While some people might argue that most young people can't even find Tibet on a map, more than 160,000 of them gathered to watch the best in hip-hop, British rock, jazz and even reggae performed for this mountainous country nestled in the Himalayas.
The Third Tibetan Freedom Concert, June 13-14 at RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C., drew the best talent of all the music festivals this summer in a two-day benefit concert and rally in the nation's capital.But what do the Beastie Boys, R.E.M., Sean Lennon, A Tribe Called Quest, Pearl Jam and Wyclef Jean have in connection with Tibet? The answer came from Radiohead's Thom York, who told the crowd that "there's lots of crack reasons to be a rock star. This is a good one."
Of course, the overall purpose of the Tibetan Freedom Concert is to free Tibet from the province's near 50-year occupation by the Chinese government. This year's festival had three main goals. First, the festival aims to organize Students for a Free Tibet chapters on high school and college campuses throughout the nation. Second, organizers hope to educate the public on the Tibetan struggle, and finally to place pressure on elected officials.
Because of President Clinton's trip to China, this last goal was the main focus of 1998's benefit.
This year's benefit is a result of the cooperative efforts of three groups: the Miarepa Fund, an organization co-founded by Beastie Boys main man Adam Yauch and Erin Potts, the International Campaign for Tibet - a group that boasts Richard Gere as chairman - and Students for a Free Tibet. All three organizations promoted the benefit concert and the rally that followed.
Besides listening to performing artists, concertgoers heard from several activists in the foray of the Tibetan movement. Palden Gyatso, a prisoner for 33 years in the Chinese concentration camps of Tibet, waved documents of imprisonment to the crowd as he spoke with false teeth in his hands.
Gyatso lost his teeth as a result of continuous torture from electric cattle-prods in the camp. Gyatso also related stories of female sexual torture with the same electric cattle-prods and recalled the ever-worsening conditions Tibetan monks and nuns face in Chinese concentration camps.
Chinese activists also attended. Recently released political prisoner Wei Jingsheng called for action in Tibet. "Nobody can be silent in the face of such atrocities."
Wei extended a call to the international community, saying, "These problems exist for all of humanity - all of humanity must solve these problems." When asked if the young people at the concert were there for the music or the cause, Wei said, "If you remind them, you have an effect of making them more intelligent."
Tashi Rabgey, a graduate student at Harvard and the only Tibetan Rhodes Scholar, referred to Tibet as "the largest remaining province in the world." She noted that 490 missile sites dot the Tibetan landscape. The senior minister of the Tibetan government in exile in India asked Chinese President Jiang Zemin to sit down with the Dahli Lama and negotiate for a peaceful solution to the problem.
The benefit's artists were less eloquent. Mixing disconnected views of anti-technology and colonization, York argued, "If we carry on like this until the end of the 20th century, then God help us."
Some were more direct. The articulate Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys claimed that President Clinton was stonewalling on the Tibet issue because of contributions from China and U.S. corporations.
Self-proclaimed "edutainer" Kris, from the hip-hop group KRS-ONE, said that he was performing at the Tibet Freedom Concert to "represent the other side - the China side." Telling the media the festival was orchestrated by CIA officials and that he was being trailed by agents from the FBI, Kris spoke of taking political actions like this as a way of "decriminalizing hip-hop."
Although it was obvious concertgoers were more interested in the music than the political issues, the fans must have received some message simply by staring at the enormous Tibetan flag that graced the background of every performance.
Thousands of postcards were signed to deliver to Clinton and Zemin to protest the Tibetan occupation, thanks to hundreds of volunteers who traveled from all over the country to help out.
Although the concert won't lead to immediate freedom for Tibet, it raises enough funds to power the three groups for two or three more years. More importantly, the festival hopefully raised the plight of the Tibetans in the minds of both concertgoers and artists. Cleverly analyzing the state of rock in this decade, York closed his performance by saying, "Rock stars don't have much of a moral high ground. But in this case they do."
For information on the Tibet movement, to get involved or start a Students for a Free Tibet chapter on your campus, call 1-888-738-4238, e-mail ustcsft@igc.apc.org or visit: (www.tibet.org) or (www.milarepa.org).