World Tibet Network News Tuesday, June 9, 1998

By Marc Fisher

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, June 7, 1998; Page G01

In America's celebrity culture, Tibet -- a tiny region of 3 million people, ruled by China for hundreds of years -- wields almost magical power.

Filmmakers have persuaded Hollywood executives in recent years to ignore focus groups and bankroll movies about Tibet. For the past two years, some of pop music's top names have donated their time and energy to the Tibetan Freedom Concert, which has taken place in San Francisco and New York. Now concert

organizers hope to drive their message home to decision-makers by bringing the benefit to RFK Stadium next weekend.

From Hollywood studios to rock clubs, from symphony halls to literary dens, Tibet is the cause of choice. Tibet, its Buddhist heritage and the territory's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, have won fawning treatment on the cover of celebrity-smitten Time magazine, TV coverage that other charitable causes yearn for, and a steady stream of big name supporters, including actor Richard Gere, composer John Cage and Chicago Bulls coach Phil Jackson.

The result is Tibet Chic. In the battle for popular attention and celebrity fund-raising, Tibet overshadows famine, refugee crises and shooting wars overseas, as well as poverty, disease and inequality at home.

So why Tibet? Why not Rwanda, where vastly more people are dying, or Bosnia, where repression comes in the form of bullets and bombs rather than expulsion and imprisonment, or the inner cities of the U.S., where some of the artists' fans actually live?

Why, for example, is Wyclef Jean, of the Fugees, donating his time to the concert? "I just think when you think of the Dalai Lama or Tibet, it just makes you peaceful," Jean says. "Peace of mind -- any form -- is important."

Why is veteran jazz man Herbie Hancock, who is also on the RFK lineup, devoting himself to Tibet? Because Hancock, like an increasing number of people who work in the entertainment business, has adopted Buddhist beliefs. "Those who are aware of the all-encompassing nature of creativity should encourage others to come to that realization," Hancock says.

Some artists involved in the Tibet campaign agree that the cause has won an unfairly large portion of celebrity energy. "The Tibet thing made me think, 'Can we look at our problems here?' " says Jill Cunniff, vocalist and bass player for alternative rock band Luscious Jackson. "We're looking now at supporting music teaching in our public schools."

Cunniff, like many of the musicians appearing at RFK, was recruited to the Tibetan cause by the Beastie Boys' Adam Yauch, a co-founder of the Milarepa Fund, the San Francisco-based charity that collects receipts from the Tibet concert. "I'm not the foremost authority on Tibet," Cunniff says. "I just became

interested because of Adam. Most of these artists would not have gathered around Tibet if it weren't for Adam."

Although the RFK concerts sold out immediately, no one pretends the audience is motivated by concern for a remote and mysterious sliver of Asia. The lack of popular resonance does not deter rock stars, who cite three main reasons for playing the RFK benefit: Adam asked me to, Tibet is spiritual and any

human-rights abuses deserve attention.

"For me, it's about making a psychic connection to all the spiritual juice that comes out of that part of the world," says Ed Kowalczyk, frontman for the band Live. Kowalczyk follows a guru named Adi Da who lives on an island in Fiji and espouses a "Crazy Wisdom" involving drug and sex sprees. "Lots of

human-rights tragedies deserve concerts, but there's something extra with Tibet. It's a spiritual culture, a country rooted in humility and compassion. And among artists, there's a lot of Buddhists, people who want an alternative to basic Christianity, which doesn't offer much."

The image of Tibetans as a gentle and wise people crushed by atheistic, militarist China -- whose troops suppressed an uprising there in 1959 after invading the country in 1950 -- seems to motivate politically naive rockers to action, even if they remain largely ignorant of Tibet's past.

The roots of the dispute between China and Tibet trace back 700 years. China has ruled Tibet intermittently since the late 17th century. From 1912 to 1951, Tibet functioned as a de facto independent nation. The communist Chinese ended that period of relative amity in 1950; nine years later, the Chinese brutally

put down an armed Tibetan uprising. The Dalai Lama and Tibet's former government have been in exile ever since.

"Tibet and Shangri-La have a long history of attracting people trying to reach the fabled city of Lhasa," says Melvyn Goldstein, director of the Center for Research on Tibet at Case Western Reserve University. "There's a Western view of Tibet as this idyllic place, which it never was. People in the glitterati community have taken up Western Buddhism from Allen Ginsberg and Philip Glass and other artists. They're attracted to this idea that there's a better place than what we see as our venal communities."

Pro-Tibet activists readily concede that their movement has won a powerful push from celebrity attention. Erin Potts, co-founder of the Milarepa Fund, says artists are simply quicker to see the value of a good cause.

"Art reflects life," she says, "and the artists' genius is they pick up on cultural trends before everyone else does." Potts, 26, became involved through one of her high school teachers in Connecticut, a man who had lived at a Tibetan refugee camp. His stories about that experience were so compelling that Potts,

then 17, persuaded the teacher to take a group of students to Nepal on a field trip.

