World Tibet Network News
Published by the Canada Tibet Committee
Wednesday, March 13, 2002
1. 'Merchants of Morality' (FP)
By Clifford Bob
Foreign Policy Jan-Feb 2002
"Which global injustices gain your sympathy,
attention, and money? Rarely the most deserving. For
every Tibetan monk or Central American indigenous
activist you see on the evening news, countless other
worthy causes languish in obscurity. The groups that
reach the global limelight often do so at dear cost by
distorting their principles and alienating their
constituencies for the sake of appealing to
self-interested donors in rich nations"
For decades, Tibet's quest for self-determination has
roused people around the world. Inspired by appeals to
human rights, cultural preservation, and spiritual
awakening, tens of thousands of individuals and
organizations lend moral, material, and financial
support to the Tibetan cause. As a result, greater
autonomy for Tibet's 5.2 million inhabitants remains a
popular international campaign despite the Chinese
government's 50-year effort to suppress it.
However, while Tibet's light shines brightly abroad,
few outsiders know that China's borders hold other
restive minorities: Mongols, Zhuang, Yi, and Hui, to
name only a few. Notable are the Uighurs, a group of
more than 7 million located northwest of Tibet. Like
the Tibetans, the Uighurs have fought Chinese
domination for centuries. Like the Tibetans, the
Uighurs face threats from Han Chinese in-migration,
communist development policies, and newly strengthened
antiterror measures. And like the Tibetans, the
Uighurs resist Chinese domination with domestic and
international protest that, in Beijing's eyes, makes
them dangerous separatists. Yet the Uighurs have
failed to inspire the broad-based foreign networks
that generously support and bankroll the Tibetans.
International celebrities including actors Richard
Gere and Goldie Hawn, as well as British rock star
Annie Lennox speak out on Tibet's behalf. But no one
is planning an Uighur Freedom Concert in Washington,
D.C. Why?
Optimistic observers posit a global meritocracy of
suffering in which all deserving causes attract
international support. Howard H. Frederick, founder of
the online activist network Peacenet, has argued that
new communications technologies help create global
movements in which individuals rise above personal,
even national self-interest and aspire to common good
solutions to problems that plague the entire planet.
And Allen L. Hammond of the World Resources Institute
recently wrote that the combination of global media,
new technologies, and altruistic nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs) may soon empower the have-nots of
the world, bringing them simple justice by creating a
radical transparency in which no contentious action
would go unnoticed and unpublicized.
But even while a handful of groups such as the
Tibetans have capitalized on the globalization of NGOs
and media to promote their causes, thousands of
equally deserving challengers, such as the Uighurs,
have not found their place in the sun. While the world
now knows about East Timor, similar insurrections in
Indonesian Aceh and Irian Jaya remain largely off the
international radar screen. Among environmental
conflicts, a small number of cases such as the
Brazilian rubber tappers' struggle to save the Amazon,
the conflict over China's Three Gorges Dam, and the
recent fight over the Chad-Cameroon pipeline have
gained global acclaim. But many similar environmental
battles, like the construction of India's Tehri Dam,
the destruction of the Guyanese rain forests, and the
construction of the Trans Thai-Malaysia gas pipeline
are waged in anonymity. Whole categories of other
conflicts such as landlessness in Latin America and
caste discrimination in South Asia go likewise little
not! iced. To groups challenging powerful opponents in
these conflicts, global civil society is not an open
forum marked by altruism, but a harsh, Darwinian
marketplace where legions of desperate groups vie for
scarce attention, sympathy, and money.
In a context where marketing trumps justice, local
challengers-whether environmental groups, labor rights
activists, or independence-minded separatists-face
long odds. Not only do they jostle for attention among
dozens of equally worthy competitors, but they also
confront the pervasive indifference of international
audiences. In addition, they contend against
well-heeled opponents (including repressive
governments, multinational corporations, and
international financial institutions) backed by the
world's top public relations machines. Under pressure
to sell their causes to the rest of the world, local
leaders may end up undermining their original goals or
alienating the domestic constituencies they ostensibly
represent. Moreover, the most democratic and
participatory local movements may garner the least
assistance, since Western NGOs are less likely to
support groups showing internal strife and more
inclined to help a group led by a strong, charismatic
leader. Perhaps most ! troubling of all, the
perpetuation of the myth of an equitable and
beneficent global civil society breeds apathy and
self-satisfaction among the industrialized nations,
resulting in the neglect of worthy causes around the
globe.
Pitching the Product
The ubiquity of conflict worldwide creates fierce
competition for international support. In a 2001
survey, researchers at Leiden University in the
Netherlands and the Institute for International
Mediation and Conflict Resolution in Washington, D.C.,
identified 126 high-intensity conflicts worldwide
(defined as large-scale armed conflicts causing more
than 1,000 deaths from mid-1999 to mid-2000), 78
low-intensity conflicts (100 to 1,000 deaths from
mid-1999 to mid-2000), and 178 violent political
conflicts (less than 100 deaths from mid-1999 to
mid-2000). In these and many other simmering disputes,
weak challengers hope to improve their prospects by
attracting international assistance.
Local movements usually follow two broad marketing
strategies: First, they pitch their causes
internationally to raise awareness about their
conflicts, their opponents, and sometimes their very
existence. Second, challengers universalize their
narrow demands and particularistic identities to
enhance their appeal to global audiences.
Critical to the success of local challengers is access
to major Western NGOs. Many groups from low-profile
countries are ignored in the developed world's key
media centers and therefore have difficulty gaining
visibility among even the most transnational of NGOs.
Moreover, despite the Internet and the much-ballyhooed
"CNN effect," repressive regimes can still obstruct
international media coverage of local conflicts. In
the 1990s, for example, the government of Papua New
Guinea did just that on Bougainville island, site of a
bloody separatist struggle that cost 15,000 lives, or
roughly 10 percent of the island's population. During
an eight-year blockade (1989-97), foreign journalists
could enter the island only under government guard,
while the rebels could dispatch emissaries abroad only
at great risk. India has used similar tactics in
Kashmir, prohibiting independent human rights monitors
from entering the territory and seizing passports of
activists seeking to plead the Ka! shmiri case before
the U.N. General Assembly and other bodies. Less
effectively, Sudan has tried to keep foreigners from
entering the country's vast southern region to report
on the country's 19-year civil war. Even for causes
from "important" countries, media access-and therefore
global attention-remains highly uneven. Money makes a
major difference, allowing wealthier movements to pay
for media events, foreign lobbying trips, and overseas
offices, while others can barely afford places to
meet. For example, long-term support from Portugal
helped the East Timorese eventually catch the world's
attention; other Indonesian separatist movements have
not had such steady friends. And international prizes
such as the Goldman Environmental Prize, the Robert F.
Kennedy Human Rights Award, and the Nobel Peace Prize
have become important vehicles of
internationalization. In addition to augmenting a
leader's resources, these awards raise a cause's
visibility, facilitate invaluable contacts with key
transnational NGOs and media, and result in wider
support. For instance, Mexican "farmer ecologist"
Rodolfo Montiel Flores's receipt of the $125,000
Goldman Prize in 2000 boosted the campaign to rel!
ease him from prison on false charges stemming from
his opposition to local logging practices. Not
surprisingly, such prizes have become the object of
intense salesmanship by local groups and their
international champions.
Local challengers who have knowledge of global NGOs
also have clear advantages. Today's transnational NGO
community displays clear hierarchies of influence and
reputation. Large and powerful organizations such as
Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Greenpeace,
and Friends of the Earth have the resources and
expertise to investigate claims of local groups from
distant places and grant them legitimacy. Knowledge of
these key "gatekeeper" NGOs-their identities, goals,
evidentiary standards, and openness to particular
pitches-is crucial for a local movement struggling to
gain support [see sidebar]. If homegrown knowledge is
scarce, local movements may try to link themselves to
a sympathetic and savvy outsider, such as a visiting
journalist, missionary, or academic. Some Latin
American indigenous groups, including Ecuador's
Huaoroni and Cofán, Brazil's Kayapó, and others, have
benefited from the kindness of such strangers, who
open doors and guide their way among internati! onal
networks.
Small local groups with few connections or resources
have more limited options for raising international
awareness and thus may turn to protest. Yet domestic
demonstrations often go unseen abroad. Only
spectacular episodes-usually violent ones-draw
international media coverage. And since violence is
anathema to powerful international NGOs, local groups
who use force as an attention-grabbing tactic must
carefully limit, justify, and frame it. For example,
the poverty and oppression that underlay the 1994
uprising by Mexico's Zapatista National Liberation
Army went largely unnoticed at home and abroad for
decades. In the face of such indifference, the
previously unknown Zapatistas resorted to arms and
briefly seized the city of San Cristóbal on January 1,
1994. Immediately tarred by the Mexican government as
"terrorists," the Zapatistas in fact carefully
calibrated their use of force, avoiding civilian
casualties and courting the press. Other tactics also
contributed to the Za! patistas' international
support, but without these initial dramatic attacks,
few people beyond Mexico's borders would now know or
care about the struggles of Mexico's indigenous
populations.
The NGO Is Always Right
To improve their chances of gaining support, local
movements also conform themselves to the needs and
expectations of potential backers in Western nations.
They simplify and universalize their claims, making
them relevant to the broader missions and interests of
key global players. In particular, local groups try to
match themselves to the substantive concerns and
organizational imperatives of large transnational
NGOs. Consider Nigeria's Ogoni ethnic group, numbering
perhaps 300,000 to 500,000 people. Like other
minorities in the country's southeastern Niger delta,
the Ogoni have long been at odds with colonial
authorities and national governments over political
representation. In the late 1950s, as Royal
Dutch/Shell and other multinationals began producing
petroleum in the region, the Ogoni claimed that the
Nigerian federal government was siphoning off vast oil
revenues yet returning little to the minorities who
bore the brunt of the drilling's impact. In the early
1990s, an Ogoni movement previously unknown outside
Nigeria sought support from Greenpeace, Amnesty
International, and other major international NGOs.
Initially, these appeals were rejected as
unsubstantiated, overly complex, and too political.
Ogoni leaders responded by downplaying their
contentious claims about minority rights in a poor,
multiethnic developing state and instead highlighting
their environmental grievances, par! ticularly Shell's
"ecological warfare" against the indigenous Ogoni.
Critical to this new emphasis was Ogoni leader Ken
Saro-Wiwa's recognition of "what could be done by an
environment group [in the developed world] to press
demands on government and companies."
The Ogoni's strategic shift quickly led to support
from Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and the Sierra
Club. These and other organizations provided funds and
equipment, confirmed and legitimated Ogoni claims,
denounced the Nigerian dictatorship, boycotted Shell,
and eased Ogoni access to governments and media in
Europe and North America. In the summer of 1993, as
the Ogoni's domestic mobilizations brought harsh
government repression, human rights NGOs also took
notice. The 1994 arrest and 1995 execution of
Saro-Wiwa ultimately made the Ogoni an international
symbol of multinational depredation in the developing
world, but it was their initial repositioning as an
environmental movement that first put them on the
global radar screen. (For its part, Shell countered
with its own spin, attacking Saro-Wiwa's credibility
as a spokesman for his people and denying his
allegations against the company.)
Similar transformations have helped other local causes
make global headway. In drumming up worldwide support
for Guatemala's Marxist insurgency in the 1980s,
activist Rigoberta Menchú projected an indigenous
identity that resonated strongly with left-leaning
audiences in Western Europe and North America. Her
book I, Rigoberta Menchú made her an international
symbol of indigenous oppression, helping her win the
Nobel Peace Prize in 1992, year of the Columbus
quincentenary, despite her association with a violent
rebel movement. As anthropologist David Stoll later
showed, however, Menchú and the guerrillas may have
enjoyed more backing among international solidarity
organizations than among their country's poor and
indigenous peoples. According to Stoll, external
support may have actually delayed the guerrillas'
entry into domestic negotiations by several years,
prolonging the war and costing lives.
