Letter: Tibet: Between myths and facts

Fri, 05/09/2008 9:37 AM  |  Reader's Forum

The present myths surrounding Tibet are perhaps as good as the myth of the imaginary Shangri-la, that this much romanticized roof of the world has always been independent in history until China sent in its PLA in 1950 to occupy it and that the 14th Dalai Lama led an unsuccessful uprising against China in 1959 and fled to India with about 100,000 of his followers.

The myth would thus go on from here that, since then, Tibetan people have been oppressed without cultural and religious freedom, or what the 14th Dalai Lama claimed recently as cultural genocide.

But the fact is that according to a recent census, 92 percent of the population in Tibet is ethnically Tibetan. Meanwhile, Tibetans outside Lhasa and Shigatse, main towns, can hardly speak fluent Mandarin and Tibetan. The languages are compulsory subjects in schools.

Some writers here with the least understanding and knowledge of China and Tibetan histories have even cited unfounded history to try to make the point to support the myths, with one even making a ridiculous statement that China made a claim over Tibet as part of China just because Tibetan monks visited Genghis Khan's court.

The fact is that the Tibetan monk Phagspa visited the Mongolian Godan court in 1247 in Liang Zhou long after Genghis Khan had died in 1227 during his military expedition to conquer Xi Xia kingdom in present-day Ningxia autonomous region.

What another myth refers to as Tibetan independence was perhaps the period between 1912 and 1949 after the Qing court abdicated the throne in 1912 and when China was both under civil war and foreign invasion and when most provinces were under the rule of regional governments.

But the fact is that even then no single country in the world recognized Tibet as independent, not even Great Britain, although the Japanese created the puppet state of Manchukuo in northeast China from 1932 until 1945, which had 17 countries recognizing its independence, including Thailand and Philippine.

It is also sad to see that some Indonesians have been misled by the various myths to join in the chorus against China and even to demonstrate against it at its embassy, forgetting that their acts would also encourage separatist movements inside Indonesia, a a multinational country as a legacy of the Dutch empire.

The attempt to try to cause unrest and to wreak chaos and havoc to the 1.3 billion Chinese people is as much against humanity and human rights as what the self-righteous Tibet campaigners have rallied for.

SIA KA MOU
Jakarta

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