While India and the Dalai Lama has scored some points in getting the sympathies of world public opinion, she has left herself open to blowback from Beijing.

The Chinese blowback won’t be swift, but one can be sure, it will be well planned, thorough, and it will be devastating to the conglomeration of nationalities, ethnic groups and religious sects living in a country called Bharat.

Bharat has serious vulnerabilities not only in Kashmir, in the Northeast, but also in the heartland where Maoist, and Nazalites control more than 100 districts without any supervision from the Central government.

With the Communists in charge of Khatmandu, Red Nepal will galvanize the Naxalites and the support to them will grow.

The risk vs. reward for India on Tibet may not worth it to New Delhi. The Dalai Lama should have been silenced decades ago. His role in the riots in Lasha is in line with the policies of his masters.

The Hypocrisy and Danger of Anti-China Demonstrations by Floyd Rudmin
We hear that Tibetans suffer “demographic aggression” and “cultural genocide”. But we do not hear those terms applied to Spanish and French policies toward the Basque minority. We do not hear those terms applied to the US annexation of the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1898. And Diego Garcia? In 1973, not so long ago, the UK forcibly deported the entire native Chagossian population from the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia. People were allowed one suitcase of clothing. Nothing else. Family pets were gassed, then cremated. Complete ethnic cleansing. Complete cultural destruction. Why? In order to build a big US air base. It has been used to bomb Afghanistan and Iraq, and soon maybe to bomb Iran and Pakistan. Diego Garcia, with nobody there but Brits and Americans, is also a perfect place for rendition, torture and other illegal actions.

When the Olympics come to London in 2012, the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu will certainly lead the demonstrators protesting the “demographic aggression” and “cultural genocide” in Diego Garcia. The UN Secretary General, the President of France, the Chancellor of Germany, the new US President and the entire US Congress will certainly boycott the opening ceremonies.

The height of hypocrisy is this moral posturing about 100 dead in race riots in Lhasa, while the USA, UK and more than 40 nations in the Coalition of the Willing wage a war of aggression against Iraq. This is not “demographic aggression” but raw shock-and-awe aggression. A war crime. A war on civilians, including the intentional destruction of the water and sewage systems, and the electrical grid. More than one million Iraqis are now dead; five million made into refugees. The Western invaders may not be doing “cultural genocide” but they are doing cultural destruction on an immense scale, in the very cradle of Western Civilization. Why is the news filled with demonstrators about Tibet but not about Iraq?

And as everyone knows but few dare say, “demographic aggression” and “cultural genocide” can be applied most accurately to Israel’s settlement policies and systematic destruction of Palestinian communities. On this, the Dalai Lama seems silent. Demonstrators don’t wave flags for bulldozed homes, destroyed orchards, or dead Palestinian children.

The Chinese Context

The Chinese government is responsible for the well-being and security of one-fourth of humanity. Race riots and rebellion cannot be tolerated, not even when done by Buddhist monks.

Chinese Civilization was already old when the Egyptians began building pyramids. But the last 200 years have not gone well, what with two Opium Wars forcing China to import drugs, and Europeans seizing coastal ports as a step to complete colonial control, then the Boxer Rebellion, the collapse of the Manchu Dynasty, civil war, a brutal invasion and occupation by Japan, more civil war, then Communist consolidation and transformation of society, then Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Such events caused tens of millions of people to die. Thus, China’s recent history has good reasons why social order is a higher priority than individual rights. Race riots and rebellion cannot be tolerated.

Considering this context, China’s treatment of its minorities has been exemplary compared to what the Western world has done to its minorities. After thousands of years of Chinese dominance, there still are more than 50 minorities in China. After a few hundred years of European dominance in North and South America, the original minority cultures have been exterminated, damaged, or diminished.

