by Bill King
Sometimes you can find yourself in the right place by accident and having a camera in your hand can be a great tool to get you there. On June the 3rd, one day before the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, the Consulate General of the People’s Republic of China, launched a photographic exhibition at the Melbourne Town Hall, “Tibet’s Past and Present”, to mark the 50th anniversary of the “democratic reform” in Tibet. Needless to say it was a ham-fisted propaganda exercise. It should be noted that the 1959 “democratic reforms” had nothing to do with elections. Rather they were an exercise to rid Tibet of the “class enemy” – broadly defined as anyone who stood in the way of the Communist Party exercising total control over Tibet. Thousands of Tibetan people were executed and many times more were imprisoned in forced labour camps. Nonetheless, the current government of the People’s Republic sees fit to mark the occasion with photo exhibitions staged around the world and regularly reported in the Chinese media as showing there is widespread support in the West for its rule in Tibet.
I had thought I would be picketing outside this event in the rain so I rolled up to the Melbourne Town Hall in my hiking jacket, complete with scruffy backpack, looking more ready for a day in the bush than an official function. However, without really thinking about it, I found myself inside the exhibition space, surrounded by people from the consulate busy putting the last touches on the exhibition. So I pulled out my camera and got to work photographing everything. A security guard came up and asked politely: “Excuse me sir but are you entitled to be at this opening?” (I’m an Anglo-Australian guy so I stood out a bit.) “Oh yes!” I assured him and held up my camera. “I’m here to take photographs.” He seemed happy with that and wandered off.
About half the exhibition was the kind of photos that could just as easily fit into a pro-Tibet exhibition. However, the other half was of photos purporting to document the cruelty of old Tibet. There were also some photos of radiantly smiling Tibetan Communist Party deputies at the National Congress. I can imagine they must have been having an exciting time there.
Strangely, the captions of the photos, the interpretive material and the banner for the exhibition were only in English and Chinese. Tibetan language was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps this was a mere oversight but perhaps it reflected the way the curators see the world. Many Chinese have indeed seen a future in which the Tibetan language will no longer be spoken and it was actively targeted for elimination during the Cultural Revolution.
As the crowd started to gather it also became clear that no Tibetan people would be seen at the exhibition. The only Tibetans around were those outside picketing.
With some time still to kill before the speeches were due to start, I got chatting to some people.
First I spoke to a guy called David, a student who came over from China three years ago. David has been to Tibet once, quite a few years ago, for about a week. He went to Lhasa and to Shigatse. He found Lhasa to be quite like Melbourne. He added: “It got very hot during the day but very cold at night.” He asked me why I am so interested in Tibet. The single best answer I could give is that I am drawn irresistibly to underdogs of all kinds but especially to people suffering under dictatorships. However I thought a more round about answer might be better so I explained: “I’ve spent quite a bit of time in Thailand, including staying in Buddhist temples there and joining in everything the monks do. Thailand is a deeply Buddhist country and I find that really interesting. Tibet is also a deeply Buddhist country and I’m interested in that.” David replied: “Yes Tibetans are deeply Buddhist. So deep. It is like they are brainwashed.” I guess it could be said in David’s defence that he at least had some understanding of just how different Chinese and Tibetans are. Then one of David’s friends came in and waved to him and he bid me goodbye.
Then a woman who was probably from the Consulate came over and said: “You come here very early and take a lot of photographs. Who are you?” I replied: “I’m a photographer” and smiled and held up my camera. “Are you a journalist?” she asked. “No just an amateur photographer interested in this exhibition,” I replied. She left it at that.
