Vigil Casts Light on Tibetan Strife
By David Collins, The Santa Fe New Mexican
Mar. 23–Thupten Thondup, a 2002 Santa Fe High School graduate and current Santa Fe Community College business student, was born in the U.S.A. His father was born in Tibet.
Thondup’s grandparents, along with much of his extended family, died while fleeing Tibet in 1959 after Chinese troops took control of their homeland.
On Saturday, Thondup and other members of Santa Fe’s Tibetan immigrant community occupied the Plaza gazebo, vowing not eat during their 36-hour protest, to call attention to recent strife in Tibet, asking that the Olympic torch not be carried through the troubled land on its way to a worldwide gathering in Bejing.
"Tibet belongs to Tibetans. Chinese go home," said a sign affixed to a wrought-iron fence in the center of the Plaza, where a damaged obelisk commemorating those who battled American Indians marks historic ethnic strife in local Tibetans’ adopted homeland.
After a week of candlelight vigils and petitioning on the Plaza, the Santa Fe Tibetan Association by Saturday had gathered about 2,000 signatures asking International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge, Gov. Bill Richardson and other government officials to make a public statement about what the association says is China’s failure to live up to its Olympic promise of improved human rights in China and Tibet.
The association also wants the torch run routed away from Mount Everest and Tibet, where rioting and a government crackdown has led to an undetermined number of deaths and arrests in recent days.
"When the protests started, it was peaceful. The monks were just sitting there," said Phuntsok Rapden, a young Tibetan man among those who sat under the gazebo Saturday. "Then there was a scuffle. It’s not clear who started it."
Whatever started the recent unrest in Tibet’s capital city of Lhasa, it soon escalated to what several news outlets called some of the most widespread unrest there in 20 years. By this week, Chinese troops were reported to be in control, but information from the troubled region was sparse because of China’s restrictions on the flow of news and its refusal to let international reporters into the region.
Santa Fe Tibetans on Saturday echoed sentiments expressed in news accounts by their exiled leader, the Dalai Lama, who also fled Tibet to exile in India in 1959. Tibetans see themselves as a peaceful people who eschew violence. Reactions inside Tibet result from frustration, Rapden said.
"We want the movement to remain peaceful, but the Chinese haven’t responded to our peaceful protests. Violence is a last resort," Rapden said.
Tibetans’ vision for a peaceful return to their homeland has been marred from the first by violence. Thondup’s father stayed on the Tibetan border when he first fled, fighting newly arrived Chinese troops with some support from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, he said. For a while, Thondup noted, the CIA even trained a few Tibetan resistance fighters in Colorado.
In the 1970s, when the United States established trade ties with China, "His Holiness the Dalai Lama asked Tibetans to give up violence," Rapden said.
Now, with foreign governments eager to maintain ties with the China the superpower, "We are getting support, but it’s not really strong. Just a little criticism here and there," Rapden said.
Tibetans enjoy widespread support in Santa Fe, a community where residents generally sympathize with human-rights struggles and many have adopted Buddhist practices.
"It’s a very friendly community," said Tsering Tsomo, who arrived here in 1991 as part of a Tibetan relocation program from India.
Tsomo said she wished the millions of Chinese who have since moved into her homeland — where she is not currently free to travel — would return to China. But asked how Tibetans can stop a spiral of violence that seems driven at times by identity issues and the sheer momentum of reciprocal violence, she offered a typically Tibetan solution.
Violence can be resolved "by making friends," Tsomo said.
Tibetans said they aren’t asking to secede from China, and their exiled leader has said those who have left don’t want to rule those who have stayed behind.
"All we are asking for is some basic human rights and autonomy," Rapden said.
The Chinese government has responded to criticisms of its human-rights record in Tibet and elsewhere by citing the United States’ high rate of incarceration and the lack of guarantees in the United States for access to basic human needs like food and housing. Tibetans say they want the right to practice their religion and speak freely in their homeland.
The Santa Fe Tibetan Association plans to continue its vigil on the Plaza today.
Contact David Collins at 986-3064 or dcollins@sfnewmexican.com.
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