Opinion: Hopes and Dangers of new Tibet-China dialogue- A friendly warning

By Vijay Kranti

Beijing’s record of conducting dialogue and establishing contacts with others throughout its history has never been happy for the other side. Skeptics point out that whenever Beijing showed interest in a ‘dialogue’ with Dharamshala, the Chinese leaders used it only to buy time for further fortifying their grip on Tibet or to cool down the growing international pressure on matters related to Tibet — or both. Now sudden interest shown by President Xi Jinping’s China in starting a fresh dialogue with Dharamshala calls for a deep clinical scrutiny of what prompted President Xi Jinping to restart these negotiations?

Repeated claims by the senior most Tibetan exile leadership about ‘back channel’ talks being in progress with Beijing are an indication of a new round of Dharamshala-Beijing dialogue taking shape to settle the seven decade old conflict between the two sides. In his recent media statements Penpa Tsering, the ‘Sikyong’ (Tibetan title for the elected ‘President’ of the exiled Tibetan diaspora) has revealed that some behind the scene talks are being held with the Chinese leaders with the help of a third country. It’s understandable that the Sikyong refused to divulge either the name of the ‘third country’ or the identity of officials involved from either side. But his claim that these talks started with the initiative of the Chinese side deserves serious attention and calls for a deep clinical scrutiny of what prompted President Xi Jinping to restart these negotiations after having rejected every single point on which the Dalai Lama side has been resting its case for settlement of the Tibetan issue with Beijing.

Since the last official contact between Dharamshala and Beijing ended abruptly in 2010, Dalai Lama’s establishment in Dharamshala has been calling upon world governments to push Beijing to restart the dialogue — a demand which the Chinese side has been brushing aside with full contempt all these 14 years. Although the ruling elite among the ‘Central Tibetan Administration’ (CTA), also known as the ‘Tibetan Government-in-Exile’, looks enthusiastic over this new development about a fresh dialogue, many independent thinkers among the diaspora and the skeptical section among Tibet supporters are smelling a rat in this sudden change of mind on the part of Chinese leadership. The latter point out that China has never been sincere in its dealings and contacts with the Dalai Lama since Mao assimilated Tibet into China in 1951 through a forcibly signed ’17-Point Agreement.’ China had signed this controversial ‘Agreement’ in Beijing with a visiting Tibetan delegation who, according to the erstwhile Dalai Lama establishment in Lhasa, was never authorized to sign any treaty or agreement on his behalf with Beijing. To the annoyance of the 16 year old Dalai Lama the signing of this ‘Agreement’ led to assimilation of Tibet into China without the knowledge or approval of his Lhasa government. Citing history of all subsequent contacts between Dharamshala and Beijing the skeptics  claim that whenever Beijing showed interest in a ‘dialogue’ with Dharamshala, the Chinese leaders used it only to buy time for further fortifying their grip on Tibet or to cool down the growing international pressure on matters related to Tibet — or both.

‘Dialogue’- a tool of deception.

Another historic example of this Chinese art of deception in the name of holding ‘dialogue’, though unrelated to Tibet, was late Chairman Mao’s invitation to a wide set of Uyghur leaders of East Turkistan who were violently resisting China’s takeover of their country in 1949. After most of these leaders agreed to go to Beijing in an airplane, specially arranged by Mao, the plane mysteriously exploded in the midair and the entire Uyghur resistance leadership was wiped out to pave way for converting a free ‘Republic of East Turkistan’ into China’s  new colony ‘Xinjiang’.

