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(updated and expanded version,
January 2007)
I. For Lords and Lamas
Along with the blood drenched landscape of religious conflict there is the experience of inner peace and solace that every religion promises, none more so than Buddhism. Standing in marked contrast to the intolerant savagery of other religions, Buddhism is neither fanatical nor dogmatic--so say its adherents. For many of them Buddhism is less a theology and more a meditative and investigative discipline intended to promote an inner harmony and enlightenment while directing us to a path of right living. Generally, the spiritual focus is not only on oneself but on the welfare of others. One tries to put aside egoistic pursuits and gain a deeper understanding of one's connection to all people and things. "Socially engaged Buddhism" tries to blend individual liberation with responsible social action in order to build an enlightened society.
A glance at history, however, reveals that not all the many and widely varying forms of Buddhism have been free of doctrinal fanaticism, nor free of the violent and exploitative pursuits so characteristic of other religions. In Sri Lanka there is a legendary and almost sacred recorded history about the triumphant battles waged by Buddhist kings of yore. During the twentieth century, Buddhists clashed violently with each other and with non-Buddhists in Thailand, Burma, Korea, Japan, India, and elsewhere. In Sri Lanka, armed battles between Buddhist Sinhalese and Hindu Tamils have taken many lives on both sides. In 1998 the U.S. State Department listed thirty of the world's most violent and dangerous extremist groups. Over half of them were religious, specifically Muslim, Jewish, and Buddhist. 1
In South Korea, in 1998, thousands of monks of the Chogye Buddhist order fought each other with fists, rocks, fire-bombs, and clubs, in pitched battles that went on for weeks. They were vying for control of the order, the largest in South Korea, with its annual budget of $9.2 million, its millions of dollars worth of property, and the privilege of appointing 1,700 monks to various offices. The brawls damaged the main Buddhist sanctuaries and left dozens of monks injured, some seriously. The Korean public appeared to disdain both factions, feeling that no matter what side took control, "it would use worshippers' donations for luxurious houses and expensive cars." 2
As with any religion, squabbles between or within Buddhist sects are often fueled by the material corruption and personal deficiencies of the leadership. For example, in Nagano, Japan, at Zenkoji, the prestigious complex of temples that has hosted Buddhist sects for more than 1,400 years, "a nasty battle" arose between Komatsu the chief priest and the Tacchu, a group of temples nominally under the chief priest's sway. The Tacchu monks accused Komatsu of selling writings and drawings under the temple's name for his own gain. They also were appalled by the frequency with which he was seen in the company of women. Komatsu in turn sought to isolate and punish monks who were critical of his leadership. The conflict lasted some five years and made it into the courts. 3
But what of Tibetan Buddhism? Is it not an exception to this sort of strife? And what of the society it helped to create? Many Buddhists maintain that, before the Chinese crackdown in 1959, old Tibet was a spiritually oriented kingdom free from the egotistical lifestyles, empty materialism, and corrupting vices that beset modern industrialized society. Western news media, travel books, novels, and Hollywood films have portrayed the Tibetan theocracy as a veritable Shangri-La. The Dalai Lama himself stated that "the pervasive influence of Buddhism" in Tibet, "amid the wide open spaces of an unspoiled environment resulted in a society dedicated to peace and harmony. We enjoyed freedom and contentment." 4
A reading of Tibet's history suggests a somewhat different picture. "Religious conflict was commonplace in old Tibet," writes one western Buddhist practitioner. "History belies the Shangri-La image of Tibetan lamas and their followers living together in mutual tolerance and nonviolent goodwill. Indeed, the situation was quite different. Old Tibet was much more like Europe during the religious wars of the Counterreformation." 5 In the thirteenth century, Emperor Kublai Khan created the first Grand Lama, who was to preside over all the other lamas as might a pope over his bishops. Several centuries later, the Emperor of China sent an army into Tibet to support the Grand Lama, an ambitious 25-year-old man, who then gave himself the title of Dalai (Ocean) Lama, ruler of all Tibet.
His two previous lama "incarnations" were then retroactively recognized as his predecessors, thereby transforming the 1st Dalai Lama into the 3rd Dalai Lama. This 1st (or 3rd) Dalai Lama seized monasteries that did not belong to his sect, and is believed to have destroyed Buddhist writings that conflicted with his claim to divinity. The Dalai Lama who succeeded him pursued a sybaritic life, enjoying many mistresses, partying with friends, and acting in other ways deemed unfitting for an incarnate deity. For these transgressions he was murdered by his priests. Within 170 years, despite their recognized divine status, five Dalai Lamas were killed by their high priests or other courtiers. 6
For hundreds of years competing Tibetan Buddhist sects engaged in bitterly violent clashes and summary executions. In 1660, the 5th Dalai Lama was faced with a rebellion in Tsang province, the stronghold of the rival Kagyu sect with its high lama known as the Karmapa. The 5th Dalai Lama called for harsh retribution against the rebels, directing the Mongol army to obliterate the male and female lines, and the offspring too "like eggs smashed against rocks". In short, annihilate any traces of them, even their names." 7
In 1792, many Kagyu monasteries were confiscated and their monks were forcibly converted to the Gelug sect (the Dalai Lama's denomination). The Gelug school, known also as the "Yellow Hats," showed little tolerance or willingness to mix their teachings with other Buddhist sects. In the words of one of their traditional prayers: "Praise to you, violent god of the Yellow Hat teachings/who reduces to particles of dust/ great beings, high officials and ordinary people/ who pollute and corrupt the Gelug doctrine." 8 An eighteenth-century memoir of a Tibetan general depicts sectarian strife among Buddhists that is as brutal and bloody as any religious conflict might be. 9 This grim history remains largely unvisited by present-day followers of Tibetan Buddhism in the West.
Religions have had a close relationship not only with violence but with economic exploitation. Indeed, it is often the economic exploitation that necessitates the violence. Such was the case with the Tibetan theocracy. Until 1959, when the Dalai Lama last presided over Tibet, most of the arable land was still organized into manorial estates worked by serfs. These estates were owned by two social groups: the rich secular landlords and the rich theocratic lamas. Even a writer sympathetic to the old order allows that "a great deal of real estate belonged to the monasteries, and most of them amassed great riches." Much of the wealth was accumulated "through active participation in trade, commerce, and money lending." 10
Drepung monastery was one of the biggest landowners in the world, with its 185 manors, 25,000 serfs, 300 great pastures, and 16,000 herdsmen. The wealth of the monasteries rested in the hands of small numbers of high-ranking lamas. Most ordinary monks lived modestly and had no direct access to great wealth. The Dalai Lama himself "lived richly in the 1000-room, 14-story Potala Palace." 11
Secular leaders also did well. A notable example was the commander-in-chief of the Tibetan army, a member of the Dalai Lama's lay Cabinet, who owned 4,000 square kilometers of land and 3,500 serfs. 12 Old Tibet has been misrepresented by some Western admirers as "a nation that required no police force because its people voluntarily observed the laws of karma." 13 In fact. it had a professional army, albeit a small one, that served mainly as a gendarmerie for the landlords to keep order, protect their property, and hunt down runaway serfs.
Young Tibetan boys were regularly taken from their peasant families and brought into the monasteries to be trained as monks. Once there, they were bonded for life. Tashì-Tsering, a monk, reports that it was common for peasant children to be sexually mistreated in the monasteries. He himself was a victim of repeated rape, beginning at age nine. 14 The monastic estates also conscripted children for lifelong servitude as domestics, dance performers, and soldiers.
In old Tibet there were small numbers of farmers who subsisted as a kind of free peasantry, and perhaps an additional 10,000 people who composed the "middle-class" families of merchants, shopkeepers, and small traders. Thousands of others were beggars. There also were slaves, usually domestic servants, who owned nothing. Their offspring were born into slavery. 15 The majority of the rural population were serfs. Treated little better than slaves, the serfs went without schooling or medical care, They were under a lifetime bond to work the lord's land--or the monastery's land--without pay, to repair the lord's houses, transport his crops, and collect his firewood. They were also expected to provide carrying animals and transportation on demand.16 Their masters told them what crops to grow and what animals to raise. They could not get married without the consent of their lord or lama. And they might easily be separated from their families should their owners lease them out to work in a distant location. 17
As in a free labor system and unlike slavery, the overlords had no responsibility for the serf's maintenance and no direct interest in his or her survival as an expensive piece of property. The serfs had to support themselves. Yet as in a slave system, they were bound to their masters, guaranteeing a fixed and permanent workforce that could neither organize nor strike nor freely depart as might laborers in a market context. The overlords had the best of both worlds.
One 22-year old woman, herself a runaway serf, reports: "Pretty serf girls were usually taken by the owner as house servants and used as he wished"; they "were just slaves without rights."18 Serfs needed permission to go anywhere. Landowners had legal authority to capture those who tried to flee. One 24-year old runaway welcomed the Chinese intervention as a "liberation." He testified that under serfdom he was subjected to incessant toil, hunger, and cold. After his third failed escape, he was merciless beaten by the landlord's men until blood poured from his nose and mouth. They then poured alcohol and caustic soda on his wounds to increase the pain, he claimed.19
The serfs were taxed upon getting married, taxed for the birth of each child and for every death in the family. They were taxed for planting a tree in their yard and for keeping animals. They were taxed for religious festivals and for public dancing and drumming, for being sent to prison and upon being released. Those who could not find work were taxed for being unemployed, and if they traveled to another village in search of work, they paid a passage tax. When people could not pay, the monasteries lent them money at 20 to 50 percent interest. Some debts were handed down from father to son to grandson. Debtors who could not meet their obligations risked being cast into slavery.20
The theocracy's religious teachings buttressed its class order. The poor and afflicted were taught that they had brought their troubles upon themselves because of their wicked ways in previous lives. Hence they had to accept the misery of their present existence as a karmic atonement and in anticipation that their lot would improve in their next lifetime. The rich and powerful treated their good fortune as a reward for, and tangible evidence of, virtue in past and present lives.
The Tibetan serfs were something more than superstitious victims, blind to their own oppression. As we have seen, some ran away; others openly resisted, sometimes suffering dire consequences. In feudal Tibet, torture and mutilation--including eye gouging, the pulling out of tongues, hamstringing, and amputation--were favored punishments inflicted upon thieves, and runaway or resistant serfs. Journeying through Tibet in the 1960s, Stuart and Roma Gelder interviewed a former serf, Tsereh Wang Tuei, who had stolen two sheep belonging to a monastery. For this he had both his eyes gouged out and his hand mutilated beyond use. He explains that he no longer is a Buddhist: "When a holy lama told them to blind me I thought there was no good in religion."21 Since it was against Buddhist teachings to take human life, some offenders were severely lashed and then "left to God" in the freezing night to die. "The parallels between Tibet and medieval Europe are striking," concludes Tom Grunfeld in his book on Tibet. 22
In 1959, Anna Louise Strong visited an exhibition of torture equipment that had been used by the Tibetan overlords. There were handcuffs of all sizes, including small ones for children, and instruments for cutting off noses and ears, gouging out eyes, breaking off hands, and hamstringing legs. There were hot brands, whips, and special implements for disemboweling. The exhibition presented photographs and testimonies of victims who had been blinded or crippled or suffered amputations for thievery. There was the shepherd whose master owed him a reimbursement in yuan and wheat but refused to pay. So he took one of the master's cows; for this he had his hands severed. Another herdsman, who opposed having his wife taken from him by his lord, had his hands broken off. There were pictures of Communist activists with noses and upper lips cut off, and a woman who was raped and then had her nose sliced away.23
Earlier visitors to Tibet commented on the theocratic despotism. In 1895, an Englishman, Dr. A. L. Waddell, wrote that the populace was under the "intolerable tyranny of monks" and the devil superstitions they had fashioned to terrorize the people. In 1904 Perceval Landon described the Dalai Lama's rule as "an engine of oppression." At about that time, another English traveler, Captain W.F.T. O'Connor, observed that "the great landowners and the priests" exercise each in their own dominion a despotic power from which there is no appeal," while the people are "oppressed by the most monstrous growth of monasticism and priest-craft." Tibetan rulers "invented degrading legends and stimulated a spirit of superstition" among the common people. In 1937, another visitor, Spencer Chapman, wrote, "The Lamaist monk does not spend his time in ministering to the people or educating them. . . . The beggar beside the road is nothing to the monk. Knowledge is the jealously guarded prerogative of the monasteries and is used to increase their influence and wealth."24 As much as we might wish otherwise, feudal theocratic Tibet was a far cry from the romanticized Shangri La so enthusiastically nurtured by Buddhism's western proselytes.
II. Secularization vs. Spirituality
What happened to Tibet after the Chinese Communists moved into the country in 1951? The treaty of that year provided for ostensible self-governance under the Dalai Lama's rule but gave China military control and exclusive right to conduct foreign relations. The Chinese were also granted a direct role in internal administration "to promote social reforms." Among the earliest changes they wrought was to reduce usurious interest rates, and build a few hospitals and roads. At first, they moved slowly, relying mostly on persuasion in an attempt to effect reconstruction. No aristocratic or monastic property was confiscated, and feudal lords continued to reign over their hereditarily bound peasants. "Contrary to popular belief in the West," claims one observer, the Chinese "took care to show respect for Tibetan culture and religion."25
Over the centuries the Tibetan lords and lamas had seen Chinese come and go, and had enjoyed good relations with Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek and his reactionary Kuomintang rule in China.26 The approval of the Kuomintang government was needed to validate the choice of the Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama. When the current 14th Dalai Lama was first installed in Lhasa, it was with an armed escort of Chinese troops and an attending Chinese minister, in accordance with centuries-old tradition. What upset the Tibetan lords and lamas in the early 1950s was that these latest Chinese were Communists. It would be only a matter of time, they feared, before the Communists started imposing their collectivist egalitarian schemes upon Tibet.
The issue was joined in 1956-57, when armed Tibetan bands ambushed convoys of the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army. The uprising received extensive assistance from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), including military training, support camps in Nepal, and numerous airlifts.27 Meanwhile in the United States, the American Society for a Free Asia, a CIA-financed front, energetically publicized the cause of Tibetan resistance, with the Dalai Lama's eldest brother, Thubtan Norbu, playing an active role in that organization. The Dalai Lama's second-eldest brother, Gyalo Thondup, established an intelligence operation with the CIA as early as 1951. He later upgraded it into a CIA-trained guerrilla unit whose recruits parachuted back into Tibet.28
Many Tibetan commandos and agents whom the CIA
dropped into the country were chiefs of aristocratic clans or the
sons of chiefs. Ninety percent of them were never heard from again,
according to a report from the CIA itself, meaning they were most
likely captured and
killed.29
"Many lamas and lay members of the elite and much of the Tibetan army
joined the uprising, but in the main the populace did not, assuring
its failure," writes Hugh
Deane.30
In their book on Tibet, Ginsburg and Mathos reach a similar
conclusion: "As far as can be ascertained, the great bulk of the
common people of Lhasa and of the adjoining countryside failed to
join in the fighting against the Chinese both when it first began and
as it
progressed."31
Eventually the resistance crumbled.
Whatever
wrongs and new oppressions introduced by the Chinese after 1959, they
did abolish slavery and the Tibetan serfdom system of unpaid labor.
They eliminated the many crushing taxes, started work projects, and
greatly reduced unemployment and beggary. They established secular
schools, thereby breaking the educational monopoly of the
monasteries. And they constructed running water and electrical
systems in
Lhasa.32
Heinrich Harrer (later revealed to have been a sergeant in Hitler's SS) wrote a bestseller about his experiences in Tibet that was made into a popular Hollywood movie. He reported that the Tibetans who resisted the Chinese "were predominantly nobles, semi-nobles and lamas; they were punished by being made to perform the lowliest tasks, such as laboring on roads and bridges. They were further humiliated by being made to clean up the city before the tourists arrived." They also had to live in a camp originally reserved for beggars and vagrants--all of which Harrer treats as sure evidence of the dreadful nature of the Chinese occupation.33
By 1961, Chinese occupation authorities expropriated the landed estates owned by lords and lamas. They distributed many thousands of acres to tenant farmers and landless peasants, reorganizing them into hundreds of communes.. Herds once owned by nobility were turned over to collectives of poor shepherds. Improvements were made in the breeding of livestock, and new varieties of vegetables and new strains of wheat and barley were introduced, along with irrigation improvements, all of which reportedly led to an increase in agrarian production.34
Many peasants remained as religious as ever, giving alms to the clergy. But monks who had been conscripted as children into the religious orders were now free to renounce the monastic life, and thousands did, especially the younger ones. The remaining clergy lived on modest government stipends and extra income earned by officiating at prayer services, weddings, and funerals.35
Both the Dalai Lama and his advisor and youngest brother, Tendzin Choegyal, claimed that "more than 1.2 million Tibetans are dead as a result of the Chinese occupation."36 The official 1953 census--six years before the Chinese crackdown--recorded the entire population residing in Tibet at 1,274,000.37 Other census counts put the population within Tibet at about two million. If the Chinese killed 1.2 million in the early 1960s then almost all of Tibet, would have been depopulated, transformed into a killing field dotted with death camps and mass graves--of which we have no evidence. The thinly distributed Chinese force in Tibet could not have rounded up, hunted down, and exterminated that many people even if it had spent all its time doing nothing else.
Chinese authorities claim to have put an end to floggings, mutilations, and amputations as a form of criminal punishment. They themselves, however, have been charged with acts of brutality by exile Tibetans. The authorities do admit to "mistakes," particularly during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution when the persecution of religious beliefs reached a high tide in both China and Tibet. After the uprising in the late 1950s, thousands of Tibetans were incarcerated. During the Great Leap Forward, forced collectivization and grain farming were imposed on the Tibetan peasantry, sometimes with disastrous effect on production. In the late 1970s, China began relaxing controls "and tried to undo some of the damage wrought during the previous two decades."38
In 1980, the Chinese government initiated reforms reportedly designed to grant Tibet a greater degree of self-rule and self-administration. Tibetans would now be allowed to cultivate private plots, sell their harvest surpluses, decide for themselves what crops to grow, and keep yaks and sheep. Communication with the outside world was again permitted, and frontier controls were eased to permit some Tibetans to visit exiled relatives in India and Nepal.39 By the 1980s many of the principal lamas had begun to shuttle back and forth between China and the exile communities abroad, "restoring their monasteries in Tibet and helping to revitalize Buddhism there."40
As of 2007 Tibetan Buddhism was still practiced widely and tolerated by officialdom. Religious pilgrimages and other standard forms of worship were allowed but within limits. All monks and nuns had to sign a loyalty pledge that they would not use their religious position to foment secession or dissent. And displaying photos of the Dalai Lama was declared illegal.41
In the 1990s, the Han, the ethnic group comprising over 95 percent of China's immense population, began moving in substantial numbers into Tibet. On the streets of Lhasa and Shigatse, signs of Han colonization are readily visible. Chinese run the factories and many of the shops and vending stalls. Tall office buildings and large shopping centers have been built with funds that might have been better spent on water treatment plants and housing. Chinese cadres in Tibet too often view their Tibetan neighbors as backward and lazy, in need of economic development and "patriotic education." During the 1990s Tibetan government employees suspected of harboring nationalist sympathies were purged from office, and campaigns were once again launched to discredit the Dalai Lama. Individual Tibetans reportedly were subjected to arrest, imprisonment, and forced labor for carrying out separatist activities and engaging in "political subversion." Some were held in administrative detention without adequate food, water, and blankets, subjected to threats, beatings, and other mistreatment.42
Tibetan history, culture, and certainly religion
are slighted in schools. Teaching materials, though translated into
Tibetan, focus mainly on Chinese history and culture. Chinese family
planning regulations allow a three-child limit for Tibetan families.
(There is only a one-child limit for Han families throughout China,
and a two-child limit for rural Han families whose first child is a
girl.) If a Tibetan couple goes over the three-child limit, the
excess children can be denied subsidized daycare, health care,
housing, and education. These penalties have been enforced
irregularly and vary by
district.43
None of these child services, it should be noted, were available to
Tibetans before the Chinese takeover.