"It just blew my mind," she says now. "It's very contagious, this passion for Tibet, this idea that people are suffering and we should try to stop that suffering, regardless of spiritual leanings."

Yet Potts knows it is that spiritual connection that lures many celebrities to Buddhist ideas. As the Fugees' Wyclef Jean says: "The world of music is insanity. Dealing with all this success with meditation is very helpful."

From Buddhist meditation to the Tibetan cause is apparently a short jump.

"That's a very human thing to do, to feel a little closer to a cause because it's part of you," says Hancock, who practices a Japanese form of Buddhism.

But the net effect, some say, is to steal attention from more controversial causes and from problems that desperately need prominent advocates.

"The cause of Tibet is worthy, but the effect is to follow in the tradition of pop politicking that focuses on issues far away from home," says Marc Andersen, organizer of Positive Force DC, a Washington group that recruits punk and rock bands to stage benefits for the homeless and other local causes.

Andersen believes musicians and other artists choose Tibet as their issue because it's "easier to take stands on issues that are not in your front yard. A lot of these folks are quite wealthy now, and it impinges on your own lifestyle if you're challenging the increasing concentration of the entertainment

industry or the systematic destruction of the safety net for the poor," he says.

Both punk and rap music started with frequent incantations of the need to reshape society, to create a more just world. But as the artists have grown rich, Andersen says, that rhetoric has diminished. "These musicians are now representatives of large multinational corporations," he argues, "an insidious, but very real mechanism that co-opts people. I wish there were a D.C. Freedom Concert, but the folks engaged in this concert just don't want to face those questions."

Similarly, an official at a nonprofit organization dedicated to building support for African causes says Tibet chic has stolen attention from the tragedy in Rwanda and human-rights issues in Nigeria. "Hollywood has this movement to alternative religions," says the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear that his apparent jealousy would hurt his cause. "The religious aspect of the Tibet question gives people a comfort level, so artists embrace it without digging too deeply into the issues."

The Washington concert is a benefit for the Milarepa Fund, a San Francisco-based group that has raised $1.2 million to promote the liberation of Tibet and the philosophy of nonviolence. Milarepa spends the money on education (a toll-free hot line, a Web site, and school presentations), grass-roots campaigns such as last year's boycott of Holiday Inn (because it had embarked on a partnership with the Chinese government to build a hotel in Tibet), and grants to groups

working for Tibet or on nonviolence or other "compassion issues," Potts says.

The rhetoric surrounding the concert is stark: Tibet must be liberated from the Chinese yoke. And many of the musicians believe their performances will somehow contribute to China's withdrawal from Tibet. "Absolutely it will happen," Kowalczyk says. "The concerts can definitely change it. People have to

get [ticked] off."

But what neither concert organizers nor the artists who will perform at RFK tell their audience is that neither Tibet's government in exile nor the Dalai Lama supports the Milarepa Fund's emphasis on getting China out of Tibet.

"Protest and benefits and symbolic gestures are not helping to solve the Tibet problem," says Goldstein, the Tibet scholar. "Quiet diplomacy is where the action is. These other things are good only for people venting their emotions." If the money raised by the Freedom Concerts has accomplished anything, he says, it has been to push the Chinese government into a more hard-line policy toward Tibet.

Asked for comment on next week's concert, China's Foreign Ministry offered this statement: "Since the mid-13th century, Tibet has been Chinese territory. Tibet is an inalienable part of China. This is a fact recognized by the international community, including the United States. . . . We are firmly opposed to activities, in whatever name or under whatever pretext, which support the Dalai Lama's political maneuvers to split Tibet from China."

While the Dalai Lama appreciates the benefit concerts and other pro-Tibet events, "The government in exile does not support any activities that paint a picture of being against China," says Glen Kelley, assistant to the Dalai Lama's representative for the Americas. "There's certainly a very strong intention not in any way to antagonize China."

Kelley says Tibet's exiled leaders strongly oppose the Milarepa Fund's campaign to boycott Chinese goods. "The Milarepa Fund has been requested to make it clear that the problems are with how China treats its citizens," Kelley says. "Our emphasis is on dialogue directly with the Chinese, to make genuine compromise, not to make loud noises and scream and shout."

But of course making loud noises is what the Tibetan Freedom Concert is all about, and organizer Potts does not apologize for that.

"The Tibetan government has very different tactics," she says. "The Dalai Lama has his middle-path approach. We're a little harsher in our tone, a little more punk-rock."

Neither Potts nor anyone else involved in the concert is daunted by the Clinton administration's support of the Chinese position or by longstanding U.S. policy that Tibet is part of China or even by the Dalai Lama's endorsement of Clinton's policy of engaging China.

"We can't free Tibet," Potts says. "But we can help prepare the way for that to happen."

Toward that end, Tibetan nuns and monks, as well as representatives of the Tibetan government in exile, will attend the RFK concert, making themselves available to interested fans. "I wonder what they'll think of the mosh pit, the green hair, the piercings," Potts says. "On the other hand, the audience can't understand that somebody would choose not to drink or have sex. It takes some explaining."