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There are many ways to define privilege. One might be who gets to go where.

If you’re Roisin Timmins, you get exclusive access to Tibet, one of the world’s most geographically and politically secluded countries, which is currently in the stranglehold of China’s stringent isolation policies.

Having brutally occupied Tibet since 1959, China now has the region on complete lockdown. A recent report from the US State Department says the Chinese government “systematically impeded travel to the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) and Tibetan areas outside the TAR for US diplomats and officials, journalists, and tourists in 2018.”

No doubt the same was true for citizens of other countries—except Chinese citizens, who increasingly make tourist trips to Tibet, where they are presented with a Disneyland version of Tibetan culture and history.

The situation is worst of all for Tibetan exiles, including thousands of Tibetan American citizens, who are cruelly denied the right to visit their ancestral land. Since I began working for ICT last summer, I’ve been dismayed by the number of Tibetans I’ve met who’ve never been allowed to set foot on Tibetan soil.

This exclusion is also extreme for international journalists. In March 2019, the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China released a position paper noting the TAR is the only region of China that journalists need government permission to enter, and that such permission is rarely granted.

So how, then, did Timmins—who described herself as a journalist in a 2018 interview with her alma mater, Leeds Trinity University in England—enter Tibet earlier this year?

The answer is easy: She took a job as a correspondent for Xinhua, an official Chinese state news agency, leading to this fiasco of a video report filed from the TAR.

If you want to spare yourself six minutes of wasted time, let me assure you: The video is trash. In it, Timmins conjures the profound insight that “There’s much more to Tibet than yaks and temples” and sets out to show how, under Chinese rule, Tibetans have “modernized their education, their healthcare, their whole way of life without losing their identity.”

Of course, that thesis itself is sheer nonsense. More than 1 million Tibetans have died as a direct result of China’s invasion and occupation of their land, and Tibet’s rich and ancient culture is slowly being devoured by China’s assimilationist regime.

But to back up their bogus claim, Timmins and crew interview a number of Tibetans—who might have felt horrific pressure to say the right things as state media cameras filmed them—and regurgitate a set of Chinese government talking points, all of which are easy to rebut. For example:

• Tibet’s population is 90% Tibetan. According to the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA), ethnic Chinese outnumber Tibetans in Tibet. China has also implemented policies incentivizing intermarriage between Tibetans and Chinese, hoping to breed out Tibetans in a kind of slow, covert genocide.
• China brought democratic reform to Tibet. There is no democracy in Tibet or China. China is a one-party authoritarian regime. If Tibetans ever did get to vote freely, surely they would vote to kick their repressive Chinese leaders out.
• Schools are helping to preserve Tibetan culture. In July 2018, Chinese officials banned Tibetan schoolchildren from taking part in religious activities during their summer breaks. Buddhism is at the heart of Tibetan culture. So if anything, China’s control of the education system is helping to eradicate Tibetan heritage, not protect it.
• China is bringing jobs to Tibet. Just a few weeks ago, Radio Free Asia reported that a Tibetan graduate student whose essay on declining government job opportunities for Tibetans went viral was hauled out of class and has been detained ever since. As I tweeted, this is the reality of China’s economic development in Tibet. Tibetans are discriminated against in the job market and viciously punished when they complain.
• China is helping to preserve Tibet’s environment, including by hiring Tibetan herders as forest rangers. Put aside for a moment the mining, bottled water production and reckless development policies China has unleashed in Tibet. Chinese authorities have also forced Tibetan nomads off their ancestral lands and onto ill-fitting settlements. Not only is this stunningly inhumane, but scientists everywhere (including in China) have reached a consensus that indigenous stewardship is crucial for the health of ecosystems, making China’s approach to Tibetan nomads both savage and environmentally destructive.

Apart from the obvious inaccuracies, Timmins’ piece is problematic in a more foundational way. Timed to distract from the media attention surrounding the 60th anniversary of the Dalai Lama’s forced exile from Tibet, the video claims the anniversary actually marks “Serfs’ Emancipation Day,” the Rubicon moment when Chinese troops freed the Tibetan people, who, according to this narrative, lived as serfs in a feudal order.

To set the record straight, the Dalai Lama has acknowledged that Tibet had many problems at the time of China’s invasion, when he was just a teenager, and insisted he would have enacted reforms. Indeed, in exile, His Holiness helped set up the CTA to provide democratic representation for the Tibetan diaspora. This transition to democracy was completed in 2011 when the Dalai Lama retired from politics, fully severing church and state.

But no matter what injustices took place in Tibet decades ago, none of them could possibly justify China’s ravenous annexation of the country. In fact, Beijing’s claim that it took control of Tibet to liberate the Tibetan people is sickeningly reminiscent of the propaganda past imperial powers have used to defend their crimes.

Case in point: The British Empire consumed India, my country of birth, looting its abundant resources, restructuring its economy to serve English commercial interests, exacerbating religious divisions that eventually led to a bloody Partition and dehumanizing the Indian people, all while claiming to help them.

Like Tibet, India had its share of social plagues, the untouchability of the caste system high among them. But a violent conquest by foreign profiteers was hardly the right cure. Every civilization has its particular ills, and every empire uses them as a pretext for invasion and plunder. To avoid creating as much damage as it’s intended to fix, social reform needs to come from the bottom up, not from the barrel end of a colonizer’s gun.