Next I spoke to a guy called Anson Hong, who turns out to be the guy who booked the Melbourne Town Hall for the exhibition. (The Melbourne City Council apparently only found out two days before that they were hosting a Chinese government sponsored exhibition.) Anson is a businessman with lots of connections everywhere but especially with China. He told me that many of the photos had been taken by ordinary Chinese Australians on a recent trip to Tibet. This is surprising given that the same exhibition seems to have been shown around the world and the photos all look very professional. “Were you on that trip?” I asked. “Yes, it was great,” he responded. They went to Lhasa and to Lake Namtsho. Anson feels he is very well informed about Tibet but that ordinary Australian people are not. “Did you know they used to have slavery there right up until 1959? Those people out the front (ie: half a dozen Tibetan refugees quietly holding banners and Tibetan flags), want to reintroduce serfdom and slavery to Tibet. How could we allow that? There is no slavery in the world any more.” I thought I should chip in with the obvious point that slavery does still exist in many places. Anson responded: “But not officially. Not with government approval anywhere.” I would have asked him about the forced labour camps in China and doesn’t he think they are a form of government approved slavery but that would have blown my cover.
Anson then told me that ordinary Australian people don’t understand the “Tiananmen incident.” He said the Chinese government actually took a very decent and kind approach to things. “What other country would rescue a man standing in front of a line of tanks? He could have had bombs in those bags. But they rescued him and took him to safety. Would you stand in front of an American tank? They would mow you down! The things they are doing in Baghdad are terrible!”
Surprisingly, Anson did not grow up in the People’s Republic and have his adherence to the Party line shaped by a relentless barrage of messages that everything good he has is due to the Party and that without the firm but beneficial rule of the Party everything could descend into chaos. Instead, Anson grew up in South Vietnam and fought for the South Vietnamese Army. He came to Australia in the 1980s. “Do you know about the Vietnam War?” he asked. “Oh yes!” I replied. “I have quite a few friends who are refugees from Vietnam. And Cambodia too.”
I would love to have chatted with people for much longer, because it was all just so eye opening. However it was time for the official programme to start. There were four speakers: the Consul General for Melbourne, Shen Weilian; two prominent Chinese Australian businessmen Wellington Lee and Anson Hong and an Anglo-Australian, Craig Skinner, who is Victorian Secretary of the Australia China Friendship Association (or what Stalin used to call a “useful idiot” for the Party). All four speakers said the same thing: that Tibet has always been an inseparable part of China but people keep trying to split it from the motherland; that Tibet was a dark and cruel place until the PLA liberated the Tibetans; that wonderful progress has been made there over the past 50 years of democratic reform but that the West is ignorant about all of that and that “the people out the front” are lying about it when they claim terrible things are happening in Tibet. I listened with my mouth shut right up until Craig Skinner got halfway through his speech, then I couldn’t hold it in any longer. Craig Skinner pronounced that “most Australian people don’t know anything about Tibet but everyone here is really well informed.” I presumed Craig was including himself as one of the experts so decided it was time to rectify the possible oversight of Tibetan language being excluded from the exhibition. I butted in and said “Tashi telek. Khyerang kusu depo yin be?” (“Hello, how are you?” in polite form.) Craig looked confused for some reason so I explained “Ti Po’ kay re” (“This is Tibetan language”) He still looked confused so I switched to English and explained: “I’ve been speaking to you in Tibetan and you didn’t understand a f…n word I said did you? Do you really know all about Tibet mate?” Craig didn’t quite know how to respond to that and there was quite a bit of dead air while he pondered the question. Then someone behind me shouted: “Why you swear, you rude person? You not even Australian!” (Perhaps the last bit was a round about compliment about my spoken Tibetan but I’m not sure.) I said: “Don’t worry I’m leaving right now” and started to hurry out before I got punched. Then I thought I should explain why I had been rude. “Why am I so f…n rude? Because the Chinese invaded Tibet 60 years ago and a million people have died since. Now that is rude!” I think I also gave them the finger but I’m not sure, such was my rage. Then I went out the front to be with “those people” and I cried.
Bill King is a beginner Tibetan language student, does not merit the title of photographer and has no intention of ever becoming an under cover investigative journalist.
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