For the rich
lamas and secular lords, the Communist intervention was an
unmitigated calamity. Most of them fled abroad, as did the Dalai Lama
himself, who was assisted in his flight by the CIA. Some discovered
to their horror that they would have to work for a living. Many,
however, escaped that fate. Throughout the 1960s, the Tibetan exile
community was secretly pocketing $1.7 million a year from the CIA,
according to documents released by the State Department in 1998. Once
this fact was publicized, the Dalai Lama's organization itself issued
a statement admitting that it had received millions of dollars from
the CIA during the 1960s to send armed squads of exiles into Tibet to
undermine the Maoist revolution. The Dalai Lama's annual payment from
the CIA was $186,000. Indian intelligence also financed both him and
other Tibetan exiles. He has refused to say whether he or his
brothers worked for the CIA. The agency has also declined to
comment.44
In 1995, the News & Observer of Raleigh, North Carolina, carried a frontpage color photograph of the Dalai Lama being embraced by the reactionary Republican senator Jesse Helms, under the headline "Buddhist Captivates Hero of Religious Right."45 In April 1999, along with Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II, and the first George Bush, the Dalai Lama called upon the British government to release Augusto Pinochet, the former fascist dictator of Chile and a longtime CIA client who was visiting England. The Dalai Lama urged that Pinochet not be forced to go to Spain where he was wanted to stand trial for crimes against humanity.
Into the twenty-first century, via the National Endowment for Democracy and other conduits that are more respectable sounding than the CIA, the U.S. Congress continued to allocate an annual $2 million to Tibetans in India, with additional millions for "democracy activities" within the Tibetan exile community. In addition to these funds, the Dalai Lama received money from financier George Soros.46
Whatever the Dalai Lama's associations with the CIA and various reactionaries, he did speak often of peace, love, and nonviolence. He himself really cannot be blamed for the abuses of Tibet's ancien régime, having been but 25 years old when he fled into exile. In a 1994 interview, he went on record as favoring the building of schools and roads in his country. He said the corvée (forced unpaid serf labor) and certain taxes imposed on the peasants were "extremely bad." And he disliked the way people were saddled with old debts sometimes passed down from generation to generation.47During the half century of living in the western world, he had embraced concepts such as human rights and religious freedom, ideas largely unknown in old Tibet. He even proposed democracy for Tibet, featuring a written constitution and a representative assembly.48
In 1996, the Dalai Lama issued a statement that must have had an unsettling effect on the exile community. It read in part: "Marxism is founded on moral principles, while capitalism is concerned only with gain and profitability." Marxism fosters "the equitable utilization of the means of production" and cares about "the fate of the working classes" and "the victims of . . . exploitation. For those reasons the system appeals to me, and . . . I think of myself as half-Marxist, half-Buddhist.49
But he also sent a reassuring message to "those who live in abundance": "It is a good thing to be rich... Those are the fruits for deserving actions, the proof that they have been generous in the past." And to the poor he offers this admonition: "There is no good reason to become bitter and rebel against those who have property and fortune... It is better to develop a positive attitude."50
In 2005 the Dalai Lama signed a widely advertised statement along with ten other Nobel Laureates supporting the "inalienable and fundamental human right" of working people throughout the world to form labor unions to protect their interests, in accordance with the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In many countries "this fundamental right is poorly protected and in some it is explicitly banned or brutally suppressed," the statement read. Burma, China, Colombia, Bosnia, and a few other countries were singled out as among the worst offenders. Even the United States "fails to adequately protect workers' rights to form unions and bargain collectively. Millions of U.S. workers lack any legal protection to form unions."51
The Dalai Lama also gave full support to removing the ingrained traditional obstacles that have kept Tibetan nuns from receiving an education. Upon arriving in exile, few nuns could read or write. In Tibet their activities had been devoted to daylong periods of prayer and chants. But in northern India they now began reading Buddhist philosophy and engaging in theological study and debate, activities that in old Tibet had been open only to monks.52
In November 2005 the Dalai Lama spoke at Stanford University on "The Heart of Nonviolence," but stopped short of a blanket condemnation of all violence. Violent actions that are committed in order to reduce future suffering are not to be condemned, he said, citing World War II as an example of a worthy effort to protect democracy. What of the four years of carnage and mass destruction in Iraq, a war condemned by most of the world" even by a conservative pope--as a blatant violation of international law and a crime against humanity? The Dalai Lama was undecided: "The Iraq war" it's too early to say, right or wrong."53 Earlier he had voiced support for the U.S. military intervention against Yugoslavia and, later on, the U.S. military intervention into Afghanistan.54
III. Exit Feudal Theocracy
As the Shangri-La myth would have it, in old Tibet the people lived in contented and tranquil symbiosis with their monastic and secular lords. Rich lamas and poor monks, wealthy landlords and impoverished serfs were all bonded together, mutually sustained by the comforting balm of a deeply spiritual and pacific culture.
One is reminded of the idealized image of feudal Europe presented by latter-day conservative Catholics such as G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc. For them, medieval Christendom was a world of contented peasants living in the secure embrace of their Church, under the more or less benign protection of their lords.55 Again we are invited to accept a particular culture in its idealized form divorced from its murky material history. This means accepting it as presented by its favored class, by those who profited most from it. The Shangri-La image of Tibet bears no more resemblance to historic actuality than does the pastoral image of medieval Europe.
Seen in all its grim realities, old Tibet confirms the view I expressed in an earlier book, namely that culture is anything but neutral. Culture can operate as a legitimating cover for a host of grave injustices, benefiting a privileged portion of society at great cost to the rest.56 In theocratic feudal Tibet, ruling interests manipulated the traditional culture to fortify their own wealth and power. The theocracy equated rebellious thought and action with satanic influence. It propagated the general presumption of landlord superiority and peasant unworthiness. The rich were represented as deserving their good life, and the lowly poor as deserving their mean existence, all codified in teachings about the karmic residue of virtue and vice accumulated from past lives, presented as part of God's will.
Were the more affluent lamas just hypocrites who preached one thing and secretly believed another? More likely they were genuinely attached to those beliefs that brought such good results for them. That their theology so perfectly supported their material privileges only strengthened the sincerity with which it was embraced.
It might be said that we denizens of the modern secular world cannot grasp the equations of happiness and pain, contentment and custom, that characterize more traditionally spiritual societies. This is probably true, and it may explain why some of us idealize such societies. But still, a gouged eye is a gouged eye; a flogging is a flogging; and the grinding exploitation of serfs and slaves is a brutal class injustice whatever its cultural wrapping. There is a difference between a spiritual bond and human bondage, even when both exist side by side
Many ordinary Tibetans want the Dalai Lama back in
their country, but it appears that relatively few want a return to
the social order he represented. A 1999 story in the Washington Post
notes that the Dalai Lama continues to be revered in Tibet, but
. . . few Tibetans would welcome a return of the corrupt aristocratic clans that fled with him in 1959 and that comprise the bulk of his advisers. Many Tibetan farmers, for example, have no interest in surrendering the land they gained during China's land reform to the clans. Tibet's former slaves say they, too, don't want their former masters to return to power. "I've already lived that life once before," said Wangchuk, a 67-year-old former slave who was wearing his best clothes for his yearly pilgrimage to Shigatse, one of the holiest sites of Tibetan Buddhism. He said he worshipped the Dalai Lama, but added, "I may not be free under Chinese communism, but I am better off than when I was a slave."57
It should be noted that the Dalai Lama is not the only highly placed lama chosen in childhood as a reincarnation. One or another reincarnate lama or tulku--a spiritual teacher of special purity elected to be reborn again and again--can be found presiding over most major monasteries. The tulku system is unique to Tibetan Buddhism. Scores of Tibetan lamas claim to be reincarnate tulkus.
The very first tulku was a lama known as the Karmapa who appeared nearly three centuries before the first Dalai Lama. The Karmapa is leader of a Tibetan Buddhist tradition known as the Karma Kagyu. The rise of the Gelugpa sect headed by the Dalai Lama led to a politico-religious rivalry with the Kagyu that has lasted five hundred years and continues to play itself out within the Tibetan exile community today. That the Kagyu sect has grown famously, opening some six hundred new centers around the world in the last thirty-five years, has not helped the situation.
The search for a tulku, Erik Curren reminds us, has not always been conducted in that purely spiritual mode portrayed in certain Hollywood films. "Sometimes monastic officials wanted a child from a powerful local noble family to give the cloister more political clout. Other times they wanted a child from a lower-class family who would have little leverage to influence the child's upbringing." On other occasions "a local warlord, the Chinese emperor or even the Dalai Lama's government in Lhasa might [have tried] to impose its choice of tulku on a monastery for political reasons."58
Such may have been the case in the selection of the 17th Karmapa, whose monastery-in-exile is situated in Rumtek, in the Indian state of Sikkim. In 1993 the monks of the Karma Kagyu tradition had a candidate of their own choice. The Dalai Lama, along with several dissenting Karma Kagyu leaders (and with the support of the Chinese government!) backed a different boy. The Kagyu monks charged that the Dalai Lama had overstepped his authority in attempting to select a leader for their sect. "Neither his political role nor his position as a lama in his own Gelugpa tradition entitled him to choose the Karmapa, who is a leader of a different tradition"59 As one of the Kagyu leaders insisted, "Dharma is about thinking for yourself. It is not about automatically following a teacher in all things, no matter how respected that teacher may be. More than anyone else, Buddhists should respect other people's rights" their human rights and their religious freedom."60
What followed was a dozen years of conflict in the Tibetan exile community, punctuated by intermittent riots, intimidation, physical attacks, blacklisting, police harassment, litigation, official corruption, and the looting and undermining of the Karmapa's monastery in Rumtek by supporters of the Gelugpa faction. All this has caused at least one western devotee to wonder if the years of exile were not hastening the moral corrosion of Tibetan Buddhism.61
What is clear is that not all Tibetan Buddhists accept the Dalai Lama as their theological and spiritual mentor. Though he is referred to as the "spiritual leader of Tibet," many see this title as little more than a formality. It does not give him authority over the four religious schools of Tibet other than his own, "just as calling the U.S. president the 'leader of the free world' gives him no role in governing France or Germany."62
Not all Tibetan exiles are enamoured of the old Shangri-La theocracy. Kim Lewis, who studied healing methods with a Buddhist monk in Berkeley, California, had occasion to talk at length with more than a dozen Tibetan women who lived in the monk's building. When she asked how they felt about returning to their homeland, the sentiment was unanimously negative. At first, Lewis assumed that their reluctance had to do with the Chinese occupation, but they quickly informed her otherwise. They said they were extremely grateful "not to have to marry 4 or 5 men, be pregnant almost all the time," or deal with sexually transmitted diseases contacted from a straying husband. The younger women "were delighted to be getting an education, wanted absolutely nothing to do with any religion, and wondered why Americans were so naive [about Tibet]."63
The women interviewed by Lewis recounted stories of their grandmothers' ordeals with monks who used them as "wisdom consorts." By sleeping with the monks, the grandmothers were told, they gained "the means to enlightenment" -- after all, the Buddha himself had to be with a woman to reach enlightenment.
The women also mentioned the "rampant" sex that the supposedly spiritual and abstemious monks practiced with each other in the Gelugpa sect. The women who were mothers spoke bitterly about the monastery's confiscation of their young boys in Tibet. They claimed that when a boy cried for his mother, he would be told "Why do you cry for her, she gave you up--she's just a woman."
The monks who were granted political asylum in California applied for public assistance. Lewis, herself a devotee for a time, assisted with the paperwork. She observes that they continue to receive government checks amounting to $550 to $700 per month along with Medicare. In addition, the monks reside rent free in nicely furnished apartments. "They pay no utilities, have free access to the Internet on computers provided for them, along with fax machines, free cell and home phones and cable TV."
They also receive a monthly payment from their order, along with contributions and dues from their American followers. Some devotees eagerly carry out chores for the monks, including grocery shopping and cleaning their apartments and toilets. These same holy men, Lewis remarks, "have no problem criticizing Americans for their 'obsession with material things.'"64
To welcome the end of the old feudal theocracy in Tibet is not to applaud everything about Chinese rule in that country. This point is seldom understood by today's Shangri-La believers in the West. The converse is also true: To denounce the Chinese occupation does not mean we have to romanticize the former feudal régime. Tibetans deserve to be perceived as actual people, not perfected spiritualists or innocent political symbols. "To idealize them," notes Ma Jian, a dissident Chinese traveler to Tibet (now living in Britain), "is to deny them their humanity."65
One common complaint among Buddhist followers in the West is that Tibet's religious culture is being undermined by the Chinese occupation. To some extent this seems to be the case. Many of the monasteries are closed, and much of the theocracy seems to have passed into history. Whether Chinese rule has brought betterment or disaster is not the central issue here. The question is what kind of country was old Tibet. What I am disputing is the supposedly pristine spiritual nature of that pre-invasion culture. We can advocate religious freedom and independence for a new Tibet without having to embrace the mythology about old Tibet. Tibetan feudalism was cloaked in Buddhism, but the two are not to be equated. In reality, old Tibet was not a Paradise Lost. It was a retrograde repressive theocracy of extreme privilege and poverty, a long way from Shangri-La.
Finally, let it be said that if Tibet's future is to be positioned somewhere within China's emerging free-market paradise, then this does not bode well for the Tibetans. China boasts a dazzling 8 percent economic growth rate and is emerging as one of the world's greatest industrial powers. But with economic growth has come an ever deepening gulf between rich and poor. Most Chinese live close to the poverty level or well under it, while a small group of newly brooded capitalists profit hugely in collusion with shady officials. Regional bureaucrats milk the country dry, extorting graft from the populace and looting local treasuries. Land grabbing in cities and countryside by avaricious developers and corrupt officials at the expense of the populace are almost everyday occurrences. Tens of thousands of grassroot protests and disturbances have erupted across the country, usually to be met with unforgiving police force. Corruption is so prevalent, reaching into so many places, that even the normally complacent national leadership was forced to take notice and began moving against it in late 2006.
Workers in China who try to organize labor unions in the corporate dominated "business zones" risk losing their jobs or getting beaten and imprisoned. Millions of business zone workers toil twelve-hour days at subsistence wages. With the health care system now being privatized, free or affordable medical treatment is no longer available for millions. Men have tramped into the cities in search of work, leaving an increasingly impoverished countryside populated by women, children, and the elderly. The suicide rate has increased dramatically, especially among women.66
China's natural environment is sadly polluted. Most of its fabled rivers and many lakes are dead, producing massive fish die-offs from the billions of tons of industrial emissions and untreated human waste dumped into them. Toxic effluents, including pesticides and herbicides, seep into ground water or directly into irrigation canals. Cancer rates in villages situated along waterways have skyrocketed a thousand-fold. Hundreds of millions of urban residents breathe air rated as dangerously unhealthy, contaminated by industrial growth and the recent addition of millions of automobiles. An estimated 400,000 die prematurely every year from air pollution. Government environmental agencies have no enforcement power to stop polluters, and generally the government ignores or denies such problems, concentrating instead on industrial growth.67
China's own scientific establishment reports that unless greenhouse gases are curbed, the nation will face massive crop failures along with catastrophic food and water shortages in the years ahead. In 2006-2007 severe drought was already afflicting southwest China.68
If China is the great success story of speedy free market development, and is to be the model and inspiration for Tibet's future, then old feudal Tibet indeed may start looking a lot better than it actually was.
http://www.michaelparenti.org/Tibet.html
Michael Parenti has won awards from Project Censored, the Caucus for a New Political Science, the city of Santa Cruz, New Jersey Peace Action, the Social Science Research Council, the Society for Religion in Higher Education, and other organizations. In 2007 he was awarded a Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition from U.S. Representative Barbara Lee. During his earlier teaching career he received grants or fellowships from the Louis Rabinowitz Foundation, the Ford Foundation, Brown University, Yale University, State University of New York, and the University of Illinois. For several years he was a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. He now serves on the board of judges for Project Censored, and on the advisory boards of Independent Progressive Politics Network, Education Without Borders, and the Jasenovic Foundation; as well as the advisory editorial boards of New Political Science and Nature, Society and Thought. He is the author of twenty books:
Some 300 articles of his have appeared in scholarly journals, political periodicals and various magazines and newspapers. He appears on radio and television talk shows to discuss current issues and ideas from his published works. Dr. Parentl's talks and commentaries are played on radio stations and cable community access stations to enthusiastic audiences in the United States, Canada, and abroad. He lectures on college campuses and before a wide range of community audiences, peace groups, labor organizations, scholarly conferences, and various other venues. His books are enjoyed by both lay readers and scholars, and have been used extensively in college courses. Among the many topics he treats are:
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Tibetan Youth Congress = Taliban?
10:12, April 10, 2008
How western journalists cover the Tibet riots is a
textbook example of biased journalism. Nothing innovative here. Just
old tricks recycled.
Life expectancy of Tibetan was 35.5 years in 1959 vs. 67 years in
2005.And the infant mortality rate was 43% in 1959 and 3.1 % in 2005
(4.8% inCanada, 2006 data). What happened? Since 1959, 1,326 new
medical institutions have been built ,among which, 764 new hospitals
or clinics, 79 disease prevention centers and55 health centers
dedicated to women and children. How about education? Before 1950,
there was almost no decent school inTibet, less than 2% school-age
children received education and theilliteracy rate was 95%. In 2003,
91.9% school-age children in Tibetenrolled in primary schools; 82.9%
primary schools students continuedstudying in middle schools; and
72.1% middle school graduates continuedhigher education. All are
decent numbers even they were from communities in U.S.
No matter what kind of religion peeople follow and what kind of life
harmony pople pursue: living longer is good; fewer infant deaths is
good; more education is good.
Tibetans put religion in first place. So does "his holiness", the
DaLaiLlama hold that they don't need hospitals, don't need to get
education, don't want to live longer, don't want more babies to
survive? Are rights to medical care, to education, to have healthy
babies not human rights?
Denying Tibetans those rights is the biggest human rights abuse!
Before 1959, Tibet was under the Lamaist (Buddhist) theocracy. Just
like most theocracies in history, it was a very cruel and inhumane
form of governing. Tibet before 1959 was close to, if not worse than,
the Afghanistan under the Taliban regime.
Michael Parenti, a history professor from U.S,
(http://www.michaelparenti.org/Tibet.html)
provides the following finding:
"In the Dalai Lama's Tibet, torture and mutilation -- including eye
gouging, the pulling out of tongues, hamstringing, and amputation of
arms and legs -- were favored punishments inflicted upon thieves,
runaway serfs, and other "criminals."
Some Western visitors to Old Tibet remarked on the number of amputees
to be seen. Since it was against Buddhist teachings to take human
life, some offenders were severely lashed and then "left to God" in
the freezing night to die. "The parallels between Tibet and medieval
Europe are striking," concludes Tom Grunfeld in his book on
Tibet.
Theocratic despotism had been the rule for generations. An English
visitor to Tibet in 1895, Dr. A. L. Waddell, wrote that the Tibetan
people were under the "intolerable tyranny of monks" and the devil
superstitions they had fashioned to terrorize the people. In 1904
Perceval Landon described the Dalai Lama's rule as "an engine of
oppression" and "a barrier to all human improvement." In 1937,
another visitor, Spencer Chapman, wrote, "The Lamaist monk does not
spend his time in ministering to the people or educating them, nor do
laymen take part in or even attend the monastery services. The beggar
beside the road is nothing to the monk. Knowledge is the jealously
guarded prerogative of the monasteries and is used to increase their
influence and wealth."
Does the West want to support another Taliban?
There are good reasons and tons of books on the separation of church
and state.You people on the bandwagon blasting China might want to
read those books first.
One respects the belief on "incarnation". But it seems that should be
reserved for choosing a religion leader rather than choosing a
government head. Democracy builds on accountability-government
officials are accountable for the voters. The voters can deny their
leaders positions through voting. Not sure about DaLaiLLam's thoughts
on democracy.
And democracy also builds on educated voters. Before 1959, the
illiteracy rate was 95% and common Tibetans seldom got chance to be
educated. Do you expect people who can't read to understand how a
modern government operates and how to hold their leaders
accountable?
Here are some historical facts about Tibet, all from westerners.
"In the Da-Lai La Ma's Tibet, torture and mutilation -- including eye
gouging, the pulling out of tongues, hamstringing, and amputation of
arms and legs -- were favored punishments inflicted upon thieves,
runaway serfs, and other "criminals."
Journeying through Tibet in the 1960s, Stuart and Roma Gelder
interviewed a former serf, Tsering Wangdui, who had stolen two sheep
belonging to a monastery. For this he had both his eyes gouged out
and his hand mutilated beyond use. He explains that he no longer is a
Buddhist: "When a holy lama told them to blind me I thought there was
no good in religion."
