Escaping from flames

This is the English translation of a reportage published by Zigor Aldama on "Igandea", the Sunday supplement of the Basque newspaper Berria. The original title is "Garretatik ihesi" and it reflects the impact that repression and self-immolations have been among Tibetans, many of whom have no other alternative but going into exile.

Escaping from flames

Repression is worsening in Tibet; in the last 4 years, 107 people have set themselves on fire and, for many, fleeing the highest country in the world is the only alternative.

Zigor Aldama. Dharamsala.

Sonam and Rinchen were only 17 and 18 years old, but last week they decided to set themselves on fire in Aba (Ngaba) Prefecture, Sichuan Province (Tibetan region of Amdo), one of the Tibetan-majority areas. They had been classmates at school, and they decided to commit suicide together to denounce that Beijing stifles the Tibetan people increasingly harshly. Shortly afterwards, as usual, the army took the streets and closed the most troubling villages. Already 107 Tibetans have set themselves on fire since 2009. Dripping immolations have become a nightmare for those who seek to provide a friendlier face of the communist regime.

"The soldiers do not carry guns, but fire extinguishers", said Tenzin Chokey, general secretary of Tibetan Youth Congress. China claims that hers is a terrorist organization which stimulates suicides, but Chokey denies it. "These samples of extreme desperation are a sign of the failure of Chinese propaganda", because those who have set themselves on fire have been born under this propaganda. However, nobody knows certainly what is happening in Tibet, as the access of international journalists to the region is banned and the information issued by Beijing and activists is partial.

A forbidden territory

Despite all this, a Tibetan nun called X.T does not add any ideological bias to her history as she explains without adjectives the suffering she lived along with two more nuns. “We came to Dharamsala in 2011 because we wanted to talk with the Dalai Lama”. This is the city that hosts the Tibetan spiritual leader as well as the exile government. “Everything was right until we tried to come back to China. The Chinese detained us for allegedly having tried to cross the border illegally and jailed us for twenty days”, she reminded. “We had been warned of the risks, but we thought that they were only rumors and we tried”.

She has not wanted to give more details but another colleague has taken over the narration, shedding tears. “Firstly, they took our shoes off to make us feel cold and finally we were stripped of all. They put us in solitaire confinement and we were interrogated night and day. They wanted us to give them the names of people we did not know, those of the activists persecuted by the police who helped Tibetans fleeing. They did not let us sleep neither speak with anyone but the police. They did not even remove our handcuffs and shackles. They also prevented us from going to the toilet and we were forced to make our needs in the same cell. They just gave us flour and tea to eat”.

After those twenty days, when the authorities realized that the nuns had nothing to do with any resistance movement, the women were left in Nepal. They were undocumented, so that they could not prove their citizenship from the People’s Republic and, through treaties between the two countries, the nuns were held to Nepalese police. “We spent a month in prison and the guards stole us everything we had”. A United Nations Organization agency managed to take them away to a shelter. Then, they went back to Dharamsala, aware that they would never return home.

They are not the only ones. About 600 Tibetans flee every year, and they are hosted at the shelter that the Tibetan exile government has established in Dharamsala. According to Norbu-La, director of the centre, most of them do not escape from Chinese security forces but from the repression exercised by Beijing in a complex system of social assimilation, called “cultural genocide” by the Dalai Lama. With the economic benefices that they give to Han, the main ethnic group in China, so that they move to Tibet, the central government has managed to become Tibetans an ethnic minority in their own territory. The wealth is in the hands of the Chinese and the locals remain poor. Those who flee want the education that Beijing denies them. They want to learn Tibetan and English, not Mandarin. And they want to live freely besides their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

T.L. is a good example of the situation that Tibetans live in their own country. “My dream since I was young was to be a nun, but I was not allowed by my nomadic family. My work was essential for all of us to survive. I had a very hard youth because I could not take the idea off my head. Once I reached the adulthood I committed to a monastery and I decided that I would dedicate myself to religion. Then I realized that I needed to be authorized by the government and to learn Chinese. I had to meet standards that did not fit my view on Buddhism, which were against the Dalai Lama, and I feel a great devotion for him because he is the reincarnation of Buddha. Beijing says that we can practice our religion freely, but that is a lie; we have to follow the beliefs they have imposed”.

She decided to start her journey to freedom in January. It took her a month for walking the distance between the sacred mount Kailash and the Nepalese border. “I knew that I might die if I did the journey on foot and without documentation. But I am 45 years old, I have no money or training and no longer have my family by my side. What could I lose?”

A mother who has arrived illegally in India with her two 7 and 12 years old daughters nods while listening to the story of T.L. They have left Tibet because she does not want her daughters to end up as the nun. “They say that the education is free in China, but I have to pay 9,000 yuan –more than 1,000 euros—a month so that my daughters could go to school and, in spite of this, they are not taught Tibetan language. It is our language and I want my daughters to acquire writing and speaking skills. Most of our people do not go to school because they cannot pay for it. This is positive for China, the poor and the illiterate are easier to manipulate by their propaganda. As much as many tell us otherwise, Tibetans in Tibet are not happy”.

No international help

But it is increasingly difficult to escape. According to Norbu-La, the situation has worsened after the unrest which took place in Lhasa on March 2008. “Immediately after that, we had a wave of refugees; about 3,000 a year. They only came to Dharamsala for a while before, intending to return to Tibet. But China stepped up border controls and started torturing those who had crossed it illegally. Those who risk are increasingly fewer, and they no longer think about the way back”.

It is noteworthy that, although the situation has worsened, the international community pressure on China to solve the situation in Tibet through peaceful means has not increased. In contrast, economic growth has become a powerful muzzle. “When we settled in India –China occupied Tibet in 1959—, our case was widely reported in a world steeped in Cold War, because it was necessary to stop communism; then the situation of Tibetan refugees caught the attention of the international community; after the Tiananmen massacre and the fall of the Soviet Union, the concept of human rights acquired a great strength and everyone pressed China; but now the economic growth moves the world and China holds the reins in its hands”, Tashi Phuntsok recognized. He is the general secretary of the International Relations Department, the head of the office that serves as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the exile government.

“We are about 100,000 people against 1,300 million; thus we are aware of the difficulties to go ahead with our cause and to stop the drama of Tibet. But we have been working on it for nearly half a century and, if the situation changes, we are willing to do it”, Phuntsok added. Nevertheless, the responsible for international affairs recognized that there is no type of contact with Beijing; he does not think that the policy on Tibet will change after Xi Jinping is named president of China. “He cannot stop overnight the direction set by his predecessors”. For this reason, he thinks that self-immolations, “exponents of civil disobedience”, will continue.

Those who arrive in the shelter after fleeing from Tibet either want to talk about suicides. “They are afraid”, Norbu-La explained. “China is against the relatives and friends of those who have fled and those who self-immolated”. Therefore the face of any interviewed for the realization of this report has been photographed and their names have been kept secret. With these safeguards, some of them dare to say that the bleeding must be stopped and the frustration must be aimed “against aggressors”.

Thus, many share the concern of Chokey: that suicides become murders. “We advocate for nonviolence, but we are aware that everything has its limits and repression is just unbearable”. Some in the shelter share the same point of view. “Some young people are frustrated because they see that self-immolations do not meet any of their goals and it is imperative to seek other paths, including violence”, the mother of the two girls admitted. “We do not understand why the international community sends weapons to Libya or Syria, conflicts which provoke thousands of deaths, whilst it does not support those who seek a peaceful solution to our problems”, asked Tashi Phuntsok. “This is a very dangerous message”.