I’m not by any means a football fan, but the arrival of the Tibetan team in London for the CONIFA World Football Cup – bringing together dispossessed nations and others locked out of FIFA – kicked off something rather special.
For a start, no other team had been given a personal blessing by the Dalai Lama, who in a special audience before their visit to the UK urged them to set an example of compassion. They are the only team in the history of football, no doubt, to present their opponents with khatags, white blessing scarves, before the game – and to assert that winning or losing are not important. The British media hailed them as the undoubted stars of the show, with many journalists making a special effort just to attend the matches of the Tibetan team.
The controversial nature of their participation gained headlines, too. Organizer Paul Watson said that CONIFA were talking to several firms about sponsorship that would have totaled six figures. “But at quite a late stage they each came to us and said: ‘Um, yes, but you’d have to take Tibet out’,” he told The Guardian. “We’d underestimated the difficulty of coming up against China and the FIFA network.” What did CONIFA do? “Obviously we refused to comply.” Sometimes pushback against China and defense of principles comes from unexpected quarters.
That same sense of solidarity was evident at every match. And wherever the exile Tibetan team played, the exile Tibetan community of Britain came too, with Tibet flags, banners – and momos. In Bracknell Town, a fan wrote on Twitter that the Tibet supporters had brought food for everyone – “Not seen that at the Emirates before”. After matches impromptu picnics were held in parks near by; there was joyful circle dancing and a real sense of pride that Tibetans were competing in a world football tournament.
The ten-day event in London has brought together 16 teams from nations, minorities and regions not part of FIFA to compete in an alternative World Cup. The competitors include the Romani people, the North American region of Cascadia, Matabeleland, Panjab and United Koreans in Japan.
The players in the Tibetan team are from the exile diaspora in India, Nepal and Bhutan with some from North America, Europe and two from the UK. One of the team, Wangchuk, said that he had never been back to Tibet after escaping across the Himalayas as a child, carried by his mother, 17 years ago. She had said to him that in India, he would have more opportunities to study and work. If he remained in Tibet, she told him, he would have no education and have to do construction work.
Newspaper coverage of the Tibetan soccer team.
A month ago, Wangchuk told a British journalist, he was able to get in touch with a family member, his sister, for the first time since he left. She told him that their mother had died. “He said that they are not able to talk about politics, the Tibetan situation or even Indian society, because the Chinese government ‘will know.’ But he did tell his family he would be playing on the national team. His sister cried of happiness.”
Another member of the team, Nyendak, told The Independent it is “a privilege to be part of the national team squad… I am really proud to represent Tibet globally.” He said that football is the closest thing Tibetans have to a national sport, and he believes the team will be backed “by all Tibetans, in and outside Tibet”.
There was a neat symbolism to the Tibetan team coming together in London. Prior to the Chinese invasion in 1949, Britain was the only country to formally recognise Tibet as an independent nation, because British representatives were stationed in Lhasa from 1904 to 1947 to liaise with the Tibetan government. And during this period, Tibetans were first introduced to football by the British Trade Agency in Gyantse. The introduction of British military training at Lhasa in 1913 and increase in the army and introduction of the modern police force in the early 1920s saw more football in Tibet. According to the Tibetan National Sports Association, some of the veteran players of popular teams like the Lhasa, the Potala, the Drapchi and Security Regiment, are still alive today.
After a match against Kabylia at Enfield – the Tibetan team had lost, but were philosophical, and a Tibetan friend observed simply that it could have been worse, it could have been 12-1 – I made an informal presentation to the team on behalf of ICT. Mindful of the historic connection, it included some England football team kitbags. But most of all we wanted to express our support and admiration for the spirit and grit of a team who have played with loyalty to their nation and culture first and foremost, and in doing so, succeeded in reaching people across the world with the story of Tibet.
“The wide, deceptively empty spaces of the high grasslands can no longer be categorized as just beautiful stretches of land. They are also spaces of continuing protest or contestation.”
– Tsering Wangmo Dhompa, ‘A Home in Tibet’ (Penguin India)
Tenzin Choekyi reads ICT’s statement at the UNESCO Committee meeting while Chinese delegates below the balcony celebrate the inscription and take photographs.