My outrage at India’s subjugation and despoiling by the British is part of the reason I wanted to join ICT in the first place. As heir to a history of oppression, I felt the need to speak out against colonialism wherever it occurs, even if it’s perpetrated by Asians like me.

Of course, China too was touched by the heavy hand of foreign domination during the bygone age of imperialism. Beijing is right to decry the humiliation it faced from Westerners and Japanese in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and its continued anger and paranoia are understandable. But unfortunately, as so often happens, the onetime victim has now become a swaggering bully. Rather than demonstrate solidarity with its Tibetan neighbors, who were themselves once invaded by England, China has instead imposed on them a form of settler colonialism that is shamefully similar to the sufferings inflicted on indigenous peoples throughout the world.

By producing a video purporting to show the progress benevolent Chinese have bestowed on backward Tibetans, Timmins is serving as apologist for an evil empire. Yet I feel incensed by her work not just as a native of India but as someone who—like Timmins herself presumably—grew up in a Western democracy.

No doubt Western countries have been immensely hypocritical in preaching freedom and equality for some while enforcing subservience and hierarchy on untold others. As an American citizen, I take part in political debates, vote regularly and criticize my government frequently in the hopes of fueling change. Yet the thought of living in a place where I’m unable to do even those things, meager or ineffective as they may be, gives me chills.

For all their inadequacies, open societies where people have at least basic freedoms are certainly preferable to totalitarian countries like China. Coming from the UK, Timmins ought to have been sensitive to that. Instead, she has produced work that is—to borrow a phrase George Orwell used to describe another gleeful propagandist of empire, Rudyard Kipling—“morally insensitive and aesthetically disgusting.”

Timmins is among a privileged few in world history who have had the relative freedom to say what they want and go where they please. She was even able to travel to Tibet, a place many Tibetans in the diaspora have never been able to see. And to get that access, all she had to do was betray the humane values of liberty, justice and civil rights.

Timmins did herself no favors with her attempted self-defense on Twitter, in which she deigned to “make it clear what my job is” and “what it isn’t,” as though merely stating that her role is to do what Xinhua tells her to makes what she did acceptable. If only Roisin would realize ‘I was just doing my job’ has never been a good excuse.

As I told Timmins on Twitter, no one was holding a gun to her head; she could have chosen to do something else with her life. (Relevant side note: Chinese troops have pointed guns at the heads of many Tibetans and Chinese, who do not have the array of life choices that Timmins has.) Perhaps Timmins enjoys the perks of her job, but there is likely something more insidious at play. Tom Grundy, editor-in-chief and co-founder of the Hong Kong Free Press, brought the subtext to the surface in a comment on one of Timmins’ tweets:

With respect to you, your western face is repeatedly being used as a party propaganda tool on issues where countless int'l rights NGOs have raised the alarm: https://t.co/KrcZwwmDZA
I think it's unlikely you misunderstand that.

— Tom Grundy (@tomgrundy) April 8, 2019

Though Timmins is now performing the role of social media victim, the backlash she has faced is purely of her own making. For me personally, I’m disgusted by her work in part because it seems she and I have as many commonalities as differences. We appear to be close in age; we are both from the West; and we both work as PR people for groups involved in the same contentious issue—except I acknowledge my role for what it is while Timmins calls herself a journalist.

When I decided to join ICT, I realized I was likely forfeiting the possibility of traveling not only to Tibet, but also to China unless major changes come to that country. Yet I was fine with my decision because I knew which side of the Tibet issue I wanted to be on. I knew I could criticize the Chinese government from the safety of the US without facing jail time and torture—something Tibetans surely cannot do. Even overseas, many Tibetan exiles feel unable to criticize China openly because they fear what Chinese authorities will do to their family members in Tibet.

Access to Tibet is a privilege conferred not by Tibetans themselves, but rather by the Chinese powers who continue to rule over their land. Timmins gained that privilege by dint of being a useful tool for the occupying forces. She could have opted to do countless other things for a career, but she made her choice of her own accord.

Sadly, given the glib, defensive posture she has assumed on social media, it seems unlikely Timmins will reverse course any time soon. But hopefully the controversy she ignited will lead others like her—and me—to use the tremendous privilege we have to speak up in support of the Tibetan people, not their oppressors.

One of the benefits of my work in Washington, D.C. has been the opportunity to meet a wide section of policy makers and public figures in the course of accompanying Mr. Lodi Gyari, the Special Envoy of His Holiness the Dalai Lama (and Executive Chairman of ICT Board), for meetings. One such individual Rinpoche, as we refer to Mr. Gyari, would meet during the Obama Administration was Ms. Valerie Jarrett. Her official title was “senior adviser to President,” but it was no secret that she was more than that. She was a friend and confidante to the Obama family. Her views and gestures showed that she had deep reverence for His Holiness the Dalai Lama and sympathy for the plight of the Tibetan people.

She has written about the impact the Dalai Lama had in her life in her memoir, My Journey to the West Wing and the Path Forward, published in April 2019.

