Where is Tibet?
Tibet lies at the center of Asia, with an area of 2.5 million square kilometers. The earth’s highest mountains, a vast arid plateau and great river valleys make up the physical homeland of 6 million Tibetans. It has an average altitude of 14,000 feet above sea level.
Tibet is comprised of the three provinces of Amdo (now split by China into the provinces of Qinghai and part of Gansu), Kham (largely incorporated into the Chinese provinces of Sichuan, Gansu and Yunnan), and U-Tsang (which, together with western Kham, is today referred to by China as the Tibet Autonomous Region).
The Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) comprises less than half of historic Tibet and was created by China in 1965 for administrative reasons. It is important to note that when Chinese officials and publications use the term “Tibet” they mean only the TAR, whereas Tibetans use the term Tibet to mean the three provinces described above, i.e., the area traditionally known as Tibet before the 1949-50 invasion. When SFT refers to Tibet, we are also refering to all three provinces.
Despite over 60 years of Chinese occupation of Tibet, the Tibetan people refuse to be conquered and subjugated by China. The present Chinese policy, a combination of demographic and economic manipulation, and discrimination, aims to suppress the Tibetan issue by changing the very character and the identity of Tibet and its people. Today Tibetans are outnumbered by Han Chinese population in their own homeland, and the Chinese language is being pushed more and more into circulation in education, employment, bussiness and social circles. Tibetans are effectively becoming ostracised in their own land.
Tibet today
Tibet is an occupied country. This is the most important fact to remember when working for Tibetan freedom. We are not simply working for human rights or religious freedom in Tibet, we are working to free a nation from a illegal and brutal foreign occupation. At the time when Chinese troops invaded Tibet in 1949, Tibet was an independent nation. Tibet had its own government, its own language, its own currency, its own postal and legal systems. It sent diplomats to and agreed borders with other nations like any other soverign state.
Human rights are part of the issue; the Chinese government has brought horrendous rights abuses to Tibet, but even an end to human rights abuses would not constitute a ‘free Tibet’. Every human being has human rights which must be respected, and every nation has the right to be independent, to manage its own affairs and to celebrate its status as a country. By a ‘free Tibet’, we mean an independent one.
After Chairman Mao came to power in China in 1949, he set about sending vast numbers of troops to invade Tibet. He wanted the huge natural resources which Tibet holds, and which China has since used to fuel its enormous industrial economy. A lot of people say that China is economically powerful, and because of that it’s a valuable ally, but the fact is that China would not be so powerful had it not invaded Tibet and other areas like East Turkestan and Inner Mongolia. The reason why the Chinese Communist Party carries out human rights abuses in Tibet and other occupied lands is not because China has a different cultural attitude to such rights and it isn’t because China is ‘developing’ and must be given time to clean up its act. The reality is that the Chinese state operates a deliberate and systematic policy of imposing human rights abuses on Tibetans, Uyghurs, Mongolians and even Chinese people as this is the only way it can keep these people down and maintain the brutal occupations which fuel it’s economy. So we can’t appeal to the CCP to stop abusing Tibetans; what we can do is make the occupation of Tibet more costly for China than it is beneficial.
Tibetan resistance to Chinese rule has been a continual thorn in the side of the Chinese Communist Party. Tibet’s relatively small army were crushed by the invading Chinese forces, and in 1959 the great Tibetan Uprising saw some 86,000 Tibetan men, women and children killed as they attempted to overthrow the invaders. We still mark this date every year, and inside Tibet, March 10th is often a catalyst for renewed Tibetan protests. There are now Tibetan refugees all around the world, including Tibet’s most famous representative, Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama. But Tibetan exiles have never forgotten where their home is, and contrary to the Chinese government’s hopes that time might erase the idea of the Tibetan nation from these exiles’ minds, the younger generation of Tibetans born in exile are even more passionate about their country’s freedom. Inside Tibet, students are often at the forefront of protests against Chinese rule, while Tibetans use more and more inventive methods of protest, civil disobedience and circumvention of strict state controls.
While the ultimate goal of Students for a Free Tibet is to help Tibetans regain their independent nation, we also work hard to end the atrocious violations of the Tibetan people’s political, religious, cultural, social and economic rights by the Chinese government. We also train young Tibetans and Tibet supporters across the world about the strategy of non-violent direct action, political campaigning and the importance of Tibetan independence.
Though they are denied the right to vote and face a raft of oppressive measures designed to prevent them interacting with the outside world, Tibetans in Tibet have continually resisted Chinese rule. There were mass uprisings in 1988-1989 and in 2008, and in 2011 there has been a sustained stream of protests, some inspired by the Arab Spring, where people power has sent powerful dictators to the scrap pile. In 2008, these mainly peaceful protests led to brutal crackdowns which left many dead and injured and many thousands imprisoned. This is the Chinese government’s reaction to dissent, and it is typical of any regime which weilds power through the barrel of a gun; when people have opinions, aspirations and identities, brutality is the only trick the regime has up its sleeve. But Tibetans are getting cleverer, using technology which wasn’t available to them in the 50s. They’re sharing information, networking, using the arts and building community resistance projects like the Lhakar movement. They’re inspired by Gandhi, Mandela and Martin Luther King and the more that China expands its presence in the world’s media spotlight, the more it is exposed for what it is; an oppressive occupying power which must withdraw from Tibet for the country to be free.
The Chinese state does not confine its oppression to its treatment of Tibetans. Citizens of other occupied nations such as East Turkestan and Inner Mongolia are also severely repressed and subjected to cultural discrimination and can suffer arbitrary arrest and torture if they demand that they be granted human rights, free speech and political self-determination. The Chinese state also denies Chinese citizens free speech and information access, and invests huge amounts of money and manpower in controlling outlets through which Chinese, Tibetans and other groups may attempt to network and demand an end to state controls and abuses. The internet is increasingly being seen as a major threat to the Chinese state, which has notably backed down from introducing further censorship when Chinese netizens challenged these controls. Meanwhile, Tibetans and other groups are using the arts to express political opinions, and though some are arrested and tortured for this, the Chinese state knows that imprisoning people with cult followings can be more destructive to the stability of the Chinese Communist Party than arresting them. SFT UK networks with other groups who are affected by Chinese state policies and utilises the internet in innovative ways to share information between Tibetans and others and expose the abuses carried out by the Chinese regime.
The Dalai Lama recently said Tibet is ‘hell on Earth’, and Tibetans who escape echo his words. Inside Tibet, people are putting their lives on the line to call for freedom, but outside, we have the right to call for action, and we have a duty to do so. Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi said ‘use your liberty to promote ours’. This is what we are doing at SFT UK, and the more people who join us, the more pressure the Chinese Communist Party will be under. Change has been sweeping the world recently, and no regime in history has lasted forever. The Chinese state is no different. Today, Tibet is occupied and Tibetans oppressed. But the only thing which is ever gaurenteed is that everything changes. The occupation of Tibet will change too.
Click on the links to read more:
Tibet in depth
History and Culture
Fact vs. Myth
Travel in Tibet
The Tibet Movement
Links
