With the courageous sacrifices and inspiring actions that witnessed widespread uprisings for Tibet’s independence during March and April 2008 fresh in the memory, the Tibetan Government in Exile (TGIE) is intensifying its appeasement of communist China, through ever more conciliatory overtures. Having abandoned any notion of a separate political or territorial identity for its people the TGIE is now desperately seeking to resolve matters by accepting the dubious assurances within Communist China’s law on Regional Ethnic Autonomy. The ‘Memorandum on Genuine Autonomy for the Tibetan People’ (released on 16th November 2008 by the TGIE) is a breathtaking demonstration of surrender which casts a disgraceful stain upon the political aspirations of the Tibetans inside Tibet. A manifesto of stealthy capitulation, it arrogantly notes that: “To a very considerable extent Tibetan needs can be met within the constitutional principles on autonomy“. Praising the potential of China’s law on regional and ethnic autonomy it goes on to state that a number of discretionary powers within the regional framework “can be exercised to facilitate genuine autonomy for Tibetans” and happily describes Tibetans as an ‘ethnic minority’. Which flag will be flying over the Tibetan Assembly this March 10th?

Clearly the strategists of the TGIE consider that justice, prosperity , self-rule and freedoms can be achieved within communist China’s constitution, such ‘reasoning’ would equally have suggested that the occupied people’s of Europe would enjoy political and civil freedoms under Nazi occupation! In an effort to pursue this ‘strategy-of-the-madhouse‘, it proposes solutions wholly to the advantage of Beijing, and offered in a language saturated in dangerous compromise. Meanwhile it is painfully oblivious to the fact that achieving ‘genuine autonomy’, that most nebulous of conditions, whilst posing as much a challenge as obtaining independence, presents a number of immense risks and offers no guarantee of maintaining a distinct Tibetan cultural and territorial identity. Such considerations do not appear on the radar of those tasked with advancing negotiations with Beijing, who repeat the official mantra of autonomy.

The executions, torture and imprisonment that was waged upon Tibetans inside Tibet for daring to demand their independence during last year’s protests has not stirred the conscience of Tibet’s exiled administration, who have proved contemptuous and indifferent towards any voice which does not conform to its orthodoxy of capitulation. Meanwhile, adhering to an established pattern Beijing refuses to shift its position, unless ever more severe demands are conceded by the TGIE, whilst flatly rejecting the ‘autonomy proposals’ offered by the exiled Tibetan administration.

Despite such a public, formal rejection, voices urging surrender to China’s conditions remain, articulated most notably by Samdhong Rinpoche amongst other prominent Tibetans. Stumbling with eyes wide-open towards the abyss, the momentum to accept Chinese domination and to extinguish a sense of Tibetan political distinctiveness, tramples uncaringly over the common desire of ordinary Tibetans for nothing less than full independence. This is not the transparent democracy envisioned by the Dalai Lama, but the calculated application of traditional cultural and societal mechanisms in which the leadership is seen, in public at least, as without failings, whilst a carefully dispensed official propaganda, manipulates long established social perceptions and values, and ensures public conformity to the status quo.

Yet the pressure is growing upon the TGIE from within, the sense of disillusionment increases, particularly from younger Tibetans and those communities far removed from the suffocating deferential conventions which stifle any genuine dissent within Tibetan communities in India. Evidence of such frustration appears on chat-rooms and forums across the Internet as Tibetans express a profound dissatisfaction with their Exiled Government’s vacuous and fruitless policy of appeasement. This stagnant failure to produce any meaningful progress is viewed against the events of 2008 when Tibetans rose against Chinese occupation and demanded with one voice that Tibet be free and independent.