In Krakow last month, important decisions on the world’s most important cultural and natural landscapes were made in a politically-charged environment at the annual UNESCO World Heritage Committee meeting. A vast landscape of wetlands, wildlife and lakes on the Tibetan plateau, traditionally the domain of Tibetan nomads, was among the sites being discussed – in UNESCO terms, the Hoh Xil ‘property’ of the Chinese Communist Party government.
In a report released just prior to the opening of the meeting, the International Campaign for Tibet documented how the Hoh Xil nature reserve on the Tibetan plateau – Achen Gangyap in Tibetan – is in the middle of three major nature reserves that increasingly exclude normal Tibetan land use such as nomadic herding, situate the state as the sole agency of control, and encourage mass tourism. (Gabriel Lafitte has closely tracked progress towards the nomination on his blog.)
China’s official nomination proposal for this vast area of Qinghai, twice the size of Belgium, required UNESCO World Heritage Committee members to accept a framework that specifically labelled traditional pastoral land-use a threat, involving the criminalization of traditional productive and sustainable activities as pastoralism and gathering medicinal herbs. It involved tacit acquiescence with China’s ambitious and elaborate state-engineering policies that are re-shaping the landscape of the world’s highest and largest plateau – notably, the removal of Tibetan nomads from their land.
Tibetan nomads have protected the land and its wildlife for centuries, and are responsible for Hoh Xil being recognized as World Heritage in the first place. Their essential involvement as stewards of this vast landscape in order to maintain the long-term health of the ecosystems and the water resources that China and Asia depend upon is acknowledged by grasslands experts and scientists within the PRC, as well as internationally. There is a consensus that indigenous stewardship and herd mobility are essential to the health of the rangelands and help to mitigate climate change.
So ICT went to Krakow to speak on behalf of the nomads. Together with Tenzin Choekyi, a skilled Tibetan advocate who studied Tibetan pastoralism and Chinese grasslands policy, we talked to Ambassadors, staffers and international NGOs both in UNESCO offices in Paris beforehand and directly at the Committee itself. We made a presentation at a global Civil Society Forum in Krakow organized by Berlin-based NGO World Heritage Watch before the opening of the UNESCO meeting.
After Choekyi spoke about the implications of unexamined inscription of Hoh Xil at the NGO Forum in Villa Decius (a stately former Renaissance palace that now hosts cultural dialogues), the room fell silent. It was clear that few had grasped the significance of China’s nomination. While the Chinese government flatly denied that it had relocated any nomads from the ‘property’, our research gave reason to assume that China had indeed removed Tibetan nomads from the area prior to making its World Heritage bid (detailed in ICT’s report). International conservation body the IUCN also stated in its evaluation that the Chinese state party would seek to move those remaining into different types of work.
Protecting the wildlife of Hoh Xil
Images of the Hoh Xil area showing Tibetan antelope crossing a road at the UNESCO Committee meeting.
Serious concerns about China’s nomination for UNESCO status had already been raised in a substantive report by IUCN, which sent a scientific evaluation team to Hoh Xil last year. IUCN raised major concerns about the exclusion of herders and the dangers to wildlife presented by unqualified endorsement by UNESCO, including to the iconic species, the Tibetan antelope, adopted by China as mascot for the Olympic Games in 2008. Tibetans such as Sonam Dargye lost their lives protecting the Tibetan antelope, or tsö, from poachers in Hoh Xil. (See Gabriel Lafitte’s blog.)
IUCN also admitted that local people had expressed concern to them about relocations – a significant acknowledgement, given the dangers faced by Tibetans or local Chinese people who dare to raise even moderate concern about projects prioritised by the Beijing leadership. The Chinese government does not allow Tibetans or other ‘ethnic minorities’ to express views that are different to those of the Party state, and this is a high-profile project which matters to Beijing.
We argued that for these reasons and others, inscription of Hoh Xil without further assessment contravened both UNESCO and IUCN guidelines, including the principles of FPIC (free, prior and informed consent) and UNDRIP (UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples) which are recognised in UNESCO Operational Guidelines.
