A series of tragic self-immolations has been staged by Tibetans in protest against the continued ruthless oppression of the Chinese Communist government.

　　　On February 17, a monk in his late thirties named Tamchoe Sangpo burned himself to death at the Bongtak Monastery in Qinghai (called Amdo by Tibetans) Province. Much of Qinghai and Sichuan actually once belonged to Tibet, although most people would think these provinces have absolutely no connection with Tibet. Actually, China annexed Amdo in the early 1950s to create the Tibet Autonomous Region and four provinces (Qinghai, Sichuan, Gansu, and Yunnan).

　　　Sangpo’s protest came after armed Chinese police and security guards abruptly showed up and demanded that Chinese patriotic education be enforced at the monastery, where Sangpo served as one of the head instructors for young monks. Patriotic education imposed by China views as supreme the Communist Party’s teachings maintained since the days of Mao Zedong, denying Tibetan Buddhism and slandering His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

　　　Sangpo told the police to disappear immediately, pointing out that the monastery is a place of learning for the monks -€ not to be disturbed by armed police and security guards. But the intruders countered with a threat that they would “close down the monastery unless the monks received patriotic education.” According to the Representative Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Japan, the threat subsequently led to Sangpo’s suicide by self-immolation.

　　　Even now, access to the Bongtak Monastery is strictly restricted, creating widespread concern about the safety of an estimated 80 residents there, most of them monks.

　　　Tibetan resistance against Chinese oppression intensified in March, with an 18-year-old monk burning himself to death on March 10 in Ngaba Prefecture in Sichuan Province. Four days later, Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao blamed the “government-in-exile for instigating the self immolations behind the scenes,” bitterly criticizing the Dalai Lama and Prime Minister Losbang Sangay as the leaders of the Tibetan government-in-exile in Dharamsala, India.

　　　On the same day, a 34-year-old monk tried to kill himself in self-immolation and suffered serious burns in Tongren Prefecture, Qinghai Province. Three days later, on March 17, a 44-year-old farmer friend of the monk burned himself to death. Nearly 6,000 mourners are said to have congregated in the monastery where the farmer’s body was kept. The size of the crowd bore testimony to the gravity of the problem intensified by growing popular discontentment with China’s Communist Party among the Tibetans.

　　　What is it that drives them to choose such a painful way of dying -€ engulfing the living flesh and blood in flames? It clearly is a desperate determination on the part of the Tibetans to resist at any cost China’s plot to force them to forget their ethnic heritage and pass into oblivion, effectively leading to the annihilation of the Tibetan race from the face of the earth.

Ruthless Oppression and Mass Slaughter

　　　Buddhism is at the very heart and soul of Tibetan identity, and no doubt because of this, suppression of the religion has been one of the major focuses of the Chinese. The results of this policy can seen be in the drastically reduced number of monasteries. There used to be a total of 2,713 monasteries in the Tibet Autonomous Region alone, but the number is said to have dwindled to a mere eight by 1976 (generally seen now as the final year of the Cultural Revolution).

　　　At one time, monks are said to have numbered between 100,000 and 200,000 among a population of some five million. However, only several thousand of them survived the 1959 Tibetan uprising. The Chinese Communist Party did to the Tibetans exactly what they did to the Uyghurs and Mongolians by first slaughtering the most influential leaders in society, namely monks.

　　　And now, in what is left of the Tibetan monasteries, the Communist Party’s teachings handed down from the days of Chairman Mao have become the “Bible,” replacing Buddhist sermons.

　　　In addition to the elimination of Tibetan Buddhism, the Chinese are dead set on depriving the Tibetans of their indigenous language -€ the all-important means of expressing their heart and communicating their values. In every manner imaginable, the Tibetans have been induced -€ and frequently coerced -€ to neglect their own language and think in Chinese instead, as they live under oppression day to day. The Tibetans are a race standing precariously on the verge of disappearance as an ethnic group, stripped of their native language and values.

　　　After successfully destroying the Tibetan ethnic values, the Chinese will no doubt try even harder to make them forget their past. They will go all out to link disappearance of memory to virtual disappearance of the Tibetan race.