Some Western visitors to Old Tibet remarked on the number of amputees
to be seen. Since it was against Buddhist teachings to take human
life, some offenders were severely lashed and then "left to God" in
the freezing night to die. "The parallels between Tibet and medieval
Europe are striking," concludes Tom Grunfeld in his book on
Tibet.
Some monasteries had their own private prisons, reports Anna Louise
Strong. In 1959, she visited an exhibition of torture equipment that
had been used by the Tibetan overlords. There were handcuffs of all
sizes, including small ones for children, and instruments for cutting
off noses and ears, and breaking off hands.
Theocratic despotism had been the rule for generations. An English
visitor to Tibet in 1895, Dr. A. L. Waddell, wrote that the Tibetan
people were under the "intolerable tyranny of monks" and the devil
superstitions they had fashioned to terrorize the people. In 1904
Perceval Landon described the Da Lai La Ma's rule as "an engine of
oppression" and "a barrier to all human improvement."
At about that time, another English traveler, Captain W.F.T.
O'Connor, observed that "the great landowners and the priests . . .
exercise each in their own dominion a despotic power from which there
is no appeal," while the people are "oppressed by the most monstrous
growth of monasticism and priest-craft the world has ever seen."
Tibetan rulers, like those of Europe during the Middle Ages, "forged
innumerable weapons of servitude, invented degrading legends and
stimulated a spirit of superstition" among the common people.
In 1937, another visitor, Spencer Chapman, wrote, "The Lamaist monk
does not spend his time in ministering to the people or educating
them, nor do laymen take part in or even attend the monastery
services. The beggar beside the road is nothing to the monk.
Knowledge is the jealously guarded prerogative of the monasteries and
is used to increase their influence and wealth."
More on:
http://www.swans.com/library/art9/mparen01.html#019
Is there anyone here have read the history of Tibet before 1950?
Anyone?
I happened to read couples of books written by historians from
Britain.
The history before 1950 is relevant to answer the question: what will
happen if one day, Tibet gets its independence? Will they live
happily thereafter(as most Da Lia supporters assume)? The world will
be better off?
There is a close modern parallel: The Afghanistan under the Taliban
regime. Is that a kind of regime you guys are looking forward to?
Before 1959, Tibet was under the Lamaist (Buddhist) theocracy. Just
like most theocracies in history, it was a very cruel and inhumane
form of governing. Most T!bentans were under the slavery by the
monks. It was a slavery, agreed by most western historians.
Speak of the facts, before 1959, human rights situation was a lot
worse. Many offenses were punished by cutting arms and legs or taking
out eyes, literally. Read the history yourself. One of the books I
read was published by Cambridge University.
I haven't heard about Da Lai Lama denounced the Lamaist (Buddhist)
theocracy. I hope he has the ability to deliver a modern
democracy.
Read history. Please.
Life expectancy of Tibetan was 35.5 years in 1959 vs. 67 years in
2005
Infant mortality rate was 43% in 1959 and 3.1 % in 2005 (4.8% in
Canada, 2006 data).
Since 1959, 1,326 new medical institutions have been built ,among
which, 764 new hospitals or clinics, 79 disease prevention centers
and 55 health centers dedicated to women and children.
Before 1950, there was almost no decent school in Tibet, less than 2%
school-age children received education and illiteracy rate was 95%.
In 2003, 91.9% school-age children in Tibet enrolled in primary
schools; 82.9% primary schools students continued studying in middle
schools; and 72.1% middle school graduates continued higher
education. All are decent numbers even for communities in U.S.
No matter what kind of religion they follow and what kind of life
harmony they pursue, living longer is good; fewer infant deaths is
good; more education is good.
And talking about the special treatment, in Tibet, Tibetans don't
need to follow the one-child policy. The policy only applies to Han
people.
Comment on: A week in Tibet | Trashing the Beijing Road |
Economist.com at 3/25/2008 9:43 PM EDT
Why the western media is biased?
How western journalists cover the Tibet riots is a textbook example
of biased journalism. Nothing innovative here. Just old tricks
recycled.
There is a book called "Manufacturing Consents", an assigned reading
in most U.S universities for journalism majors. Now examples
criticized by this book become the writing guidances for covering
China.
The whole western civilization is based on rational thinking-facts,
logic, analysis, comparison and etc. But when it comes to cover
events related to Tibet, those thinking skills are temparily
suspended by Editors until the journlists are reassigned to cover,
for example, cow-milking advance in rural French villages.
Economist, for example, is an excellent weekly magazine full of
numbers from big mac indexes to GDP growth, economic analysis based
on latest researches, papers, until it begins to cover Tibet.
I used the "Pocket World in Figures" published by Economist as my
reference when I was writing the post titled "Have Tibetans been
better off since 1959?" The metrics like life expectancy ( 35.5 years
in 1959 vs. 67 years in 2005), infant mortality rate (43% in 1959 and
3.1 % in 2005--4.8% inCanada, 2006 data), the number of medical
facilities (1,326 new medical institutions that have been built) are
all standard metrics in the pocket book. So there is no excuse to
pretend "we don't know how to measure". You are experts!
Aren't those significant and laudable achivements for any government?
Don't forget what Tibet was like in 1959!!!
Tibetans put religion in first place. So they don't need hospitals,
don't need to get education, don't want to live longer, don't want
more babies survive? Are rights to medical care, to education, to
have healthy babies not human rights?
Denying Tibetans those rights is the biggest human rights abuse!
If yes, they are human rights.Then, why achievements in those areas
have been measured?
Let's have a debate based on rational thinkings, the same way we
analyze economic or social issues in Europe or in U.S.
Otherwise, you journalists are lowering your own moral standard and
your own professionalism. Your reporting is not only humiliating the
wisdom of Chinese but also the wisdom of your own readers!
And what you have written, a few years later, will be complied into
another book titled "Manufacturing Non-sense"
Comment on: Tibet | A colonial uprising | Economist.com at 3/25/2008
9:41 PM EDT
Why the western media is biased?
How western journalists cover the Tibet riots is a textbook example
of biased journalism. Nothing innovative here. Just old tricks
recycled.
There is a book called "Manufacturing Consents", an assigned reading
in most U.S universities for journalism majors. Now examples
criticized by this book become the writing guidances for covering
China.
The whole western civilization is based on rational thinking-facts,
logic, analysis, comparison and etc. But when it comes to cover
events related to Tibet, those thinking skills are temparily
suspended by Editors until the journlists are reassigned to cover,
for example, cow-milking advance in rural French villages.
Economist, for example, is an excellent weekly magazine full of
numbers from big mac indexes to GDP growth, economic analysis based
on latest researches, papers, until it begins to cover Tibet.
I used the "Pocket World in Figures" published by Economist as my
reference when I was writing the post titled "Have Tibetans been
better off since 1959?" The metrics like life expectancy ( 35.5 years
in 1959 vs. 67 years in 2005), infant mortality rate (43% in 1959 and
3.1 % in 2005--4.8% inCanada, 2006 data), the number of medical
facilities (1,326 new medical institutions that have been built) are
all standard metrics in the pocket book. So there is no excuse to
pretend "we don't know how to measure". You are experts!
Aren't those significant and laudable achivements for any government?
Don't forget what Tibet was like in 1959!!!
Tibetans put religion in first place. So they don't need hospitals,
don't need to get education, don't want to live longer, don't want
more babies survive? Are rights to medical care, to education, to
have healthy babies not human rights?
Denying Tibetans those rights is the biggest human rights abuse!
If yes, they are human rights.Then, why achievements in those areas
have been measured?
Let's have a debate based on rational thinkings, the same way we
analyze economic or social issues in Europe or in U.S.
Otherwise, you journalists are lowering your own moral standard and
your own professionalism. Your reporting is not only humiliating the
wisdom of Chinese but also the wisdom of your own readers!
And what you have written, a few years later, will be complied into
another book titled "Manufacturing Non-sense"
Comment on: A week in Tibet | Trashing the Beijing Road |
Economist.com at 3/24/2008 6:28 PM EDT
To TibetanGirl
Your writing seems reasonable. I think you are a Tibetan.
I am writing to you directly and with all my respect.
Have you read the history of Tibet before 1950? If not, I encourage
you to read every book you can find. Otherwise, you can't get the
whole or real picture. What do you think those human rights abuses
against your own people before 1959? I am against any human rights
abuse, befor or after 1959. How about you?
The second question is, assuming Tibet gets its independence, what is
your plan for the new government?
I encourage you to give it some thoughts and read books on modern
government. There are good reasons and tons of books on the
separation of church and state.You might want to read those books
first.
I respect your belief on "incarnation". But it seems that should be
reserved for choosing a religion leader rather than choosing a
government head. Democracy builds on accountability-government
officals are accountable for the voters. The voters can deny their
leaders positions through voting. Not sure about your thoughts on
democracy.
And democracy also builds on educated voters. Before 1959, the
illiteracy rate was 95% and common Tibetans seldom got chance to be
educated. Do you expect people who can't read to understand how a
modern government operates and how to hold their leaders
accountable?
You might have friends and relatives in Tibet. Could you check the
facts I provided in another comment "Have Tibetans been better off
since 1959?"? Especially, the numbers on schools and hospitals. I
think those numbers are true-schools and hospitals are buildings and
should be very easy to verify.
Looking forward to your thoughts!
Comment on: Tibet | Fears of contagion from Tibet | Economist.com at
3/24/2008 10:34 AM EDT
Have Tibetans been better off since 1959?
This question is strangely missing from most China-bashing articles
relatedto the recent Tibetan riots. And the Economist only covered
the economic part.
Let's be spiritual and skip the economy completely. Let's look at
public health instead.
Life expectancy of Tibetan was 35.5 years in 1959 vs. 67 years in
2005.
And the infant mortality rate was 43% in 1959 and 3.1 % in 2005 (4.8%
inCanada, 2006 data).
What happened? Since 1959, 1,326 new medical institutions have been
built ,among which, 764 new hospitals or clinics, 79 disease
prevention centers and55 health centers dedicated to women and
children.
How about education? Before 1950, there was almost no decent school
inTibet, less than 2% school-age children received education and
theilliteracy rate was 95%. In 2003, 91.9% school-age children in
Tibetenrolled in primary schools; 82.9% primary schools students
continuedstudying in middle schools; and 72.1% middle school
graduates continuedhigher education. All are decent numbers even they
were from communities in U.S.
People generally agree - no matter what kind of religion they follow
and whatkind of life harmony they pursue-that: live longer is good;
fewer infantdeaths is good; more education is good.
Have Tibetans been better off?
And talking about the special treatment, in Tibet, Tibetans don't
need to follow the famous one-child policy. The policy only applies
to Han people.
It is a shame that most western reporters don't provide a
comprehensive comparison or analysis; Economist is better but not
much.
Comment on: Tibet | Fears of contagion from Tibet | Economist.com at
3/24/2008 10:34 AM EDT
Do you want to support another Taliban?
Before 1959, Tibet was under the Lamaist (Buddhist) theocracy. Just
like most theocracies in history, it was a very cruel and inhumane
form of governing. Tibet before 1959 was close to, if not worse than,
the Afghanistan under the Taliban regime.
Michael Parenti, a history professor from U.S,
(http://www.michaelparenti.org/Tibet.html)
provides the following finding:
"In the Dalai Lama's Tibet, torture and mutilation -- including eye
gouging, the pulling out of tongues, hamstringing, and amputation of
arms and legs -- were favored punishments inflicted upon thieves,
runaway serfs, and other "criminals."
Some Western visitors to Old Tibet remarked on the number of amputees
to be seen. Since it was against Buddhist teachings to take human
life, some offenders were severely lashed and then "left to God" in
the freezing night to die. "The parallels between Tibet and medieval
Europe are striking," concludes Tom Grunfeld in his book on Tibet.
(20)
Theocratic despotism had been the rule for generations. An English
visitor to Tibet in 1895, Dr. A. L. Waddell, wrote that the Tibetan
people were under the "intolerable tyranny of monks" and the devil
superstitions they had fashioned to terrorize the people. In 1904
Perceval Landon described the Dalai Lama's rule as "an engine of
oppression" and "a barrier to all human improvement." In 1937,
another visitor, Spencer Chapman, wrote, "The Lamaist monk does not
spend his time in ministering to the people or educating them, nor do
laymen take part in or even attend the monastery services. The beggar
beside the road is nothing to the monk. Knowledge is the jealously
guarded prerogative of the monasteries and is used to increase their
influence and wealth." (24)
I don't like either side of this detabe but do you really want to
support another Taliban?
Comment on: Tibet | A colonial uprising | Economist.com at 3/24/2008
10:09 AM EDT
Do you want to support another Taliban?
Before 1959, Tibet was under the Lamaist (Buddhist) theocracy. Just
like most theocracies in history, it was a very cruel and inhumane
form of governing. Tibet before 1959 was close to, if not worse than,
the Afghanistan under the Taliban regime.
Michael Parenti, a history professor from U.S,
(http://www.michaelparenti.org/Tibet.html) provides the following
finding:
"In the Dalai Lama's Tibet, torture and mutilation -- including eye
gouging, the pulling out of tongues, hamstringing, and amputation of
arms and legs -- were favored punishments inflicted upon thieves,
runaway serfs, and other "criminals."
Some Western visitors to Old Tibet remarked on the number of amputees
to be seen. Since it was against Buddhist teachings to take human
life, some offenders were severely lashed and then "left to God" in
the freezing night to die. "The parallels between Tibet and medieval
Europe are striking," concludes Tom Grunfeld in his book on Tibet.
(20)
Theocratic despotism had been the rule for generations. An English
visitor to Tibet in 1895, Dr. A. L. Waddell, wrote that the Tibetan
people were under the "intolerable tyranny of monks" and the devil
superstitions they had fashioned to terrorize the people. In 1904
Perceval Landon described the Dalai Lama's rule as "an engine of
oppression" and "a barrier to all human improvement." In 1937,
another visitor, Spencer Chapman, wrote, "The Lamaist monk does not
spend his time in ministering to the people or educating them, nor do
laymen take part in or even attend the monastery services. The beggar
beside the road is nothing to the monk. Knowledge is the jealously
guarded prerogative of the monasteries and is used to increase their
influence and wealth." (24)
I don't like either side of this detabe but do you really want to
support another Taliban?
Comment on: Tibet | A colonial uprising | Economist.com at 3/24/2008
9:59 AM EDT
Have Tibetans been better off since 1959?
This question is strangely missing from most China-bashing articles
relatedto the recent Tibetan riots. And the Economist only covered
the economic part.
Let's be spiritual and skip the economy completely. Let's look at
public health instead.
Life expectancy of Tibetan was 35.5 years in 1959 vs. 67 years in
2005.
And the infant mortality rate was 43% in 1959 and 3.1 % in 2005 (4.8%
inCanada, 2006 data).
What happened? Since 1959, 1,326 new medical institutions have been
built ,among which, 764 new hospitals or clinics, 79 disease
prevention centers and55 health centers dedicated to women and
children.
How about education? Before 1950, there was almost no decent school
inTibet, less than 2% school-age children received education and
theilliteracy rate was 95%. In 2003, 91.9% school-age children in
Tibetenrolled in primary schools; 82.9% primary schools students
continuedstudying in middle schools; and 72.1% middle school
graduates continuedhigher education. All are decent numbers even they
were from communities in U.S.
People generally agree - no matter what kind of religion they follow
and whatkind of life harmony they pursue-that: live longer is good;
fewer infantdeaths is good; more education is good.
Have Tibetans been better off?
And talking about the special treatment, in Tibet, Tibetans don't
need to follow the famous one-child policy. The policy only applies
to Han people.
It is a shame that most western reporters don't provide a
comprehensive comparison or analysis...
Source: China Daily
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90776/90882/6389959.html
TYC: from violence to terrorism
+ - 16:59, April 18, 2008
TYC President Tsewang Rigzin is destined to "overtake his master". As the current president of the Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC), Tsewang Rigzin recently had an interview with the Milan-based Italian newspaper, Corriere Della Sera, and voiced stunning words that left people gasping with awe and bewilderment. For the cause of "Tibetan independence", he said, the use of human bomb for revenge is a direction of development.
In contrast, his predecessor Gaisang Pucong, former TYC chairman, only threatened to use all means, violence or nonviolence, for the sake of their cause. Violence, revenge and all kinds of atrocities that match to their "statements" have been voiced freely. Since its inception, TYC in the people's memory has never hesitated to display its inclination to violence.
Among its recent moves, TYC has held a series of training courses on guerrilla warfare tactics and detonating skills, constantly turned to such violent actions as beating, smashing, looting and committing arson, and even harshly assaulted handicapped Olympic torchbearers before the eyes of the world's people... All these attemps are by no means accidental.
TYC, dubbed as the daring vanguard for "Tibetan independence", represents the greatest and most dynamic force among the Tibetan societies and organizations in exile. It was formed in India in 1970 under the blessing of the Dalai Lama. Shortly afterwards, some of its members claimed to resort to violence forever and its president then even clamored to use all means including violence for the sake of the interests of Tibetans. To this end, they plotted the Lhasa riots in 1987, 1988 and 1989.
With the passage of time, however, TYC has turned increasingly more violent when the cause of "Tibetan independence" they had schemed developed slowly and the situation remained unfavorable to them. During riots in Lhasa on March 14, they burned or stabbed innocent civilians to death and set fire to stores and stalls. Moreover, they, in a bid to inflict greater casualties upon people, stored more than 100 guns, tens of thousands of bullets, several thousand kilograms of explosives and tens of thousands of detonators, as reported by lamas and ordinary people. Some ringleaders even clamored that they were ready to sacrifice additional 100 Tibetan lives to achieve a "thorough victory".
Such violent and terrorist tendencies of TYC have been completely exposed or unmasked as they do not mind losing human lives, either those of innocent civilians or its own "warriors". All terrorist organizations regard human lives merely as "trash or dirt" instead of highly evaluating them and taking them seriously, and their cruelty and ruthlessness educated people profoundly during the September 11 attacks of 2001 in the United States. The TYC's actions, too, have turned increasingly to the "definition of terrorism".
By the terrorism, it means the unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence against people or property to coerce or intimidate a government or an international organizations, often to achieve political purposes or to inflict losses of innocent human lives and result in immense injuries to human bodies.
Terrorism constitutes the foe of peace and development for humanity. Those violent moves of TYC have, nevertheless, obtained support from some media organs and a few politicians in the Western world, who have whitewashed such actions as "peaceful protests" to seek "human rights". And actions of some "Tibetan independence" elements in the torch relay, in particular, were not denounced and, instead a laissez-faire attitude was taken toward them, the matters were let drifting and some have even received acclaims.
This enhances the conviction of TYC leaders that they will be more influential through their terrorist activities and the "Tibet issue" will attract more attention of the international community; they will confide more with terrorist activities that "could achieve the biggest effect at the lowest costs", so that they have slipped farther along the path from violence to terrorism.
With the arrival of the day with revengeful human bombs as clamored by Tsewang Rigzin, people really do not know whether some Western media will still think that they are "protesting peacefully" and where will the so-called "moral height" of US Speaker Ms. Nancy Pelosi be located?
By People's Daily Online
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90780/91342/6395323.html
Beijing Olympic torch relay in Paris April 7, 2008
Character display of Tibetan Youth Congress
Well prepared...She was selling her flags.
This is the nature of Tibetan Youth Congress !!
It is degrading to be with Tibetan Youth Congress !!
It was so disgusting, he was pushed on the ground by the public
The whole show was recorded by French TV
TYC, Common Enemy to All Human
+ - 14:35, April 14, 2008
The violent incident in Lhasa on March 14 -- including beating, smashing, looting and arson, hindered the passing of Beijing Olympic Flame in Britain and France. These were Dalai group's separatist activities, organized premeditatedly to achieve for Tibet's independence. "Tibetan Youth Congress" plays a role of rascal in these criminal activities, treating innocent people with extremely vicious violence, being no different from terrorist organization's activities.
