Dalai Lama And Chinese Communist Party(ZT)

The devil you know?

I criticised Gyurme Dorje's Footprint Tibet (see this and this with the feedback from Dorje's office manager) for his groundless accusation of the Han Chinese's bias against the Tibetans. In a recent debate about whether some popular China blogs are hate sites, commentators again take issue with the way the Western media handle Tibet. But the Chinese media, which are still essentially party-controlled, are hardly more credible. These highly politicised accounts and analysis made understanding the modern history almost a mission impossible - until I came across "Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth" by Dr Michael Parenti (July 2004; Updated). Here is an excerpt thereof:

Occupation and Revolt
The Chinese Communists occupied Tibet in 1951, claiming suzerainty over that country. The 1951 treaty provided for ostensible self-government under the Dalai Lama's rule but gave China military control and exclusive right to conduct foreign relations. The Chinese were also granted a direct role in internal administration "to promote social reforms." At first, they moved slowly, relying mostly on persuasion in an attempt to effect change. Among the earliest reforms they wrought was to reduce usurious interest rates, and build a few hospitals and roads. "Contrary to popular belief in the West," writes one observer, the Chinese "took care to show respect for Tibetan culture and religion." No aristocratic or monastic property was confiscated, and feudal lords continued to reign over their hereditarily bound peasants.21

The Tibetan lords and lamas had seen Chinese come and go over the centuries and had enjoyed good relations with Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek and his reactionary Kuomintang rule in China.22 The approval of the Kuomintang government was needed to validate the choice of the Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama. When the young Dalai Lama was installed in Lhasa, it was with an armed escort of Chinese troops and an attending Chinese minister, in accordance with centuries-old tradition. What upset the Tibetan lords and lamas was that these latest Chinese were Communists. It would be only a matter of time, they feared, before the Communists started imposing their collectivist egalitarian solutions upon Tibet.

In 1956-57, armed Tibetan bands ambushed convoys of the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army (PLA). The uprising received extensive assistance from the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), including military training, support camps in Nepal, and numerous airlifts.23 Meanwhile in the United States, the American Society for a Free Asia, a CIA front, energetically publicized the cause of Tibetan resistance, with the Dalai Lama's eldest brother, Thubtan Norbu, playing an active role in that group. The Dalai Lama's second-eldest brother, Gyalo Thondup, established an intelligence operation with the CIA in 1951. He later upgraded it into a CIA-trained guerrilla unit whose recruits parachuted back into Tibet.24

Many Tibetan commandos and agents whom the CIA dropped into the country were chiefs of aristocratic clans or the sons of chiefs. Ninety percent of them were never heard from again, according to a report from the CIA itself, meaning they were most likely captured and killed.25 "Many lamas and lay members of the elite and much of the Tibetan army joined the uprising, but in the main the populace did not, assuring its failure," writes Hugh Deane.26 In their book on Tibet, Ginsburg and Mathos reach a similar conclusion: "As far as can be ascertained, the great bulk of the common people of Lhasa and of the adjoining countryside failed to join in the fighting against the Chinese both when it first began and as it progressed."27 Eventually the resistance crumbled.

Enter the Communists
Whatever wrongs and new oppressions introduced by the Chinese in Tibet, after 1959 they did abolish slavery and the serfdom system of unpaid labor, and put an end to floggings, mutilations, and amputations as a form of criminal punishment. They eliminated the many crushing taxes, started work projects, and greatly reduced unemployment and beggary. They established secular education, thereby breaking the educational monopoly of the monasteries. And they constructed running water and electrical systems in Lhasa.28

Heinrich Harrer (later revealed to have been a sergeant in Hitler's SS) wrote a bestseller about his experiences in Tibet that was made into a popular Hollywood movie. He reported that the Tibetans who resisted the Chinese "were predominantly nobles, semi-nobles and lamas; they were punished by being made to perform the lowliest tasks, such as laboring on roads and bridges. They were further humiliated by being made to clean up the city before the tourists arrived." They also had to live in a camp originally reserved for beggars and vagrants.29

By 1961, the Chinese expropriated the landed estates owned by lords and lamas, and reorganized the peasants into hundreds of communes. They distributed hundreds of thousands of acres to tenant farmers and landless peasants. Herds once owned by nobility were turned over to collectives of poor shepherds. Improvements were made in the breeding of livestock, and new varieties of vegetables and new strains of wheat and barley were introduced, along with irrigation improvements, all of which reportedly led to an increase in agrarian production.30

