The exile Tibetans are at a crossroads. The question is not whether they will opt for either the middle-way approach or independence. Nor if they will find a sure-fire, foolproof alternative course to resolve the Tibetan issue. The question is whether or not the exile vote will hand the leadership a strategic mandate to act upon and for them and their supporters to unite around. Or is it?

After more than three and half decades of non-violent struggle led by the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Government-in-Exile, the exile community was driven to this crossroads two years ago when the government embarked on a decision to conduct a referendum to decide the goal and means of the Tibetan struggle.

The stage for the proposed referendum was set once the Dalai Lama suggested in his 10 March statement in 1995 that the Tibetan people be consulted to clarify' the political course of their struggle. He cited as the immediate reason his failure to bring China to the negotiating table after over 15 years of conciliatory overtures. However, more than China's rejection of his initiatives, it was the Dalai Lama's vision to see the political wishes of Tibetans spelled out in a popular plebiscite that gave birth to the referendum.

"The referendum will be a major step towards giving a collective face to the Tibetan struggle," says Ngawang Lhamo, a member of the Assembly of Tibetan People's Deputies.

All initiatives from the Tibetan side to resolve the Tibetan issue with their Chinese counterpart made little headway because China has reduced the Tibetan issue to that of the personal status of the Dalai Lama. China also wants the Tibetan leader to renounce the independent status of Tibet prior to 1950, which, he says, is not possible because he can't distort Tibet's historical past.

Starting from 1979 - when the first of four fact-finding delegations were sent by Dharamsala to Tibet - to 1982 and 1984, when two rounds of exploratory talks were held in Peking between CCP Central Committee functionaries and the Dalai Lama's delegates, China has blocked all efforts to hold meaningful negotiations. Either through downright indifference or manipulative dilly-dallying. The same fate was met by the Dalai Lama's Five-Point Peace Plan in 1987 and his Strasbourg Proposal in .1988, which were endorsed by the international community as visionary, flexible and practical solutions.

The need for Tibetans to give united expression to their political goals was clearly asserted by the Dalai Lama in his Strasbourg Proposal when he said, "Whatever the outcome of the negotiation may be, the Tibetan people themselves must be the ultimate deciding authority."

When the official Tibetan offer of China retaining control of defence and foreign relations was rejected by Beijing in 1990, the need to review the Tibetan political path became all the more glaring and urgent. This need assumed greater significance following the brutal suppression of pro-independence demonstrations in Lhasa in 1987 and 1988 and the imposition of martial law in 1989. The events of Tiananmen square in 1989 were further proof that China was deaf to calls for democratic change in its own country, let alone in Tibet.

"By constantly posing procedural problems with negotiations, China is only trying to buy time till the' death of the present Dalai Lama," speculates a Tibet watcher. If China succeeds in this, it will be the death knell of the Tibetan struggle, analysts point out.

The real question before exile Tibetans, therefore, is whether to go ahead with this referendum or not.

"No," says the Tibetan Youth Congress, an NGO with 13,000 members worldwide. "A referendum is totally uncalled for because the wishes of a few hundred thousand exile Tibetans cannot effectively represent the aspirations of the six million Tibetans in Tibet," argues its spokesperson. "And not only are the exile Tibetans politically naive, they don't have a choice." The youth body is not alone in this thinking. A vociferous "Say No to the Referendum" campaign is also being waged by some other NGOs including the Tibetan Women's Association.

A sizeable and more educated section of the Tibetan populace feels that the referendum would result in restricting the Tibetan struggle to one rigid course, when future situations may require a combination of political methods. "Realpolitik is about squeezing gains at every opportunity and by every means," says a Tibetan college graduate. "Transparency doesn't work here."

To the voting public, the referendum remains a mystery of sorts. Though public education programmes preparing the ground for the referendum have led to considerable public awakening to the urgency of the Tibetan issue and the options available, the matter is far from clear.

If the grassroots mood is any indication, the whole referendum issue is a pendulum, vacillating to and fro between ignorance and indifference. For the enthusiastic few, debate is between either the middle-way approach or complete independence. Self-determination and satyagraha (truth persistance), the two other sample options proposed to, the exile Tibetan community by their government are largely left untouched.

Grievances against the authorities' handling of the referendum's preparatory stages are many.

"This whole thing doesn't make any sense. A referendum is supposed to be made simple. But our way of doing it is so complicated that one can't make head nor tail of it," complains a Tibetan businessman in Dharamsala. He is reinforced by a housewife, bewildered at her own Columbian discovery. "I was under the impression that the Chinese were offering these options to us. When nothing is being offered, why all the squabbling?" she asks.

The four political options, as the Tibetan government points out, are just guidelines for the convenience of the voting public and nothing final. According to the administration's procedural programme, the exile Tibetans should have undertaken a thorough analysis of the pro and cons of the four sample options and explored other avenues before an opinion poll is conducted by the end of July. Popular opinion will then be collated and analysed by the Cabinet Secretariat and forwarded to the Assembly for debate in September before the real referendum, if called for, is conducted under the supervision of the Election Commission.

But the scenario is not without its pitfalls. In view of the inescapable tendency among many Tibetans to link the middle-way approach to the authority of the Dalai Lama, the whole exercise might well be reduced to a reflection of the community's loyalty to its leader. For them it's either middle-way approach or "Dalai Lama knows best" sort of attitude.