We can never forget the tragedy brought about by "Tibetan Youth Congress". During the riot on March 14, Tsering Drolkar, Yang Dongmei, Chen Gui, Han Xingxing and Liu Yan, the five shop assistants at Yishion specialty stores, were burnt to death. The eldest among the five girls was 24 years old, and the youngest was only 19. The mobs were cruel, cutting off people's ears and killing people in inhuman ways; not even letting go an infant of eight months old. They were even cold-blooded towards the Tibetan people. A few among the mobs even carried out the cruel torture called "Light the sky lamp", as Tibetan serf owner did in the old times, and burned innocent people to death. The deeds of the "Tibetan Youth Congress" were inhuman and barbarous.
We will not forget the frantic clamor made by the "Tibetan Youth Congress" while the people around the world were looking forward to the coming of the 29th Olympic Games with the athletes. Aiming at the Beijing Olympic Games, they held all kinds of extreme activities at home and abroad, together with Tibetan separatist organizations--"Students for a Free Tibet", "Tibetan Women's Association" and etc. in brewing a plot to stop the Olympic Flame from reaching the summit of Mount Qomolangma this year.
In fact, the "Tibetan Youth Congress" has always favored violence. Kelzang Phuntsok, the leader of "Tibetan Youth Congress" once said in 2003: "We will try all means, no matter violent or non-violent, to achieve our goal." Before and after the "3.14" event, "Tibetan Youth Congress" shouted shamelessly: "We vow to regain the independence of Tibet, even at the cost of blood and lives." The "Tibetan Youth Congress" held a meeting in India and later passed the decision to "instantly organize armed guerilla wars inside China". On March 15th, the head of "Tibetan Youth Congress" claimed to achieve their goal "they were ready to sacrifice the lives of at least 100 more Tibetans". Tsewang Rigzin, leader of "Tibetan Youth Congress" said: "The violent activities have basically awoken the resistance consciousness in the regions inhabited by Tibetan people in China and have drawn attention from the world on the Tibet problem as expected. But the resistance activity cannot stop. This action is only the prelude of this year's resistance activities."
The "Tibetan Youth Congress", which has always supported violence and terrorism, is in fact a terrorist organization. It can cause turmoil in Tibet, China today and will probably start terrorist attacks in other countries another day. After the "9.11" tragedy, terrorism has become the world's common enemies. Therefore, to have world peace, all human in the world should unite and crack down on the terrorist organization--"Tibetan Youth Congress".
Source: CRIENGLISH.com
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90780/91342/6392246.html
Young Foreign Tibetans stop being used by USA
You deserve high standard free-of-charge Education
Say NO! to Dalai Lama and Tibetan Youth Congress
Destiny of Dalai Lama is desperate hopelessness
click here
Tibetan Youth Congress = a terror group
14:10, April 12, 2008
It's hard -- because that's something I never thought of before -- peeling off the clothes of someone else. I'm taking the risk of being charged as a suspect in a "sexual harassment" case and I can see the troubles there. Hah. However, currently, I have no fear and feel self-assured and rational. Now, we can use an equation to rip off the camouflage of the Tibetan Youth Congress.
(Mask and Husk) + (Blood and Terror) = the real TYC
It's not a difficult one, and one who takes the first sight of it will understand it. And it's not an easy one too, which baffles lots of wise people.
1. Mask and Husk
When the "Tibetan Youth Congress" was founded in 1970, it declared itself as "non-governmental organization". That label is quite natural as no one will follow them if they proclaimed to be a terrorist group. They also used the image of our pure snow mountain and the just dauntless lion to make their so-called "snow lion flag", a cunning tactic to deceive kind-hearted people.
The TYC, the "Tibetan Women's Congress", the "Free Tibet Students' Movement" and four other "secessionist" organizations held a press conference in New Dehli on January 4, 2008 and announced a proposal of "Tibetan People's Uprising Movement". They called the movement a "global movement of Tibetans in and outside Tibet" and said it will "make trouble to China by organizing and coordinating actions in Tibet". How ridiculous. What kind of movement can be called "People's Uprising"? No doubt many people in other countries, even some in China, have been deluded.
The "husk" of the TYC is thin, but it is soft and sticky, making it difficult to peel, and somewhat nauseating.
Equation 1: so-called "NGO" + "Snow Lion flag" + "People's Uprising" = ?
2. Blood and Terror
Since its founding, the TYC has been a terrorist group for the "total independence of Tibet". Tendzin Choegyal, Dalai Lama's younger brother and follower, said: "Terrorist activities can be most effective at the lowest cost." At a meeting of its "central executive committee" in Dharamsala, India, the TYC approved a decision to "start a guerrilla movement as soon as possible to secretly enter China and carry out armed struggles". The organization also made preliminary plans to prepare personnel, funding and arms to steal into China through the China-Nepal border. Some ringleaders even claimed they could sacrifice at least 100 Tibetans to achieve a "thorough victory". Wow! All those lead us to think about the Black Widows, bin Ladens, East Turkistans, human bombs, and September 11 terrorists¡&endash;
Equation 2: Tendzin Choegyal + Dharamsala "central executive committee" + personnel, financing and arms purchasing plans + 100 Tibetans = ?
In the 1970s, the TYC instigated "Free Tibet" activities when Dalai Lama dispatched a visiting group to Tibet with the approval of China's central government. In the 1980s, it instigated a series of serious riots in Lhasa. In the early 1990s, it audaciously claimed that Tibet would be independent in five to ten years. In the late 1990s, the TYC staged a ban on worshipping the protective deity "Dorje Shugden". This year, the TYC of the Dalai Clique claimed in a March 10 statement that it would "never give up the struggle for a free Tibet" and organized the serious violent incident of beating, smashing, ransacking and arson on March 14. We can see all these can be applied at the right side of the equation.
Equation 3: 1970s+1980s+1990s+2008+ . . . = ?
The TYC has been organizing such classes as "blast technique trainings" for terrorists. Speeches by the Dalai clique in 2007 revealed the "Students for a Free Tibet" (SFT) held its eighth "free Tibet campaign" in North America and has so far trained 450 terrorists. They committed appalling and ghastly crimes in Lhasa on March 14. Then the same kind of violence including beating, smashing, looting and arson also broke out in several Tibetan-inhabited areas like Aba of Southwest China's Sichuan Province and Gannan of Northwest China's Gansu Province. Displaying the snow lion flag of the so-called "Tibetan government in exile," rioters vowed to pursue "Tibet independence" at any cost. They attacked government offices, hospitals, schools and shops, smashed and burned vehicles, utilities and residences. Innocent civilians were hacked and beaten to death, in an atrocious and brutal way. The sabotage led to losses of 250 million yuan ($36 million) and 400 casualties.
Equation 4: Blast technique training class + "free Tibet campaign" + 450 terrorists + March 14 Lhasa riot + $36 million + 400 casualties = ?
The police recently found 178 guns, 13,013 bullets, 359 swords, 3,504 kilograms of dynamite, 19,360 detonators and two grenades in the residence of some lamas in Tibet. Since March 10, 18 Chinese embassies and consulates in some foreign countries have harassed and attacked by the Tibetan separatists and some so-called international "pro-Tibet activists."
Equation 5: 178 guns + 13,013 bullets + 359 swords + 3,504 kilograms of dynamite + 19,360 detonators + two hand grenades + 18 embassies=?
Equation 1+2+3+4+5= terrorist organization TYC
After all these calculations, I'm afraid I might be nominated for the Nobel Prize for Mathematics! The "Tibetan Youth Congress", you are left of merely blood and terror when your mask and skin are stripped off.
Source: China Daily
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90776/90882/6391345.html
TYC Attacked handicapped woman
Beijing Olympic torch relay in Paris April 7, 2008
Jin Jing was attacked during the Olympics torch relay in Paris.(Xinhua Photo)
Jin Jing, a Paralympic fencer, returned home on Wednesday and received a hero's welcome when she was recognized by people at Beijing's Capital International Airport.(Xinhua Photo)
Commentary: A 'human right' to attack handicapped woman?
www.chinaview.cn 2008-04-12 00:53:30
BEIJING, April 11 (Xinhua) -- Is it a human right that "Tibet independence" separatists assaulted a handicapped woman? the People's Daily, the flagship newspaper of the Communist Party of China (CPC), questioned in a commentary to be published on Saturday.
The Dalai clique claimed they have pursued "freedom" and "human rights" on various occasions. However, what happened during the Paris leg of the Olympic torch relay revealed the nature of the "rights", the commentary said.
Jin Jing, a Paralympic fencer, held the torch tightly from her wheelchair while a few mobs tried to snatch it away. She had to bend her body to protect the torch, but the mobs did not stop in their attempt, leaving her bruised and scratched on her chin and right leg.
The "Tibetan independence" separatists said they were advocating "freedom" and "human rights" while protesting against the torch relay. They tried to deprive the freedom of Jin of fulfilling her dream, and attacked her to have their so-called freedom and human rights. "How overbearing and terrible the freedom and human rights are!" the commentary said.
"Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else," the commentary cited the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of France.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations also said "in the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others ...".
The separatists, for their own "rights", have deprived freedoms from and trod on the rights of others from Lhasa to Paris, the commentary pointed out.
"We were saddened by what we saw in London and Paris. We were sad for the athletes and torch bearers. We were sad for the children who watched their heroes and role models being booed," International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Jacques Rogge said after the torch relay was disrupted in the two European capitals.
"It is utterly inhuman to attack a handicapped girl," remarked an American athlete. A Chinese netizen wrote "it is always seen that mobs commit violence under the cloak of pursuing freedom and human rights".
What happened in Paris just revealed the true face of Tibetan separatists to more people and showed what kind of freedom and rights the Dalai clique want, the commentary concluded.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-04/12/content_7962472.htm
French Senate President Christian Poncelet (front L) hands over President Nicolas Sarkozy's sympathy note to Chinese torchbearer Jin Jing (R) in Shanghai, east China, April 21, 2008. (Xinhua Photo)
French Senate President Christian Poncelet (front-L) poses with Chinese torchbearer Jin Jing in Shanghai, east China, April 21, 2008. (Xinhua Photo)
"What happened in Paris on April 7 has engendered a feeling of bitterness in your country. I want to assure you that the incidents that were brought about by a few people on this sad day don't reflect the feelings of my fellow countrymen for the Chinese people," the letter says.
Sarkozy also invited Jin Jing to come to France in the near future as his personal guest as well as French people's guest, in a bid to erase that "painful moment".
Poncelet's special visit was made amid China's growing anger with France mainly due to the disruption of the torch relay by Tibetan secessionists during the chaotic Paris leg.
Calling upon Jin Jing at Shanghai Disabled Persons' Sport Training Center, Poncelet hugged and kissed the girl, who was honored by the Chinese as a "smiling wheel-chaired angel".
He told reporters that to call on Jin Jing is the shared wish of all his delegation members, coming from various parties of France and representing all the French people.
Regarding his current China trip as at a sensitive moment, Poncelet said the French people were astonished by the attack Jin suffered in Paris, which not only hurt the Chinese but also the French.
"Although something unhappy happened, we should make efforts to strengthen the Sino-France friendship," he added.
After reading Sarkozy's letter, the grey-haired Poncelet presented Jin with a bouquet of lilies, wishing her greater achievements in future sports competitions.
"To protect the torch is what every Chinese and every athlete is ready to do. When I joined the torch relay in Paris, I not only passed on the Olympic flame, but also the Chinese people's friendship with the French," said a smiling Jin.
She said she was very glad to be invited by President Sarkozy to France, adding she hopes to contribute her own efforts to cementing the Sino-France friendship.
The 27-year-old Jin also wished French athletes excellent performances at the Beijing Olympics and Paralympics, and a happy stay in Beijing.
"We Chinese people will certainly welcome French people and athletes to China with a tolerant, friendly and passionate attitude," she said.
Poncelet is paying his third China trip as French Senate president from April 21-27, at the invitation of Chinese top legislator Wu Bangguo.
"We believe the Beijing Olympics would be a successful Olympic Games. The French people expect its complete success. Every one of us should exert efforts for that," Poncelet said.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-04/21/content_8020551.htm
Video: French Senate President visits Chinese torch bearer Jin Jing .
PD Online readers support crack down on TYC
17:31, April 11, 2008
Netizens have left dozens of messages on PD Online supporting China's stance on dealing with the Lhasa riots, and condemning the terrorism incidents triggered by the Dalai Lama clique.
A reader named Sohail Ahmad from Pakistan says he feels sad about what is going on in Tibet. He claims that Tibet is part of China; and China must handle these terrorists with an iron fist.
"I firmly believe that landlocked [Tibet] is an integral part of China. These are attempts by the US to destabilize Asia. ¡&endash;The US has committed the worst crime against humanity by subjecting Iraqi civilians to daily mayhem and genocide. ¡&endash;The US is trying to cover up its crime against humanity in Iraq by inciting CIA-funded covert operations in Tibet," another reader stated.
Another reader commented that the War against Lies must be made at all costs not only in China but internationally, as he thinks that the greater the lie the more people will believe it. In terms of dealing with the terrorists, he thinks U.S. President Bush is the best person to give advice.
Another American reader expressed that he was appalled by the lack of simple internet research that would show the historical use of the Dalai Lama's family as just part of a much larger historical geopolitical attempt to dismantle the Chinese government. He held that the Dalai Lama's hands are still dirty today, and he hopes the world will see the real truth soon.
By People's Daily Online
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90776/90882/6391178.html
TYC, a terror group worse than Bin Laden's
11:32, April 11, 2008
Terrorist organizations are notorious for their activities like explosions and aircraft hijacking. But few people had heard about "Tibetan Youth Congress". It is not until the Lhasa riot erupted on March 14th that people began to know about this group.
Founded in 1970, with 30,000 members and nearly 70 branches worldwide, "Tibetan Youth Congress" is made up of descendents of Dalai and other Tibetan aristocrats in exile. It alleged the "complete independence of Tibet" on the first day of its establishment, and later became the right core of Dalai Group. It has always been engaging in activities to split China, and it cannot shirk the responsibility for the Lhasa riots happened not long ago.
"Tibetan Youth Congress" regards "Violence" and "terrorist activities" as its "primary tasks" to achieve Tibet's independence. Its ex-president once said: "we have to achieve our goal by any means, be it violence or non-violence." Dalai's brother made it more direct: "terrorist activities can reap maximum efforts with minimum cost". These remarks tell this group is no different from any other terrorist groups in the world.
The Lhasa riots are actually the "masterpieces" premeditated by "Tibetan Youth Congress". A journalist at Asia Week detected this group's vicious plan on his trip to India as early as last August. On January 4th and 5th 2008, seven "Tibet Free" Organizations held a press conference in New Delhi and released the so-called "Tibetan Uprising Movement" Proposals. When their proposals were not fully taken by the Chinese government, they directed the riot on March 10th, their so-called "deadline". When failing to get what they expected, they plotted another series of attacks, looting and burning which took away many innocent people's lives and property.
Massive aggressive weapons confiscated from the residence of monks by police after the riots has proved the violent nature of "Tibetan Youth Congress". According to Wu Heping, a spokesman from the Ministry of Public Security, the confiscated weapons include 178 guns, 13013 bullets, 359 knives, 3504kg explosive devices, 19360 primers and 2 grenades. How destructive it would be if these weapons were added together! If "Tibetan Youth Congress" was not a terrorist organization, what else would it be?
Terrorists never take people's lives seriously. The day after March 14th, instead of mourning for victims, "Tibetan Youth Congress" couldn't wait to hold a meeting in India and later passed the decision on armed struggles by setting up guerilla. The head of the group claimed they were ready to sacrifice at least 100 Tibetan's lives for the utter success.
On March 25th, the second day after the Beijing Olympic flame was lit in Greece, about 50 "Tibetan Youth Congress" members lit the torch symbolizing "the Independence of Tibet" in Dharms¨¡la, India, where Tibetan government-in-exile locates. But their torch is unable to become the "flame" in the hearts of peace-loving people; on the contrary, it unveils its true face to the whole world.
Source: China Daily
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90780/91342/6390946.html
TYC, a terrorist organization much catastrophic than bin Laden's, say netizens
15:32, April 10, 2008
Al Qaeda has been infamy in recent years with a series of terrorist activities it has plotted, such as bombings and hijacking of airplanes. But few people knew anything about the inside story of the Tibet Youth Congress or TYC. It has begun surfacing and arresting the attention of common people since such riots as beating, smashing, looting and arson erupted in Lhasa, capital city of the Tibetan autonomous region on March 14.
Founded in 1970, the Tibet Youth Congress, or TYC, is an exile group comprising chiefly descendents of those Tibetan aristocrats, who came in exile with the Dalai Lama about half a century ago. With a current membership of 30,000, it now has close to 70 branches around the world, including the United States. Since its inception, it had advocated for the "total independence of Tibet".
Afterwards, it all joined the "Tibetan government in exile" and became the core of power of the Dalai clique. For a long period of time, TYC has engaged in activities to secede China and made an "indelible service" in the recent violence involving murder, arson and other acts of vandalism against innocent civilians in Lhasa.
Unlike the Dalai Lama who uses "non-violence" to gloss over his blemishes, TYC has all along turned to violence and resorted to terrorist activities as its first primary task to attain the Tibet independence. Kalsang Phuntsok, its former president, once alleged that they would resort to any means, violence or non-violence, for the sake of their cause.
Meanwhile, the Dalai Lama's younger brother and follower, Tebdzub Choegyal, said more bluntly that the maximal effect could be brought about by terrorist activities at the lowest costs. These open, naked allegations have enabled us to see that TYC does not have much difference essentially with al Qaeda and Chechen terrorists militants, but it could be even worse.
In fact, riots erupted in Lhasa since March 10 and the March 14 serious incident of violence is precisely a premeditated "masterpiece" of TYC. Back in late August of 2007, an "Asian Weekly" reporter discovered during his India visit that the Tibet independent forces, or TYC, intended to create turbances and schemed to organize guerrilla.
Moreover, they incited Tibetan youths to go in for underground activities, and spy on railways and water conservancy and power grid projects in Tibet and numerous barracks of the military area command. On January 4 and January 25, seven Tibet independence groups held press conferences in New Delhi, India, giving calls to organize an uprising inside Tibet and these Tibetan exile groups had announced the creation of a "Tibetan People's Uprising Movement" and spread the so-called proposal on the internet.
As the Chinese government could not agree to their unreasonable and unjustifiable demands, TYC and other groups provoked disputes on March 10, or "the last day" they had set as the deadline, inciting some Buddhist monks to make disturbances. Again on March 14, they brazenly created the violent Lhasa incident with a resultant heavy loss of human lives and property damage.
These seven groups include the Tibet Youth Congress, or TYC, the Tibetan Women's Association, "Students for a Free Tibet", the "National Democratic Party of Tibet", the "Tibet Support Network" and the "Tibetan Writers' Organization".
After the Lhasa riots occurred on March 14, police seized a lot of offensive weaponry in some Tibetan Buddhist temples or Lamaseries, as a clear proof to the violent nature of TYC. Among the weapons seized, according to Ministry of Public Security spokesmen Wu Heping, there were 178 rifles or guns, 13,013 rounds of bullets, 359 knives or swords, and a lot of explosives, including 3,504 kilograms of dynamite, 19,360 detonators and two hand-grenades. The destructive capabilities of the above-mentioned weaponry can be said to be "shocking". If such an organization of violence, which can be said to be much catastrophic than ben Laden's, is not practicing terrorism, then what else can said to be a terrorist organization?
On March 15, the following day of the March 14 incident, TYC held a meeting of its executive members in Dharamsala, India, and unanimously adopted a resolution on cross-border entry into China to carry out guerrilla warfare and launch a secret entry into the country though the Sino-Nepalese border. A TYC ringleader even claimed that they are ready to sacrifice another 100 Tibetans for their complete victory. This has once again laid bare the ugly feature of this group of terrorists.
On March 24, the Beijing Olympic sacred fire was ignited in Greece with its 85,000-mile journey starting from ancient Olympia in Greece to Beijing. On the following day, however, about 50 people ignited a torch symbolic of "Tibet independence", but regrettably, their torch will never be the "sacred fire" of the peace-loving people the world over. And on the contrary, they will bury themselves ultimately in the sea of fire at the purgatory they have erected with their own hands.
By People's Daily Online
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90780/91342/6390216.html
"Tibetan Youth Congress" cannot cover terrorist nature with lies
www.chinaview.cn 2008-04-28 10:33:40
BEIJING, April 28 (Xinhua) -- Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC) recently resorted to the so-called "peaceful and non-violence" steps in an attempt to achieve its goal of "Tibetan independence". But the violence in Lhasa on March 14 revealed its terrorist nature.