Privately, many officials expressed their concern and support, but no member of the Committee was prepared to volunteer any formal amendments to the language of the nomination seeking to guarantee that traditional nomadic life of Tibetans must be respected and guaranteed in the nomination document as a precondition for the inscription, including a land use plan that establishes the right of Tibetans to graze their animals.
UNESCO’s brand equity is highly sought after; Tibet has become a major destination for Chinese tourists, with official (and inflated) statistics stating that by the end of 2020, the number of annual visits to Tibet should reach 20 million. According World Heritage status to Hoh Xil, a wild landscape between Lanzhou and Xining, on the way to Lhasa, will contribute towards a strategy that identifies ‘safari tourism’ as a key area for expansion.
An Economist article last week drew attention to the new popularity of ‘glamping’ for Chinese tourists in wilderness areas – with tourists staying in luxury yurts or nomad tents as the authorities settle nomads across the PRC.
Mapping the sacred landscape
We also pressed for the mapping and description of sites of sacred and cultural importance, with free access to the sites as well as the freedom for Tibetans to practice their religion there. The latter would have supported an innovative approach being developed by some Tibetan environmentalists working on a bid to have the Hoh Xil and Sanjiangyuan areas declared as a Sacred Natural Site (SNS) under Tibetan community control, in direct contrast to the nomination by China to UNESCO. This is a category that has no official status, although the IUCN concept of an ICCA, an Indigenous or Community-Conserved Area, is similar. It is linked to a more widespread promotion of ‘sacred’ landscapes as a means of conserving nature and culture. (See for instance http://sacrednaturalsites.org/items/the-sacred-natural-sites-of-kham/).
In her book, ‘A Home in Tibet’, Tibetan poet Tsering Wangmo Dhompa explains the connection of Tibetan nomads with the landscape, highlighting rituals in monasteries in Kham, her home area, that link man and nature, and are “a feature of Tibetan religious life indicative of the belief that both the natural world and humans are psychological and moral beings dependent on each other for their survival.” She writes that her relative Dorje “carries the land in his body. He remembers the rocks he played on and the trees he hid behind. […] He knows the treasures of the land: gold, silver, stone. He says lamas have known for decades of the precious metals buried in the soil. It is the duty of the people to keep the treasures in the land. […] Such a culture of beliefs […] has protected the mountains, the rivers and the animals thus far.”
The vote on Achen Gangyap came up after lunch in Krakow on July 7. It was clear that the nomination would go ahead without any amendments. Kuwait expressed its “sincere admirations to the commitment and excellence that People’s Republic of China demonstrates in enriching the diversity of our World Heritage”, while the Philippines even congratulated China on its “very beautiful dossier” that was “a pleasure to read”. Amidst the praise for the PRC – although China’s policies are devastating Tibet’s fragile landscape – several countries did at least refer to the importance of the nomads and their integral link to protection of the plateau. The Ambassador for Portugal said: “We know how local communities and their traditional users contribute to preserve the landscape and the conservation of species and their habitats. This coexistence seems to be an essential dimension of the property’s Outstanding Universal Value, and should be thoroughly upheld and safeguarded.”
When the nomination was overwhelmingly approved, the large Chinese delegation were jubilant, to the extent that the Polish Committee Chair Dr Jacek Purchla had to advise the Committee that there was a specific area for delegates to celebrate approval of nominations, and that was outside the hall, not inside.
Above the hubbub on the floor of the Committee as representatives from different governments came to congratulate China, Tenzin Choekyi read our prepared statement. You can watch it here – what you do not see is the Chinese delegation gathered around, taking photographs of Choekyi, as she stands to face representatives of the world’s governments, responsible for making critical decisions on the earth’s natural and cultural heritage. (The transcript of Choekyi’s statement is here: https://www.savetibet.org/unesco-approves-controversial-world-heritage-tibet-nomination-despite-concerns/)
Gabriel Lafitte observed: “Politics trumped facts on the ground, inconvenient facts such as China’s removal of most of the Tibetan nomad guardians of the landscape to remote concrete settlements on industrial urban fringes, with nothing to do, dependent on state handout rations. The decision by the World Heritage Committee says much about what we may grieve for on our paths old and new. The rubber stamp of anything proposed by China is axiomatic, and has little to do with heritage.”
