"hope and faith are more powerful than bombs and bullets"

Dalai Lama leads a better protest
By LISA VAN DUSEN

Saturday, 29 November, 2008

The carnage in Mumbai, no matter which group was responsible, was a bloody, unnecessary reminder of the lengths to which some non-state actors will go to try to force new political realities or destabilize existing ones.

One week earlier, elsewhere in India, there was an equally powerful example of how other non-state actors go about seeking change. In this case, instead of bombs and bullets they used the Internet, open dialogue and the basic tools of democracy to make a statement.

The Dalai Lama's open call for members of the Tibetan diaspora to meet Nov. 17-22 in Dharamsala, where the Tibetan government-in-exile is based, produced three results.

The first was an endorsement of the 73-year-old spiritual leader's moderate, "Middle Way" approach to dealing with China, which invaded the region in 1951 and keeps a firm lock on what it now slyly calls the Tibetan Autonomous Region.

That included backing of the Dalai Lama's decision to pull his envoys out of negotiations with Beijing, a process that has produced nothing but talk and a lot of overwrought finger-pointing about the "Dalai clique" and the "evil intent" of the benign Buddhist leader by Chinese officials.

The second was a qualifier stating, for the first time, if the approach fails to produce meaningful autonomy the international Tibetan community will launch a full-blown independence movement.

The third was a promise that the Tibetan people remain totally committed to a non-violent struggle for freedom.

In response, the government of China, which has been emboldened in its anti-Tibet stance since the economic meltdown enhanced its economic leverage over the west, cancelled an EU-China trade summit in Lyon, France, because French President Nicolas Sarkozy has a date with the spiritual leader in Poland Dec. 6. The EU's trade deficit with China was $207 billion last year, an imbalance that was to be addressed in Lyon.

China's demonization of the Dalai Lama isn't swallowed outside its own controlled propaganda environment, but it has allowed the Chinese government to pay lip service to negotiations over Tibet's political status, cultural protections and human rights because no other country has had the leverage or the courage to force legitimacy on the process.

During the run-up to the Beijing Olympics, when world attention was focused on Tibet through the Olympic torch protests and China's crackdown in Lhasa, Western leaders were unwilling or unable to leverage anything but an agreement from China to resume talks, the last round of which failed Nov. 11.

What the Dharamsala meeting showed was Tibetan exiles worldwide are getting more, not less, organized largely thanks to an active online community that is thriving despite China's efforts.

For the United States, whose influence is make or break in such conflicts, Tibet has been one of the few issues on which political leaders from both the right and the left agree.

In their farewell meeting at the APEC summit in Peru, President George W. Bush urged Chinese President Hu Jintao to resume talks with the Dalai Lama which, in the current economic context, was actually a bold diplomatic move.

The next day in Dharamsala, Karma Chophel, speaker of the Tibetan parliament-in-exile, asked in his closing remarks to the exiles meeting that the Chinese government stop "making baseless allegations against His Holiness the Dalai Lama" because it "hurts the feelings the all those people who have respect and love for His Holiness the Dalai Lama and his untiring work for world peace and universal responsibility."

Not exactly the talk of radicals.

As incoming president, Barack Obama may not have any more big-stick leverage with China but he may have an overriding interest in using softer persuasion with Beijing toward a legitimate process of establishing and protecting enough basic rights and freedoms in Tibet to counterbalance the process begun in Dharamsala.

It might also be a way to show the world that hope and faith are more powerful than bombs and bullets.