By Tenzin Tsundue
Before it happened our Superintendent of Police, Kangra District, called me to his office twice and tried to advise me to keep silent. He even told some senior exile Tibetan government officials to counsel me. And when everything failed he slapped an official detention order on me saying that I couldn’t leave the hill town of Dharamsala for 14 days ─ ‘till the tension had subsided in India’s capital.
Hu Jintao, President of the People’s Republic of China, was visiting India and the host government had to somehow keep me away from the scene of their diplomatic display of friendship and desire for business contracts ─ fearing I might repeat my protest stunts by breaching security and inviting myself to their banquet table shouting “FREE TIBET”.
The order states that I was detained due to my provocative protests in 2002 and 2005 ─ when Chinese Prime Ministers Zhu Rongji and Wen Jiabao visited India ─ and also on “substantial evidence” of plans to protest this time and add Hu Jintao to the list.
For the 10 April 2005 caper, I hid myself on the balcony of the bell tower atop India’s premier science institution for 24 hours. I had climbed the building the night before China’s Prime Minister was to address a conference in the Indian Institute of Science. So, as Wen Jiabao started his speech on the ground floor, I emerged onto the tower’s balcony brandishing the Tibetan national flag ─ a legal proof of nationhood that’s banned in Tibet ─ shouting “FREE TIBET”. By then unfurling a huge red banner reading “FREE TIBET” and flinging leaflets in the air, the massive media coverage meant to focus on the Chinese premier was instantly redirected to the plight of Tibet.
India was therefore worried that the nation’s security might be breached for the third time. So, along with the detention notice, 15 policemen in plainclothes with four cars and two motorbikes were deployed to observe my activities. There was no restriction within Dharamsala district, however the police joined me everywhere ─ in the toilet, at meetings, to restaurants, and even watched me buy the morning’s newspapers.
At our police headquarters I had my mug shot taken twice to be circulated, along with the detention notice, to all police stations in Himachal Pradesh state, not to mention Agra, Delhi and Mumbai – the cities Hu was to visit. By then I was finding everything amusing since I live frugally and save rupees by always walking up and down the hill roads in this district of the lower Himalayas. And suddenly there are all these cops following me. My Tibetan friends started calling them my “bodyguards”. Initially I found this intimidating, but it didn’t take time for me to understand the duty they were performing.
Nearer to the date of Hu’s arrival, the police again summoned me; the Additional Superintendent of Police placed me in front of him, explaining that the order was from the Central Government in Delhi and it would be better for me and for all Tibetans that I abide by the directive. “You are a Tibetan, a foreigner. You are here because of India giving you refuge. Why don’t you obey when the government tells you not to protest? As a foreigner, you do not have any right to do any political activity here”. And then he warned me, “If you breach this detention notice, we will have to deport you”. I said, “When I breach this notice in a few days, please do just that. I WANT to confront China face-to-face in my OWN COUNTRY. Please deport me.” The SP wanted me to give him my assurance that I wouldn’t slip away from here. I said, “Who am I to decide? Life has thrust this responsibility for the freedom struggle on me. I listen only to this duty.”
I then consulted my lawyer friend Mr. Deepak Thakur, an advocate with Delhi’s High Court, an expert on refugee law. He said “Tsundue la, Tibetans as a foreigners are in India because of the government’s permission allowing you to stay in India and it has absolute power to control all your activities including imposing the restriction on you not to move out of Dharamsala for a specific period.” Then I asked myself “As a human being do we have no right to protest injustice? United Nations doesn’t take our membership, big countries talk of justice, peace and non-violence, but their business interests far supercede to these high morals.”
By then the news of my detention was spreading like wildfire across all the media. Letters of support were pouring in from all corners of the world. Young Tibetans were inspired and fired by the detention notice and so my friends were saying, “Let’s all go to Delhi if Tsundue can’t.” Then six major Tibetan NGOs banded together and orchestrated the “Chalo Delhi” Tibetan People’s Movement to mobilize a huge gathering of Tibetans in Delhi to sit there in protest. Then, when this was posted on the internet, Tibetans and Tibet supporters the world over sent donations to ensure the success of this spontaneous movement.
This in turn inspired me. For me, my protest activities are only a small fraction of my work for the freedom struggle. Creating a Tibetan Movement from within the Tibetan community has been an important focus. And when I saw the flowering of this momentum being created before my eyes I saw no reason to escape Dharamsala and go anywhere. So on the day when our people were being bussed down to Delhi, I met the chief of police again and requested smooth and safe passage for those demonstrators and a guarantee of police protection for our people who would sit in protest in Delhi.
Then I decided to stay. But I made it very clear to the police that the moment our peaceful public protest was disrupted by them we would have to play the old “chor-police” cat-and-mouse game. The evening when almost a thousand emotionally-charged Tibetans gathered at McLeod Ganj square to board the buses for Delhi, I looked at the police surrounding us. No lathis. No side arms. The police hierarchy had kept their promise. But that night they stepped-up their vigilance on me to around 20 policemen and a fleet of cars and motorbikes choking the tiny, congested square.
On the second of day of protest in Delhi, the police had asked all Tibetan protestors to stay in the Tibetan camp and said they would allow them to come to protest site the next day. We suspected it as a ploy, and doubted they would turn up at 7.30am the next morning. With two mobile phones, one tapped by police, I was waiting in abated breath for news from my friends in Delhi at 7am. I had my plans made if the things turn out otherwise.
The protest went smoothly with police protection; the police again kept their promise and even escorted the protestors on their way to Jantar Mantar the protest site in central Delhi. India supported us when we lost Tibet to the Chinese invasion. After 47 years in exile, we are once again fighting China with more than 130,000 exile Tibetans living in India in 40 refugee camps, 100 Tibetan schools, and over 500 monasteries across India. India’s support has resuscitated our dreams of a Free Tibet. The Tibetans remain grateful to India. On the other hand, India’s policy that Tibet is a part of China – the policy inherited from the British Raj – has placed India herself in a dilemma today.
We Tibetans have no political strings to pull, no money power, we have no crude oil to offer in exchange for help; what we have is only history and truth. Our struggle is based on truth, and non-violence is our principle of life. By sheer power of protest, people’s power, we draw attention of the world. The truth we fight for, we are willing to sacrifice everything, even our lives. With the arrival of younger generation Tibetans on the horizon bringing in new education, skills and worldwide contacts, this time, we have made China and India realize that without solving Tibet’s issue they can be no lasting friendship between the two republics founded in 1947 and 1949 respectively. The issue covered up China as “internal issue” and ignored by India as “foreign” is today staring in their face.
After everything got over, a Tibetan woman who had recently escaped from Lhasa came up to me and said you sound the end of “Dao”. She said: “a Chinese astrologer predicted the end of new China when a leader called “Dao” comes in. That’s when the new China will see itself in its epitome of progress and from his rule, just as grapes “Dao” in Chinese rot, China will start to degenerate.” She said you people say “Hu Jintao”, it’s wrong spelling. The correct transcription should be “Hu Jindao”.
*Tenzin Tsundue is a writer and activist for Free Tibet
