时近年末，距离昂山素季【1】获释也将近两个月了，但我似乎还没有从这一事件带来的兴奋恍惚中完全平静下来。为了看到她重获自由，我已经等待良久。诚然不如她忠实的缅甸追随者那样的专一和激情洋溢，不过依然心怀焦虑地等待着，同时也带着某种她一定能坚持到底的信念等待着。她绝不会向军政府低头，而那些军头们总有一天不得不还她自由之身。就是这样的。
所以，当我看到她在她的追随者面前首次亮相的视频时，我原本以为心中会涌起一些崇高而深刻的情感。结果我发现自己所做的一切却只是担心她会伤到自己，至少可能被那扇紧闭着的铁门上那些乱七八糟的尖刺割伤手指，铁门背后便是曾经囚禁她的院落。她原本站在铁门后面，但是有人搬来桌子还是别的什么东西让她站在上面，这样人们可以清楚地看到她。她面带微笑而那些可恶的尖刺就挡在她的面前。后来人群中有人献给她一捧鲜花。她在头发上别了一束小花枝，而那儿原本应该是一束她标志性的茉莉花。不管那是什么花了，反正它给我开了个玩笑。这个世界上什么都是对的。
最初出现素季可能获释的迹象时，专家们尚不能确定军政府释放她的动机背后的种种可能因素，不少报道（包括《纽约时报》、BBC、《问询报》等等）权宜性的征用了“无权者的权力”这一便利的短语，来对素季最终战胜拘押者的原因提供一个宽泛和部分的解释。这样的解释尽管有些含混模糊但肯定不会是错的。1991年她获得诺贝尔和平奖时（由她的儿子亚历山大代领），诺贝尔和平奖委员会主席弗朗西斯•塞哲斯特德（Francis Sejersted）【2】就曾经将素季描述为“无权者权力的杰出典范”。
这个机智的矛盾修辞术语是由捷克剧作家、异见人士和政治领袖瓦茨拉夫•哈维尔（Václav Havel）发明的，最初他将其作为一篇文章的标题，原文为捷克文“Moc bezmocných”，面世时间大约在1978年10月。这篇文章很快就成为那些难得一见的能经得起考验并最终被奉为经典的政论文章之一。正如哈维尔后来提到的，这篇文章是个急就篇，并无意成为学术文章或文学作品，而是为了号召东欧和苏联集团各国的所有异见人士采取行动。事实上，当这篇文章被收进一本论述自由和权力的文集发表后，哈维尔和这本文集中的其他一些作者遭到了逮捕。
这篇文章对当时东欧风雨飘摇中的政治反抗运动起到了深刻的和转型性的影响。曾经长期致力于在波兰的工厂里召集和组织工人的团结工会活动家Zbygniew Bujak【3】解释了其中的原因：“有一段时间人们都认为我们是疯子。为什么我们要做这些？为什么我们要冒这样的风险？由于看不到任何直接的和有形的成果，我们开始怀疑我们所作所为的目的……而就在这时我们读到了哈维尔的文章。这篇文章给我们的行动提供了理论基础。它保持了我们的士气。我们最终没有放弃……”
哈维尔的剧作有让人惊叹的可接受性。我曾经在BBC（或是ITV【4】）上看过一次由观众表演的节目，是一出长达一个小时的荒诞剧，讲述了哈维尔被捷克的剧院封杀后被迫去一家啤酒厂工作的故事。我从来没有在电视上看过这样的节目——让我发自内心地感到沮丧和虚弱可同时又忍不住哈哈大笑。从另一方面讲，我也始终清楚这篇只有短短76页的《无权者的权力》所具备的沉甸甸的分量。我曾试图对哈维尔的观点进行一个简要的归纳，因为产生于那个时代的政治文献只有为数不多的一些依然有助于我们理解当下的这些压制性政权和体制的“理论基础”，哈维尔的这篇文章无疑是其中之一。此外，更为至关重要的是他的这篇文章为受压迫者成功地挑战他们的压迫者提供了一条真正具有可操作性的道路，尽管这是一条痛苦的和需要付出巨大牺牲的道路。
哈维尔在文章中首先做的也是关键性的一件事，是对当时东欧政权的性质进行了界定。它不是像斯大林政权和毛泽东政权那样的传统的独裁政体或极权政体。哈维尔称之为“后极权主义”（ post-totalitarianism），但同时强调尽管有“后”这样一个前缀，它的本质依然是极权主义的。尽管如此，这样的体制会通过给自己戴上一幅平淡无奇、四平八稳的面具，并且狡猾地去除掉“伟大领袖”或“帝国元首”之类的极权商标，从而让自己呈现出一个看上去中规中矩的表象，但是哈维尔告诉我们：在这样中规中矩的表象背后，这样的体制的本质依然是“官僚机构独裁”（ dictatorship of a bureaucracy）。
之后，哈维尔让人们去认清压制他们的政权的本质。哈维尔认为，仅仅着眼于一个政权所依仗的工具——军队、秘密警察、官僚机构、宣传机构、新闻审查机构等等或许会对这个政权的性质产生误判。虽然这样的政权依然实施酷刑，设立劳改营，依然有能力进行惊人的和随意的残酷伤害，但是它的权力的真正源泉存在于它能够用各种不同手段（包括消费主义）强制人们“活在谎言中”（ live within the lie），去接受一个由谎言编织成的巨网（或是科幻小说迷们眼中的“Matrix”）,它编造这些谎言用来为自己永久掌权提供一件正当性外衣。
由于“后极权主义”如此依存于谎言，哈维尔认为，在最广泛意义上理解的“真相”一词是这个体制最危险的敌人。因此，滋生“后极权主义”反对者的最重要的温床便是“活在真相中”（ living within the truth）。虽然这一点最初始的作用只是体现在存在主义层面上，但是最终它可以在街头抗议、公民协会等等公开可见的政治行动中证明自己。哈维尔提到由捷克作家和知识分子制定的《七七宪章》（Charter 77），这些人要求捷克斯洛伐克政府承认一些基本人权。这份宪章远远不是一份激进的文献，但是共产党政府依然重拳打压了宪章的作者和签名者。不过，宪章激发了后来的种种努力。
