Now the Dalai Lama is threatening to resign - whatever that means:
The Dalai Lama hit back at Chinese leaders and Tibetan radicals today by threatening to “resign” if violence in Tibet escalated, insisting that independence was “out of the question”, and urging his people to live “side by side” with the Chinese.
Which makes this particularly interesting:
The Dalai Lama was criticised yesterday by prominent Tibetan radicals who say that his non-violent campaign for greater autonomy within China has failed and who are demanding a boycott of the Beijing Olympics.Tibet’s spiritual leader has won international acclaim for eschewing violence since he fled Tibet after a failed uprising in 1959 and set up a government in exile in the Indian town of Dharamsala. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989.
On Sunday he stopped short of calling for an Olympic boycott after two days of rioting in the Tibetan capital, although he did call for an international inquiry. Tibetan radicals, who are organising protests around the world, criticised his conciliatory approach, contrasting it with the successful drives for independence in East Timor and Kosovo.
“China does not deserve the Olympics because the human rights situation has deteriorated,” Tsewang Rigzin, president of the radical Tibetan Youth Congress, told The Times. “Independence is the only solution.” His comments reflect the growing tensions among the 300,000 Tibetans living in exile, mainly in India and Nepal, with a few thousand across Western Europe and North America.
When the Dalai Lama fled Tibet he was followed by about 100,000 of his countrymen, most of whom did not question his decision to pursue a non-violent campaign. A few Tibetans fought a guerrilla campaign backed by the CIA, until funding dried up and they were kicked out of Nepal in 1974.
Tibetan exiles say that they still revere the Dalai Lama as their spiritual leader but are divided between those who have lost interest in the cause and those who want a more radical approach. The latter group is increasingly vocal as young Tibetan exiles — most of whom were born outside their homeland — vent their frustration with the Dalai Lama’s “middle way”.
The Dalai Lama is generally credited with keeping alive the spirit of Tibetan independence - for instance in Rosemary Righter's article here:
The Chinese are paranoid about the Dalai Lama for essentially the same reasons that the rest of the world respects him: as the humbly persuasive spiritual leader of a leading world religion whose lack of temporal power diminishes in no way the loyalty and love he commands. He is the main reason why China's methods of ethnic colonisation, fairly effective with other minorities, have failed in Tibet. Not only is Tibetan culture too far removed from Chinese for assimilation to be feasible; it revolves around religious loyalties that the State cannot reach.
But while there's clearly some truth in this, it's also clear that however accommodating the Dalai Lama is towards China, with his assertion that independence is "out of the question", there'll be no reciprocal accommodation by the Chinese. Parts of Tibetan culture may be preserved as tourist curiosities, but that, if the Chinese have their way, is about it. Peaceful protest may have worked with Gandhi, but that was a whole different situation, against a whole different imperialism.
So has the Dalai Lama's way failed, as Tibetan radicals are claiming? It's way too early to tell. It's difficult not to admire the man for the consistency of his anti-violence rhetoric. Anyway, these decisions must be made by Tibetans, not by people cosily pontificating from outside. But I can certainly sympathise with those Tibetans who insist that they should be aiming for nothing less than independence.
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