To Tibetans’ Dream of Independence, China Has the Last Word--’No’

A Tibetan man, perhaps emboldened by the liquor he had obviously been drinking, spotted a Westerner in the square in front of Lhasa’s Jokhang Temple and sat down on a curbstone next to him.

“Dalai Lama!” he exclaimed, making a thumbs-up sign of praise for Tibet’s exiled theocratic ruler. “Tibet belongs to the Dalai Lama, not to China,” he went on, keeping his voice low to avoid being overheard by plainclothes policemen swarming amid the worshipers in the area.

“But we cannot stand up. We are afraid. We all support the Dalai Lama. But if we say that, the Chinese Communists. . . .”

His voice trailed off and his hands imitated the motion of firing a gun.

Two days later, on the last day of the Great Prayer Festival, the biggest religious celebration of the Tibetan calendar, Buddhist monks and other Tibetans in the square attacked police in a protest against China’s control of Tibet. Witnesses told reporters that at least eight people died--three policemen killed by rioters, plus a monk and four civilians killed by police bullets. Some reports have placed the death toll higher, and official Chinese reports say that more than 300 policemen were injured.

Similar to October Protest

The March 5 incident was virtually a repetition of a protest last Oct. 1, when a pro-independence demonstration by monks led to rioting, police gunfire and an estimated six to 14 deaths.

Over the centuries, Tibet has sometimes been part of China and sometimes independent. It had de facto independence--but not general international diplomatic recognition--from the 1911 fall of China’s Qing dynasty until Beijing’s troops entered Lhasa in 1951.

Many supporters of the Dalai Lama, who has lived in exile in India since an abortive rebellion in 1959, dream of making Tibet independent again. But Beijing has made it clear that it considers Tibet to be an integral part of China, that advocacy of independence will be treated as treason and that any attempt to win independence will be crushed.

“Freedom to say that Tibet should be independent--this freedom cannot be allowed,” Gyamtso, a vice chairman of the Tibet regional government, said in an interview the day before the March 5 rioting. “It is against both the criminal law and the constitution of China.”

Monks and other Tibetans who yearn for independence tend to have a simple, emotional belief in the righteousness of their cause, rather than any strategy or plan by which it could be achieved.

Beijing’s Strategy Clear

On the other hand, the reformist leadership now dominant in Beijing has been trying to implement a rather clear strategy: an outright ban on pro-independence activities, combined with policies allowing a limited religious revival in place of the harsh suppression of religion that occurred during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution.

The goal has seemed to be to convince Tibetans that winning independence is impossible, while at the same time preserving enough of traditional Tibetan culture to defuse some of the anger directed at the Chinese and to help attract foreign tourists--and their money--to the region.

That strategy was reflected in bulletins posted in Lhasa in the Chinese and Tibetan languages during the Great Prayer Festival.

“All units and individuals must respect the nation’s constitution and laws, protect the unity of the motherland and the unity between its nationalities and oppose any person making use of religious places or religious activities to carry out illegal criminal activity,” the posters said, in a warning to independence-minded Tibetans.

But officials of the Lhasa city government, which put up the posters, also seemed to see a threat from leftist critics of the policy of relative tolerance of religious activity.

Respect for Customs

“All cadres, workers and officers must respect ethnic customs, respect the religious freedom of the masses, refrain from casually entering sites of religious activity and, even more certainly, must not interfere with normal religious activities,” the poster also said.

The March 5 rioting could cause a reassessment of Beijing’s attempts to move toward a more relaxed policy in Tibet.

One indication that a tougher line will be followed, at least for the present, came in a report on the riots by the official New China News Agency, which quoted people who demanded “justice against the rioters.”

“They are of the opinion that the people’s government has exercised too much restraint and shown enough tolerance and patience toward the people,” the report said.

Punishment for pro-independence activity can be severe, but solid figures on executions and imprisonment of Tibetan activists are impossible to obtain.

A monk from Drepung Monastery on the outskirts of Lhasa, speaking with a reporter at the Jokhang Temple during the Great Prayer Festival, said he believed that about 20 monks from his monastery were still imprisoned in connection with the Oct. 1 riot.

Gyamtso, the Tibetan regional government official, said that all participants in the Oct. 1 riot had been released but that between 10 and 20 people who were arrested after the riot for “underground activity” in support of Tibetan independence are still in custody pending sentencing.

Asked whether there might be more than 100 prisoners incarcerated since before the October rioting who are considered “reactionary” or “splittists”--the latter a term used by the Chinese government for advocates of Tibetan independence--Gyamtso replied: “I don’t know. I do not know the specific number. I would guess there are not that many.”

Prominent Dissident Dead

Gyamtso confirmed reports circulating outside China that Geshe Lobsang Wangchuk, 73, the most prominent Tibetan jailed for advocating independence, died in custody in early November last year. The cause of death was liver cancer, he said.

Gyamtso said that Wangchuk was imprisoned throughout the 1960s for “splittist” activities.

“In 1981 he committed a crime again,” Gyamtso said. “He put up posters for independence, so he was imprisoned again. He was sentenced to 3 1/2 years. During this stay in prison, he was very enthusiastic for an independent Tibet. He then was sentenced again, this time to 18 years’ imprisonment.”

Despite the heaviness of Chinese rule and questions about the degree to which the benefits of economic development reach ordinary Tibetans, China can point to accomplishments in Tibet, including the building of roads, schools and hospitals and a lessening of poverty over the last decade.

But many Tibetans still bitterly resent the devastation of religious buildings during the Cultural Revolution, when fanatical Red Guards led the organized destruction of all but a few of Tibet’s estimated 6,000 monasteries.

Chinese officials appear to believe that limited restoration of monasteries will be sufficient to ease Tibetan anger and also win the praise of foreigners.

At Ganden, one of the three great monasteries in the Lhasa area, two dozen restored buildings stand amid the ruins of about 100 destroyed structures.

There was some damage to the monastery during the Cultural Revolution, according to Zhao Yunqiu, an official with the Foreign Affairs Office of Tibet’s regional government who accompanied a foreign visitor to Ganden. But, Zhao blithely added, “mostly it was that there was no one to look after it.”

Some foreign tourists who visit Tibet may be taken in by such comments. But one of the major problems for China, as it attempts to find a solution to the tensions plaguing the region, is that Tibetans remember what really happened.