Outcomes
The eventual outcome makes it all the more important for ICT to continue its advocacy, in partnership with Tibetan advocates.
We forged new links with civil society advocates from across the globe, from Polish environmentalists and lawyers defending ancient forest, to Turkish activists speaking out against the razing of historic villages. In powerful demonstrations of solidarity, when individuals made statements to the Committee, other civil society activists would stand with them. (The hard work by NGOs and experts under the umbrella organisation World Heritage Watch resulted in further assertions of the importance of civil society in world heritage decisions and the establishment of an International Indigenous Peoples Forum on World Heritage.)
The controversy over Achen Gangyap (Hoh Xil) went global; it was covered in the international media from the New York Times to the BBC.
The Chinese government was forced to respond to UNESCO and issue a statement stating that it will “fully respect the will of the local herders and their traditional culture, religious beliefs, and lifestyle”. Several governments made specific statements on protecting the nomads in their statements to the Committee; for instance, Portugal and Finland opened up the discussion by references to the need to protect Tibetan nomads. International conservation body IUCN also gave a clear message on Hoh Xil in its new document on the World Heritage list: “The traditional use of the site by nomadic herders has co-existed with nature for millennia. The World Heritage listing unequivocally supports the rights of the Tibetan pastoralists in the area.”
IUCN, in its statement in Krakow, also explicitly referred to “international rights norms” that need to be observed with regard to Tibetan herders and pastoralists, which acknowledges the broad significance of human rights principles for land-use policies, an assurance that was something ICT had pressed for.
The work must continue to help ensure that Tibetan pastoralists are protected, and to seek to support Tibetan conservationists in their skillful work at a grass roots level wherever possible.
A heartfelt new song about Tibetan nomads is circulating online, sung by well-known singers inside Tibet: In order to understand Tibetan feelings about their integral connection to the Tibetan landscape, Tenzin Choekyi translated some of the lyrics as follows:
“Studying the development of days and herds
Gathering the beauty of the nights’ constellations
Are the nomads of the plateau
Studying the development of days and herds
Gathering the beauty of the nights’ constellations
Are the owners of the plateau
In the depth of your mind is the luminosity of the sun, the moon and the stars
In your home are the values of the ancestral forefathers
Oh hear…
You are the first to uphold our plateau’s foundation
You are the last to uphold our plateau’s foundation.”
On October 2, 2016, I participated in a conference on possibility for democratization of China at New York University. There were scholars on China, Chinese-American academics, Tibetans, Uyghurs, and some of the top names in the Chinese democracy movement, including Tiananmen veteran Wang Juntao and writer of Fifth Modernization Wei Jingsheng. The conference was convened by Prof. Ming Xia of New York University and Mr. Chin Jin of the China Democracy Forum.
In my presentation I made a case on why Tibet matters in this discourse by Chinese democracy advocates.
Here is an expanded version of the points I made:
First, the aspirations of the Tibetan people need to be considered from the beginning of the discourse. If the Chinese democracy advocates are talking of democratization of the People’s Republic of China, then they need to bear in mind that the present PRC territorial borders include a large number of people like Tibetans who are not Chinese (Han). In fact, the PRC terms itself “a unified multi-ethnic country” with the 56 nationalities supposed to be having equal rights. Therefore, Tibetan viewpoints need to be considered as part of the discourse rather than Tibetans merely being perceived as beneficiaries of the discourse.
The Chinese Communist government has failed, and continues to fail, in understanding Tibetan aspirations. It is for this reason that even after virtually 60 years of occupation, the leadership in Beijing has not been able to gain the trust of the Tibetan people. The Chinese democrats should not commit the same mistake.
