Chuba and Dagger
The item in an Indian newspaper, about the Tibetan refugee community being infiltrated by foreign agents, is likely to be received with wide spread resentment. The reporter does not produce a shred of evidence to support his theory. And what little arguments he puts forward are transparently ill-founded. For instance, he says that some years ago many Tibetans were expelled from Bhutan on suspicion of being Chinese spied. In fact, all concerned parties were in agreement that time that the event resulted from refusal on part of the Tibetans in Bhutan to submit to forced naturalization. Not surprisingly, therefore, the story is not being grabbed eagerly by other national and international media, and there are no banner headlines proclaiming further details on The Great Tibetan Spy Scandal.
The writer could legitimately have speculated on the possibility of there being foreign agents among Tibetan refugees, instead of acting as if there are known cases but ignored by authorities. Such a possibility cannot at all be ruled out given the number of ‘escapees’ or ‘visitor’ from Tibet over the past two decades. It is also more logical to inside information on Tibetan refugee activites rather than to steal Indian defence secrets. The latter assumption rests on the totally implausible implication that Indian defence secrets are within easy reach of all Tibetan refugees. Such an access would be possible only if one is well ensconsed in the Indian Defence establishements.
One of the functions of the Security Office of Tibetan government-in-exile is supposed to be to ferret out such moles from our community. We do not—and quite rightly—know exactly how its officials go about doing this. However, to our untrained eyes, they seems to be more concerned about whether Tibetans eat beef or drink chang than whether any of them are engaged in activities harmful to other Tibetans. Let us hope they realize that such persons would hardly go around wearing T-shirts saying ‘I am a Chinese spy’, and that they are more likely to be generally accepted in the society and held to be a partiotic as the next man.
And so, let us also hope that the inept piece of journalism we have referred to at least will have the effect of making the Tibetan intelligence service—what there is of it—more alert and vigilant.
The item in an Indian newspaper, about the Tibetan refugee community being infiltrated by foreign agents, is likely to be received with wide spread resentment. The reporter does not produce a shred of evidence to support his theory. And what little arguments he puts forward are transparently ill-founded. For instance, he says that some years ago many Tibetans were expelled from Bhutan on suspicion of being Chinese spied. In fact, all concerned parties were in agreement that time that the event resulted from refusal on part of the Tibetans in Bhutan to submit to forced naturalization. Not surprisingly, therefore, the story is not being grabbed eagerly by other national and international media, and there are no banner headlines proclaiming further details on The Great Tibetan Spy Scandal.
The writer could legitimately have speculated on the possibility of there being foreign agents among Tibetan refugees, instead of acting as if there are known cases but ignored by authorities. Such a possibility cannot at all be ruled out given the number of ‘escapees’ or ‘visitor’ from Tibet over the past two decades. It is also more logical to inside information on Tibetan refugee activites rather than to steal Indian defence secrets. The latter assumption rests on the totally implausible implication that Indian defence secrets are within easy reach of all Tibetan refugees. Such an access would be possible only if one is well ensconsed in the Indian Defence establishements.
One of the functions of the Security Office of Tibetan government-in-exile is supposed to be to ferret out such moles from our community. We do not—and quite rightly—know exactly how its officials go about doing this. However, to our untrained eyes, they seems to be more concerned about whether Tibetans eat beef or drink chang than whether any of them are engaged in activities harmful to other Tibetans. Let us hope they realize that such persons would hardly go around wearing T-shirts saying ‘I am a Chinese spy’, and that they are more likely to be generally accepted in the society and held to be a partiotic as the next man.
And so, let us also hope that the inept piece of journalism we have referred to at least will have the effect of making the Tibetan intelligence service—what there is of it—more alert and vigilant.
posted by editorla at
9:13 PM
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