We hear that Tibetans suffer “demographic aggression” and
“cultural genocide”. But we do not hear those terms applied to
Spanish and French policies toward the Basque minority. We do not
hear those terms applied to the US annexation of the Kingdom of
Hawaii in 1898. And Diego Garcia? In 1973, not so long ago, the UK
forcibly deported the entire native Chagossian population from the
Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia. People were allowed one
suitcase of clothing. Nothing else. Family pets were gassed, then
cremated. Complete ethnic cleansing. Complete cultural destruction.
Why? In order to build a big US air base. It has been used to bomb
Afghanistan and Iraq, and soon maybe to bomb Iran and Pakistan.
Diego Garcia, with nobody there but Brits and Americans, is also a
perfect place for rendition, torture and other illegal actions.
When the Olympics come to London in 2012, the Dalai Lama and
Desmond Tutu will certainly lead the demonstrators protesting the
“demographic aggression” and “cultural genocide” in Diego Garcia.
The UN Secretary General, the President of France, the Chancellor
of Germany, the new US President and the entire US Congress will
certainly boycott the opening ceremonies.
The height of hypocrisy is this moral posturing about 100 dead
in race riots in Lhasa, while the USA, UK and more than 40 nations
in the Coalition of the Willing wage a war of aggression against
Iraq. This is not “demographic aggression” but raw shock-and-awe
aggression. A war crime. A war on civilians, including the
intentional destruction of the water and sewage systems, and the
electrical grid. More than one million Iraqis are now dead; five
million made into refugees. The Western invaders may not be doing
“cultural genocide” but they are doing cultural destruction on an
immense scale, in the very cradle of Western Civilization. Why is
the news filled with demonstrators about Tibet but not about
Iraq?
And as everyone knows but few dare say, “demographic aggression”
and “cultural genocide” can be applied most accurately to Israel’s
settlement policies and systematic destruction of Palestinian
communities. On this, the Dalai Lama seems silent. Demonstrators
don’t wave flags for bulldozed homes, destroyed orchards, or dead
Palestinian children.
The Chinese Context
The Chinese government is responsible for the well-being and
security of one-fourth of humanity. Race riots and rebellion cannot
be tolerated, not even when done by Buddhist monks.
Chinese Civilization was already old when the Egyptians began
building pyramids. But the last 200 years have not gone well, what
with two Opium Wars forcing China to import drugs, and Europeans
seizing coastal ports as a step to complete colonial control, then
the Boxer Rebellion, the collapse of the Manchu Dynasty, civil war,
a brutal invasion and occupation by Japan, more civil war, then
Communist consolidation and transformation of society, then Mao’s
Cultural Revolution. Such events caused tens of millions of people
to die. Thus, China’s recent history has good reasons why social
order is a higher priority than individual rights. Race riots and
rebellion cannot be tolerated.
Considering this context, China’s treatment of its minorities
has been exemplary compared to what the Western world has done to
its minorities. After thousands of years of Chinese dominance,
there still are more than 50 minorities in China. After a few
hundred years of European dominance in North and South America, the
original minority cultures have been exterminated, damaged, or
diminished.
Chinese currency carries five languages: Chinese, Mongolian,
Tibetan, Uigur, and Zhuang. In comparison, Canadian currency
carries English and French, but no Cree or Inuktitut. If the USA
were as considerate of ethnic minorities as is China, then the
greenback would be written in English, Spanish, Cherokee and
Hawaiian.
In China, ethnic minorities begin
their primary schooling in their own language, in a school
administered by one of their own community. Chinese language
instruction is not introduced until age 10 or later. This is in
sharp contrast to a history of coerced linguistic assimilation in
most Western nations. The Australian government recently
apologized to the Aboriginal minority for taking children from
their families, forcing them to speak English, beating them if they
spoke their mother tongue. China has no need to make such apology
to Tibetans or to other minorities.