Such factors may well have sharpened minds within Dharamsala’s elite to produce the recent Special Meeting of Tibetans, partly public relations, mostly an exercise to endorse current efforts to encourage negotiations at any price. It was a curious gathering, with a somewhat slanted demographic, its participants, mostly middle-aged and uncritical loyalists of the TGIE. Its findings were seized upon by the Kashag, whose Statement (Issued 10th December 2008) selectively avoided any reference to the fact that there was a forceful opinion expressed within the meeting to return to the goal of Tibetan independence should no progress be shortly forthcoming. Instead it used the conclusions reached at the meeting to trumpet an emphatic endorsement of the ‘Middle Way’.

In reaching this judgment perhaps they failed to note the findings of their own ’census’ conducted inside Tibet, in which from a total of some 17 000 Tibetans only 2000 openly stated support for the ‘Middle Way’. The breakdown of the results revealed those favouring Independence as more than 5000, those following the Dalai Lama as some 8000, whilst the number of Tibetans supportive of autonomy numbered 2000. Even the Speaker of the Tibetan Parliament in Exile reportedly agreed that few in Tibet are in favour of that policy (Indian Express 18th November 2008).

Interestingly, the Special Meeting of Exile Tibetans was convened under Article 49 of the Tibetan Charter, a document which is very clear in its description of what constitute fundamental objectives: “The future Tibetan polity shall uphold the principle of non-violence and shall endeavour to be a Free Social Welfare State with its politics guided by the Dharma, a Federal Democratic Republic…”.(Article 3) That being so the question is raised as to how exactly the current policy of seeking so-called ‘genuine autonomy’ within the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China conforms to the formal objective detailed in the above Article of the Tibetan Charter.

Unless possessed of a thinking similar to the TGIE it is difficult to conceive that communist China’s constitution on Regional Ethnic Autonomy can accommodate principles of federalism, or democracy! Indeed communist China’s statutes on regional autonomy oppose any notion of separation of ‘nationalities’ through what is described as ‘local nationalism’, whilst Beijing forcefully rejected any suggestion of a federalist solution along the lines of Hong Kong. Can it be that in rushing to accept the draconian conditions of communist China’s law on regional and ethnic autonomy, which would in practice and law prevent any genuine enjoyment of democracy and federalism for Tibetans, the Central Tibetan Administration is now in conflict with a central objective of its own Charter? Or having surrendered Tibetan nationhood has the TGIE now discarded too its democratically agreed principles of seeking a democratic and federal Tibet, comprising all three regions? If so perhaps the exiled Tibetan authorities would care to provide details of when this was decided, an amendment to Article 3 requiring two thirds majority support from the Tibetan Assembly and the assent of the Dalai Lama. If no such amendment has been formalised through due democratic process, in accordance with the procedures detailed in the Charter, then the TGIE has not only violated its own state document, but grossly failed its people by undermining democratic process.

Despite the visionary commitment by the Dalai Lama to democratise Tibetan society in what genuine, accountable and transparent process are Tibetans assured of any truly democratic participation? Their aspirations of nationhood surrendered by a presiding cabal, whose inane orthodoxy would abandon Tibet’s political and territorial freedoms for a settlement completely to the advantage of communist China.

Yet the TGIE ignores the lesson that history has written large, that there is no meaningful negotiation with tyranny. Incapable, as communist China is, of seeking an accord of understanding, mutual respect, tolerance and compromise, only one outcome is possible, unreserved submission.

The alternative carries formidable choices bearing inherent hazards and possibly suffering, yet no people have regained their nation’s freedom by offering compromise and abandonment to their oppressors. Unless communist China experiences some form of economic, social and political cataclysm, similar to that of the former Soviet Union, it is challenging to envision how Tibetans can break free (or operate a more forceful campaign of resistance) without having to examine questions of grave dimensions. As Tibetans assemble under the banner of their national flag to commemorate the events of 1959 they will be aware that the Tibet movement has reached a Rubicon moment, which if not responded too with acute political and strategic examination, plus an urgent replacement of present policies with a commitment to the political aspirations of the Tibetan people, will result in the cremation of Tibet’s historic and just claims in exchange for minority status under the brutal over-lordship of communist China.

Issued 9th March 2009