Looking Back in Anger
I think it was Alex Garland who said the thing that really takes you back there is not photos, not diaries, not sounds, but smells. Walking around Oxford on a recent morning, there was a distinct odour of burning in the air, subtle yet obvious, and all around me. It took me back to the crowded streets of Delhi, to the villages and beaches of Goa. The smells of incense still return me to the bar in the hotel in Agra and the smoke, and the barman, and the French family in the corner and me talking.
And although he is right that smells do have an uncanny knack of placing you perfectly within a world that actually doesn't seem to exist once you've left it - I still find myself transported back to the town of McLeod Ganj (Dharamsala), in the Himalayan foothills, looking down the valley in a fantastic storm - what really takes me back is U2.
And what do I find when I return there? Return to the home of the Dalai Lama and his government in exile, as well as thousands of other Tibetan Buddhists? That is what I find there - exiles.
I actually find myself whiling away the hours in the Green Hotel restaurant, biting at my steaming momos (dumplings literally, but more like partially cooked dough, stuffed with cheese, meat, tofu...) While I eat, a man comes up to me, and asks if he can sit with me. He has long hair, tied back. He is young. He is Tibetan. He has left his family in Tibet. He spent a month trekking across the Himalayas to escape his occupied homeland.
He is 22 years old, although I don't know his name. At 19, he escaped and came, via Kathmandu, to India. He has never known his father, his brother is in jail. He had never been able to go to school back home, and all the teaching is Chinese anyway - indoctrinating. His mother said she would kill herself if he left - he didn't tell her he was leaving. He left with a group of people; one got caught, had his jaw broken, and was returned. One slipped, and died. He said to me, "What is your government doing about it?" I couldn't answer - I didn't know, and I wasn't even sure whether our government was doing an awful lot about it at all.
In the Foreign & Commonwealth Office's Human Rights Annual Report 2003 (FCOHR), there is a substantial amount of space devoted to issues concerning the People's Republic of China, relative to other countries' inclusions. Yet despite this, it is not a country we see in the news every day, like Iraq, Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, Israel, Pakistan, North Korea. It is a secretive country and a private one; and it does not seem to be high on the government 'hit-list.' Is this because it is not as pressing and demanding as other issues in the 'TV countries'? Or are there other reasons holding back action? Why do we not intervene in Tibet, like we did in Iraq, in Kosovo, in Bosnia?
There are a number of reasons. First and foremost is the fact that, well, it would be entirely foolish to start a war with China. Saddam Hussein is one thing, the largest air force in the world is another.
Second, it is an issue that does not directly affect us, economically, socially and defensively. We have no interests to be served through liberating Tibet. (China's occupation of Tibet was, and continues to be, carried out under the premise of liberating the Tibetan people, begun in 1950, and based on the fact that they were all once part of the Mongol empire - China has plenty of benefits from being in Tibet, including the forests, natural mineral resources, and harnessing the area's hyrdro-power potential, damaging the unique and fragile Tibetan ecosystem).
Despite no direct intervention then, which is not an option, the British government is actively engaged in negotiations with the Chinese government. Representatives meet twice a year, in alternate capitals, to discuss China's human rights issues. However, it is hard to hold effective dialogue with a leadership that considers "international concern over human rights in China [as] 'unimportant, meaningless, and irrelevant'" (FCOHR). A leadership that also denies blocking Mandarin language BBC World Service signals, that denies the presence of an underground church, that claims the use of the death penalty has been reduced - all issues the UK government disputes. The UK government requested responses to 44 cases of concern from the Chinese administration - 16 were received.
Of course, the Free Tibet cause is a well known and popular one, one that people jump to support even before they know the issues. They are not misguided in their trust however, as the situation is one of the most patent widespread abuses of human rights in the world today - the FCOHR report highlights "the case of Ngawang Sangdrol, a 26 year old nun who had been imprisoned since she was 15. She was serving the longest prison sentence of any female political prisoner in Tibet." With serious concerns about her health, the case had been raised regularly at UK-China human rights dialogue, and "last year the Chinese confirmed that her sentence had been reduced and that the new release date was 3 November 2011". Following on from that and heightened negotiations, she was "released on medical parole in October 2002". Since then she has been allowed to the US and Switzerland for medical treatment, and also visited London. Ms. Sangdrol's case is not unique, and for every prisoner slowly released after continued campaigning, there are still many more, still unknown, still waiting for someone to take up their case.
But is the government's dialogue enough? The Free Tibet Campaign requested Tony Blair to raise the issue of Tibet when he met Chinese President Hu Jintao in Beijing in July this year. Apparently he did not, and when pressed about the issue, government officials refused to confirm either way.
Monasteries and other cultural symbols are still being destroyed - language, history, religion, art. Things that can never be replaced are erased. Fortunately, many of the sacred scrolls of Tibetan Buddhism were saved and taken to McLeod Ganj, where 40 per cent of all Tibetan writings are now held.
Heinrich Harrer describes some of the wonderful rituals and social systems of Tibet in his book Seven Years in Tibet, whilst Martin Scorsese's film, Kundun, about the life of the current Dalai Lama, from his childhood to his flight to India, leaves such vivid images of such a wonderful, unique culture that has only ever wanted to live a peaceful, enclosed existence on its own land.
I never saw the man from the restaurant again, but I suspect he is still there, and will be for a long time. McLeod Ganj is an amazing snapshot of a peaceful and beautiful culture and people. A culture and people that deserves to have its own country back.
13th Nov 2003