阿坝是否会成为中共的滑铁卢

11月26日至30日，中国国务委员兼公安部长孟建柱视察四川，令世人再度聚集阿坝自治州的格尔登寺，前不久那里发生的连串喇嘛自焚，令忙于维稳的北京十分头疼。

格尔登寺已成为西藏问题的一个新的引爆点，其不断升腾的火焰将会如何蔓延，是否会烧毁中共统治的基座？11月11日，总部在香港的亚洲时报在线登载了Peter Lee的一篇文章《阿坝是否会成为中共的滑铁卢？》。在近日的一次聊天中，研究流亡藏人历史的美国学者李江琳认为，阿坝不会，但西藏问题有可能成为中共的滑铁卢。

Will Aba be the CCP's Waterloo?
By Peter Lee

The Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) setbacks in a remote corner of Sichuan province, Aba prefecture (more accurately, the Aba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture), may in time be seen as the beginning of the end of its authoritarian reign.

Today, Aba is in the news because of a string of self-immolations at a Tibetan Buddhist monastery, Kirti, on the outskirts of a county town in Aba, in response to a brutal government crackdown.

Aba was also in the news in 2008, when an earthquake in the southeastern corner of the prefecture, Wenchuan, killed tens of thousands.

At first, China was hailed internationally for its massive and timely relief effort in the aftermath of the quake. But the focus rapidly

shifted to the death of schoolchildren attributed to shoddy construction practices abetted by corrupt local authorities, the ensuing cover-up, and heavy-handed mismanagement of the compensation and reconstruction process.

The Wenchuan earthquake was a radicalizing experience for Chinese artists and intellectuals like Ai Weiwei, who was beaten up while in Chengdu to offer support to a local activist on trial for pursuing the substandard school construction story in Wenchuan. The government reaction to their activism validated - or at least self-validated - their critique of the Chinese communist system and its methods, and created a hard kernel of resistance that persists to this day.

From a public relations standpoint, the CCP might as well shoveled one trillion yuan (US$158 billion) down a hole. The abiding international memory of Wenchuan is Ai Weiwei's mawkish installation of schoolchildren's backpacks in Berlin, ''She lived happily on this earth for seven years.''

Ai's recent incarceration - and his reincarnation as a martyr to China's selective enforcement of its income tax laws - appears to show that the CCP has not come up with any good new ideas on how to deal with critics of its rule.

2008 also saw China's $40 billion grab at the brass ring of international legitimacy - the Beijing Summer Olympic Games.

The Olympics turned into something of an expensive disappointment, primarily because the West was conspicuously unwilling to welcome China on the world stage as an equal partner.

It was easy and more consoling for China to blame the messenger - the storm of pro-Tibetan independence demonstrations and provocations that disrupted the passage of the Olympic flame throughout the world and roiled towns and monasteries in the Tibetan Autonomous Region and Tibetan areas of Gansu and Sichuan around March 10 (the anniversary of the 1959 Lhasa uprising against Chinese rule) in the Olympic year.

Kirti Monastery in Aba county, Aba prefecture was the scene of violent outbursts in 2008. Indeed the Chinese government publicized them as part of its campaign to assert the non-peaceful/subversive nature of Tibetan dissatisfaction.

According to credible reports, at least 10 and possibly as many as 28 ethnic Tibetans in the small town, including monks, lay people, and one child, died in confrontations with security forces in March 2008.

On March 16, 2011, on the third anniversary of the shootings, a monk at Kirti, Phuntsok Jarutsang, self-immolated.

Chinese security forces put out the flames but then, according to reports of Tibetan emigre groups, detained Phuntsok and subsequently beat him to death.

If the government's objective was to deny the Tibetan independence movement a martyr by dousing the flames, and then discourage prospective imitators by administering a fatal beating, the effort failed miserably.

Phuntsok's death provoked sizable demonstrations at the monastery that reportedly resulted in beatings and the death of two lay people at the hands of security forces, and five subsequent immolations in Kirti in September and October 2011 - out of a total of 12 self-immolations in Tibetan regions this year.

If, on the other hand, the intention was to escalate a confrontation to a point at which monasteries and monks who refuse to knuckle under are completely broken, the policy may be said to be working.

Aba prefecture was once advertised as a showcase for a moderate approach to the PRC's relation with ethnic Tibetans. In the case of Aba, that promise has been honored, as it were, in the breach.

In April 2011 a convoy of military vehicles ferried away 300 of Kirti's estimated 2,500 monks off for Patriotic Re-education, whose salient feature apparently is to demoralize the monks by compelling them under physical and emotional duress to denounce the Dalai Lama.

The remaining monks were divided into groups of 20 for what Radio Free Asia termed ''patriotic religion'' meetings. The outlet stated that two monks received three-year jail terms in May 2011 for speaking out during a meeting.