无论哈维尔是否有意为之，他的文章有很强的甘地主义的感觉。他告诉我们“活在真相中”（可以理解为 “非暴力不合作主义”的一种方式）“……显然是一种道义行为，不仅仅因为一个人需要为此付出巨大，还因为这种行为基本上不是一种自利的行为。冒这样的风险可能得到但也可能得不到局势总体改善的回报。”哈维尔强调说，“活在真相中”不仅是意指产生某些“思想概念产品”或是重大的政治行动，而是在于它可以是“……任何一个个人或团体采取的任何反对操纵和篡改的手段方法：从知识分子的文字到工人罢工，从摇滚音乐会到学生示威游行。”
我在10月份发表了一篇——也是唯一一篇【5】——文章讨论了如何在图伯特（汉语：西藏）进行学生抗议，我认为这种抗议恰恰符合哈维尔的“活在真相中”，是一种“无权者的权力”的表达。在图伯特高原上还没有像样的摇滚音乐会，不过来自安多【6】的年轻歌手谢旦（Sherten）发布了一段宝莱坞风格的音乐视频《团结的声音》（The Sound of Unity）【7】，号召雪域三区的博巴（汉语：藏人）团结起来（去反对那个众所周知的东西），其中一个小节还引人注目的出现了来自“黑暗的旧社会”的“反革命分子”——身着盛装的拉萨贵族男女——用来强调表达博巴团结的讯息。还有另外两首类似的音乐视频（《来电话了》【8】和《精神回归》【9】）也表达出同样颠覆性的讯息——号召“红脸膛”的博巴团结起来等待“雪狮”的回归。尽管歌曲的词作者们用委婉和双关的手法隐藏他们的政治意图，但这样的作品并非没有风险。一年以前，歌手扎西顿珠（Tashi Dondrup）便由于他热卖的音乐专辑《没有伤口的痛处》（Torture Without Trace）而遭到逮捕，而在2008年，歌手加羊吉也因从事“颠覆活动”遭受逮捕和酷刑。
哈维尔了解这样的歌手和音乐人在社会和政治革命中的重要性，他曾经支持捷克的摇滚乐队“宇宙中的塑料人”（ The Plastic People of the Universe），这支乐队因不受政府欢迎而被迫转入地下，乐队成员在1976年遭到逮捕和起诉。塑料人乐队和哈维尔还都是纽约“地下天鹅绒”（ Velvet Underground）【11】乐队的颠覆性音乐的狂热爱好者。哈维尔曾经对萨尔曼•拉什迪（Salman Rushdie）【12】说，最终在1989年推翻共产党政府的非暴力革命正是得名于这个美国乐队。拉什迪以为哈维尔是在开玩笑，不过后来发现哈维尔确实是这样非常严肃地对“地下天鹅绒”乐队的音乐主创卢•里德（Lou Reed）说的。
自从上个世纪90年代以来，博巴学者、作家和学生有效地利用了互联网进行相互沟通并将他们的作品在世界范围传播。他们的写作最主要是利用博伊（汉语：藏文）和中文，而“高原净土”（ High Peaks Pure Earth）【13】网站则为他们代表性的作品提供了英文翻译。最著名同时也是最直言不讳的博客作者是诗人唯色，她最近刚刚获得“新闻勇气奖”（ Courage in Journalism），而她的电脑在上个月受到了极端民族主义的中国红客联盟（China Honker Union）的攻击，所有的文章都被删除。她住在北京，遭受着几乎持续不断的监视。中国的检查人员经常在中国和图伯特查封很多博伊博客和博客服务器。尽管面临日益增加的困难，但是博巴博客作者依然想方设法坚持写作。很多博巴采用绕过审查和避免查封的办法是在比如“人人网”这样的中文社交网站上发帖子。
所有这些活动都反映了对于中国在图伯特的统治日益扩展的政治和社会反抗，也反映了人们在行使“无权者的权力”的手法上日趋成熟，从而避免了如以前那样绝对冒险的和终极性的表达。早先，所有反抗中国统治的表达都是直接的和对抗性的。如果我们回顾2008年在图伯特的抗暴，以及1987年以来所有类似的抗争都是同中国中央政权的直接对抗——示威者挥舞被禁止的图伯特国旗，呼喊要求图伯特独立和达赖喇嘛回归的口号——这些抗议示威或是起义都无一例外地遭遇压倒性的武力镇压、枪杀、殴打、囚禁、劳改、处决和被失踪。而在图伯特出现的新的斗争手段，由于其（令北京方面感到）棘手的细微差别，或许更有机会在政府找到应对之策前获得进展。
在流亡海外的头三十年，达赖喇嘛和流亡博巴秉持“让赞”或独立的目标，坚定不移地践行了“活在真相中”，尽管遭遇到了1970年代中期令人沮丧的形势变化，当时共产中国因反对苏联而成为了西方盟友，而大多数自由世界的知识分子和社会名流（包括造访达兰萨拉的西方人士）都似乎沉迷于“毛泽东思想”。
达赖喇嘛当时在西方不如现在这样受人欢迎。事实上直到1979年，在他已经流亡二十年之后才首度访美。当然，他在印度并没有被软禁，但他的活动是受到限制的。在西方几乎没有支持图伯特的团体，在华盛顿或者布鲁塞尔也没有有影响力的支持者和院外团体。但是达赖喇嘛紧握住了自己的武器——这当然是一种比喻。你走进流亡博巴社区的任何一个家庭、一座寺院、一处办公室、一间教室或是一家餐厅，你都可能看到一张暗绿色的海报，上面用英文和博伊写着尊者的语录，雄辩地表达了他的道德信念。上面没有他的照片，设计也很简单，但却能真切有效地激励人心：“我们的道路或许漫长而艰辛，但是我相信真理和正义终将获胜”。
而在某种程度上讲，博巴确实意外获胜了。随着柏林墙的垮塌，随着中国领导人公开承认他们在经济和社会项目上的失败，随着图伯特对西方游客的开放，全世界突然了解到降临在世界屋脊上的巨大悲剧。世界各地的政治领袖、社会名流、媒体开始关注图伯特问题。那时有“野兽男孩”（ Beastie Boys）乐队举办的慈善音乐会，有李察•基尔（Richard Gere）和哈里森•福特（Harrison Ford）与达赖喇嘛拥抱，好莱坞还制作了两部有关图伯特的故事片。这一时期最具标志性的事件是达赖喇嘛被授予诺贝尔和平奖。诺贝尔奖评委会承认达赖喇嘛“在争取图伯特自由的斗争中始终反对使用暴力。”
