Does the DL feel compassion toward the Huis and the Hans and people of
other ethnicities? Of course, he talks about love and peace and
compassion all the time. He is a monk. Talking about love, peace, and
compassion and similar buzz wrods are what he is supposed to do. But
what is the real DL under his holy man fascade ? For
most people who do not belong to the DL's inner circle, the real DL is
difficult to fathom.
The Qinghai Anti-poverty project controversy, however, provides us an
op****tunity to see the political DL in action. Briefly, the Qinghai
Anti-Poverty project is a a program to resettle 58,000 Qinghai
residents from one part of the Qinghai proviince to another part of
the Qinghai province. within China. These people, Hans, Huis and some
Mongolians were poor because the land they were living on was poor
land. So, the idea was that if they could be
resettled to another part of Qinghai where the physical conditions
were more accomodating, they would have better lives. The project was
co-sponsred by the World Bank. The World Bank's role was to provide to
the Chinese authority a 40 million dollar loan. The World Bank also
performed various studies to safeguard aginst potential environmental
degradation as well negative social and cultural impacts to the
resettlement region. During the second half of the 1999, the project
was about to get final from the World Bank for the 40 million dollar
loan. At this juncture, .suu****ters of the"Free Tibet" and the exiles
jumped out and accused the World Bank as well as China on trying to
commit cultural genocide by diluting the Tibetan population through
resettlement. At first the World Bank defended itself on the ground
that it had done meticulous researches and all the studies indicated
that the project would not have negative social and cultural impact.
However, the criticism kept piling on, the World Bank gave in. The
loan was not ap****ved after some tem****izing. The Chinese government
then stepped in to provide the necessary funding. The intenal
migration continued as planned.
The Dalai Lama was mostly silent during the whole episode. Toward the
end, he commented that the bank initiative ''would be a source of more
problems'' and that the project should not proceed. He also said
something like "too difficult" or "too hard" in another occassion. Of
course, every human acitivity can be construed as a source of more
problems. If this is the criteria, nothing can ever been done. The
project should have evaluated on its intriinsic value. Were it worth
while to help these unlucky souls to get better lives? What was the
cost and what was the benefits. To be sure, The DL and his sup****ters
needed to view the issue from their particuler point of view. Still,
it is upsetting that they chose to attack the anti-poverty effort. For
Dalai and his sup****ters, such project, although humaniarian by
nature, had to pass the race test. So they may say they are concerned
about the Hans, the Huis and etc. But they don't really about. As a
matter of fact, they may not even did not even want to appear to
care, as the Qinghai incident had shown. According to the DL, since
these unlucky souls were not Tibetans, they did not deserve
compassion. Fortunatley, China stpped in to resettle the people with
its only money. Hence, the DL and his supoorterss' objection amont to
becoming a "little person" unnecessarily. The only thing achieved was
to tag China with another "cultural genocide" accusation. Thpical
symbol over substance. Of course, this episode also underscored the DL
political leader****p and influence. It is likely that he kept his
slience because he knew that his influence was limited. Yes, he is
still the god/kig but according to Patrick French lie, (ttp://
www.nytimes.com/2008/03/22/opinion/22french.html?) "The International
Campaign for Tibet, based in Wa****ngton, is now a more powerful and
effective force on global opinion than the Dalai Lama's outfit in
northern India."
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