Glenn Hurowitz, author of Fear and Courage in the Democratic Party, has a forceful op-ed in Politico today on Tibet, China, and the imperative for the US to “bring China to its knees” a la Congressman Charlie Wilson’s work to stop the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Hurowitz challenges Tibetans to take a stronger stance than the Dalai Lama’s Middle Way in response to Chinese brutality.

Mahatma Gandhi was never as restrained as the Dalai Lama. Whereas the Dalai Lama renounced the goal of independence and even defends China’s right to hold the Beijing Olympics (and said he would like to attend the opening ceremonies), Gandhi moved in the opposite direction during his career. He first advocated for mere autonomy, but then, horrified by the British army’s massacre of hundreds of peaceful Indian protesters at Amritsar, embraced the cause of independence and never backed away until India achieved it. What’s more, he actively sought out confrontation with the British army: His march to the sea, his boycott of imported fabric and his general strikes were in large part intended to provoke a British reaction — and lay bare to the world the cruelty and immorality of the British occupation of India.

I agree with Hurowitz that the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Government in Exile need to reevaluate the benefits of continuing to seek autonomy at a time when an uprising in Tibet extending more than a month demands freedom. Autonomy has not even produced negotiations – only mere “dialogues” – despite 30 plus years of nonviolence. The brutality the Chinese government has displayed in quashing Tibetan protests, coupled with the international smear campaign the Chinese government has waged against the Dalai Lama and nonviolent Tibetan support groups, should compel the Dalai Lama and the TGIE to demand more, not less, for Tibet.

Hurowitz concludes his piece:

Given the kind of government we’re dealing with, it would be wise to look to Gandhi’s acknowledgments that not every government had the same humanitarian side as the British. Although Gandhi taught that nonviolence was “infinitely superior to violence,” and even suggested that nonviolence could have stopped Nazi atrocities, at other times he admitted that violent resistance to foreign invasion can be appropriate in situations in which peaceful behavior would equal defeat.

“I would risk violence a thousand times rather than risk the emasculation of a whole race,” he wrote. “My method of nonviolence can never lead to loss of strength, but it alone will make it possible, if the nation wills it, to offer disciplined and concerted violence in time of danger.”

To save Tibet from China’s crackdown, the Tibetans will need more than just rhetoric and cheek-turning in the face of a brutal, unfeeling crackdown and ongoing ethnic cleansing — they’ll need real support, real confrontation and a real Charlie Wilson to be their hero. And when that happens, we might just see not only the end of Chinese repression in Tibet but also the end of China’s cruel regime.

I think Hurowitz understates the degree to which the actions by Tibetans inside Tibet in the last month – almost exclusively nonviolent, but in a few instances violent – are in fact an exercise in profound strength of the Tibetan people in the face of Chinese repression. The acts of nonviolent protest, from the display of the Chinese flag to the hoisting of pictures of the Dalai Lama to publicly assembling and singing the national anthem or chanting “Free Tibet” is a quite real confrontation with China’s repressive power. It has lead to thousands of detentions, hundreds of deaths, and an untold number of disappearances. Tibetans are publicly and fearlessly committing acts that they know may be death sentences.

What is missing, as Hurowitz points out, is international leadership to support them in both words and actions. In that regard, Hurowitz is 100% correct. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a handful of US Congressmen have been supportive of Tibet, but I don’t think this is what Hurowitz seeks. Leaving aside the power of outside support for armed resistance in Tibet, unequivocal international condemnation from governments and corporations around the world would strike a massive blow to the Chinese regime. That this has been substituted by a series of press releases and weak-worded requests for China to let international observers into Tibet shows how generally unwilling the international community is to take meaningful action on behalf of the Tibetan people. There is a real leadership gap between the needs of Tibet and what they are receiving in response; this must change if the international community is going to play a positive role in the resolution of China’s occupation of Tibet.

Hollywood star Jackie Chan:

Chan insists anyone trying to protest on his watch can expect short shrift, warning: ‘Demonstrators better not get anywhere near me.’

And the 54-year-old, speaking at the launch of latest movie Forbidden Kingdom, claimed many of the protestors are simply publicity seekers.

‘They are doing it for no reason. They just want to show off on the TV,’ he said. ‘They know, “if I can get the torch, I can go on the TV for the world news”.’

I think you’re engaging in what psychologists call projection, Jackie. A movie star complaining about political protesters doing it to get on TV is just too rich. Apparently the irony of him doing it at a big budget movie premier was lost on Jackie. Well,  I guess I don’t have spend $10 going to see Forbidden Kingdom. 

