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Human
rights groups are warning that a controversial documentary
on Tibet could lead to the imprisonment and torture of people
who were secretly filmed watching an illegal recording of
their exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama. The film,
entitled What Remains of Us, reports on the political and
religious persecution faced by Tibetans living under Chinese
rule. Participants risk jail and torture, say rights
groups. In its 19 May 2004 edition, the Guardian called
this film ‘too dangerous to show’. |
Don’t we all love journalists?
I used to work as one, and I am still in awe of many of them,
the ones who’ve spent years learning the language of the
country they write about, who’ve studied its history,
whose articles are the result of hundreds of hours of listening,
reading and research. But journalists working on Tibet - that’s
been a patchy story. And when it comes to TV journalists, it’s
an oil slick: most TV journalism about Tibet reeks of dodgy
ethics, opportunism and superficiality. A few good pieces were
done in the past - the very best are those by Tenzin Sonam and
Ritu Sarin. But they aren’t journalists, they’re
film-makers — they don’t try to make hot news, they
don’t rush their work, they have years of background knowledge,
and they don’t try to make a quick buck. But now, as the
Tibet story becomes more complex and doesn’t have dramatic
incidents you can easily catch on film, freelance journalists
are looking for innovative ways to make films about Tibet. And
that brings me to What Remains of Us.
In case you don’t know, this documentary was shot by
two Canadian men and an exile Tibetan woman who made several
trips as tourists to Tibet. They took with them a video of a
message from His Holiness and filmed the reactions of Tibetans
there who agreed to be shown watching the video. There are a
lot of tears, and by all accounts, it’s very moving to
watch.
The film-makers imply that what is special about their film
is that it was shot secretly inside Tibet, with real Tibetans
talking. But actually, what is almost unique about it is that
it shows the faces of the interviewees for all the audience
to see. So the filmmakers have made a lot of publicity about
checking the spectators when they enter the showings. They even
have a man with night goggles standing during the show to check
that no-one takes pictures of the film. It all seems really
professional and adds a frisson of real-life danger to the spectators’
experience.
These security measures have gained the documentary a lot of
publicity, and it has had great success on the small film circuit
in the US. Despite the strong reservations expressed by one
Tibet organization — ICT— some other groups have
shown it, and last month it was on in New York. The organizers
did this knowing that dark questions hang over this film, because
some leading human rights experts who attended were asked not
to say anything critical of the film in case they scared off
funders.
The What Remains team are in a long tradition of TV journalists
whose work includes putting Tibetans in danger of their lives.
Vanya Kewley did it first in the UK in 1988, showing faces of
Tibetans whom she said had given consent. She said, just like
her latest imitators, that she had to show their faces on the
screen because the audience wouldn’t fully understand
their feelings unless they could see the eyes of the weeping
interviewees. Off the record, she told me the real story - she
wouldn’t have been able to sell it unless she showed the
interviewees’ faces. Before the broadcast she also published
their photographs in a Sunday colour magazine, which meant that
I failed in my plea to the UK Broadcasting Authorities to get
her film modified for having unnecessarily placed people at
risk. Among the magazine photos was at least one of an interviewee
who hadn’t given permission for his face to be shown,
and another who said he would only be able to leave Tibet that
December — a month after the film was shown.
The Tibetan who was told to arrange Kewley’s two trips
said later that four people had to flee Tibet because of her,
and that on the second trip she had threatened to turn him in
to the police if he didn’t arrange for her to stay in
a Tibetan’s house in Lhasa, even though she had no permit
to be there. There is no confirmation of his accusations - maybe
he’s wrong. But in an op-ed in the UK paper The Independent
written by Kewley to publicise her film, she said that two people
who had sheltered her in Lhasa had been arrested just after
she left their place. She publicly accused them of having revealed
her name to the Chinese. In fact, long after Kewley left, one
of them — Sonam Drolkar - was tortured with electric shock
treatment every second day for six months, which an Amnesty
researcher described as one of the worst cases of non-fatal
torture she had ever heard of in China. Sonam Drolkar later
escaped and is to my mind one of the great unrecognised heroines
of Tibet. But who remembers that film? Or her? Why was it necessary
for her to go through that?
Just last year, a Tibetan man from Nepal returned to Kathmandu
with a story that none of us researchers had heard of. He had
been in prison for four years, and badly tortured, because he
had been caught guiding an inexperienced German woman TV journalist,
Maria Blumencorn, round Tibet while she filmed secret interviews.
He had never wanted to do it, but had been put under heavy pressure
by her and her supporters, in which the name of His Holiness
had been freely used. The woman was present when he was arrested.
But she still toured the film round Europe, apparently without
publicising the arrest. When she was confronted with the news
that her guide had returned and told the truth, she sent him
some money with an apology note. I wonder, how much money is
four years of prison and torture worth? I don’t even know
the name of that film. I am not even sure if it was ever broadcast.
So what have the What Remains people added to this tradition?
Their achievement is a spectacular public relations double whammy:
they persuade the western audiences that they are protecting
their interviewees, while actually doing the opposite. Having
security at the cinemas earned them terrific press coverage,
looks really conscientious, and makes viewers feel important.
But it’s a con. For one thing, I could shoot the entire
film from the audience with a pinhole camera and no-one would
ever know. But that’s not all.
Look at the stories above: many arrests and torture happen
because, while they are in Tibet, the journalists — always
amateur and freelance — lead the Chinese police to their
interviewees and helpers. You think the Chinese can’t
spot an amateur camera crew wandering into Tibetans’ houses
to hold interviews? The real damage is done by going into Tibet
and talking to people there, instead of doing it in India or
Nepal with people who have escaped.
To see the film helps the Chinese police, but it isn’t
essential. And if they didn’t spot the film-makers while
they were in Tibet, then all they need is the film-makers’
names. The name of every hotel guest in Tibet goes onto a police
computer every night, and most can be tracked to see who their
contacts were. If the journalists had really cared about the
safety of their contacts, they wouldn’t have revealed
their names to the public. So one wonders if their career and
fame aren’t the big factors in their decisions.
There are bigger questions too. Is there any connection of
Dharamsala officials with this? How do these journalists get
Tibetans to agree to give consent? In one case a few years ago,
a Tibetan escaped with a story that he had been persuaded by
one American to be filmed in Lhasa because the American said
the film was to be shown to His Holiness and the UN. Apparently
he didn’t mention that it would be broadcast too. But
more likely the filmmakers have a simpler method: they imply
the film will make a difference. They probably do nothing to
dissuade their subjects from thinking that one TV documentary
will change the fate of Tibet and might even make it independent.
You and I know that independence, freedom and even happiness
don’t come from TV shows.
Personally, I suspect that repeated displays of Tibetans weeping
and complaining might even do damage to those outcomes, since
it makes Tibetans look like passive, helpless victims rather
than intelligent planners who could be capable of running their
own country - so it fits rather well with Chinese propaganda.
We also know that journalists who bring home sensational copy
sometimes do very well in their careers. So is this an economic
deal — sell one film for the cost of a few Tibetans? This
kind of product might help Tibet for the few thousand people
who see it and who don’t already know the situation —
that’s possible. But maybe a journalist who can’t
find a way to show the situation in Tibet without sending people
to prison should start taking a closer look at their motives
and ability.
