S.C. Tibetan speaker wants to discuss peace
By CAROLYN CLICKcclick@thestate.com
When the spiritual leader of the Charleston Tibetan Society and the S.C. Dharma Group comes to USC tonight, he wants to sit down in a peaceful atmosphere to talk about ways China and Tibet can restore their severed relationship.
For many years, “China and Tibet lived together,” Geshe Dakpa Topgyal said Tuesday in a telephone interview. “We treated China as our uncle, and they treated us as a nephew.”
Now, he said, China wants to openly destroy that nephew, wiping out the cultural and religious traditions Tibetans have cherished for centuries.
With reports of heightened clashes between China and Tibet making front-page news, emotions have heated up on college campuses between pro-Chinese and pro-Tibetan protesters.
Passions run high, as witnessed in a heated exchange at 423 University two weeks ago. Chinese student Grace Wang tried to mediate a campus protest between 400 pro-Chinese demonstrators and 12 protesters making the case for Tibetan independence.
Within hours, she was receiving Internet death threats, and her parents were forced into hiding after protesters painted death threats outside their apartment in the Chinese city of Qingdao.
USC has worked to quell any possible outbursts, said Michael Scardaville, a history professor and adviser to the campus chapter of Amnesty International, which is sponsoring the discussion.
Pro-China students will be able to present their ideas and literature in the lobby of Gambrell Hall, where the talk will take place, he said.
“What we are certainly trying to do is create a safe environment for people to express their points of view,” said Scardaville, who plans to meet with the president of the Chinese student association before the talk.
Topgyal is intimately familiar with Chinese repression toward Tibet, the high plateau region within the People’s Republic of China.
Tibet declared itself independent from China in the early 1900s but was forced to accept China’s sovereignty after a 1949 military invasion. The Dalai Lama is the head of the Tibet government in exile.
After the military crackdown was completed in 1959, Topgyal’s family lived quietly until 1968, when the Chinese finally built navigable roads to his ancestral home. The family was forced to flee when he was 6, traveling across the Himalayas in an eight-day trek to reach Nepal in neighboring India.
“No horse, no yak, no nothing,” he said.
Topgyal entered the Drepung Loseling Monastic University in India, the famous Tibetan monastery that the communists had shuttered in Lhasa, killing and imprisoning many of the monks. It was re-opened in exile in India.
He later spent 10 years teaching in Europe before coming to America. Topgyal has been in Charleston since 1995.
The message he plans to bring tonight comes “from the Dalai Lama’s heart,” he said. “I’m planning to speak about what the Dalai Lama’s heart is speaking to the world: peace, nonviolence, tolerance, understanding and working for the mutual benefit of China and Tibet.
“I try to explain in a common and peaceful means,” he said. “Bring the facts on the table and see through a different angle.
“If China is looking for economic prosperity, then, again, they need to change by improving the quality of human rights, freedom of religion, freedom of speech.”
Reach Click at (803) 771-8386.
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