Some members of the TYC announced they would "forever use violence" when it was founded in India in 1970. Since then, "terrorism" has become its label. Its crimes to achieve "Tibetan independence" reached its climax with the recent Lhasa riots.
They mistakenly regarded the 2008 Beijing Olympics as the "last chance" for their secessionist activities, and advocated that "Tibetans in all parts of the world should commit themselves to the campaign".
The day after the Lhasa riots, the TYC approved a decision to "found a guerrilla movement as soon as possible to secretly enter into China and carry out armed struggles" at a meeting of its "central executive committee".
However, as the truth about the Lhasa riots became known to the world, the TYC was doomed to be criticized and abandoned by the world people for its violent and terrorist activities to separate Tibet from the motherland.
All the people, who are well informed, peace-loving and pursuing development, will be able to perceive the ugly face of the TYC and never facilitate its efforts to diminish China's image.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-04/28/content_8065545.htm
Video: Tibet Riot Documentary.
Facts exposing Dalai clique's masterminding of Lhasa violence
17:21, March 31, 2008
Xinhua was authorized to release a signed article on Sunday to reveal how the Dalai clique plotted and incited the Lhasa violence on March 14, which killed at least 18 civilians and one police officer.
The story, by Yi Duo, says that it was untrue of the Dalai Lama and his backers to claim that the riot was a "spontaneous peaceful protest" that the Dalai Lama had nothing to do with.
AN INSIDER'S CONFESSION
An unidentified suspect who was connected with the Lhasa violence has confessed to the police that the "security department" of the "Tibetan government-in-exile" asked him to distribute leaflets promoting the so-called "Tibetan people's uprising" to civilians and monks in Tibet, according to the article.
"The violence on March 14 was related to the instigation of the 'security department' of the 'Tibetan government-in-exile'," the suspect said.
"To protect myself, (the Dalai clique) asked me not to participate in the demonstrations in person, just to take charge of stirring people up," the suspect said.
"The beating, smashing, looting and burning were by no means peaceful demonstrations and the deeds were inhuman," the suspect admitted. "If they (the Dalai clique) wanted to follow the non-violent 'middle way', such violence should have never happened."
On the same day that mobs attacked innocent Lhasa civilians, a closed-door meeting was held by the Dalai Lama clique on how to build on the "achievements," the article said.
FOLLOW-UP PLOTS
The meeting finally decided to mobilize all of the monasteries in Tibet, each with more than 100 lamas, especially those of the Yellow Sect of Tibetan Buddhism, and ask the monks to take to the street and involve common Tibetans in the demonstrations. The meeting also plotted to launch ongoing protests, in stages, in Tibetan-inhabited areas.
Samdhong, the "prime minister" of the "Tibetan government-in-exile," said at the meeting that they should seize the very rare opportunity provided by the Beijing Olympics to make breakthroughs in the "Tibet cause", to pave the way for the Dalai Lama to "return" to Tibet and to achieve a high level of autonomy in "Greater Tibet", as well as the goal of "abolishing" the existing management method on the reincarnation of Tibetan living Buddhas.
The Dalai clique also entrusted the "ministry of finance" under the "government-in-exile" to "financially support the decisive battle against the Chinese government," the article said.
A day after the violence began on March 14, the "Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC)", a hardline organization under the Dalai Lama's supporters that openly preaches violence, decided to "set up guerillas to infiltrate Tibet and start armed struggles" at a meeting in Dharamsala, where the "Tibetan government-in-exile" was located, the article said.
They also drafted recruitment plans and plans to purchase weapons and planned to steal into Tibet through the China-Nepal border.
The "TYC" leaders said that they were ready to "sacrifice another 100 Tibetans at least" to achieve their goal.
Besides the "TYC", other organizations that were among the Dalai Lama's supporters also sent people to Tibetan communities in India and Nepal, urging residents there to contact people in Tibet and other Tibetan-inhabited areas in China by telephone or e-mail and incite them, "in the name of the Dalai Lama", to hold demonstrations following the Lhasa violence.
Cewang Rigzin, the "TYC" president, said at a meeting on March 20 that violence has "achieved its goal" to "awaken resistance among people in Tibet and attract high-profile international attention to the Tibet issue" but the struggle "will not stop and this incident is just the prelude of this year's fight."
INSTIGATION OF LHASA RIOT
The article detailed how the Dalai Lama's backers masterminded a so-called "Tibetan people's uprising" that led to the violence in Lhasa.
Five organizations under the "Tibetan government-in-exile", the "TYC", the "Tibetan Women's Association (TWA)," "Students for a Free Tibet (SFT)," the "National Democratic Party of Tibet (NDPT)"and the "Gu-Chu-Sum Movement of Tibet (GCSMT)" announced the formal start of the "Tibetan people's uprising" on Jan. 4 this year and founded a temporary preparation office in charge of coordination and financing, headed by Cewang Rigzin, according to the report.
They claimed that the movement would be a "turning point in the history of Tibetans' struggle for freedom," the article said.
"They divided the movement into four stages," it said. The first was to recruit participants and promote the ideas of the movement. The second stage, or the action step, started on March 10, followed by the third, which was to organize demonstrations across the world. The last one was to launch actions in the regions inhabited by Tibetan people inside China.
FOREIGN ASSISTANCE
From Feb. 15 to 17, the five organizations launched training programs for people in charge of the movement activities in Dharamsala in northwest India, where the "Tibetan government-in-exile" was located.
Four days later, in the same place, they started a six-day campaign to recruit participants.
The "GCSMT" obtained financial assistance from the U.S.-based National Endowment for Democracy (NED) on Feb. 27 from a fund "for activists to deal with danger."
According to an NED report, the foundation granted 1.36 million U.S. dollars to the Dalai Lama's backers between 2002 and 2006. In 2006 alone, it gave 85,000 U.S. dollars to organizations such as the "TWA" and "GCSMT."
The Dalai clique questioned about 300 Tibetans who were smuggled across the border from China during February in a bid to collect information for planned attacks on border points or infiltration into China, the article said.
On March 10, after careful selection, 101 hard-core members setoff from Dharamsala to unleash the movement.
HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF
March 10 is the anniversary of the so-called "Tibet uprising" in 1959. On that date, 49 years ago, Lhasa saw a bloody riot initiated by the Dalai Lama's backers. Rioters killed Pagbalha Soinam Gyamco, a senior lama and a member of the preparation committee of the Tibet Autonomous Region, tied his body to a horse and dragged it for two kilometers.
The day, annually commemorated by the Dalai Lama's backers, has been a reminder of violence. And history seems to have repeated itself.
On the same date this year, a ceremony was held in Dharamsala to mark the event. The 14th Dalai Lama said in a critical statement that the Chinese government had imposed "more severe repression upon Tibetans in Tibet" and "trampled on human rights and limited religious freedom".
He also expressed appreciation for the "Tibetan people's sincerity, courage and resolution."
Immediately after the ceremony, about 300 monks from the Zhaibung Monastery tried to march into central Lhasa. In the following days, monks from other temples in Lhasa also tried to demonstrate but were restrained by police.
When the monks' efforts to spread unrest failed, rioters came. They torched shops and vehicles, attacked innocent passers-by on the streets and even attacked ambulances on March 14.
TRYING TO ESCAPE RESPONSIBILITY
After the Lhasa riot on March 14, which is so far known to have claimed at least 18 civilian lives and caused 382 injuries, unrest erupted in other Tibetan-inhabited regions in the southern part of Gansu Province and the northern part of Sichuan Province.
Mobs, some shouting slogans for "Tibet independence" and bearing flags of the so-called "Tibetan government-in-exile", stormed into and attacked government offices, police stations, hospitals, schools and banks.
Moreover, the backers of the Dalai Lama spread violence even further by organizing rioters to attack Chinese embassies and consulates in the United States, Canada, India, Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Australia, the article said.
The Dalai Lama released a statement via his personal secretariat on March 14, in which violent actions were described as "peaceful protests". On the same day, the "Tibetan government-in-exile" defined the riots in another statement as peaceful demonstrations by Tibetans to protest Chinese policies.
In commenting to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) on March 16, the Dalai Lama said, when prompted, that he would not ask the rioters to stop.
The Chinese government later released film and photographs showing the violent attacks that took place during the riot in Lhasa, which have been regarded as a contradiction to the vaunted "peaceful image" of the Dalai Lama.
On the advice of his supporters, the Dalai Lama changed his tune at a press conference on March 18, when he said that he should not have created an anti-Chinese mood in the international arena. The only option would be his retirement if the situation got out of control, the Dalai Lama said.
His comments were soon seen by the international community as an admission that he had a responsibility for the riots in Lhasa.
BEIJING OLYMPICS
After Beijing won a bid for hosting the 29th Summer Olympic Games in 2008, Dalai clique claimed that it would be a "decisive battle" to seek for "Tibet Independence" by interfering the Olympics.
Chairman of the working department of "2008 Free Tibet Movement" Lordain said in December 2004, "People around the world will pay close attention to China (for Olympics) and that gives us a unique opportunity to bring political pressure to Chinese government."
On February 7 of this year, Gama Qoinpe, "Speaker of the Assembly of Tibetan People's Deputies" said that they should make use of the opportunity to compel Chinese government to resolve the Tibet issue in 2008 or within future two years.
In recent two years, the Dalai Lama and his followers have launched a series of Olympics-related actions for the above-mentioned purpose:
-- Members of "Students for a Free Tibet (SFT)" raised banners of "Tibet Independence" to boycott Beijing Olympics at the base camp of the Mount Qomolangma in April 2007.
-- In May, Dalai clique declared that it will hold "Tibetan Olympics" in Dharamsala and established a "organizing committee" for it.
-- Dalai clique's "Network of International Support to Tibet" also built an athlete "delegation" consisting of Tibetans living outside China and requested International Olympic Committee to allow them to "participate in the Beijing Olympics on behalf of Tibet".
-- The "TYC" decided to launch a "Death Torch" relay in April from Dharamsala to New Delhi, India's Capital.
-- Head of Dalai clique's "Tibet Independence Movement" has said that The Beijing Olympics is an important timing for international communities to press Chinese government to improve human rights, continue dialogs with the Dalai Lama and peacefully resolve the Tibet issue. Tibetans living everywhere should participate in the fighting, he said.
Source:Xinhua
http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90776/90785/6384226.html
Video: Dalai clique's masterminding of Lhasa violence exposed .
Canadian tourists tell of atrocities by rioters in Lhasa
www.chinaview.cn 2008-03-20 05:39:07
OTTAWA, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Three Canadian tourists who had been in Lhasa have told of the atrocities committed by rioters last Friday in Lhasa, Tibet, Canada's newspaper The Toronto Star reported Tuesday.
John Kenwood, 19, from Victoria B.C., said that he witnessed a motorcyclist "being pummelled unconscious by a mob hurling chunks of pavement as big as bricks."
Kenwood said he saw the man drenched in blood after being beaten by "15 men carrying what appeared to be two-meter long, silver poles."
The Canadian youth also said that Lhasa's main street, Beijing Road, was "strewn with garbage and the burnt-out hulks of torched vehicles."
Susan Wetmore, another Canadian tourist who had been stranded in the chaos, said some of what she had seen in Tibet "was pretty ugly... pretty ugly."
The 59-year old consultant said she was so grateful to a Chinese cab driver "who literally risked his life" to get her to Lhasa's Gonggar airport.
Despite the shocks and fears they experienced in Tibet, all the tourists told The Toronto Star that they were taken good care of by the Chinese government and local Tibetan people.
The Toronto Star also carried a story of a Canadian tourist rescuing a young man from the hands of the mob.
The rescuer, Justin Winfield from Toronto, said he saw a crowd of rioters beating a young man and two women.
Winfield said he intervened and the angry mobs stopped their attack, but the man was already unconscious, lying on the ground.
He then lifted the man to his feet, and helped him stumble toward a hospital. He took along the two young women, one of whom had lost several teeth.
At the hospital, Winfield said, he saw half a dozen victims with cuts and bruises from beatings.
On the way back to his hotel, he saw at least 15 stores burned or damaged. "They torched the roof of the store across from us. It's just a few gutted walls," he said.
On March 14, riots involving beating, smashing, looting and burning broke peace in Lhasa.
Rioters set fires at more than 300 locations, including residences and 214 shops, smashed and burned 56 vehicles, and attacked schools, banks, hospitals, shops, government offices, utilities and state media offices.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said Tuesday that the Lhasa riot was organized, premeditated, masterminded and incited by the Dalai Lama clique, which exposed once again the separatist nature of the Dalai Lama clique and the hypocritical and fraudulent nature of its so-called "peace" and "non-violence" claims.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-03/20/content_7823452.htm
Western tourists recount riots in Lhasa
+ - 08:09, March 20, 2008
Four Western tourists who visited Tibet and witnessed the recent riots in Tibet recounted the ferocity in a story carried by the British daily The Times on Wednesday.
Entitled "They got him in the head. He was down on the ground, not moving," the story quoted a Swiss tourist as saying that he saw the mob beating an old man on a bicycle.
"They were howling like wolves," said Claude Balsiger. "That's the point when it went insane."
He also described seeing a Canadian tourist step in to rescue a young man being attacked by the crowd.
"They were kicking him in the ribs and he was bleeding from the face," he said. "But then a white man walked up... helped him up from the ground."
Stephen Thompson, 41, from New Zealand, said that he arrived at the Saikang Hotel just as the riot was starting and saw the mob smash the glass front of the building.
"We didn't feel in danger but some people in the group were pretty emotional and one person was injured by a rock that hit them on the head," he said.
Martin Camps, 55, from Germany, said that he had arrived in Lhasa with his wife on the train from Beijing on last Friday, but all attractions were shut down because of the riot.
John Kenwood, a 19-year-old backpacker from Canada who spent 10 days in Lhasa, gave a similar account of the violence.
He said that he saw at least five people being attacked by the mob, including a motorcyclist in his 20s who he thought was beaten to death.
"They got him in the head with a large piece of sidewalk," he said. "He was down on the ground and he was not moving."
On March 14, riots involving beating, smashing, looting and burning broke peace in Lhasa.
Rioters set fires at more than 300 locations, including residences and 214 shops, smashed and burned 56 vehicles, and attacked schools, banks, hospitals, shops, government offices, utilities and state media offices.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said Tuesday that the Lhasa riot was organized, premeditated, masterminded and incited by the Dalai Lama clique, which exposed once again the separatist nature of the Dalai Lama clique and the hypocritical and fraudulent nature of its so-called "peace" and "non-violence" claims.
http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90776/90882/6376830.html
Int'l media delegation departs for Tibet after unrest
www.chinaview.cn 2008-03-26 13:34:58
Members of an international media delegation are about to get on a mini bus upon their arrival in Lhasa, capital of southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, March 26, 2008. The three-day trip is arranged by the Information Office of China's State Council and the media delegation is composed of 26 journalists from 19 media organizations from different countries and regions, such as the Associated Press, the Wall Street Journal and U.S. Today from the United States, Financial Times from Britain, Itar-Tass News Agency from Russia, Kyodo News Service from Japan, Lian He Zao Bao from Singapore, KBS from ROK, Al Jazeera from Qatar, South China Morning Post and the Phoenix TV from Hong Kong and Central News Agency from Taiwan etc. (Xinhua Photo)
BEIJING, March 26 (Xinhua) -- An international media delegation left Beijing for southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region on Wednesday morning following an unrest in the regional capital Lhasa.
Members of an international media delegation arrive in Lhasa airport in Lhasa, capital of southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, March 26, 2008. (Xinhua Photo)
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-03/26/content_7861863.htm
Video: Western media's distorted reports torn apart by truth .
The Information Office of China's State Council has arranged a three-day trip for the delegation, which is composed of 26 journalists from 19 media organizations from different countries and regions, such as The Associated Press from the United States, Financial Times from Britain, South China Morning Post from Hong Kong and Central News Agency from Taiwan.
Lhasa is returning to normal after the March 14 unrest that was believed to have been organized, premeditated and masterminded by the Dalai Lama clique.
The unrest, involving beating, smashing, ransacking and arson, led to the deaths of at least 18 innocent civilians and one police officer. It also left 382 civilians and 241 police officers injured, businesses looted, and residences, shops and vehicles torched.
Overseas journalists' Lhasa tour
www.chinaview.cn 2008-03-27 21:49:37
Wangdui(C), a managerial personnel with Xinhua News Agency Tibet Branch, tells how the agency's building was burnt by the rioters as overseas journalists listen during an interview in Lhasa, capital of southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, March 27, 2008. A tour by overseas reporters to cover the aftermath of the Lhasa riot went on as scheduled on Thursday. The reporters, from 19 media organizations including the U.S.-based Associated Press, Britain's Financial Times and the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong, were touring the Tibetan capital on a three-day trip in Lhasa following the riot on March 14. (Xinhua Photo)
Zhukang Tubdan Kezhub (R), a living Buddha from Tibet, vice chairman of the Tibet regional committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), and vice-chairman of the Tibetan branch of the Buddhism Association of Chinain Lhasa, speaks to reporters during an interview with overseas journalists in Lhasa, capital of southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, on March 28, 2008. (Xinhua Photo)
Journalists work in Lhasa, capital of southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, on March 28, 2008. Top buddhas of the region met with the oversease journalists on Friday. (Xinhua Photo)
Two journalists from Hong Kong work at Yishion clothing store where five sales assistants were burned to death in an arson attack by the rioters in Lhasa, capital of southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, March 27, 2008. A tour by overseas reporters to cover the aftermath of the Lhasa riot went on as scheduled on Thursday. The reporters, from 19 media organizations including the U.S.-based Associated Press, Britain's Financial Times and the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong, were touring the Tibetan capital on a three-day trip in Lhasa following the riot on March 14. (Xinhua Photo)
Tang Qingyan, a functionary in Yishion clothing store where five sales assistants were burned to death in an arson attack by the rioters, tells the details of the atrocity as overseas journalists listen during an interview in Lhasa, capital of southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, March 27, 2008. A tour by overseas reporters to cover the aftermath of the Lhasa riot went on as scheduled on Thursday. The reporters, from 19 media organizations including the U.S.-based Associated Press, Britain's Financial Times and the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong, were touring the Tibetan
Two journalists with Al Jazeera work in a debris left after the riots in Lhasa, capital of southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, March 27, 2008. A tour by overseas reporters to cover the aftermath of the Lhasa riot went on as scheduled on Thursday. The reporters, from 19 media organizations including the U.S.-based Associated Press, Britain's Financial Times and the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong, were touring the Tibetan capital on a three-day trip in Lhasa following the riot on March 14.(Xinhua Photo)
Degyi Zhoiyar, a teacher with Lhasa No. 2 Middle School, tells how her school buildings were torched during the riot as overseas journalists listen during an interview in Lhasa, capital of southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, March 27, 2008. A tour by overseas reporters to cover the aftermath of the Lhasa riot went on as scheduled on Thursday. The reporters, from 19 media organizations including the U.S.-based Associated Press, Britain's Financial Times and the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong, were touring the Tibetan capital on a three-day trip in Lhasa following the riot on March 14. (Xinhua Photo)
Yangzhoen (C), a clerk with a Bank of China outlet that was smashed during the riot, answers overseas journalists' questions during an interview in Lhasa, capital of southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, March 27, 2008. A tour by overseas reporters to cover the aftermath of the Lhasa riot went on as scheduled on Thursday. The reporters, from 19 media organizations including the U.S.-based Associated Press, Britain's Financial Times and the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong, were touring the Tibetan capital on a three-day trip in Lhasa following the riot on March 14. (Xinhua Photo)
An overseas journalist shoots video clips in Lhasa, capital of southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, March 27, 2008. A tour by overseas reporters to cover the aftermath of the Lhasa riot went on as scheduled on Thursday. The reporters, from 19 media organizations including the U.S.-based Associated Press, Britain's Financial Times and the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong, were touring the Tibetan capital on a three-day trip in Lhasa following the riot on March 14.(Xinhua Photo)
Gesang, a local hotel manager, answers overseas journalists' questions during an interview in Lhasa, capital of southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, March 27, 2008. A tour by overseas reporters to cover the aftermath of the Lhasa riot went on as scheduled on Thursday. The reporters, from 19 media organizations including the U.S.-based Associated Press, Britain's Financial Times and the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong, were touring the Tibetan capital on a three-day trip in Lhasa following the riot on March 14. (Xinhua Photo)
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-03/27/content_7871187.htm
Video: Lhasa rioters "regret" actions .
