In the lobby of an upscale hotel in Prague, Sikyong Penpa Tsering spoke about death, particularly the possibility that China’s Xi Jinping would one day die.
“Nothing is permanent. Even our life is not permanent. We are born and we must die. So even empires rise and fall. Governments rise and fall. Xi Jinping will also have to So these events are inevitable,” said Tsering, head of the Tibetan government in exile, the Central Tibetan Administration.
He said it casually, in a matter-of-fact tone, as if he wasn’t talking about the potential fall of the world’s second most powerful government and the inevitable death of its powerful leader.
“China will change. It must change. There is no other choice,” Tsering told VOA last week on the sidelines of the Forum 2000 democracy conference in Prague, the Czech capital.
Sitting in a leather chair and wearing a black Tibetan vest and blue button-down shirt, Tsering explained how this fundamental Buddhist idea of impermanence gives him hope for his homeland.
Reports indicate abuse has increased
China annexed Tibet in 1950, and since then, human rights abuses in the region have continued to grow, according to reports from the U.S. State Department and rights groups.
Beijing says the region has been part of China since “ancient times”. He considers the Central Tibetan Administration, or CTA, a separatist organization and says no government should allow the Dalai Lama – Tibet’s former spiritual and political leader – to visit.
But for Tsering, according to the Buddhist concept of impermanence, everything in life – even Beijing’s power and repression – is fleeting.
Although Tsering’s hope is immense, so is his pragmatism. The prospect of an improved human rights landscape and greater autonomy remains remote. It doesn’t help that the CTA and Beijing barely have an open channel of communication, Tsering said.
“Even if we manage to re-establish contact, there is no possibility of actually getting anything out of it,” Tsering said. For now, the dialogue behind the scenes is for the long term and not the short term, added the democratically elected leader.
But in an ideal world, where Beijing would be willing to engage with the CTA, human rights in Tibet would be among the top priorities, along with the Middle Way approach – the Tibet administration’s policy which would give the region increased autonomy while remaining an integral part of Tibet. China.
These are among the questions Tsering sought to raise with political and civil society leaders at Forum 2000, an annual gathering on democracy and human rights issues founded by former Czech President Vaclav Havel.
Plea for the “Middle Way”
Although based in India, Tsering frequently travels the world to advocate for the cause of the Tibetan people. But he feels a special kinship with the Czech Republic and other European countries that once suffered from communism.
“They experienced what our people are going through now,” Tsering said. “It gives them a better understanding.”
Tsering has about a year and a half left in his five-year term. He said he had not yet decided whether he would run for a second term, but that one of his priorities for the next 18 months was to advocate for the Middle Way approach.
The Middle Way approach accepts Tibet’s status as part of China but advocates for increased autonomy, such as greater freedoms of religion, language and culture. This is an attempt to balance Beijing’s concerns about Tibetan separatism with Tibetans’ concerns about cultural preservation.
Tsering said he didn’t really understand why Beijing seemed so opposed to this approach, since it doesn’t call for independence.
“Dying slowly, culturally”
For years, media reports and rights groups have detailed Beijing’s serious human rights violations in Tibet.
Chinese authorities are particularly repressive against any signs of dissent among Tibetans in the region, with more than 5,600 political prisoners formerly or currently imprisoned in Tibet since 1990, according to the Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy.
Expressions of Tibetan Buddhism and Tibetan cultural identity are also restricted.
“We are slowly dying culturally, because China is taking our breath away like a python, expelling it, slowly but surely,” Tsering said.
Authorities have cracked down on the use of the Tibetan language, and the United Nations estimates that around a million children were forcibly separated from their families and sent to state boarding schools to assimilate into the dominant Han Chinese culture.
“It’s very clear that the Chinese government is essentially seeking to hollow out and erase the identity of Tibetans,” Sophie Richardson, a visiting scholar at Stanford and former China director at Human Rights Watch, told VOA.
China’s Foreign Ministry did not respond to VOA’s email seeking comment for this story.
Other human rights issues include Beijing’s harassment of exiled Tibetan journalists and activists in a process known as transnational repression.
“It’s basically to prevent anyone from hearing an alternative version of their story or criticizing their version. The Chinese government wants everyone to believe their side of the story,” Richardson said.
But when it comes to transnational repression, Tsering said he is not a target.
“They don’t threaten me because they know it makes no sense. I won’t listen. If they threaten me, my situation will be much worse,” Tsering said. “If they ask me not to do something, I do it more because I know it hurts them.”
