AMY GOODMAN: Professor Thurman, can you talk about what sparked this latest wave of protest and where you see this going?
ROBERT THURMAN: Yes, Amy. I think it’s sort of the straw that broke the camel’s back, and it took us totally by surprise. And I think it took His Holiness the Dalai Lama very much by surprise. He was—everyone was kind of focused on the march from Dharamsala, the nonviolent march to Delhi and then to the Tibetan border that the young Tibetan activists were doing. And His Holiness was quite worried about that. Also, he did not call for that, either. That’s something they did on their own initiative and—because there is an agreement between the Tibetan government in exile and the Indian government not to do political things on the sort of Indian territory where they are refugees. So the Chinese claim that this is the work of the Dalai Lama clique is very laughable, but also very sinister.
And that is the main point I’d like to get across, is that when Wen Jiabao in his press conference and also the hard-line officials in Tibet say this is the work of the Dalai Lama clique, this is very sinister, because the Dalai Lama clique is all of the Tibetan people. All of the Tibetan people follow the Dalai Lama and whatever he does and says, and they—and the monks were just protesting about local conditions where they are—some of them were arrested at the last Congressional Gold Medal Award last fall—and they went and painted the monastery in celebration, because they were forbidden to have a formal celebration, but they were arrested anyway, monks of Drepung Monastery. And so, they were marching peacefully and nonviolently on the March 10th occasion in order to protest those conditions, as well as to celebrate the day, knowing full well that they might bring onto themselves there the full force of the Chinese intolerance of any sort of demonstration by Tibetans in Tibet.
And then, when they were shot at and when they were suppressed violently and beaten, then the Tibetan community exploded, because they’re are a tinderbox, because China has been smothering them with immigration because of this train—three or four million people came pouring into Tibet—and also the Chinese have been pushing them very hard by making them denounce the Dalai Lama and, you know, controlling their studies and persecuting them in all kinds of ways. So it’s a kind of spontaneous outburst of all the Tibetans all over Tibet, including all the areas where two-thirds of the Tibetans live outside of the Tibet autonomous region.
So when they say—the Chinese—the Dalai Lama clique and that they have a life-and-death struggle with the Dalai Lama clique, what they’re saying is they have a life-and-death struggle against all Tibetans, because there’s no clique. It’s just all of the Tibetans. So, in a way, they’re openly proclaiming their intention and their practice of trying to commit cultural genocide on the Tibetans, as the Dalai Lama said.
And the fact—and that the Dalai Lama called for either violence or nonviolence is ridiculous. He didn’t call for either, because he knows that nonviolent protest in the face of the Chinese oppression leads to violence, because the Chinese will suppress it with violence, and then some Tibetans will not be able to keep to nonviolent discipline, as you saw on those videos from the Chinese state. They don’t show you any videos, as independent journalists would have, of Chinese troops firing live ammunition into crowds and beating monks, and so forth, which they always do...
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Thurman, we only have a few more seconds. You’re very close to the Dalai Lama. You’re coming out with a book on the Dalai Lama. What he said about stepping down as political leader of Tibet, if the violence continues?
ROBERT THURMAN: Yes. Well, the context of that is like Gandhi, when sometimes they would have nonviolent nationwide strikes in India to protest the British domination of them, and then some members of the Dalai—Gandhi’s movement would sort of flip out, and there would be local violence somewhere, they would burn a police station, or some things like that happened in the Indian independence movement. And in those times, immediately Gandhi would call off any sort of strike, and he would say he is not leading this, and, you know, he would denounce his own followers if they went or moved over from nonviolence to violence.
And what the Dalai Lama is saying there merely is that if his followers lose the discipline of being nonviolent, which is what they mainly have done for forty years or fifty years under the most extreme oppression, but if any of them blow it or lose it and it becomes like a violent movement—you know, the young people who are impatient or the people in Tibet who are really being beaten too hard—then, however, he will not lead the movement, because he will not adopt a violent strategy. That is what he’s saying.
And I’m sure that the Tibetans will react to that very, you know, strongly, although he’s different than Gandhi in that he didn’t call for this movement at the moment. But he—but by saying that if they do violence, that’s his reaction to those videos that the Chinese showed, where some Tibetans were taking this chance to burn shops and things, which of course is very oppressive to them. They have no shops of their own in Lhasa. The Chinese have taken over all the commerce in Lhasa. And the Tibetans have no—the Tibetans are really impoverished by the so-called development of Tibet, because the development of Tibet the Chinese have been doing is all to colonize it with Chinese. So it’s developing it so Chinese can live there, which itself is futile, because the Chinese can’t live at 13,000 feet long term; they get sick. So it’s a really sad story.
The Dalai Lama Clique
The Dalai Lama Will Step Down if Violence Continues
by Seamus OBlimey » Wed Jun 18, 2008 12:01 pm 