Tibetans hope the pen is mightier than China's army

Against the might of the People�s Liberation Army, the Dalai Lama�s only weapon is words, and by choosing his words carefully the spiritual leader has put the west�s precarious relationship with China firmly in the spotlight.

KATE SMITH

Against the might of the People's Liberation Army, the Dalai Lama's only weapon is words, and by choosing his words carefully the spiritual leader has put the west's precarious relationship with China firmly in the spotlight. When the Tibetan leader accused the Chinese government of cultural genocide he ratcheted up the stakes, casting the repression of his people against the countdown to the Beijing Olympics in August.

Genocide is an emotive term and the world community rarely agrees on its meaning or its use. This is a tricky time for world leaders caught between growing outrage at what is happening in Tibet and not wanting to turn the Games into a repetition of Moscow in 1980 when they were boycotted, ironically, over the Soviet Union's occupation of Afghanistan.

The 1948 Genocide Convention does not include cultural genocide, but it is regarded as the imposition of a culture on an ethnic group. This can be done by putting restrictions on education or linguistic freedom without necessarily causing the destruction or disappearance of the people. While the body count may be low, in cultural genocide the aim is the same: to destroy a people or a way of life.

The UN caught up with the notion of cultural genocide in response to the ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia. Its draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People said cultural genocide had the "aim or effect of depriving them of their integrity as distinct peoples, or of their cultural values or ethnic identities".

It also identified it as the "assimilation or integration of other cultures or ways of life imposed on them by legislative, administrative or other measures". Perhaps part of the reason cultural genocide is so difficult for the west lies in our colonial past. The plight of the native Americans in the US and Canada, and Aborigines in Australia and Maoris in New Zealand, could be classed as cultural genocide.

Whole cultures and languages were wiped out as European settlers swept through the new world. These ancient cultures withered in the face of the forces of progress. Indigenous people were forced off their lands, which, in turn, were handed over to agriculture; with the passage of time, once proud cultures were left in ruins with faded languages. Earlier this year the Australian government finally got round to saying that little word - "sorry" - to the Aborigines, while in the US native Americans are as poor and marginalised as ever. They suffer the highest unemployment rates, and alcohol and drug dependency, of any group in the US.

Even here in Scotland it could be argued that the Highland Clearances were cultural genocide. The Scottish landlords saw the removal of crofters as necessary "improvements" and progress away from a feudal society into a modern world of sheep farming and agricultural advancement. The repression that followed Culloden in 1746 was formalised by the Act of Proscription and the Dress Act introduced that year which required all weapons to be surrendered to the government and prohibited wearing of tartan or kilts and the speaking of Gaelic. This was forbidden until 1822, when Sir Walter Scott revived the tartan in the kitsch form we have today for the visit of King George IV. But even after this moment in Scotland's history, the worst of the Clearances was to come.

The population of the Highlands was said to have dropped by some 200,000 during the nineteenth century. Whether it was progress or cultural genocide, the net effect of the persecution of the Gaels was the massive depopulation of the Highlands which saw the number of Gaelic speakers reduced to just 60,000 by the 1901 census.

The problem with these terms is they can be so easily tossed around and then cast aside. In Darfur, the US has been keen to declare the murderous ways of the Janjaweed as genocidal, but found no support from Russia or China, each of which has vested interests in the Sudan. As the Serbs persecuted Muslim ethnic Albanians in Kosovo in the 1990s, Nato had to turn to the less emotive phrase of "ethnic cleansing" before intervening in Pristina.

This is cold comfort for the people of Tibet. Earlier this week, Chinese premier Wen Jiabao told Gordon Brown he was ready to enter into talks with the Dalai Lama at the same time he was sending thousands of troops to quell the uprising in the Himalayan region.

Tibetan exiles say that more than 100 people have died in this latest uprising, which began with demonstrations in the capital, Lhasa, to mark the 57th anniversary of China's occupation. As the body count increases and China ramps up its military presence, the Dalai Lama's only hope is that the pen is mightier than the sword and that the international community puts Tibet before the Games.