The ongoing repression of Tibetans and Uighurs is reason enough to say no to Beijing’s bid.
The News Hub
Nithin Coca
July 28, 2015
Last week, news broke that one of Tibet’s most revered Buddhist monks and a fierce activist had died after 13 years of ill-treatment and torture in a Chinese prison. He had been refused medical care despite calls from his family and international NGOs.
Sadly, his death was just the latest in an ongoing, five-decades and counting nightmare for the Tibetan people. Despite all the progress the world has made, Tibetans have been left behind. In China today, the tragic death of Tenzin Delek Rinpoche shows, very clearly, the choices at stake when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) meets in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in a few days to choose the host of the 2022 Games.
A failed theory
Tenzin Delek Rinpoche was jailed for life in 2002 in a secret trial, on what was almost certainly trumped-up, falsified charges, ironically, just one year after the IOC awarded the 2008 Summer Olympic Games to Beijing.
The reasoning: the awarding of the Games would push China to further open up and respect human rights and freedoms. The country, then, had been making remarkable progress, albeit measured against the horrific atrocities of the Cultural Revolution of the 1970s and the Great Leap Forward in the 1960’s. Against that backdrop, was there really anyway to go but up?
This is a theory favored by many in institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank. Liberalized economies lead to liberalized Governments. The short-term suffering of people like Tenzin Delek Rimpoche and countless other Tibetans (estimations are that a million have been killed as a result of the Chinese occupation), is just a necessary cost of the vast equation of liberalism, in which, somehow, all of us will be better off.
While the policymakers were waiting for China’s booming economy to result in more political freedoms, those of us paying attention to Tibet, East Turkestan, and Inner Mongolia saw increased migration of Han Chinese (now the majorities in all three regions), growing restrictions on local culture, more surveillance in Monasteries and local institutions, and less willingness by the Communist Government to engage with activists or leaders (including the increasingly shunned Dalai Lama, who is finding fewer and fewer willing to offer the Nobel Peace Laurette a visa for fears of upsetting China).
We didn’t see any progress. Then came the 2008 Games. Before then, ignorance was, maybe, acceptable but not after.
The tragedy of 2008
In early 2008, months before games were to begin, Tibetans, with knowledge that the world was watching China, began protesting the Chinese occupation in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, protests which then spread across the occupied country. This made headlines around the world, followed by thousands gathering to protest Olympic Torch rallies in Argentina, the United Kingdom, France, the United States, India, and South Korea.
What came next was the clearest example of the reality in China, and the failure of global institutions to address it. Firstly, a massive crackdown in Tibet, followed by the closing off of the region to the outside world.
Here it was. We now knew China would not respect human rights, right before the Olympics. Yet, that summer, despite the protests, the world turned a blind eye to Tibet as not a single country boycotted the games, as many of us said they should.
This made things worse as China took global inaction as a green light that it wouldn’t be held responsible for its actions.
Today, seven years since those games, Tibet remains closed to foreigners. It is now a place where, according to research undertaken at the University of Colorado – Boulder, there are fewer foreign journalists than in North Korea. Surveillance at monasteries has increased, roadblocks made travel for Tibetans nearly impossible, and many of those jailed in ’08 remain in prison and, like Tenzin Delek Rinpoche, are ignored.
Tibetans have now taken to self-immolation as a final form of resistance, with hundreds having burned themselves in protest since 2008. China’s response, according to Free Tibet, is a deeper level of surveillance and control, including the use of collective punishment, in which an entire village or family is punished for the actions of a single individual, including self-immolators.
Now, imagine what awarding another Games to China will mean.
Willfully Blind
It is not only Tibetans who are suffering under Chinese control. Last year, Ugyur academic Ilham Tohti was arrested and remains in custody. 2010 Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo has not been seen in public since then either. This month, a round-up of human rights lawyers and activists in the country left over 80 imprisoned. The trend is clear – Premier Xi Jingping is reigning over what many see as the most repressive period in China since Mae Zedong’s death in 1976.
It is time for another method. One where it is not trade that comes first but the rights of people like Tenzil Delek Rinpoche, Ilham Tohti, Lui Xiabo, and countless other human beings suffering under a regime that cares more about money than its own citizens rights. Let’s be willing to revoke favored trade status, WTO membership, or implement visa restrictions based how a country treats its minorities. And finally, let’s not award the Olympics to a country that has shown itself incapable of keeping its promises.
Tenzin Delek Rinpoche was in jail for 13 years. Was his suffering, and that of his people, a necessary cost towards global development? Is the fact that his sister and niece remain in custody for the crime of asking for his ashes a sign of progress in China?
