Life as a Holiday

I’ve been back in India for two and a half months and can’t help but wonder where all the time has gone. I guess the adage “time flies when you’re having fun” is true.

My life has consisted mostly of hanging out in a coffee shop; drinking, smoking and eating too much; trying to avoid fights at Excite, the only “club” in town; learning to appreciate sappy Indian, Tibetan and Western music; embarking on too many bus trips to and from Delhi (some way too much fun and others extremely lonely); crashing an Indian wedding; learning to write in Tibetan; and reading a pile books.

My intention to write more often completely flew out the window. But it is not dead. With the approach of the Special Meeting called by the Dalai Lama to discuss the future of the Tibet movement and my initial research into Masters programs, I have felt stirrings of inspiration again…

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?

The Sounding Board

This blog started off as “Destination Unknown” – an online travel journal I created as I left Montreal in December 2006, unsure of where my travels were going to take me. Eventually I wound up in Dharamsala, India, and the blog became an extension of my campaign work with Students for a Free Tibet.

I am now blessed with enough free time to pursue other interests. So I have redesigned the blog to be my sounding board – a place where I hope to post fiction, narrative, anthropological, and political writings.

Please feel free to share constructive criticisms, or your own ideas and responses to my posts.

Bombs in Delhi

Five bombs exploded in downtown Delhi last night, killing at least 20 people and injuring another 90. More than 400 people have been killed in bombings in Indian cities since October 2005. Many were expecting Delhi to be next target.

I first heard about the news in a text message from a friend in the States. I called a friend here in Dharamsala who filled me in on the details, and another in Delhi who put me at ease.

“Don’t worry,” said my friend in Delhi. “I’m on good terms with God.” I was comforted to hear him chuckle.

Bombs are scary enough when they are detonated in a city where I don’t know anyone. In 2001, I remember watching the US’s bombing of Baghdad on television, stunned that the government and military (and the news machine reporting it) could be so proud of something that was tearing apart human lives and families. I imagined how horrifying it must have been to live there that night.

When bombings happen in a city where I have friends and acquaintances, I worry. I know that the chances of my friends being in the vicinity of the bombs are slim, but there is a gnawing in the pit of my stomach until I can contact them. I remember how worried I was about my mum and her friend who were living in Bali when the second round of bombs exploded there, how my worries were expounded with every failed phone call. It was two entire days before I reached them, during which I couldn’t shake my fear. When I finally got through, my mum told me all mobile phone towers were shut down because the bombs had been detonated with a mobile phone.

Each time I hear of bombings, I wonder: what drives someone to want to kill others like that?

Pent up anger that festers the longer it’s contained. Political and social ostracization. Feeling unempowered. Religious differences.

People all over the world have the same laundry list of grievances, including Tibetans. However, Tibetans seem to be one case where such injustices have not led them to embrace anything so angry and violent – yet. Even in March, when the National Uprising Day protests turned “violent”, Tibetans’ anger was let loose predominantly on property – stores and goods were burned, cars overturned. The people who were injured were unintended victims – as in the case of the girls who were trapped in a Chinese store that was torched – or were Chinese soldiers. In my mind, violence against these soldiers who personally participate in perpetrating violence against Tibetans is somewhat rationally justified. They are attacking those who they see as guilty of attacking them. This is much more understandable than terrorist bombers targeting civilians who are not directly responsible for the violence or injustices committed against them.

Perhaps Tibetans’ avoidance of widespread violence is due to the pervasiveness of Buddhism and the notion of compassion within their society. Or perhaps it is because of Tibetans’ deep reverence for the Dalai Lama and his path of non-violence. Maybe this will all go out the window when His Holiness passes away. Maybe there will be stories of bomb explosions in Lhasa and key Chinese cities in the years to come. That will be a very sad day. I won’t condone violence then just because I am sympathetic to the Tibetans’ struggle.

I can understand that, strategically, there may be a time and place for some forms of violence – such as bombing important buildings or landmarks. But what is the strategic relevance of detonating bombs in a public place and killing innocent people? I fail to see how instilling fear achieves any goals, other than creating fear itself. This kind of violence only seems to rally people against the perpetrators, bonding them by a common sense of victimhood. Look at all the US has done in the last 7 years in the name of being a victim and protecting itself from further attacks – invading foreign countries, torturing whomever it deems a threat, cracking down on its own citizens’ freedoms.

I would like to believe that the world would be able to function without violence, that we could truly understand the adage, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” But I don’t think it’s possible. Violence and retaliation seem to be ingrained in the human psyche.

Post-Olympic Slump

There is a lull now that the Olympics are over. The campaign we have been working on for more than 7 years is over, and no one seems to have much time or energy to prepare for what comes next.

Many of my friends and colleagues here are discouraged by how the Olympics played out in India. Unfortunately, internal politics within the NGOs seems to have kept anyone from doing anything really exciting. The typical protests and vigils that were held, were only organized at the very last minute and lacked any vision beyond fulfilling expectations of protests. For many here, the saving grace was SFT’s protests in Beijing – they are the only things people here seem to be proud of.

It seems as though we’ve come to a point where we all need a lot of introspection – on personal, organizational, and movement-wide levels. Introspection is difficult enough on a personal level, where people need to figure out where their abilities and skills are best suited, and if they can drum up the passion to continue at this time. I have a lot of friends who are looking for the next step in their lives, unsure of where it lies – myself included.

What is also needed now is introspection about the entire movement, how the NGOs work together (or not), and even how the NGOs operate internally. This kind of introspection will be most difficult because it could require that NGOs and the entire community be open to changing how things have been done for the last 50 years. SFT is preparing for our own debriefing and analysis, but it will be interesting to see whether we will be able to address our internal issues to make us as effective as we could possibly be.

My own personal slump is surely tainting how I see the movement right now. But I already feel a bit lighter being back in Dharamsala where others’ passion and drive always seem to rub off on me.