Many peasants remained as religious as ever, giving alms to the clergy. But the many monks who had been conscripted into the religious orders as children were now free to renounce the monastic life, and thousands did, especially the younger ones. The remaining clergy lived on modest government stipends, and extra income earned by officiating at prayer services, weddings, and funerals.31

Both the Dalai Lama and his advisor and youngest brother, Tendzin Choegyal, claimed that "more than 1.2 million Tibetans are dead as a result of the Chinese occupation."32 But the official 1953 census - six years before the Chinese crackdown - recorded the entire population residing in Tibet at 1,274,000.33 Other census counts put the ethnic Tibetan population within the country at about two million. If the Chinese killed 1.2 million in the early 1960s then whole cities and huge portions of the countryside, indeed almost all of Tibet, would have been depopulated, transformed into a killing field dotted with death camps and mass graves - of which we have not seen evidence. The thinly distributed Chinese military force in Tibet was not big enough to round up, hunt down, and exterminate that many people even if it had spent all its time doing nothing else.

Chinese authorities do admit to "mistakes," particularly during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution when religious persecution reached a high tide in both China and Tibet. After the uprising in the late 1950s, thousands of Tibetans were incarcerated. During the Great Leap Forward, forced collectivization and grain farming was imposed on the peasantry, sometimes with disastrous effect. In the late 1970s, China began relaxing controls over Tibet "and tried to undo some of the damage wrought during the previous two decades."34

In 1980, the Chinese government initiated reforms reportedly designed to grant Tibet a greater degree of self-rule and self-administration. Tibetans would now be allowed to cultivate private plots, sell their harvest surpluses, decide for themselves what crops to grow, and keep yaks and sheep. Communication with the outside world was again permitted, and frontier controls were eased to permit Tibetans to visit exiled relatives in India and Nepal.35

In the 1990s, the Han, the ethnic group comprising over 95 percent of China's immense population, began moving in substantial numbers into Tibet and various western provinces. On the streets of Lhasa and Shigatse, signs of Han preeminence are readily visible. Chinese run the factories and many of the shops and vending stalls. Tall office buildings and large shopping centers have been built with funds that might have been better spent on water treatment plants and housing. Chinese cadres in Tibet too often view their Tibetan neighbors as backward and lazy, in need of economic development and "patriotic education[".] During the 1990s Tibetan government employees suspected of harboring nationalist sympathies were purged from office, and campaigns were launched to discredit the Dalai Lama. Individual Tibetans reportedly were subjected to arrest, imprisonment, and forced labor for carrying out separatist activities and engaging in political "subversion [".] Some arrestees were held in administrative detention without adequate food, water, and blankets, subjected to threats, beatings, and other mistreatment.36

Chinese family planning regulations allow a three-child limit for Tibetan families. (For years there was a one-child limit for Han families.) If a couple goes over the limit, the excess children can be denied subsidized daycare, health care, housing, and education. These penalties have been enforced irregularly and vary by district. Meanwhile, Tibetan history, culture, and religion are slighted in schools. Teaching materials, though translated into Tibetan, focus on Chinese history and culture.37

Elites, Émigrés, and the CIA
For the rich lamas and lords, the Communist intervention was a calamity. Most of them fled abroad, as did the Dalai Lama himself, who was assisted in his flight by the CIA. Some discovered to their horror that they would have to work for a living. However, throughout the 1960s, the Tibetan exile community was secretly pocketing $1.7 million a year from the CIA, according to documents released by the State Department in 1998. Once this fact was publicized, the Dalai Lama's organization itself issued a statement admitting that it had received millions of dollars from the CIA during the 1960s to send armed squads of exiles into Tibet to undermine the Maoist revolution. The Dalai Lama's annual payment from the CIA was $186,000. Indian intelligence also financed both him and other Tibetan exiles. He has refused to say whether he or his brothers worked for the CIA. The agency has also declined to comment.38

In 1995, the News & Observer of Raleigh, North Carolina, carried a frontpage color photograph of the Dalai Lama being embraced by the reactionary Republican senator Jesse Helms, under the headline "Buddhist Captivates Hero of Religious Right."39 In April 1999, along with Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II, and the first George Bush, the Dalai Lama called upon the British government to release Augusto Pinochet, the former fascist dictator of Chile and a longtime CIA client who had been apprehended while visiting England. The Dalai Lama urged that Pinochet not be forced to go to Spain where he was wanted to stand trial for crimes against humanity.

