http://www.smh.com.au/letters/index.html
Tibet: it's about economic equality, not religious freedom
April 15, 2008
In the late 1950s and early 1960s I worked in a Christian
missionary school near the Tibetan border in north India, where
refugees were entering in their thousands. A number of my students
were Tibetan children. Talking to the refugees and my students, I
learned about Tibet and its people before and after the physical
occupation by China.
There were three classes of people in Tibet: the feudal
landlords who owned all the land, monks who spent their time
reading scriptures and begging, and serfs who worked the land for
the feudal lords. The Dalai Lama presided over the whole life of
Tibetans as god-king.
The landlords treated the serfs with the same ruthlessness as
the landlords of the Dark Ages in Western Europe. There were no
roads, no hospitals and no modern schools in Tibet, no human
rights, and no democracy. Outsiders were banned during the Dalai
Lama's time. The refugees did not speak of a genocide of Tibetans
by the Chinese. The refugees who came to India were mainly the
feudal landlords with their wealth in gold, their servants and some
monks, together with the Dalai Lama.
The Chinese takeover changed the face of Tibet. They built
roads, schools and hospitals and other infrastructure necessary for
an acceptable modern life. They instituted land reforms and gave
dignity in life to the serfs. That the monks still comprise a
sizeable population in Tibet is significant, and makes me wonder
how much the spiritual life of Tibetans has been affected by the
Chinese.
Lindsey Hilsum, China correspondent for Britain's Channel 4 News
has given an interesting perspective on the unrest in Tibet. In the
New Statesman (March 19) she wrote that the unrest in Tibet
is caused by the economic disparity between the Tibetans and the
Han Chinese and Hui Muslims who own the majority of shops and
businesses.
These Chinese minorities, with their better business acumen,
have benefited most from the upturn in the Tibetan economy. This
has fuelled the resentment of Tibetans against its Chinese
minorities. Freedom or religion has very little to do with what is
happening in Tibet now.
Bill Mathew Parkville (Vic)
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