Tíbetar eru sem fuglar í neti í landi sínu

Óhugnalegar staðreyndir um það sem Tíbetar þurfa að þola í sínu daglega lífi

Ég fann eftirfarandi grein á vef the Independent áðan. Hún byggist á viðtali við Tash sem fór til Tíbet til að gera heimildarmynd um hvað er í raun og veru að gerast í ættlandi hans. En hann flúði Tíbet þegar hann var 18 ára gamall. Um 3000 manneskjur flýja Tíbet ár hvert yfir hina háu fjallagarða. En það eru ekki náttúröflin sem eru þeim hættumest, heldur leyniskyttur úr landamæralögreglunni sem skjóta þau á færi og skilja svo líkin eftir á víðavangi. Þeirra eini glæpur: að vilja yfirgefa Tíbet. Ég hvet ykkur til að lesa þessa grein og ef þið hafið aðgang að Channel 4 að horfa á heimildarmyndina hans á morgunn.

"My Tibet: Secret report from the roof of the world

 

Eleven years ago, Tash, above, risked his life to flee Tibet. Now he has risked it again, by returning with a hidden camera to film the stories of torture, murder and forced sterilisation that China does not want the world to hear.

By Clare Dwyer Hogg
Sunday, 30 March 2008

Tash does not look like a man who has just put his life in danger. But as he sits in a cosy editing suite in London, the images on the screens around him – a Tibetan political prisoner showing his scars, a still of Tash interviewing a Buddhist monk – prove the contrary. He has risked his life at least twice: the first time, 11 years ago, to escape his native Tibet; and then, as the screens document, when he went back with a hidden camera to expose what he felt were injustices perpetrated by the Chinese government. "I can now never go back to Tibet," he says. "But it is worth it."

What makes his actions particularly dangerous is the Chinese government's blanket ban on journalists entering Tibet. His report for Channel 4's Dispatches reveals detail not seen before: reports last month of the recent uprisings could only be given by major news sources from vantage points outside the country – usually Nepal – conveying what snatches of second-hand experiences they could garner from the other side of the Himalayas. Tibet has an estimated one Chinese soldier for every 20 Tibetans – as opposed to one soldier per 1,400 Chinese citizens. This country, about the size of western Europe, has been firmly in the grip of the Chinese government since the Dalai Lama fled in 1959.

Tash fled Tibet, too, when he was 18, without telling his family. Yet as a boy he had been protected from knowing too much of the political repression. "I knew there were some people who had the Dalai Lama's book My Land and My People," he says, "but when I saw them talking they wouldn't let me join in – I was too young."

He says everybody practised in secret. "Boys would secretly watch the films of the Dalai Lama teachings, but no one knew anything of the outside world." Eager to escape to that unknown, Tash travelled the treacherous journey across the mountains to India, past frozen bodies half buried in the snow, to freedom.

Not everyone is so fortunate. Footage captured by Western climbers in September 2006 (and shown in the Dispatches programme) has a line of refugees plodding through the snow, with some of their number suddenly picked off by bullets fired by the Chinese soldiers behind them. "They shot a girl dead right in front of me and dumped her corpse in a hole nearby," one of the group remembers.

These people were deliberately escaping from what they considered Chinese tyrannies. As a young refugee looking for an education in India, though, Tash didn't realise the insulated nature of his old life until the political relevance of his new-found freedom began to hit home. "On Tibetan television almost every night, there would be stories about the Japanese invading China, committing genocide, beheading the Chinese and raping girls. I used to hate Japanese people, until I came into India and realised that it was propaganda," he recalls. The memory of a life in Tibet without fear seemed even more preposterous during his three-month undercover operation there last summer.

"When we were in Tibet I was greatly shocked," he says, clenching his hand into a gentle fist. "We're going to lose all Tibetan identity soon. In Lhasa, if you don't speak Chinese, it doesn't matter how good your Tibetan or English is, you don't get a job." And the fading of the ethnic way of life, he was distraught to find, is down to more than this systematic wearing away of cultural and religious ties. Through tip-offs and a web of contacts, he discovered that Tibetan women are being forcibly sterilised.

One woman agreed to speak to Tash, despite the cultural propriety that would rarely see a woman speak about such intimacies with a man, and the obvious dangers of criticising the government. "I was taken away against my will," she explains. She has two children – more than the "one child" policy allows – and could not afford to buy a certificate that stated she had been sterilised. "Apparently they cut the fallopian tubes and stitch them up," she says ruefully. "When they opened me up they pulled them out by the roots. It was agonisingly painful." They didn't use anaesthetic, or provide any drugs aside from aspirin. "I was sick and giddy," she says. "From the day after the operation I had to look after myself. If I needed a drip I had to pay for it myself."

