Five months after it was closed in response to protests that rocked Tibet, the Drepung Monastery in Lhasa quietly reopened to the public last week. As the capital’s major monastery welcomes worshippers again, it will no doubt offer some comfort and hope to Tibetans who have suffered oppression since the March demonstrations.
However, in the same week Radio Free Asia reported that more than 600 Buddhist monks from Lhasa, detained in March, remained locked up in prisons in Qinghai — among them more than 400 “troublemakers” from Drepung. The Drepung Monastery that reopened this week was no doubt a somber shadow of its original spirit, a reminder that all is not well.
Even with hundreds of dissidents tucked out of the way — including pivotal voices from the monasteries where the spring protests began — China’s apprehension about Tibetan frustration has not eased.
That was abundantly clear in China’s reaction to repeated actions by unshrinking Tibetan activists during the Beijing Games. And it was apparent on Aug. 13, when Beijing police detained journalist John Ray of the Independent television news station as he covered a peaceful protest by Students for a Free Tibet — one of around 10 foreign media workers manhandled by Chinese police during the Games.
Meanwhile, rights groups have criticized Beijing for keeping a tighter grip on Internet censorship in Tibet than in other parts of China, even as the government lifted bans on selected Web sites for reporters at the Olympics.
With the Beijing Olympics behind us, pro-Tibet activists in China and abroad may be mourning the loss of a once-in-a-lifetime event that brought unprecedented international attention to a wide variety of problems in China. There is reason to believe that winning the attention of the international community over China’s abuses will once again prove difficult in the months and years ahead.
At the same time, there is cause to hope that the roots of disgruntlement in China will continue to strengthen and eventually force change. Never have the downtrodden of China been so aware of the rights they are denied and of the existence of fellow activists around the country demanding change. The network of distraught but courageous Chinese that began “terrorizing” Beijing a few years ago with national petitions and international hunger strikes has found fertile ground in which to grow.
Reflecting on the legacy of the Games for China, International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge said on the last day of the Olympics that there could be no doubt that awarding the Games to Beijing had been a good choice.
Rogge may have been right. There is no question that the Games were historic. What they will be remembered for, however, is neither the change once touted by Rogge nor the unbounded glory pursued by Beijing. What will be remembered is the desperation of Chinese authorities to feign perfection at all cost and crush even the most peaceful forms of dissent.
For Tibetans, as for other oppressed groups in China, hope lies in fortifying China’s incipient culture of discontent and critical thought. Relying on the international community to pressure Beijing has its limits — and increasingly so as China’s economic clout forces world powers into silence.
Only by building a sufficiently broad and strong community of activists who understand their rights can Chinese, Uighurs and Tibetans hope to bring the authorities to their knees. The voice of anger must become so rife that it cannot be quelled, no matter how many hundreds of monks and thousands of petitioners are locked up away from the public eye.
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