SONYA FATAH

Many fleeing Chinese rule to follow the Dalai Lama seek linguistic, religious and cultural freedom
March 20, 2008

SONYA FATAH

THE TORONTO STAR

DHARAMSALA, India–Tsering Norbu arrived here from Tibet five days ago.

Hiding between stacks of mail in a delivery van for a courier company, the 14-year-old left his hometown not far from Lhasa and set off to cross the least policed section of the border between China and Nepal.

His parents, who sell Tibetan medicine, paid 7,000 yuan (nearly $1,000) to smuggle him across the border into Nepal, bidding farewell to their eldest child.

Officially registered as a Tibetan refugee by the UN agency in the Nepalese capital of Kathmandu, Norbu has been safely transported to India, where he is one of several dozen recent arrivals at the refugee reception centre in the village of McLeod Ganj in Dharamsala, a short walk from where the Dalai Lama lives.

Chinese authorities say the recently built railway to Lhasa and the city’s glitzy new malls and high-rises signal new economic opportunities for Tibetans in its Tibetan Autonomous Region, or TAR.

But at the reception centre here in Dharamsala, that sort of progress isn’t stopping the influx of refugees from risking their lives and their freedom to send their young children over into India.

Between 2,500 and 3,000 Tibetans have entered India every year since the early 1990s, according to the Office of the Reception Centres in Dharamsala. They cross the border into Nepal mostly on foot before being transported to India, where many settle in refugee resettlement centres.

Since the failed Tibetan uprising against the Chinese government in 1959, almost 130,000 Tibetans have followed the Tibetan spiritual and political leader, the Dalai Lama, settling mostly in India but also in the United States, Canada and Switzerland.

Last year 2,337 Tibetans arrived in Dharamsala, and more than 300 have made it here this year.

“The people who make it out here become representatives overseas for the 6 million who are inside Tibet,” said Dorjee, the director of the refugee centre, who came to India in 1965 and has been an official in the Central Tibetan Administration for over two decades. More than 6 million Tibetans are said to live inside TAR and the Tibetan provinces of Kham and Amdo.

Those who enter India say that China’s claim about increasing economic opportunities hasn’t really affected them. Still, coming to India isn’t just about access to financial betterment. It’s mostly about ties to language and religion that many say are easier to cultivate in India than in Tibet.

“It was very expensive for my parents to send me here,” said Norbu, recalling his frightening trip into Nepal.

“My parents sent me here because I wasn’t learning much about my own culture in school. After six years I could barely write the Tibetan alphabet.”

Once in India, Tibetan refugees are sent to schools where they learn Tibetan, English and Hindi, and become familiar with Buddhism.

Indeed, religious and linguistic freedom have guided many people to this hill-station.

Jampa Tashi, 39, understands why. Once a monk in Pashi Dzong, Tashi was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment in 1994 for pasting Tibetan independence flyers outside Chinese government offices.

“They used all sorts of torture devices on us – electrical shock, hanging, kicking us with boots,” recalled Tashi, who escaped to Lhasa and stayed there under cover for five months after he was released in 2006. He paid the equivalent of $950 to escape to India and arrived in Dharamsala in December last year.

“I was in Lhasa and I saw all the development, but everything that is nice and new and developed is owned by the Chinese.”

For men like Tashi, being in India is a real treat.

“This is a true democracy. Here you can do anything you want, there is no fear, no pressure, even if you want to protest,” he said, referring to the demonstrations in the streets of Dharamsala.

“In China, when we decided to protest, we had decided that we were willing to pay with our lives for it.”

At Dharamsala’s refugee reception centre, there aren’t many political prisoners. Some, like Rinchen Tundup, 30, have been here before.

“I came to India in 2001 and studied Tibetan at the Transit School until 2003. Then I decided to go back and spread the message back home.” Tundup, who comes from Amdo province, said he travelled to many parts of Tibet distributing CDs to raise awareness about the Tibet issue.

“I returned to India because I thought I’d get caught soon, and I figured I could do more good from here as the Olympics draws near.”

Most of those who were at the refugee reception centre were youths like Norbu, whose parents sent them away with a heavy heart.

