Tibet – Exiles
17.46 – June 1998
Dawn over monastery in Ladakh START ALMOST SILENT WITH DAWN SHOTS? (01.00.00.00)
If you want to know what Tibet was like before the Chinese came, the best place to go is not in Tibet at all. (00.05)
CONCH-SHELL BLOWERS BLOWING HORN BLOWING
MAP – TIBET AND INDIA HORN BLOWING CONTINUES
TIGHTER SHOT HIMALAYAN REGION THROUGH MAP – mix to cymbals etc.
SHOWING NEPAL AND NORTH INDIA
WITH DELHI.
HIGHLIGHT LADAKH PROVINCE.
EXT. MONASTERY BETWEEN STUPAS HORNS AND CYMBALS FROM AROUND 03.14.04
CHANTING
INTERIOR PRAYING SCENES (00.39) Every morning, just after dawn, the monks of Thikse Monastery gather in one of its many temples, to chant the prayers that monks have been chanting in the Himalayas for more than one thousand years.
MUSIC BURST
TEA POURING (01.01) They are not Tibetans, but Ladakhis. Their homeland is within the borders of India. But their language is a dialect of Tibetan, their religion is Tibetan Buddhism.
BUDDHA IMAGE And the Dalai Lama, the God-King of Tibet,
BACK TO MONKS is their spiritual leader too.
PRETTY LAKE (01.23) But there are Tibetans living here, people who followed the Dalai Lama into exile in 1959, and have been here ever since.
PLOUGHING FIELDS FX PLOUGHING/SINGING
Of the hundred thousand Tibetan exiles in India, the seven thousand or so who’ve settled in Ladakh have had to change their ways the least.
PLOUGHING CONT. This is the just the way they sowed their barley in the fields outside Lhasa, before the Chinese came.
SHORT BURST SINGING/FX
(01.56) The Chinese say that they liberated a land of impoverished serfs, exploited by a hundred thousand idle monks and nuns.
In good Marxist eyes, the Chinese were right – but the Tibetans of Ladakh don’t remember it that way.
OLD WOMAN IN VISION: SUB-TITLES:
NO NAME SUPERS (02.13)
We’re happy here in India, but we don’t
have our own country.
We’re
getting older by the year, but I dream that my children will go home
I’d
like them to walk down hills and cross the rivers we used to know.
CUT TO OLD MAN I always dream of going back to Tibet
SIDE-ON 2 SHOT OF OLD PEOPLE (02.36) But if Thangchub Wangmo and Dhondup ever do return, will the Tibet they find resemble the land that they left behind?
LADAKH – CHOTENS IN LANDSCAPE (02.48) Ladakh today, like the old Tibet, is a place where religion, land and people seem so seamlessly interwoven that the work of human beings seem to grow out of the ground itself.
PTC (03.01) JH TO CAMERA
You
can see here how a Tibetan monk has laboriously carved a mantra into this
stone. There’s another stone with another mantra here. And another one here. In
fact this entire wall is covered in stones, each one
with a mantra carved into it. It’s a vivid example of the extraordinary power
and longevity of Tibetan Buddhism – and here in Ladakh
these walls are still being added to stone by stone. But in Tibet itself, the
exiles say, there may soon be nothing left but walls, and ruins, and a few
museums left. The living culture, they say, is being strangled to death.
REFUGEES UP STREET TO HOSTEL (03.41) There’s a constant flow of news from across the Himalayas.
Every week, a new batch of refugees arrives at the Tibetan clearing centres.
INTERIOR HOSTEL Some as young as six or seven years old, they have struggled over the high mountain passes into Nepal, and on to India.
OFFICIAL IN
VISION WELCOMING OFFICIAL:
NO NAME SUPER SUBTITLES
(04.00) Now rest, eat well, become healthy and fat…
REFFOS LISTENING
… so when you got
to school you will do well.
REFUGEES IN HOSTEL. (04.10) Most of the youngest refugees have been sent out by their parents, to get the education which they can’t get in Chinese Tibet. It may be years – if ever – before they see their families again.
TOP SHOT GROUP TALKING TO ME Many of the others are monks who could no longer stomach the Chinese dominance of their religion.
