The Border Issues
The Age
Tuesday June 5, 2007
Stateless people need more than a one-size-fits-all passport.
A PASSPORT is a beautiful thing. If you have one, take it out of that safe place and kiss it, because you don't know how precious it is until you can't get one. A passport is also a privilege - were we not all slightly shaken when the Prime Minister said he could stop the cricketers going to Zimbabwe by taking their passports? I haven't had a passport for 10 years, because I spent so many years travelling that my greatest pleasure now is to watch my vegetable garden grow.The Queen does not have a passport because they are issued in her name. The Dalai Lama does not have a passport because he is a stateless person. When he travels he carries a certificate of identity (IC) issued by the Indian Home Ministry, which must be renewed every two years. It is a yellow passport- size document of just five pages, which, when you travel as often as he does, quickly get used up.Quite often passport control in various countries like to see when a person on an IC last entered their country, so the last IC gets stapled onto the back of the new one.Frequent travellers need several ICs stapled together and it is very possible that the Dalai Lama's IC looks like a small yellow brick.The Dalai Lama does not have to endure the numbing bureaucratic trials other Indian IC applicants must face but like them his IC must bear a NORI (no objection to return to India) stamp and is a cutting reminder of their international status.Canada offered the Dalai Lama honorary citizenship but he prefers to be one with his people.The thousands of Tibetan refugees braving the hardships of fleeing that violently abused country and arriving in Nepal all want to go to Dharamsala in India, to be near His Holiness. Until recently the Nepalese Government packed them into buses with a group permit, which was taken off them at the Indian border. Now they receive an entry permit from the Indian embassy in Kathmandu that allows them only a few days in the country.They may also receive a card stating, "The holder of this card is a person of concern to the UNHCR". However, these are not always available, do not carry the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees logo and are often forged.In his suitcase the Dalai Lama carries the Tibetan texts from which he will teach. These long, loose-leaf books, called pecha, are wrapped in coloured cloth or brocade. I once had the pleasure of photographing the contents of one well-known and much-travelled Tibetan monk's suitcase - a rainbow of at least 100 such texts. His suitcases are famously heavy.I have seen the Dalai Lama many times and not once was he wearing Gucci shoes, though Rupert Murdoch's bitter line certainly has media traction. Like all monks, the Dalai Lama owns only 13 articles and considers additional items the property of his abbot.It is only correct that in a democracy public figures are subject to scrutiny but there is a particular flavour of ridicule apportioned religious leaders - especially one who has antagonised the greatest economic force in the world today - of which we can only expect to see more when the Dalai Lama arrives in Melbourne on Thursday.
© 2007 The Age