Tibet will be Free.

Much Needed Inspiration from Jamyang Norbu

One of the drawbacks of living in a country in which you are not a citizen is the awkwardly timed, but required, exits from the country in order to maintain a valid visa. So here I am in Bangkok in the middle of a “revolution” and, despite essentially living on the internet, I feel a million miles away from all the action and my friends.

And then comes along Jamyang Norbu’s latest commentary, which makes me feel again that I am (and we all are) indeed, in the middle of a Revolution. And we’re not going to stop.

(For those who don’t know, Jamyang Norbu is an activist, author, and thinker within the Tibet movement, perhaps mostly respected amongst the so-called “radicals”. This is a great piece describing the protests inside Tibet and what’s been going on in Dharamsala with the Tibetan Government-in-Exile and the NGOs.)

More Unfounded Chinese Accusations

I woke up this morning to reports of China accusing the Dalai Lama of organizing suicide attacks. The only basis for such accusations are stores of weapons that have supposedly been found in monasteries in Tibet, including 176 guns, 13,013 bullets, 7,725 pounds of explosives, 19,000 sticks of dynamite and 350 knives!

Knowing about China’s use of agitators in the 87-89 protests (and their suspected use of them this times around), as well as their tendency to construct “evidence” makes these accusations almost impossible to believe. Especially since they are mentioned in connection with insane comments like the Dalai Lama is a “wolf in monks’ robes, a devil with a human face, but the heart of a beast” and his followers as the “scum of Buddhism.”

Only a couple of days ago, the monks at Kirti Monastery in Dharamsala released a statement with descriptions of the raid of their brother monastery in Amdo, Northeastern Tibet (Sichuan Province). Monks at Kirti Monastery in Tibet reported that their rooms had been raided by Chinese troops, who forced many of them at gun point to pose for photographs. They were made to hold photos of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan national flag, suggesting that they were following his orders. A small monk was forced to hide half his body underneath the wooden floorboards and made to place his hands on the keyboard of a lap top computer. One of the monks managed to make a secret phone call to the Kirti monks in Dharamsala, saying, “I am worried that the CCP is creating false evidence to try to show that His Holiness the Dalai Lama is the mastermind behind the protests in Tibet. The security forces forced us to act out these scenes against our will with guns pointed at us. I appeal to the people of the world, do not be persuaded by these fake videos.”

So even if China shows the world photos of the supposed weapons they’ve found in the monasteries, can we believe them? The monks at Kirti Monastery in Tibet said that the weapons confiscated were on display in the chapel of the monastery’s protector deity. These items are ancient traditional offerings to the protectors, and symbolize the overcoming of obstacles and negative emotions, not evidence that they were taking up arms as Xinhua alledged, and which has not been extrapolated into rhetoric of “suicide attacks.” It’s almost as if the Chinese government is making these statements to justify the fact that they have arbitrarily arrested 572 monks from Kirti Monastery alone.

Thankfully some media coverage is offering both sides of the argument.

“There is no question of suicide attacks,” Samdhong Rinpoche, prime minister of the government-in-exile in Dharmsala, India, said Tuesday. “But we fear that Chinese might masquerade as Tibetans and plan such attacks to give bad publicity to Tibetans.”

Experts on terrorism and security risks facing Beijing and the Olympics have not cited any Tibet group as a threat.

Scholars said the claim of suicide squads was a calculated move by China allowing it to step up its crackdown in Tibetan areas.

“There is no evidence of support for any kind of violence against China or Chinese,” said Dibyesh Anand, a Tibet expert at Westminster University in London.

Instead, Beijing is “portraying to the rest of China and the rest of the world: these people are basically irrational” and that there was no room for compromise, he said.

Tuesday’s accusations could also further divide the Tibetan government-in-exile and other groups like the Tibetan Youth Congress, which has challenged the Dalai Lama’s policy of nonviolence, Anand said.

“This is a way of pressuring the Dalai Lama to renounce Tibetans who have created violence,” he said.

Andrew Fischer, a fellow at the London School of Economics who researches Chinese development policies in Tibetan areas of China, dismissed Wu’s warnings as “completely ridiculous.”

What China is trying to do “is justify this massive troop deployment, a massive crackdown on Tibetan areas and they're trying to justify intensification of hard-line policies,” Fischer said.

I really hope that the world is smart enough to realize that this is the latest in a long stream of empty rhetoric by China – a government that is scared of how the international community disagrees with their crackdown in Tibet and their oppression of the Tibetan people.

March 31st – International Day of Action for Tibet

Yesterday marked an International Day of Action for Tibet, with actions in 80 cities in 27 countries around the world. I unfortunately wasn’t present at any of them, but here are some of my favorite accounts:

In Washington D.C., Tibetans and supporters became quite mob-like in front of the Chinese embassy, throwing rocks, water bottles and flags. Then…

…an amazing thing happened. The Drepung Loseling monks, who had earlier performed ritual for the dead in Tibet and had led the march to the embassy, calmly walked, chanting, to the very front of what I would have pretty much called a mob at that moment; people enraged at the torture and murder of their familes and friends in Tibet, looking quite prepared to smash their way into the Chinese embassy as we have seen happen elsewhere recently. But no - within a few seconds all of the defiant roaring that had been echoing off the buildings died down, and virtually everybody sat down on the ground and joined the monks' chant. Many police cars were descending on the scene by that time, but the officers emerged to find no riot at all but a large group of people mostly sitting and chanting. After a final singing of the Tibetan National Anthem, with their backs turned to the embassy, the crowd began to disperse.

Chalk one up for the monks.

The Tibetan Youth Association in Europe painted this beautiful graffiti in Zurich, Switzerland: