By Hannah Beech
Can he be seen or not? Last week, different organizations that follow Tibet, including Radio Free Asia, reported that in certain Tibetan regions, local authorities appeared to be allowing images of the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, to be openly venerated for religious purposes. The seeming policy shift in parts of Sichuan and Qinghai provinces with large Tibetan populations was seen as possible evidence of a gentler approach to the troubled region by the new Chinese Communist Party (CCP) chief Xi Jinping. (Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, was once the hard-line party head for Tibet and his decade in power as China’s top leader was marked by continued repression on the Tibetan plateau.)
Adding to the positive indications, London-based advocacy group Free Tibet said on June 27 that local officials told monks at a monastery in Lhasa, the tightly controlled capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), that the Dalai Lama’s image could now be publicly displayed for the first time in 17 years. This report provoked particular interest because government suppression of Tibetan spiritual and cultural expression has been harsher in the TAR than in Tibetan parts of Sichuan, Qinghai, Gansu and Yunnan provinces.
For its part, the Chinese government accuses the Dalai Lama (and his supporters) of orchestrating the self-immolations, a charge he denies. Beijing says that the CCP has dramatically improved the living standard of Tibetans since its troops marched onto the high plateau in 1950. Certain Tibetan areas are, indeed, profiting from a mining boom, and cities in the region have expanded quickly. But some Tibetans say that members of China’s Han ethnic majority, who have poured into the region in recent years looking for economic opportunities, have profited disproportionately from that growth.
A Human Rights Watch report released on June 27 estimated that since 2006 more than 2 million Tibetans have been relocated, often forcibly, as nomads and farmers are pushed off the land and into resettlement enclaves or so-called New Socialist Villages. In late June, the People’s Daily, the official mouthpiece of the CCP, announced that the extensive reconstruction of Lhasa’s old town, where some of Tibetan Buddhism’s most sacred monuments exist, had the support of 96% of locals. Nevertheless, 100,000 people worldwide have signed a petition asking UNESCO, which has designated Lhasa a World Heritage site, to investigate reports that the city’s cultural legacy is being destroyed.
And what of the Dalai Lama’s image? When I was in a Tibetan part of western Sichuan in late 2011 to report on the rise of self-immolations, I saw his photos displayed discreetly in countless places: in small provisions stores, in monks’ quarters, on cellphone screens, even in large temples where Han Chinese tourists flock to. No one I talked to seemed clear as to whether his image was formally banned or not. But that didn’t stop them from quietly worshipping his picture.
Meanwhile, advocacy groups who follow Tibet have been hampered by the strangulated flow of information from the high plateau. Often when a self-immolation happens, phone and Internet access to the area is compromised. For such a vast, lightly populated region, the security apparatus in Tibet is fearsome. Still, Eleanor Byrne-Rosengren, the director of Free Tibet, has sounded a guardedly optimistic note: “For the present, the regional government believes it is necessary to deny any such change in policy,” she says. “But this does not preclude the possibility that a change may be introduced later.”