YOUNG MAN ON
LEFT SUB-TITLES:
No name super (04.29)
All the Tibetans have faith in and support
the Dalai Lama
but
the Chinese are telling all the monks and nuns to oppose him
MONK IN ROBE
(FIRST GRAB) (04.41)
The monks who don’t comply with what they
are forcing us to do
…are removed from the monasteries
and quite a
number are imprisoned.
OTHERS LISTENING, ME LISTENING, ETC (04.55) Lodde Himself was kept in police cells for six months, he told me.
MONK IN ROBE
CONTD SUBTITLES
NO NAME
SUPER They locked us in the cells for 24 hours a
day. The food was very bad
They
interrogated us all the time.
They used
electric cattle prods on people, and made them stand naked
...they beat
them and then poured ice-cold water over them
and many other
methods of torture
LODO GOES ON TALKING, CUT TO OTHER FACES Then for two years Lodde worked in a labour camp, where he claimed the monks and nuns were over worked and underfed. After his release he managed to escape over the mountains.
MAN IN RED SHIRT (05.25) Lodde’s friend Yeshi Gyaltsen was scornful of the Chinese claim that ordinary Tibetans are better off under Chinese rule.
MAN IN RED SHIRT SUBTITLES
(05.31) The situation hasn’t improved – the Chinese are lying.
They give
nothing, they just take.
In
the villages, if there is a good harvest,
there
might be 300 Kilos of wheat per person,
This line comes
when he holds up one finger but a hundred will be taken by the Chinese authorities.
(6.05) The Chinese have brought only suffering, and none of the benefits they
claim.
DEMONSTRATORS MARCHING CHANTING
They’ve travelled for two days by train from the far north-east of India
Now, outside the UN building in New Delhi, they’re making their voices heard…
TO THE DEMONSTRATORS OUTSIDE
UN BUILDING: (06.19) Tibetan exiles from every corner of the country have been flocking to Delhi for weeks, to support a hunger strike organised by the Tibetan Youth Congress.
SINGING OR CHANTING
(06.44) There’s a sense in the exile community that after forty years, time for Tibet is running out
NAME SUPER:
TSETEN NORBU
Pres, Tibetan
Youth Congress (06.55)
Inside occupied Tibet things are getting
worse and worse each passing day. The migration or government sponsored
migration of Chinese people is making the Tibetan people themselves a minority
people inside Tibet, and on that the government policy, the Chinese government
policy, is to destroy the Tibetan people as a race, as a country, as a nation.
DEMONSTRATORS START TO ARRIVE,
START CIRCLING THOPTEN SHRINE (07.25) The demonstration over, the hoarse protestors make their way to the hunger strike headquarters, a streetside encampment where a shrine has been erected to the memory of Thopten Ngodup.
PIC THOPTEN, PAN TO WOMAN CRYING
PRAYER CHANTING AT SHRINE
PRAYING, CANDLES ETC (07.43) On the 29th of April, after 47 days without food, the first six hunger strikers were forcibly taken to hospital by Indian police. Thopten was one of six more Tibetans standing by to continue the strike – but privately, he’d decided on more drastic action.
THOPTEN BURNING BURNING FX
DATE SUPER: 29th April 1998 (08.17) Thopten Ngodup died within hours. His self-immolation galvanised
the world media, as it was supposed to do.
TSETEN AND ME
INSIDE TENT (08.27) MAYBE SNATCH TSETEN TO ME:
Right
now we have five people here this is the second bunch
of hunger strikers…
Gruesome as it was, the Tibetan Youth Congress fully supported Thopten’s martyrdom.
HUNGER STRIKERS’ C/Us The second batch of hunger strikers were into their 14th day without food when I visited.
JH TO HUNGER STRIKER TIBETAN SPEECH
NO SUBTITLES – USE SYNC TRANS Tseten translates: He
says he wants to sacrifice himself for his goal, so he is happy to take part in
this program.
CONTINUE SHOT TO: Yes
he can do it.