The government also labored to place the blame for Phuntsok's death on his fellow monks instead of the regime, sentencing three of them to 10-year-plus terms for ''intentional homicide'' for helping Phuntsok plan the immolation and - according to the court - spiriting him away after the incident, thereby denying him life-saving medical treatment.

Per Xinhua:

Tsering Tenzin and Tenchum of the Kirti Monastery in Aba Tibetan-Qiang Autonomous Prefecture were sentenced to 13 years and 10 years in prison, respectively, according to the verdict from the Maerkang County People's Court in Aba.

The two plotted, instigated and assisted in the self-immolation of fellow monk Rigzin Phuntsog, causing his death, the court found.

Phuntsog set himself on fire on March 16 and was hidden by a third monk for 11 hours. He died the next morning after treatments failed at a local hospital.

Three days before the self-immolation, Tenchum and Dorje, another monk who would be charged in another instance in Phuntsog's death, sent photos of Phuntsog and Tsering Tenzin to a monk living overseas via the Internet, proving that the self-immolation was premeditated.

Pro-government religious leaders put their shoulders to the wheel to support the propaganda effort, and evangelize for the primacy of national law over monastic rule. Xinhua continues:

Some living Buddhas and monks attended the trial.

"Monks can't kill. What they did was against the dharma and against the law," said Yangdron Jamaseng, director of the management committee of the Tsakhor Monastery. "Through the trial, I realized monks not only need to learn scriptures, but they also need to learn the law and obey the law."

In a further effort to discredit the monastery and its monks, the Chinese government told the UN that "some monks of the monastery also frequented places of entertainment, prostitution, alcohol and gambling, and spread pornographic CD-Roms."

The Chinese government has also inserted a ''Democratic Management Committee'' (DMC) answering to the government's Bureau of Religious Affairs (of the type headed by Yangdron Jamaseng in the passage quoted above) into Kirti, in order to assert government supremacy over the Tibetan Buddhist religious establishment, disrupt the relationship between the monastery and its exiled Rinpoche in Dharmsala, and control the once-influential monastery's links to about 30 satellite monasteries the region.

Permission from the DMC is also required for monks who wish to leave the monastery.

Monks inside Kirti try to communicate with Dharmsala by cell-phone; however, the leadership in Dharmsala only learned of the most recent immolations through the international news media.

The International Campaign for Tibet creditably alleged:

According to exile sources, high numbers of troops are still stationed in the Ngaba [in the Tibetan language; ''Aba'' in Mandarin] county town and Kirti monastery, with security cameras now installed on buildings on both sides of the main road and checkpoints on the main access roads. The Ngaba authorities have ordered the management of Kirti monastery not to allow any help for families of monks who have committed self-immolation, such as prayers for those who have died. Four permanent security police offices have been built in the monastery compound. Internet access has been virtually cut off completely.

AFP reporters who were able to get to Aba in October described a town under lockdown by police and soldiers armed with guns, clubs … and fire extinguishers:

Police, many carrying riot shields and armed with clubs and iron, lined the streets of the town, which has a population of around 20,000 mainly ethnic Tibetans who say their culture is being eroded by China's government.

Large groups of soldiers in camouflage carried automatic rifles, metal rods with spiked tips and fire extinguishers, while police buses, trucks and armoured personnel carriers blocked the streets.

in a recent statement, the Rinpoche of Kirti (living in exile in Dharmsala) told a Washington, DC audience:

Electronic surveillance apparatus such as listening devices and CCTV cameras in the monks' quarters and watchtowers are being built in all sides of the monastery. Furthermore, unscheduled searches are being carried out in monks' rooms at any time by smashing the windowpanes, walls and doors, and monks are randomly beaten, dogs let loose on the people and there are also cases of thieving by security personnel. Monks are threatened that the monastery would be destroyed if they did not excel in 'Patriotic Education' and 'Re-education' campaigns. In nutshell, the monks are driven to a state of utter fear and desperation.

Reportedly, the population of Kirti Monastery has shrunk from2,500 to about 1,000 monks. According to the International Campaign for Tibet, the Chinese government is offering cash awards to expelled Kirti monks who agree to disrobe and renounce their Buddhist vows.

Small wonder that the harvest of the campaign at Kirti has been misery, despair, and suicide.

The Rinpoche of Kirti summed up the toll in his statement in Washington:

[F]rom 16 March 2008 to 17 October 2011, 34 Tibetans have died in Ngaba region from extreme torture, execution, suicides and by setting themselves on fire and more than 619 have been detained (this does not include mass detention of 300 Kirti monks). Only 108 detainees have been put on trial. There have been over 20 writers, poets and intellectuals among the 619 who were detained.

