Category Archives: Tibet

Fallimento Tibetano per il Dalai Lama e il Presidente Cinese Hu Jintao

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I disordini in Tibet del Marzo 2008 hanno fatto due grandi vittime politiche: Tenzin Gyatso, il XIV Dalai Lama e Hu Jintao, Presidente della Repubblica Popolare Cinese.

a. Il Dalai Lama

O il Dalai Lama è dietro la ribellione, o non lo è.

Se lo è, quanto accaduto è un grosso fallimento per decenni della sua lotta nonviolenta, 49 anni circa dopo avere condotto in un modo o nell’altro la rivolta del 1959, dalla tempistica e opportunita’ assolutamente sbagliate e che termino’ con il suo esilio.

Se non lo è (e personalmente, penso che sia quello il caso), significa che è stato messo da parte (si veda la sua minaccia di dimettersi in caso di escalation della violenza). E quindi, visto che i tibetani non sono tutti dietro lui, qualunque sia la sua popolarita’ in Occidente, il mondo deve identificare (anche?) altri interlocutori per mantenere un contatto significativo con la gente del Tibet.

b. Presidente Hu Jintao

Ancor più del Dalai Lama, il fallimento più grande è tutto personale e riguarda il Presidente Cinese Hu Jintao.

Questi e’ gia’ stato Segretario del Partito in Tibet qualche tempo fa: quanto mai protetta e privilegiata sia stata la sua vita allora, e anche se come si dice arrivo’ a diffidare e disprezzare quella regione e quella gente, Hu deve aver pure imparato qualcosa riguardo il Tibet.

Adesso, come Leader Supremo, Presidente, Segretario Generale del Partito e Presidente della Commissione Militare Centrale (capo delle Forze Armate), Hu è responsabile di portare il Paese intero alle Olimpiadi.

E’ vero, ha persino provato a prevenire eventuali problemi mandando ulteriori truppe in Tibet. Ma quando poi i disordini sono cominciati (e sono cominciati quando prevedibile: in occasione di un anniversario, a pochi mesi dalle Olimpiadi), l’unica risposta di Hu e’ stata uccidere, brutalizzare, arrestare, deportare, in una serie di incredibili errori di Public Relations complicati anche da una fissazione malsana e improbabile per fantastiche macchinazioni da parte del Dalai Lama, un tizio con tunica in Dharamsala che fingerebbe nonviolenza per decenni ma che avrebbe ora l’abilita’, di mettere nei guai tutto da solo l’intera Cina.

Nelle (in-)capaci mani di Hu, la Cina è stata fatta apparire insensata, incapace di prepararsi, incapace di impedire disordini, violenta, facile con la pistola contro le “proprie” popolazioni, incapace di difendere i cinesi di etnia Han dalla rabbia dei tibetani, incapace di impedire che le notizie trapelassero al mondo esterno, macchiata di sangue davanti a centinaia di milioni di clienti delle sue merci in tutto il mondo, e questo giusto alcune settimane prima delle Olimpiadi: una Cina pronta si’ ma solo per le critiche e i tentativi di ostracismo da parte di tutti coloro che cercano una giustificazione per protezionismo anti-Cinese.

Tutto questo, alcuni giorni dopo l’annuncio di operazioni contro “terroristi” uiguri, che sembrano sempre piu’ una finzione o una realtà imbellettata.

È questo che Hu Jintao aveva in mente quando parlava della sua filosofia politica della “Società Armoniosa” e dello “Sviluppo Pacifico“? Speriamo di no… ma purtroppo, sempra proprio che sia come uno di quei Capitani che sanno comandare una nave ma solo quando il tempo e’ bello.

A meno che qualche cosa di grosso non accada durante i prossimi mesi, non stupiamoci se Hu Jintao decidera’ presto di pensionarsi…

Tibet’s Unrest A Failure for the Dalai Lama and President Hu Jintao

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The March 2008 “unrest” in Tibet has managed to net two big political victims: Tenzin Gyatso, the XIV Dalai Lama and Hu Jintao, President of the People’s Republic of China.

a. The Dalai Lama

Either the Dalai Lama is behind the rebellion, or he is not.