Mexico's Zapatistas have also benefited abroad from
their indigenous identity. At the beginning of their
1994 rebellion, the Zapatistas issued a hodgepodge of
demands. Their initial call for socialism was quickly
jettisoned when it failed to catch on with domestic or
international audiences, and their ongoing demands for
Mexican democratization had mainly domestic rather
than international appeal. But it was the Zapatistas'
"Indianness" and their attacks first on the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and then on
globalization that found pay dirt in the international
arena. (Little coincidence that the day they chose to
launch the movement-January 1, 1994-was also the day
NAFTA went into effect.) Once the appeal of these
issues had become clear, they took center stage in the
Zapatistas' contacts with external supporters. Indeed,
the Zapatistas and their masked (non-Indian) leader
Subcomandante Marcos became potent symbols for
antiglobalization activists worldwide. I! n February
and March 2001, when a Zapatista bus caravan traversed
southern Mexico and culminated in a triumphant
reception in the capital's central square, dozens of
Italian tute bianche ("White Overalls"), activists
prominent in antiglobalization protests in Europe,
accompanied the Zapatistas as bodyguards. Even the
French farmer and anti-McDonald's campaigner José Bové
was present to greet Marcos.
Focusing on an internationally known and notorious
enemy (such as globalization or NAFTA) is a
particularly effective way of garnering support. In
recent years, multinational corporations and
international financial institutions have repeatedly
served as stand-ins for obscure or recalcitrant local
enemies. Even when a movement itself is little known,
it can project an effective (if sometimes misleading)
snapshot of its claims by identifying itself as the
anti-McDonald's movement, the anti-Nike movement, or
the anti-Unocal movement. Blaming a villain accessible
in the developed world also forges strong links
between distant social movements and the "service
station on the block," thus inspiring international
solidarity.
Such strategies are not aimed only at potential
supporters on the political left. The recent growth of
a well-funded Christian human rights movement in the
United States and Europe has helped many local groups
around the world. One major beneficiary is John
Garang's Sudan People's Liberation Army, made up
mostly of Christians from southern Sudan fighting
against the country's Muslim-dominated north. Rooted
in ethnic, cultural, and religious differences, the
conflict has been aggravated by disputes over control
of natural resources. Since fighting broke out in
1983, the war has attracted little attention, despite
the deaths of an estimated 2 million people. As late
as September 1999, then Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright reportedly stated that "the human rights
situation in Sudan is not marketable to the American
people." However, in the mid-1990s, "slave
redemptions" (in which organizations like Christian
Solidarity International buy back Christians from
their Muslim ca! ptors) as well as international
activism by Christian human rights organizations began
to raise the conflict's profile. The start of oil
extraction by multinationals provided another hook to
attract concern from mainstream human rights and
environmental organizations. Joined by powerful
African-American politicians in the United States
angered over the slave trade, conservative NGOs have
thrown their support behind Garang's group, thereby
feeding perceptions of the conflict as a simple
Christian-versus-Muslim clash. These NGOs have also
found a receptive audience in the administration of
U.S. President George W. Bush, thus boosting Garang's
chances of reaching a favorable settlement.
By contrast, failure to reframe obscure local issues
(or reframing them around an issue whose time has
passed) can produce international isolation for a
struggling insurgent group. Two years after the
Zapatista attacks, another movement sprang from the
poverty and oppression of southern Mexico, this time
in the state of Guerrero. The Popular Revolutionary
Army attacked several Mexican cities and demanded an
old-style communist revolution. But these rebels drew
little support or attention, particularly in contrast
to the Zapatistas and their fashionable
antiglobalization rhetoric. Meanwhile, Brazil's
Landless Peasants Movement and smaller movements of
the rural poor in Paraguay and Venezuela have suffered
similar fates both because their goals seem out of
step with the times and because their key tactic-land
invasions-is too controversial for many mainstream
international NGOs. In the Niger delta, radical
movements that have resorted to threats, sabotage, and
kidnappings have! also scared off international
support despite the similarity of their grievances to
those of the Ogoni.
Leaders for Sale: If marketing is central to a local
movement's gaining international support, a gifted
salesman, one who identifies himself completely with
his "product," is especially valuable. Many individual
leaders have come to embody their movements: Myanmar's
(Burma) Aung San Suu Kyi, South Africa's Nelson
Mandela, as well as the Dalai Lama, Menchú, and
Marcos. Even when known abroad only through media
images, such leaders can make a host of abstract
issues seem personal and concrete, thus multiplying a
movement's potential support. For this reason,
international tours have long been a central strategy
for domestic activists. In the late-19th and
early-20th centuries, for example, Sun Yat-sen
crisscrossed the world seeking support for a
nationalist revolution in China. Attracting
international notice when he was briefly kidnapped by
the Manchus in London, Sun found himself in Denver,
Colorado, on another lobbying trip when the revolution
finally came in 1911. Today, f! or well-supported
insurgents, such roadshows are highly choreographed,
with hard-charging promoters; tight schedules in
government, media, and NGO offices; and a string of
appearances in churches, college lecture halls, and
community centers. In November 2001, for example,
Oronto Douglas, a leader of Nigeria's Ijaw minority,
embarked on a six-city, seven-day tour throughout
Canada, where he promoted the Ijaw cause along with
his new Sierra Club book Where Vultures Feast: Shell,
Human Rights, and Oil in the Niger Delta.
