Fire Under the Snow

At this year’s Montreal Human Rights Film Festival, I went to see “Fire Under the Snow”, a film about Palden Gyatso, a Tibetan Buddhist monk who spent 33 years in Chinese jails. The documentary was simple but well made – it captured the real nature of the monk who drew me into the Tibet movement nine years ago.

I first heard about Palden Gyatso in high school. I was then a member of the Amnesty International club at school and had just learned about the situation in Tibet. A friend of mine, who was a member of Students for a Free Tibet, insisted that I come to see Palden’s public talk.

Just like in his talk nine years ago, in “Fire Under the Snow” Palden tells the story of how he was arrested for protesting against China’s invasion of Tibet in 1959. He shows the tools the Chinese prison guards used to torture him and the other inmates, describing in gory detail how he was tied up, hanged, shocked, and beaten. And yet, despite the horrible pain inflicted on him, Palden la never gave in to his interrogators’ demands that he denounce his teacher as a spy nor did he lie about his motivations for protesting. Whenever questioned, he honestly told the prison guards that Tibet was independent and that he protested for it to be so yet again. After 23 years in several prisons and 10 years in hard labour camps, Palden was released and escaped to Dharamsala, India, where he still lives. Instead of staying in a monastery with fellow monks, Palden chose to live in a small room that I used to pass on my way to temple so that he could continue to work for Tibetan independence.

Nine years ago, Palden’s story moved me more than any other political prisoner’s case had. I was amazed by the small, smiling monk who sat humbly but resolute at the front of the room, with a great sense of humour and deep compassion for the Chinese people and his prison guards, even after so many years of brutal torture. Because of his talk, I joined the local chapter of Students for a Free Tibet (SFT) who had helped organize his cross-Canada tour.

Last year, Palden was attending a press conference in Dharamsala that SFT had helped organize for the Spanish lawsuit against the Chinese government, in which he is a main witness of the genocide being carried out in Tibet. A friend, knowing that Palden la had inspired me to join the Tibet movement, took me to meet him after the press conference. When we were introduced, Palden la held my hand, smiled sincerely, and said “good friends!”

It is the strength and dedication of Tibetans like Palden Gyatso who keep me involved in the movement. If they still have hope, then so will I. It’s infectious – as I’m sure the rest of the audience at “Fire Under the Snow” would agree.

Beijing Coma by Ma Jian

Before the Olympics, a friend posted a video of the Tiananmen Square Massacre on his Facebook page. I knew the story of the Chinese Army’s ruthless crackdown, but had never seen such brutal footage of it before. I cried as I watched tanks rolling over students in the street and police indiscriminately firing on crowds. I thought to myself, if the Chinese government, military and police treated their own people like this, imagine how bad things must have been in Tibet in 1987-89 and since March of this year. The same thought echoed through by mind as I read Bejing Coma.

When I heard about Beijing Coma, I was immediately intrigued. All of the author’s books have been banned in China. After he wrote Stick Out Your Tongue, a book about Tibet, Ma Jian was forced to leave his country, exiled for writing truths that the Chinese Communist Party didn’t want others to hear. A friend of mine who protested in Beijing during the Olympics this summer was told many times by Chinese police that she had a “criminal mouth” – I consider her to be in good company.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the interplay between fact and fiction, especially in terms of ethnography and novels. Most of my favorite books are historically or culturally based, and involve a lot of background research. I have been thinking of this interplay as an interesting means of presenting information about a culture or moment in history. But reading Beijing Coma raised some doubts. Having never read a detailed history of the Chinese democracy movement, I was somewhat obliged to give this book the benefit of the doubt and assume that it was accurate in its insight into the movement. But I didn’t feel comfortable with that assumption. Throughout the book, I found myself trying to determine what was historically factual and what was fictional. I was left supposing that, with such books, there is no way of discerning fact from fiction, unless one has done one’s own research or is already intimately familiar with the topic. For those not versed in a given subject then, do such books offer only a dubious source of knowledge?

If I were to take this book as factually accurate, it was striking how disorganized the protests were leading up to the Massacre. The students were driven to protest because of their disgust for their government’s corruption, but they had no real strategy or vision of where the movement was headed. It seemed like they were just making things up as they went along. This gave me a bit of confidence in the Tibet movement as we are definitely more strategic and have a more nuanced understanding of the struggle than the Chinese students did. But nonetheless, I was inspired by their drive to stand up for what they believed in, especially in the face of such a callous government and military machine. Their bravery – even if it was only the “stars in their eyes” idealism of 20-somethings – was enough that the Chinese people came the Square to support them, donating money, food, and supplies.

If you don’t want to delve into the entire 586-page book, you should at least read the last 40 pages. Knowing how the students’ occupation of Tiananmen Square ends, these pages were riveting. I could feel the students’ fear and their sense of outrage at their government. When the Army first starts firing into the crowds, the students cried out:

“The People’s Army loves the people! The Chinese people don’t shoot their fellow countrymen!”

This passage epitomized my disgust that the CCP could order such violence against peaceful democracy protesters. I may be biased, but the students’ demands were neither irrational nor dangerous for Chinese citizens – only the CCP.

As an optimist, I appreciate that Ma Jian tries to end Beijing Coma with a sense of hope for democracy in China, but I find reality much more dismal. Most of the movement leaders now live in exile, there is no “movement” anymore, and those individuals who do dare to speak out are silenced, jailed, or forced into exile. This lack of rights is exaggerated among the so-called “ethnic minorities” – such as Tibetans – whose struggle for basic rights and freedom is so intimately intertwined with the struggle for rights and democracy of all Chinese citizens.

How is it that the largest country in the world is still able to control the thoughts and actions of over a billion citizens and colonized peoples? Ma Jian offered an explanation:

“The Chinese are very adept at ‘reducing big problems to small problems, then reducing small problems to nothing at all,’ as the saying goes. It’s a survival skill they’ve developed over millennia.”

This is definitely something we saw with the Chinese government’s handling of the Olympic Torch Relay and the Games themselves. But it leaves me wondering: how do we force the government of one of the largest, most powerful countries in the world, to address the issues of human rights and democracy instead of brushing them under the table?