Secondly, although the Tibetans in Tibet have been living under an authoritarian regime, the small, but critical number of Tibetan Diaspora, has been undergoing a unique experiment in borderless democracy. In the process, Tibetans are gaining much experience in the intricacies of democracy, both good and bad. This experience is something that the people talking about democratization of China can look at and learn from.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who has been the proponent of Tibetan democracy, developed his thinking, monitored the changing circumstances of the Tibetan Diaspora, and introduced pertinent changes in stages. The process began in 1960 with the Dalai Lama introducing the concept of representative democracy by asking the Tibetans to elect their deputies to a Parliament that would have a say in the governance of the Tibetans in exile. He then followed it up a few years later with the promulgation of a draft constitution for future Tibet, thus introducing the concept of rule of law. Much to the consternation of the Tibetan public he mandated that this constitution have an impeachment clause to be applied to the Dalai Lama, if needed. This was a very important message that the Dalai Lama was sending, namely that no one should be considered being above the law.
In subsequent years, the Dalai Lama took further steps in empowering the Tibetan people; from enfranchising the people to elect the ministers (who were until then appointed by him); to the drafting of a Charter, specifically to govern the Tibetan Diaspora, which included provision for the establishment of the three pillars of democracy; legislative, executive, and the judiciary. Obviously, given that the Tibetan Diaspora does not operate from their own homeland these were adapted to the prevailing situation.
The most significant change took place in 2011 when the present Dalai Lama not only gave up all his political authority in favor of an elected Tibetan leadership, but also virtually removed the institution of the Dalai Lamas from all future political roles.
Therefore, the Chinese democracy movement needs to discuss how and where the Tibetans will fit in their discourse on the democratization of China. This means thinking about the broader issue of nationalities. Lately, some Chinese scholars and politicians have been talking about a “second generation ethnic policy”, which calls for doing away with virtually all affirmative actions (that are on paper, if I may add) for people considered “minorities”. What is the position of the Chinese democracy advocates on this? What do they feel about the concerns of the Tibetan people?
They should also learn from the Dalai Lama and his vision for Middle Way Approach to resolve the Tibetan issue. In this it will be beneficial for the Chinese democrats to understand the Dalai Lama’s role, not only on the Tibetan issue, but also his impact on the broader Chinese community.
In summation, Chinese democracy advocates need to address the aspirations and concerns of the Tibetan people if they are to be part of the democratization of China. It would be counter-productive to take people like the Tibetans for granted or to merely see them as part of the community needing some largesse. They need to bear in mind that among Tibetans there is no consensus on their preference for a democratic China for there are those who feel that there may not be much difference. Also, there are voices in the Tibetan community that call for an independent Tibet and discussions need to happen on how they fit in the discourse.
In short, the Chinese democracy advocates need to consider the Tibetan people when they are discussing the future, but also take steps to win over the Tibetans in the current discourse.
The former Party Secretary of Tibet Autonomous Region, Chen Quanguao (left) with the newly appointed Party Secretary Wu Yingjie (right).
On August 28, 2016 the Chinese authorities replaced the Party Secretary of the Tibet Autonomous Region, Chen Quanguo, with Wu Yingjie. Chen’s transfer may not have any extra significance as he has served in Lhasa for over five years, which is around the time when such Party officials are moved. But Wu is interesting in quite a few ways.
Wu is the first of the “second generation Tibetans” (Chinese: Zang Er Dai) to assume the position of the Party Secretary. The term “second generation Tibetans” is assigned to Chinese officials who have literally grown up in Tibet, having been brought there by their parents when they were young. They are believed to be very familiar with the Tibetan way of life. The first generation is composed of those who were sent in the 1950s by Beijing after taking control of Tibet.
The general assumption is that given his past portfolio and his statements and actions while serving in different capacities in Lhasa and other places, he will only strengthen the Party’s rigid control of the Tibetan people. He has been personally linked to some of the crackdowns in Tibet, including in Driru county where he is said to have asked the armed police force, after an incident in 2013, to “further strengthen patrol duty, control and grid management.” According to this theory, Wu Yingjie’s long stint in different Tibetan towns enables him to understand the Tibetan psyche and this will enable him to adopt appropriate stringent measures to deal with the people. In other words, since he is familiar with the Tibetans, he can be relied on to have contempt for them.