“I feed very sad and I miss my family but I know it’s good for me to be here,” the 14-year-old said. “I saw that the Tibetans back home were always the employees in the malls, not the owners,” said Norbu. “My mother told me to study hard and to make sure that I get the blessings of His Holiness.”

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Sonya Fatah
THE TORONTO STAR
DHARaMSALA, India–There’s a constant buzz in the two-room office of Students for a Free Tibet as throngs of young Tibetans in exile march on the streets.There’s a sudden burst of excitement as Lhadon Tethong of Victoria, B.C., gets off her phone and announces: “There’s been an emergency press conference and His Holiness has said he’s open to change. He will reassess his stance if that is what the Tibetans want.”

Squeals all round and high-fives. Laptops are set aside and everyone gets on their phone to spread the news.

It’s eight days since protests inside the Tibet Autonomous Region and its neighbouring prefectures in China helped launch a veritable resistance movement.

Inside the group’s tiny office, the excitement is palpable as the Dalai Lama, the spiritual and political leader of the Tibetan community, hosts the Tuesday news conference.

In reality, the Dalai Lama did not say he was willing to reassess his traditional position on accepting autonomy within China. Instead, he reaffirmed his commitment to non-violence and promised to stick to his middle-path policy of being autonomous in China.

He’d gone one step further and offered his resignation if violence continued. But at the group’s Indian office here the misunderstanding stirred temporary hope for those who have made fighting for a free Tibet a life mission.

When the uprising began in Tibet, 31-year-old Tethong – who was visiting family in India and has travelled across Canada and elsewhere to raise awareness about the Tibet issue – volunteered to assist the Indian chapter of the organization she heads in New York.

That means helping the media centre sift for truth in piles of misinformation. As the uprising in Tibet has gathered steam, so has government censorship in China.

For the 100,000 Tibetans who live in India, and who have struggled to keep in touch with relatives since March 10, passing on information detailing the government’s crackdown on family and friends isn’t easy as communication lines have been intercepted or broken.

On March 10, Indian police arrested the group’s leader in India, Tenzin Choeying, 30, along with more than 100 other marchers.

In his absence, the local team is buttressed by young activists from around the world.

Jessica Spanton, 25, from Montreal, is one of them. She started raising awareness for Tibet while still in high school in Edmonton.

“People in Alberta are basically pretty conservative and don’t really care about social justice issues so it was like banging your head against the wall,” said Spanton, recalling her time trying to raise awareness about issues back home.

Still, after attending non-violence training and after years of working with the student group, she’s remained committed.

Tethong, too, has memories of campaigning difficulties.

“As a family, we would go every year on March 10 (the anniversary of the national uprising) and demonstrate outside the Chinese embassy in Vancouver,” she recalled.

“We used to chant for Free Tibet and people would come up and ask us what a Tibet was, and what we were giving away for free.”

Last August, Tethong spent six days in China blogging about how the Chinese government was painting an untrue, rosy picture of the situation in Tibet in the run-up to the 2008 Olympic Games.

Tethong says she was followed for most of her time there. At the end of six days, the Chinese government deported her.

Her blog – Beijing WideOpen.com – had caused a bit of a stir, and she continues to work on it from India recounting her observations.

As visitors to India, Tethong and Spanton aren’t participating in the daily marches around town or the candlelight vigils where young Tibetans cautiously remind India to be wary of China.

“Remember 1962!” they shout, referring to the Indo-Chinese war. “Remember how China duped you!”

Many of those who protest are angry because they are cut off from family in Tibet, and they have reservoirs filled with personal stories or hand-me down tales of Chinese brutality or the gradual erosion of Tibetan culture.

As well as giving support to the Tibetan community, Tethong has been receiving some strange emails, like this one from “Liu”:

“I am a Chinese living in Lhasa who is astonished by the authority’s atrocious crackdown on the Tibetans.

“The current situation is worsening. And though it is still dangerous to send out this letter I believe it is necessary to reveal the truth to the outside world and to you who are fighting for your deserved rights.

“Attached please find some first-hand materials I have collected.”

The attachment was a virulent virus intended to destroy files on Tethong’s computer.

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