The last 2002-2010 dialogue too, which Beijing started with a big bang, unfortunately proved to be just a Chinese façade and ended up into a whimper.  The Chinese leaders dragged it on for eight long years without moving an inch in any direction in spite of Dharamshala’s high hopes on it. It is worth noting that before this dialogue started in 2002 the Chinese side had consistently remained indifferent for decades to Dalai Lama’s appeals and offers for a dialogue. It was only because of the rising international pressure that Beijing finally agreed to talk to Dharamshala. In its resolution on Tibet on 6^th July 2000 (text-0326) the European Parliament had put a three-year embargo on the Chinese government and had asked the EU governments to “give serious consideration to the possibility of recognizing the Tibetan Government in exile as the legitimate representative of the Tibetan people if, within three years, the Beijing authorities and the Tibetan government in exile have not, through negotiations organised under the aegis of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, signed an agreement on a new Statute for Tibet….”.

Similarly the US Congress’ decision to add the famous ‘Tibet Policy Act of 2002’ (TPA-2002) to its agenda too had shaken the Beijing leaders. As the EU Parliament embargo date started approaching and the US Congress started discussing TPA-2002, Beijing started its so called ‘Dialogue’ in 2002 and an over enthusiastic Dalai Lama’s side joined it without involving the UN Secretary General or any other independent international agency. True to the Chinese nature, the dialogue remained a non-starter till its last day in 2010. 

Behind the walls of ‘Dialogue’

It took Dharamshala eight years to realize that while it was confident about some big breakthrough and was busy in bragging about the dialogue as its great achievement, the Chinese side was busy using these crucial years to fill up all such major gaps which stood in their way of foisting its final colonial grip over Tibet. To name a few: by agreeing to sit with the Tibetans for a ‘dialogue’ the Beijing leaders successfully deflated the growing European, American and most of other international anger over the non-resolution of Tibetan issue and the ever worsening human rights situation inside Tibet. On the material side, some major critical successes of Beijing during these years included completing the strategic target of spreading the Chinese infrastructure like roads and military network to the farthest corners of Tibet; developing a vast chain of new and modern cities and towns across Tibet to facilitate migration of millions of new Han settlers with the aim of reducing the Tibetans into a nearly meaningless minority in their own homeland. And, more than everything else, the Chinese government used this period to achieve the most unthinkable and technologically difficult target of connecting Tibetan capital Lhasa and the other major city Shigatse to China through its bullet train. This train has proved to be the final tool for making Tibet hospitable for the new Han settlers and a fast and reliable transportation mode for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to transport hundreds of its tanks, armored vehicles and any number of military personnel to Tibet on any day of the year.

How China manipulated the Dalai Lama

Besides these achievements inside Tibet, the Beijing leaders also proved smarter than Dharamshala outside Tibet where Dalai Lama had laboriously developed a massive international network of Tibet supporters and Tibet Support Groups (TSG) across almost all continents over his five decades of his exile. It goes to the credit of Beijing leaders that they could successfully use the dialogue bonhomie to manipulate Dalai Lama and his CTA establishment to defuse the Tibet support movement across the world. The Chinese side also succeeded in creating deep friction and divisions among the Tibetan diaspora which already stood fragmented following Dalai Lama’s decision to scale down his demand for ‘Independence’ of Tibet from the Chinese colonial rule to just ‘genuine autonomy’ for Tibet.

As the massive network of Tibet support groups across the word started making international news headlines by stopping or disrupting the Olympic-Torch’s journey towards Beijing for the forthcoming Beijing-Olympics-2008, the Chinese leadership proved smart enough to convince the Dalai Lama to use his influence and charm to stop his supporters from their anti-China demonstrations in order to let the Beijing Olympics happen successfully. The anti-China sentiments among the Tibetan people living inside Chinese controlled Tibet too were so high at that time that anti-China demonstrations and riots erupted inside Tibet, months before the Beijing Olympics-2008 started. World was surprised to note that these Tibetan demonstrations spread to more than 54 cities and towns of Tibet. Interestingly, 52 of these 54 places belonged to those areas of original Kham and Amdo provinces of Tibet which China does not recognize as ‘Tibet’. After occupying Tibet in 1951 Beijing had scooped out these areas out of original Tibet and had assimilated them into adjoining Chinese provinces of Yunnan, Sichuan, Gansu and Qinghai through a reorganization of Tibet in 1965.