但是这一时期同样也见证了中国的逐步开放，和“中国贸易”的日趋重要。于是，慢慢地同时也是非常敏锐地，从可以想象的各个方面开始向图伯特领导人施加压力，让他们放弃争取独立的目标。中国很快就会变成一个民主国家，尽管还存在争议，但所有问题到那时便会迎刃而解。美国国会中一度相当成功的坚持以改善图伯特人权状况为条件同中国进行贸易的支持图伯特运动，实际上被克林顿政府赶出圈外。这位总统希望让人权问题和贸易问题脱钩并吸纳中国加入世界贸易组织（WTO）。克林顿政府实际上“说服”了支持图伯特的院外集团【14】（即国际声援西藏运动，即ICT）同北京方面进行所谓“建设性接触”。这一术语现在已经成了图伯特活动圈子里的新咒语。英国有一个支持图伯特的团体，曾经成功地让假日酒店集团（Holiday Inn）离开拉萨，受到ICT主席的公开“指点”并被“苦口婆心”地告知要同中国进行更加“建设性接触”。
“活在这样的谎言中”，对于流亡博巴来说相当便利而且还经常是有利可图的。ICT搬进了漂亮的大办公室。直到那时一直捉襟见肘的流亡政府现在开始得到来自西方很多国家的资助。博巴组织，尤其是达赖喇嘛，开始受到参加各种国际会议的邀请。但是在这些同情的姿态背后，所有这些邀请、奖项、资助和援助背后，常常似乎有一个不言而喻的条件——一旦博巴提出独立问题（即中国威胁性地指称的“核心问题”），这一切都将随风而逝。
随着外界对图伯特独特的传统文化、艺术和精神世界的兴趣不断增加，相比其他像东突厥斯坦（新疆）这样的冲突地区，图伯特在世界舞台上有了更多登台亮相的机会。然而，吊诡之处正在于对图伯特文化的这种兴趣和热情似乎也给一些西方人士提供了一种方便法门——可以无视这个古老的国家正在遭受的破坏，无视那里的人民遭受的真正的苦难和可能遭受的灭顶之灾。已故著名摄影家加伦•罗维（Galen Rowell）【15】在《我的图伯特》（My Tibet）一书的前言中实际上为这种状况提供了正当性理由：“细细想来，他（达赖喇嘛）的存在和他传递给世界的讯息的精髓丧失殆尽才是中国人施加在他的土地上的巨大灾难。”达赖喇嘛似乎认同他的观点，因为他曾经说过保护图伯特的精神文化要比为图伯特的政治自由而斗争更加重要。
必须要强调的是，这样新的关注和援助，尤其那些来自于一些小国家、国际组织甚或是来自像南希•佩洛西和图图主教这样的领导人，大多数都是真诚的、善意的，当然也是受欢迎的。诚然，“中国院外集团”（很广义地讲）的影响和活动范围是广泛而有效的，但并非无所不在。存在这样一种现实的可能性——如果图伯特领导人坚持自己基本的国家目标，或许会遇到暂时的挫折，或许会在一些西方国家的首都遭到一时冷遇，但只要坚守住支持图伯特的国际基础的关键的（和更加真诚的）一部分，一旦中国丢掉它“软实力”的面具（如同它正在做的这样），图伯特便可以在更加真实而有意义的路径上重建国际支持。
但是达兰萨拉却选择将目前的现实看成是无法逃避和无法改变的，并且用它一部分作为借口，一部分作为一种自我应验的预言告诫流亡公众——如果提出独立问题，博巴便会失去他们在西方得到的支持，而达赖喇嘛从此在任何地方都不会受到欢迎，博巴难民甚至会被庇护国驱逐出境。
由于所有的流亡博巴还认为他们身处一场生死攸关的争取自由的斗争之中，那么就必须给他们提供某种“替代活动”（如康拉德・劳伦兹【16】所说的）来让他们应付眼下的现实。于是来自各种各样“冲突解决”、“冲突管理”和“冲突调解”等团体和机构的各种专家们驾临达兰萨拉，组织各种讲座、讲习班和研讨会，流亡政府的官员有时都必须参加。这些会议上最为重要的观点莫过于一切问题的解决取决于如何设法顺应中国。因而，任何可能妨碍这一进程的事情（比如谈论独立）必须立即停止。似乎没人明白这些团体来此的目的不在于传达正义，甚至不是为图伯特寻求正义开启某条路径。其实他们的组织机构的名称已经说得很清楚，他们来这里是为了让“冲突”靠边站，哪怕这样的冲突事关存亡续绝，哪怕这样的冲突事关是非善恶。当一方天下无敌、不可撼动而且又是西方世界重要的贸易伙伴，那么解决问题的最简单的方法就是让弱势的一方放弃争辩。
除了图伯特的官员们，甚至有些在自由世界生活和学习的博巴也受惑于这种新思维方式。一位博巴MBA得到了一个“影响深远”的发现——跟中国人做生意是拯救图伯特和让图伯特现代化的唯一方法。还有一位哲学博士用他新近掌握的学术方法重新解读了哈维尔的“无权者的权力”，认为这个短语的实际意思是奔忙于各种会议、提交各种报告、寻求各种资助和其他一些基本上属于自利性的活动，可以在博巴的流亡世界里部分地取代“行动主义”一词。有不少曾经的独立活动人士现在也在图伯特内部设立“延展”和“搭桥”项目（当然是与中国政府合作），甚至在有些场合里还公开声言反对“西藏独立”和那些依然谋求独立的人士。
印度小说家和社会思想家阿兰达蒂•洛伊【17】（《微物之神》作者）曾经对印度类似的现象做过评论。在她的演讲稿《帝国时代的公共权力》一文中，次大陆的社会运动面临的最阴险的敌人之一是她所谓的“抵抗活动的NGO化”。她指出，在80年代后期，印度公众对全球化趋势以及全球化对自由经济受害者，尤其是农民造成的可怕冲击进行的政治抗争恰巧遭遇了NGO的急速发展。她承认有些NGO确实做出了有价值的工作，但坚持认为NGO现象需要在一个更广阔的政治语境中加以考量。人们有一种印象认为NGO对缓解社会矛盾有所贡献，而这种贡献是客观上的一种无关紧要的意外之得，并非他们实际议事日程的主要部分：