Foreign diplomats visit Lhasa after March 14 riot
www.chinaview.cn 2008-03-29 22:48:51
By Xinhua writers Meng Na and Bai Jie
Foreign diplomats arrive in Lhasa, capital of southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, March 28, 2008. A 15-member diplomat delegation visited Lhasa on Friday and Saturday after the March 14 riot. The delegation went to the burnt shops, schools, visited wounded police and other patients at local hospitals, and talked with ordinary Tibetans whose lives have been severely affected by the March 14 riot , as well as some foreigners who live in Lhasa. (Xinhua Photo)
LHASA, March 29 (Xinhua) -- A 15-member diplomat delegation visited Lhasa, capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region, on Friday and Saturday, the first group of foreign diplomats to visit the plateau city after the March 14 riot.
Their tight agenda included talking with a monk at the Jokhang Temple and meeting with Qiangba Puncog, chairman of the Tibet regional government.
On Saturday morning, the delegation came to the Jokhang Temple and talked with a monk of the temple.
The diplomats came from Beijing-based embassies and diplomatic missions of Brazil, Japan, Germany, Canada, European Union, Italy, Spain, Slovenia, Singapore, Tanzania, United Kingdom, Australia, France, Russia and the United States.
Upon arrival on Friday afternoon, the delegation went to the burnt Yishion Clothes Store on the Beijing Middle Road in downtown Lhasa where five young girls were burnt to death in the riot.
Slovenian Counsellor to China Bernard Srajner takes a photo of a damaged ambulance at a hospital in Lhasa, capital of southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, March 29, 2008. (Xinhua Photo)
The shop boss and a girl who survived the fire answered questions from the diplomats. The survived girl told in detail what had happened in the afternoon of March 14, as foreign diplomats required.
The delegation's buses passed through the Beijing Middle Road, Qingnian Road, North and East Linkuo roads on which some shops and institutions were smashed, looted and burnt by the rioters. Then they arrived at the Second Middle School of Lhasa which was partially burnt in the riot.
The schoolmaster talked about the whole process of how rioters burnt school buildings and their efforts to evacuate students and teachers.
George Manongi, minister of the Tanzanian embassy in China, said he felt very sad while seeing the burnt houses and wounded innocent people.
"Those 'peaceful protests' were in fact ended up with violence. No government will tolerate this," he said.
Qiangba Puncog met with the delegation Friday evening.
He told the diplomats that the March 14 violent incidents were created by the "Tibet independence" forces and organized, premeditated and masterminded by the current Dalai clique with the vicious intention of undermining the upcoming Beijing Olympics and splitting Tibet from the motherland.
He said police authorities had detained 414 suspects being involved in the beating, smashing, ransacking and arson incidents, and another 289 turned themselves in. Among them, 111 had been released for minor offence.
The Public Security Bureau of Lhasa had issued a "most wanted" list hunting for 53 suspects and post their images on major Internet portals, including yahoo.com and sina.com. Among the 53 suspects, six had turned themselves in, and four had been arrested, Qiangba Puncog said.
So far, at least 18 civilians, including an eight-month infant, and one police officer had been confirmed killed in the Lhasa unrest, which also saw 382 injuries. Damage was estimated at about250 million yuan (35.21 million U.S. dollars), according to the regional government chairman, adding that no foreigners had been hurt in the unrest.
Oswaldo Biato Jr, minister counselor of Brazilian Embassy in China and head of the delegation, expressed his gratitude to Qiangba Puncog for his meeting.
He said all the delegates were glad to be here, as it was a good chance to collect first-hand information.
During his meeting with the delegation, Qiangba Puncog also urged Tibetan monks to stay out of politics, saying, "Politics is not in line with Buddhism doctrines."
Counsellor of the Slovenian Embassy in China Bernard Srajner said he was satisfied at Qiangba Puncog's remarks. What he saw after arriving Lhasa showed that "it is a normal city."
Gregory May, secondary secretary from the United States Embassy in China, called the trip "a step in the right direction."
On Saturday morning, the delegation visited wounded police and other patients at local hospitals.
The diplomats also talked with ordinary Tibetans whose lives have been severely affected by the March 14 riot, as well as some foreigners who live in Lhasa.
The diplomats returned to Beijing late Saturday evening.
The trip was arranged by China's Foreign Ministry and the government of the Tibet Autonomous Region.
Peter Wilson (L), a British Counsellor to China, talks with Zhukang Tubdan Kezhub, a living Buddha from Tibet, vice chairman of the Tibet regional committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), and vice- chairman of the Tibetan branch of the Buddhism Association of China, in Lhasa, capital of southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, March 29, 2008. (Xinhua Photo)
Gregory C.May (C), a U.S. diplomat to China, asks a question during a meeting with Qiangba Puncog, chairman of the Tibet regional government, in Lhasa, capital of southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, March 29, 2008. (Xinhua Photo)
Qiangba Puncog, chairman of the Tibet regional government, talks to the visiting diplomats during a meeting in Lhasa, capital of southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, March 29, 2008. (Xinhua Photo)
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-03/29/content_7881525.htm
Video: 30 sentenced in Lhasa riots .
Why some Western media wage 'asymmetric warfare' on China
+ - 17:42, April 16, 2008
People's Daily Online Wednesday released an interview between Song Luzheng (hereinafter will be Song) and his French boss Bastien, trying to figure out why some Western media entities have long-held a biased, even hostile attitude towards China; and why a few of them showed blatant discrimination towards China and went out of their way to slander China, as seen and heard following the Lhasa Riot and on the global tour of the Beijing Olympic torch relay.
Song: What remains confusing to us Chinese, including the overseas Chinese, is why the French government, as well as the people, are so actively -overzealously - and desperately involved in attacks and clampdowns on China. Some French media carried articles and editorials with evident anti-China sentiment which can be detected by just glancing at the titles: "Olympic flame suffered a disastrous defeat in Paris," and "A slap to China." To my knowledge, the Chinese-French relationship remains sound and without any substantial conflict or confrontation. China has never done anything to offend French interests; and in particular, the two sides recently concluded a deal with a bulky order worth over 20 billion euros. Why would France opt to risk losing such a big and promising market like China?
Bastien: (pondering for a while) For human rights.
Song: Human rights? But why has the French government continuously offered aid and even sent protective troops to those African countries whose human rights records are even worse?
Bastien: You are quite right, but ...
Song: Let's get down to Tibet. As a part of China's territory, Tibet takes the lead in the country for tax exemptions; and is also exempt from family planning restrictions. The per capita GDP in Tibet exceeds 10,000 yuan. Compared with parts of China's mainland, Tibet enjoys the most preferential treatment as far as human rights are concerned. Why won't the French authorities shift their attention to other matters equally as important as human rights; and why do they, instead, always pin their focus on Tibet?
Bastien: It is still different because of the Dalai Lama.
Song: When you mention the Dalai Lama, I wonder how much you know about Tibet.
Bastien: I don't know very much about it.
Song: Then how much knowledge do you have about the Lama Buddhism?
Bastien: I'm sorry, I don't know very much about it.
Song: It is unbelievable that your government can easily pick a side to join that is opposed to China, when it remains ignorant of the Dalai Lama and Tibet. The Dalai clique is a bloc mixing religion and politics. Mixing religion with politics is forbidden in Western Europe, including France; and it is considered illegal.
Bastien: I'm not quite sure about this, as nobody has told me about this.
Song : But the Dalai Lama has kept very close ties with the Aum Shinrikyo ( Supreme Truth) cult.
Bastien: That's impossible.
Song: But it's a fact. The Dalai formed a tutor-pupil relationship with the Aum cult guru, Shoko Asahara; and even worse, he accepted a 100,000-dollar offer from the Aum cult. In return, he granted the cult a certificate which gave the cult a religious status in Japan. It was because of the Dalai Lama who persistently supported and trumpeted Shoko Asahara that the Aum cult could acquire "tax exemption" privileges and accumulated funds to bankroll his cruel evil doing against the Japanese people.
Bastien: (suspiciously) Did it really happen that way?
Song: You can find it on the Internet, and you can also find a group of photos with the both of them.
Bastien (reticent) ...
Song: Then do you know what the Tibetan social structure was like before 1959, when the so-called "uprising" was foiled by the central government?
Bastien: Democratic society, of course.
Song: (astonished) What? Democratic society! Come on, that was serfdom! It is incredible how you French could call it democracy.
Bastien: What?
Song: Do you know why the Chinese were irate and outraged this time? It is simply because your media fabricated news and made slanted reporting.
Bastien: (excited) Certainly impossible.
Song: The Chinese people both at home and abroad are still protesting this. RTF even fabricated a story saying the Chinese Embassy apologized to the French media.
Bastien: But was that true?
Song: It was crafted news. China's Foreign Ministry has straightened it out at the weekly press conference, stating that no such apology ever happened.
Bastien: Oh! I didn't know that.
Song: When the armed rebellion erupted in Tibet in 1959, the two brothers of the Dalai Lama were both working for the US's CIA, as the U.S then tried to cultivate Tibetan rebellious groups and airdropped them into Tibet to launch and organize the riots.
Bastien: Are you sure about this?
Song: Yes, this is history.
Bastien: As far as I know, the Dalai Lama has all along been seeking greater autonomy, not independence.
Song: But I wonder if you really know about the true nature of this "autonomy." What is behind the "autonomy" he preaches are his unspoken political ambitions: first, he attempts to smash the existing social system in Tibet, and rebuild a Tibetan society by mixing religion and politics. Second, he attempts to force the central government to pull troops out of Tibet. And third, he attempts to establish the "greater Tibet" which covers Tibet Autonomous Region and neighboring provinces which have never belonged to Tibet; and making up a quarter of China's territory. He even attempts to carry out "ethnic cleansing" by driving the Han Chinese out of Tibet. Do you really believe Tibetans would enjoy more human rights under the leadership of such a political Lama?
Bastien: Why has the Chinese side never explained this to other people?
Song: We have. The Chinese government, embassy and the overseas scholars keep informing others of the truth. Unfortunately, you are selectively blind to the facts and turn a deaf ear to the calls for justice.
Song: There is still one thing I personally can't understand: why did the French government sent such a hostile message to China this time? You must have done this for a reason, right? For instance, France strongly opposed to the U.S invasion of Iraq because of oil. More than a decade ago, the French government finished a deal with Taiwan on arms sales, which aroused great indignation from the Chinese and poisoned relations between the two countries. But we all knew, even then, it was driven by profit. But this time, for what? Who will want to deal with such an unreliable and unpredictable friend in future?
Bastien: (silent) I really didn't know about this before.
As we continued talking, I suddenly realized that Bastien is a French person with limited information and knowledge about Tibet and the Dalai Lama and fed by the media's selective or even manipulative reports. I can not help but think of a military term - asymmetric warfare - which originally refers to war between two or more players or groups whose relative military power differs significantly. But today, "asymmetric warfare" can describe a conflict in which the resources of two opposing sides differ; and during the struggle, each side interacts and attempt to exploit each other's characteristic weaknesses. Some biased foreign media is launching pseudo- asymmetric warfare on China.
By People's Daily Online
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90780/91342/6393940.html
Video: Documentary: The Dalai Lama .
To clarify: Dalai Lama and his so called "Tibetan independence"
click here
Commentary: Dalai Lama is spewing lies
17:21, April 30, 2008
The 14th Dalai Lama is adept at issuing appeals to his disciples, and several days ago in New York City, while meeting press, he distributed another appeal to all Chinese religious believers in the world. Dalai has urged Chinese government to stop "suppressing" local Tibetans, and release all criminal suspects who were arrested for the "March 14" violent and terrorist act in Lhasa.
Dalai is spewing lies, rumors and hear says again in this statement.
In his appeal, he alleged some Tibetans have fled to the mountains, hiding themselves and even their family members there, without adequate food and clothing. Dalai also alleged that Chinese government policy seems to have encouraged the "suppressing" and mistreatment of the detained suspects.
But, his allegations are not based on facts, but on words and phrases he used in the appeal, including "as far as we know", "it seems", and "according to my credible sources". However, Dalai has failed by far to show any credible evidence to back up his claims.
White elephant accusations that Tibetans fleeing into mountains for nothing, and the captured Tibetan detainees facing brutal, grisly and unhumane punishments, like the American enemy combatants at Gitmo, is the usual finger-pointing scheme being played by the 14th Dalai Lama. Its motive is nothing but to defame China's justice system.
And, why should China's government, Chinese people, and Chinese law system need to cater to his call, that all criminal suspects responsible for the March 14 looting, sabotage, arson and slaughtering, be set free? Shouldn't those law-breakers, who killed 18 innocent civilians including one toddler, horrible crimes against humanity, be brought to justice?
Once again, Dalai Lama beamed to the world audience that he fully supported the 2008 Beijing Olympics. However, during a trip in Europe last year, he told his followers that Olympics will be their "last chance". Last chance for what? Will a real Games cherisher use an international sports gala party he claims to be supportive, to get to his other objective, as a "last straw"?
Sabotaging Olympic Games, by agitating violence and fanning Tibet secession from China, won't be tolerated by the Chinese government, and would be firmly opposed by every Chinese.
Dalai has long claimed that what he seeks is autonomy, rather than independence. However, in a recent interview with reporters, he urged Beijing to withdraw troops from Tibet. How can a sovereign state which owns territorial rights over Tibet, pull out its army from its own domain?
During his conference call with the reporters in NY, Dalai Lama proclaimed that what he cares most is harmony and peace.
How can the violent and deadly incident that happened on March 14 be called harmony? How can a Buddhist monk who actually advocates violence be called "a man of peace"? How can a monk full of lies dare to say he values harmony?
Source:China Daily
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90780/91342/6402048.html
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Video: Where does Dalai Lama's "middle path" lead to? .
"International cards" cannot rescue "Tibetan independence dream"
14:50, April 22, 2008
Dalai Lama has begun roaming around the world as some Westerns whip up their anti-China wave in recent days. This is also the case in 2007, when a new round of the "China threat theory" re-emerged, he made a rush tour of Germany, Canada and the United States.
Although the Dalai Lama insists that his trips had "had nothing to do with politics", each of his trips, however, has been "timed so accurately" that people doubt his allegation of "having nothing to do with politics." The Global and Mail (newspaper) of Canada even reports that Dalai's meetings with (foreign leaders) are precisely set in an extremely sensitive moment.
In fact, some people have tried hard to capitalize on the Dalai clique to add weight onto China, whereas the Dalai clique would take the opposite side to build up a great momentum for "Tibetan independence" elements and play "international cards" in a vain attempt to internationalize the "Tibet issue" and proceed to exert more pressure upon the Chinese government.
At one moment, they appeal to the international community to link the Tibet issue with Beijing's 2008 summer Olympic Games when dealing with China and, at another moment they urge international community to set up "an independent committee of inquiry" to make a thorough investigation of the Lhasa unrest on March 14.
They thought they were clever to play "international cards". Some people have worked in coordination with the Dalai clique ever since the latter stepped up its scheme to promote the "internationalization" of the "Tibet issue" in the 1980s. The Dalai Lama presented a Five-point Peace Plan in his address to the U.S Congress in Washington D.C. on September 21, 1987, which was followed by the release of the "Tibet issue" motion by the US Congress in September of the same year. At the repeated call of the Dalai Lama in the wake of riots in Lhasa and other ethnic Tibetan areas since March 14, the US House of Representatives and Senate and the European Parliaments (EP) adopted their respective "resolutions" on the so-called "Tibet issue".
Of course, the attainment of these achievements is also related to the self-promotion ability of the Dalai clique. The Dalai Lama and his ilk have got to know well how Western nations think of their own interests during their half a century of exile overseas; they also know how to cater to and appease to Western society on such topics on human rights, peace, environmental protection, culture and ¡&endash; but they have never uttered a single word on the dark feudal serfdom under his own rule over five decades ago and the cruelty of the Tibet Youth Congress (TYC). Moreover, they denigrated tremendous progress scored in Tibet, either with the so-called "genocide" of Tibetan culture or with the absence of freedom in religious belief.
So, it is quite understandable for Dr. Eberhard Sandschneider, a China scholar who is head of the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), to say that the Dalai clique has the best market promotion capability, and a US congressman has even noted that the Dalai clique is good at doing public relations for the international Tibet (independence) movement.
The effect of "international cards" is still limited, nevertheless. To date, not a single nation on earth recognizes the so-called "Tibet independence". Meanwhile, the Dalai clique should not forget its own "honor and disgrace". Their requests for assemblies were rejected and visits turned down time and again in the era of cold war and, with ensuing changes in the world situation, they have turned increasingly "hot" again, from an "orphan" of the cold war to a "darling" of the world. It also indicates that they are merely a card for some countries to play with, whose value is decided by the interests of other parties, instead of having anything to do with the desire of the Dalai clique or the settlement of the so-called Tibet issue.
The Dalai clique should be aware that the "international card" does not work at all. Neither the people of China will allow its attempt for Tibetan independence to succeed, nor the international community will pay any heed to it, since the "Tibet issue" constitutes an issue of sovereignty without any room for bargains. This can be seen from the unprecedented unity demonstrated by people in China since the March 14 Lhasa incident and gigantic protests by Chinese expatriates and students overseas. So, in this sense, "international cards" cannot rescue the "dream of Tibetan independence".
By People's Daily Online and its author is He Zhenhua
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90780/91342/6396923.html
Dalai Lama does not represent all Tibetan or Tibetan Buddhism and he has lots of enemies, even within Tibetan Buddhism. Enclosed photo showing a demonstration against Dalai Lama by Tibetan Buddhism Monks in Germany. In this photo many Germans(like many of us) were very much surprised.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/newscenter/2008-06/23/content_8424644.htm
"Nonviolence" in the mouth of "Dalai Lama"
16:29, June 24, 2008
Buddhists always preach that no living things are to be killed and all violent actions have to be opposed. "I say that 21st century should be one of dialogue," the Dalai Lama told his audience on May 19 when he delivered a speech in Berlin, and he said repeatedly that he only wants autonomy for Tibetans. "This (21st century) should be the century of peace and dialogue," he noted.
Can his remarks hold true for the whole 21st century? Only three days latter, on May 22, he alleged in Paris that if the talks between his personal envoys and China broke down, grave violence may occur in Tibet again.
So, it is quite possible for "nonviolence" and "grave violence" to slip back and forth in the mouth of the same person.
Dalai Lama has passed himself off as "a disciple of the Gandhi school" and so he adheres to the nonviolence. He, nevertheless, has hardly expected what Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948), the leader of the Indian nationalist movement against British rule, had explicitly said, "Nonviolence is not a garment to be put on and put off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our very being."
But the Dalai Lama has indeed taken nonviolence as a garment to hide his shame and so he has put on and put off at will. Why does he need to put on such a garment? He could be overjoyed if "stayed naked and then he would have nothing to worry about," as a popular Chinese saying goes. It is not because he is not willing but he won't able to do so. As he had said explicitly in an address in Oslo in 1989: If Tibetans took up arms, Communist troops in China would have the excuse for the suppression of them and they would be possibly be extinct.
The Dalai Lama claimed that he advocates "nonviolence"but he is not able to stop the Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC) and other radical forces from going in for violence, as he said that some of the Tibetans in exile listened to him while others did not. As is known to all, 80 percent of the staff of the government in exile were TYC members, and the so-called "the charter (or constitution) of Tibetans in Exile" specifies that these Tibetans must obey the "supreme political and religious leader Dalai Lama."
Since the Dalai Lama is the "supreme leader" who controls and governs all the supreme power in politics and religion, how he is not able to check TYC and curb violence?
In numerous journals owned by TYC, there are often articles concerning the use of violence or to spouse armed struggle to materialize their dream of "Tibetan independence". There are also agitating articles in recent years to urge Tibetans to follow suit of Palestinians to carry out suicide bombing, and openly alleged that they had a lot to draw on from the terrorism of the September 11 attacks of 2001 in the U.S. The Dalai Lama, however, has turned a deaf ear and blind eye to all this.