Chinese currency carries five languages: Chinese, Mongolian, Tibetan, Uigur, and Zhuang. In comparison, Canadian currency carries English and French, but no Cree or Inuktitut. If the USA were as considerate of ethnic minorities as is China, then the greenback would be written in English, Spanish, Cherokee and Hawaiian.

In China, ethnic minorities begin their primary schooling in their own language, in a school administered by one of their own community. Chinese language instruction is not introduced until age 10 or later. This is in sharp contrast to a history of coerced linguistic assimilation in most Western nations. The Australian government recently apologized to the Aboriginal minority for taking children from their families, forcing them to speak English, beating them if they spoke their mother tongue. China has no need to make such apology to Tibetans or to other minorities.

China’s one-child-policy seems oppressive to Westerners, but it has not applied to minorities, only to the Han Chinese. Tibetans can have as many children as they choose. If Han people have more than one child, they are punished.

There is a similar preference given to minorities when it comes to admission to universities. For example, Tibetan students enter China’s elite Peking University with lower exam scores than Han Chinese students.

China is not a perfect nation, but on matters of minority rights, it has been better than most Western nations. And China achieved this in the historical context of restoring itself and recovering from 200 years of continual crisis and foreign invasion.

Historical Claims

National boundaries are not natural. They all arise from history, and all history is disputable. Arguments and evidence can always be found to challenge a boundary. China has long claimed Tibet as part of its territory, though that has been hard to enforce during the past 200 years. The Dalai Lama does not dispute China’s claim to Tibet. The recent race riots in Tibet and the anti-Olympics demonstrations will not cause China to shrink itself and abandon part of its territory. Rioters and demonstrators know that.

Foreign governments promoting Tibet separatism and demonstrators demanding Tibet independence should look closer to home. Canadians can campaign for Québec libre. Americans can support separatists in Puerto Rico, Vermont, Texas, California, Hawaii, Guam, and Alaska. Brits can work for a free Wales, and Scotland for the Scots. French can help free Tahitians, New Caledonians, Corsicans, and the Basques. Spaniards can also back the Basques, or the Catalonians. Italians can help Sicilian separatists or the Northern League. Danes can free the Faeroe Islands. Poles can back Cashubians. Japanese can help Okinawan separatists, and Filipinos can help the Moros. Thai can promote Patanni independence; Indonesians can promote Acehnese independence. New Zealanders can leave the islands to the Maori; Australians can vacate Papua. Sri Lankans can help Tamil separatists; Indians can help Sikh separatists.

Nearly every nation has a separatist movement of some kind. There is no need to go to Tibet, to the top of the world, to promote ethnic separatism. China is not promoting separatism in other nations and does not appreciate other nations promoting separatism in China. The people most oppressed, most needing a nation of their own, are the Palestinians. There is a worthy project to promote and to demonstrate about.

Danger of Demonstrations

These demonstrations do not serve Tibetans, but rather use Tibetans for ulterior motives. Many Tibetans, therefore, oppose these demonstrations. Many Chinese remember their history and see the riots in Lhasa and subsequent demonstrations as another attempt by foreign powers to dismember and weaken China. There is grave danger that Chinese might come to fear Tibetans as traitors, resulting in wide spread anti-Tibetan feelings in China.

Fear that an ethnic minority serves foreign forces caused Canada, during World War 1, to imprison its Ukranian minority in concentration camps. For similar reasons, the Ottomans deported their Armenian minority and killed more than a million in death marches. The German Nazis saw the Jewish minority as traitors who caused defeat in World War 1; hence deportations in the 1930s and death camps in the 1940s. During World War 2, both Canada and the USA feared that their Japanese immigrant minorities were traitorous and deported them to concentration camps. Indonesians fearing their Chinese minority, deported 100,000 in 1959 and killed thousands more in 1965. Israel similarly fears its Arab minority, resulting in deportations and oppression.

Hopefully, the Chinese government and the Chinese people will see Tibetans as victims of foreign powers rather than agents of foreign powers. However, if China reacts like other nations have in history and starts systematic severe repression of Tibetans, then today’s demonstrators should remember their role in causing that to happen.

