Tibet in the media
The Tibet issue gets quite a lot of media attention. However, the quality of a lot of what is written is not great. News from the Chinese media is nothing more than propaganda and it often gets re-reported by the major news agencies. What is written in the media outside China does a good job of representing the viewpoints of both sides but lacks nuance. It tends to be the Tibetan Government in Exile versus the Xinhua News Agency. There is no appreciation of the wider range of viewpoints that exist.
Shakya Tsering, a leading Tibetan historian and author of Dragon in the Lands of Snows, has an excellent article in the Far Eastern Economic Review titled The Gulf Between Tibet and Its Exiles. In it he highlights the difference in outlook between the Tibetans in exile and the Tibetans in the PRC. The article discusses many of the complexities of Tibetan politics that are generally ignored.
The article was written in response to two earlier articles. One was by William Engdahl in Global Research which was later retracted and is no longer online. The other was by Ching Cheong repeating Engdahl's argument.
Another article on a similar theme was published in the Asia Times Online in March 2008. Tibet, the 'great game' and the CIA by Richard Bennett talks about Tibet's connections with the CIA. Although some people some people are surprised by the historical connections between the Tibetans and the CIA during the Cold War it is hardly a secret. It is the subject of the book The CIA's Secret War in Tibet and the documentary The Shadow Circus.
While I am sure that various foreign intelligence agencies (especially those of India and the US) maintain connections with various Tibetan groups I think it is a little naive to connect the covert guerilla war in the 1960s to the present outbreak of protests in Tibet.
What journalists should be spending more time doing though is investigating and understanding the politics of the Tibetans in exile. Some of them might be quite surprised to learn that not all Tibetans regard His Holiness the Dalai Lama with uncritical devotion. There are a wide range of viewpoints in the Tibetan diaspora.
Another topic that really needs thorough investigation is the Dorje Shugden sect who are protesting against the Dalai Lama claiming he is opressing their religious freedom. This group is closely linked with the New Kadampa Tradition (NKT) led by Geshe Kelsang Gyatso. There is a very long Wikipedia article titled the Dorje Shugden controversy which covers a lot of the details.
Some suspect the Chinese of being an invisible hand behind the Dorje Shugden controversy using it to discredit the Dalai Lama. However, as far as I know thre is no credible evidence to prove this. It could also be the result of a split within the Tibetan in exile community. This would not be a first as there has already been the Karmapa controversy. It is also possible that this is just the workings of a religious sect or cult that is fanatical about its beliefs. Whatever the case might be it is something that needs more investigation and analysis in the media.
posted by David @ 4:21 AM
2 Comments:
Here is some more information on the Dorje Shugden controversy: http://www.wisdombuddhadorjeshugden.blogspot.com/
actually, the website that belongs to that blogspot (or is it the other way round?!) has a great deal of information on the subject, along with interviews of people being persecuted, a chronology, some analysis, and a whole bunch of other interesting stuff.
www.wisdombuddhadorjeshugden.org
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