Today, mostly through the National Endowment for Democracy and other conduits that are more respectable-sounding than the CIA, the US Congress continues to allocate an annual $2 million to Tibetans in India, with additional millions for "democracy activities" within the Tibetan exile community. The Dalai Lama also gets money from financier George Soros, who now runs the CIA-created Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and other institutes.40

The Question of Culture
Many ordinary Tibetans want the Dalai Lama back in their country, but it appears that relatively few want a return to the social order he represented. A 1999 story in the Washington Post notes that he continues to be revered in Tibet, but few Tibetans would welcome a return of the corrupt aristocratic clans that fled with him in 1959 and that comprise the bulk of his advisers. Many Tibetan farmers, for example, have no interest in surrendering the land they gained during China's land reform to the clans. Tibet's former slaves say they, too, don't want their former masters to return to power. "I've already lived that life once before," said Wangchuk, a 67-year-old former slave who was wearing his best clothes for his yearly pilgrimage to Shigatse, one of the holiest sites of Tibetan Buddhism. He said he worshipped the Dalai Lama, but added, "I may not be free under Chinese communism, but I am better off than when I was a slave."42

Kim Lewis, who studied healing methods with a Buddhist monk in Berkeley, California, had occasion to talk at length with more than a dozen Tibetan women who lived in the monk's building. When she asked how they felt about returning to their homeland, the sentiment was unanimously negative. At first, Lewis thought their reluctance had to do with the Chinese occupation, but they quickly informed her otherwise. They said they were extremely grateful "not to have to marry 4 or 5 men, be pregnant almost all the time," or deal with sexually transmitted diseases contacted from a straying husband. The younger women "were delighted to be getting an education, wanted absolutely nothing to do with any religion, and wondered why Americans were so naive." They recounted stories of their grandmothers' ordeals with monks who used them as "wisdom consorts," telling them "how much merit they were gaining by providing the 'means to enlightenment' - after all, the Buddha had to be with a woman to reach enlightenment."

The women interviewed by Lewis spoke bitterly about the monastery's confiscation of their young boys in Tibet. When a boy cried for his mother, he would be told "Why do you cry for her, she gave you up - she's just a woman." Among the other issues was "the rampant homosexuality in the Gelugpa sect. All was not well in Shangri-la," Lewis opines."43

*  *  *

Michael Parenti received his Ph.D. in political science from Yale University. The full article is available at Dr Michael Parenti's political archive (via Sun Bin).

October 03, 2005 in China-US Relations, Politics, Tibet |

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Comments

Could we have more revelations like this please? For example about Nazi concentration camps myth (yes, few mistakes happened but the Jews were really awfully rich, some of them were homosexuals and besides the overall number of casualties is highly [exaggerated]. And look at all these new motorways!)

Posted by: kincajou | October 04, 2005 at 12:19 AM

Kincajou,

You go ahead with your own revelation. But make sure you can support your argument with solid facts, as Parenti has done.

Posted by: a | October 04, 2005 at 03:32 AM

A,

it's not that much a question of facts (which particularly in this case are not easy to obtain) but of their interpretation. OK, so "throughout the 1960s, the Tibetan exile community was secretly pocketing $1.7 million a year from the CIA". There were over 100 000 Tibetan refugees, is 17 USD per year/person that much? And secretly?? "it had received millions of dollars from the CIA during the 1960s to send armed squads of exiles into Tibet to undermine the Maoist revolution." - well, everybody knows about the fate of Tibetan guerillas in Nepal after the CIA withdrawn it's support and allowed Nepalese troops to storm them. Wouldn't you fight for your country's freedom? "The Dalai Lama's annual payment from the CIA was $186,000." - what do you think he's doing with the money? Building swimming pools? "Some [rich lamas] discovered to their horror that they would have to work for a living." - thousands of exiled Tibetans discovered they cannot survive in tropical weather and thousands died.

No, I don't have "solid facts" about Tibet as well as I don't have them about Spanish conquesta or fate of American natives. I just have my common sense which tells me Tibetans had their country stolen by a superpower that doesn't care about human lives, culture or human rights. That's quite enough for me.

Posted by: kincajou | October 04, 2005 at 04:36 AM

Wow, that article gave me quite an education!! :-)

Posted by: Omni | October 04, 2005 at 05:12 AM

Kincajou,

Of course the "fact" is always open to interpretation.

