This is a huge hypocrisy and shows that American support for the Tibetans struggle is purely tokenistic. They are clearly supporting the struggle for their own purposes and not because they actually care that people are suffering and have no democratic rights.
It is all part of the power struggle between the US super-power, and China - the rising super-power. By saying that they are pro-Tibet and by small acts such as president Obama meeting with the Dalai Lama, the USA is sticking its middle finger up to China while not actually doing anything for the Tibetan cause. It is a reminder from the USA that it is still “top power” and a large amount of the money that comes into China comes from American pockets.
Imperialism “supports” Tibet to remind China of where it stands in the global capitalist hierarchy, but it would be against its interests to dismember China — which has become the industrial estate of global capitalism. Western economic interests have increasingly penetrated into Tibet itself, which is facilitated by Chinese control of the region — maintained by repression.
The western media openly talks about Tibet as it openly criticises China. It would seem by watching it as if the Tibetans are the only people on earth whose right to independence is being denied by brutal force and violence.
There is no doubt that the Tibetan people deserve the right to self-determination because it is a democratic right. The desire of many Tibetans for independence reflects the fact that, after 50 years of Chinese rule, Tibetans are marginalized second-class citizens in their own country.
This rule should also apply to the Chechnyan’s; the Kurds in Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria; the people of the Western Sahara who’s territory is occupied by Morocco. Also in Xinjiang, the land north of Tibet, where the Uighurs reside, whose struggle for self-determination against China parallels that of the Tibetans. Notably the Uighurs are Muslim and in the Western world, Islamophobia now occupies the place that had for centuries been reserved for anti-Semitism. This is a major reason why the Tibetans are talked about and not the Uighars even though both were invaded by Mao’s red army at around about the same time and both face Chinese oppression. And of cause the struggle in Palestine, which is always ignored due to the USA’s special relationship with Israel.
The Tibetans have a culture that is appealing to a lot of onlookers from the west and is headed by the Dalai Lama who a lot of Buddhists and non-Buddhist alike look up to. This combined with the lack of “Buddhaphobia” exerted by the American government, and media as a whole, makes the Tibetan struggle a lot more likeable in the media’s eyes. Unlike Islam, Tibetan Buddhism arouses curiosity and sympathy. The picture painted by the media of a beautiful paradise hidden behind the beautiful snow capped peaks of the Himalayas is far different and more appealing than the harsh and baron deserts of the Middle East. The Policy of non-violence is also very attractive and is much easier for imperialist powers to support as opposed to militant Islamist groups who are leading struggles elsewhere. When looked at like this it is easy to see why the western media happily supports the Tibetan struggle but does not support that of the Uighurs. It would not be in line with other things that they support and criticise.
The Chinese regime is also easier to pick on than others. It is hated by many - by capitalists because it is a Communist dictatorship, by Communists because it has become capitalist and distinctly different from real socialism. It promotes a crass and ugly materialism, the very opposite of the spiritual Buddhist monks, who spend their time in prayer and meditation.
Immanuel Kant said that we should "Act as if the principle by which you act were about to be turned into a universal law of nature." The West’s general attitude towards the Tibetan problem does not conform to this rule. It does not reflect the attitude towards the struggle for independence of all other oppressed peoples.
The Chechnyans should have been in a better position. They, too, are a separate people, who have for a long time been oppressed by the Tzars of the Russian Empire, including Stalin and Putin. But alas, they are Muslims. Islam has turned into a synonym for terrorism, it is seen as a religion of blood and murder. In reality it is, of course, the religion of dozens of vastly different peoples, from Indonesia to Morocco and from Kosova to Zanzibar. The vast majority of which do not share the same ideas as the likes of Osama Bin Laden.
The US does not fear Moscow as it fears Beijing. Unlike China, Russia does not look like a country that could dominate the 21st century. The poor Chechnyans, who have no charismatic leader or outstanding spokespersons, have been banished from the headlines, unless a Chechnyan commits an “act of terror” within Russia. For all the world cares, the Russian government can hit them as much as they want, kill thousands and obliterate whole towns.
In the competition for the sympathy of the world media, the Palestinians are unlucky. They have a right to liberation, exactly like the Tibetans. They inhabit a defined territory; they are a specific nation; a clear border exists between them and Israel; and they are unrightfully being oppressed.
But the Palestinians are not favorable in the eyes of Israel and therefore the USA, who almost never fault the Zionists, whatever they do. The whole world sympathizes with the Israelis because the Jews were the victims of the most horrific crime of the Western world. That creates a strange situation: the oppressor is more popular than the victim. Anyone who supports the Palestinians is automatically suspected of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial even though the Palestinians are clearly an oppressed people and the two are not linked.
Also, the great majority of the Palestinians are Muslims (even though there are a significant number of Palestinian Christians but you rarely hear of them). Since Islam arouses fear and abhorrence in the West, the Palestinian struggle has become a part of that shapeless, sinister threat, "international terrorism". And since the deaths of Yasser Arafat and Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the Palestinians have no particularly impressive leader - neither in Fatah nor in Hamas.
The world media are shedding tears for the Tibetan people who are oppressed by the Chinese government. Who cares about the Palestinians who are being oppressed by the Israeli’s?
The Western media paints Tibetans more favorably than other oppressed groups but this does not make either people undeserving of democratic rights. In fact, the simple, spiritual Tibetan Buddhist monk and the deranged Arab terrorist are equally racist stereotypes. Everyone who supports the principles of social justice should support the growing global movement in solidarity with Tibet's struggle for self determination and that off all oppressed groups of people around the world.
It is never going to be the actions of the elite that will give power and democratic rights to the oppressed and make them equals as the elite have vested interests, such as the American’s in their stance towards the Tibetans. Democracy and equality can only be won through a international, organized, grass-roots movement of workers, students and all oppressed people who demand and take what they, as the majority of people on the planet, rightfully deserve. In the words of Karl Marx: “the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority”. The only way for all oppressed people around the world to be made equals is through a new system of democratic socialism.
J.Llewellyn
With acknowledgements to U.Avnery and Counterpunch
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