The New York Times has a good article on how effective the Tibetan independence movement, lead by Students for a Free Tibet, has been at creating the sort of public relations narrative that has drawn global interest and support for Tibet in recent months. The ironic thing in this is that the Beijing Olympics were and are meant to be a public relations coup for the Chinese government. The response by groups like SFT has developed out of the need to communicate better and more effectively than China. So far, it looks like SFT has succeeded.

Matthew Forney has a very interesting op-ed in today’s New York Times about the loyalty Chinese youth show towards the Chinese government and how unlikely it is to find seeds of dissent in the educated elites in China. Though Forney doesn’t go into it, the same loyalty seen inside China is likely even heightened amongst Chinese students pursuing graduate degrees in the West.  Forney’s analysis points towards a tremendously successful state-run pedagogy that teaches Han Chinese that they are ascendant victims and outside forces critical of China (Tibetans, human rights groups) are not to be treated seriously. In this regard, it’s clear that the Chinese government has created a brilliant propaganda machine that reaches into the educational system and ensures that dissent is less likely today than it was twenty years ago.

The main problem that this creates down the line for China is that it is never shocking that elites are complacent under the current regime. They are, after all, elites. The economic underclass in China, however, does not necessarily harbor the same feelings of ascendancy. China has averaged over 75,000 annual instances of mass protest in recent years – coming almost entirely from laborers, farmers, and fisherman. Nationalism may help shift the underclass’ attention off of their economic woes, but it’s hard to imagine a situation where internal political turmoil in mainland China originate from the educated elites and not the working class.

PBS’s Frontline had a feature on Students for a Free Tibet a couple days ago which I’m just finding now. It’s a great piece, with both video and text at the following link. The intro by Alison Satake really captures the essence of SFT and the Tibetan independence movement today.

It’s the night before the highly anticipated Olympic torch relay in San Francisco, and I am watching a training session for protestors led by Students for a Free Tibet, the group who scaled the Golden Gate Bridge to unfurl two banners the day before. A stream of young Tibetans files into the back of a Berkeley church until the room is filled. Lhadon Tethong, the executive director of the organization, arrives with a caravan of weary protesters who had attended a candlelight vigil in San Francisco. Nobel Peace laureate Bishop Desmond Tutu had spoken there. So did actor and activist Richard Gere. Draped in Tibetan flags, with their face paint reading “Free Tibet,” the protestors look like sports fans after a long tournament.

But the outcome of this event is still to be decided.

The organizers of Students for a Free Tibet are sophisticated. In their black American Apparel tracksuit jackets with “Team Tibet ’08” on the back, they immediately plug their white Apple laptops, iPods, and Blackberrys into the available jacks in the room and get wired. One organizer, a tall Tibetan in a black leather jacket said I could subscribe to their Twitter account to receive text message updates on my cell phone. He shows me how.

The leaders are recent college grads, who are savvy when it comes to the media and technology. They immediately begin drilling the group of mostly teenage immigrants about “message discipline” and “how to talk to the media.” The trainer, Gopal Dayaneni, tells them “Free Tibet” has been a useful message, but he encourages them to trade it in for a stronger catch-phrase: “End the Occupation.”

This is definitely the next generation of Tibetan activists.

The ironic thing with this description is that SFT is not a new organization. It has existed, with many of the same members and leaders, since the mid 1990s. The level of effectiveness that SFT has achieved in recent years is not a product of youth, but experience. Core organizers have done and seen many actions, trained many students in nonviolent tactics, found new ways to fund raise, and stayed in tune to new technologies that make their organizing more effective. But it is true, this is the next generation of activists, defining themselves in a moment brought on by the global spotlight of the Olympics in China and the imperative of human rights and freedom for Tibet.

Satake’s piece goes on through her experience in San Francisco during the protests of the torch relay minute-by-minute. It’s a detailed retelling of the actions and activities surrounding the relay and it’s worth a read.

Japan has now joined Australia and refused to allow the Chinese People’s Armed Police guard the Olympic torch while it is in Japan.

“We should not violate the principle that the Japanese police will firmly maintain security,” Kyodo news agency quoted Shinya Izumi, head of the National Public Safety Commission, as saying.

“We do not know what position the people who escorted the relay are in,” Izumi was quoted as saying. “If they are for the consideration of security, it is our role.”

Security is the province of a sovereign nation? What a radical idea. It’s a shame that no one thought of it in the US, the United Kingdom or France.