What transforms insurgent leaders into international
icons? Eloquence, energy, courage, and
single-mindedness can undeniably create a charismatic
mystique. But transnational charisma also hinges on a
host of pedestrian factors that are nonetheless
unusual among oppressed groups. Fluency in a key
foreign language, especially English; an understanding
of Western protest traditions; familiarity with the
international political vogue; and expertise in media
and NGO relations-all these factors are essential to
giving leaders the chance to display their more
ineffable qualities. Would the Dalai Lama appear as
charismatic through a translator? For his part,
Subcomandante Marcos has long insisted that he is but
an ordinary man, whose way with words just happened to
strike a responsive chord at an opportune moment.
Most of these prosaic characteristics are learned, not
innate. Indeed, many NGOs now offer training programs
to build advocacy capacity, establish contacts, and
develop media smarts. The Unrepresented Nations and
Peoples Organization in the Hague regularly holds
intensive, week-long media and diplomacy training
sessions for its member "nations," replete with role
plays and mock interviews, helping them put their best
foot forward in crucial venues. (Among others, Ken
Saro-Wiwa praised the program for teaching him
nonviolent direct action skills.) One of the most
elaborate programs is the Washington, D.C.-based
International Human Rights Law Group's two-year
Advocacy Bridge Program, which aims to "increase the
skills of local activists to amplify their issues of
concern globally" and to "facilitate their access to
international agenda-setting venues." Under the
program, dozens of participants from around the world,
chosen to ensure equal participation by women, travel
to Wash! ington for one week of initial training and
then to Geneva for three weeks of on-site work at the
U.N. Human Rights Commission. In their second year,
"graduates" help train a new crop of participants.
Successful insurgent leaders therefore often look
surprisingly like the audiences they seek to capture,
and quite different from their downtrodden domestic
constituencies. Major international NGOs often look
for a figure who neatly embodies their own ideals,
meets the pragmatic requirements of a "test case," or
fulfills romantic Western notions of rebellion-in
short, a leader who seems to mirror their own central
values. Other leaders, deaf to the international
zeitgeist or simply unwilling to adapt, remain
friendless and underfunded.
The High Price of Success: Many observers have
trumpeted global civil society as the great last hope
of the world's have-nots. Yet from the standpoint of
local challengers seeking international support, the
reality is bleak. The international media is often
myopic: Conflicts attract meager reporting unless they
have clear relevance, major importance, or huge death
tolls. Technology's promise also remains unfulfilled.
Video cameras, Web access, and cellular phones are
still beyond the reach of impoverished local
challengers. Even if the vision of "radical
transparency" were realized-and if contenders involved
in messy political wrangles in fact desired complete
openness-international audiences, flooded with images
and appeals, would have to make painful choices. Which
groups deserve support? Which causes are more "worthy"
than others? Powerful transnational NGOs, emblematic
of global civil society, also display serious
limitations. While altruism plays some role in their
decision making, NGOs are strategic actors who seek
first and foremost their own organizational survival.
At times this priority jibes nicely with the interests
of local clients in far-flung locations, but often it
does not. When selecting clients from a multitude of
deserving applicants, NGOs must be hard-nosed,
avoiding commitments that will harm their reputations
or absorb excessive resources. Their own goals,
tactics, constituencies, and bottom lines constantly
shape their approaches. Inevitably, many deserving
causes go unsupported.