他们（NGO）的真正贡献在于平息了政治怒火，而把根据权利本该属于人们的东西以援助或慈善的形式一点一点释放出来……他们改变了公众心理。他们把人们变成了依附于人的受害者并且钝化了政治抵抗的边缘。NGO成为了帝国和帝国臣民之间的一种缓冲层。他们已经变成了仲裁人、传声筒和分销商。从长远看，NGO最终都是对他们的创立者负责而不是他们所服务的人群。
昂山素季那篇著名演说《远离恐惧的自由》的开头是这样的：“是恐惧而不是权力让人堕落。掌权者因恐惧失去权力而堕落，臣服于权力的人因恐惧权力带来的苦难而堕落。”图伯特流亡政府和生活在自由世界里的那些博巴无需恐惧中国的军队、公安、劳改营、监狱、酷刑或处决，但是他们恐惧失去获得机会的途经和他们目前在自由世界所享受的种种特权，他们已经说服自己把这些作为自己在图伯特自由和主权等最关键的问题上默不作声的交换条件。恐惧腐化了他们，也在某种程度上破坏了那些虽然被边缘化但依然忠心耿耿的博巴和朋友们正在图伯特内部甚至海外进行的革命斗争。
获释之后，有些媒体评论员建议昂山素对缅甸当前的政治局势或许应该采取一种观望态度，因为她已经和缅甸公众脱离接触而反对派阵营也已经出现新的领导人。但是对她的获释产生的热烈而普遍的公众反响，甚至来自那些或许从没有见过她本人的缅甸年轻人，都显示出她没有丧失任何感染力。她一如既往地轻声细语、头脑冷静。她从国家体制的角度对军人独裁和军队进行礼貌的，甚至是尊重的评说。她没有号召“政权更迭”，但是在她终身追求民主的根本问题上，“无权者的权力”从来不存在被让渡的问题。
在《纽约时报》一次电话采访中，她清楚地表明，获释之后她将领导一场非暴力革命而不是一个递进的改良。她说她对“革命”一词的运用是正当的，因为“我认为改良是细微末节的变化，非常非常缓慢，而我想革命是重大的变化。我说这些是因为我们正处在需要重大的变化时刻。”
译者注：
1、昂山素季（Aung San Suu Kyi），1945年6月19日生于缅甸仰光，是领导缅甸独立的民族英雄昂山将军的女儿。1990年她带领缅甸全国民主联盟赢得大选的胜利，但选举结果被军政府作废。其后21年间她被军政府断断续续软禁于其寓所中长达15年，1991年获得诺贝尔和平奖，在2010年11月13日终于获释。被誉为全亚洲最美丽的女性。
2、弗朗西斯•塞哲斯特德（ Francis Sejersted），1936年2月8日生于挪威奥斯陆，挪威历史学家，曾于1982年至1999年担任诺贝尔和平奖评委，并于1991年至1999年担任评委会主席。
3、Zbygniew Bujak，1954年11月29日生于波兰，曾经是华沙附近乌尔苏斯拖拉机厂的工人，后来成为波兰团结工会主要领袖之一。１９８９年波兰转型后，在波兰立法会议选举中当选波兰国会议员，曾组织工联党（ＵＰ）并担任领导。２００２年竞选华沙市长失败后基本退出政坛。
4、英国独立电视台（Independent Television，简称ITV）是英国第二大无线电视经营商，在1955年设立，目的是为BBC提供竞争。
5、指作者2011年10月18日在其博客上发表的《WHAT MUST I DO》一文。
6、安多（Amdo）, 图伯特三区之一，主要包括今行政区划的青海（玉树地区除外）、甘肃甘南和四川阿坝等地。
7、“The Sound of Unity”， Youtube网址：
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3P3KlEvTePM
8、“The Telephone Rang”Youtube网址：
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hp_Bm0OS9M
9、“Mentally Return”，Youtube网址：
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUEvpmGjv4M
10、图伯特歌手，2009年12月因被指控创作颠覆性歌曲遭到逮捕。
Youtube网址：
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hndK5Y2lxbU
11、地下丝绒（英语：The Velvet Underground）是一个美国摇滚乐团，活跃于1960年代与1970年代。地下丝绒在商业上并不成功，但是却影响了许多后来的摇滚乐团与歌手。也影响了多种不同音乐领域的发展，包括试验摇滚（experimental rock）、后庞克（post-punk）、新浪潮（new wave）、以及歌德摇滚（gothic rock）等。
12、萨尔曼•拉什迪（Salman Rushdie）印度裔英国作家，因1988年出版的小说《撒旦诗篇》引起极大争议。
13、
http://www.highpeakspureearth.com/ 是一家专门从事博伊（汉语：藏文）中文涉藏文章英文翻译的非营利性网站。
14、院外集团，西方国家中为了某种特定利益而组成的企图影响议会立法和政府决策的组织。其活动常在议会的走廊(lobby)或接待处进行，故有院外活动集团、罗比分子或走廊议员之称。因在很大程度上可左右议会立法过程和结果，故又被称为议会两院之外的第三院。
15、加伦•罗维（Galen Rowell）是享有崇高国际声望的的户外登山摄影家。他生于1940年8月23日，2002年8月11日和爱妻Barbara Rowell不幸双双死于飞机失事。由于他的政治倾向和行为，国内对他的相关介绍稍微少一些。Galen夫妇曾经多次去过喜马拉雅山和图伯特。他的有关图伯特的作品完全是人类传世的佳作。