But I do not understand how the calculation of "per capita CIA donation" helps one understand the Dalai Lama. Could you enlighten me?

Would you care to interpret the fact that "the Dalai Lama called upon the British government to release Augusto Pinochet, the former fascist dictator of Chile and a longtime CIA client"?

Posted by: Letters from China | October 04, 2005 at 11:19 AM

In regards to the Tibetan exiles sent into Tibet by the CIA, their purpose was more intelligence gathering and [reconnaissance] than [necessarily] undermining communist rule in Tibet. The numbers of Mustang force were not large enough for anything particularly destabilizing. The CIA and the Indian government had mixed feelings about dispatching the operatives because they were cautious about how China would respond, so the guerilla force was never quite as large as desired. If I recall, the only real military action they participated in was ambushing some resupply trucks. The operation as a whole was a complete failure though, almost all of the operatives were captured or killed [soon after] entering in Tibet. The local villagers reported sightings of strange comings and goings to the PSB and that was that. In one instance, a family member of a guerilla actually turned him over to the authorities. Funding dried up to a trickle soon after that and it was considered somewhat of an [embarrassment] that Chinese security forces were so quickly able to neutralize the operatives.

Posted by: Jing | October 04, 2005 at 09:31 PM

Letters from China,

if you visit Tibetan settlements in India, you won't see any marble government palaces, you'll see schools and hospitals that were built with help of "secretly pocketed money" from USA. If it was CIA money, God bless CIA for it. As for Pinochet, in 1999 he was 84 and suffering from dementia. (And to call him "fascist dictator" is easy but you should first know something about Allende and the situation in Chile when Pinochet seized the power. Mind you, I'm not questioning his crimes but I think I'd prefer living in Chile under Pinochet then in Cuba under Castro.)

Anyway, Mr. Parenti simply forgets who was and still is the victim and who suffered most. I consider his article highly unobjective and biased in favor of the victorious China. In my opinion it's cheap to side with the stronger.

Posted by: kincajou | October 05, 2005 at 02:47 AM

The direct link to the full article is here.
http://www.michaelparenti.org/Tibet.html

I think the CIA fund is open to interpretation. Also, if dalai has received aids or favors from Pinochet in the past (they both received CIA help), I also think it is okay for him to help Pinochet back, on humanistic ground. I [don't] think Pinochet told Dalai he was torturing opposition back in the 1960s, so there was legitimate reason for them to be friends.

In short, i think it is up to us to make our own opinion. Parenti has at least presented the facts, objectively, from both sides, for us to use our own brains to judge. But most western media whitewashed what happened in Tibet before 1950s, while the CCP is also biased on their own accord.

Regarding CIA's 'guerilla', I am not sure about the reconnaissance theory. It is well known that they played [pivotal] role in the Chilean coup, and Bay of Pig. The warfare did not escalate further only because they were crushed. The fighting [training and weapons] these 'guerillas' received were not intended as reconnaissance skills. The agents were turned it because they were unpopular at the time. Their unpopularity was a result of the way they had treated their fellow Tibetans in the past.

Posted by: sun bin | October 05, 2005 at 06:00 AM

[Letters from China: This was a correction made by Sun Bin. I have corrected Sun Bin's comment above accordingly]

Posted by: sun bin | October 05, 2005 at 06:06 AM

On the Dalai Lama and Pinochet:

Both Kincajou and Sun Bin commented on the Dalai Lama's support of Pinochet.

Kincajou highlighted the fact that Pinochet is old and has been suffering from dementia. I have studied the Pinochet cases, including House of Lords decisions, quite carefully. Is Dalai Lama's support to Pinochet justified? Whether Pinochet should be extradited to Spain from the UK was at issue. Spain is a member state of the Council of Europe and the Spanish court is bound by the European Convention of Human Rights, and Article 6 of the ECHR, right to a fair trial, would come into play. Did the Dalai Lama have reasonable grounds to suspect that even if Pinochet was unfit to stand trial, the Spanish court, or the European Court of Human Rights (if necessary) would not come to an unbiased decision according to the letter and spirit of the law?

Kincajou compared Pinochet with Allende (Chile) and Castro (Cuba). But with respect I could not see the merit of such comparison. Either Pinochet is guilty as alleged or he is not for our present purposes.

