Author: Maura Moynihan
Publication: The Asian Age
Date: July 6, 2009
URL: http://www.asianage.com/presentation/leftnavigation/opinion/op-ed/to-see-who-china-fears-and-tortures,-visit-tibet.aspx
When Americans discovered that the Bush administration
replicated torture techniques described in a Chinese Communist military manual
from the 1950s, citizens and legislators across the nation were outraged and
demanded an investigation. Torture is illegal in the United States, and President
Barack Obama has stated that torture does not reflect American values.
In the People's Republic of China there is
no such public debate, for in China's totalitarian dictatorship, soon to celebrate
60 years in power, torture is an integral part of governance.
If you wish to study the grotesque particulars
of Communist China's torture techniques, study Tibet. Human rights researchers
have for decades reported that China uses Tibet as a laboratory to develop
and practice torture methods of extreme cruelty, which, in the judgment of
the Chinese state, are a reminder that the totalitarian order prevails and
anyone who challenges it will be shackled, whipped, beaten, starved, even
killed, for such crimes as waving the Tibetan flag or proclaiming allegiance
to the Dalai Lama. Pause at a Tibetan chai shop anywhere in India and you
will hear stories and see scars and wounds of torture survivors. You will
also hear the Tibetan refugees express profound gratitude to the people of
India for their generosity and kindness.
Why do the politburo's cadres become hysterical
at the mere mention of Tibet, as they shamelessly bully anyone who has the
temerity to show respect to the Dalai Lama, the distinguished Nobel laureate,
stateless refugee and spiritual citizen of Mother India? Clearly they are
terrified of having to explain and defend their plunder of their most treasured
colonial possession, the vast and bountiful Tibetan plateau.
The Chinese Communist Party has for decades
dismissed all discussion of their conduct in Tibet as "an internal affair
of the state", but to ignore Tibet is to misread the many ways China's
capture of Tibet contributes to military and ecological instability in Asia
and beyond.
China's policies now threaten neighbouring
states: population transfer, urbanisation and forced resettlement of nomads
has disrupted the delicate ecosystem of the vast Tibetan plateau, the source
of Asia's major rivers, the Yellow, the Yangzi, the Mekong, Salween, Irrawaddy,
Brahmaputra, Ganga, Sutlej and Indus, which provide water for three billion
people. China has launched a multi-dimensional development strategy, which
includes a vast development campaign entitled "Xi bu dai fa" (the
"Opening and development of the Western Regions"), to develop Xinjiang
and the Tibetan Autonomous Region, which together comprise one-half of China's
land mass. China's Great Leap West is thrusting towards the oil fields of
Kazakhstan, and yoking Tibet's rivers with dams and underwater drains.
China is building a vast hydroelectric dam
and water diversion scheme on the bend of Tibet's Yarlong Tsangpo River, with
twice the hydropower of the Three Gorges Dam. The project will steer the waters
of the Brahmaputra towards China's drought-stricken northern plain, and will
cause untold disaster for the people of India, Bangladesh and Burma.
In 2008 the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change states that 80 per cent of Himalayan glaciers will be gone
in 30 years. Isabel Hilton, editor of China Dialogue, a London think tank
researching China's environment, has launched a campaign to address climate
change in the Tibetan plateau, stated earlier this month: "In a region
that is already fractured and unstable, the melting of the 'third pole' glaciers
is one of the most important challenges facing humanity in the 21st century".
A heavy Chinese troop deployment in Tibet
has pressed into South Asia since the 1962 war. Beijing has aggressively backed
the homicidal Maoist rebels in Nepal, which has fed Maoist violence in India.
Diplomats express alarm over recent People's Liberation Army incursions into
Ladhak, and China's new campaign to claim large swaths of Arunachal Pradesh.
China rudely pressured the Asian Development Bank to cancel a grant to India
for development in Arunachal Pradesh, and vociferously protested against Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh's campaign visit to the region.
China's ambitions are no longer confined to
Asia. The Pentagon just revealed that cyber hackers had penetrated America's
new fleet of fighter jets; analysts strongly suspect a Chinese link. In March
2008, the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto,
Canada, issued a detailed report on "GhostNet", a vast Chinese cyber
espionage network which has infiltrated 1,295 computers in 103 countries over
the past 22 months. Researchers first discovered GhostNet in the Dalai Lama's
private office in Dharamsala, India.
Despite half-a-century of Communist rule and
indoctrination, ethnic identities in China's western possessions, Tibet and
East Turkistan, have persisted, much to the alarm of the politburo. The collapse
of the Soviet Union shattered the primary tenant of Marxist theory, that socialism
would vanquish the stratifications of class and ethnicity. The 2008 populist
uprising inside Tibet exposed China's failure to integrate the Tibetan populace
into their vast development scheme. China's barbarous treatment of helpless
Tibetan civilians exposes the uncomfortable truth that China remains an unreformed
totalitarian state, which declares Buddhism a "disease to be eradicated",
excises the bloodstains of the Tiananmen Square massacre from all textbooks
and televisions and tosses its critics into jail.
Think about it: There has not been one general
election in China since 1949. India just completed yet another general election,
with an open press providing comment along the way. The Chinese Communist
Party, soon to celebrate 60 years in power, marked the 20th anniversary of
the Tiananmen Square massacre by sealing Beijing under paramilitary commandos.
Elections would, indeed, prove fatal to a leadership that fears above all
else the Tank Man and the Dalai Lama.
- Maura Moynihan is a writer and Tibet expert
based in New York and is currently researching a book on America's failed
China policy. She has worked with Tibetan refugees in India for many years.
