Dharamsala DiaryNobel Laureates’ Crowd-Dispersal Duties in Japan[Friday, 20 November 2010, 2:56 p.m.]Dharamsala
Diary is back. Sorry for the long wait, that is, if anyone has been
waiting.
From its
mountain perch here in Dharamsala, the Diary has been witness to two
momentous events. One is the awarding of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize to
Liu Xiaobo. The other is the release from house arrest of the 1991 Nobel
Peace Laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese democracy leader. Both
events have been welcomed by democracies around the world.While
one is in jail and the other released, some Nobel laureates have been
busily engaged in crowd-dispersal duties in Japan. On a gray and chilly
Sunday morning on 14 November, His Holiness the Dalai Lama visited the
Hiroshima Peace Memorial with his five fellow Nobel laureates, with the
international media in tow. The other laureates were F.W. de Klerk of
South Africa, Mairead Corrigan Maguire of Northern Ireland, Mohamed
ElBaradei of Egypt, Jody Williams of the USA and Shirin Ebadi of Iran.
The laureates made the visit to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial to pay
their respects to the victims of the two atom bombs dropped in Japan at
the end of the second World War.On their way back from this
sacred site, the laureates were confronted by a crowd of 50 to 60
protesting Chinese, across the other side of the boulevard. The crowd
shouted angry slogans and punched their fists in the cold Hiroshima air.
They flaunted huge banners. In both Japanese and Chinese the banners
screamed: “We oppose the Dalai’s splittist activities. We safeguard the
unity of the country.”You may disagree with the sentiments of
the protesting Chinese crowd, but you cannot help admire their backbone
for standing up to their country on a foreign soil.
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| Above: His Holiness the Dalai Lama with fellow Nobel laureates lay a wreath at the cenotaph for the atomic-bomb victims during the 11th World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates at the Peace Memorial park in Hiroshima, Japan, 14 November 2010/AP PhotoBelow: Chinese residents in Japan protest againstHis Holiness the Dalai Lama at the Peace Memorial park in Hiroshima/Getty ImagesPhoto design by Tenzin Norbu/Kashag |
Lama wanted to walk up to the crowd to explain to the protesters why the
sentiments expressed in their slogans were wrong. He was dissuaded by
his security.Jody Willaims
and Shirin Ebadi volunteered to talk to the crowd. The international
media towed with them.
Just before they reached the Chinese crowd, Shirin Ebadi broke
into what looked like a loud mystical Sufi chant until her words were
translated into English by her interpreter. “We love the people of
China. The only problem is your government. We believe in the beauty and
kindness of the people of China. So, please we beg and plead with you,
ask your government to free Liu Xiaobo from prison. We Iranians like the
Chinese people like to live in freedom. Don’t be afraid of the powers
of your rulers. Your power is greater than those of your rulers. Long
live the union of the people of China with the rest of the humanity.” The spell worked. After a scuffle with a
cameraman here and arguments amongst themselves there, the protesting
Chinese crowd melted away, which left Betty Williams to wonder aloud
before the international media, “Why did they run away the minute we
came to talk to them? We did not come here for confrontation. Shirin
Ebadi and we both are peace laureates. This is the question that we all
need to ask, why did they leave? There are no Japanese police here. They
left because they don’t want to have a conversation with us,” Williams
said.The charitable
explanation is that the crowd overcome by the courage of the two
laureates did not want to pursue their Dalai-Lama-is- a-splittist
argument or found it unnecessary to defend the unity and honour of their
nation before these two chanting we-love-China woman laureates.
The second explanation is that the crowd
became shell-shocked and totally confused. In China, any protest is
greeted with police beating, tear gas and eventual imprisonment and
likely torture. Except for the late premier Zhou Ziyang at the height of
the Tiananmen Square democracy movement in the spring of 1989 when he
met the protesting students in an effort at reconciliation, no Chinese
leader has ever met protesters to find out what their problems were. So
when the two laureates walked up to them to find what what their problems were, the protesters,
totally unprepared for this response,
left the scene.The cynical
explanation is that the crowd was a part of the Chinese Communist
Party’s rent-a-crowd policy. Awashed in a ballooning cash reserve but
confronted by a dwindling legitimacy deficit, the Party buys writers,
bloggers, and crowds to shore up its rule.The question is, why
would the Party be instigating and financing protests abroad while it is
overwhelmed by squashing protests anywhere from ten to thousands of
people all over China every day? These protests are increasing in
intensity and number that last year’s national budget for internal
security nearly tallied China’s national budget for external defence.
China’s military budget for 2009 was $80 billion. Its budget for
internal security for the same year was $75 billion.These
expenses might be quite exasperating for the Chinese finance minister.
He just as well might request Shirin Ebadi and Betty Williams to use
their crowd-dispersal skills in China itself. However, those leaders who
are not responsible for the stewardship of China’s national treasury
might caution the finance minister that instead of dispersing the
crowds, the two laureates might lead them. “And what would become of
us?” they might ask. (The
views in this piece do not necessarily reflect those of the Central
Tibetan Administration)
