A Sledge Hammer for a Knat

Festival-goers ordered to wear fur or face fines as China flouts Dalai Lama’s ruling

The question of whether to wear traditional fur was sparked by the Dalai Lama last year. He told Tibetans who gathered for a Buddhist festival that he was ashamed of photographs showing his people dressed in robes decorated with tiger skins and other animal pelts. Within days people across the Himalayan region began to set alight mounds of fur-trimmed chubas.

Chinese officials were furious. The display of obedience by ordinary Tibetans to the Buddhist monk, exiled in India since fleeing amid an abortive anti-Chinese uprising in 1959, shocked the authorities, denting their increasing confidence about having established control over the restive region.

The Communist rulers are swift to respond to displays of loyalty to the Nobel peace laureate. His picture is banned. Officials accuse him of seeking independence for his homeland under the pretence of autonomy.

China’s response to his order was not without irony. Officials had been pursuing a policy of trying to discourage Tibetans from wearing their traditional dress as a way of stemming the trade in skins. But the priority for authorities in Yushu county was to counter the Dalai Lama. So they told locals that they must wear skins.

This type of nonsense snags the Chinese government every time. Officials can't resist the opportunity to overreact and cause a huge scene where none existed before. They just gave Richard Gere and Madonna something to do over the weekend.