Politics: World Does Little While Tibetan Culture Is Destroyed

About a decade ago, a friend who is well versed in Tibetan Buddhism made a pilgrimage to Lhasa, Tibet's capital. Upon his return, he told me that Tibet “no longer existed,” that the Chinese had utterly destroyed the country and it's culture. Unfortunately, this fact is not always so obvious to American tourists who are not as astute as my friend. Tourists to Lhasa are herded through the few restored Buddhist temples and come away somewhat satisfied with the Chinese rhetoric that religious freedoms have been restored and that Beijing's modernization programs are improving the lot of the native Tibetans.

The truth is much different. Despite the Chinese government's insistence that they now allow a degree of freedom to ethnic Tibetans, the process of cultural genocide continues. To be sure, a few temples have been dusted-off and restored, but this has been done for propaganda purposes and to attract tourists' dollars. On any given day, at any functioning Buddhist temple in Tibet, you're likely to find more European and American tourists in attendance than Tibetans.

It's not just tourists who are overrunning Lhasa. Just two weeks ago, Jin Shixun, the Chinese deputy director general of Tibet's Development and Planning Commission, vowed that within the next few years native Tibetans will become a minority in their own capital city. Except for the Potola and the tiny Tibetan quarter, Lhasa already has the appearance of a provincial Chinese town, with most of the city being dotted with neon-lit stores, karaoke bars and Chinese restaurants to serve Chinese migrants. Even the Tibetan quarter is being swallowed-up by Chinese businesses, and there is little left to indicate that until relatively recently this was one of the holiest cities on the planet.

From 1642 until 1959, when the Chinese finally forced the Tibetan government into exile, Tibet was ruled by a spiritual monarchy, under which the spiritual leader of the country, the Dalai Lama, was also the country's political ruler. By all accounts, this “harmonious blend of religion and politics” worked well for the Tibetan people who saw Buddhism as more than a mere system of belief. The uniquely Tibetan version of Buddhism encompassed the entirety of Tibetan life and the religion formed the social fabric of their culture. According to the Government of Tibet in Exile, “Of all the bonds which defined Tibetans as a people and as a nation, religion was undoubtedly the strongest.”

It's not surprising, then, that the Chinese sought to break the Tibetans' spirit by destroying their relationship with their spiritual practices, especially given the communists' disdain for religion. In 1959 there were more than 6,200 monasteries with nearly 600,000 resident monks and nuns in Tibet. These monasteries were the intellectual as well as spiritual centers for Tibetan culture, containing not only Buddhist texts but holding works on literature, medicine, astrology, art and politics as well. By 1976, only about eight monasteries remained in Tibet, and over 110,000 monks, nuns and tantric practitioners were tortured and executed. Over 250,000 more were forcibly disrobed.

The dismantling of temples, monasteries and nunneries in Tibet was not done for purely ideological purposes. According to the Government of Tibet in exile: “First, special teams of mineralogists visited religious buildings to locate and extract all the precious stones. Next came the metallurgists who marked all metal objects which were subsequently carted away in trucks requisitioned from army headquarters. The walls were then dynamited and all the wooden beams and pillars taken away. Clay images were destroyed in the expectation of finding precious metals inside. Finally, whatever remained - bits of wood and stone - were removed. Literally, hundreds of tons of valuable religious statues, thangkas (scroll paintings), metal artifacts, and other treasures were shipped to China, either to be sold in international antique markets or to be melted down.”

Although these days the Chinese government claims to be a kinder and gentler friend to the Tibetan people, nothing could be further from the truth. As recently as 1996, more than 11,000 monks and nuns were expelled from the country for opposing “patriotic re-education” sessions conducted in monasteries and nunneries. According to the Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy, there were 615 known political prisoners in Tibet in 1999. That same year, 130 Tibetans are known to have been arrested for political activities. Since 1988, 69 Tibetans are known to have died as a direct result of torture at Chinese prisons in Tibet.

Between 1949 and 1979, in a country of 2.5 million, over 1.2 million Tibetans died from the causes of torture, execution, fighting, starvation, suicide, and the unique category of “struggled to death.” According to refugees, recent reforms instituted by the Chinese have served to make life easier for Chinese immigrants, but not for native Tibetans.

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