Yesterday I went to a conference on the topic "Is the Dalai Lama bad for the West?" implying that Western countries are starting to see the Tibetan issue as a problem to their economic relationships with China.
This conference was held at the University of Westminster (where I study) and the speakers were Dr. Dibyesh Anand, Dr. Martin Mills, Jonathan Mirsky, Dr. Tsering Topgyal and one more speaker who I am terribly sorry but I can't remember the name.
It was an extremely interesting lecture where I got a better understanding of the Tibetan issue and learned the fact that some Western countries avoid any kind of relations with the Dalai Lama because it could anger the Chinese government. Even more nowadays when China is one of the greatest economies of the world. This just shows that Western countries are scared of China and deal with it as if it is a completely different world. An example of this was, as Jonathan mentioned, Boris Johnson and David Cameron's trip to China where they immensely praised the Chinese and the two countries relation and didn't make any mention about the human rights issue neither in Tibet or the rest of China. "They are the biggest clowns of today" said Jonathan.
Dr. Mills decided to show to the audience a more economic point of view. He mentioned that the value of British exports to China is only half (or even a third) of what the UK exports to the USA or the EU. This means that although China has an impact on British and the World's economy we shouldn't be scared of talking about issues of human rights because we might lose an economic partner. Which by the way would never happen because we need China as much as China needs us.
Dr. Dibyesh on the other hand decided to focus on the view of Tibetan people about this subject and explained that over their long history of struggle against the atrocities of the Chinese government we have seen that some Western countries (and India) use the Tibetan issue to pressure the government but then drop their support for Tibetans when it's no longer useful for them. Therefore Tibetan people are starting to understand that the West will never truly help them because economic interests will always be more important.
On Jonathan's final remarks he stated that this situation tell us once again that politicians today are an elite who doesn't care about what the people they should be representing think. "The people should fight and regain control over politics" Jonathan said. "And today all of you before going to sleep you should write a letter to your MPs. Because if we flood them with letters about this or any particular issue they might listen and do something. You are not powerless because words are a very powerful weapon".
This conference really sparkled my interest for Tibet and to fight for what I think it's right using my words (or actions if I can). During this year I will be part of a research project led by Dr. Dibyesh himself about stateless nations which is about specific ethnic groups who feel themselves as a unique nation, different from the state they live in and thus should have one of their own.
Also I will try to post a video of the conference when it is uploaded to youtube.
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