　　　Imagine to what extent Tibetan history was destroyed during the ten years starting in 1966 when the Cultural Revolution raged across China. The Communist Party has in fact neglected to conduct any authentic probes into the Cultural Revolution, never permitting discussions or putting on record the grim fate of the Tibetans and other minorities. In what is available of the limited materials and studies conducted in China relating to the Cultural Revolution, there has been a conspicuous void as regards the same period in Tibet. Oblivion, the Chinese thought, would automatically lead to effacement of historical facts.

　　　However, one single book turned the situation completely around -€ Forbidden Memory: Tibet during the Cultural Revolution, by Tsering Woeser with photography by Tsering Dorji (Da Kuai Wenhua, Taiwan; 2006). (The Japanese edition, translated by Akira Fujino and Liu Yanzi, was published in 2009 by Shukosha, Tokyo). Originally written in Chinese, Forgotten Memory was developed from several hundred photos the author’s father, Dorji, had secretly taken during the Cultural Revolution in Tibet. His daughter Woeser spent some six years collecting information and material relating to the subject, and interviewed more than 70 men and women who were in Tibet during those days before writing up this major work comprising more than 400 pages. The photographs themselves, not to mention a vivid commentary by one of the translators, lay bare the long-concealed historical truths about what really happened to Tibet during those years.

　　　With overpowering facts about the wholesale destruction of Tibetan Buddhism and culture as well as the oppression of the Tibetan people, this solid volume hardly allows the international community to remain silent.

　　　Akira Fujino, one of the translators who twice served as the China bureau chief of the mass-circulation Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, also contributed a commentary, describing the seriousness of the mortal blow Tibetan Buddhism sustained in Tibet, where it had long constituted a spiritual pillar incomparably more significant than in any other nations. Quoting figures provided by the Tibetan government-in-exile, Fujino listed the victims of Chinese atrocities in Tibet during the 1951-1983 period (including the Cultural Revolution years of 1966-76) as follows:

　　　Tibetans who died resisting Chinese oppression: 432,000; those who died of starvation: 343,000; those who died in jail: 173,000; those who were tortured to death: 93,000; and those who committed suicide: 9,000.

　　　This is more than enough proof of ruthless oppression and mass slaughter. Forbidden Memory has evidently frustrated China’s blatant attempt to keep ethnic cleansing and oppression out of sight, force the Tibetans to forget their past, and pretend that nothing abominable has ever taken place.

Towards Mature Democracy and Fair Values

　　　In the introduction to the book, Wang Lixiong, husband of the author and a prominent Chinese novelist, stresses that “continuance of any race relies significantly on historical memory,” also noting that “it is the responsibility of every individual with good sense to counter ‘oblivion’ with the power of ‘memory.’ ”

　　　It is important to note that Wang Lixiong and Liu Yanzi, one of the translators of the book, are both Han Chinese. The only cause for hope in terms of China’s history of oppression and massacre of various ethnic groups is the fact that, among those determined never to tolerate “oblivion,” among those endeavoring to keep “memory” alive, there are Han Chinese like these two.

　　　In the 21^st century, with democratization movements beginning to powerfully influence international politics, how should we deal with the Chinese Communist government? How should we also pursue dialogue with thoughtful Han Chinese, whom we suspect are plentiful. How in fact can we create a better world for the Tibetans, Uyghurs, Mongolians, and other minorities, who are oppressed every minute of the day, driven to a corner where only death awaits?

　　　A group of concerned Japanese will shortly have the honor of inviting Tibetan Prime Minister Sangay to Japan in order to ponder these and other questions. I will have the pleasure of serving as chairperson of the invitation committee, whose many members include prominent figures like Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara and renowned architect Tadao Ando. A symposium, entitled “The Swelling Tide of Freedom and Democracy: What Should Japan’s Role Be?”, is scheduled for April 3 at the Constitution Memorial Hall in Nagata-cho, Tokyo. The organizers are unanimous in their desire to help create an Asia where democracy and fair values take root firmly so as to allow all men to live as human beings are entitled.

(Translated from “Renaissance Japan” column no. 503 in the March 29, 2012 issue of The Weekly Shincho.)