[MIT CSSA Outreach] Information about Tibet and Lobsang Sangay

[Lu Gao]

Dear Friends,

Today there is a talk at 6PM called "Tibet: Human Rights & Conflict", organized
by the MIT chapter of Amnesty International, the same people who got us Rebiya
Kadeer last year.

http://events.mit.edu/event.html?id=9008478&date=2008/5/8

Many of you may be planning to attend. Drawing from the experience last year,
here are a few things to keep in mind before you go:

- Please educate yourself well if you intend to ask questions, so as to be
composed, logical, and hopefully enlightening. Writing down your question
beforehand may help.

- We may be joined by a group of Lyndon LaRouche supporters who may make points
we agree with. However, be aware that they are a political cult with a nutty
and questionable leader. We aren't associated with them nor should we appear to
be.

Below we provide you some resources to learn about the speaker and the issues.

The speaker is Lobsang Sangay, and has two roles: a Harvard academic as well as
pro-independence activist. He is a second-generation Indian-born Tibetan
educated in the Indian school system. His parents are from Lithang in western
Sichuan, the main site of the 1959 Khampa rebellion. His uncle fought with the
CIA according to himself and went missing in action. As far as can be inferred,
he has never set foot in Tibet or China, and has little knowledge about what is
going on there except what the exile government says and possibly some personal
communication. Keep this background in mind.

As an academic at Harvard Law School, he wrote his dissertation on the exile
government and its political reforms, which is his field of expertise. Let's
give him credit for winning some awards there. In recent years he organized
some panel talks at Harvard with Chinese scholars and Tibetologists there. This
is one of the papers he published on the subject in case you are interested:
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_democracy/v014/14.3sangay.html

As an activist, he is hardline and is heavily involved in the Tibetan Youth
Congress rising to "national executive member". He talks to the media
extensively and is well known among overseas Tibetans. He frequently loses his
mind and credibility and there are many careless and glaring comments from him,
for example, a recent interview:
http://www.ethnicnewz.org/en/harvards-lobsang-sangay-chinese-crackdown-tibet

Some other "tough talk" he has made:

"These unemployed youths, with their strong sentiments of nationalism, could
resort to violence, if they gain access to weapons. Neighboring countries,
becoming increasingly nervous about China's 15 percent increase in its defense
budget every year for its 3 million-man army, may be willing to send a cache of
arms into Tibet, as the CIA did in the late 1950's and '60s."

"The Dalai Lama has always advocated non-violence but if the Chinese government
doesn't reciprocate, Tibetans will have to rely on traditional means."

Today, he is to speak as an activist, yet he will wear a suit and be introduced
as an academic along with all the crendentials that come with it. So it is even
more important to be prepared. His talk may be like this recent one he gave
(about the first 15 min.):
http://forum.wgbh.org/wgbh/forum.php?lecture_id=4020

The gist of it is to blame the Chinese government for everything and the tactic
is to make a string of misleading and plausible-sounding remarks. There are
many resources to counter this. Some are listed below:

An extensive rebuttal of the pro-independence tropes by an Indian magazine:
http://www.hindu.com/fline/fl1718/17180040.htm

An analysis of the claim of the "1.2 million dead" claim with population numbers
http://www.case.edu/affil/tibet/booksAndPapers/tibetan.population.in.china.pdf

Hopefully these will arm you with the knowledge to be confident in
challenging absurd statements you will hear today.


Truly,
CSSA