In his first year, President Barack Obama faced with developments that affected US relations with China that would have an impact on US relationship with His Holiness the Dalai Lama (I will dwell on this more later). As part of the resolution of the issue, Ms. Jarrett (and the newly designated, but not announced, U.S. Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues, Maria Otero) ended up flying to Dharamsala in India in September 2009 to call on His Holiness.

I will let her memoir take it up from here. She says, “When I returned to DC, I told the president that the Dalai Lama had changed my life. If his spirit could be so positive and hopeful in the face of fifty years living with his people in exile, I should have no complaints.” She then compares the Dalai Lama to two other personalities who have touched her deeply: “He had the same generous spirit I saw in Elie Wiesel when we had visited Buchenwald, a spirit I’d also seen once before back in city hall in Chicago, when we received a visit from Nelson Mandela.”

She then recalls this incident when the Dalai Lama visited Washington, D.C. in February 2010: “Several months later, when the Dalai Lama did visit the president, I was so excited to see him again. After dealing with the frustrations of trying to work with the Republicans in Congress, I needed another infusion of his hopeful spirit. After President Obama greeted the Dalai Lama, he re-introduced him to me and told the Dalai Lama that I had said he had changed my life. The Dalai Lama’s eyes danced with delight, and, pausing first for effect, he announced with a belly laugh, “She exaggerates.”

Now to the background to this Dharamsala trip by these senior American officials. The years around 2009 were those in which the Dalai Lama made at least one annual visit, if not more, to the United States. Some months after President Obama assumed office in January 2009, there were talks of him making his first visit as President to China in November. That news came when preparations were already underway for a visit by the Dalai Lama to Washington, D.C, in October, to participate in programs, including a conference with scientists organized by the Mind & Life Institute.

Rinpoche took up with the White House the issue of a presidential meeting. It is public knowledge that His Holiness the Dalai Lama has a principled position not to cause inconvenience to leaders of countries that he visits and President Obama was no exception. Given that US-China relationship is something important, the US side wanted to request the postponement of a meeting with His Holiness to a period after the China trip. At the same time, the White House felt important to get His Holiness’s thoughts on what the President could convey to the Chinese leaders during the November trip. It was thus that Ms. Jarrett ended up going to Dharamsala on September 13 and 14 of 2009 to convey President Obama’s message to His Holiness.

Ms. Jarrett explains this in her memoir: “My work for the White House took me around the world and back, many times. Very early on, we heard that the Dalai Lama wanted to visit DC and call on President Obama. At the same time, we were trying to manage our relationship with China, and it would have caused diplomatic problems if the Dalai Lama, who China considered to be an enemy, came to visit the White House before they did. We had to try and think of a delicate way to ask the Dalai Lama to postpone his trip without giving offense. The national security team came up with the idea that I should go and hand-deliver a letter from the president to the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India, where he and thousands of other Tibetans have lived in exile for fifty years. The letter invited him to come in six months. We felt that the symbolism of someone close to President Obama making this trek would smooth over any ruffled feathers with the Dalai Lama, while not provoking any negative reaction from the Chinese.”

The Office of H.H. the Dalai Lama announced their visit to Dharamsala on September 14, 20109 saying, “US President Barack Obama’s emissary, Valerie Jarrett, called on His Holiness the Dalai Lama on September 13 & 14. She was accompanied by State Department Under Secretary Maria Otero, who she introduced formally to His Holiness as the designated new Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues.” The statement also said, “His Holiness is looking forward to meeting President Obama after his visit to China.”

The International Campaign for Tibet carried a report on the visit on September 14, 2009. It quoted Rinpoche as saying, “His Holiness has shared with the US delegation his views about how the President can help the Tibetan people and he would value an opportunity to hear directly from the President about what transpired during the Beijing summit with regard to Tibet.”

President Obama and the Dalai Lama eventually met on February 18, 2010 with the White House issuing a statement saying, “The President met this morning at the White House with His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama. The President stated his strong support for the preservation of Tibet’s unique religious, cultural and linguistic identity and the protection of human rights for Tibetans in the People’s Republic of China. The President commended the Dalai Lama’s “Middle Way” approach, his commitment to nonviolence and his pursuit of dialogue with the Chinese government. The President stressed that he has consistently encouraged both sides to engage in direct dialogue to resolve differences and was pleased to hear about the recent resumption of talks. The President and the Dalai Lama agreed on the importance of a positive and cooperative relationship between the United States and China.”

The White House had to face some criticism from members of congress, analysts and the media for the non-meeting in October 2009 as some saw this as kowtowing to the Chinese. Ms. Jarrett’s memoir explains from the Obama Administration’s perspective, the development leading to this.

While in Dharamsala, Ms. Jarrett was also touched by the babies at the Tibetan Children’s Village as well as other people she met. She writes, “We arrived a couple of days before the Dalai Lama, who was on his way back from Europe. He’d arranged for us to tour an orphanage filled with over five thousand children, all sent by Tibetan families to escape persecution in China and to be closer to their spiritual leader. The children were so well loved and happy. One of them grabbed my hand and took me to her immaculate room and showed me her stuffed animals. The woman giving me the tour had a special way with the children because she had been an orphan herself decades earlier. I visited with nuns who’d been incarcerated in Tibet because of their commitment to the Dalai Lama, and met with the men who’d escaped the Tibetan village and hid in the surrounding mountains while the Chinese government searched for them. We met with Buddhist monks who tended to the ancient manuscripts secured safely away in their monastery, and they told me the history of the Dalai Lama and why he meant so much to his people.”

