China has forced world attention away from its religious repression.
A 24-year-old farmer set himself on fire this weekend in Tibet’s first reported self-immolation of the year, and approximately the 150th since 2009. Pema Gyaltsen intended to protest Chinese repression and call for the return of the exiled Dalai Lama. When relatives went to find him afterward at a local police station, they were beaten severely and detained overnight in harsh conditions. It remains unclear whether he has survived or succumbed to his wounds.
This report, from Radio Free Asia’s Tibetan Service, is a reminder of the rough authoritarianism that still dominates life for millions of people in China, especially in remote areas with minority populations such as Xinjiang and Tibet. Amid the glitz of Shanghai and the intrigue of Beijing, it’s easy to forget—which is how Chinese leaders want it.
Not long ago Tibet was a humanitarian cause and cultural reference world-wide. The movies “Seven Years in Tibet” (starring Brad Pitt) and “Kundun” (directed by Martin Scorsese) appeared months apart in 1997, the latter an epic about the life of the Dalai Lama. Today major studios duck such material for fear of angering China’s government and losing access to the Chinese box office. Disney CEO Michael Eisner apologized to Beijing for “Kundun,” calling it a “stupid mistake,” before earning permission to build a Disneyland in Shanghai.
President Obama avoided seeing the Dalai Lama upon taking office in 2009. After a meeting in 2010, White House officials ushered him out a side door past piles of garbage. British leader David Cameron met him in 2012 but faced criticism from Beijing and pointedly refused subsequent meetings. When the ostensible leaders of the Free World act this way, it’s little surprise to see smaller countries such as Mongolia turning away the Dalai Lama more recently.
The Tibetan spiritual leader remains a global icon, but he’s often identified more with a vague spirituality than with a gravely repressed people. In a truly Orwellian turn, Beijing-backed student groups at the University of California San Diego are even protesting his scheduled commencement address on grounds that he’s a “separatist” (he’s not) whose presence would offend Chinese students.
So the same Chinese government that persists in stifling religious freedom in Tibet increasingly demonizes and marginalizes the Dalai Lama overseas. This is the context for the self-immolations of recent years, which the Dalai Lama opposes on theological grounds but hasn’t been able to stop. The reason Beijing works so hard to distract attention from Tibet is that its heavy-handed policies there continue to breed resentment and expose the enduring authoritarianism of Chinese governance.
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