16、康拉德・劳伦兹（Konrad Zacharias Lorenz，1903年11月7日－1989年2月27日），生卒于维也纳，奥地利动物学家、鸟类学家、动物心理学家，也是经典比较行为研究的代表人物。受他的老师奥斯卡•海因洛斯的影响，建立了现代动物行为学。
17、阿兰达蒂•洛伊（Arundhati Roy），1961年出生，印度作家。十六岁时离家，只身来到新德里，在学校主修建筑；毕业后做过记者、编辑，后从事电影文学剧本写作。三十七岁凭借《微物之神》成为第一个获得全美国图书奖、英国文学大奖“布克奖”的印度作家，震惊世界文坛。
SEEKING THE POWER OF THE POWERLESS
BY Jamyang Norbu
It’s almost the end of the year now, and nearly two months since Aung San Suu Kyi was released, but I haven’t quite gotten over the dopamine rush of that event. I’ve been waiting a long time to see her a free woman. Not as single-mindedly and passionately, to be sure, as her loyal Burmese followers, but waiting, nonetheless, with some anxiety but also with a conviction of sorts, that she would be able to tough it out. That she would never ever give in to the junta, and one day they would have to let her go. Just like that.
So when I saw the video of her first appearance before her followers, I expected to feel lofty and profound emotions. But all I found myself doing was worrying that she might injure herself, or at least cut her fingers on the wicked looking spikes on top of the closed gate of the compound where she had been confined. She was behind the gate but someone had put a table or something for her to stand on, so you could see her quite clearly. She was smiling but those damned spikes were getting in her way. At one point she even rested her forearms on them. Then someone from the crowd handed up a bouquet of flowers. She tied a spray to her hair, it might have been her trademark jasmine. Whatever it was, it did the trick for me. All was right with the world.
When the first signs appeared that Suu Kyi would be released, but before the experts could hold forth on the possible reasons behind the junta’s motives for freeing her, quite a few reports (The New York Times, the BBC, The Inquirer.com, etc) pressed into service the convenient phrase “the power of the powerless” to provide at least a broad, partial explanation of why Suu Kyi had prevailed over her captors. Ambiguous as the explanation was it was certainly not incorrect. When she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 (accepted by her son, Alexander) the Chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, Francis Sejersted, had described Suu Kyi as “an outstanding example of the power of the powerless”.
