ABSTRACT
During the late 1990s, the opportunities that were available to Tibetans within Tibet by which they could protest against Chinese rule were limited. While the violent protest by Khampa guerrillas from the 1950s to 1970s did not free the Tibetans from Chinese occupation, crucially it ensured that the Dalai Lama was able to escape into exile. The prospects of such a campaign being launched in Tibet now are extremely doubtful. The Tibetan population is divided between Chinese provinces, the Tibetan Autonomous Region and exile, which would make building a united resistance army very difficult, as would China’s continued iron grip on Tibet. Since the late 1980s, monks and nuns inside Tibet have led non-violent protest against China; this too has achieved little, other than emphasising the Tibetan occupation of the moral high ground.2 The Dalai Lama continues to insist that non-violence is the only way forward, and suggests that the methods of Mahatma Gandhi should be taken as an example by Tibetans. In 1998, a radical Tibetan non-governmental organisation, the Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC), launched in India the ultimate Gandhian campaign: a hunger strike, designed to draw the world’s attention to the Tibetan cause.3