Unfortunately, the least participatory local movements
may experience the greatest ease in winning foreign
backing. Charismatic leadership is not necessarily
democratic, for instance, yet external support will
often strengthen a local leader's position, reshaping
the movement's internal dynamics as well as its
relations with opponents. Among some Tibetan
communities today, there are rumblings of discontent
over the Dalai Lama's religiously legitimated
leadership, but his stature has been so bolstered by
international support that dissident elements are
effectively powerless. Indeed, any internal dissent-if
visible to outsiders-will often reduce international
interest. NGOs want their scarce resources to be used
effectively. If they see discord instead of unity,
they may take their money and clout elsewhere rather
than risk wasting them on internal disputes.
The Internet sometimes exacerbates this problem:
Internecine feuds played out on public listservs and
chat rooms may alienate foreign supporters, as has
happened with some members of the pro-Ogoni networks.
And although much has been made about how deftly the
Zapatistas used the Internet to get their message out,
dozens of other insurgents, from Ethiopia's Oromo
Liberation Front to the Western Sahara's Polisario
Front have Web sites and use e-mail. Yet they have
failed to spark widespread international enthusiasm.
As the Web site for Indonesia's Papua Freedom
Organization laments, "We have struggled for more than
30 years, and the world has ignored our cause."
Crucial in the Zapatistas' case was the appeal of
their message (and masked messenger) to international
solidarity activists, who used new technologies to
promote the cause to broader audiences. In fact, for
most of their conflict with the Mexican government,
the Zapatistas have not had direct access to the
Internet. I! nstead, they have sent communiqués by
hand to sympathetic journalists and activists who then
publish them and put them on the Web. Thus the
Zapatistas' seemingly sophisticated use of the
Internet has been more a result of their appeal to a
core group of supporters than a cause of their
international backing.
Perhaps most worrisome, the pressure to conform to the
needs of international NGOs can undermine the original
goals of local movements. By the time the Ogoni had
gained worldwide exposure, some of their backers in
the indigenous rights community were shaking their
heads at how the movement's original demands for
political autonomy had gone understated abroad
compared to environmental and human rights issues. The
need for local groups to click with trendy
international issues fosters a homogeneity of
humanitarianism: Unfashionable, complex, or
intractable conflicts fester in isolation, while those
that match or-thanks to savvy marketing-appear to
match international issues of the moment attract
disproportionate support. Moreover, the effort to
please international patrons can estrange a movement's
jet-setting elite from its mass base or leave it
unprepared for domestic responsibilities. As one East
Timorese leader stated after international pressure
moved the territory close ! to independence, "We have
been so focused on raising public awareness about our
cause that we didn't seriously think about the
structure of a government."
The quest for international support may also be
dangerous domestically. To gain attention may require
risky confrontations with opponents. Yet few
international NGOs can guarantee a local movement's
security, leaving it vulnerable to the attacks of
enraged authorities. If a movement's opponent is
receptive to rhetorical pressure, the group may be
saved, as the Zapatistas were. If not, it will likely
face its enemies alone. The NATO intervention in
Kosovo provides a rare exception. But few challengers
have opponents as notorious and strategically
inconvenient as Slobodan Milosevic. Even in that case,
Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova's nonviolent strategies
met years of international inaction and neglect; only
when the Kosovo Liberation Army brought the wrath of
Yugoslavia down on Kosovo and after Milosevic thumbed
his nose at NATO did the intervention begin.
Historically, desperate local groups have often sought
support from allies abroad. Given geographical
distance as well as political and cultural divides,
they have been forced to market themselves. This was
true not only in the Chinese Revolution but also in
the Spanish Civil War, the Indian nationalist
movement, and countless Cold War struggles. But the
much-vaunted emergence of a global civil society was
supposed to change all that, as the power of
technologies meshed seamlessly with the good
intentions of NGOs to offset the callous self-interest
of states and the blithe indifference of faraway
publics.
But for all the progress in this direction, an open
and democratic global civil society remains a myth,
and a potentially deadly one. Lost in a
self-congratulatory haze, international audiences in
the developed world all too readily believe in this
myth and in the power and infallibility of their own
good intentions. Meanwhile, the grim realities of the
global morality market leave many local aspirants
helpless and neglected, painfully aware of
international opportunities but lacking the resources,
connections, or know-how needed to tap them.
(Clifford Bob is an assistant professor of political
science at Duquesne University)
Articles in this Issue:
'Merchants of Morality' (FP)
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