The Torch Relay
I sit cross-legged on a patch of sunburnt Canberra grass, listening to the guttural chants of orange robed monks.
Two hundred metres away and out of sight, Ian Thorpe, the last torchbearer, has brought the Olympic flame to a cauldron.
On the grass a group of Tibetan exiles harmonise with the monks. Most of the Tibetans here belong to a small community based in Dee Why, Sydney. Half of these people have family imprisoned in Tibet. None are currently able to communicate with those in Tibet. The chants are prayers, but their abstract song sounds to me like a seance.
Hordes of young Chinese students begin to hover on the outskirts of the group of Tibetans. Cloaked in the five-starred red flags of the People’s Republic of China, these students stare intently at the Tibetan monks.
In the late Sixties the American sociologist Erving Goffman described a ‘hate stare’ that involved a sustained gaze with unbroken eye contact. Goffman wrote that this deliberate violation of the codes of looking ultimately dehumanized the subject of the stare. Goffman understood that sometimes a stare can be more dangerous than sticks or stones.
I sit opposite Tenpa Dugdak, a young Tibetan exile and activist who wears a ‘Free Tibet’ t-shirt and a soft smile.
He is poking me gently but repeatedly on the arm
“Initially you will try not to react,” he says.
He keeps poking me.
“After one hour you may be fine, but if I do this 24/7 you will get upset.
“You are going to say something or hit me.
“That’s what they are doing to the Tibetans. Doing it all the time.
“When you have all these people who don’t like what you drink, who don’t like your religion, who think you are barbaric, I mean these Tibetans will respond.”
I am standing at a steel barrier watching an open truck drive slowly past me. Disco music booms from the truck and women in lycra dance, waving paper cut-outs of laptops. The side of the road is lined with red flags and banners that read ‘One China’. The two Tibetan supporters beside me repeatedly scream ’shame’ as the Olympic sponsor’s float passes. The Chinese supporters answer with ecstatic outbursts. Soon a torchbearer holding aloft the Olympic flame follows the disco music at a slow jog.
The parade has passed in a matter of minutes. The two Tibetan supporters share a look of disbelief. Their small Tibetan flag is but a yellow speck in a sea of red and their screams of ‘Free Tibet’ are barely audible to each other.
“At least we came here, at least we did something,” I hear one of them say.
“People like myself were born because people took action,” says Dugdak.
Dugdak’s father spent many years imprisoned in Tibet. Dugdak says that if people in the West had not taken action, if people had not protested, the Chinese wouldn’t have felt pressured to release his father. Dugdak says that the estimated 15 000 Chinese supporters in Canberra during the torch relay did not shroud the issue of Tibet.
“For me, the Canberra protest went beautifully,” he says.
“It was great, it was awesome, especially having that number. I wish they had more Chinese in Canberra to really let people know that this is how it is in Tibet.
“If the Chinese say this is tea, this is not coffee, you have to say yes. You can’t question it. That is what they want.”
Spit speckles my face as a Chinese student screams at me.
“Look at history,” he says.
“Don’t look at the media. They tell lies.”
I am walking with a large group of Tibetans through a gauntlet of Chinese supporters. We are trying to reach Stage 88, the final point of the Olympic torch relay. We are following the same path that Ian Thorpe would soon run along.
The roar of the Chinese is deafening. We walk up the hill. There are no police in sight.
“Why don’t you torch yourself. Why don’t you torch yourself,” is shouted at us.
Chinese flag poles tear at Tibetan flags. Stones are thrown. We reach the top of the hill and stop. I look up at the sky. A television helicopter hovers above filming what I imagine to be a small blue and yellow island of Tibetan flags in a violent red sea. We are surrounded.
“After the protests a lot of Tibetans would go to Chinatown for lunch,” Dugdak says, remembering the earlier protests at the Chinese consulate in Sydney.
“That’s a protest but these are the Chinese people,” he says.
“We are against the policy not the Chinese people.
“Now there are some Tibetans that say that after seeing the Chinese community in Canberra, there is a strong resentment towards the Chinese people.
“For me as a Tibetan, that is a really unfortunate outcome of the Canberra torch relay.
“The hate directed towards the Tibetan was so strong.
“At the end of the day Tibetans are as human as anyone else. If every Tibetan was the Dalai Lama then I guess you can say anything against him and the Dalai Lama would simply laugh, but not every Tibetan is the Dalai Lama.”
The police soon arrive and escort us away from the throng of Chinese. We cannot see the cauldron being lit. Instead we stand further down the road and press up against the metal barrier. The Tibet supporters have one more opportunity for their voice to be heard as the marathon passes by one final time. When the flame is out of sight the Tibetans sit on the grass beside the road and the monks begin to pray.
“It will get worse after the Olympics,” says Dugdak.
“The Chinese are creating these new Tibetans, the angry Tibetans, so they have a reason to crush them down. So they can tell the rest of the world these Tibetans are terrorists.
“What we have seen on the television is the perfect example of how they are producing these new form of Tibetans. These are the product of the Chinese Communist government. They are the Tibetans who have never heard a single message of the Dalai Lama, who have never seen his holiness and they are the Tibetans who grew up under Communism.
“Tibetans are not born peaceful and non-violent, and in the Middle East, suicide bombers are not born violent. It is the environment of the world that is producing them.
“Tibetans are radical in terms of peace and non violence,” he says, “and for me as a Tibetan the saddest part in the whole Tibetan struggle is losing that peace and non-violence.
After the prayers a Tibetan starts to sing the Australian anthem and soon others join in. The Inji, or ‘Western’, friends of the Tibetans mutter and grimace at each other. Singing the Australian anthem is too nationalistic an act for the Australians here. They don’t seem to recognise that what the Tibetans are struggling so desperately for is the idea of a ‘nation’.