Editorial: In Solidarity With Tibet

The Central Tibetan Administration, referred to by those on the outside as the Tibetan Government in Exile, observed 10 December, the Human Rights Day, as “Global Solidarity Day”. The community in exile is the only Tibetan section with a voice, and this section is reaching out, seeking solidarity from the world to notice and engage with the situation inside Tibet where a pushed-to-the-wall community has taken resort to a disturbing wave of self-immolations. When the Tibetan community across the world and their support groups observe a Global Solidarity Day, they seek to amplify the desperation of Tibetan inside Tibet and hope that the global community will listen and pay more heed. Solidarity is what is required in these desperate time; a solidarity of the people which will bring moral pressure to bear on the Chinese authorities to pay heed to the aspirations of the Tibetans, a consideration which has remained denied for more than six decades now. The wave of self-immolations has been explained by the Tibetan Prime Minister, Dr. Lobsang Sangay, as “a continuation of a sustained non-violent Tibetan resistance against the occupation of Tibet and the repression of Tibetans”. He sees this new and disturbing mode of protest as representing “a new threshold of Tibetan despair and resentment, and a worsening of the vicious cycle of unrest-repression-more unrest”. The self-immolations are undoubtedly a response to the political and religious repression, economic marginalization, social discrimination, cultural assimilation and environmental destruction in Tibet. A total of 95 Tibetans have attempted self-immolation in Tibet since 2009; 12 in all of 2011 and 82 so far in 2012! What was earlier limited to monks and monasteries is now being attempted on a much wider scale – from nomads, students and lay Tibetans across Tibetan Autonomous Region. Tibetans refuse to see the self-immolations as a desperate move of a people left with no other options left, and anyone who has known the community will accept that pessimism is not a trait one associates with the resilient Tibetans. Much larger populations in exiled have lost their moorings and identity within fewer years in exile, but the Tibetan way of life and sense of identity remains strong despite the more than half a century that the Tibetans have lived either in exile or under occupation. Given this reality, the self-immolations need to be seen as an expression demanding attention, and not of submitting to fatalism. If seen in that light, it becomes the moral responsibility of everyone who knows of the Tibetan issue or has been among Tibetans to extend support to the call for global solidarity. This should be especially expected of Indians who have hosted the community in exile and who apart from sharing a border with Tibet, also have strong historical and cultural links to the Roof of the World.
The global community, apart from a moral responsibility towards occupied Tibet, also has an obligation towards the community and their leader, the Dalai Lama, to support their call seeking attention. The obligation is for the hope that Tibet and Tibetans, both in exile and inside Tibet, radiate to the world. On first look, Tibet appears to be a lost cause. The country continues to be under Chinese occupation, its people denied and marginalised, the conditions there perhaps the worst since the Chinese takeover, the Dalai Lama is ageing, the young are getting restless and the world community kow-towing to an emerging super-power that is China. This does appear a very desultory scenario, especially since this is the picture that greets us after more than 50 years of an issue being alive. Scratch deeper though and these very realities become the reason to sustain hope, celebrate the success of the Tibetan people. Their country might still be under occupation, but the idea of Tibet still holds strong. Despite everything that the occupying State has thrown on them, the Tibetan way of life, the culture and the ideals, have survived. People, lifestyles and cultures have been obliterated even in free countries in the decades that the Tibetan people have sustained and nurtured who they are and what they stand for, even in exile. Even though a community in exile, they survive with self-respect and command public esteem. Despite being an issue that is more than 50 years old, it has not died out. Ideologies that changed the world, powers that consumed other cultures have had shorter shelf lives, but Tibet survives, both, under China as well as in exile. By surviving, the Tibetans have thwarted everything that has been thrown at them. Theirs is not a lost cause, theirs is a model of resilience. By surviving, they have given the world hope that human tenacity can outlive State mechanizations, and for that, they command our collective gratitude. And hence, a commitment to stand with them in solidarity. Monday, incidentally, also marked the 23rd anniversary of the conferment of the Nobel Prize on the Dalai Lama.