Escape from Exile

Phayul, 18. Januar 2007

by Gen Sherap

Time has come for us to return. Night follows day, and day follows night. Exile, too, if meaningful, is followed by return. For the very goal of going into exile is but to refill our water bags and restock our armory so that we might return home to finish the fight with renewed vigor.

But in the case of our exile, something else happened: we came, we saw, we stayed.

It is understood that there was much wisdom behind our escape to India in 1959 following the Chinese invasion. There was also much wisdom behind our leadership’s farsighted plan to develop strong institutions and establish stable communities in India and abroad in order to prepare for the eventuality of a prolonged exile. It goes without saying that today the exile Tibetan community is one of the most successful refugee groups in the world.

The flip side of this success is that we have become blind to the very reason we came into exile in the first place. Our communities have grown roots in foreign lands, and our houses have grown tall against foreign skies. The comforts of a privileged exile have made us forget our brethren inside Tibet; in fact some of us have even grown to cherish our position as default beneficiaries of the Chinese occupation of Tibet. Thus we extended our stay in India, Nepal, Europe and America, swinging like a pendulum between delusion and despair – the delusion that Tibet would be free if we can preserve enough culture and generate enough publicity, and the despair that Tibet would never regain its sovereignty no matter what we do. After fifty years of waiting, we are still here – essentially waiting. Waiting for what?

Some are waiting for a free Tibet! Strange as this may sound, there are many chest-thumping patriots in our community who routinely bang the table and scream, “I will return to Tibet only when it becomes a free country!” These people, in an attempt to sound patriotic, are unwittingly displaying their selfishness by implying that Tibetans inside Tibet should do all the work and pay the price for freedom, and then at the dawn of victory the exiles will march in amidst pomp and ceremony. If you are one of these people, you should be ashamed to claim even a square inch of land in a future free Tibet!

Then there are those of us who believe that Tibet can be freed by fighting from exile, that we need not be on the battleground to win the battle. This line of thinking is dangerously flawed. A freedom struggle cannot be outsourced. A movement that is outsourced quickly loses its legitimacy and effectiveness: imagine what would have happened if Gandhi’s Salt March to Dandi had taken place on the sandy beaches of California! Sadly, the Tibetan freedom struggle increasingly resembles a manufacturing company, except in this case the jobs are being transferred from Tibet to India and the West. This is partly due to the current lack of political space inside Tibet and partly due to the global community’s enduring sympathy for the Tibetan cause. But instead of working to increase political space inside Tibet, we have so far chosen to bask in the warmth of global sympathy while passively waiting for the miracle of a free Tibet. Gandhi would find our Tibetan-style passive resistance quite strange - very passive, hardly resistant!

The movement in exile and the accompanying global sympathy are of course necessary and helpful, for they deny China the legitimacy and global acceptance that it so desires. But the main role of an exile movement is to provide a megaphone to the resistance inside, to engage and bring in outside groups and countries as allies, and to provide financial and moral resources to the resistance inside Tibet. Without an organized resistance inside Tibet, an exile movement has no foundation to stand upon. Any victory that we accomplish in the battle for global public opinion merely serves to blow fire at China without setting it aflame. Raising awareness through films and talks, visits to the parliaments of foreign countries, petitions and news headlines, and storming of embassies are all effective and necessary tactics, but they remain tragically incomplete unless there is substantial mobilization inside Tibet strategically aimed at removing the pillars that support China’s occupation. Hence there is a crying need for a grassroots movement across the three provinces of Tibet that will give the beleaguered masses the hope and the means to wrest power from the hands of the oppressor.

Our brethren in Tibet are the ones who best understand China and its weaknesses. They are the ones who have the practical ability to plan and execute a nonviolent satyagraha movement that can sever the limbs of China’s rule in Tibet. However, due to the sinister infrastructure and ruthless methods China uses to silence dissent and prevent rebellion – some of which put even the futuristic, Orwellian tactics to shame – the potential leaders who are most likely to organize such a movement inside Tibet end up either jailed or killed. A favorite lament of many critics is that there are no grassroots political leaders among Tibetans; on the contrary, there are hundreds of thousands of them. Unfortunately, they are all in jail or in exile. The Chinese government knows that exiling an activist is as effective as imprisoning her or him; both diminish the effectiveness and relevance of the activist to the movement inside Tibet. This in part explains why China shows little hesitation these days before releasing political prisoners so long as they are put aboard a plane out of Tibet.

This, then, is the reason why we must return. Every activist living in exile is an activist absent in Tibet. Every Tibetan who crosses the Himalayas to become a refugee deprives our brethren in Tibet of an actual or potential leader. The hundred thousand Tibetans in exile are in fact a hundred thousand Tibetan leaders missing from Tibet.

Exile Tibetans who return to Tibet can play a pivotal role both in laying the socioeconomic foundation and in organizing the actual resistance. In spite of all the shortcomings of the exile community, there are many virtues that the exiles can contribute to the cause: knowledge of similar nonviolent movements around the world, familiarity with modern communication technology that will form the bedrock of mobilization, and the vision of a future democratic Tibet.

This is not to say that the homeland Tibetans lack these virtues; rather this is to emphasize that exile Tibetans have yet to pay their dues and now it is time for them to serve on the battleground, whether by teaching at a school, or helping at a clinic, or mentoring at an orphanage, or assisting the start-up of a local business. In the beginning, our initiatives can – and often should – be social and economic rather than overtly political. But these tactics must fit into a long-term strategy of creating more and more sociopolitical capital in Tibet, which will become the raw material of political mobilization when the opportunity arises in the form of a change or crisis in Beijing.

Some will cite China’s strict borders and visa restrictions as insurmountable obstacles. But obstacles exist so they may be overcome. Already many young Tibetans residing in the West have entered Tibet with relative ease as tourists, students, or visitors. Some even live there now. Whether we go as tourists or returnees, more and more homeland Tibetans are expressing their belief that our return can play a pivotal role in changing the course of our nation.

Let this be a call to all Tibetans, young and old, residing abroad in India, China, Nepal, Europe and North America. Time has come for us to return. Our armory is full and our water bags have been refilled. Board a plane, ride a bus, cross a river, or climb a mountain! Before time brings our memory to rust, let’s find our escape from this exile.

(Bilderauswahl: Tenzin N. Emchi)

Gen Sherap is writing under a pseudonym for many reasons, some of which are obvious and some of which are not.