World Tibet Network News Thursday, May 28, 1998

DHARMSALA, India, 28 May (AP) -- Kunchok Tender spent 20 years in the Tibetan underground, distributing anti-China pamphlets and pasting posters on walls. Like most Tibetans, he was devoted to the Dalai Lama's campaign for greater freedom for Tibet purely by peaceful means.

No more.

"Inside Tibet, the people are ready to take up weapons," said Tender, a slightly built refugee who fled to India in April when he feared he might be arrested for his underground activities.

Since fleeing Tibet to lead his nation from exile, the Dalai Lama has been the sole voice and face of his people. His policy of compromise and negotiation won world support and the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize.

The Dalai Lama's forceful personality and stature as the preeminent incarnated Buddhist deity command a loyalty that keeps him in undisputed control of the Tibetan movement. But increasingly frustrated followers are becoming less timid about disagreeing with his politics.

"The situation in Tibet is getting worse day by day, hour by hour. We cannot wait another 40 years," said Tseten Norbu, president of the Tibetan Youth Congress. Recalling India's independence struggle led by Mohandas Gandhi, Norbu said, "We need a leader."

Ten years ago, the Dalai Lama renounced the claim to full independence and proposed self-rule for Tibet on internal affairs with Beijing control over foreign and defense matters. Muted criticism of his decision not to pursue outright independence has grown more vocal.

The Dalai Lama confesses he is uncertain how to deal with the growing radicalism in his movement. Uncompromising on nonviolence, he refuses to endorse proposals that could endanger lives.

He opposed a hunger strike that brought six Tibetans close to death in April after 49 days without food. When Indian police ended the strike, a 50-year-old former monk set himself ablaze in protest and later died.

An anguished Dalai Lama admits such actions win attention and that, in the eyes of many Tibetans, his moderate approach has failed.

"I am in a state of dilemma," he told The Associated Press.

The Dalai Lama refuses to endorse a detailed plan for Gandhi-like nonviolent resistance to Chinese authority in Tibet proposed by professor Samdhong Rinpoche, speaker of the Tibetan exile parliament.

Under Rinpoche's plan, ethnic Tibetans would quit jobs in the Chinese-dominated administration and boycott Chinese-run stores and restaurants. Students would refuse to study in the Chinese language and Tibetans would not do business with Chinese partners. Demonstrators would take to the streets, and decline to defend themselves against the inevitable Chinese reprisal.

"It is our moral duty to register our refusal to accept Chinese rule. Whether it would have results, I don't know," said Rinpoche, the No. 2 political figure after the Dalai Lama. "History will not forgive us if we remain quiet."

Tibet, the forbidding plateau sealed off by the Himalayas, was seized by the Chinese army in 1950, the year after the communist takeover. An abortive uprising in 1959 prompted the Dalai Lama to lead an exodus of more than 100,000 Tibetans. Resistance was virtually broken after a series of riots in the late 1980s prompted China to impose martial law.

But incidents of defiance continue. On May 1, Tibetan inmates of Drapchi prison near Lhasa raised the Tibetan flag, and were fired on by prison guards. Three days later, wardens fired on prisoners protesting the earlier incident, according to unconfirmed reports reaching the Dalai Lama's exile government in Dharmsala. The number of casualties was unknown.

Kunchok Tender, a former militia commander who spent 19 years in jail for fighting the Chinese in the late 1950s, wants to see a guerrilla force rise up in Tibet, killing Chinese one by one until his country is free.

Asked about the Dalai Lama's opposition to terrorism, Tender shrugged. "I accept that. Every Tibetan has his responsibility."