Ethnic unrest has been a common theme in China recently (mysteriously for many, but not for me). One source of that comes from Tibet. I was once asked why Chinese government treats Dalai Lama with such hostility and distrust? Why would China distrust such a peace-loving, caring, charismatic and perfect Nobel Peace prize winner? Digging a little bit into history, with basic information from wikipedia, I find the distrust makes perfect sense.
So a brief history is in order (from wiki): On 17 November 1950, at the age of 15, the 14th Dalai Lama (the one you know) was enthroned formally as the temporal ruler of Tibet. He sent a delegation to Beijing, which ratified the Seventeen Point Agreement for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet. (which allowed a high degree of autonomy) He worked with the Chinese government: in September 1954, together with the 10th Panchen Lama he went to the Chinese capital to meet Mao Zedong and attend the first session of the National People's Congress as a delegate, primarily discussing China's constitution. On 27 September 1954, the Dalai Lama was selected as a deputy chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, a post he officially held until 1964.
However, Dalai Lama was planning something else. He accepted assistance from CIA. In 1956, a large rebellion broke out in eastern Kham, an ethnically Tibetan region in Sichuan
province. To support the rebels, the CIA launched a covert action
campaign against the Communist Chinese. A secret military training camp
for the Khampa guerrillas was established at Camp Hale near Leadville, Colorado, in the U.S. The guerrillas attacked Communist forces in Amdo and Kham but were gradually pushed into Central Tibet.
At the outset of the 1959 Tibetan uprising, fearing for his life, the Dalai Lama and his retinue fled Tibet with the help of the CIA's Special Activities Division, crossing into India on 30 March 1959, reaching Tezpur in Assam on 18 April.
This excerpt from wikipedia should have explained the origin of the distrust. Oran's Dictionary of the Law (1983) defines treason as "...[a]...citizen's actions to help a foreign government overthrow, make war against, or seriously injure the [parent nation]."(from wiki). I think what Dalai Lama did fit the definition of treason. Then it is not all that surprising that China treats a traitor with suspicion, distrust, and hostility, especially after that traitor has publicly embarrassed China many times afterwards. To build trust is a lengthy process, and once destroyed, it is hard to rebuild, isn't it?
While Dalai Lama likes to instill some Tibetan teaching, I wish to quote Conscious: I used to judge a person by what he says, now I have learned to judge a person by what he does.
i think sometimes Westerns like to apply double standards, while it's ok for them to treat traitors harshly and portray them as demons, it's not ok for other countries...i think we need to figure out someone in western history who was treated badly yet loved by many others...it's the best reply to whoever likes to mention Dalai Lama
ReplyDeleteI fear that westerners mostly fail to recognize Dalai Lama as a traitor, instead they view him as a peace-loving spiritual leader, who fights for the freedom and welfare of Tibetan people. For some reason, Dalai Lama has been extremely successful in painting a noble image.
DeleteBut for the question you posed, I do remember one incident that might be of interest to you. The famous nuclear scientist, Rosenberg for (allegedly )passing scientific discovery to Soviet Union. He and his wife is executed. There was tons of protest, including from Einstein, but US proceeded anyway:
Marxist Nobel-Prize-winning existentialist philosopher and writer Jean-Paul Sartre called the trial "a legal lynching which smears with blood a whole nation. By killing the Rosenbergs, you have quite simply tried to halt the progress of science by human sacrifice. Magic, witch-hunts, autos-da-fé, sacrifices — we are here getting to the point: your country is sick with fear... you are afraid of the shadow of your own bomb." Others, including non-Communists such as Albert Einstein and Nobel-Prize-winning physical chemist Harold Urey, as well as Communists or left-leaning artists such as Nelson Algren, Bertolt Brecht, Jean Cocteau, Dashiell Hammett, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, protested the position of the American government in what the French termed America's Dreyfus affair. In May 1951, Pablo Picasso wrote for the communist French newspaper L’Humanité, "The hours count. The minutes count. Do not let this crime against humanity take place." The all-black labor union International Longshoremen’s Association Local 968 stopped working for a day in protest. Cinema artists such as Fritz Lang registered their protest. Pope Pius XII appealed to President Dwight D. Eisenhower to spare the couple, but Eisenhower refused on February 11, 1953, and all other appeals were also unsuccessful.