While parroting "nonviolence", the Dalai Lama has often instigatted and voiced his support to violence both in public or in private. Sufficient evidence has showed that the March 14 Lhasa violence was part of the "Tibetan People's Uprising Movement," a schemed plotted by the Dalai clique. So, he was so elated that day and repeatedly exhorted that he appreciated with all his heart the Tibetans inside the border for their absolute loyalty, courage and determination.
What the Dalai Lama has"appreciated" is the unrest erupted in Lhasa on March 14 when rioters set fire to and looted public facilities, residential houses and shops. On the same day, he told American reports that he would not stop Tibetans because they had the right to do whatever they desired.
To date, the dust has been settled in Lhasa, the capital of the Tibet autonomous region, and the splendid, towering snow mountains around remain holy. The Dalai Lama, however, has turned somewhat impatient, anxious and restless, and he even predicted that grave violence could possibly recur in Tibet. Was it something not more plain and definite that what he had "appreciated" days before the "March 14th" riot'? And what he was really hinting, inciting and expecting?
With a too fast replacement of the "nonviolence" garment by the garment of "violence", it seems that flaws or burst seams are apt to be exposed. No wonder some personality in the West have referred to the Dalai Lama as the "Drama" Lama and often found what he said or preached joining in the fun or playing the game merely on the occasion.
In order to retain the Dalai Lama's "Buddhist" compassionate face and rope in the kind-heated people, the Dalai clique have all along brandished the "nonviolence" as their banner. Whenever following in their footprints, these people can see the stripes of "violence" on their buttocks, and then roar with laughters and disperse helter-skelter.
By People's Daily Online and its author is Zong Yiwen, a council member of the China Religious Culture Communication Association
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90780/91342/6436017.html
Dalai clique is chief criminal of violent crimes
16:54, June 07, 2008
The three bombing cases that took place in eastern Tibet's Qamdo prefecture in April have recently been cracked. All suspects are Buddhist monks who have been instigated by the Dalai Cliques' separatist thought. Plots of the attacks echo the 3.14 unrest. The Dalai clique is the chief criminal of the three bomb attacks.
"Buddhists should believe in clemency. True Buddhists should learn Buddhist scriptures by heart; love their country and their religion; abide by the law; and bring happiness to people. They should not involve themselves in cruel murders and sabotage," said Dainzin Chilai, vice-chairman of the China Buddhist Association and vice-chairman of the People's Political Consultative Conference of the Tibet Autonomous Region. His words are a reminder of the essence of Buddhism, and criticism to the Dalai clique and the few monks who are keen on violent attacks.
People's actions are inseparable from their thoughts. The bomb attack suspects are inspired and instigated by the Dalai clique's propaganda. Having listened to overseas radio broadcasts for a long time, they have accepted the Dalai Lama's separatist thoughts. Once know the happening of the Lhasa incident and the contents of "Tibet Uprising" planned by the Dalai Lama, they actively cooperated with the Dalai clique. The three bomb attacks indicate how dangerous the Dalai Lama's separatism is and therefore demands our attention.
Facts prove again that "Tibet Independence" is unpopular and violent acts are intolerable. Those who try to undermine social stability come to no good end; and the separatist activities will never succeed.
By People's Daily Online
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90780/91342/6426375.html
Tibet issue is not about religion
BEIJING, April 29 (Xinhua) -- The People's Daily newspaper on Tuesday posted a commentary saying the Tibet issue was not a religious issue.
The Dalai clique called for the international community's concern for the Tibet issue, claiming Tibetans lacked religious freedom, the commentary said.
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An open court session
in connection with the Lhasa violence on March 14 is held at
the Intermediate People's Court of Lhasa, capital of
southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, April 29, 2008.
(Xinhua Photo) |
However, the Dalai clique's accusation against China contradicts the facts, the commentary quoted Narasimhan Ram, editor-in-chief of the Hindu Newspaper Group, as saying.
It said the living Buddha reincarnation, various ritual ceremonies and resumption of academic degrees of monks showed that religious activities in Tibet were normal.
Currently, Tibet has over 1,700 monasteries of Tibetan Buddhism,46,000 monks and nuns, four mosques and one Catholic church, the commentary said, stressing all religious activities go on smoothly in Tibet.
On average, there was one religious venue for every 1,600 Tibetans, but only one church for every 3,125 people in England, it said.
In recent years, many learned monks won Gexe Lharampa, the highest academic degree of the four ranks in the Gexe system, from the yellow sect, or the Gelugba school of Tibetan Buddhism, annually.
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An open court session
in connection with the Lhasa violence on March 14 is held at
the Intermediate People's Court of Lhasa, capital of
southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, April 29, 2008.
(Xinhua Photo) |
The commentary also said common followers have religious freedom. Sutra streamers, prayer wheels and other religious instruments are ubiquitous in Tibet.
Most followers have built scripture chambers in their own houses and over 1 million Tibetans went to Lhasa to pay homage to Buddha.
The Chinese government has allocated more than 700 million yuan(about 100 million U.S. dollars) since 1980 to maintain 1,400 monasteries and cultural relics. The Potala Palace, Norbu Linkag and the Sakya Monastery were renovated with central government funding.
The central government has also made efforts to collect and publish Tibetan Buddhism classics, including the Tibetan Tripitaka.
Many Tibetan traditional festivals have been preserved, including Spring Festival according to the Tibetan Calendar, and Shoton (Yogurt) Festival.
The commentary said the government respected and protected the religious freedom in conformity with the law.
Nowadays, religious freedom is the basic right of Chinese citizens. In addition, the legitimate rights of religious staff and followers are protected by law.
In the dark ages, only Tibetan Buddhism could be followed but nowadays religion in the autonomous region had developed with time. With Tibetan Buddhism dominating, more religions have been introduced to this area, including Muslim and Catholicism with 3,000 and 700 followers, respectively.
The above facts have showed explicitly the Tibet issue was not about religion but only a card played by the Dalai clique to woo sympathy from others, the commentary said.
The essence of the Tibet issue was a scheme for "Tibet independence" and this couldn't be disguised as a religious problem, it stressed.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-04/29/content_8073148.htm
"Tibet issue" is definitely not human rights issue
15:37, April 30, 2008
Dalai clique has worked to promote the "Tibetan Human Rights issues" on its tours of Europe and the United states since the 50s and 60s of the 20th century. So, the human rights have been solemnly turned into a trump card in their hands as well as the weaponry they exploit to call the attention of the international community to the so-called "Tibet issue".
Then, is the "Tibet issue" an issue of human rights?
Concerning the human rights, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights made a clear and explicit explanation. "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights," says the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. "No one shall be held in slavery and servitude¡&endash;"
Old Tibetan society under the rule of the Dalai clique was rigidly stratified, however, and local Tibetans were divided into three social strata within nine grades, where once five percent superstructure (monks and aristocracy) ruled the serfs, making up over 95 percent of the total population, who were economically exploited ruthlessly, politically oppressed and mentally controlled, and even their right to live could not be guaranteed.
Tibetologist Alexander Daweinier of France in her "Old Face of New China in Tibet", said all (serf) farmers were life-long liabilities in old Tibet, and that all serfs then lost all the freedom as human beings. With the peaceful liberation of Tibet in 1951, the one million serfs then began to enjoy genuine democracy, freedom and human rights.
How can the endeavor to let former slaves be masters of their own destiny be termed as the act of "encroaching upon human rights" and how can there be such an absurdity is in the world today! Late senior leader Dang Xiaoping said, "what are human rights, how many people are there meant for; and whether these rights belong to the minority, to the majority or ¡&endash;"
If some people are said to have lost their "human rights" in Tibet, it is meant to the Dalai clique, which represents the handful of serf owners who lost their absolute "special privileges" to kill the innocent at will.
In fact, it is better for the Dalai clique to resolve their own human rights issues rather give heed to the non-existent Tibetan Human Rights issues. The Dalai clique is composed of high-level or upper-class monks and aristocrats to be represented by the Dalai families, and ordinary Tibetan exiles, nevertheless, remain in the status of being enslaved, with most of them huddling in slums in Dharamsala, India, and yet they still have to pay a type of "independence fee' for the Tibetan government in exile; they do not have any human rights to speak of at all, and at what time has Dalai clique ever paid any attention to this reality.
The Declaration on the Right to Development, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 4, 1986, confirmed that the right to development is an inalienable human right. Since the peaceful liberation of Tibet, local economy has retained an annual growth of up to 12 percent for years, local farmers and herders are covered by the government-sponsored medical care system and their kids enjoy free boarding and education at their schools. Moreover, recent years represent the fastest period of growth in history for Tibetans to own their private homes.
In sharp contrast, the Dalai clique, who has bent on propagating or promoting the so-called "human rights," has not contributed in the least to the development of Tibet, and instead repeatedly infringed upon the rights and interests of people of various ethnicities in the Tibet region. They harassed the life and production of Tibetans residing inside Tibet in early years and, in recent years they turned to infiltrations for disruption, and successively plotted violent incidents to undermine the rights of Tibetans for survival and to development.
Dalai clique has kept up hyping the so-called Tibetan Human Rights issues with a lot of publicity simply for the reason that it poses a"fashionable topic". Meanwhile, there are always some Western politicians to work in coordination with them and speak in "all seriousness" to hoodwink people who are not aware of the truth. Hoisting the banner as "the defenders of human rights", they tried all means to denigrate the development and progress scored in new Tibet, while not uttering a single word on how old Tibet had trampled upon human rights of local Tibetans.
A noted Russian Tibetologist has referred to "three factors" in citing Dalai Lama, who had ruthlessly persecuted serfs in old Tibet, as the defender of the "human rights", namely, ignorance, shamefulness and betrayal of justice for selfish private interests. And an ace Canadian scholar is even more to the point when he said some people who "interested" themselves in the Tibet issue, not out of their "moral support" or "sympathy", but to serve the needs for their strategic global layout.
Espousing "Tibetan human rights" to stir up ethnical sentiments and to draw on the support of the West and ultimately to achieve Tibetan independence and separate China - Consequently, we can see therefrom what issue really is the Tibetan Human rights issue of the Dalai clique.
By People's Daily Online and its author is He Zhenhua
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90780/91342/6401910.html
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Video: Where does Dalai Lama's "middle path" lead to? .
What issue is "Tibet issue"?
17:00, April 16, 2008
Dalai Lama clique has made repeated appeals and statements to impose pressure or punitive measues upon China, and Nancy Pelosi of the United States and others of her ilk also kept up noises and uproars. Meanwhile, the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, and the European Parliament (EP) have passed resolutions on Tibet one after another. So the so-called "Tibet issue" has become increasingly fashionable.
So, people cannot but ask what issue is actually the "Tibet issue"?
To answer this question, people'd better ask Ms. Pelosi first. In her view, the Tibet issue has originated from the suppression of the Chinese government in Tibet. So, if she and her peers do not interfere in the "Tibet issue", she said with anxieties, "we have lost all more authority to speak on behalf of human rights."
Of course, we might as well see the appeals and statements of the Dalai clique, and the "Tibet issue" it is here being referred to includes "the lack of freedom in religious belief" and the so-called "ethnic inequalities".
Then, what is the "human rights issue" of the "Tibet question"? We first of all cite an example of the recent Lhasa riots. Faced with such violent actions as beating, smashing, looting and arson in Lhasa and other ethnic Tibetan areas since March 14, how can the government sit idle, and who will then come over to protect the human rights of innocent civilians? If the government's settlement of this incident is meant to encroach upon the human rights, Ms. Pelosi should better ask herself about the Los Angeles civil unrest happened right before her eyes 16 years ago, in which the US government aroused much military and police power and arrested more than 100,000 people.
The riots of 1992 in Los Angeles stunned the entire U.S. with its resultant 53 deaths, 2,325 injuries and an immense loss of property damage.
As for the Dalai Clique, people will never forget that Tibet was still under the semi-feudal serfdom till the first half of the 20th century, which was much darker and more sinister and vicious than the days under the "integration of the state and religion" in the Middle Age Europe. The ecclesiastical and secular serf owners, though accounting to less than five percent of the population of Tibet, controlled the personal freedom of serfs and slaves, who then made up 95 percent of the Tibetan population. These wretched of the earth could have their hands and feet chopped off, eyes gouged out, tongues cut or be subjected to other tortures and fatal penalties; and so they could hardly have a guaranteed right for survival under serfdom.
Afterward, it is ascribed to the peaceful liberation of Tibet in 1951 and the ensuing democratic reform in 1959 in the region that let serfs of old Tibet to gain their dignity and human rights.
Tibet's total population has increased from 1.14 million in 1951 to more than 2.8 million today; compulsory education, medical services and a minimum living allowance system have covered the whole of the Tibetan autonomous region. With such a historical background and present reality, how the Dalai clique, the chieftains of serfdom in old Tibet, are qualified to talk excessively and glibly about the "human rights" issue of Tibet?
The "Tibet issue" is also not a "religious issue". If Tibet is lacking the "freedom in religious belief', then how can people explain scenes of Lamaseries across the region crowded with believers or worshippers of varied ages to burn incenses, thousands upon thousands of Tibetans make pilgrimages to Lhasa, and suspending sutra streamers and Mani stone mounds put up by devout believers can be seen everywhere in Tibet?
It is even more absurd for the Dalai clique to clamor the so-called "ethnic inequalities". Let alone huge state appropriations made for developing traditional Tibetan medical science and Tibetan medicine, China has input more than 700 million yuan (about 100 million US dollars) to overhaul the imposing Potala Palace in Lhasa over recent years and to overhaul, rescue-repair and preserve traditional Tibetan culture.
Thanks to increased allocations from the central government, the Tibetans are the first among ethnic minority groups in China to have an international standard language, so that the Tibetan is currently an ethnic miority language with a permit to enter global information super highway networks.
In fact, it is crystal clear what the exact issue of the "Tibet issue" is. Dalai clique tries to seek "Tibet independence" under the signboard of varied "issues" -- This can seen from the "middle way" solution he has kept to, from their negation of the existing political system in Tibet, from their attempt to create the "Greater Tibet' that had been non-existent in history, and from their request urging other ethnicities to move out of Tibet and for the pullout of troops from the "Greater Tibet".
In the final analysis, the "Tibet issue" is not at all a "human rights issue", a religious issue, or an ethnical issue, but an issue concerning China's state sovereignty and territorial integrity, and an issue of core interests for the Chinese nation. Not a single nation on earth can tolerate to see its sovereignty sustain losses or sit idle to see its territory being seceded. On this issue, the Chinese government has made it very clear that the unity of the Chinese nation is the supreme, overriding principle, and there is no room whatsoever for any bargain on the issue of sovereignty. So any scheme to encroach upon China's sovereignty and meddle in China's internal affairs on the Tibet issue is only futile under whatever banner is hoisted.
By People's Daily Online and its author is He Zhenhua
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90780/91342/6393934.html
Only by halting violence can there be harmony
15:16, May 08, 2008
The Chinese nation has always attached importance to social harmony. For the Dalai clique that claimed its "willingness to be a member of the big family of the People's Republic of China," it also openly voiced its "appreciation and support" to the building of a harmonious society in the country.
Just as the Dalai clique said, a harmonious society cannot be separable from "freedom" and the "rule of law" and, as is known to all that either "freedom" or the "rule of law" has nothing in common with one thing -- violence. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, signed 60 years ago, notes that human beings have the freedom of averting terror and shortages, as terror and shortages are often associated with violence. So violent crimes also pose a direct challenge and trample upon the civilization of a modern legal system; and a society which indulge and tolerate violence can absolutely not be a harmonious society.
The Dalai clique, nevertheless, plotted and incited the March 14 Lhasa riots, in which they resorted to violence to disrupt the peaceful life of Tibetans, and brought terror and scourge to the innocent people, thus seriously infringing upon the "freedom" and "rule of law', and fundamentally undermining social harmony in Tibet. If such violent moves are prettified as "peaceful protests" with the "courage and resolve" and they themselves bragged as "winning the endorsement and support" of the international community, then why they should have given such expressions to the endorsement and recognition of the harmonious society, and how they would carry out their commitment to the sake of "interests of the Tibetan people"?
For the Dalai clique, they claimed they worked for the future of Tibet but has been bent on whipping up violent incidents in the past half century ever since 1959 for sabotaging the production and living environment of people of varied ethnicities in Tibet; they alleged they worked for "freedom" and the "human rights" for Tibetans but continuously encroached upon the ordinary people's basic rights of survival and development ¡&endash; The failure of their deeds to match their words cannot but let people doubt the sincerity of the Dalai clique, and people cannot but pander over what a member of the Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC), a terrorist organization, has said, namely, "peace and non-violence" were only spoken to leading Western powers.
Violence cannot give rise to harmony, and still less win public will. When peace and development have been turned into the tide of the contemporary world, violent actions to the detriment of peace have become the common foe of all people in the world yearning for peace. Under the pretexts of the "human rights" issue, or a religious issue, or whatever issues, with whatever purposes, violence can only mean moving against the current of the times and is therefore unacceptable.
Violence runs counter to what the Dalai clique has said about the Tibetan Buddhism culture with the protection of benevolence as the core. In the history of human civilizations, Buddhism has been regarded as a religion of peace and goodwill since ancient times. The vain attempt of the Dalai clique to seek "Tibetan independence" with the use of violence has not only harmed the quintessence of Buddhism with "mercy at heart" but also runs counter to the Buddhist core foundation of "not hurting all living beings", let alone carry forward and develop the Buddhist culture to seek harmony.
With the formation of equal, harmonious relationships among people of various ethnicities in Tibet since its peaceful liberation in 1951, a situation of harmony among the people of ethnicities for common prosperity has taken shape. In disregard of this reality, the attempt of the Dalai clique to fan up violent actions to disrupt the peaceful life of Tibetans and their fundamental well-being and even to connive at some extremists' evil-doings from violence to terrorism not only runs counter to the tide of the times but is unacceptable. If the Dalai clique really wants to support the construction of a harmonious society and to work for the interests of Tibetan people, it should proceed from the most rudimentary thing - that is to halt plotting and instigating violent actions.
By People's Daily Online and its author is He Zhenhua
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90780/91342/6406995.html
Only by halting separatist activities can there be a way out
16:04, May 07, 2008
All people, including Buddhist monks, have their own motherland, and their hearts always yearn and turn to their motherland.
The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau on the roof of the world is the common homeland of the Han people, Tibetans and people of other ethnic minorities. Tibet has been an inalienable part of China since ancient times. It became an administrative region directly under the administration of the central government of China's imperial Yuan dynasty (1271-1368 A.D.). Tibet was subsequently subjected to the administration of the central authority from the imperial Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties and the Republic of China (1912-1949) through the People's Republic of China upon its establishment in October 1949.
In history, Tibet has never been an independent nation, nor any power in the world has ever recognized the so-called "Tibet independence". This has been an indisputable historical fact and a common acknowledgement of the sons and daughters of the Chinese nation, including Tibetan compatriots.
The attempt to seek "Tibet independence" and to separate the motherland in disregard of this rudimental historical fact and the common feelings of people of all ethnicities in China not only violatrd religious rites or tenets and the established historical rules or practices, but also undermines the tradition of patriotism of Tibetan Buddhism. There are very rich and profound contents of patriotism in the classic tenets of Buddhism. And past generations of eminent monks made important contributions in safeguarding the unity of the motherland.
From the struggles against colonialist powers of the West between 1624 and 1632 to the war of resistance to British imperialist armed aggression against Tibet in 1888 and 1904, and from the remarks of the 13th Dalai Lama that he knew very well that sovereignty could not be lost though Britons indeed had lured¡&endash; and the famous speech "Tibet Is China's Territory" by the Ninth Panchen Lama, or Bainqen Erdini Qoigyi Gyaincain (1938-1989).- All these have demonstrated the patriotic tradition of Tibetan Buddhism and the patriotic spirit of eminent Buddhist monks.
The shared history and common belief have enabled Tibetan compatriots and people of other ethnicities in the motherland to share weal and woe and turn mutually dependent on each other. The Tibetan culture, as an important component part of the Chinese culture, can keep up developing and prospering only when it is deep rooted in the culture of the Chinese nation.
Great changes or many vicissitudes of life in Tibet over the past five decades or so have shown to the world that the people in Tibet cannot bid farewell to the dark serfdom and move toward the modernization development if without the unity of the motherland, without the peaceful liberation and without reform and opening to the outside world in the past three decades. Breaking away from the embrace of the motherland and going in for the system of integrating politics with religion does not comply with general historical trends or the tide of the times and still less with the common aspiration of the people of the whole Chinese nation, including Tibetan compatriots.
