Tibet: The Other Protest

[March 26th, 2008]

While anti-war protesters visibly and vocally demonstrated in downtown Portland last week, another local group has been trying to get attention for their cause also half a world away.

The cause is Tibet, where authorities suppressed peaceful demonstrations that began on March 10 by Buddhist monks in the capital of Lhasa. The monks were commemorating a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959.

Chinese officials say police in Lhasa acted with restraint while Tibetan exiled leaders claimed the Beijing-controlled authorities were merciless. Violent street demonstrations by mostly lay Tibetans followed, targeting Chinese businesses, government buildings and even residents, and sparking wider-spread violence.

The unrest in Tibet and the surrounding Chinese provinces that made up the original Tibet homeland is creating some of the worst violence seen there in 20 years. (The current Tibet is one-third the size of the original country.) Estimates of deaths among Tibet civilians range from 16 to the hundreds. And that information has rattled, energized and rallied Tibetans in the Portland/Vancouver region like no other event since the community’s first Tibetans arrived around 1970.

“We’re feeling pretty sad. Pain. Stress. Helpless, basically,” says Tsering Choephel, President of the Northwest Tibetan Cultural Association. “The only thing we can do is to go out in public for candlelight vigils or rallies, or write our congressmen and senators for help. What else can we do? Hopefully the world is watching.”

The area’s Tibetan community numbers more than 350 people, and their center is the Bhond-Khang (Tibet House) Buddhist shrine and cultural center operating out of a former church at 6225 NE Stanton St. Normally 25 to 30 people attend Sunday services and children’s language classes. However, on the first Sunday, March 16, after the troubles in Tibet began, Choephel said the center was “packed full.” (Legal capacity for the shrine is 237.)

Last Sunday, March 23, numbers were closer to normal. About 110 community members had gone to a peaceful protest the previous day at the Chinese Consulate in Vancouver, B.C. Rallies also were held last week at the State House in Salem and outside the Portland speech by Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.)

On March 15, at least 300 local Tibetans gathered at Pioneer Courthouse Square for a candlelight vigil, the largest such gathering in recent memory according to organizer Jamphel Dorji, President of the 100-member Portland-Vancouver Regional Tibetan Youth Congress.

“The main goal of the Tibetan Youth Congress is to struggle for the total independence of Tibet under the guidance of His Holiness the Dalai Lama with peaceful means,” says Dorji, a 33-year-old microchip production specialist. “Total independence, even if we have to sacrifice our lives, but not meaning to harm others.”

Choephel, a 59-year-old wood company production manager, says the Northwest Tibetan Cultural Association wants a boycott of the Summer Olympics this August in China. (No decision has been reached whether to rally at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials in Eugene this June.)

“If the Chinese do not give any human rights in Tibet, any human rights in China, their own country, we feel they do not deserve the Olympics,” Choephel says.

Jigme Topgyal, a 60-year-old human-rights activist who helped to bring the Dalai Lama to Portland in 2001, says an Olympics boycott over Tibet “would be nice,” but takes a realistic perspective. “It’s probably asking too much.”