A great Tibetan blunder

What came as a shock to many Tibetans and Tibet supporters was that in his enthusiasm to win the Chinese leaders’ smiles and success for his ongoing dialogue with China, the Dalai Lama personally appealed to the Tibetan people inside Tibet as well as Tibet supporters across the world and persuaded them to stop their anti-China demonstrations. It was during this anti Beijing Olympics-2008 movement that the international Tibet support movement had recorded its highest popularity and efficacy by forcing the International Olympic Committee to abandon its traditional practice of carrying the Olympic Torch from Greece to the host country in an open international marathon. But in the checkered history of Tibet support movement the Tibetan leadership’s over enthusiasm to please their Chinese dialogue partners also proved to be the watershed point when the movement started losing its steam and went on a path of demoralization and decline following the 2008 Beijing Olympics .

China’s U-turn

And here comes the anti-climax. As soon as the Beijing Olympics ended successfully, the Beijing leaders were back in their original colours. They suddenly put a full stop at the ongoing Tibet-China dialogue and asked the delegation of Dalai Lama’s representative to come back with a written statement of their expectations from Beijing in this dialogue. The community of Tibet watchers and sympathizers was shocked to realize that over first six years of the ‘dialogue’ the Chinese had not let the Tibetan side to even tell them what were their expectations from this ‘dialogue’.

The ‘dialogue’ finally crashed with a loud thud two years later in 2010 when the Tibetan delegation was invited to Beijing to present its memorandum. The Chinese delegation took only a few minutes to reject the memorandum out rightly and closed the dialogue saying that the Tibetan memorandum was unacceptable because it is nothing but asking for separation of Tibet from China. Since the sudden death of this dialogue Dharamshala has been desperately trying to restart the dialogue despite Chinese rejections.

However, it is not also true that the Dalai Lama and Dharamshala have been always on the losing side in their direct dealings with Beijing. In late 1970s and early 1980s when late Deng Xiaoping was busy opening China to the outer world and gave impression that he was serious about settling the Tibetan issue with Dalai Lama but without the idea of ‘Tibetan independence’. It was at that time that Dalai Lama succeeded in convincing the Chinese leaders to allow his representatives to freely visit Tibet to have a first-hand assessment of the situation. But the process was abruptly stopped by China and sent back Dharamshala’s fifth delegation in the middle of its visit. The Beijing masters of Tibet were shocked to see Tibetan peoples’ overwhelming welcome and support for Dalai Lama’s representatives. While this experience gave a big impetus to the Dalai Lama’s hopes about Tibet, it gave a good reason to the Chinese side to revise their strategy for taming its Tibetan subjects. Massive international propaganda generated by Dharamshala on the basis of these visits also further infuriated Beijing and made it highly skeptical about further links with Dalai Lama.

Is it a ‘change of heart’ in Beijing?

If Sikyong Penpa Tsering’s claims about a ‘back channel’ contact and Beijing’s own initiative for this new edition of dialogue are correct, then it is worth analyzing why Xi Jinping and his communist establishment are suddenly getting so keen about fresh negotiations with the Dalai Lama? There is no shortage of people among functionaries of CTA and those from the personal establishment of Dalai Lama who must be looking at this ‘change of heart’ on President Xi’s part as his vulnerability to the American and European pressure on Tibet just like what happened in 2002. But knowing the present state of power balance between China and its Western foes, this euphoria has hardly any base to sustain itself. Today’s ground reality is that power equations between China and the entire western block put together are just opposite of the conditions prevailing in 2002. In 2002 Beijing was still a rising power; was vulnerable to international opinion and pressures on issues like Tibet and; its grip over Tibet was still less than complete . In sharp contrast to the 2002 situation Dharamshala will now have to deal with an aggressive, arrogant and an all mighty Xi who is at the helm of a new China which is armed with an unprecedented financial, military and international clout.  The vice like control of China on today’s Tibet through its PLA; the Gestapo like Public Security Bureau (PSB) and; a massive network of digital and electronic surveillance system which controls every moving sentient thing, including poor Tibetan people inside today’s Tibet, would leave hardly any meaningful elbow room for the Dalai Lama side in its negotiations on the dialogue table.

