Op-Ed Contributors

Chronicle of a region needs to be retold

By Tom Mcgregor (China Daily)
Updated: 2011-03-28 08:01

The story is not new. When you meet Westerners who have never visited Asia or are unfamiliar with China and ask them about Tibet, many say it is a place of horrors where the Chinese government ruthlessly cracks down on Tibetans.

Such Westerners assume Tibetans do not have any freedom to practice their religion, they are forced to live in poverty and the Chinese government has created a "concentration camp" atmosphere under the control of the People's Liberation Army (PLA).

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But these Western assumptions are based more on fantasy than facts.

Nevertheless, Beijing has not done a good enough job to dispel the myth and prove that in reality the social, economic and cultural life of the Tibetans is a lot better in the Tibet autonomous region today. You only have to say the word "Tibet", and many Westerners conjure up negative images about the Chinese government's role in the region.

To overcome misconceptions, the central government has to play a more effective role in leading a renewed public relations campaign to explain how it is enhancing, not harming, the quality of life in the Tibet autonomous region.

But this is not going to be an easy task, because the Dalai Lama holds sway over the Western mind and has been very successful in his public relations blitz. The Dalai Lama has been so effective at playing the game that to imagine this separatist leader living in India's hill town of Dharamsala as anything but an angelic figure would be deemed as "heresy" by most Westerners. The Dalai Lama is a genius at public relations.

He is a man who loves the cameras and always appears either entranced in spiritual ecstasy or smiling. How can you criticize a man who travels the globe, and tells the world he loves "peace, harmony and compassion" and glosses over the fact that Tibet was never the utopian paradise before 1951, when China liberated the region?

The truth is that the Tibetans were subjected to egregious human rights abuses before 1951, because Tibetan rulers imposed a harsh theocracy on the people where only Buddhism was the permissible religion.

Heinrich Harrer, author of Seven Years in Tibet, described his time in Tibet (1944-51) as deeply disturbing in regard to human rights. He has said democracy, human rights and universal education were non-existent. The Tibet government was ruled by lamas selected because of their religious piety, with the Dalai Lama at the head of this theocracy.

He has written that Tibet had no impartial system of law, while religious leaders and the noble ranks prevailed over justice. Only the Dalai Lama could grant mercy or pardon a sentence.