Sun Bin, I imagine the relationship between the Dalai Lama and Pinochet is "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" (or "help Pinochet back", to use your words). But you also link the support to "humanistic ground". I must say I cannot follow.

Posted by: Letters from China | October 05, 2005 at 12:26 PM

i meant 'scratch your back', OR (maybe) 'on humanistic ground', i did not try to imply they are linked, sorry for the confusion.

what i tried to say is, i don't really care. from the buddhist point of view, one can forgive even the most terrible person in the world. i don't have a problem for Dalai signing a petition as an individual. that would put him in the class of Margaret Thatcher, and Bush Sr. That is for each of us to judge.

However, we may speculate the real reason for the Dalai-Pinochet relationship is thr' the CIA link. But there is no proof for such link, or proof that such link is sinister. So I am willing to let go of that.

I agree with you there is no comparison with Castro. In fact Castro is also demonized by the US, but there is another long discussion.

Posted by: sun bin | October 05, 2005 at 01:46 PM

SB,
Thank you for the clarification of your position on Dalai Lama-Pinochet-CIA relationship. But I beg to disagree that the Dalai Lama, as the "head of state" (according to tibet.com), could petition the British government to release Pinochet in personal capacity. Lady Thatcher and Bush Snr were not PM / President at the material time.

Posted by: Letters from China | October 05, 2005 at 04:51 PM

Kinkajou,

- I have never visited Dharamsala, nor could I find any accounts published by Dharamsala. Neither Parenti nor I claim that the Dalai Lama has appropriated the funds to build another Potala Palace in India. But I am afraid the core issue is not the use of the funds, but whether the "donation" has in any way influenced the decisions made by the Dalai Lama. As far as I know, the CIA is not a charity and there is no such thing as a free lunch.

- In your opinion "it's cheap to side with the stronger [the Chinese Communist Party]". I am not so sure. I venture to say that in the Western media, the Dalai Lama has successfully claimed the moral high ground and the CCP (and sometimes even the Han Chinese) have been demonised.

Posted by: Letters from China | October 05, 2005 at 05:17 PM

I agree with Parenti's analysis, and of course, the main reason why China invaded Tibet in the first place is because the U.S. was clearly trying to gain an influence in Tibet, as the British tried to do before them, and so too were the Russians for that matter, in the more north western frontiers. The decision to invade and to occupy Tibet needs to be seen in the context of the Cold War.

I am not saying here that I agree with China's decision - I am merely saying that the decision needs to be viewed in this context.

Regardless of this, I do believe that both the Han and the CCP have been demonised by the corporate media of the West, and that the claims made against the Chinese occupiers have, by and large, been seriously exaggerated.

It's so refreshing I might add, to come across an alternative view like this on the pages of an English-language China blog! :)

Regards,
Mark Anthony Jones

Posted by: Mark Anthony Jones | October 07, 2005 at 07:51 PM

Holy shit. You write "I venture to say that in the Western media, the Dalai Lama has successfully claimed the moral high ground and the CCP (and sometimes even the Han Chinese) have been demonised."

Mao, the CCP, and the occupation of Tibet have caused the death of over a million Tibetans. Yes, only a measly number like, say, 100,000 from torture and murder - most of the rest from "agriculture reforms" that starved countless nomadic and farming Tibetan communities to death by forcing them to fucking grow rice on the Tibetan plateau! Of course, these "reforms" killed millions of Chinese too, during the (ha ha) "Great Leap Forward."

Yeah, the racist, imperialist western media has given CIA stooge the Dalai Lama the moral high ground. Please, he's earned it by working tirelessly, peacefully for his people, and for the benefit of all people (whether they care or not) since he was oh, about five years old. Most Tibetans receiving help from the CIA didn't even know what the hell the CIA was. They were just glad someone was hearing pleas for help to fight a cruel aggressor.

Please, read a real history of Tibet - not Parenti's crap. I know some Tibetan youth that confronted him about his ridiculous essay. He was shocked, thought all Tibetans in exile were rich Tibetan aristocrats (they're not) didn't know Tibetans spoke "Tibetan" (duh) and didn't realize that the Tibetan government in exile is a parliamentary democracy (google?).

I actually appreciate other work by the guy but that essay, even simply on the level of scholarship, is crap.

Try Buddha's Warriors by Mikhel Dunham or Dragon in the land of Snows by Tsering Shakya for a balanced history of modern Tibet. No, it was no Shangri-la. Fuck anyone who claims it was or wants it to be again. Certainly no Tibetan I know does. They just want and end to a Chinese occupation that means no freedom of speech, religion, assembly and is literally destroying the language and culture.