Conclusion

The demonstrators now disparaging China serve only to distract themselves and others from seeing and correcting the current failings of their own governments. If the demonstrators will take a moment to listen, they will hear the silence of their own hypocrisy.

The consequences of these demonstrations are 1) China will stiffen its resolve to find foreign influences inciting Tibetans to riot, and 2) the governments of the USA, UK, France and other Western nations will have less domestic criticism for a few weeks. That is all. These demonstrations can come to no good end.

Floyd Rudmin can be contacted by email.

The Indian Bull In China Shop: China Tastes RAW Deal In Tibet

A few kilometers to the north of the Indian city of Dharamshala, 200 to 300 Tibetan women and men are being trained in ‘self defense’ by the special operations division of RAW, the Indian intelligence service. Tibetan students who join get extra marks at Indian schools as an incentive. New Delhi’s declared policy is to peacefully settle disputes with Beijing. This special investigation sheds light on India’s secret policy toward China, which is getting a ‘RAW deal’ in Tibet.

By MAKHDOOM BABAR

Friday, 2 May 2008.

WWW.AHMEDQURAISHI.COM
(Additional reporting by Christina Palmer and Sally Stewart in New Delhi, Sandra Johnson in Washington DC, Alec Smith in London and Meerza Arsalan in Nepal)

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan-While the Chinese government is trying to sort out all its disputes with India through dialogue, the Indian intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) has adopted a contrary stance on the directions of Delhi and is going all out to destabilize and defame China through a variety of plans and the recent wave of riots in Tibet was one of these plans, reveal the findings of The Daily Mail’s investigations.

The Daily Mail’s investigations unearth that RAW has established a terrorist training camp, 25 kilometers, north of the Indian border town of Dharamshala, a place where Indian government is hosting a so-called government in exile led by the wily Tibetan monk, Dalai Lama.

At this camp, RAW’s Special Operations Division trains young Tibetan males and females about carrying out subversive acts and the use of small and big arms and ammunitions, self immolation and even suicide attacks on the pattern of Japanese Hara Kari and how to organize mob attacks on short notice.

These investigations indicate that RAW, under the cover of a so-called NGO, named Raksha (The Defense) established a self defense training facility at a small building at Dharamshala downtown, a few years back. The facility offered short courses on self defense, with a duration of six to eight weeks. In the beginning, only local Indian boys and girls were admitted to this institution and were trained about self defense tactics. However, with the passage of time, Dharamshala-based Tibetan youngsters were also offered admission. In the meantime, the facility was shifted from Dharamshala to some 25 kilometers to the north at a deserted place in the woods. It is learned that at the said facility there are some 200 to 300 young Tibetans now, getting ‘Self Defense’ training with no local Indian students at all.

It was further revealed that all the Tibetans getting terrorist training at this RAW establishment are given 10 extra marks at government run schools, colleges and universities across India.

Despite the cover of an NGO, common people are not authorized to enter the camp premises and any aspiring journalist has to go through a complicated process to carry out a visit to the facility. The movement near the facility became monitored and difficult after a U.S. satellite spotted the camp with the presence of arms and ammunition dumps and other explosives and later this news found some place in a leading U.S. magazine, though, surely by ‘mistake’ some time last year.
The Daily Mail’s investigations indicate that the activities at this terrorist training camp of RAW received a boost recently when the facility was placed under the command of the chief of RAW’s Special Operations Division (SOD), Chotta Rajan.

Rajan is actually commanding similar camps in Afghanistan since 2001 but was given the additional duty of managing the Dharamshala camp as well. After SOD took full command of this camp, the number of both the trainers and trainees considerably increased. Our findings reveal that after being placed under command SOD, some female shooting experts, belonging to a militant Hindu extremist organization, Durga Vahini, were also inducted amongst the training staff at the camp.