Be that as it may, Ms. Jarrett concludes her experience meeting the Dalai Lama by comparing his life with that of Elie Wiesel and Nelson Mandela. She writes, “All three men had endured terrible ordeals, and not only had they not lost their will to live, but they never let those experiences warp their spirit or undermine their belief in the potential of all people to be good. Their empathy, warmth, and compassion always remained unshakably intact. They all had a genuine love for their fellow man, regardless of how their fellow man felt about them.”

On February 23, 2019, I was at UMass Amherst to participate in an event to thank Representative Jim McGovern on the successful passage of the Reciprocal Access to Tibet Act (RATA). Acknowledging the International Campaign for Tibet’s close involvement at all stages in the legislative process on RATA, we were invited to speak at the event that saw Tibetan Americans and Tibet supporters not just from UMass, but also from Amherst and neighboring areas as well as from Boston and Connecticut.

The local paper The Daily Hampshire Gazette covered the event that included remarks by Congressman McGovern, Ms. Dhardon Sharling, an UMass research student and a former secretary in the Central Tibetan Administration in Dharamsala, and Thondup Tsering, president of the Regional Tibetan Association of Amherst. UMass SFT’s Tenzin Tseyang and Tenzin Tsedon were the moderators of the event. The Tibetan students from Amherst and Boston performed several cultural songs and dances.

In my remarks, I outlined a few areas in which RATA’s significance can be appreciated.

First, I said it gave hope to the Tibetan people. At a time when the Chinese authorities are increasing their efforts to break the spirit of the Tibetan people, RATA’s message of not isolating Tibet makes the Tibetan people understand that the international community does not forget them.

Secondly, it sends a strong message to China as RATA showed that the United States will continue to raise the Tibetan issue until the grievances of the Tibetan people are addressed and their freedom and rights restored.

Thirdly, RATA gave an opportunity to the Tibetan Americans to know that they have a role in the American political process. The Tibetan Americans really understood the power of their American identity as they lobbied their members of Congress to support the Reciprocal Access to Tibet Act.

Fourthly, Congressman McGovern had mentioned during the introduction process of RATA that one of the reasons he was doing so was because his Tibetan American constituents in Massachusetts were asking him. I said that this showed that supporting the Tibetan cause is in the interest of the American citizens, including those of Tibetan heritage. It is a step in the process of making the Tibetan issue a domestic issue of the United States. I do believe that this will have far-reaching consequences on the overall issue of Tibet. China will no longer be able to use the excuse of the Tibetan issue being its internal affairs to silence the international community.

In his remarks, Congressman McGovern outlined ways in which the Tibetan Americans could contribute to spreading awareness and drawing support to the Tibetan issue. I mentioned that as we move forward with a renewed sense of determination, one way the Tibetan Americans can implement the Congressman’s advice was by becoming more active. I said ICT will proudly partner with them through our programs like the Tibet Lobby Day, the Tibetan Youth Leadership Program, the Washington Internship Program for Tibetan Americans, and the Rowell Fund for Tibet.

I concluded by quoting His Holiness the Dalai Lama who said, “No matter how strong the wind of evil may blow, the flame of truth cannot be extinguished.

The event was a meaningful one. In addition to Congressman McGovern, there was a State Representative as well as officials from Amherst Town Council, which indicates that there is good interest at the local level in the issue of Tibet and Tibetan Americans.

The first day of Losar, or New Year, in the Female Earth-Pig year fell on February 5 this year. Losar is celebrated by Tibetans and people in the Himalayan region and includes a combination of early morning religious rituals followed by social festivities.

However, this is not the only time that Losar is celebrated. Although by the name of it, the first day of Losar ought to be the first day of the first month of a new year, historically there have been variations in when people celebrate. These variations are also accompanied by locally originated reasoning. Let me try to explain this historical development here.

How did Losar originate? It has its roots in the pre-Buddhist Bon period. This can be visible from some of the Losar paraphernalia that are supposed to be there on the altar. Items like་“Sheep’s head” (improvisation from the time when there were sacrificial offerings) as well as the use of the image with Swastika and the sun and the moon.

It is said that in Tibet, tradition of celebrating Losar started around 1st century BC during the time of King Pude Gunggyal. It was based on lunar cycle with Losar observed when flowers started blooming on the trees on the sacred Yarlha Shampo Mountain in Lhoka. The current tradition of Losar seems to have been instituted during the time of the Sakya rule over Tibet in the 14th century.

Be that as it may, the earliest among the Losar celebrations every year takes place in Kongpo in Tibet, where people observe it on the 1st of the 10th month. It is generally known as Kongpo Losar. According to local legend, in the 13th century, the ruler of Kongpo (Akyi Gyalpo) had to wage a war against the invading Mongol army. While he could not avoid going into battle, at the same time he understood that his soldiers needed to celebrate Losar. Thus, he ordered that it be celebrated before their expedition, and thus the tradition of Kongpo Losar on the 1st of the 10th month was born.

