By Palden Kyab
Recent shooting of unarmed Tibetans by Chinese border Security Force, who were crossing the Nangpa La pass near Mount Everest for a better future, to seek a blessing from their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, and after all, a collective proof of Tibetans’ aspiration and dissatisfaction with Chinese rule in Tibet. It stirred a global outcry against such atrocious act from the Chinese soldiers in front of a sizeable international mountaineering audience. How brave? Isn’t the Ghost running wild even in the broad daylight? Although it is only one of those uncountable unfortunate incidents that happened to Tibetans since 1959, but this one could make its headway to international news headlines, thanks for those mountaineers who placed humanity, justice and truth before anything else, even their career. Initially the news appeared on a mountaineering website while China was denying such incident had taken place. When more and more news appeared with pictures as concrete proofs by individual mountaineers, Chinese Government cast doubts upon the validity of the initial rare reports by foreigners from the Mt Everest Base Camp. As the numbers of reports increased with mountaineers arriving to Katmandu and their respective countries, it became the breaking news everywhere, Chinese government was forced to accept the shooting incident under this circumstance, but blamed Tibetans as not only they did not listen to Chinese soldiers’ “persuasion to go home, but also attacked the Chinese soldiers” as Chinese Communist Party’s mouthpiece, xinhua news agency reported. Now a video about the actual shooting scene by a Romanian mountaineer is out and it is trotting over the globe in global news media. Even US government has lodged a protest with China over the September 30th incident. The US ambassador had gone to the Chinese foreign ministry to officially protest the September 30 shooting incident.
I must say that Tibetan Government in Exile (TGIE) did not say a word about this incident, even NGOs like Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC) and Tibetan Women’s Association (TWA) has no word for it although trumpeting for independence as their goal and mission. I hope all organizations including Tibetan Government are not in slumber. Even Tibetans across the globe did not take any action against the local Chinese Embassy with exception to the Tibetans in Toronto and California. So, now where are the Tibetans? What is TGIE doing? Where are all these independence minded NGOs?
I had the privilege to participate in 2006 Tibetan Youth leadership training with numbers of young Tibetans in North America. Personally I concluded that Sino-Tibetan dialogue was not a dialogue at all, it was a diplomatic exercise on the part of PRC, while our side still faithfully believe it is a dialogue. I think current TGIE’S silence about the September 30th incident definitely to do with the delusional dialogue. I think TGIE’s ways of doing dialogue is too submissive, dialogue means talk about the reality and possible solution to the problem, but dialogue does not mean ignoring tragic realities like Nangpa La shooting which is the core problem that needs to be addressed through dialogue. Also while dialogue is going on; there should be at least some changes in Chinese policy towards Tibetans as a gesture of goodwill and positive response. With all these respects and hopes to have a genuine dialogue with the Chinese by TGIE, their policy in Tibet intensified, forcing Tibetan party cadres to write a long letter of denouncing their leader, the Dalai Lama. Moreover, the Chinese policy was nicely framed and put forward by the newly appointed Tibetan Autonomous Region’s (Chinese version of Tibet) Chinese communist party secretary Zhang Qin Li as “fight to death with dalai-clique”. I think it is high time to rethink over the whole notion of dialogue itself. What is the use of dialogue when the person who initiated and persisting on the way of dialogue, peace, and reconciliation is attacked and denounced? Are there any points?
Furthermore, TGIE’s expression of criticism to such intentional slaughtering humans like “dogs” will not hurt the so called building a “conducive political environment for the possible dialogue” rather it reinforces the fact that TGIE has more legitimacy than the Chinese, thus pushing China into the orbit of dialogue if there is a dialogue going on behind all these mysteries. By not accusing the Chinese means, TGIE is not only loosing the credibility from its people, but also looses the creditability from the Chinese government. Eventually, it sends a wrong signal to all parties who are concerned with the Tibetan Issue, including the Chinese Government. Thus, TGIE will always be the looser in the end with no concrete result for the nation of Tibet.
After all, those who captured, including these children are unknown and it seems not many concerned about them. They tried to come to Dharamsala where their leader and government headquarters are located, they came out because they thought there is a hope outside because of many Tibetans, but unfortunately, it seems neither the government, nor the leaders are concerned with their fate. Even Tibetan people around the globe are seemingly not really interested into their fate. What might happen to them in the next few days is a big question mark. It is frustrating and sad when our government is not taking the responsibility in times of need when the tale of human slaughter went global.
Palden Kyab can be contacted at Palden_kyab@yahoo.com
