Tibetan exiles waver between hope, confusion

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

The Associated Press
By TIM SULLIVAN
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NEW DELHI (AP) -- On one side is China, the world's most populous country, with its generations of experience in controlling its population and 1.8 million police.

On the other is a poor Himalayan region, home to some 5 million Tibetans. Its most prominent leader hasn't been home in almost five decades, and its best-known politicians are in exile. When Tibetans tried to stand up to Beijing last March, the unrest was brutally quashed.

So the idea of hundreds of Tibetan exiles gathering from around the world to discuss the future of their freedom struggle might seem like an exercise in pointlessness. Or perhaps hopelessness.

But not in the Indian hill town of Dharmsala, where the Dalai Lama fled after leaving Tibet in 1959 and where he has his government in exile. Around here, there never seems to be a shortage of hope.

"I'm always optimistic," said Tenzin Choeying, the head of Students for a Free Tibet. "You have to be optimistic here."

But whether they should be optimistic is a far more complicated question.

The Dharmsala talks ended last weekend with a statement upholding the Dalai Lama's "middle way," which calls for Tibetan autonomy through measured compromise but falls short of calling for independence.

It's a policy that even the Dalai Lama acknowledges has largely failed, and which its staunchest defenders say has left most Tibetans deeply frustrated.

The statement warned that the exiles eventually might demand outright independence if China refuses to grant Tibet autonomy. But it's hard to see how that change in policy - dramatic by the standards of the government-in-exile - would have much effect, if any, in Tibet.

"I thought (the conference) was a really good opportunity to make a much stronger statement," said John Powers, a Tibet expert at the Australian National University in Canberra.

But, he said, reverence for the Dalai Lama, the Buddhist god-king traditionally at the center of Tibetan life, remains so ingrained that it was difficult for anyone - even those fervently in favor of independence - to come out stridently against his policy.

Over the years, the Dalai Lama has repeatedly compromised with Beijing: rejecting calls for Tibetan independence, speaking out against the Tibetan violence in the March riots, supporting the Beijing Olympics.

"Every precondition the Chinese set he has gone with it, and he's never gotten anything in return," Powers said. The exiles "asked for so little, and they gave up so much, and now there's really not much left to negotiate."

These days, China has even more power because of the global financial crisis, which has increased Beijing's leverage as financial markets seek Chinese help to calm the turmoil. That makes many Western governments even less interested in reaching out to Tibetans.

It's a situation that leaves many Tibetans deeply confused.

"I want to be free from China totally, but how to achieve that?" asked Norbu Dhargay, a former member of the Tibetan assembly now living in Boston and a delegate to the conference. "The middle way makes sense, but China has not responded, China is not going to make any concessions."

With more ethnic Han Chinese moving into Tibet, and the 73-year-old Dalai Lama's age and health troubles forcing him to curtail his travels, many exile leaders believe there is little time to make sure their movement doesn't stumble into obscurity.

"Time is against Tibet," Dhargay said. " China has increasing advantages."

Some observers believe some good came out of the conference.

Most obviously, the meeting brought exiles together, said Robbie Barnett, director of the modern Tibetan studies program at Columbia University.

In recent years, the Dalai Lama and the government-in-exile have become increasingly distanced from an angrier generation of young activists, many of whom want an immediate declaration of independence.

The radicals don't want to go back to the days of direct military confrontation with Beijing - it has been decades since the last CIA-backed Tibetan guerrilla units laid down their weapons.

Instead, today's radicals mostly push for stronger language - demanding independence instead of autonomy - and urging that quiet compromise be traded for aggressive political moves to embarrass Beijing. They urge such things as protests when Chinese leaders travel, and campaigns to press Western nations to join their cause.

"The Dalai Lama got a huge vote of support for his policy, but it is surprising that he brought the radicals with him," said Barnett. "He seems to be reunifying what was a fractured community."

As a cohesive group, he says, they'll better be able to face their most pressing problem - creating a system that will survive the death of the Dalai Lama.

The Chinese leadership believes time is on its side, as it pours money, development aid and Han Chinese into Tibet while the Dalai Lama grows older.

While Tibetan Buddhism has generations of tradition setting out how a Dalai Lama's successor is found, the current Dalai Lama has proven to be a charismatic activist who can marshal moral support abroad as he speaks in favor of Tibet, spiritualism and pacifism.

The death of a Dalai Lama - from the search for the child seen as his reincarnation to the generation spent training him - traditionally has been a time of infighting among the Tibetan elite.

That is time the Tibetan exile movement cannot afford.

While the exile community presented a unified front at the conference by supporting the middle way, disagreement could be heard hours later.

"I'm, of course, disappointed," Kelsang Wangchuck, an exile activist, said after the meeting closed. "We are publicly supporting the middle path but individually I am for freedom."

"We have to go for full freedom - independence. That's the only option."

But what about China, which says it will never grant independence to Tibet - and insists the middle way is really just a secret plan for independence?

That is where Buddhist teachings on cycles of death and rebirth can make all the difference.

"Being Buddhist, we believe nothing is permanent," the Los Angeles-based delegate Tseten Phanucharas said at the conference. "All powers do come to an end. And China is no different."

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Associated Press writer Sam Dolnick in Dharmsala, India, contributed to this report.