Tibetan Review
August 07, 2012
A commentary in the online edition of Global Times, the international English-language edition of China’s party mouthpiece, the People’s Daily, on Aug 5 accuses India of following a double-standard policy against China vis-à-vis the around 100,000 exile Tibetans hosted by it. The commentary by one Xiao Jie, introduced as an assistant researcher at the China Tibetology Research Center, alleges that while India follows a policy of not allowing anti-China political activities by Tibetan exiles, it “still secretly supports or indulges separatist activities”. However, the commentary does not offer any evidence either for its specific claims or general allegations but only rhetorical speculations and conjectures..
The commentary’s substantive content begins with the claim, generally known to be untrue, that “(a)t first, India fully supported the establishment of the “Tibetan government in exile.” It then says that though India and China restored ambassadorial relations in 1976, the later carried out a two-track policy on the Tibetan issue: not recognizing the “Tibetan government in exile” and opposing Tibetan separatist forces on the one hand and secretly supporting or indulging separatist activities on the other hand.
The commentary maintains that the Indian government exerts pressure on ordinary exiled Tibetans and uses them as a political tool and the only supposed evidence it presents for this very serious allegation is that “Tibetans who came to India or were born in India prior to 1979 can receive Indian residence permits” which it says must be renewed yearly. Another supposed evidence it cites is that “India takes ambiguous policies toward this group,” with the country’s Ministry of Home Affairs viewing the “exiled Tibetans as stateless persons in the immigration registration form.”
The commentary does acknowledge that “(c)ompared to the US and Europe’s interference in China’s domestic affairs over the Tibetan issue, India makes fewer accusations about the internal problems of Tibet.” However, it then speculates that “India reserves the card of exiled Tibetans for future use” so that “it needn’t take risks to interfere in China’s domestic affairs.”
The commentary suggests that India can use the residential permit system to force exile Tibetans to act against China. It takes a dim view of the situation of Tibetan exiles in India, noting that they require the residential permit “to find work, rent an apartment, open a bank account, and obtain identity documents” and that “most of the time, these exiled Tibetans can just be hired by small business and little workshops.” It added that “(c)ompared to local people, they lack opportunities of education and employment.” However, it does not explain how all that fits into the claim that India can use the residential permit system as a tool to force the exile Tibetans to act against China.
Finally, the commentary claims that the exiled Tibetans may even become a hidden danger to India’s own stability in future, with their “separatist activities” threatening regional security and the whole China-India relations. This is a very thinly veiled suggestion that if China decides to act against India, resulting in war, it might be because of what it may see as separatist activities by exiled Tibetans.
Both the Tibetan administration at Dharamsala and the Dalai Lama have been insisting for decades that they only seek genuine autonomy for Tibet under Chinese sovereignty for the Himalayan region’s own best interest and of China. But China considers this to be merely a public relations ploy and refuses to negotiate a solution to the Tibet issue.
