I just watched a documentary entitled “Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion”, and had a few thoughts. First, if the Dalai Lama thinks Green Day and Richard Gere mean jackshit, he is wrong. He is not practicing Wisdom (Prajhnya, if memory serves).
If he thinks non-violence means jackshit, when the Chinese have installed so many cameras that they can run down any monks who set themselves on fire within three minutes, then he is not practicing wisdom.
Violence sometimes is the answer. Personally, I recognize only three values, and one of them might be called Wisdom. To my mind, compassion is an after-effect of Wisdom. They do not arise together. Compassion is nothing more or less than understanding, of which empathy is an example.
All matters of violence (and of life generally) ultimately involve logistics. What are your resources, what is your ability to deploy them where needed, and how do you get more?
What the answer is in Tibet I cannot say, but it does not seem to me that nearly 40 years of telling the Tibetans to behave has done anything but contribute to their on-going subjugation. I can’t see how you can get worse than mass torture, the maintenance of political prisons, and extrajudicial murder.