Hopes of the Dalai Lama

In my personal meetings with the two supreme Tibetan leaders during initial days of the 2002 dialogue His Holiness the Dalai Lama himself and Prof. Samdhong Rinpoche, who happened to be the most popular elected ‘Kalon Tripa’ (Prime Minister) of present day Tibet, both looked confident of positive results from the Dharamshala-Beijing dialogue. In my separate meetings, both of them told me more than once that their minimum expectation from this fresh contact with Chinese leadership was that the Chinese leadership will stop the ongoing process of destruction of Tibetan identity and that this new bonhomie between the two sides, aided by the international support for the Tibetan people, will force the Chinese leaders to ease the suffocating human rights situation being faced by the Tibetan people inside Tibet. But unfortunately, the ground situation on both counts went in just opposite direction and life of ordinary Tibetans inside Tibet went from bad to worse throughout the fateful eight years of the dialogue. Things look far worse today when President Xi has declared an open war against the Tibetan identity of Tibet and the people of Tibet living under his colonial control.

Dharamshala’s appeals to Tibetan people inside Tibet and Tibet supporters on the international forums to stop their ‘anti-China’ demonstrations, especially against the visiting Chinese Presidents and other senior leaders have finally proved to be a serious diplomatic mistake. In my personal discussions with some very senior functionaries of the CTA I was told that a common complaint of the Chinese side during the dialogue process was that Dharamshala was playing double game by talking to the Chinese on one side and supporting the anti-China demonstrations by Tibetan people inside Tibet and the Tibet supporters outside Tibet on the other. The Chinese side refused the Tibetan argument that as people’s democratic rights in India and other countries the Tibet support movement was self-initiated and was out of Dharamshala’s command area.  I was told that in response to this logic of Dharamshala the Chinese side told the delegation that it simply meant that the CTA was not the sole representative of the Tibetans and hence there was no point in talking to Dharamshala about whole of Tibet. As one of these senior leaders told me, Dharamshala’s stand against such anti-China movement, especially its appeals to the TSGs to stop such demonstrations, was aimed at meeting this Chinese demand in order to keep the dialogue going.  

Ever since President Xi took over control of China and Tibet the Dalai Lama and the ‘Sikyong’ (elected President) of CTA have been publicly expressing fears about imminent total destruction of Tibetan identity inside Tibet. Xi’s open call to the communist cadres in Tibet for establishing ‘Tibetan Buddhism with socialist character’ has started a replay of Mao’s same dreaded ‘Cultural Revolution’ which had led to destruction of every single Buddhist symbol from the public and private life of Tibetan citizens. Destruction of Buddhist statues across Tibet by the communist administrators today has revived the memories of the notorious ‘Bamyan Act’ of the Taliban in Afghanistan. China’s new law which makes it mandatory to have written and paper-stamped approval of the local Chinese Communist Party office for every new incarnate Lama; Xi’s draconian decision to snatch every Tibetan child, above age of 4, from their families and lodging them into jail like secluded Communist Party schools for communist brainwashing  and pure Han upbringing and; rules like seven-year jail for possessing a photo of Dalai Lama in today’s Tibet will hardly encourage any Tibetan or Tibet supporter to share hopes and enthusiasm of the pro-dialogue lobby of Dharamshala.