Posted by: han-shan | October 12, 2005 at 12:12 PM

Han-shan,

I find it difficult to follow your logic. You highlighted the terrible mistakes made by the Chinese Communist Party, which I have never denied. To expose the brutality and madness is not an attempt of demonising Beijing. But what about labelling the Qinghai-Tibet Railway as a cultural genocide campaign?

You said that the Dalai Lama has earned [the moral high ground] by working tirelessly, etc. Perhaps. But does his work include supporting Pinochet? Would you care to address the issue?

Posted by: Letters from China | October 12, 2005 at 12:57 PM

The Dalai Lama arrives in Santiago in early April, just after Britain's Home Secretary Jack Straw says that Spain can extradite Pinochet. He is on a visit to give Buddhist teachings to Chileans and traveling without highly-paid press agents or a Press Secretary.

He is immediately mobbed by press, asking for comment on Pinochet. He says, "In the Pinochet case, as an individual, now old, it might be worth it to forgive him" ... "I think forgiveness is important, but forgiveness does not mean to forget about what happened."

How this could mean he "supports" Pinochet or "called upon the British government" to release Pinochet, I do not know.

In fact, he seems to support decision to allow Pinochet's extradition to Spain. When asked about Straw's ruling, he says "I feel under the law, everybody is equal. So according to law, whatever decision is taken we should support that."

If you can find any other quotes or stories whatsoever about the Dalai Lama "supporting Pinochet" I would very much like to see them.

I guess I just think these off-the-cuff comments made by the Dalai Lama - who is by the way, first and formeost a monk who also preaches compassion and forgiveness for the facsist murderers whose cruelty has inflicted his people - plays into Parenti's fantasy. Parenti, and people like him, can't seem to take a moment to imagine how these comments came to light and in what context. They are certainly very different than those of former President Bush.

Posted by: han-shan | October 13, 2005 at 10:45 PM

Han Shan,

My view (a bit different from our host [LfC]) is not to blame Dalai too much about the Pinochet comment. But I think it is equally wrong to blame Parenti for noting this tidbit.

I googled and found the report was brief, "The Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader, also called for forgiveness for Pinochet while on a visit to the Chilean capital, Santiago."
http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/apr1999/pino-a16.shtml
http://www.guardian.co.uk/pinochet/Story/0,11993,205075,00.html

Someone at Dalai's publicity (or his sophisticated PR team) would issue a clarification if he strongly disagree with the reporting. But he didn't. That may tell something. But again, I can buy that he is promoting forgiveness for all.

Parenti mentioned explicitly that Dalai should not be held responsible for what happened in Tibet when he was less than 15 year old. All Parenti tried to do was to expose the truth of the brutality of the old Tibet Theocracy (which makes up most of Dalai's aides) to us, and to make sure that the brutal serfdom and slavery system will not return in any disguise. To call Parenti's rigorous work "fantasy" is to allow lies to overshow truth and hence hurting your own cause, even if your cause is justifiable.

Posted by: sun bin | October 14, 2005 at 09:27 AM

Han-shan, thank you for the detailed account. Is it your first-hand account or would you tell us your sources?

If the account is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth (No disrespect - there are always potential problems of recollection), I accept that what the Dalai Lama told the media is open to different interpretation. There may or may not be link between forgiveness and the extradition. That said, I think we would not dispute that international politics is not street protests – one has to capture every nuance of the statement. After all, no one would expect the Dalai Lama to shout "free Pinochet, no extradition" to "support" the former Chilean ruler?

Both reports quoted by SB are dated April 16, 1999. The Guardian said:
"In allowing the law to take its course, Mr Straw [the then UK Home Secretary] has faced down the opposition of forceful figures including Lady Thatcher, George Bush, Henry Kissinger, the Dalai Lama and the Pope."

SB has made a noteworthy observation: we do not see any clarification (Most of us rely on Google or Lexis etc and the research can by no means be exhaustive). The reason behind the silence is anyone's guess.

Whether the alleged support of Pinochet is "off-the-cuff comments" (HS) or "tidbit" (SB) or none-of-the-above, I think it deserves our attention. The Dalai Lama (also the Head of State of Tibet, according to Dharamsala) preaches peace. If the Dalai Lama did indeed support Pinochet, we can at least say that he does not always practise what he preaches. That necessarily begs the question whether the Dalai Lama justify the moral high ground.

