Western colonialism is history, China’s oppression is ongoing
“China-hating farang are whitewashing their own history,” Have Your Say, March 18.
As Robin Grant notes in his letter of March 15 (“Appalling euphemism for China’s slaughter in Tibet”), Prasan Stianrapapongs has given us the Mother of All Euphemisms to enliven these pages: the term “modern reorganisation” to describe what the People’s Republic (another euphemism, perhaps?) of China has done to Tibet.
It doesn’t get any better than this for connoisseurs of political doubletalk. Just as the US “reorganised” the American Indians, Hitler “reorganised” European Jewry, the Khmer Rouge “reorganised” the people of Cambodia, and Myanmar has been “reorganising” the Rohingya, so the PRC has “reorganised” the Tibetans.
Khun Prasan justifies the ongoing atrocities that China has committed in Tibet by citing the crimes that Britain committed against India and the US committed against its indigenous people. This is the shop-worn “You’re another” argument commonly invoked by five-year-old boys quarrelling on the playground. “I’m bad, but you’re just as bad” doesn’t excuse the badness of either side. The difference is that the crimes committed by the Britons and the Americans were committed in the past, and can’t be undone.
But China is still in control of Tibet, and there is something it can do. It can make the Tibetan “Autonomous” Region truly autonomous. It can loosen up its repressive rule and give the Tibetans more power to manage their own affairs. It can remove the restrictions on the practice of Tibetan religion and permit the reflowering of Vajrayana Buddhism. It can stop vilifying the Dalai Lama as a “wolf in monk’s clothing” and invite him to return in peace and safety to his own homeland (with ironclad guarantees of his personal security).
It can do all of these things. But anybody who entertains fantasies that it will actually do so can fairly be accused of smoking some really powerful weed. We may not be able to undo the sins of the past, but we can take steps to make sure they don’t continue in the present and aren’t repeated in the future. I don’t see any signs of that coming from Uncle Xi’s China.
Ye Olde Pedant