In Ladakh (as well as neighboring Ngari in Tibet) Losar is observed on the first of the 11th month. According to Ladakhi tradition, in the 17th century, similar to the Kongpo version, then ruler of Ladakh, Jamyang Namgyal, had to wage a war against the neighboring Balti ruler. However, since the timing was close to Losar, he resolved the problem of his soldiers being able to go to war and at the same time celebrating Losar by observing the same on the first of the 11th month. In some parts of Tibet, the nomadic community celebrates this day as the Bheu Losar “Calf’s New Year” to celebrate the annual tradition of going to a warmer site where the calves of their cattle are born and returning from a barter trip to nearby settled towns.

The tradition of celebrating Losar on the first of the 12th month is somewhat widespread in the Himalayan region. It is called Sonam Losar (Farmer’s New Year), a tradition that traces its origin to farmers’ doing a celebration after their harvest. In the Tsang region in Tibet, it is also called Tsang Losar.

In Bhutan, too, this day is celebrated as Chunyipai Losar, Losar of the 12th month. According to the Central Monastic Body, the origin of this tradition is traced to the time of Shabdrung Ngawang Namgyal and it marked the occasion when people from all over came to make their annual offerings.

In the Nyarong area of Tibet, there is a tradition of celebrating what could be Losar on the 13th of the 12th month. The people call this the Nyarong Chusum, Nyarong 13th. Similar to the stories from Ladakh and Kongpo, one of the legends in Nyarong say that the observation was moved forward to the 13th because of the ruler’s need to go on a military expedition.

Losar festivities traditionally go on for several days, but the first three days have specific rituals in traditional Tibet. The first day is called Lama Losar as on that day, there are spiritual rituals early in the morning and people go to offer greetings to the Lamas. The second day is known as Gyalpo (ruler, king) Losar as on that day there is the official ceremony where the government officials make traditional offerings to His Holiness the Dalai Lama. This ceremony also includes a display of dialectic dexterity by learned monks and the performance of a song and dance ritual known as Gar by a specially trained troupe. The monks chosen for the dialectic display are selected from the best of the scholars of the monasteries and it is seen as a coveted prize to be won. Interestingly, the King of Ladakh who sent a team of Gar artists to pay respect to the 5th Dalai Lama introduced it to Tibet in the 17th century. Impressed by the performance, the Dalai Lama issued a decree to establish a Tibetan troupe specializing in Gar song and dance. Thus was born the tradition of performing Gar during such official ceremony. The third day is called Tensung Losar when the state oracles come into trance, protecting deities are propitiated, and prayer flags are hoisted.

Now a word about the designation of the year. This year is the Female Earth-Pig year. As you can see, it is composed of three categories: gender, element and the zodiac animal. An element (iron, water, wood, fire and earth) is paired with a gender for two consecutive years along with a Zodiac animal (Mouse, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Sheep, Monkey, Bird, Dog, and Pig). Thus, since this is a Female Earth Pig Year, next year will be Male Iron Mouse Year and the year after that Female Iron Ox. The whole circle is completed in a 60-year cycle, which is called a Rabjung. We are currently in the 17th Rabjung period.

In the post-1959 period, the Tibetan people have had to change the nature of the Losar celebrations. In Tibet, after the Chinese takeover, community Losar celebration, which is connected to Tibetan religious and cultural tradition, had to change because of the nature of the Chinese Communist ideology. In fact, these days the main community event in Tibet is the evening Losar gala concert on TV rather than the official spiritual ceremony before Chinese rule. The concert by Tibet TV in Lhasa this year, in itself a mixture of Tibetan and Chinese items, was particularly political with many Tibetans brought to mouth praise to Xi Jinping and the Communist Party at regular intervals. In addition, popular Tibetan artists are performing skits in Chinese rather than in Tibetan, making them artificial. In contrast, the one from Qinghai TV in Amdo, was comparatively wholesome and was a proud display of Tibetan cultural tradition. I am yet to see the Losar program on the TV in Kham at the time of writing this blog.

In exile, His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan people’s life in a different society meant that certain changes were inevitable. Losar celebrations currently is a condensed version of what used to happen in Tibet. It does include the pre-dawn prayers, the Gar performance, and the dialectics display. In the United States, as also in the West in general, the Tibetan community had to adapt further. Families do try to visit nearby monastery or Buddhist center on the first day, the community Losar celebrations often tend to be scheduled to a weekend as some people even have to report for work on the first day of Losar. Nevertheless, they do include some spiritual and traditional components.

Happy Losar to everyone, whether or not you are celebrating it!

We are in the 49th day period after the passing away of Kasur Lodi G. Gyari, or as he is universally known to the Tibetan-speaking world (as well as to Himalayan community), Gyari Rinpoche. Rinpoche is a title with which we refer to incarnated individuals, and he was recognized as one at an early age, while in Tibet.

The 49th day after death is an important landmark in Buddhism. In the broader context of the theory of the transmigration of consciousness, it takes at least 49 days after death for the consciousness to proceed on the path of rebirth. It is believed that rites conducted during this period – known as Bardo (intermediate stage)—can help to guide the consciousness toward a good rebirth. But a Rinpoche is also believed to have the ability to determine the nature of his rebirth.