If he is, it’s a big failure for decades of his nonviolent struggle, some 49 years after leading one way or another the wrongly-timed, poorly opportunistic 1959 uprising that lead him into exile.

If he is not (and personally, I think that’s the case), it means he’s been sidelined (check his threat to resign against escalating violence). That is, the Tibetans are not all behind him: and so, as much as he is popular in the West, the World needs to identify more interlocutors to keep a meaningful contact with the people of Tibet.

b. President Hu Jintao

Even more than the Dalai Lama’s, the biggest failure of all is a personal one, and concerns Chinese President Hu Jintao’s.

First he was Party Secretary in Tibet for a while: however protected and privileged his lifestyle must have been at the time, and even if he came to distrust and despise the region and the people, as rumors have it, Hu must have learnt a thing of two about Tibet. Now, as Paramount Leader, President, General Secretary, and Chairman of the Central Military Commission, Hu has been in charge of getting the whole country ready for the Olympics.

True, Hu even tried to prevent troubles by sending additional security personnel. But still: when the troubles happened (and they happened when most expected: on an anniversary, a few months before the Olympics), Hu’s only answer was to kill, brutalize, arrest, deport, in an incredibly bad P.R. move compounded by an unhealthy, improbable fixation for fantastic machinations by the Dalai Lama, a robed guy in Dharamsala pretending nonviolence for decades but now single-handedly capable of eliciting problems for the whole of China.

Under Hu’s (in-)capable hands, China has been lead into looking foolish, unable to prepare, unable to prevent civil unrest, violent, trigger-happy against “its own” people, unable to defend the ethnic Chinese Han apparently victims of the Tibetans’ anger, unable to prevent the news from leaking to the outside world, blood-splattered in front of hundreds of millions of its customers around the world a few weeks before the Olympics and ready to be criticized and ostracized by all those looking for an excuse for protectionism.

All of this, a few days after announcing a clampdown on Uighur’s terrorists that appears more and more either fiction or embellished reality.

Is this what Hu Jintao had in mind when presenting his political philosophy of “Harmonious Society” and “Peaceful Development“? Hopefully not…but unfortunately, his does look like “Fairweather Leadership“.

Unless something big happens during the next few months, one shouldn’t be surprised to find Hu in well-earned retirement quite soon.

Pro-Tibet, With Both Eyes Wide Open

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It’s obviously a big issue, when Police and the Army shoot against unarmed civilians, and beat schoolchildren during their free time. But the Tibet situation is complex: sure, more complex than Burma’s of some months ago.

The Burmese monks rebelled against the umpteenth torment on the part of the Military Junta. The Tibet revolt seems planned instead in order to coincide with the 20th anniversary of another one, risking embarrassment for the Beijing Government during what was meant to be a joyful prelude to the Olympic Games of August 2008.

There was in fact nearly the absolute certainty that the Chinese “security forces” would react brutally: indeed, if the dead total to tens or hundreds, they will be much fewer in past repressions. And those “security forces” act just as brutally in other parts of China…

Also, the strong aversion for all thing Tibet by the President of the People’s Republic of China, Hu Jin Tao, are well known, stemming from his stint as Party Secretary in Lhasa: whose climate, and whose people he just never managed to bear.

The history itself of the relationships between communist China and the current Dalai Lama is not very simple. It could indeed be argued that his hastened departure after the unwise rebellion by the Tibetan nobility in 1956-1959 has coincided with the liberation of large numbers of people from serfdom. Finally, just to provide an example of all the issues that seldom surface, the Chinese Government is obviously determined not to let Tibet end up like Mongolia, that managed to free itself thanks to Soviet support whilst China went from one civil war to another during the first half of the XX Century.

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Therefore, even if there is criminal repression going on at this moment, we must ask why it has been evoked/provoked right now with a rebellion and civil disorders. Who wanted to verify if the People’s Liberation Army would have avoided the use of force or not? And why… that is, what ever will the medium/long term Tibetan strategy?

If we do not know how to answer these questions, we can only pronounce the usual appeals to calm and moderation: assisting as spectators to the renewed drama in the destructive relationship between the central Government and the aboriginal Tibetan population.

And for the Chinese Government there is a clear, logical strategy: repress, without exaggerating too much. At the end of the day, just a media-management issue.