Wu’s appointment is an indication of the Chinese authorities’ inability to empower Tibetans to assume such a responsible position. In the past, when asked why a Tibetan has not been appointed as a Party Secretary, one of the responses from the Chinese side has been that, unlike in the government, in the Party there is no space for ethnic consideration. But in the present case, Pema Thinley (Chinese: Padma Choling), holds a deputy secretary position (a rank similar to that of Wu Yingjie before his promotion) in the Tibet Autonomous Region Party Committee. In fact, Pema Thinley is senior because he became Deputy Secretary in 2010 while Wu Yingjie was named Deputy Secretary only in 2011. So Pema Thinley’s seniority in the Party should have made him an equal candidate for the post. But there is no indication that anything like that has happened. Thus, his being a Tibetan might have in fact been an obstacle in his promotion, just as it seemed to have been with previous Tibetan Party leaders like Bapa Phuntsok Wangyal, Sangye Yeshi (Tian Bao), Tashi Wangchuk, etc. The only message that one can take from this is that if one is Tibetan one is always a suspect in the eyes of the Chinese Communist Party. That was the situation in the 1950s and it remains the same today.
I want to mention here that I am of the view that even if a Tibetan were to be appointed as the Party Secretary, he or she would not be able to do much, in the absence of courage to take a certain amount of risk. For the possibility of being accused of “local nationalism” will always be there, like the Sword of Damocles.
Nevertheless, whenever, there is a change in leaders, there is always the possibility of a new approach. Therefore, there is the opportunity for Wu Yingjie to show himself as someone sensitive to the Tibetan people’s sentiments. In this he does not have to look far for inspiration. There is his namesake predecessor, Wu Jinghua, who served as the Party Secretary in Lhasa from 1985 to 1988. This Wu, who was of Yi nationality, endeared himself to the Tibetans by his willingness to appreciate Tibetan sensitivity, allowing for the revival of Tibetan culture and tradition, so much so that the 10th Panchen Lama is said to have termed him even as ‘one of the best officials in Tibet’.
Even if we look at history, it looks like Mao Zedong himself did look for officials who did not alienate the Tibetans. It is believed that Zhang Guohua, who served twice as Party Secretary in Lhasa (in the 1950s and in the 1960s), is said to have been chosen for his familiarity with the Tibetan culture.
Today, despite whatever claims the Chinese authorities might have about how wonderful the life of Tibetans in Tibet is, the fact remains that there is a trust deficit situation. By their misguided policies, recent Chinese officials overseeing Tibetan affairs have not contributed to reducing this deficit. If Wu Yingjie truly considers himself a “second generation Tibetan” he should understand Tibetan aspirations and reflect that in his work.
Then Secretary Hillary Clinton receiving the Dalai Lama at the State Department in February 2010. (Photo: Michael Gross, State Department)
As the November 8, 2016 US Presidential elections draw near, there are those who are predicting a very close race between Republican candidate Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
Tibetan Americans and friends and supporters of the Tibetan people are watching the developments closely. In past elections, Tibetan Americans have shown themselves to be single-issue voters; with Party affiliations being regarded secondary to how the candidate has shown his (and now her) support to Tibet. During President George W. Bush’s re-election in 2004, quite many Tibetan Americans said they voted for him even though they identified themselves as being Democrat. This was because President George W. Bush clearly spoke out in support of the Dalai Lama and Tibet.
American politicians have noted this small but influential voting constituency. During the 2008 elections, Republic presidential candidate John McCain paid a special trip to Aspen to meet with the Dalai Lama, who was on a visit there. Not to be outdone, a few days later, the then Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama sent a personal letter to the Dalai Lama in which he said, “I regret that our respective travel schedules will prevent us from meeting during your visit to the United States this month, but I wanted to take the opportunity to reassure you of my highest respect and support for you, your mission and your people at this critical time.”
Presidential Elections and Tibet
In general, both the Democratic and the Republican parties do have a reference to Tibet in their respective platforms.
The Democratic Party Platform refers to Tibet under the Asia Pacific section. It says, “We will promote greater respect for human rights, including the rights of Tibetans.”
In 2012 the Democratic Platform had said, “We will consistently speak out for the importance of respecting the universal human rights of the Chinese people, including the right of the Tibetan people to preserve their cultural and religious identity.”