Nevertheless, the timing provides one with the opportunity to look back at Rinpoche’s life in a less emotional way than was possible in the immediate days following his passing on October 29, 2018 in San Francisco. The coverage in the international press about Rinpoche outlined in detail his contributions and is a testimony to what he meant to the community interested in Tibet and beyond. The International Campaign for Tibet, which was the base of Rinpoche’s work from 1991 until his retirement, has encapsulated his lifetime of service in its report.

I was fortunate to have worked with Rinpoche, in one way or another, from 1984 until his retirement in 2014. While he was my boss for around 30 years, he was also my mentor and guide.

What have I learnt from and about Gyari Rinpoche? Here is a partial list.

Rinpoche was a strategist. He was someone who did not wait for opportunities, but ventured forth to create them. Whether in Dharamsala or subsequently in Washington, D.C. he did not look at the issue that he was dealing with in isolation, but tried to put that into context. He did this to get the best outcome rather than merely doing a checklist. One clear example is about visits by His Holiness the Dalai Lama to the United States and specifically to Washington, D.C. (of which he was directly in charge as the Special Envoy). In organizing such visits, Rinpoche was strategic even before proposing a visit or acceptance of an invitation so that the visit had a well laid out objective beyond the immediate programs. He consulted the leadership in Dharamsala, strategized with officials of the host government, and worked on creating a proper environment with concerned offices even before the visit. This included identifying concrete programmatic and policy outcomes. After the visit, he would follow up for their implementation. That is how many of the initiatives on Tibet, including the Tibetan Policy Act of 2002, came about in the United States.

I can recall a few major initiatives where I saw him implement this sort of strategic vision. In 1990, Rinpoche coordinated the first-ever International Conference of Tibet Support Groups in Dharamsala and those who were present then can testify how the conference energized Tibetans and Tibet supporters alike. At the conference a “long and ambitious list of new global strategies and initiatives was drawn up” which is a benchmark against which today’s Tibet movement can be measured, nearly 30 years later. Among specific suggestions from that conference were “to initiate international Tibetan Flag Days, to set up a computer information network (TibetNet), to internationally publish the destruction of Tibet’s environment, to campaign more effectively with dissident Chinese students abroad, and finally: to intensify lobbying at the UN or through other governments and non-government bodies.” EcoTibet (no longer active) was in fact founded thereafter for Tibet groups to take up the Tibetan environmental issue. Also discussed then was the establishment of an inter-parliamentary network of parliamentarians who are active in raising questions on Tibet.

Similarly, he outlined the strategy that eventually resulted in the United States Congress bestowing His Holiness the Dalai Lama with the Congressional Gold Medal in 2007. When the historic event finally took place on October 17, 2007, everyone, including Administration officials, members of Congress, Tibetans and their supporters, returned home feeling ownership and having a stake in it. This also reminds me of how Rinpoche coordinated an international strategy in the wake of the Nobel Peace Prize to His Holiness the Dalai Lama in 1989. I was then a junior official but felt empowered when I was part of that strategy tasked with producing the commemorative medallion.

Rinpoche worked at many levels. In the mid-1980s, at one level, he oversaw the development of a new Tibetan font for letterpress printing that was used by the Narthang Press in Dharamsala, until the onset of the digital typesetting. At another level, he was leading an international coalition of groups representing communities under Chinese Communist Government oppression. If you happen to come across old issues of a journal, Common Voice, that is one of his ideas.

In one sense, Rinpoche was a maverick. He always tended to look at issues beyond the confines of Gangchen Kyishong (as the seat of the Tibetan Administration is known), searching for new ways to take the Tibetan issue to the next level. In the process, he was all for taking advantage of the resources, including human and material, in order to reach this goal. He would enable those working under him to think outside the box, and provide resources accordingly. Those of us who have worked closely with him have heard him say in an understated manner that he only had one quality: he got the best possible people to work for him and let them do their job. However, the truth is that he had a well-planned strategy and got the staff to implement that.

Although, he personally did not take up technological gadgets like a computer (iPad became a companion in later years), he went all out to provide such facilities to the office he was connected with or to make the best use of them. In my early years in Dharamsala, when not just the Central Tibetan Administration, but Himachal Pradesh state as a whole, was only beginning to hear of something called a fax machine, he was able to get one for the Department of Information & International Relations. Similarly, his mobile phone was indeed his mobile office and if one has to think of a caricature of him, it might be him with his phone. In addition, if I recall correctly, he was the first Tibetan official to have a telephone connection at his residence in the early days in Dharamsala, and put it to good use.

He looked at the dialogue process with the Chinese Government — the main task assigned to him by His Holiness the Dalai Lama from 1997 – in a strategic way. As he would tell concerned Tibetan officials, dialogue did not merely mean the few days of actual talks that might take place with Chinese officials. Rather, it involved building the necessary support base among governments and in the international community so that the few days of talks can have the needed outcome. He implemented that by building a coalition of governments whose representatives met regularly to strategize with him, in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere. Through such interaction, Rinpoche was able to convey the vision of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and plan forward movement.

