Like Gold that Fears no Fire: Tibetan dissent and China's response since March 2008

It was the beginning of a wave of overwhelmingly peaceful protests that swept across the Tibetan plateau, to be met by a violent crackdown, unprecedented in its intensity. Over the past 50 years, China has instituted increasingly hard-line policies that undermine Tibetan culture and religion; the Tibetan people have been denied freedom of expression; their language has been downgraded; and their economic resources have been appropriated by the Chinese state, with increasing numbers of Chinese migrants moving to the Tibetan plateau. Tibetans had reached a breaking point.

In risking their lives to make their feelings clear, they propelled Tibet to the top of the international news agenda and forced the international community to view Tibet as a more serious issue than before, resolvable only through political means. Tibetans wanted to convey the message that the Dalai Lama represents their interests, not the Chinese state, and they continue to do so today.

Since the Drepung monks took to the streets on March 10, 2008 the Chinese government has engaged in a comprehensive cover-up of the torture, disappearances and killings that have taken place across Tibet combined with a virulent propaganda offensive against the exiled Tibetan leader, the Dalai Lama.

New campaigns directed against Tibetan culture and religion mean that almost any expression of Tibetan identity not directly sanctioned by the state can be branded as 'reactionary' or 'splittist' and penalized with a long prison sentence, or worse. Singers, artists and writers have 'disappeared' and faced torture under a new drive against "cultural products" with suspect ideological content - such as songs referring to the Dalai Lama - and in music bars Tibetan performers are no longer allowed to address the audience as 'Tibetan brothers and sisters' because it is considered 'subversive' to the 'unity of the nationalities'.

And yet, despite the risks, this is the only period when protests have continued despite the severity of Beijing's response. It is also a time when there has been an unprecedented outpouring of emotion and expression of views, in blogs, articles in literary magazines published by scholar monks or lay poets, or songs and ballads sung in bars or uploaded onto Youtube. This new cultural resurgence is being led in Tibet by a new generation of Tibetans, many of whom have been educated in Chinese as well as Tibetan. Unlike the older generation of Tibetan elites, young intellectuals did not experience the takeover of Tibet by China or the excess of the Cultural Revolution; they are aware of both the political struggle being waged against the Chinese state and a renaissance of Tibetan cultural identity.

In one book that was banned as soon as it was published in Tibet, a writer reflects: "In a year that turned out to be like a raging storm... how could we remain... in fear. [This work is] a sketch of history written in the blood of a generation." (There's a translation of this writer's essay in ICT's report, A Great Mountain Burned by Fire: http://www.savetibet.org/media-center/ict-press-releases/a-great-mountain-burned-fire-chinas-crackdown-tibet).

A Tibetan blogger writes "[Tibetans] are no longer just trying to fit into the Chinese national story; instead they are creating their own. It is a new cultural moment... [young Tibetans] are starting to have the chance to be many things and at the same time still be Tibetan."

These courageous writers, many of whom are still in Tibet, dare to refute China's official narrative - representing a more profound challenge to the Beijing authorities than ever before. They find the cause of the protests that convulsed the plateau not in some phantom instigation of the 'Dalai clique' but in the tragic Tibetan history that began in the 1950s and the shortcomings of China's Tibet policy.

The most well-known Tibetan writer Woeser, an accomplished poet and one of the most eloquent and fiercest analysts of Chinese oppression in Tibet, argues that the events of 2008 are as significant in contemporary Tibetan history as those of March 1959, when tensions against the Chinese presence in Tibet escalated into an uprising, and led to the Dalai Lama's escape into exile.

Woeser writes: "Having been through the events of 2008 that shook the world, Tibet is no longer the Tibet of the past, and the Tibetan people are no longer the Tibetan people of the past - everything has undergone a genuine transformation. If one pretends to be aloof and indifferent and thinks that blood can just be washed away and that the truth can be covered over; or that atrocities will not be condemned and suffering will not be pondered; if one acts as though nothing ever happened and thinks life goes on as before and the sun will rise as ever, this is just self- deception.....Tibetans are breaking through the silence, and there are more and more instances of these voices being bravely raised, encouraging ever more Tibetans."

Kate Saunders, works for the International Campaign for Tibet

The phrase 'Like gold that fears no fire' comes from a common Chinese expression (zhen jin bu pa hul lian) meaning that truth cannot be undermined. Woeser has used the expression to describe Buddhist teachings and doctrines, the Dharma. 'Like Gold that Fears no Fire' is a title of a new collection of Tibetan writing published by the International Campaign for Tibet that features stories of imprisonment, interrogation, death and loss, as well as perspectives on a better future that reveal an unquenchable spirit and deeply-felt Tibetan identity. These stories, poems and political writings give readers an insight into the hidden, shared experiences of the Tibetan people. The book is available for downloading here