China’s one-child-policy seems
oppressive to Westerners, but it has not applied to minorities,
only to the Han Chinese. Tibetans can have as many children as they
choose. If Han people have more than one child, they are
punished.
There is a similar preference given to minorities when it comes
to admission to universities. For example, Tibetan students enter China’s elite Peking
University with lower exam scores than Han Chinese
students.
China is not a perfect nation, but on matters of minority
rights, it has been better than most Western nations. And China
achieved this in the historical context of restoring itself and
recovering from 200 years of continual crisis and foreign
invasion.
Historical Claims
National boundaries are not natural. They all arise from
history, and all history is disputable. Arguments and evidence can
always be found to challenge a boundary. China has long claimed
Tibet as part of its territory, though that has been hard to
enforce during the past 200 years. The Dalai Lama does not dispute
China’s claim to Tibet. The recent race riots in Tibet and the
anti-Olympics demonstrations will not cause China to shrink itself
and abandon part of its territory. Rioters and demonstrators know
that.
Foreign governments promoting Tibet separatism and demonstrators
demanding Tibet independence should look closer to home. Canadians
can campaign for Québec libre. Americans can support separatists in
Puerto Rico, Vermont, Texas, California, Hawaii, Guam, and Alaska.
Brits can work for a free Wales, and Scotland for the Scots. French
can help free Tahitians, New Caledonians, Corsicans, and the
Basques. Spaniards can also back the Basques, or the Catalonians.
Italians can help Sicilian separatists or the Northern League.
Danes can free the Faeroe Islands. Poles can back Cashubians.
Japanese can help Okinawan separatists, and Filipinos can help the
Moros. Thai can promote Patanni independence; Indonesians can
promote Acehnese independence. New Zealanders can leave the islands
to the Maori; Australians can vacate Papua. Sri Lankans can help
Tamil separatists; Indians can help Sikh separatists.
Nearly every nation has a separatist movement of some kind.
There is no need to go to Tibet, to the top of the world, to
promote ethnic separatism. China is not promoting separatism in
other nations and does not appreciate other nations promoting
separatism in China. The people most oppressed, most needing a
nation of their own, are the Palestinians. There is a worthy
project to promote and to demonstrate about.
Danger of Demonstrations
These demonstrations do not serve Tibetans, but rather use
Tibetans for ulterior motives. Many Tibetans, therefore, oppose
these demonstrations. Many Chinese remember their history and see
the riots in Lhasa and subsequent demonstrations as another attempt
by foreign powers to dismember and weaken China. There is grave
danger that Chinese might come to fear Tibetans as traitors,
resulting in wide spread anti-Tibetan feelings in China.
Fear that an ethnic minority serves foreign forces caused
Canada, during World War 1, to imprison its Ukranian minority in
concentration camps. For similar reasons, the Ottomans deported
their Armenian minority and killed more than a million in death
marches. The German Nazis saw the Jewish minority as traitors who
caused defeat in World War 1; hence deportations in the 1930s and
death camps in the 1940s. During World War 2, both Canada and the
USA feared that their Japanese immigrant minorities were traitorous
and deported them to concentration camps. Indonesians fearing their
Chinese minority, deported 100,000 in 1959 and killed thousands
more in 1965. Israel similarly fears its Arab minority, resulting
in deportations and oppression.
Hopefully, the Chinese government and the Chinese people will
see Tibetans as victims of foreign powers rather than agents of
foreign powers. However, if China reacts like other nations have in
history and starts systematic severe repression of Tibetans, then
today’s demonstrators should remember their role in causing that to
happen.
Conclusion
The demonstrators now disparaging China serve only to distract
themselves and others from seeing and correcting the current
failings of their own governments. If the demonstrators will take a
moment to listen, they will hear the silence of their own
hypocrisy.
The consequences of these demonstrations are 1) China will
stiffen its resolve to find foreign influences inciting Tibetans to
riot, and 2) the governments of the USA, UK, France and other
Western nations will have less domestic criticism for a few weeks.
That is all. These demonstrations can come to no good end.
www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8731