MORE STRIKERS’ C/Us (08.32) To the Dalai Lama, suicide is violence to the self
INSIDE HUNGER STRIKE TENT –
THOPTEN’S EMPTY BED AND PIX The hunger strike – and even more, Thopten Ngodup’s self-immolation were a direct challenge by the Tibetan Youth Congress to His Holiness’ Middle Way of non-violent, peaceful negotiation
REPEAT NAME SUPER? TSETEN AROUND 02.01.02
TSETEN NORBU; President,
Tibetan Youth Congress (08.49) many countries, many freedom struggle fighters,
or nations who have fought, they have gained independence using many other
available means, but Tibetans remain peaceful and we tried to be peaceful until
today but we are very very far away from our goal.
TSETEN IN
VISION and future generations will say look at the
Tibetans, they followed a non-violent path and they lost so it’s bullshit, you
try your way.
DRIVING UP ROAD TO DHARAMSALA HARD CU TO TRUCK NOISE AND HORN
JH IN CAR (09.23) To discover just how radical such ideas are, you have to travel to the heartland of the Tibetan exiles’ world:
CAR CROSSING BRIDGE not Ladakh or New Delhi, but the town of Dharamsala, in the foothills of the Himalayas in the far north-west of India
Main square dharamasala (09.42) This is the town where the Indian government ensconced the Dalai Lama when he fled Tibet in 1959.
HIPPIES IN MAIN SQUARE (09.50) Ever since the sixties, it’s been a favourite destination for Western seekers after spiritual enlightenment and the mystic spirituality of the East.
BUDDHIST CEREMONY – MONKS CHANTING (10.14) At the spanking new Namgyam monastery near the
ABBOTS PRAYING (No Westerners YET) Dalai Lama’s house, the monks that mark the Buddhist calendar with the complex rituals that evolved over more than a thousand years of seclusion behind the Himalayas.
PROCESSION OF MONKS CYMBALS, BAND, ACTUALITY
FOREIGNERS TAKING PIX
WESTERNERS MEDITATING (10.34) The foreigners are not resented: much of the support Tibetans have been able to garner in the West has been generated by visitors like these – disciples of the Buddhist creed of love and peace and compassion.
BACK TO ABBOT CHUCKING INCENSE ON FIRE (10.48) But some Tibetans do resent the notion that their country was some perpetual Shangri-La.
PAN WITH BIRD FROM MOUNTAIN TO SATELLITE DISH (11.00) From a tiny set of offices in Dharmasala, for example, the Amnemache Institute analyses military and economic trends in China – now, and in the past. Between 1912 and 1950, when Tibet was independent,
JAMYAM ON COMPUTER says director Jamyam Norbu, it was a small but modern army that kept the Chinese out.
NAME SUPER: JAMYAM INTERVIEW:
JAMAM NORBU IN:
Amnemache Institute (11.18)
everybody knows that to a certain extent
it wasn’t just prayers and poojas and the blessings of holy men that kept our
country free, it was through rifles and the courage of soldiers and warriors
that did it… so that is part… but the troubles is that in the West people don’t
want to hear that part of Tibetan history although its
there and its obvious, and they want to in some ways idealise Tibetans as these
very peaceful hobbit-like characters living in the mountains which is totally untrue.
MONKS DEBATING (11.51) Every morning in the monastery courtyard, novice monks practice the ancient art of the theological debate.
DEBATING FX
(12.01) But not every Tibetan, says Jamyam, wants to be a monk. And not every Tibetan believes that preserving Buddhist culture should be the top priority.
MONKS CONTD JAMYAM VOICEOVER
(12.12)
Tibetans first and foremost don’t need
world peace. They need their country back.
JAMYAM IN
VISION we are not saints, we do not claim to be
saints, we are ordinary Tibetans, we have to pay back
the taxes, we have to pick up the shit, we have to defend the frontiers, we are
the ones with the wife and the wailing screaming kids and you know that whole
messy life that you have to lead.
Noddy
Back to Jamyam (12.36)
when you’re a layman you need that land,
you need Tibet, if you don’t have that land if you don’t have control over your
life men end up becoming
DRUNK TIBETAN
IN STREET alcoholics and beating their children and
beating their wives as many many other//indigenous
people all over the world have unfortunately done.// I
do not want to see my society go down that unfortunate path.