This clever oxymoron had been thought up by the Czech playwright, dissident and political leader, Vaclav Havel, as the title for an essay, “Moc bezmocných“, in its original Czech, which appeared sometime in October 1978. It soon became one of those rare pieces of political reflection that outlive their time of birth and come to be regarded as a classic. The piece was written in a hurry, as Havel later mentioned, and was intended not as an academic or literary exercise, but as a call to action for all dissidents in Eastern Europe and the Soviet bloc. In fact after its publication in a volume of essays on freedom and power, Havel and some of the other contributors to the volume were arrested.
The essay’s impact on the frail political opposition in Eastern Europe was profoundly transformational. A Solidarity activist, Zbygniew Bujak who had for years had been trying to rally and organize workers in Polish factories explains why: “There came a moment when people thought we were crazy. Why were we doing this? Why were we taking such risks? Not seeing any immediate and tangible results we began to doubt the purpose of what we were doing… Then came the essay by Havel. Reading it gave us the theoretical underpinnings for our activity. It maintained our spirits; we did not give up…”
Havel’s plays are marvelously accessible. I saw a BBC (or ITV?) performance of Audience, an absurdist drama of an hour of Havel’s life after he was banned from the Czech theatre and forced to take a job in a brewery. It is the only thing on TV that’s ever made me deeply depressed and weak with laughter at the same time. On the other hand I have always found the dense 76 odd pages of “Power of the Powerless” heavy going. I have tried to cobble together a simple précis of Havel’s thesis, as I consider it one of the few political documents from that period that is still relevant to understanding the “theoretical underpinnings” of repressive regimes and systems in our day and age. Moreover, and more crucially, the essay provides a genuinely doable, though painful and high-sacrifice way, for the oppressed to successfully challenge their oppressors.
The first and crucial thing that Havel does in his essay is define the nature of the regime in the Eastern Europe. It was not a traditional dictatorship or a classic totalitarian regime like Stalin’s or Mao’s. Havel called this post-totalitarianism, but emphasizes that it was still totalitarian in spite of the prefix “post”. Nonetheless, this system was able to present a superficial appearance of normalcy by putting on a bland faceless facade, and very cunningly doing away with the trademark “great leader” or “Führer figure”. But Havel tells us that in spite of its ordinariness this system was in was in fact the “dictatorship of a bureaucracy.”
Havel then opens people’s eyes as to the nature of the power that held them in subjugation. He maintained that this power should not be mistaken for the instruments of that power: the military, the secret-police, the bureaucracy, the propaganda, the censors, et al. Though the regime still had its torturers and labor camps and was still capable of tremendous and arbitrary cruelty, the true source of its power lay in its ability to coerce people in a variety of ways (even with consumerism) to “live within the lie”; i.e. to accept the complex web (or for sci-fi fans, the “matrix”) of lies it had created to provide a cover of justification for its perpetual hold on power.
Because post-totalitarianism was so fundamentally based on lies, Havel maintained that truth “in the widest sense of the word” was the most dangerous enemy of the system. The primary breeding ground for what might be understood as an opposition in the post-totalitarian system was “living within the truth”. This operated initially and primarily at the existential level, but it could manifest itself in publicly visible political actions as street demonstrations, citizens associations and so on. Havel mentions the creation of Charter 77 by Czech writers and intellectuals, who demanded that the government of Czechoslovakia recognize some basic human rights. It was a far from radical document but the Communist government cracked down hard on the authors and signatories. But it inspired subsequent efforts.
Whether Havel intended it or not his essay has a very Gandhian feel to it. Havel tells us that “living within the truth” (which one might accept as a form of satyagraha) “… is clearly a moral act, not only because one must pay so dearly for it, but principally because it is not self-serving. The risk may bring rewards in the form of a general amelioration in the situation, or it may not”. Havel emphasized that by “living within the truth” he did not just mean “products of conceptual thought,” or major political action, but that it could be “… any means by which a person or a group revolts against manipulation: anything from a letter by intellectuals, to a workers strike, from a rock concert to a student demonstration.”
My last post but one, was about the student demonstrations in Tibet in October, which I think fits in nicely with Havel’s “living with the truth” and as an expression of “the power of the powerless”. The Tibetan plateau hasn’t had a major rock concert yet but a young singer from Amdo, Sherten, has released a Bollywood style music video extravaganza “The Sound of Unity” calling on all Tibetans from the three provinces of the “Land of Snows” to unite (against you know who). Even such counterrevolutionary characters from “the bad old days” as an aristocrat lord and lady from Lhasa (in full regalia) are conspicuously depicted in one segment to press home the message of Tibetan unity. Two other similar music videos (“The Telephone Rang“, and “Mentally Return“) have appeared, with similarly subversive messages calling on “ruddy face” Tibetans to unite and await the return of “The Snow Lion”. In spite of the effort by the lyricists to hide their political meaning behind euphemisms and double entendre, such compositions are not without risk. A year ago, the singer Tashi Dondrup, was arrested for his bestselling album, Torture Without Trace, and in 2008 the singer, Jamyang Kyi was incarcerated and tortured for “subversive activities”.
Havel saw the significance of such singers and musicians in social and political revolutions, and he supported the Czech rock group, The Plastic People of the Universe, which the Communist government had harassed and forced underground, and whose members were arrested and prosecuted in 1976. The Plastic People and Havel were in turn great admirers of the subversive music of the New York based Velvet Underground. Havel once told Salman Rushdie that the final non-violent revolution of 1989 that overthrew the Communist government was called the “Velvet Revolution” after the American band. Rushdie thought that Havel was joking but later found out that Havel had said exactly that, and quite seriously, to Lou Reed, the principal songwriter for the Velvet Underground.
