A Tibetan Exile's Tale
Phuntsok arrived in this polluted, traffic-crammed city six days ago, dusty and weary after a 15-day journey from Tibet, a small duffle and a handful of clothes his only possessions. He was happy to have made it out, he says. Or rather he was happy until he phoned home to Lhasa to hear the news: Tibet was on fire and the same anger and frustration that had pushed Phuntsok to leave his homeland at the age of just 17 was now being turned against Chinese police and the shops and houses of recent Chinese migrants by his fellow Tibetans. "I left too early," he says. "I wish I could be there with the protesters. I don't care if I die. I actually would like the opportunity to die alongside my relatives and friends." In that first phone call home to his parents, he says, he learned that his 19-year-old cousin had joined the demonstrators and been shot dead by Chinese police. "I should have been there," says Phuntsok calmly.
The young man had been thinking about fleeing Tibet for years. "Education in Tibet is a waste of money," he says. "They don't teach us anything about Tibetan history, just Chinese. And then when we finish school there are no opportunities for Tibetans. All the jobs go to Chinese people." The protests, his family and friends in Lhasa told him by phone, began when a group of monks started marching to mark the 49th anniversary of an uprising against Beijing's rule. When Chinese security forces began beating and shooting the monks "the students joined in and stood up for the monks and all this frustration erupted."
Phuntsok says he told only one or two people of his plans before he left Lhasa in late February, sneaking out of the city late at night. It was school vacation time and he set off for Nepal. As he neared the border, Chinese police in a Tibetan town called Nyalam stopped him and interrogated him for about half an hour, he says. He told them he was visiting relatives. They searched his bag but found only clothes and let him go. He assumes they thought he would be carrying more if he was planning on leaving Tibet for good. At the border, local Nepalese showed him a route many Tibetans use to bypass the official border post. "All the way I have not worried about dying," says Phuntsok. "I was thinking, 'well, come what may' and 'if I cross I will get an audience with the Dalai Lama.'"
He is lucky to have made it this far. At a Tibetan center in Kathmandu where he is staying, the number of people arriving from Tibet has plunged over the past year. Records at the center, which processes refugees and then sends them on to a new life in India, show that up until 2006, some 400 to 500 people a month were making it out of Tibet and into Nepal during the peak winter season, when many Tibetans flee because evading Chinese detection is easier. But since early 2007 the monthly figure during winter has fallen by half. In January, 221 Tibetan refugees arrived at the center. In February just 64 did. "I think it is because of the Olympics coming," says a registration and administration officer at the center. "China has restricted the movement of Tibetans and we do not expect many people until the Olympics are finished. China doesn't want to face protests — and have new stories about what is happening inside Tibet known."
But some, like Phuntsok, get through. "I'm very excited that I might see His Holiness the Dalai Lama when I get to India," says Phuntsok. "I'm sure tears will roll down my cheeks and I will pray and not be able to say any words." Asked what he would he tell the Dalai Lama about life in Tibet now, he says: "That I have wasted so many years in Tibet and that there is no right to learn about our own culture there and no opportunities to work. That we need freedom and need for His Holiness to live in Tibet with all the Tibetans." How will that ever happen? "If the Chinese withdraw their violent forces," says Phuntsok, "then this will be the answer." An answer, maybe, but hardly a plan.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1722912,00.html
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