CYBER MATTERS
A public-relations disaster for Tibet?
By Clarissa Oon
AS THE heavily guarded Olympic torch makes its journey across Asia after being dogged by Free Tibet protests in the West, an online war of words rages on.
The result is a global debate over China's treatment of Tibetans that is increasingly polarised between liberal Tibet sympathisers on the one hand and ordinary Chinese riled by what they see as the demonisation of China on the other.
Some Singaporeans are also weighing in, partly in response to remarks by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, who said at an international forum here last week that no government can be seen to be giving ground to protesters.
Disruptions to the Beijing Olympics torch relay, seen by young Chinese as 'displays of contempt for China', will 'have consequences well beyond the Olympic Games', said Mr Lee.
The PM's remarks sparked off another debate among Singaporean bloggers over the principle of civil disobedience and whether Singapore should be defending China.
Several bloggers argued that the right to peaceful public protest is a guarantee of a democratic society and something that Singapore itself should loosen up on.
One of them, Mr Alex Au, offered a critical take on the PM's words as 'calling on the world to kowtow to China'.
'No passionate believer in freedom is going to self-censor. No democratic government is going to stop people from protesting,' wrote Mr Au, whose Yawning Bread blog discusses human rights issues regularly.
He added that the Chinese would never know the seriousness of Western opinion on Tibet if not for the torch protests, triggered by last month's riots there and the economic marginalisation and other injustices Tibetans say they face in China.
In response to his post, some netizens stoutly defended Chinese rule over Tibet, saying that Tibet had been part of China at various points throughout history and that Beijing had succeeded overall in improving the living standards of Tibetans.
Claims of oppression have been wildly exaggerated by those who want to separate from China, they added.
One anonymous netizen said he was no supporter of China but slammed the tactics used by pro-Tibet activists as 'hooliganism'.
'Do you support a protester physically threatening a young woman in a wheelchair, because she is bearing the Olympic torch?' he questioned.
The ugly scene had happened during the Paris leg of the torch relay last week. A male Tibetan protester tried to wrestle the torch from the Chinese paralympian, before being bundled off by the police.
Complexities of the Tibet issue aside, Singapore is too small to be taking sides in other countries' conflicts, wrote veteran journalist Seah Chiang Nee on his Little Speck blog.
Noting that Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew had previously expressed comments sympathetic to China over issues like Taiwan, Mr Seah felt the result is that 'some countries (and some of our own citizens) may see us as China's little puppy with an unwritten global role as damage controller of its faults'.
'Which, of course, we are not,' he noted.
Still, Singapore's remarks will be seen by some as an attempt at diplomatic point-scoring with China at a time when it feels internationally besieged, even though from the Singapore Government's point of view, there are good reasons for the remarks.
Ironically, while the Chinese are now calling for a boycott of French goods because of the latter's support for Tibet, France was eager to show itself as a good friend to Beijing at the height of the Sars crisis in 2003. Top French leaders were then among the very few foreign dignitaries to visit China, despite the threat of the pandemic and Beijing initially covering up the outbreak.
On one level, the PM's comments do not help our image in the West. As one anonymous netizen quipped on Yawning Bread, it reinforces 'the belief among uneducated Westerners that Singapore is just some part of China'.
The other question to ask, though, is whether the torch protests have helped the Tibetan cause itself, even as they have succeeded in giving it unprecedented publicity.
My view is that a virulent nationalistic backlash in China as a result can only make negotiations for greater autonomy for Tibet even more difficult - if not impossible - than before.
To write off millions of Chinese as 'hypersensitive' or uniformly influenced 'by a steady diet of nationalist propaganda', as Mr Au and others in the West have done, is a gross oversimplification.
Many Chinese do criticise the government on other issues and Chinese bloggers can be as outspoken and incisive as those in the West.
At heart, the torch-relay scuffles between pro-Tibet demonstrators and Chinese supporters - mirrored in heated and even foul-mouthed exchanges in the blogosphere - reflect cultural divides and blind spots on all sides.
The Tibetans want the freedom to worship the exiled Dalai Lama, their spiritual leader. Ordinary Chinese, however, are mostly atheistic and see the economic improvements China has brought to Tibet.
Liberals in the West and elsewhere see confrontation as necessary to bring about improvements in human rights but, to the Chinese, any disruption of the Beijing Olympics is a national slight because the long-awaited hosting of the Games is a source of collective pride - a point PM Lee also noted.
In an interesting post on his EastSouthWestNorth blog, Hong Kong translator and China watcher Roland Soong notes how the female Chinese paralympian Jin Jing has become a heroine among the Chinese for 'defending' the torch from her wheelchair against protesters.
Other China watchers have warned that more moderate Chinese voices on Tibet are being crowded out by the turn of events and the growing number of hardliners.
'There is a public-relations disaster, but the question is for whom?' writes Mr Soong.
If the Dalai Lama and Chinese leaders do not quell extremism on both sides, the greater tragedy could well be Tibet's, as it will have to face an even more intransigent China long after the Olympic flame has died.
clare@sph.com.sg
(Thanks to ST 16 Apr 08)
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