In December 2007, SOD chief Chotta Rajan organized a ‘Special Training Course’ on the snow covered hills of Dhauladhar Ranges.

At this sub-camp, young Tibetans were given special training for operations in snow covered areas and they were also trained to face the extreme climatic conditions during operations.
It is learned further that the number of registered Tibetan youngsters at this camp increased dramatically after some top RAW officials held meetings with the President of Tibetan Youth Congress, Mr. Tsewang Rigzin at Kangra. These meetings were held at Dharamkot, Dalhousi and New Delhi at different occasions during 2007.

It is learned further that the Tibetan Youth Congress was founded and is being comprehensively sponsored by RAW. The Daily Mail’s findings indicate that the basic aim of RAW behind establishing this setup at Dharamshala was to initiate an insurgency movement in Tibet to engage the Chinese government and then, at stage two, to initiate a comprehensive separatist movement in China’s Xinjiang province through the terrorist East Turkistan Islamic Movement via Afghanistan and Pakistan (A special Investigative report over this issue would be published in The Daily Mail very soon).
The Tibet plan was initially a long term project. But last year, New Delhi ordered RAW to come up with a short term plan to tarnish China’s image across the globe in order to jeopardize Beijing’s hosting of the Olympic Games of 2008.

It is understood that these directions from New Delhi came in comprehensive connivance of certain anti-China forces in the West.

Responding to this given task, RAW straight away moved its SOD and assigned the duties to the SOD Chief.
It is learned that March 10, 2008, was fixed as a target date to initiate the master plan, code named ‘Operation Ashes on Snow.’ The training was launched on war footing and according to reports, from August 2007 to February 2008, RAW’s SOD succeeded in preparing at least 3000 to 5000 young Tibetan Chinese, inhabiting in Indian territories to create trouble in Tibet.
They were trained in different groups with different methodologies and to operate in different fields. It is learned that they were trained to carry out large scale and small scale subversive activities, plain and bus hijackings, kidnappings, firing with small arms weapons, bomb making, bombing and also suicide bombing while training of outrageous violent protests and mob attacks and ransacking was part of the Common Training Program for all groups. According to some reports, the SOD officials carried out these training programs on the pattern of the programs that RAW used for the training of Maoist rebels in Nepal and LTTE militants in Sri Lanka in the 1980s.
It is learned that some 500 specially trained operatives were sent to Tibet in the third week of February 2008 while 2 senior SOD officials also infiltrated in the area in the vicinity of Tibet to monitor the functioning of the trained operatives.

These operatives were given different tasks, in accordance with their training programs, however, the first and the basic task for all the groups was to organize mob assaults, violent protest rallies and to carry out small scale subversive action. They were also tasked to generate more and more like-minded youngsters.

Back in India, the arrangements were made to organize protest rallies at Delhi and Dharamshala.

At New Delhi, in a bid to ward off potential Chinese anger and show Indian neutrality, Indian authorities ordered the police to baton-charge and disperse the protesting Tibetans when they tried to attack the embassy of the People’s Republic of China in New Delhi.
However, on the other side, the Superintendent of Police of Kangra, the Indian district that is home to the town of Dharamshala, was ordered to escort and accommodate the anti-China rallies by Tibetans in his area.

The Daily Mail’s findings further reveal that television crews of a leading U.S. and a famous British TV Channel, along with some select correspondents of British, American, French, German and Japanese news agencies and newspapers were flown to Gaggal Airport of district Kangra through special arrangements just one night before the protest rallies were held at Dharamshala.
It is believed that this is just the beginning of the RAW deal for China via Tibet and the trained “operatives are bound to carry out more operations in different parts of China in the coming few months. RAW’ Operation Ashes on Snow is over. Many more are in the pipeline.

Makhdoom Babar is the Editor in Chief of Daily Mail, a Pakistani daily newspaper published simultaneously from Islamabad and Beijing. He can be contacted at macbabur@hotmail.com