State sovereignty and territorial integrity represent the fundamental interests of the Chinese nation, and it is the lofty duty and the mission of every Chinese citizen to safeguard the unity of the motherland and ethnical unity. History has proven and will continue to prove that the scheme to secede the motherland can never succeed but is doomed to failure.
Abandoning all views or propositions for separating the motherland and halting all activities in this regard - this will test the sincerity of the Dalai clique in safeguarding the unity of the motherland, the sincerity in what the Dalai clique said "Tibet remains in China" and the "true heart" in what is meant by the Dalai clique with the words, "for the interests of Tibetan people". People of the Chinese nation both at home and overseas shall wait and see if they will work with their concrete actions for safeguarding the unity of the motherland and if they truly "think of the future for Tibetans".
By People's Daily Online and its author is He Zhenhua
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90780/91342/6405977.html
No one knows about Tibet better than the people from India
<<The Hindu>> Journalist first-hand Tibet visit experience:
Social well-being a striking aspect of life in modern Tibet
| by: Parvathi Menon | From: The Hindu
2008-08-28 14:16:00
Life has changed beyond recognition since 1959, when the system of monastic feudalism presided over by the Dalai Lama was overthrown and over a million serfs were set free.
In what used to be the dungeons of the Potala Palace, once the winter palace of the Dalai Lamas in Lhasa and now a religious and tourist site, is an unusual museum. The Zhol jail, a place where disobedient or rebellious serfs and labourers were subject to horrific forms of torture, was once located here. Today, photographs, paintings, models, and sound effects are used to recreate the brutality of the ancien regime against those classes whose labour created and sustained the splendid monument that soars above.
The squalor, poverty and social hierarchies of Lhasa, captured vividly in black and white photographs of the 1940s and 1950s, belong to a historical phase now squarely in the past.
Today the Potala Palace overlooks a city of modern infrastructure and conveniences. It has attractive tree-lined avenues, a busy business district, hotels, cultural centres and open spaces like the 12.2 square km Lhalu wetlands, a protected marsh that acts as what our hosts refer to as the kidneys of the Lhasa urban area. The modernity of the capital bears the impress of a strong Tibetan stamp in architecture, dress, and cultural practice.
Apart from warm clothes and altitude sickness pills, a foreign visitor to Tibet usually carries baggage of another kind. This is a belief that the 'real' Tibet lies hidden somewhere beneath what the eye sees and the mind registers; that the well being and modernisation evident in contemporary Tibetan society is a sort of maya. This perspective has been shaped by a vast literature and propaganda offensive that has emanated over the years from within the support base of the 14th Dalai Lama. It comes in large part from people who have not set foot in Tibet, and has, unfortunately, many well-meaning adherents.
A report published this year by the Dalai Lama's Dharamsala-based Government-in-Exile and titled Environment and Development in Tibet: A Crucial Issue has this to say: China claims that Tibet is experiencing growth and prosperity, but the reality is that, under Chinese rule, Tibetans are impoverished, marginalised and excluded; the sensitive and globally important ecology of Tibet is deteriorating; and many plant and animal species face extinction.
In fact, the fatal flaw of the report is that it has been written by people who have not visited their research area, for it is evident to any visitor's eye that the allegations of the impoverishment, marginalisation, and exclusion of Tibetans are unsubstantiated.
I was part of a journalists' delegation invited by the Chinese government to Tibet in July this year. To a visitor, the relatively high levels of living standards of people in the Tibet Autonomous Regions (TAR) are a striking feature of observable social life. In Lhasa, small towns and the villages of Tibet, there are no crowds of people ill, destitute, and unemployed - on the contrary, the overwhelming visual impression is of a population healthy and gainfully employed. Schools and universities hum with activity, and cultural assets like museums and ancient monasteries are treasured - these are but some marks of a society that is on the move.
Older Tibetans emphasise that life has changed beyond recognition since 1959, when the system of monastic feudalism presided over by the Dalai Lama was overthrown and over a million serfs were set free.
I consider myself middling-prosperous, says Zhuoga, the head of an eight-member farming family in Gapa, a village of 60 households, 10 km from Lhasa. She and her family members offer fruit, biscuits and Tibetan tea to her visitors in her warm and colourful sitting room decorated with Tibetan thangkas (religious scroll paintings) and carpets.
The Zhuoga household's annual income of 20,000 yuan (roughly Rs. 140,000) comes from her oilseed and corn harvest, from the rent paid by vegetable farmers for land they lease from her, from a 500 yuan annual subsidy given by the Government, and from collective work she and the family put in on village projects. School education and health care are free. Although a Buddhist, she thinks the Dalai Lama is not a good man as he masterminded the disturbances of March 14th 2008. We could not go to the city for work, she said. I was angry and scared.
Life now is like this, says Pingtso Tashi giving a thumbs-up sign. And before 1959 it was like this. He holds up his little finger. This 58-year old dam inspector and farmer is the son of former serfs. Today, hard work pays, he said. Every village family owns land and the average individual land holding of the village is 3.8 mu (15 mu = 1 hectare)
A range of special preferential policies and measures for social and economic development apply to Tibet. There is a preferential taxation policy by which income tax in Tibet is three percentage points lower than elsewhere, and farmers and herdsmen are completely exempt from taxes and administrative charges. There is a preferential interest rate on bank loans, the rate being two percentage points lower in the TAR than in the rest of China.
Yang Chen and Deji, microbiologists working for a bio-pharmaceutical company in Lhasa, and their office colleagues, are part of a cheerful and spirited group of women dressed in formal western office wear who have come to see a photographic exhibition on Tibetan women at the Tibet museum in Lhasa. Asked about the exhibition and whether it reflects the progress of women in Tibet, Yang Chen says, Yes it does. Today we are equal to men in every way. She and Ms Deji have two daughters each, and hope that the girls will one day become doctors. The one-child norm does not apply to Tibetans and other ethnic minorities as it does to Han Chinese.
http://eng.tibet.cn/index/news/200808/t20080828_422961.htm
Modern education a key to Tibet's social and economic progress
2008-09-04 10:01:00
| by: Parvathi Menon | From: The Hindu
Before 1951, 92 per cent of the population of Tibet was illiterate. That proportion is now 44 per cent.
A report published this year by the Dalai Lama's Dharamsala-based "Government-in-Exile" and titled Environment and Development in Tibet: A Crucial Issue (available on their website) seeks to perpetuate the myth that Tibetans are fast becoming a minority in their homeland as a result of a state-sponsored policy of Han settlement in Tibet. In fact, of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) population of 2.8 million, Tibetans account for 92 per cent, other ethnic minorities for around 2 per cent, and Han Chinese a little under 6 per cent.
Government officials in Tibet emphasise that the accusation that Han Chinese control the administration of Tibet is wrong. Tibetans constitute a majority of the cadre within government and the Communist Party. According to Duo Ji Ciren, Vice-Commissioner of the Administrative office of Nyingchi prefecture, 70 per cent of civil servants in Nyingchi prefecture are either Tibetans or from other ethnic minorities, and key prefectural posts are held by Tibetans.
Education has been key to social and economic progress in Tibet. Modern education only began after 1951. In 2007, enrolment in primary schools reached 98.2 per cent, in middle schools 90.97 per cent, in high school 42.96 per cent, and in colleges 17.4 per cent. Before 1951, 92 per cent of the population of Tibet was illiterate. That proportion is now 44 per cent, although the illiterate are now concentrated in the older age groups.
"You had to be a monk if you wanted education in the old society," said Dr. Losang Yundeng, 51, Director of the 210-bed County Peoples Hospital in Nyingchi. An ethnic Tibetan from a poor family of labourers in a remote village in Nyingchi prefecture, he was sent to one of the first schools to be opened in his village. When a medical team visited the village in 1972, the 15-year-old boy was chosen by his village to train as a barefoot doctor. After the Cultural Revolution, Dr. Yundeng trained at the Nanjing Medical College and later at the famous Norman Bethune Medical Academy to become a doctor.
Dr. Wangmo, 44, a brilliant Tibetan plant pathologist and professor in the Department of Plant Technology at the Tibetan Agriculture and Animal Husbandry College, Nyingchi, speaks of how education transformed life in her village. "I studied in a village which you could only get to by horse," she said. "But education gave us ability and confidence. In my school, 80 per cent of the children were Tibetan and our Tibetan education was very good." In the college where she teaches, half of the 3,000 students are girls and 80 per cent of all students are Tibetan.
Dr. Wangmo's current research is on understanding the structure of a fungus called Cordyceps Sinensis, which grows wild in certain high-altitude counties. Called "yatsagompo" in Tibetan, the fungus, which looks like an innocuous dry twig, has been the reason for a sudden increase in incomes among certain communities living in these regions. Used in traditional medicine and valued for its healing properties, the fungus is highly priced. "I have seen people earn 80,000 yuan a year from this," Dr. Wangmo explained. Her research team is also working on how to undertake the sustainable cultivation of this precious resource.
Indeed, the issue of ecological sustainability and protection of the natural habitat is one over which demonstrable measures have been taken. The Tibetan plateau is a cradle of the planet's natural wealth. It has the world's highest peaks and lakes, gives birth to Asia¡¡¥s mighty rivers, and has vast deposits of mineral and forest wealth.
The 10-hour drive from Lhasa to the Nyingchi prefecture, one of TAR's ecological treasure houses, is as remarkable for its stunning landscapes as it is for the absence of heavy motor traffic, roadside hoardings, the defacement of rock surfaces with advertisements or writing, and litter. The Nyingchi Prefecture has a forest cover of 46 per cent, the largest virgin forest in China. The preservation of the ecology is central to government policy here. "Our slogan is 'Build Nyingchi as the largest district in western Tibet with the best preserved ecology,'" said Mr. Ciren, its administrative head. The beautiful Environmental Museum in Nyingchi offers a stunning display of its plant and animal wealth.
China's Tibet policy was defined to us by Dong Yunhu, Director General of the State Council Information Office, as "the continuous improvement in the living standards of Tibetans," By this criterion, the implementation of China's Tibet policy is marked by measurable and visible success.
http://eng.tibet.cn/index/news/200809/t20080904_424239.htm
China issues white paper, refutes charge of "cultural genocide" in Tibet
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Religious autocracy under the cover of democracy
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Compulsory and Free-of-Charge Education
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Primary School on Roof-of-the-World
http://pic.people.com.cn/GB/31655/6543727.html
This unique Primary School is located on Roof-of-the-World, 5573 meters above sea-level.
The Government of China is committed to provide a free-of-charge and compulsory education for every Tibetan child.
The Central Government of China invested a huge sum of money to re-build this school from ruins in 1986, so that the children of the nomads can receive an education.
This school covers an area of 8400 square meters and the building provides a useful area of 1221 square meters. The children are too far away from their nomadic families and are all staying in this boarding school for the entire school term.
Every morning the whole school will be singing the China national anthem.
The windows of this school are installed with double layers(rarely seen in China) due to winter fourty below temperature.
This school uses the latest technology, i.e. teaching Fine Art with computerized CD equipment.
The six teachers in this school and some of their students.
There are 141 students and all stay in this boarding school. It is too far from their nomadic camps. Students will learn how to take care of their bedding.
The school principal (also a teacher) is teaching his student how to read/write Tibetan.
The school principal's wife decided to move to such high altitude location, just to help out cooking tasks at the school.
Teaching Biology and practice it with a micropscope.
Students using computer aided equipments and internet access receive long distance educational training.
The cracks on a young face of every student review the hardship of the sun at high-altitude and lack of oxygen. It takes a very dedicated teaching staff to remain working long term in this special school.
The students automatically line up for their meals during lunch hours. This is a very well organized school.
Older students are serving rice (the main dish) to the students.
A study of the food being served, it reviews that students receive a very well-balanced diet.
After lunch being served, students are having fun at the school play ground.
During the Dalai Lama era there was no school or university, a child had to join one of the Monasteries to receive an education and that was the reason why many Tibetan mothers were forced by their own clans to give up their love ones to the Monasteries. Today, no Tibetan mother has to make such a decision.
The truth is that during the Dalai Lama era most Tibetan women were second class citizens and very seldom had any chance of an education. Today, all Tibetan children, both boys and girls, have equal chances of a free-of-charge and compulsory education. Tibetan women today provide a major and essential workforce in the government of Tibet Autonomous Region.
Without Lhamo Toinzhub(14th Dalai Lama), Tibet is better off today!
In 1951 Lhamo Toinzhub signed widely known as 'the 17 Pacts'
to run Tibet for Chairman Mao until he sneaked out in 1959.
For almost 9 years Lhamo Toinzhub had worked for Chairman Mao.
Tibet Today still fighting her Biggest Enemy...
Click below:
Secret CIA Sponsorship of Tibetan Rebels against China Exposed---
How A Ground-breaking Book Unveiled History as It Was
http://www.china-hiking.com/tibet/invasion.htm
In 1959 conned by then Ambassador in India(Henderson) at his own free will,
Lhamo Toinzhub left Tibet and thus had given up his right to run Tibet.
As an early version of Iranian Czar or Filipino Marcos, he was tricked to leave Tibet.
Since 1959 for 49 years Tibet Autonomous Region has been run by capable
native Tibetans, most of whom were a SERF during Dalai Lama era.
These Tibetan leaders should be the only people who can make decisions
for the future of Tibet Autonomous Region, NOT Lhamo Toinzhub.
He has neither Tibetans' Trust nor experience to run Democratic and Modern Tibet.
Tibetans do not want someone both a Political and Religious leader to head Tibet.
Why do nations want to have Tibet returned to a SERF system under Dalai Lama?
It is because they want to control Tibet with a puppet like Dalai Lama.
This will lead Tibet into neither Democratic nor 'Freedom of Choice'.
Our World is enough to have only one Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini !
USA Professor asked: Want Another Taliban?
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90776/90882/6389959.html
Lhamo Toinzhub has to realize Tibet today is a well established society,
and stop allow himself being used as a puppy by nations against China.
It is sincerely hope before his approaching death Lhamo Toinzhub
(14th Dalai Lama) will give up his so called 'Tibet Independence'
and for once in entire life doing something good for people of Tibet.
The only way to avoid ending up in history like Iranian Czar or Filipino Marcos!
http://pic.people.com.cn/GB/31655/6543727.html
What kind of olive branch from the Dalai Lama?
2008-08-21 11:23:00
Just on the former day of the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games, "New York Times", an American newspaper, published an article titled "An Olive Branch from the Dalai Lama" by Nicholas D. Kristof, a journalist who once worked in China. The article introduces the Dalai Lama's new opinions about Tibet.
Before analyzing the Dalai Lama's new ideas, I would like to share two points which puzzle me most.
Firstly, the Chinese government always opens doors to the Dalai Lama for talks. As a matter of fact, from 2002 to the beginning of this year, the departments concerned have conducted six rounds of talk with the Dalai Lama. In addition, after the March 14 Riots the United Front Work Department (UFWD) of the Communist Party of China (CPC) had dialogues with the Dalai Lama twice although local people in Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) were very angry with separatists due to great damages caused by riots. If the Dalai Lama has any new ideas indeed, he should communicate with the central government directly instead of conveying his comments by western media. The proposition from a western journalist not only makes people disbelieve its authenticity but also doubts the Dalai Lama's sincerity. Does he wish to solve the issue or just to strengthen public relations among the western world for another time?
Secondly, one point of the Dalai Lama's new allegation is that the object of the dialogue should be changed to the supreme leader from the United Front Work Department of CPC, which is out of all reason. That would do no good to the following dialogue. On the contrary, it will set new blocks to the progress. So I have to suspect the Dalai Lama's sincerity of resolving issues.
The first point of the Dalai Lama's new ideas is that "the Dalai Lama is willing to state that he can accept the socialist system in Tibet under Communist Party rule", which he regards as an important compromise. Actually, this is what the Dalai Lama should do according to the dialogue. It is really wise enough to interpret an inevitable thing as a big compromise, in terms of negotiation skills. It is a popular tactic in western public relations to put forward a fake topic and then gain virtual profit by making compromises. With the establishment of the Tibet Autonomous Region in 1965 after the democratic reform in 1959, the socialist system has become the foundation of Tibet's society today. The result of changing the reality is unimaginable. On the foundation of current social system, TAR has made great progress on the way to modernization. Further promoting the autonomous region is millions of Tibetan people's requirement and rights. It is selfish that some few people hope to change the progress of the history, which is impossible as well.
The second point of view is about the Dalai Lama's so-called "greater Tibet". He can accept the current boundary between TAR and other provinces but calls for "greater Tibet" "to be placed under one administration" and demanded "to create a Regional Authority for Tibetan Affairs that would administer key aspects of life" in greater Tibet. That is to say, he would like to gain the practical domination over greater Tibet by superficially giving up greater Tibet. Here we can learn the negotiation tactics of "moving forward two steps by moving back one step". In history, there has never been "all Tibetan areas" with an effective and consolidate administration. In the rule of law, his claiming greater Tibet disregards other nationalities' rights completely. As for politics and real life, if the plan of greater Tibet takes effect, a race launder with unprecedented scale will happen. Thus the plan of greater Tibet itself is ridiculous and persisting this plan is one of the greatest barriers for the dialogue between the central government and the Tibet separatist group. The Dalai Lama changed the expression way of the issue of greater Tibet without giving up the preposition actually, which is the essence of the problem of the so-called new ideas.
After recommending the new policy of his highly-praised Dalai Lama, Kristof raised a series of detailed requests on behalf of the Dalai Lama, such as allowing the Dalai Lama to arrive in or depart from China according to his will; restricting other ethnic people's migration; stopping the patriotism education in monasteries; permitting pre-school age children to go to school; promoting the status of Tibetan language and boosting the occupancy of Tibetan cadres. In my opinion, it is the Dalai Lama's rights to raise requests, but all those requests should be based upon rationality and reality.
Let's have a simple discussion at some topics. Firstly, the so-called migration problem. In terms of the modern nomology, except the well-organized and large scale migration to some areas based upon governmental public power and resources, it is the basic rights under the guarantee of constitution for citizens to migrate according to one's own interest demand within the frontier. It is wrong to restrict individual free migration according to the nomology and according to the modern human rights view, it is also improper. Now the fact is that there is no issue for government to organize migration to Tibet or some other Tibetan-inhabited areas while the government should respect and protect the behavior of individual migration according to market economy demand.
Secondly, permitting pre-school age children to go to school. The key problem is the balance of rights claim. China respects citizens' religion freedom according to the law and in opposite, the citizen must respect the law to fulfill the legal obligation and this is a kind of balanced contract relationship. It is the rights for children to enjoy education and the duty of parents and the government to help children to finish compulsory education. The reasonable claim is to help those children finish education and allow them to choose their religion belief after they have ability to fulfill their rights to perform their rights according to the constitution.
Thirdly, about the Tibetan language. With the development of modernization, any nationality will meet the challenge of adjusting to the modernization and protecting the traditional culture. A clear fact is that since the Reform and Opening-up, the Chinese Government has done a lot to popularize Tibetan language, protect and develop the Tibetan culture and has also made a lot of progress. In stead of criticism without any fact basis, the Chinese Government deserves affirmation and encouragement for its efforts on Tibetan language and Tibetan culture.
In Kristof's quotation cited from the Dalai Lama, a marked paragraph shows that he pays much attention to those words: "The main thing is to preserve our culture, to preserve the character of Tibet, That is what is most important, not politics." It sounds really good, but if you read carefully, you will still feel that culture is just used as an excuse as what the Dalai Lama cares most is the politics.
http://eng.tibet.cn/news/today/200808/t20080821_421558.htm
Click the following to view the White Papers on Tibet issues:
Tibet -- Its Ownership And Human Rights Situation
New Progress in Human Rights in the Tibet Autonomous Region
Tibet's March Toward Modernization
White Paper on Tibetan Culture
White Paper on Ecological Improvement and Environmental Protection in Tibet
Tibet's Compulsory and Free-of-Charge Education
White Paper: Regional Ethnic Autonomy in Tibet
Click the above for full text of White Papers on various Tibet Issues
Potala Palace is the symbol of Tibet, China
On July 1, 2006 Qinghai-Tibet Railway put into operation
which changed the History of Tibet forever !!
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Ride Qinghai-Tibet Railway with us to visit Potala Palace
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