Olympic torch burning China
By Mike Leonard
Herald Times
April 28, 2008

Bloomington, Indiana- China has long sought to use the Olympic torch as a beacon to show the world how modern, progressive and accomplished it has become. But there is an old proverb: “Be careful what you wish for.”

Without saying as much, China last week acknowledged that the heat generated by that torch has become so intense as to overshadow everything the Asian power hoped to accomplish by hosting the Olympic Games in August. Large protests over China's human rights record have accompanied China's global torch relay in cities including London, Paris and San Francisco, all but destroying the positive public relations China hoped to receive.

To the surprise of many, China on Friday announced that it will resume talks with envoys of the Dalai Lama of Tibet - the Buddhist leader it has vilified for decades but probably never as harshly as in the last few months. “It all stems from my father's doing,” Jigme Norbu said last week as his father, Thubten J. Norbu, sat next to him, listening. “He's spent his life fighting for Tibetan independence. What we're seeing now are the results of his efforts.”

A son's pride in his father's accomplishments can not only be understood, but in this case, documented. The elder Norbu (86 or 87) is the Dalai Lama's older brother. In the film “Kundun,” he was portrayed as warning the Dalai Lama that Chinese authorities had enlisted him to assassinate his own brother, and he warned the Tibetan leader to leave Tibet before he made his own escape from his native land.

During the 1950s, Norbu, known to Buddhists as Takster Rinpoche, worked with CIA officials on a plan to invade and retake Tibet. The plan was never launched.

Herman B Wells, the legendary Indiana University chancellor, brought Norbu to the IU faculty after that. Decades later, In 1995, Norbu made a public, political break from the Dalai Lama's position of peaceful coexistence with China and called for nothing less than independence from Chinese rule.

Over the last 13 years, the International Tibetan Independence Movement (ITIM) has employed long, city-to-city walks, bicycle rides and other forms of peaceful protest to call attention to the Tibetan argument against the Chinese occupation of their country, which began with an armed invasion in 1949.

Larry Gerstein, the Ball State University psychology professor who founded ITIM, said the current wave of international protests over China's hosting of the Olympic Games was launched more than a year ago at an international Tibet support meeting he attended in Brussels, Belgium. “One of the things we decided was that if we couldn't stop the Olympics from happening in Bejing, then whenever the Olympic message is out there, we'd be present, protesting and bringing up the Tibetan cause.”

Anticipating what has become a ritual for the Olympics host country, to parade the Olympic torch around the world, the Tibetan group came up with a freedom torch for advocates to carry wherever the Olympic torch went. Gerstein, Jigme Norbu and several others from Bloomington traveled to San Francisco earlier this month, where there were several acrimonious clashes between Chinese supporters and human rights advocates supporting Tibet, Darfur, Falun Gong and other issues and causes associated with repressive Chinese policies.

Gerstein said pro-Tibetan groups met in San Francisco before the arrival of the Olympic torch to discuss their values and strategies. One point of emphasis was to adhere to the Dalai Lama's plea that any protests be nonviolent. Related to that was training, by protest organizers, about how to deal with the provocation they were likely to encounter.

“Things got pretty heated on several occasions,” Gerstein said. “Chinese supporters were using their flags like clubs to knock down our (Tibetan) flags. They got in our faces. One Chinese supporter sprayed pepper spray in the faces of Tibetan protesters.”

As a small group of bicycle riders, including Jigme Norbu, rode the 520 miles from San Francisco to Los Angeles, Norbu said Chinese bicyclists carrying Chinese flags surrounded them, wove in and out of their ranks, and did everything disruptive they could do, short of knocking the Tibetan riders off their bikes. “We expected this,” he said. “It was really our Western friends who we had to restrain.”

Despite the tension, Gerstein said he saw a lot to be hopeful about in San Francisco. “I've never seen the Tibetan community so activated and energized. It used to be that you'd see a higher percentage of folks at demonstrations that were non-Tibetans. Now, it's like 90 percent Tibetans. The entire tone has changed,” he said.

“Another positive was that these were young people leading the way,” Gerstein said. “For so long, Tibetans in this country have been busy assimilating into their host country and accumulating money so that they could live. It was very, very clear to me that these younger Tibetans have watched the violent suppression of Tibetans in Tibet and they are now 100 percent committed to Tibetan independence.”

While his sons, Jigme and Kunga, sat at his side in the Chamtse Ling Monastery building on the Tibetan Cultural Center grounds south of Bloomington, Thubten Norbu remained mostly silent. Several strokes have impaired the speech and mobility of the former abbot and IU faculty member. He managed a smile when handed the Tibetan freedom torch, however, and nodded in agreement when his sons described their father's commitment to Tibetan independence.

Gerstein sounded a note of caution, however, over the impact of global protests against the Chinese government and the country's hosting of the Olympic Games. In fact, he left the U.S. late last week, bound for Dharmsala, India, the seat of the Tibetan government in exile, with post-Olympic planning as the focus of the agenda.

“When the Olympics are occurring, there are restrictions on what China will do,” the Tibetan independence leader said. “Afterwards, what's going to stop them from just killing people who protest or defy them? What can we do to forestall that?”

The welcome news late last week of impending talks between representatives of the Dalai Lama and China might be one avenue toward addressing those issues.