Dharamshala’s shrinking elbow room

Even outside Tibet too, China’s ever spreading tentacles over the Tibetan diaspora and his influence over international institutions is successively reducing the scope for the Tibetans and their supporters to force Xi to settle for an agreement which meets at least minimum expectations of Dalai Lama and the people of Tibet. For example, Tibetans, escaping from China controlled Tibet and joining the Dalai Lama establishment in exile as new refugees used to be the biggest source of a committed, dedicated and united human source to keep the Tibetan movement going. Since Dalai Lama escaped from the Chinese grip in Tibet in 1959 over 120 thousand Tibetans managed to escape from Tibet. In past decades somewhat around 2000 to 3000 Tibetans used to escape each year from Tibet via Nepal to reach India. A gentleman’s agreement between the Nepal government, Indian government and the United Nation’s High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) worked smoothly for decades to help the Tibetan escapees reaching India after scrutiny and debriefing by the Indian embassy in Kathmandu. But China’s ever increasing influence over the Nepal government, especially during past few decades, has encouraged the Nepalese army, police and bureaucracy in the border areas to oblige their China friends by catching the escaping Tibetans and handing them back to the Chinese army.

As a result of change in Nepal’s approach on this issue the annual outflow of Tibetans has now drastically reduced from a few thousands to just single digits for over a decade now. This has almost completely dried the lifeline of Dalai Lama’s exile establishment. Akin to bleeding a human body to near white, this refugee drought has severely affected the Tibetan diaspora, especially the CTA in Dharamshala. This change is now more than visible in the functioning of the vast network of Tibetan schools and monasteries across India. The situation is so serious that even national ranking Tibetan monasteries like Drepung, Sera and Ganden at Karnataka in southern India are now forced to cater mainly to monks and students from Indian Himalayan states of Ladakh, Himachal and Arunachal Pradesh and Buddhist countries like Mongolia, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. The craze among the younger Tibetan refugees to migrate to greener pastures like USA, Canada and Europe has further added to the problems of CTA which is now feeling new challenge of attracting new youths among the diaspora and difficulty in holding on to its talented staff.

To make things worse for the Tibetan diaspora, Xi’s communist establishment has found a good strategic use for the database the previous Beijing governments have been building up on the exile Tibetans. In past decades when the Dharamshala-Beijing contacts made things easier for the Tibetan refugees to visit their families back home, the Chinese authorities have been diligently building up a database of the refugee’s family links inside Today’s Tibet. There have been hundreds of instances when activist Tibetan exiles have complained about the Chinese authorities threatening and using their family members to force them return to Tibet or to stop their anti-China activities in exile. During my three yearlong series of international webinars on Tibet and China I personally had to deal with situations when some brilliant Tibetan activist or a scholar would express his or her inability to join the public discussion in the webinar for fears of safety of their family members inside Tibet.

Keeping in mind all these advantages in the hands of Xi’s China it is imperative to see why Xi has suddenly become interested in talking to Dalai Lama? Also, what makes the CTA leaders so enthusiastic about the back door contacts and what results they are hopeful about the new edition of the Dharamshala-Beijing dialogue? As far as Dharamshala is concerned the Dalai Lama side has good reasons to be elated by the recent unanimous (almost) passage of Tibet related Acts in the US Congress in 2020 and 2024 which were also promptly signed into new laws respectively by President Trump and President Biden. While both of these laws call upon Beijing to settle the disputes with Dalai Lama through a dialogue they also categorically support and underline all those vital assertions of the Dalai Lama side which China has been rejecting outright and even broke the dialogue citing its objection to these points. For ordinary Tibetans too these new American laws have come as a great moral booster. To name some of these major points:

-Tibet is an ‘occupied country’ and Tibet is an ‘unsettled’ issue;

-China should settle the Tibetan dispute through negotiations with Dalai Lama, his representatives and the elected Tibetan leaders;

-Tibet was never a part of China in history;

-‘Tibet’ means TAR plus all those areas of Tibet which have been assimilated in adjoining Chinese provinces of Yunnan, Sichuan, Gansu and Qinghai— and not just ‘TAR’ as claimed by China;

-The selection and appointment of Dalai Lama’s reincarnation is exclusively the right of Dalai Lama himself and the people of Tibet and that China has no role to play in this. If any Chinese officials is found to indulge into this process then the new US laws oblige the President of USA and other concerned agencies to take action against them;

-China must respect religious values of Tibet and human rights of Tibetan people inside Tibet;

-All US governments must ensure that the projects funded by US agencies inside Tibet must not damage Tibetan environment and must not work against Tibetan people’s human rights; and

-Unless the Chinese government agrees to the establishment of the USA Consulate in Lhasa no new Chinese Consulate offices in USA can be permitted.

