The first week of July proved to be a turning point in the 76-year-old fight between Xi Jinping’s China and the Dalai Lama’s Tibet. July 1st marked the first day of implementation of Xi’s new draconian law, which, despite being titled in typical euphemistic Communist style as the “Ethnic Unity and Progress Law”, aims at paving the way for straightjacketing and near complete assimilation of China’s ‘National Minorities’ into the Han mainstream. This law not only dictates that all non-Han nationalities and religious communities make their social, cultural and religious traditions and practices subservient to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) but also makes international organisations, foreign leaders and governments answerable to this law. Hence, liable to severe Chinese legal action against all those who oppose the Chinese Government’s policies and actions on issues related to Tibet, Xinjiang, Southern Mongolia and Hong Kong.
Lobsang Sacrifices For Tibet Cause
Only a day after this development in China and its colonies, the front grounds of the United Nations Headquarters in New York witnessed a dramatic and tragic political protest that the world body, or the USA, had never seen before. A 51-year-old Tibetan activist, Lobsang Palden, popularly known as ‘Lobga Rangzen’ among the Tibetan community in the USA and a top leader of the largest Tibetan organisation, Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC), immolated himself. Although it was the 171st act of self-immolation by Tibetans inside and outside Chinese-ruled Tibet, it was the first ever such act in the United States. Before committing self-immolation, he issued a six-minute-long live statement on his Facebook page in which he expressed his frustration with the Chinese rule over Tibet and called upon the Tibetan people to peacefully and unitedly fight for the liberation of Tibet.
Since 2009, at least 170 cases of self-immolations by Tibetans to protest against the Chinese colonial occupation of Tibet have been recorded. One hundred and sixty of these happened inside Tibet, and a large majority among them were young men, women, monks and nuns in the 20-35 year age group. In every single case, the self-immolators went down shouting against China’s presence in Tibet and demanding the Dalai Lama’s return to Tibet from exile in India. Interestingly, not in a single case did the self-immolator try to hurt or kill any Chinese person or official. The remaining 10 cases belonged to the Tibetan refugee diaspora in India and Nepal.
In every single case, the self-immolators went down shouting against China’s presence in Tibet and demanding the Dalai Lama’s return to Tibet from exile in India
This unprecedented spate of self-immolations since 2009 explains the level of Chinese surveillance and vice-like control over the Tibetan people, who have expressed their opposition against China. It is the same Tibet which has been openly fielding innumerable small and big public demonstrations against their Chinese masters since the 1950s until the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Digital monitoring and control of every single Tibetan through personal smart cards and millions of surveillance cameras have practically made any gathering of even three or four Tibetans impossible at any place in a city, town or village. That has obviously led the Tibetans to take single-wolf actions like self-immolation.
Even though it is the first-ever such event in the United States, this extreme step by a senior political leader of the Tibetan community in the USA holds seeds of serious consequences and new shapes of Tibetan resistance against China. Previous experience of repeated self-immolations inside Tibet gives rise to fears of copycat acts not only in the USA but also in other Western countries like Canada, Britain and Switzerland, where Tibetan diaspora has a substantial presence. These fears seem more real in view of the massive publicity this event has received in the American, Western and other international media.
It is also worth noting that President Xi’s implementation of his new ethnic law has evoked strong opposition and condemnation from the political leadership, especially in Western countries. Besides a group of bipartisan US lawmakers, parliamentarians and other political leaders from many other countries, including France, Italy, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Taiwan, Britain, Belgium, Australia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the European Union have openly criticised and challenged the Chinese Government and called for the withdrawal of this law. The first week of July also witnessed numerous public protests across the world by Tibet supporters, Uyghur action groups and supporters of S. Mongolia, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Observers have expressed special concerns about President Xi’s misplaced enthusiasm to eradicate the cultural identity of ethnic groups who have already been reduced to microscopic existence because of many other policies of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since the Communists took over China in 1949. On the one hand, Chinese leaders take special pride in presenting China as a “Happy Family of “56-Sisters”, comprising the Han Chinese and 55 other minorities, ethnic groups and nationalities. China’s own official demographic figures show that while the Han Chinese account for almost 92 per cent of today’s China, the remaining 55 ‘sisters’ – all put together — account for only 8 per cent.
Xi Jinping’s ongoing campaigns of forced ‘concentration camps’ of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang (the ‘East Turkistan’ of the pre-1949 era) and forcible conscription of over a million Tibetan children of 4 to 16 years old into the CCP’s residential schools have already attracted international criticism and opposition. In that background, Xi’s new Ethnic Law only reflects China’s failures to win the hearts of its minorities and colonised subjects. His determination to completely annihilate non-Han identities in his future China only reflect his desperation to eliminate all chances of opposition from these communities.
These two extreme kinds of acts of a new Ethnic-Law by Xi Jinping’s government in Beijing and expression of anger among the Tibetan exile community through an act of self-immolation in New York indicate a dramatic change taking place in the strategy of both sides in handling their 76 year old fight. As the week concludes with the Dalai Lama’s 91st birthday and the conclusion of the “Year of Compassion” to mark his 90th birthday last 6th July one can only pray for some wisdom to Xi and his government and peace to the angered souls of China’s unhappy colonies.
