Om Mane Padme Hum: Tibet and the Final Solution
By Denis McCormack
Volume 3, Number 4 (Summer 1993)
Through the years, generations of scholarly orientalists have variously translated and interpreted the well-known mantra, om mane padme hum. Commonly associated with Tibet, in short it means "the jewel in the lotus." In extenso, it means "upon physical release from this world, may your spirit join the cosmos in like manner to an individual dew drop rolling from the cradle of a lotus leaf into the universality of the pond." World events would suggest that most peoples, including the Tibetans, prefer the company of their own kind prior to the post-mortem pond.
Over forty years of worldwide handwringing by all manner of governments, organizations and high-profile individuals has sought Tibet's salvation in the face of the Han Chinese juggernaut. As I write, news bulletins carry reports of the latest unrest in Lhasha. Mass immigration has now created a Tibet of over seven million Chinese and six million Tibetans. Roughly the same demographic ratio applies in Xin Jiang province (the name of which, ironically, means 'new border' in Chinese) against the local Turkic Central Asian people to the northwest of Tibet. There, the mass movements of Chinese into the region have taken place for many of the same reasons, and at about the same time.
In 1989, the dalai lama of Tibet was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In his acceptance speech, he said:
"The issue of most urgent concern at this time is the massive influx of Chinese settlers into Tibet... this development, which threatens the very survival of the Tibetan nation, its culture and spiritual heritage, can still be stopped and reversed. But this must be done now before it is too late."
These sentiments were echoed by actor Richard Gere who politicized his portion of the recent Academy Award presentations with his thoughts on Tibet. He subsequently expanded on them in this way:
"Now Beijing is facilitating a huge Chinese population influx into the area. Tibetans call it the "final solution". ... If there is no stop to the population transfer of Chinese, the destruction of Tibet and its ancient civilization will be complete."
Gere went on to castigate U.S. administrations of the last forty years for their complicity in Tibet's demise. He has testified on Tibet before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. It is a pity he cannot also recognize the same immigration dynamic in the context of the United States, where the firmament is clearly lacking star performers who are willing to speak out on behalf of its culture.
On May 13th of this year, the dalai lama was in London seeking diplomatic support from British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd for a "one country-two systems" Hong Kong-style of government, as he now concedes that full independence is no longer a realistic prospect. He sees the "two systems" approach as an avenue toward respect for Tibet's cultural, geographic, linguistic and racial uniqueness. The Foreign Secretary has agreed to take an assertive line with Beijing over such issues as human rights and the mass movement of Chinese into Tibet. But, few observers will be holding their breath in the hope of any change in Chinese policy. Many believe that irreversible demographic and cultural damage has already been done.
Australia's educated and political elite have long supported the dalai lama's cause. It is curious, therefore, that this same respectably veneered class is the mainstay of the push for Australia to be "integrated" with Asia. Mass immigration and its Trojan horse, "multiculturalism," are the openly preferred policy tools toward this outcome. It is beyond dispute that the "Asianization" of their country is highly unpopular with the vast majority of Australians.
Given that the irreversible cultural shifts being brought about by sustained mass immigration are no more sanctioned by the majority of Australians, Canadians, or Americans than they are by the Tibetans, what does this tell us about the legitimacy of the two-party, representational, democratic political systems we all rely on? If who we are, and what we look like, along with our language and cultural biases can be so vulnerable to radical change, are these not the most serious and urgent grounds for reshaping the machinery of government? It matters little whether mass immigration policy is forced at the point of a bayonet from without, or through gradualist, undemocratic, long-term bipartisanship from within - both paths lead eventually to the "pond."
A particularly blatant Australian example of suppressive bipartisanship came to light recently. Ex-Prime Minister Hawke has been a life-long, self-confessed "high-immigration" man. During the sixties and seventies he rose to power through his presidency of the Australia Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), the peak representative body of organized labor. By the late eighties, his personal and political esteem had sunk so low in the eyes of the public that he was deservedly jettisoned from the premiership of his own party.
Hawke spoke at a recent government-funded immigration/multicultural talkfest titled "The Politics of Immigration". He told the conference that he could not deny the contention that the major parties had reached an implicit pact to keep immigration off the political agenda. He said that, for most of the post-war period, the parties had maintained bipartisan support for immigration in the face of public opposition. He also stated that "There are no other issues on which the major political parties have been prepared to act in this way, with the common cement of ACTU support, to advance the national interest ahead of where they believed the electorate to be."
Throughout history, mass immigration has been the ultimate weapon of political, ethnic, racial and cultural destruction. It remains so today. We cannot undo history, but we can learn from it. What motivates modern "democratic" governments to feign ignorance of these lessons, so clearly documented from ancient times down to the present day?
In 1970, another Nobel laureate, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, said in his acceptance speech:
"The disappearance of nations would impoverish us no less than if all peoples were made alike, with one character, one face. Nations are the wealth of mankind, they are its generalized personalities the smallest of them has its own particular colors and embodies a particular facet of God's design."
Amazingly, neither Solzhenitsyn nor the dalai lama has ever been called a "racist pig" by the one-world/international brotherhood brigade. Who would have guessed the dalai lama to be an immigration reformer? Unfettered by a big business growth lobby, a well-funded minority multicultural lobby, or a gaggle of ecumenical do-gooders, he tells it like it is and lays claim to large acreage on the world's highest moral ground. However, in his case, being morally right does not ensure the ascendancy of his ideas against the overwhelming arithmetic of immigration. Regardless of his capacity to solve it, at least the dalai lama knows what Tibet's major problem is: it isn't the economy, stupid - it's immigration!
Denis McCormack of North Fitzroy, Victoria, is the Australia correspondent for The Social Contract. Long interested in the situation in Tibet, Mr. McCormack speaks Chinese and taught in rural China.
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