No wonder these new US laws have come as a fresh shot in the arm of Dharamshala, especially after having seen China rejecting each of these points over past many decades. But one also wonders how susceptible or vulnerable Xi’s China is actually going to prove against these assertions or claims of America and other friends of Dharamshala? After all, it is one thing for the US Congress or other pro-Tibet forums like the EU Parliament to pass any resolution on Tibet and China within their own four walls and an altogether different game to make China dance on these musical notes. 

Dialogue “doomed to fail”- Jimmy Carter’s prediction

In real terms, the Chinese vulnerabilities look much farther from what is visible to the eye today because Dharamshala today holds practically no new card in its hands to play on the dialogue table. In his ‘Five-Point Peace Plan’ of 1988 the Dalai Lama has already made the offer to accept Tibet as a part of China under the Chinese constitution in return for ‘genuine autonomy’ for Tibet. Since then this has remained the ‘bottom-line’ of his approach on dialogue with China. True to his great diplomatic skills (Late) Lodi Gyaltsen Gyari, one of my best and lifelong friends among Tibetans, who was Dalai Lama’s Special Envoy and the head of his negotiator team during the 2002-2010 Tibet-China dialogue, has described this vulnerability of Dharamshala through an interesting anecdote in his monumental book “THE DALAI LAMA’S SPECIAL ENVOY — Memoirs of a Lifetime in Pursuit of a Reunited Tibet” (Columbia University Press).

Lodi Gyari has given details of his meetings with former US President Jimmy Carter to seek his advice on the draft of Dalai Lama’s ‘Strassbourg Proposal’ (more famous as Dalai Lama’s ‘five-Point Peace Plan’). In his typically diplomatic and respectable style President Carter pronounced Dalai Lama’s approach as impractical and prone to failure unless it was suitably revised. Giving details of this meeting Lodi writes:

“……Finally he (Carter) put the document down and asked what the Dalai Lama’s “bottom line” was. I responded: “Mr. President, this is His Holiness’s bottom line.” President Carter then replied that if that were true, we should begin by asking for something more. I explained to him that many of us felt the same way, but His Holiness remained adamant, declaring that he wasn’t a politician but a Buddhist monk, and bargaining is not in his nature. His Holiness wanted to be straight forward and clear about what he was asking for. After listening carefully to my explanation, President Carter admiringly observed that if His Holiness’s approach succeeded, it could revolutionize the field of negotiations……”

Time to be alert

Knowing China’s history of handling negotiations with its foes and, more than that, keeping in view the aggressive and bullying style of President Xi’s functioning, friends of Tibet like me would feel compelled to advise Dharamshala leaders to seriously look for and probe the reasons which make Xi interested in starting fresh dialogue after rejecting it so many times in the past. More so, because, unfortunately, most of things concerning today’s Tibet don’t appear to be stacked in favour of Dharamshala and its ageing leader, the Dalai Lama. Frankly speaking there are not enough signs on the Tibetan horizon which can assure one that Dharamshala has enough of skills, tools and advantages to squeeze out any meaningful favours or concessions from Xi’s China?

Xi’s design on the Dalai Lama

Dharamshala leaders today cannot afford to ignore the fact that unlike Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao in whose time the previous dialogue was initiated in 2002, President Xi today heads a China that is too powerful and influential to care for even an iota of international niceties or rule of law. After having succeeded in putting entire occupied Tibet under his iron vice the last goal of President Xi now is to mollify the ageing Dalai Lama and lure him to the Chinese umbrella. Once the Dalai Lama side accepts Chinese assurances it would remove the last hurdles in his way of imposing the next incarnation of Dalai Lama of CCP’s choice on Tibet. In such a situation the chapter of Tibet for the international community is bound to be closed for ever.

