British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has accomplished a difficult task since taking office 18 months ago: he’s made me miss Tony Blair.
Mr. Blair was George W. Bush’s lapdog on foreign policy and when he left office, I thought anyone had to be better. Mr. Brown had a promising start, putting some distance between the US and UK positions on Iraq.
Then in October, Mr. Brown’s government reversed a long-held British position on Tibet. The UK had held that Tibet was a nation separate from the People’s Republic of China, although it acknowledged China had a “position in Tibet.” Few nations, and fewer still among industrialized nations, granted such recognition to Tibet. Mr. Brown took it away.
Although China meddled in Tibet for centuries, Tibet was free of Chinese influence between 1913 and 1950. Then the Chinese invaded again. The Tibetans initially sought some sort of accommodation, but it was not to be and in 1959, the Dalai Lama and his government fled into exile in India, where it remains.
In the half-century since, Tibet has been a stone in the shoe of nations east and west. In the east, obviously, Tibet causes problems for China because Tibetans will not passively lie down and see their religion, culture and ethnicity expunged.
The Chinese have conducted a classic occupation campaign, destroying temples and monasteries, killing religious and political leaders, imposing Chinese culture and language and importing tens of thousands of ethnic Chinese to dilute Tibet’s population.
Tibet causes problems for the west, again, because Tibetans will not passively lie down and see their religion, culture and ethnicity expunged. Hundreds of thousands of Tibetans fled their country since the Dalai Lama went into exile. Even today an estimated 3,000 Tibetans each year make the hazardous journey over the Himalayas into India. From there, they have dispersed into communities across the globe (including the one in which I live) where they work to keep their traditions alive.
This is a problem for the western democracies because these nations are founded on documents declaring inalienable human rights. In the last 30 years, as China has emerged as an economic powerhouse, the western democracies on one hand want the benefits of trade with China, but on the other don’t want to be seen so obviously turning their backs on a people who assertively claim the rights all people possess.
How much easier life would be for everyone if the Tibetans would just shut up and go away! How much cleaner and neater Europeans history would have been if those Jews would have just shut up and gone away! Instead, the Tibetan Diaspora, like the Jewish Diaspora, reminds us that any rights we claim for the majority must be equally claimed for the minority, for The Others in our midst.
The Tibetans have tried to make it easy. The Dalai Lama has allowed that Tibet can be a part of China, but he has insisted that Tibetans have a right to keep their religion, their language and their culture. Under his plan, the relationship between Tibetans and Chinese might end up looking like the relationship between Quebec and Canada.
Caving to Chinese pressure, Mr. Brown changed the UK’s position to that proposed by Beijing: that Tibet is an integral part of China. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, who also currently holds the rotating EU presidency, arranged a meeting with the Dalai Lama and invited him to address the EU parliament.
China responded by canceling the annual EU-China trade summit. They are desperately waiting for the Dalai Lama to die, hoping they can block the naming of his successor or “disappear” that person, as they have with Tibet’s young Panchen Lama.
In the Financial Times, unnamed British diplomats call Mr. Sarkozy’s position “unwise” and “grandstanding.”
The economic hard times ahead will be exploited by any number of anti-democratic forces – China, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, multinational corporations. We are all in for an ordeal and we should decide now how we will pass through that ordeal.
Now is the time to decide what principles we stand for. If the only stand democracies are willing to take on behalf of liberty is a grandstand, it will have to do.
© Mark Floegel, 2008
2 Comments
Mr. Mark Floegel,
British is the only country in the world that do not officially recognize China’s sovereignty over Tibet unitl recently. So your statement of few industrial countries granted “position” in China is not correct.
Irish people have long in the history being an independent nation and they have the Republic of Ireland. However, the Northern Island is still occupied by British and Irish freedom fighters have struggled to take their country back for long time but no western democracies ever speak for them. Do you have any explanation? Why majority in Northern Ireland are Protestants not Catholic as while the majority in Republic of Ireland are Catholic? Did British destroyed Irish’s religion in Northern Ireland?
3,000 Tibetans each year are going to India for the religious reason and to see Dalai Lama. Most of them are young and take the opportunity to get western education with refugee status so they can get financed. Many of them return to China afterward.
I found your comparison of Tibetan to Jewish holocaust offensive. There is no legalized discrimination in China against Tibetan. Yes, China is not a democratic country and it does not mean China is committing a crime against humanity. Tibetan population quadrupled in the past 50 year past and one child policy does not apply to them. I agree that Chinese government has a lot of work to do on human right and others but it does not mean China should give up its right on its sovereignty.
Tony Blair participated in an illegal war against innocent Iraq people. Hundreds and thousands of Iraqi children are killed by British soldiers and weapons. Does an Iraqi bleed?
The word “democracy” no longer has its magic that western power can use to fool anybody. Innocent Iraqi people are killed under the name of “democracy”.
Why don’t Western democracies support the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia? Can you explain why Georgia’s sovereignty is so sacred but not China?
William –
Thanks for writing.
I was interested in your comparison between Tibet and Northern Ireland. I’m half Irish. My grandfather fought in the Irish Revolution and the Irish Civil War. The reason Northern Ireland has a Protestant majority is that in the 17th and 18th centuries, the British transplanted protestants (from Scotland, mostly) to Northern Ireland, displacing rebellious Irish, very much the way the PRC has transplanted Han Chinese into Tibet or the way Saddam Hussein trnsplanted Sunni Arabs into Shi’ite regions.
And no, I don’t think that was a good idea and I’ll bet the UK government today regrets it was ever made. I think the UK would give anything to pull out of Northern Ireland, but they know if they did so precipitiously, Protestants and Catholics would tear each other apart. I hope the centuries-old example of a bad decision in Northern Ireland would help the leaders of the PRC from repeating it in Tibet, but that seems not to be the case.
And no, I’m not happy with the US/UK invasion and occupation of Iraq. What has been going on in Iraq for the past nearly six years has nothing to do with democracy and I’m sorry Mssrs. Bush and Blair have associated the word “democracy” with their sorry war. If you read more posts on my site, you’ll see that.
If you re-read my post, you’ll see I deliberately did not compare the Tibet situation to the Holocuast. I compared the Tibetan Diaspora to the Jewish Diaspora and the centuries of often unsanctioned, but still very real discrimination Jews suffered in Europe.
If you like, we can discuss Georgia and South Ossetia. We can go region by ethnic region across the globe and take sides on each dispute, but that leads us far from the discussion of Tibet and China.
As I noted, the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government in exile have been willing to accept Chinese sovereignty over Tibet. They just want to keep thier culture alive. I have the same wishes for the Chinese people that I have for Tibetans. I wish Lu Xiaobo had not been arrested Monday night.
We’re just starting to get our democracy back in America. I wish the same for China, Tibet, Ireland (north and south). I wish it for you too.
Thanks again for writing,
Mark Floegel