As we await the closing statement from the Sino-Tibetan Conference, which one inside source described as looking like a manifesto of dangerous compromise, the scholarly Chinese participants who were asked by the Dalai Lama for “…your advice and frank opinions on what steps to take in future to solve the Tibetan problem”, will no doubt not have strayed beyond the appeasing confines of the Tibetan Administration’s policy of accepting communist Chinese rule in Tibet. Nor from personal and cultural perspectives, which can perhaps acommodate improvements in human, social and cultural rights for Tibetans, but balk at any notion of genuine political freedom for Tibet, particularly if that prospect in any way is considered, rightly or wrongly, to undermine China. Which, despite the warm-words of support and photo- opportunities with the Dalai Lama, exerts a profound emotional and psychological influence, and remains the mother-country.
No more or less could be expected, it is course reasonable to conceive such a perspective, no matter how strident the calls for democracy and human rights to prevail in China, there are not many Chinese voices to be heard championing independence for Tibet, East Turkestan, Manchuria or Inner Mongolia. Such a position was both predictable and understandable, it is more difficult to witness a Tibetan Administration auotcratically renouncing its nation’s right to self-determination, accepting its people as an ethnic-minority of China, and expressing a willingness to be subject to communist China’s laws on regional autonomy. This betrayal has been detailed in its so-called ‘Memorandum on so-called Genuine Autonomy for Tibetans’, which along with a statement by the Dalai Lama were recommended bedside reading for those attending the Conference. There are Tibetan versions of this shameful capitulation, have copies been circulated inside Tibet? Certainly the Tibetan peope should be aware of the details of this document and its disasterous impact, if formalised and accepted by Beijing, upon the future status of Tibet.
What would the family of eighteen year-old Lobsang Nyendrak make of its treacherous surrender?
“On June 28, a young Tibetan, a student at the Guru Teacher Training School in Dzogong [county, of the Chamdo prefecture of the Tibet Autonomous Region] was detained for protesting in Chamdo city,” said a Tibetan man now living in Canada, citing area contacts. The student, Lobsang Nyendrak, 18, had walked to town with a friend earlier in the day, the man said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Nyendrak then urged his friend to return alone to the school, saying he had “other business” to attend to. When his friend left, the source said, Nyendrak pulled out a hand-made banner along with a cloth bearing the colors of the banned Tibetan national flag. He then walked through the the local market, calling out “Tibet is independent!” and “China quit Tibet!” “He walked straight toward the police station in Chamdo, calling on Tibetans to ‘rise up’ behind him,” the source said. Nyendrak was then immediately detained, according to witnesses.” (Source: RFA)
