By STEPHEN COAN
“Tibetans are a naturally a happy people,” says Lodi Gyaltsen Gyari, special envoy of the Dalai Lama. Quite a statement considering that since the Chinese invaded and occupied Tibet in 1950, over 1,2 million Tibetans have been killed and that in 1959 the Dalai Lama, their spiritual and temporal leader, went into exile followed by over 80 000 Tibetan refugees. There are now an estimated 130 000 plus Tibetan refugees scattered around the world. Not much to smile about, one would have thought.
“Yes, people are surprised that we can still smile when we are uprooted and homeless,” says Gyari, who was in Durban attending the World Movement for Democracy conference. “But it is part of our culture. When we go and meet other people we bring our laughter, not a sense of unhappiness or hopelessness. It’s a characteristic of our civilisation, the core of our personality.”
Which may partly explain Gyari’s optimism concerning the current state of play in dealings with China over Tibet. Gyari visited China for discussions with Beijing officials in 2000 and 2003, the first such contacts since the eighties when Gyari was a member of the High Level Exploratory Delegation. “After the eighties we had no direct contact for over a decade. We are hoping to continue these visits.”
With China opening up to the rest of the world, isn’t there a danger such contacts are just window-dressing? “As a person responsible for these dialogues it’s important to have a sense of optimism,” says Gyari but he acknowledges there are concerns. “So many times in the past we were on course, then, all of a sudden, for reasons we didn’t understand, we would be shut out. We hope this won’t be repeated.”
One reason for such a hope is the 2002 transfer of power in China to the so-called “fourth generation” leaders after Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin. Gyari says the current Chinese political structure is not a top-down affair with policy dictated from above but is instead being run by professional career politicians with an understanding of democratic processes. “There is a sense of optimism that was not there in the past.”
So far, the Tibetan visits have been exploratory with an emphasis on the two sides getting to know each other. “All the people we met in the eighties are no longer around, or no longer alive,” Gyari says, admitting that some Tibetans question this strategy.
“They say ‘we’ve been waiting for results for so long, why all this time spent getting to know each other?’ But from past experience I feel it is very important that both sides get to know each other. These are the people we are going to have to deal with for several years.
“We are not dealing with specifics but getting a sense of what we are looking for further down the line,” says Gyari. “His Holiness the Dalai Lama has made it clear we do not seek independence. So sovereignty is not an issue; we are not talking about splitting China.”
With issues such as the Panchen Lama, the world’s youngest political prisoner, not even on the table yet, one can’t help wondering if the Chinese are not merely playing a waiting game until their population transfer policy succeeds. “That’s the biggest threat we face,” says Gyari. “If the ever-increasing transfer of non-Tibetans to the plateau of Tibet continues unchecked, in our lifetime we will become a minority in our own country.”
Similar population transfer policies succeeded in Manchuria and Mongolia. “However, the harsh climate and remoteness of Tibet is making it a slower process there,” says Gyari. “But if you go to Lhasa and walk around without looking up at the Potala Palace or the surrounding mountains you could be anywhere in China.”
Gyari, in common with the thousands of exiled Tibetans, lives anywhere but in Tibet. He was born in 1949 in Kham in Eastern Tibet, where his father was a local chieftain. Recognised as a reincarnation of a famous and respected Tibetan Buddhist teacher, Khenpo Aten, Gyari was taken to a monastery at the age of three. “Consequently I had no recollection of my parental home,” he says. “Then one night without warning I was taken away by people sent by my father. They had joined the Tibetan resistance and were worried I would be used as a hostage against them. So, at the age of seven, and in very strange circumstances, I was reunited with my family.
“I had a unique relationship with my father,” recalls Gyari. “He was very strict: a traditional chieftain. But he was also a disciple of Khenpo Aten, whose reincarnation I am supposed to be. So on one level he was deeply respectful but on another he could tell me what to do as I was his son.”
One of those occasions followed an attack on the resistance group by the Chinese army. “We had been ambushed by the Chinese many times,” says Gyari. “But on this occasion there were over 1 000 people together. This group was attacked and scattered – hundreds were killed, only nine families managed to escape. We headed for Lhasa. There were snowstorms – sometimes non-stop for days; you had no idea in which direction you were heading. As a father, and as a disciple of Khenpo Aten, my father would order me to do a divination to find a way out.”
Gyari and his family went into exile in India in 1959, at the same time as the Dalai Lama. After learning English in Darjeeling at a school run by protestant Christians – “there were special classes to cope with the influx of Tibetans” – Gyari went on to become a journalist and subsequently the founder and first editor of the Tibetan Review. He was also one of the founding members of the Tibetan Youth Congress and its president in 1975.
He joined the civil service of the Tibetan parliament-in-exile and became a political secretary, then a cabinet secretary. He was elected to parliament in 1982 and later became Speaker and a cabinet member. He became increasingly involved in foreign affairs and was working alongside the Dalai Lama whose Five-point Peace Plan of 1987, together with the Strasbourg Proposal of 1988, went a long way towards accommodating Chinese interests. In 1994, on his retirement from the Tibetan government-in-exile, Gyari was appointed a special envoy of the Dalai Lama and is now based in Washington, where the Bush administration has proved surprisingly enthusiastic about Tibetan interests.
“Bush appointed an under-secretary as a Special Co-ordinator for Tibet; there is an office on the seventh floor of the State Department,” says Gyari, who, with previous administrations, had to deal with low-level officials, often meeting in coffee bars.
“The Bush administration has been very supportive,” says Gyari. “Even at the first welcoming speech when the Chinese Prime Minister visited the United States, George W. Bush mentioned the Tibetan issue. He acknowledged there were areas of disagreement between the U.S. and China, saying the two countries were mature enough to acknowledge and discuss them, then he listed them: trade, Tibet, Taiwan, religious freedom and human rights.”
Would Gyari like to see the South African government doing the same? “We don’t want to irritate the government,” he says. “We hope they can play a positive role but we are not asking them to start condemning the Chinese.”
Gyari notes that South Africa is already playing an important role internationally, especially in Africa, so why not put Tibet on the agenda?
“The struggle against apartheid was an international struggle, millions fought together,” he says. “I’m not saying you owe us anything. But it would be the proper thing for this government to speak up on issues that they fought for.”