And to achieve this goal on the dialogue table we can expect Xi to promise and offer anything to the Tibetan side — even the moon and the sun. The living generation of the world community, including the Tibetans in Dharamshala and Lhasa, has already witnessed the levels of sincerity of China and its communist leaders about their own promises and assurances on Hong Kong. Unfortunately the world has already experienced the levels of courage and guts (or lack of both?) on the part of world powers and the rest of world when none could dare ask Beijing leaders to deliver on their promises they had made to the people of Hong Kong while taking over the colony from the British. After firsthand experience of how China has manipulated and mutilated its own promises on ‘n’ number of occasions since the Tibetan delegation signed on the ’17-Point Agreement’ with China in 1951, the latest example of Hong Kong should have been enough to make Dharamshala and its pro-dialogue advisors to understand the level of sincerity of Chinese leaders.

Friends or Enemies?

One word of caution which every friend and well-wisher of Tibet would like to share with policy makers in Dharamshala is that they must remain cautious about such individuals, governments and groups who might be hunting for big personal gains by offering the present Dalai Lama to Xi’s China on a platter. Such an unfortunate situation will, no doubt, solve China’s Tibet problem for ever, but it will also push Tibet into an irretrievable situation for all times in its future history. Unfortunately, this warning is not without a base because Tibet has witnessed many such cases in its recent history when a Tibetan minister like (late) Nagapo Ngawang Jigme, rather that helping Tibet, preferred to trade off Tibet’s interests in return for personal comforts and worldly gains.

There is also no shortage of governments, individuals and institutions which appeared to be strong supporters and friends of Tibet on their face, but took no time in shifting their priorities to winning favours from Beijing. The most glaring example has been of a prominent German foundation which spent tons of money on organizing series of international Tibet support conferences across the world. Once it established it credentials as a well-wisher of Tibetan diaspora, it took on itself a gigantic campaign of training Tibetan youth leaders on issues like ‘autonomy’ and ‘democracy’ through a long series of five-star residential seminars and conferences. It was already too late for the Tibetan community before they realized that the entire campaign was aimed at brainwashing an entire generation of Tibetan youth leaders and weaning them away from their national agenda of ‘independence’ from China. But before the Tibetan diaspora could understand the real game of this organization it publicly shifted its loyalties to the government of China leaving Tibet and the Tibetans high and dry. The worst impact of this brainwashing campaign was that hitherto a highly united Tibetan diaspora got deeply fractured and divided between the ‘Autonomy’ (Umay Lam) and the ‘Independence’ (Rangzen) camps who could have otherwise coexisted without such a friction. It is also not a coincidence that this brainwashing campaign on Tibetan youth leaders severely damaged the Tibetan society’s resolve to fight together for their country.  

No hope from the international community

Tibetans cannot forget that the world community in general and the world powers in particular have remained so fearful of China’s anger that ever since Mao sent his PLA first time in 1949 to invade Tibet they hardly went ahead beyond offering some verbal generosity to the suffering people of Tibet. Tibetans must also be wary of the fact that today when most countries, including the super powers, feel threatened by a far more powerful China and the danger of a world war is looming large over the world then it is all the more in the interest of international community to see a closure of the Tibetan issue on whatever terms — suitable to Tibetans or not. A publicly advertised settlement between Xi and Dalai Lama with a glaring photo-op ceremony might get front page coverage across the world media next day. But it will also seal the fate of Tibet and Tibetan people permanently. Once the photo-op is over and front page news headlines shift to other world issues then any complaints of Tibetans after that day are bound to be brushed off by the world community as a ‘petty internal matter’ of China.

(Views expressed are his own)