by Sherab W. Chopel
Tales of resistance of common Tibetans have become legendary. One man throws open a Chinese stage and proclaims ‘Free Tibet’ to a gathering of willing thousands. The vastly uneducated mass of farmers hang their shovels in defiance. A group of imprisoned nuns sing their hopes and smuggle it out to the world. Legends and heroes and martyrs permeate the population across our land of snows to an extent that we can truly pronounce that the ‘serfs’ have been emancipated. So much so that the ‘emancipators’ have send in hundreds of battalions of extra PLA troops, armed to their teeth, just to make sure that a Tibetan child doesn’t draw another graffiti calling for a ‘Free Tibet’ on his school building.
‘Serfing’ the pages of a China Daily or Xinhua, you cannot help but notice its caricatured resemblance to a short fiction story where all the chapters carry the recurrent theme of calling His Holiness names and vilifying His credits. The latest label, quite a long one at that, calls His Holiness the ‘chief representative of the theocratic, feudal serfdom of the old Tibet’. Although I don’t find any joy in repeating what China says but it tells something very profound about the ‘serfs’. Even after 50 long years of the Chinese government’s vilification policy of His Holiness The Dalai Lama, Tibetans in Tibet have repeatedly called for the return of His Holiness as so evidently demonstrated since March last year.
But, as expected of the communist government, China has blindly continued with its empty pursuits. They are doing a condescending exhibition in Beijing on 50 years of ‘democratic reforms’, they came out with a lengthy white paper on the same subject and ofcourse they have orchestrated the ‘Serf Emancipation Day’ on the 28th of March. By now we know what we can expect from the state run TV channels on this day – old villagers thanking the communist regime for their ‘prosperity’-visibly trying hard not forget the lines, the train running near green fields, rooms filled with shiny furniture and a lady wiping them for no good reason and ofcourse the grand stage and animated people coerced into dancing and singing and smiling from ear to ear. I am sure there is nothing more painful and demeaning to the human soul than trying to act happy when five decades of turmoil saturates your heart and when you know that soldiers with their fingers on the trigger are waiting for you to make a mistake.
Here in exile the day will be marked with demonstrations and rallies condemning China’s occupation of our country and the dismal human rights situation inside Tibet. Perhaps an attack on a Chinese embassy somewhere and candle light vigils will add volume to the protests which will end with the day. We will then unabashedly return to our normalcy of events (the ‘dzadrak tsogchung’ suffered an untimely death if you missed it) and continue with whatever we were supposed to be doing. Our parliamentarians will depart to meet again after six months, our government will continue to endorse organic farming and our envoys will wait.
Emancipation – the word itself is a beautiful expression of hope and seamless possibilities. Through the ages many wise men, dictators, conquerors and governments have embarked on their missions of emancipating the masses and fallen out of focus or favour. In America, the Emancipation Proclamation declaring the freedom of all slaves was ordered by Abraham Lincoln way back in 1862 but it took much more than a century for the blacks to become free of their own ignorance. For the young jihadis, their idea of emancipation indoctrinated by some cleric hiding in the mountains, dies along with the bomb blast. As for the Chinese government’s decree of ‘Serf Emancipation’ – the fact that to this day Tibetans in thousands risk their lives each year escaping the communist regime by walking over the Himalayas – decimates any notion of ‘liberation’ that China portends. And as we understand that even the Buddha Himself cannot emancipate you if you don’t have the will, our brethrens inside Tibet, through self-realization of their religious inclinations, political will and economic aspirations have defined and redefined ‘emancipation’ – demonstrated time and again with their defiance in the face of death and torture.
Tibetans in Tibet will be forced to celebrate this day as the ‘Serf Emancipation day’ and for those of us outside Tibet, it will do a heap lot of good if we force ourselves to mark this day as the ‘Self Emancipation day’. Just lay back for a while, distance yourself from the roads that you see or seek to build, forget momentarily the faces that surround you or you wish to be surrounded with and ask, ‘Am I worth the sacrifices my countrymen continue to make for me?’
The author is a former executive member of the Tibetan Youth Congress
