By Tendar
“Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,” or so goes an old English saying; and this is indeed the predicament of Tibetan officials in today’s Tibet.
As chairman of the “Tibet Autonomous Regional Government”, Champa Phuntsok may be the highest-ranking Tibetan official in the region, but his job is not exactly the most enviable one any Tibetan can think of.
He can’t make any move unless ordered by Guo Jinlong, the Chinese Communist Party Secretary of the “Tibet Autonomous Region”, the western half of Tibet.
Jinlong’s position is the highest in the Tibet Autonomous Region, and no Tibetan has held this top job since the occupation of Tibet by China in 1959.
Like all other Tibetan officials in the Chinese power structure, Champa Phuntsok is very much a prisoner of his own position.
Phuntsok’s heart may bleed for the plight of the people of Tibet, but he has no freedom to utter a single word in defense of his people’s rights.
On the contrary, he is constantly used as a mouthpiece to sing paeans to the repressive actions and policies of his boss in Beijing, to whom he is bound with a chain of gold.
It was in this sad role that Chamba Phuntsok recently visited Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto on an “external propaganda” mission; every word he uttered in the Canadian cities had been carefully scripted by the new breed of western-educated spin doctors in Beijing.
One of Phuntsok’s mission was to issue Beijing’s rebuttal of a recent report, “When the Sky Fell to Earth: The New Crackdown on Buddhism in Tibet”, in which the Washington, DC-based International Campaign for Tibet had detailed cases of religious repression in Tibet over the past few years.
Speaking to The Globe and Mail, a Canadian daily, Phuntsok remarked, “What is so wrong with educating our citizens to be patriotic? I was exasperated upon reading the report, which is full of lies and totally groundless.”
What Phuntsok was not allowed to say is that “educating our citizens to be patriotic” involves using coercion and brute force against Tibetan monks and nuns to wring out unquestioning loyalty to the Communist Party of China.
For the Tibetans in Tibet, “Patriotic education” is one of the most dreaded phrases, a euphemism for heavy-handed repression on dissent.
As part of this campaign, Chinese ideologues camp in monasteries and nunneries, disrupting the spiritual education and creating an all-pervading sense of fear, anguish and uncertainty.
Unwilling monks and nuns are subjected to a daily schedule of long lecture sessions on the merits of the Communist Party’s policies and the demerits of showing loyalty to their leader, His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
Worse, the monks and nuns are coerced into participating in the hated exercise to demonize His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
Resisting this diktat is an invitation to long jail terms, or at the very least expulsion from monasteries and nunneries.
In March 1998, Raidi, Deputy Party of the “Tibet Autonomous Region”, said 35,000 monks and nuns in more than 700 religious institutes had been “rectified” under the “patriotic reeducation”.
According to the Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy in India, 2,800 monks and nuns were expelled from their institutes in 1996 and 1997–all for resisting the “reeducation” campaign.
In the same years, 165 monks and nuns were imprisoned, of whom nine died under custodial torture.
Champa Phuntsok’s job is to cover up these facts and tell the world that all is well in his country.
He told the Canadian press that their reporting on the situation inside Tibet is biased.
Reacting to His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s suggestion during his April visit to Canada that Ottawa could play a constructive role in facilitating dialogue between Beijing and Tibetans, Champa Phunstok warned Canada not to meddle in what he termed as “China’s internal affairs”.
“We don’t need a foreign country to act as an intermediary,” he said, adding “you are welcome to visit Tibet and see the reality for yourself,”
Champa was not the first leader to “welcome” foreigners to visit Tibet so that they could see the “paradise” that Tibet today has become. The same invitation was extended last year by way of challenge by Chinese Premiere Wen Jiabao.
Canadian Member of Parliament David Kilgour, who is also chairman of the House of Commons human rights sub-committee, expressed his doubt as to whether China would make good on the offer to welcome Canadian fact-finders.
“I would be delighted if it happened,” said Kilgour. “I would be even more delighted if it could be an unrestricted visit.
“But, no, I don’t think it will happen. I would be very surprised if it did.”
In all probability, Champa Phuntsokâ?Ts heart echoes Kilgour, and does not believe the words that he is obliged to say.
But that is not important to the leadership in Beijing.
What matters, as far as Beijing is concerned, is to get the international community to see the situation in Tibet through the rosy lens of “external propaganda”, choreographed by the Communist Party of China.
Meanwhile, the thought police of “patriotic education” continue to stalk Tibetan religious establishments to see to it that the monks and nuns do not engage in the “subversion” of praying to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, or possessing his photos.