Tibetan scholars, writers and students have, since the late nineties, effectively used the internet to communicate with each other and spread their writings around the world. They write near exclusively in Tibetan and Chinese, but the website High Peaks Pure Earth provides English translations of a representative sampling of their works. One of the most well known and outspoken bloggers has been the poet, Woeser, who recently received the “Courage in Journalism” award, but whose computer was hacked last month by the ultra-nationalist China Honker Union, and all her writing deleted. She lives in Beijing, under near constant surveillance. Chinese censors have regularly shut down many Tibetan language blogs and blog hosting services, both in Tibet and China, but Tibetan bloggers have somehow managed to keep on writing, though with ever increasing difficulty. One way many Tibetans have managed to circumvent censorship and shutdowns has been by posting on Chinese social networking sites, such as the popular renren.com.
All these activities reflect a broadening of the political and social opposition to Chinese rule in Tibet, and a growing sophistication in the way people have begun to exercise the “power of the powerless”, without it become an absolutely perilous or terminal exercise, as it had been before. Earlier, all public manifestations of opposition to Chinese rule was direct and confrontational. If we look at the Tibetan Uprising of 2008, and also those from 1987 onwards, nearly all of them have been direct clashes with Chinese central authority, with demonstrators waving the forbidden national flag of Tibet and shouting slogans calling for Tibetan independence and the return of the Dalai Lama. These demonstrations, or rather uprisings, have, on every occasion, been met with overwhelming force, shootings, beatings, imprisonment, labor camps, executions and disappearances. But this new phase of the struggle emerging in Tibet just might, because of its awkward (for Beijing) nuances, have a better chance of getting off the ground, before the authorities come up with a way to crush it.
For the first thirty years of exile the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan community practiced “living in the truth” with unwavering resolution, holding on to the goal of Rangzen or “independence”, in spite of the disheartening turn of events from the mid-seventies when Communist China became an ally of the West against the Soviet Union, and when most intellectuals and celebrities in the free world (even western visitors to Dharmshala) then, appeared to be besotted with the thoughts of Chairman Mao.
The Dalai Lama was not welcome in the West as he is now. In fact he only managed to visit the USA in 1979, although he had been in exile for twenty years before that. He wasn’t, of course, under house arrest in India, but his movements were restricted. There were practically no Tibet support groups in the West and no influential supporters or lobbies in Washington DC or Brussels. But the Dalai Lama stuck to his guns, metaphorically speaking. If you walked into a home, monastery, office, classroom or restaurant in exile Tibetan society then, you would probably have noticed a dull green poster with a quotation (in English and Tibetan) by His Holiness, that eloquently expressed his moral resolve. It had no photograph of him and design-wise was minimal, but it was effective and genuinely inspirational. “Our way may be a long and hard one but I believe that truth and justice will ultimately prevail”.
And quite unexpectedly Tibetans did prevail – up to a point. With the fall of Berlin Wall and with China’s leaders openly confessing the failure of their economic and social programs, and with the opening up of Tibet to Western tourism, the world suddenly became aware of the enormous tragedy that had befallen the roof of the world. Everywhere around the world, political leaders, celebrities and the media, began to pay attention to the issue of Tibet. There were Beastie Boys benefit concerts, Richard Gere and Harrison Ford embraced the Dalai Lama and Hollywood stepped in with two feature films on Tibet. The high-water mark of this period was the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to His Holiness. The Nobel committee recognized that the Dalai Lama “in his struggle for the liberation of Tibet has consistently opposed the use of violence.”
But this period also saw the opening up of China and, more significantly “the China trade”. Slowly and very subtly, from every quarter imaginable, pressure began to be put on the Tibetan leadership to give up its goal of independence. China was going to become a democracy soon, anyway – the argument ran – and everything could be worked out then. Even the fairly successful Tibetan campaign in the US Congress to hold trade with China conditional to improvement of human rights conditions in Tibet, was effectively derailed by the Clinton administration. The president wanted to de-link human-rights and trade and induct China into the World Trade Organization. His administration essentially “persuaded” the Tibetan lobby (The International Campaign for Tibet or ICT) to go in for “constructive engagement” with Beijing. This term now became the new mantra in Tibetan activism circles. One support group in Britain that had campaigned successfully to get Holiday Inn to leave Lhasa had its knuckles rapped publicly by the director of ICT and told, in so many words, to engage China more constructively.
It was made attractively convenient and often profitable for exile Tibetans to “live within this lie”. ICT moved into a posh office suite. The exile government which had till then operated virtually on a shoestring now began to receive funding from a number of Western nations. Tibetan organizations, especially the Dalai Lama, began to receive invitations to attend all sorts of international confabs. But behind the gestures of sympathy, the invitations, the awards, the grants, and the aid, there often appeared to be a kind of unspoken condition that this might all go away if Tibetans raised the issue (or the “core issue” as the PRC menacingly calls it) of Tibetan independence.
The growing interest in Tibet’s unique traditional culture, art and spirituality also gave Tibet a more substantial presence on the international scene than other comparable conflict areas as East Turkestan (Xinjiang). But in a bizarre way this interest and enthusiasm for Tibetan culture also seemed to provide some in the West a kind of convenient rationalization to ignore the on-going destruction of that ancient nation and the real suffering and even potential extermination of its people. The late celebrity photographer, Galen Rowell, actually justified this approach in the introduction to his book, My Tibet : “To dwell on the agony the Chinese have imposed upon his (the Dalai Lama’s) land is to lose most of the essence of his being and his message to the world.” The Dalai Lama seemed to endorse this attitude by his statement that the preservation of Tibetan spiritual culture was more important than struggling for Tibetan political freedom.