Some people have different views on the outcome of the 2002-2010 dialogue process that he led without considering the actual achievement. On September 28, 2002, after the first round of the talks with the Chinese officials, Rinpoche issued a statement in which he said, “The task that my colleague Envoy Kelsang Gyaltsen and I had on this trip was two fold. First, to re-establish direct contact with the leadership in Beijing and to create a conducive atmosphere enabling direct face-to-face meetings on a regular basis in future. Secondly, to explain His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s Middle Way Approach towards resolving the issue of Tibet. Throughout the trip, we were guided by this objective.” Therefore, if you look at the marching orders that the envoys were given no one can deny that these two objectives were fulfilled even though talks stalled in 2010.

Rinpoche’s work style was such that he made everyone involved in his project feel as a stakeholder. This was apparent whether he was dealing with different Tibetan organizations or with governments whose help he sought to help with the dialogue process. This even resulted in many of the officials and other individuals taking the lead in proposing strategy or plans as if the issue was more for their interest. It was also true for the Board members of the International Campaign for Tibet. They would listen to his passionate explanations — whether about His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s plans or his own ideas – as well as how ICT could contribute towards fulfilling them. This eventually made the board members into partners in the endeavor.

He would move beyond professional relationship and personally symbolized the nature of the people and the culture that he was asking them to help. I vividly recall many instances when senior Administration officials would literally sit alongside Rinpoche and chart out a plan, which they themselves ended up implementing. He was on a first-name basis, if that is the standard, with many influential individuals. On a lighter note, this even resulted in the well-known Congressman, Charlie Rose, establishing a tradition of sending Rinpoche’s family a turkey around every Thanksgiving. Similarly, he involved his whole family in this endeavor of cultivating friends, with his wife, Dawa Chokyi la, and his home serving as hosts for countless meals and meetings.

As for Tibetan officials, those who worked under him would testify to the fact that he literally and figuratively treated all of us as colleagues. Even while respecting the fundamentals of bureaucratic protocol, he went out of his way to establish a personal relationship, in addition to a professional one, with his staff. When he saw a potential in an individual, he would do everything possible to encourage his or her advancement, which he would say would eventually be for the greater good.

Rinpoche was someone who cared both about the substance as well as about the symbol. Those who can recall events such as those surrounding the Nobel Peace Prize celebrations in 1989, the conference in 1990, and the Congressional Gold Medal event in 2007 will know that when there was substance Rinpoche went all out to make the best public presentation, too. He would often tell us that even though Tibetans are living not in an ideal situation, we should always act in ways that can bring us respect and credibility. He would quote a saying in Tibetan that can be roughly translated as, “Even if we can’t be extravagant, don’t present an impoverished image”.

Rinpoche was always for Tibetans taking the lead in the Tibetan issue. He would poke fun at himself by telling our non-Tibetan colleagues that he knows they sometimes see him as a “control freak”, but that he believes that as a Tibetan and the Special Envoy of His Holiness, he needed to assert himself. Similarly, he would tell Tibet supporters that since they are there to support the Tibetans, they should leave decision-making authority to the Tibetans.

Above all, Rinpoche understood the privilege he had in serving His Holiness the Dalai Lama. His approach towards fulfilling His Holiness’ vision was a holistic one, going beyond the superficial level. While because of his spiritual devotion and political respect it was natural that he would honor His Holiness’ wishes, yet he did not rely merely on that authority while implementing them. Rather, he took time to study them and to provide a rational basis for the same to his target audience. For example, after the formal announcement of the Middle Way Approach Rinpoche made every effort to put His Holiness’ initiative in context. Understanding concerns in a section of the Tibetan community that looked at this as a compromise, he urged the Tibetan people to study our history to understand the significance of His Holiness’ approach. He pointed out that this 14th Dalai Lama has — through a very far-sighted approach — provided the Tibetan people in all the three provinces with the feeling of being one people once again. In order to understand its significance, we need to go back to history. While all the Tibetans were under one united Tibet at one point of time, when the Communist Chinese invaded and occupied Tibet, much of the eastern and northeastern part (what we call Kham and Amdo) had already been outside the control of the Tibetan Government in Lhasa. Therefore, the importance of the renewed feeling of common identity among all Tibetans created by His Holiness cannot be underestimated.

Rinpoche’s approach can also be seen in his testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs hearing on the “The Crisis in Tibet: Finding a Path to Peace” on April 23, 2008. He wanted the international community not to take His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s nonviolent approach casually. Through a very deeply personal and poignant way, he conveyed the significance of His Holiness’ nonviolence strategy to the Senators. He told them, “In fact to struggle nonviolently is the most difficult struggle. …Every moment it is new dedication that we have make to remain nonviolent. And we can only do it again because of the leader that we have.” He explained this by revealing for the first time publicly “the pain that I was going through” when visiting his monastery in Tibet in 2004 (as part of the dialogue process with the Chinese Government); he found 70% of it in ruins, and visited the places where his grandmother was tortured to death and his elder brother starved to death. He added, “In spite of that, because of the leadership that His Holiness provides, because of the commitment that we have made to nonviolence, you see me all smiles with my Chinese counterparts.” He ended this part saying, “I am sharing this with you because you understand and appreciate more the path of struggle that His Holiness has led us. So please help us stay on this course, because this is not only important to us, but also important for China.” I was with Rinpoche on that trip to his monastery in Tibet and had not realized the deep internal pain that he was going through.

