GAROH, India – In a remote tree-lined field in the shadow of the Indian Himalayas, a handful of students link arms, chant slogans and burn a Chinese flag. Another, a bandana round his head, climbs a tree and unfurls the Tibetan colors.
“One world, one dream, free Tibet,” they shout into the mountain air.
For once there are no police to contend with, no water cannons to dodge, no angry Chinese officials to confront.
This is a training exercise for the Beijing Olympics in 2008, but these students will not be competing. Instead they aim to run a vociferous campaign against Chinese rule in Tibet and reinvigorate their campaign for independence.
“With the Olympics coming up, we will have a platform,” said Lhadon Tethong, executive director of Students for a Free Tibet.
“The eyes of the world will be fixed for a moment on our enemy, our oppressor,” said Tethong, born in Canada and whose father fled Tibet in the early 1950s as Chinese troops took control.
“This is an opportunity we can’t miss,” she said.
In the grounds of a Tibetan Buddhist nunnery, close to the Dharamsala headquarters of the Dalai Lama, more than 50 students are being trained by activists on how best to protest.
Most of those taking part are Tibetans living in India, together with a handful from North America and western Europe.
The instructors are young women like Tsering Lama, who pretended to hang herself from a bridge in Vancouver, Canada in 2003, or men like Han Shan, a white American Buddhist who has adopted the Tibetan cause and now heads the group’s leadership council.
He has several protest arrests to his name.
Just after the closing of the Athens Games, Beijing’s mayor formally received the Olympic flag. Shan was in the city, climbing a bridge by the Olympic Park and unfurling a banner proclaiming “No Olympics for China until Tibet is free.”
“China sees the Olympics as a grand opportunity to spread their propaganda about a new, progressive China,” he said. “If we are effective we are going to turn this opportunity against them.”
Analysts say the Communist country has been cracking down on dissent despite assurances by Beijing during its bid that allowing it to host the Olympics would help improve human rights in China.
Chinese troops marched into Tibet in 1950 and over the ensuing decades sought to impose its own stamp on traditional Tibetan society, closing monasteries and restricting religious life. The Dalai Lama and many thousands of followers fled into exile in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule.
The five-day meeting in Garoh was the first “action camp” organized in India by Students for a Free Tibet, and the seventh worldwide by an organization which boasts 10,000 members.
But it wasn’t just about climbing trees and making banners.
Students were taught the theory and practice of “non-violent direct action,” how to deal with police and the media, and the lessons to be drawn from Mahatma Gandhi’s campaigns against British rule in India.
Few were under any illusions.
More than 50 years after Tibetans launched their struggle against Chinese rule, Beijing’s grip over the high Himalayan plateau looks firmer than ever. Ethnic Han Chinese now outnumber Tibetans in the capital Lhasa, and a new rail link to Beijing threatens to accelerate the pace of change.
“Sometimes it is challenging to maintain morale in the face of so much,” said Shan. “But China is too large a country, too large an empire to stay together for ever. Our role is to keep the pressure on, to keep hope alive inside Tibet.”