Detractors further argue that fielding the middle-way approach amongst the four sample options was a mistake since it has already proved a failure. Nevertheless this option, based on the Strasbourg Proposal - the policy guideline of the Tibetan government -is largely endorsed by Tibetans and foreign supporters. And the exiled Tibetan leader has said that this is the most pragmatic solution to the Tibetan issue, though China hasn't responded to its possibilities.

The second sample option, independence, is championed by another more vocal section of the Tibetan community, for whom choosing anything less is tantamount to committing the Tibetan struggle hara-kiri "Living in association with China cannot be a solution to the Tibetan issue. Only independence can guarantee the survival of the Tibetans as a distinct people with their unique cultural heritage," says Lhasang Tsering, former President of the Tibetan Youth Congress and a coDirector of the Amnye Machen Institute.

Contrary to the popular perception that self-determination is a means to a solution, many contend that it is an end as well. Although definitions of self-determination vary somewhat, it is generally considered to be the right of a people to determine their own political, economic, and cultural destinies. This "inalienable right" as it is described in numerous United Nations resolutions, has been laid down in some of the principal international human rights instruments, including the Charter of the United Nations itself.

During the round of exploratory talks in Peking in 1982, when the Tibetan delegation urged China - citing the Resolution of the First All-China Congress of Soviets on the Question of National Minorities (November 1931) -to respect the Tibetan people's right to national self-determination, the Chinese replied, "We (CCP) were a child at that time but now we are grown-up." The question critics pose is who will now make this grown-up stick to what it supposedly said in its childhood?

Satyagraha, for all its novelty, is seen as a political tool that is in-keeping with the non-violent nature of the Tibetan struggle. And the proposal that the movement be launched in Tibet has struck many hearts for its promise of concrete activism. "However, Professor Samdhong Rinpoche's philosophical rendering of our political struggle, and his interpretation that an activist should be morally cleansed, sounds like a holy war straight out of Indian mythology," grouses one Tibetan youth.

A sprinkling of calls for sabotage activities and violent means in Tibet and China is making the rounds among the youth. "No country has gained independence simply through nonviolent means. Violence is also pardonable as an act of self-defence when a country's sheer survival is at stake," says a young Tibetan activist who has formed a voluntary group that organises public talks and pamphlet distribution.

But the inherent veneration among the Tibetans of all ages for their leader is so deep-rooted that adopting violence is a remote possibility. Many, however, question whether the Tibetans' way of doing things is really non-violence or simply non-action.

Beyond the hype in exile about the Tibetan referendum, the situation inside Tibet is all the more alarming. The very people inside Tibet, whose wishes this referendum presumes to reflect, have been banned from displaying photographs of the Dalai Lama since April last year. The subsequent outcry against the ban led to six monks being shot and hundreds arrested from Lhasa's Ganden and Sera monasteries'. China's aim - as recent developments from' the Panchen Lama controversy to the "Strike Hard" campaign to the "Patriotic Education" drives at monasteries and nunneries show is to obliterate the Dalai Lama's "separatist" authority.

"That the Tibetans inside Tibet want complete independence came to light with the angry demonstrations in Lhasa in 1987 and 1988. which were brutally silenced by Chinese armed police," says the Ven. Lobsang Jinpa, Assistant Editor of Sheja, a Tibetan-language monthly. Ven. Lobsang was an activist during the demonstrations and has received the Reebok Human Rights award.

If reports coming from Tibet are an indication, the Tibetans there have high expectations for an outcome from the proposed referendum. But referenda are not a new method for China.

In 1988 China conducted opinion surveys in Lhasa and Tsethang camouflaged as academic research. They included questions about independence, suggesting that some kind of a referendum was being prepared. But its futility was brought home to the Chinese authorities when about 20 monks from Rato Monastery used the survey to declare their loyalty to the Dalai Lama and their support for independence before being arrested. Though some people voiced support for Tibetan independence, others were frightened to express their opinions since they feared the penalties that could be incurred, reported Radio Lhasa on 20 September 1988.

Since that kind of disguised referendum was not successful, China has found an alternative, says Kunsang Paljor, Senior Journalist of Voice of Tibet. The current "Patriotic Education" drives being 'waged in Tibet's monasteries and nunneries are aimed at wiping out the Dalai Lama's authority, religious or otherwise, and enforcing allegiance to the Great Motherland, which was just what they intended to be the outcome of the "opinion surveys," he says.

While Occupied Tibet undergoes more re-education, exile Tibetans are facing opinion polls to decide whether a referendum, determining the path of the political cause, should be held or not. If the answer is yes, other options will hopefully emerge.

But for the moment, neither the referendum seems probable nor is there a hint of other options being formulated And there is a certain air of anxiety that this "historic" step may fizzle into oblivion while the Tibetan rank-and-file revert to business-as-usual.

Source: Tibetan Bulletin, July-August 1997

[ Homepage ] [ Referendum ]



This site is maintained and updated by The Office of Tibet, the official agency of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in London. This Web page may be linked to any other Web sites. Contents may not be altered.
Last updated: 22-Aug-97