CHAPTER ELEVEN

Dharma and the Red Men

After returning home, I did not need another physician to diagnose that I had a mild case of posttraumatic stress disorder. I cried when I described the explicit violence I had witnessed in Tibet to my family and friends. Loud noises made me duck as though I were under fire. I continued to wake up crying in the night. With patience and help from my family—and with regaining the thirty pounds I had lost—I began to recover. More than anything, writing about my experiences helped me to cope.

My mother waited for several days after my return, until I had begun to settle down, before telling me what had happened to her during the turbulence. The initial press reports out of Tibet said that we had been arrested, and that an angry mob had burned the police station to the ground. “For ten days I thought you were dead,” she sobbed. “I didn’t dare leave the house in case I missed a call with news of your whereabouts.” My mother explained that while the unrest had raged the phone rang day and night. She took forty pages of notes on a legal pad from her conversations with parliamentarians, government agencies, and concerned people around the world, which included many requests for press interviews and speaking engagements at universities and human rights organizations.

John and I had a week at home to recuperate before undergoing a live interview for CNN. Bernard Shaw introduced us as “eyewitnesses” in Tibet and asked what the Dalai Lama’s reaction had been. John said the Dalai Lama was a nonviolent man and was sorry for the deaths. I began explaining the escalation of events, from the Dalai Lama’s proposing his Five-Point Peace Plan to—

“We couldn’t get any reports,” Shaw interrupted. “Why did you subject yourself to that kind of physical jeopardy?”

“There were no reporters in Lhasa,” John said. “This was an historic moment for Tibet. We felt we needed to take pictures and document what was happening, and to get those reports out to the West.”

“What did you see?” Shaw asked. “What did you hear? What did you feel?”

John said that he watched a group of Tibetans overturn a jeep and light it on fire, and that he couldn’t believe this was happening.

“What were you doing physically?”

“I was in the Tibetan crowd,” John said. “Taking pictures, trying to stay undercover between streetlight posts and tables. Tibetans kept begging us to take pictures and show them to the Dalai Lama.”

“One effect of this is you sometimes wake up crying?”

“That was me,” I said, angered by the question. I held up the bullet casings and said that twelve people had died.

“Were you aiding the victims?”

“Definitely,” I said. “I tried to stop profuse bleeding. Most of the time I could only document how someone had died.”

“Based on what you saw, what do you make of the situation in Lhasa, in Tibet, as it relates to the Chinese and the policies affecting the Tibetans?”

“Tibetans have been living under Chinese military occupation for thirty-seven years,” I said, talking as fast as I could. “China is committing genocide in Tibet. Colonization is the biggest threat to Tibetan autonomy.” I knew I had only seconds left, and suddenly recalled the woman who was sterilized after the nurse gave her newborn a lethal injection.

The next day we addressed the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, cofounded by Tom Lantos (D-CA) and John Porter (R-IL) to make human rights concerns a bigger part of U.S. foreign policy. Lantos spoke eloquently of his own experience with Nazi Germany’s attempt to exterminate the Jews, and said that Tibet was another holocaust. Charlie Rose (D-NC), a large, impressive gentleman, said in a Southern drawl that China’s occupation of Tibet sickened him. He gave his full support to the cause of Tibetan independence.

“Before I went to Tibet,” I said, “I expected Tibet’s biggest health hazards to be intestinal…I lost thirty pounds while consuming mostly yak by-products.” People laughed and continued eating. “But I learned that these are the biggest health hazards in Tibet,” I said, raising the bullet casings. People stopped eating as I described the killing and the wounded Tibetans who feared imprisonment if they went to a Chinese hospital.

John spoke in terms of human and civil rights. His words sounded removed from our experiences, but the congressmen paid attention to phrases like “restrictions on freedom to practice religion” and “arrest and imprisonment without due process.” He mentioned that the Tibetans’ living conditions were substandard compared to those of Chinese immigrants who received higher wages and better jobs, that Chinese was the language of commerce and industry, and that massive population transfer was conspicuous in Lhasa.

As at the New Delhi press conference, we were treated to a sumptuous feast and assured that we had done well. We met representatives from Amnesty International and Asia Watch and reporters for the Christian Science Monitor, the Washington Times, the Washington Post, and the American Medical News.

I felt puny standing in the State Department’s marble lobby of skyscraping columns and country flags. We had requested a meeting with Bart Flaherty, the head of the “China Desk,” in order to discuss the Tibet section of the department’s annual “country report.” Flaherty listened politely while John showed slides of the escalating violence: the police beating monks, Tibetans burning the police station, the ten-year-old boy shot through the chest who died in my hands, Champa Tenzin coming out of the burning police station with third-degree burns. Flaherty squirmed.

“What is the department’s position on the demonstration?” John asked.

“The State Department recognizes that the People’s Republic of China perpetrates a number of human rights violations throughout China,” Flaherty said. “We also believe that Tibet is an internal affair of China’s.”

John looked stunned. It was as though we were talking to Mr. Chen, our Chinese jailer. Unable to conceal my anger, I shouted, “What about people being slaughtered?”

Flaherty became red-faced and pushed his chair back. “The State Department is expressing its concern through the appropriate diplomatic channels.”

John opened the State Department’s country report on China, which was dated October 1, the same day as the riot. In reference to the assessment that the Tibetan Autonomous Region had 30,000 Chinese immigrants, John estimated that Lhasa alone had at least 70,000 Chinese, more than the number of Tibetans. He showed a panoramic photo he had taken from the Potala’s rooftop of the newly constructed cinderblock buildings in the valley.

“You can’t determine population from a few photographs,” Flaherty said. “Tibetans are being tortured in prisons as we speak,” I shouted. Flaherty moved his chair back.

“Did you see anyone being tortured?” he asked. I said that I had met monks beaten with cattle prods during interrogation.

John pressed Flaherty to justify the State Department’s reversal on Tibet as of 1972 when the U.S. China policy changed. “It’s pure politics—it’s not based on historical realities or what’s right or wrong,” John charged. He supported his points with slides and a calm demeanor, while I tried to argued with Flaherty, who kept moving his chair back. After three hours, Flaherty had moved his chair to the wall and could retreat no farther.

At one point another man came into the room and said, “It looks like there’s going to be a demonstration in Ithaca tomorrow. The Chinese ambassador is visiting Cornell University.” I did not mention that Ithaca was my home town, or that I had accepted an invitation to speak at the demonstration. They would find out soon enough.

“It’s genocide,” I said, exasperated. Flaherty repeated that the State Department considered Tibet an internal affair of China’s.

“The U.S. could stop selling arms to China that are used against the Tibetans,” John said.

“We should boycott goods made in China,” I said.

“I’m going to be frank,” Flaherty said. “The State Department empathizes with the plight of the Tibetans. We recognize that China is committing human rights violations throughout mainland China and Tibet. However, it is the department’s position that Tibet is an internal affair of China’s.”