Tibetan militants might secretly view the incidents at Kirti as a harbinger of a martyr-fueled anti-Chinese intifada across China's ethnic-Tibetan regions.

However, the Tibetan emigre movement's religious and political leadership has approached the immolation crisis with extreme circumspection.

The Dalai Lama expressed his sadness but, as reported by Phayul, went on to say:

Responding to questions on the spate of self-immolations in Tibet that has already seen eleven Tibetans set their bodies on fire since March this year, the Dalai Lama clarified that Dr Lobsang Sangay, the de facto prime minister of Tibet, was the right person to be asked these questions.

"I have completely handed over all my political responsibilities to the elected leadership. Kalon Tripa Lobsang Sangay is in Washington DC right now, so better ask him,'' the Dalai Lama said.

The Karmapa, the charismatic young leader-in-exile of the Karma Kagyu sect of Tibetan Buddhism who is often seen as the Dalai Lama's successor, at least in the role of spiritual ambassador to the West, issued a heartfelt statement deploring the self-immolations:

'Each report of self-immolation from Tibet has filled my heart with pain. Most of those who have died have been very young. They had a long future ahead of them, an opportunity to contribute in ways that they have now foregone…

In Buddhist teaching, life is precious. To achieve anything worthwhile, we need to preserve our lives. We Tibetans are few in number, so every Tibetan life is of value to the cause of Tibet. Although the situation is difficult, we need to live long and stay strong without losing sight of our long-term goals.

Lobsang Sangay and the Rinpoche of Kirti visited Washington to testify before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, a bipartisan caucus of the US House of Representatives that was the first US governmental organization to formally invite the Dalai Lama, in 1987.

They determinedly adhered to the Dalai Lama's Middle Way policy, calling for Tibetan autonomy (not independence) and dialogue. Their most concrete demand was for an end to the oppressive re-education campaigns, freedom for foreign journalists & diplomats to visit Aba, and a resumption of dialogue.

The Rinpoche of Kirti adopted an interesting rhetorical tactic in his statement before the Lantos Commission and in remarks at the International Campaign for Tibet: he went out of his way to lay the blame for the excesses in Aba at the feet of the Sichuan provincial government and the prefecture's and county's local leaders.

When asked why the suppression of Tibetan religious activity was so severe in Sichuan, he averred that Sichuan had more older, ultra-leftist relics in the administration, and it was the only place where statues of Mao Zedong had not been removed.

The Rinpoche went as far to float the idea that Sichuan is the force that seems to have control over the Tibetan Autonomous Region, not the central government.

In private conversation with people involved in the political and religious struggle of the Tibetan diaspora, however, it is clear that the general feeling is that the central government is intimately involved in the conception and execution of China's Tibet policy.

Hu Jintao earned his bones as Tibetan Autonomous Region Party Secretary in the 1990s (he won widespread recognition within the CCP for his aggressive suppression of rioting in Lhasa on the thirtieth anniversary of the March 10 uprising); Zhou Yongkang, who holds the security brief in the CCP Politburo, served as Party Secretary in Sichuan.

It would appear that the Rinpoche of Kirti is diplomatically declining to take the central government to task for the crackdown in Sichuan, in the hopes that the Beijing government will scapegoat the local administration to provide political cover for a pullback.

Perhaps the Chinese government will see fit to de-escalate the tensions in the Tibetan areas of the People's Republic of China.

A hopeful cynic might speculate that Hu is deliberately wielding the iron fist so that Xi Jinping can receive credit for deploying the velvet glove when he assumes the top leadership post next year.

However, given the extent and severity of the crackdown - and rumors like the one that the Chinese government will dispatch 20,000 officials to the Tibetan Autonomous Region to push religious education from the more important cities, towns, and monasteries into the villages - it appears more likely that the objective is to weaken and demoralize the Tibetan religious establishment as much as possible and then marginalize Tibetan Buddhism completely after the Dalai Lama passes.

A program like this is more likely to generate bitterness and resistance, instead of obedience, as Dr Dibyesh Anand, a Tibet scholar at the University of Westminster, told Asia Times Online:

Radicalization is a direct product of Beijing's refusal to give any hope to Tibetans that a future where the Dalai Lama will be back is possible. Radicalization in this region is also a social process where one act of self-immolation makes the next act possible and also probable especially because the Chinese government's response has been the more of the same. More repression, more campaigns to deny there is any 'Tibet problem', more denunciation of 'radical monks', more securitisation.

If the CCP continues along its current path, the legacy of Aba - the repression at Kirti and the tainted aftermath of the Wenchuan earthquake - will be more than anger at government dysfunction and arrogance.

Aba will be taken as a revelation of the true face of the CCP - a face it reveals only on its remote periphery and tries to hide from the world and its own citizens.