Anyone who speaks out against the policies of the Chinese government like this, or calls for the freedom of Tibet, is in danger of being condemned a "splittist" – someone who is splitting from the Communist Party – and sent to prison. This, Tash discovered, can be for as little as raising a Tibetan flag in a meeting. A farmer, found guilty of this crime, explains: "I spent the prime of my life in prison ... from the age of 24 to 37." And so, the culture of fear is continually reinforced by harsh sentences for apparently minor crimes. An 18-year-old Buddhist monk, Tash says, was recently sent to prison for three years for inscribing "Free Tibet" in a book.

And time spent in a Chinese prison invariably means torture. One ex-political prisoner on Tash's film explains the use of handcuffs: "There are types that bind the two thumbs together," he says, demonstrating. "And others are serrated so they cut into the flesh of the wrists. They handcuff you and hang you from the ceiling then beat you. They strike your body with iron bars."

A Human Rights Watch report in 2007 claimed that tens of thousands of Tibetans have been moved into permanent camps. Tash visited a cluster of little concrete homes, miles away from any town: the people he spoke to expressed unhappiness, but with their livestock confiscated and roaming on the grasslands forbidden, they have no hope of changing things. Apart from protest, of course, but openly protesting against the police is widely acknowledged as a way to bring your life to a swift and bloody end.

Only after spending time in his homeland with the perspective of freedom does Tash understand an incident in his youth that he, blissfully ignorant, could not comprehend at the time. "When I was about 16 I sang an old song about the Dalai Lama at my village's New Year festival," he says. A friend had given him the words, and he didn't know it was banned. "When I sung, the old men and women were crying, I didn't know why. The head of the village thanked me and put a red scarf round my neck." Now he sees the situation all too clearly. "Tibetans," he says, "are trapped. They are like birds in a net."

'Dispatches: Undercover in Tibet' is on Channel 4 tomorrow at 8pm

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Mótmæli í Tíbet

Athugasemdir

[Jenný Anna Baldursdóttir, 30.3.2008 kl. 10:31]

Takk fyrir þennan fróðlega pistil.

Áframhaldandi baráttukveðjur.

[Birgitta Jónsdóttir, 30.3.2008 kl. 10:35]

Takk Jenný mín:) gott að vita að einhver les þetta.

[Ásthildur Cesil Þórðardóttir, 30.3.2008 kl. 13:28]

Þú ert dugleg að koma málefnum Tíbeta á framfæri,  mikið er gott að það er ennþá til baráttufólk eins og þú Birgitta mín.  Ég hef Tíbet í bænum mínum, og vona að þeir fái sitt sjálfstæði, eða fái allavega að vera í friði fyrir stórveldinu Kína.

[Guðbjörg Erlingsdóttir (IP-tala skráð) 30.3.2008 kl. 16:33]

þú ert nú alveg ótrúleg, hvað borðar þú eiginlega í morgunmat til að hafa alla þessa orku og jákvæðni. Þú veitir mér innblástur til að berjast áfram með mín mál!

Þúsund þakkir :)

Ofurskutlukveðja

[Kristbjörg Þórisdóttir, 30.3.2008 kl. 16:59]

Sæl Birgitta,

þú átt hrós skilið fyrir framgöngu þína í málefnum Tíbeta.

Hvar skrái ég mig í vinir Tíbet. Ég hef mikinn áhuga á því þar sem ég fór til Tíbet 2002 og hef séð ástandið með berum augum og finnst það þyngra en tárum taki hvernig staðan er þar.

[Birgitta Jónsdóttir, 30.3.2008 kl. 19:23]

Kristbjörg sendu mér póst á [e-mail] og ég læt þig vita þegar við erum búin að stofna félagið... væri gaman að fá þig á stofnfundinn:)

[Snorri Hansson, 31.3.2008 kl. 16:08]

Ég hef altaf haft samúð með baráttu Tíbeta fyrir sjálfstæði og haft andstyggð á lítilsvirðingum Kína á þjóð þeirra og lífsvenjum. Það sem nú er í gangi er hugsanlega eitthvað annað en frelsisbarátta og mótmæli. Nú neitar Dallilama allri aðild og vitneskju um það sem á gengur. Kínverjar héldu því stíft fram að hann standi á bakvið þessa atburði,en nú eru þeir hættir því. Nú tilkynna þeir að þetta séu alls ekki mótmæli eða frelsisbaráta. Þeir fullyrða að þetta sé óþjóðalýður sem brjóti sér leið inn í verslanir og berji og stundum drepi eigendur þeirra. Þeir gætu svo sem haft rétt fyrir sér svona einu sinni. Það væri mikið áfall fyrir baráttu Tíbeta ef Dalilama afsalaði sér embætti og guðleika sínum. Það verður mjög erfitt verk að finna nýjan lama sem væri sameiningar og trúartákn þjóðarinnar við þessar aðstæður.