It should be emphasized that much of this new attention and assistance, especially from small nations, some organizations and even leaders as Nancy Pelosi and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, was genuine, well-meant and unquestionably welcome. No doubt, the influence and reach of the “China lobby” (very broadly speaking) was widespread and effective, but it was not ubiquitous. There was a real possibility that the Tibetan leadership could have stuck to its fundamental national goal, and though encountering temporary setbacks and some cold-shoulders in Western capitals for a time, have hung on to a significant (and more genuine) segment of its support base, and eventually, as China dropped its “soft power” mask (as it is beginning to do right now) rebuilt its international support in a more real and meaningful way.
But Dharamshala chose to see the new reality as inescapable and unalterable, and used it as a part excuse, part self-fulfilling prophecy to warn the exile public that if the issue of independence were raised Tibetans would loose their support in the West, that the Dalai Lama would not be welcome anywhere anymore, and that Tibetan refugees might even be deported from the countries where they had found refuge.
As all exile Tibetans had till then considered themselves to be engaged in a life-and-death freedom struggle, some kind of “displacement activity” (as Konrad Lorenz would have put it) had to provided for them to deal with the new reality. Experts from various “conflict resolution”, “conflict management” and “conflict mediation” groups and institutions descended on Dharamshala to organize lectures, workshops and symposiums, which even members of the Tibetan cabinet were sometimes obliged to attended. The overriding thinking pushed at these gatherings was that that everything depended on finding a way to accommodate China. Hence anything that might impede the process (i.e. talk of independence) had to be summarily dropped. No one seemed to have caught on that these groups were not there to deliver justice, or even begin a process to seek justice for Tibet, but, as their organizational names made abundantly clear, were there to make “conflict” go away, even if that conflict was a necessary one between survival and extermination – even between good and evil. The simplest way of doing that, especially when one side was invincible, immovable, and a valued trading partner of the West, was to make the other and weaker side give up its dispute.
Besides Tibetan officialdom, even some individual Tibetans living and studying in the free world were seduced into this new way of thinking. A Tibetan MBA made the far-reaching discovery that doing business with China was the only way to save and modernize Tibet. One PhD deployed his newly acquired academic skills to re-interpreting Havel’s actual phrase “the power of the powerless” to mean the conference hopping, resume bolstering, grant seeking and other essentially self-serving activities, that passes for “activism” in a section of the Tibetan exile world. A few previous independence activists now set up “outreach” and “bridge building” projects inside Tibet (in collaboration with Chinese authorities, of course) and on a few occasions even spoke out publicly against Tibetan independence and those still contending for it.
The Indian novelist (The God of Small Things) and social thinker, Arundhati Roy, has commented on a similar phenomenon in India. In her talk/essay “Public Power in the Age of Empire” Roy mentions that one of the most insidious threats facing social movements in the sub-continent was, what she called, the “NGO-ization of resistance”. She points out that the political resistance of the Indian public to globalization and its terrible impact on the victims of economic liberalization, especially farmers, coincided with the NGO boom in the late 1980s. She does concede that some NGO’s did valuable work, but insists that the NGO phenomenon should be considered in a broader political context. That the impression that NGO’s gave of contributing to social alleviation, that contribution was materially inconsequential and not the main part of their actual agenda:
Their (the NGOs) real contribution is that they defuse political anger and dole out as aid or benevolence what people ought to have by right …They alter the public psyche. They turn people into dependent victims and blunt the edges of political resistance. NGOs form a sort of buffer between … Empire and its subjects. They have become the arbitrators, the interpreters, the facilitators. In the long run, NGOs are accountable to their funders not to the people they work among.
Aung San Suu Kyi’s celebrated “Freedom From Fear” speech begins: “It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.” The Tibetan exile government and certain Tibetan individuals in the free world do not have to fear the Chinese military, the PSB, slave labor camps, prisons, torture or execution, but they fear loosing access to opportunities and privileges they enjoy at present in the free world, which they have convinced themselves is conditional to their silence on the most crucial issue of Tibetan freedom and sovereignty. And that fear corrupts them and undermines the revolutionary struggle that is being carried on inside Tibet, and even outside still, in a small way, by a marginalized but committed number of Tibetans and friends.
After her release some media commentators suggested that Aung San Suu Kyi, might be sidelined in the present Burmese political scene, since she had been out of touch with the Burmese public and new leaders had emerged from within the opposition groups. But the ecstatic and universal public response to her release, even from young Burmese who had probably never actually seen her in person, demonstrated that she had lost none of her appeal. She was soft-spoken and levelheaded as always. She spoke politely of the military dictatorship and even respectfully of the army as a national institution. She made no calls for “regime change”, but on the fundamental issue of her life-long struggle for democracy there was no question that the power of the powerless would ever be relinquished.
In a telephone interview with The New York Times she made it clear that now she was free she intended to lead what she called a nonviolent revolution, rather than an incremental evolution. She said her use of the term “revolution” was justified because, “I think of evolution as imperceptible change, very, very slowly, and I think revolution as significant change. I say this because we are in need of significant change.”
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