What can help Tibet?

Easter Sunday, March 23, 2008

What could help Tibet?

Easter, the feast of peace. The pope would have his annual address to nations and political groups at war. Does not have much to say any more. Did he ever? In the middle ages he was a war going party himself. Maybe, we just want to believe that “some time ago” his words were still listened and had an impact.

Today the Dalai Lama would propose the Chinese government to visit and discuss the situation. The reply of the Chinese government was that they would arrest him. Slam, the door is closed. This is very unusual for Chinese. They usually play on gaining time.

What is happening in Tibet, I cannot really imagine. Too little information and too little my knowledge about this country. However, my grief is real.  I visited Tibet in the summer of 1985. China was just opened for individual tourists and Tibet as well. For us China was a wonderful magic country. We entered from Hongkong, still belonging to the Western World at that time, crossed from the British to the Chinese border by walking a few hundred meters, then travelled towards the South West, with a few words of Chinese in my mind and many more Chinese signs ready to show in my pocket. It was not a different country, but a different world. I have been to China again in the last few years and I did not recognize and could not feel the country I once visited.

Arriving in Lhasa in August 1985, after several weeks in China, we seemed to be again on another planet, so enormous was the difference between those two countries. Ever since Tibet remained in my memory like a shrine, a substantiation of human respect for nature. The combination of the majestic Himalaya Mountains and the Buddhist culture made this liturgical mix. Himalaya would not be the same without the cultures around, and the culture developed under the influence of those mountains.

It might sound funny or arrogant, but just any Western, or Chinese-new-Western-culture, would look in the Himalaya as ridiculous as a mountain village in the Rockies, pretending to be a Swiss village.

Why do the Chinese put so much effort in repressing this culture? I read they made very stupid mistakes to homogenize all parts of their huge country, even forcing Tibetans to grow rice. My experience with Chinese is that they are very intelligent, thinking ahead and carefully weighing pro and contras. Here they do not. There seems to be an URANGST, German word for a deep fear, inherited by generations. Today’s prime minister was governor of Tibet and became famous for the crash in 1989?  That cannot be all, but could be. When travelling in Tibet in 1985 we often observed disputes between the Tibetans and Chinese. We did not understand anything, but the mutual dislike was obvious.

The binding down of Tibetan culture was coherent with the ideas of the Cultural Revolution, ironically, but at least. It is not with China’s politic of opening and free competition today, which is a striking contrast to homogenization. The youngest political prisoner in China, the designated successor of the Dalai Lama, makes me feel so sad. How can a country that tries to develop towards a Western civilization be so cruel? We all read about Chinese cultural cruelty in the past, during the times of the emperors and the time of the Cultural Revolution. I know that human rights are constantly disregarded in China, and becoming a prisoner is a bit of a hazard, but how can it be demonstrated so obviously?

It is very evidently a psychological problem. We should have a psychological revolution in China. China would need a therapeutic psychoanalysis.

What can we do? Inform Chinese? Try to make them think what we think, if they are informed, but have another view of the situation? One problem of China is its size. Whenever I tell Chinese people: “In Switzerland we do this like that”, etc. Their answer is:”China is big. We cannot have it your way”. SO GET SMALL.  Crack this monster of a country into its original linguistic and cultural (if they still remember) entities. It would be easier to govern. You can permit more individualism in smaller countries with less inhabits.

However, the average Chinese, having tasted the economic spring, is aware that this is a fruit of the billions and billions of people in their country, cheep working power AND important consumers, driving their economy. So the average Chinese is proud being Chinese. Like the average US citizen. This said, the suppression of Tibet might be a demonstration to set an example to the other minorities, possibly thinking of becoming independent or autonomous.

Or, China hitting Tibet is nothing different from what we learned about the European immigrants suppressing and killing American Indians. Would not that mean that in essence, it is the forces of progress that are confronted with cultures reaching out for homeostasis, which still have other values than economic growth.  

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