Following his retirement and departure from Washington, D.C. “How is Lodi?” was a constant refrain that I would hear from serving and retired officials here when I accosted them. Until now, I could respond by saying that he is spending his time writing his memoir as he sees that as something that he can put his retired life in a meaningful use in the service of the Tibetan people. Now Rinpoche is no more, but he will continue to be my inspiration.

“You’re not going to see something that’s like ‘Seven Years in Tibet’ anymore,” says Larry Shinagawa, professor at Hawaii Tokai International College, in a recent New York Times piece titled “How China Is Rewriting Its Own Script.”

That’s cause for concern, because when I was growing up, movies like “Seven Years in Tibet” and “Kundun,” both of which opened in 1997, helped introduce me—and surely many Americans in my generation—to the Tibetan issue. If such films are no longer made, how will kids today discover this important topic?

Hollywood screenwriters love a good-vs.-evil story. Twenty years ago, they found a great one in Tibet.

Just imagine this pitch to a producer: admirable but outnumbered protagonists follow a wise elder who teaches inner peace and spiritual growth. The antagonists, meanwhile, are an evil empire bent—as real-world events have shown—on actual global domination.

Not even George Lucas could do it better. So why, then, did Hollywood turn its back on Tibet?

The sad answer is that, for now, the evil empire is winning.

According to the Times report, written by reporters Amy Qin and Audrey Carlsen, “China wields enormous influence over how it is depicted in the movies Americans make and watch.”

The Chinese gained that influence by using many of the same tactics that every colonial power uses: invade when local institutions are weak, buy off the elites and spread fear to squelch dissent.

In the case of Tinseltown, the takeover was obviously less dramatic. But it largely followed the same script.

Hollywood studios were weakened by years of declining revenue and competition from online streaming. China swooped in with huge wads of cash and the promise of a blockbuster market for foreign ticket sales.

As a result, Hollywood executives today are simply too afraid to make a movie that could offend China. That means no more “Seven Years in Tibet” or “Kundun.”

Apparently, the release of those films helped provoke Chinese censorship in the first place. In the mid-1990s, Disney was just breaking into the Chinese market when the government in Beijing heard about “Kundun,” a beautiful film on the early life of the Dalai Lama directed by screen legend Martin Scorsese and written by Melissa Mathison, an International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) Board Member who died in 2015.

China’s leaders raged against the movie, Disney pulled back on its marketing campaign, and Disney’s CEO, Michael Eisner, traveled to China to apologize to the Chinese prime minister—and to negotiate a new theme park in Shanghai. (As a supporter of Tibet and an ardent cinephile, I took heart in this line from a 1998 Film Comment article: “You decide: who’ll be lucky to be even a footnote in movie history, Eisner or Scorsese?”)

Following that experience, it’s safe to assume that no studio today would greenlight a film like “Kundun.” But even when Tibetans come up organically in a story, Chinese pressure forces them out.

Case in point: the 2016 Marvel epic “Doctor Strange.” In the comic books, the titular doctor learned his craft from the Ancient One, a wise Tibetan sage.

But in the movie, the Ancient One is Celtic and played by Tilda Swinton, a white actress from Scotland. Although Disney—once again behaving as nefariously as any of the villains in its cartoons—claimed it was trying to avoid a stereotypical portrayal of Asians, the screenwriter shockingly admitted, “If you acknowledge that Tibet is a place and that [the character is] Tibetan, you risk alienating one billion people.”

Unfortunately, Hollywood, the land of make believe, is not the only place where China’s government has pressured Americans to pretend Tibet isn’t real.

The 2018 annual report by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission notes that earlier this year, “the Shanghai branch of the Cyberspace Administration of China shut down Marriott’s Chinese website for a week as punishment for listing Taiwan as well as Hong Kong, Macau and Tibet as separate from China on a questionnaire for customers.”

Like its peers in La-La-Land, Marriott sheepishly apologized. ICT followed up with a letter to Marriott’s CEO, Arne Sorenson.

The Commission’s report also states that China doesn’t have to tell European diplomats not to mention Tibet; instead those diplomats simply choose on their own not to bring it up because they don’t want to face Beijing’s wrath.

The result is arguably the most insidious form of censorship: self-censorship. And it’s becoming more common on the issue of Tibet.

Unlike in the movies, good doesn’t always triumph over evil in real life. Hollywood, which once championed the Tibetan cause to kids like me, now shuns the Tibetan people.

Thankfully, there’s still hope for a better ending. Movie studios may fear getting banned by China, but Tibetan-Americans already face that reality. Although Chinese citizens are free to travel throughout the United States—and Chinese officials throw their weight around unimpeded in this country—China restricts Tibetan-Americans from visiting their homeland.

The Reciprocal Access to Tibet Act, which was passed by the House of Representatives in September and unanimously approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week, aims to change that situation by denying US visas to Chinese officials who prevent Americans from entering Tibet.

According to Congressional Quarterly, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who introduced the Reciprocal Access to Tibet Act in the Senate, said that Chinese authorities are “literally undertaking an effort to strip people of their identity.”

Although we can no longer count on our favorite movies to protect that identity, we can—and should—still lobby our government to do so.