We wish to see a more liberal Tibet albeit we may differ on the issues of sovereignty. But I am reluctant to accept that the Dalai Lama is the answer.

Posted by: Letters from China | October 14, 2005 at 12:45 PM

My account comes from what I recollect from sources when I made inquiries after coming across the alarming headlines to which Parenti refers when he claims the Dalai Lama "supports" Pinochet.

There has been no clarification, it is true. From experience, I can assure you that the Dalai Lama and his office does not have the most savvy (or, it should be noted, "western-oriented") media strategy. While the Dalai Lama frequently tells Tibet supporters that they should also involve themselves in other social justice issues - from working for prison reform in the US to battling global warming - I would argue that his office is hardly aware of the ramifications on the potential support of progressives upon hearing such an alarming headline. He wasn't "misquoted" and I doubt they realized the conclusions that most people would draw when he called for "forgiveness" for Pinochet... so they probably just let it be.

On your last point - well, LfC, on this we certainly agree (that the Dalai Lama is not THE answer). As far as I'm concerned, the answer lies in liberal and democratic Tibetan self-rule. Of course, most Tibetans inside and outside of Tibet still look to the Dalai Lama for leadership in the struggle for some sort of resolution to the Tibetan plight. At the same time, there are an awful lot of Tibetans in exile still fighting for Tibetan independence even though the Dalai Lama has called for everyone to support his "

Middle Way

" approach.

I think I just get tired of hearing people like Parenti - whose scholarship on Tibet seems to consist of recycled Chinese gov't propaganda - tossing about conspiracy theories about the Dalai Lama and Tibet's "Feudal Theocracy" in order to [attempt] to deprive Tibetans (and all people) of their inalienable right to self-determination.

Posted by: han-shan | October 15, 2005 at 02:02 AM

han-shan,

That is a fair description, until your last paragraph, which I have to disagree. I had the same suspicion and reservation on Parenti's source before I read it. But if you read his report, you can see he had quoted western reports and books written prior to 1950s. In fact, none of his crucial sources is via PRC/CCP publication. Parenti made it clear he did not endorse anything you accused him of doing.

Would you care to point out why you come to such conclusion?

[LfC], i googled hanshan's quote. I can only find them in a pro-dalai sites, (you can google the quote)
www.tibet.ca/en/wtnarchive/1999/4/12_2.html

It maybe because only these sites care to document the detailed speech, or it might be an effort to mend/whitewash the damage.

But as I said, we do not need to focus on this remark and I do not want to blame Dalai for doing so. This single incidence alone does not change Dalai or Parenti's credibility.

There are a lot more other issues in Parenti's report that is worth discussing.

Posted by: sun bin | October 15, 2005 at 09:26 AM

tibet.ca said the source is CNN.

I then searched cnn's website. there is no such reporting. However, we should also note CNN does not put everything on the web.

Posted by: sun bin | October 15, 2005 at 09:35 AM

Dalai Lama: "West Should Forgive Milosevic"
http://www.ibiblio.org/chinesehistory/news/199905.htm#1031

This supports han-shan's claim that Dalai has a "forgive everybody" principle.

I do not think there is any private 'scratch your back' deal or CIA connection between Dalai and Milosevic.

Posted by: sun bin | October 15, 2005 at 09:44 AM

I read the CNN via Tibet.ca report which SB referred to. I also found a Reuters report in a mailing list:
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/1999/1999-April/006693.html
which covered the quotations that HS mentioned. Coincidentally, it is also the CNN's interpretation that "[Pinochet] has received support from an unexpected quarter: Tibet's nonviolent, exiled leader the Dalai Lama."

Perhaps SB is right. Enough said about CIA-Dalai Lama-Pinochet. But why have we got too bogged down in the rather lengthy arguments? LfC is of course partly to blame. But I say the secretiveness of Dharamsala's finance is the root of the problem. At Tibet.net, Dharamsala's official website, I do not see the financial statements issued by the Department of Finance; nor do I see any accounts of His Holiness The Dalai Lama's Charitable Trust. (There is a one-page financial statement (2002-2003) about the "Social and Resource Development Fund".) We know that accounts can be cosmetic. What about the lack of it?

The Dalai Lama makes beautiful speeches. But does Dharamsala represent good governance?