OLD PEOPLE PRAYING NATSOT PRAYING
(13.12) The Dalai Lama is away in America. For two hours this afternoon, a hundred or so devout Tibetans gather in the community centre to pray for his safety
NATSOT
(13.27) They’ll be back tomorrow, and every other day until their god-king returns to them.
PAN FROM PIC OF DALAI LAMA TO But when they’ve gone, at 6 o’clock, a very different group – with a much
SCHWARZENEGGER PIC more defiant outlook – will take over the centre.
KICKBOXING FX KICKBOXING
RANGZEN YAK POSTER - (13.46) The Rangzen Yaks is a youth club formed by Jamyam Norbu. Rangzen means Independence – and there are plenty of young Tibetans, Jamyam believes, who are ready and willing to fight for it.
KIDS AND JAMYAM WEIGHT TRAINING JAMYAM VOICEOVER FROM 09.29.48.
AND EXERCISING
(14.00)
I think what a lot of these young people
need more than anything is the feeling of being needed by their society and by
their country, (CUT TO) but yet they do not see any
call, a lot of them feel very upset by it,
V/OVER CONTD
(14.17)
you just can’t fob them off all the time
by saying just be good and listen to your elders, be subservient to the Dalai
Lama, say your prayers, do your mantras, be good. Who wants to hear this
anymore?
NAME SUPER MUSCLE MAN:
(14.32)
Most of the younger Tibetans have this ? that they want to get their country back through some
physical activities.
CUT TO YELLOW T SHIRT:
Most of the youngsters have already trained,
they are more or less ready for anything. We want to
pinch. When you get pinched on your skin it hurts – we want to do that. We want
to do something
W/S JH AND KIDS JH QUESTION
(14.59)
His Holiness is never going to agree to
violent methods I mean we know that about his, where does that leave you?
YOUNG TIBETANS IN GYM CONTD. CANADIAN GUY:
That leaves a contradiction I guess against the
Dalai Lama, but it’s to a point where the anxiety and the angst you know the
feelings like that each generation is getting less and less like Tibetans, the
more we stay in India the more we get like Indians, the more we stay in Canada or
Australia or wherever – (YELLOW GUY) we are losing all you know. We want to be
as fast as we can you know – otherwise we lose everything.
TIBETAN TEACHER AND KIDS IN CLASSROOM NATSOT TEACHER
(15.31) For forty years, the Tibtan community in Dharamsala has seen its main job as keeping alive the Tibetan language, culture and religion, until, some time, the great wheel turns, and it can take its living treasures home.
KIDS WRITING ON BLACKBOARD
PAN FROM CLASSROOM TO NOTICEBOARD (15.51) But the response among the exiles to the hunger strike in Delhi is just one sign the Dalai Lama’s calls for peace, and patience, are wearing thin.
Repeat name super: we get a lot of letters from Tibet, from
inside Tibet, and also from outside”
TSETEN NORBU Tibet, from the Tibetan exiles, asking the question from the TYC leadership,
Tibetan Youth
Congress saying, “How long can we go like this?
CUT TO
(16.14)
we did not come here to preach
non-violence we did not come here to teach our religious teachings, of course
that is part of our tradition, we do that, that’s fine, l but our primary goal
and the basic reason we are here as refugees is to go back to a free Tibet and
we are fighting for a free Tibet, so if we could not gain that from non-violent
methods then future generations will certainly think otherwise.
CANDLELIGHT MARCH in Ladakh (16.50) Back in Ladakh, each week while the hunger strike was on, the Tibetans carried candles through the streets of Leh, the capital, to honour the would-be martyrs.
SUBTITLE SONG SUBTITLES
(one line of song per subtitle) A sense of compassion
Let it be born in one’s heart
Once
it’s born, let it not fade away
Let
it spread wider and wider
MARCH CONTINUES (17.16) But, unless it gets some response, the compassion of the Tibetan exiles may indeed soon fade away.
MARCH CONTINUES A resort to armed force against the right of China, most admit, would be little more than a futile gesture.
But better, some now believe, than submissively watching and praying, while their country fades away
ENDS