The Republican Platform references to Tibet is somewhat different. It says, “Meanwhile, cultural genocide continues in Tibet and Xinjiang, the promised autonomy of Hong Kong is eroded, the currency is manipulated, our technology is stolen, and intellectual property and copyrights are mocked in an economy based on piracy.”
The Republican formulation in 2012 was the following: “The Chinese government has engaged in a number of activities that we condemn: China’s pursuit of advanced military capabilities without any apparent need; suppression of human rights in Tibet, Xinjiang, and other areas.”
Irrespective of who wins the presidency, there are certain fundamental positions on Tibet that the next American President will have to uphold. These are all incorporated in Tibetan Policy Act of 2002. As the Congressional Research Service says in a report, “The Tibetan Policy Act of 2002 (TPA) is a core legislative measure guiding U.S. policy toward Tibet. Its stated purpose is “to support the aspirations of the Tibetan people to safeguard their distinct identity.”
This legislation outlines practical initiatives with a firm expression of support for the Tibetan people. The Act provides for the appointment of a Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues in the State Department: “The central objective of the Special Coordinator is to promote substantive dialogue between the Government of the People’s Republic of China and the Dalai Lama or his representatives.”
To date, both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have not made any statements on Tibet, except for the casual reference by Clinton to the Dalai Lama at the US Mayors’ Conference in Indianapolis on June 26. It remains to be seen if either of them makes a more substantive reference to Tibet in the coming months before the elections.
The Tibetan Americans and friends of Tibet will be watching.
Harry Wu addressing the “Flame of Truth” torch relay in Washington, D.C. in September 2012 organized by the Tibetan community in North America to draw attention to the plight of the Tibetan people.
Harry Wu, the human rights crusader who ensured the Chinese name for prison labor camps entered the Oxford English Dictionary, has died aged 79. He served the first period of his 19 years in prison camps in the fearsome Qinghe farm in the Beijing area, and it was there, on an ox cart leaving the graveyard, that he made a promise to himself that began his life’s work.
It was the early 1960s, at a time of desperate famine, and Harry had been returning to barracks after burying his friend, Chen Ming, a mild-mannered, reserved man who had been arrested as a ‘thought reactionary’ at around the same time as Harry.
That morning, in the cell, when Harry and the other prisoners woke up, Chen Ming didn’t move, and he didn’t sit up for the 4 o’clock meal. His cellmates assumed he was dead, like so many others in the prison camp – which housed inmates in an advanced state of starvation, kept apart from the healthier prisoners. An hour later, the duty prisoners arrived to take away Chen Ming’s body. At midnight, he came back. Harry was told that a duty prisoner in the storage room had seen a hand reach up and shake the door. It was one of the seven bodies piled up before being taken by ox cart to the mass graves. Everyone thought it was a ghost – but it was Chen Ming. He was not quite dead.
Harry persuaded the guards to feed his friend. “He is not an ordinary prisoner – he has come back from hell,” he told them. Chen Ming was given two corn buns; he grabbed them from the plate and stuffed them both into his mouth at once. A few seconds later, he clutched his stomach in pain and dropped to the floor. He was dead. His stomach, weakened from months of starvation, could not digest so much rich corn so quickly.
All night, Harry watched over Chen Ming’s body. As other prisoners slumbered around them, Chen Ming’s face brightened, taking on a rosy hue typical of the last stage of oedema, known as ‘the last redness of the setting sun’. Harry began to think. Usually he would save his energy by making his mind a blank. But that night he began to wonder what his own life was worth – what his friend’s life had been worth. “If I die tomorrow like Chen Ming, I thought, my life will have been worth nothing,” he said later. “But somehow I didn’t want to give up. I didn’t want to surrender.”
The next morning, when the duty prisoners came to take Chen Ming’s body, Harry refused to let go of his friend. The surprise of the security captain on duty at Harry’s emotions – an unusual occurrence in a prison camp where the living and the dead were often indistinguishable – outweighed his anger. He climbed into the ox cart and sat next to Chen Ming’s body, wrapped in a quilt among several other corpses. The cart rolled into a section of the camp known as 586 dotted with small pieces of wood marking the graves. Harry said: “Suddenly my mind became animated, and I had what seemed almost a revelation. Human life has no value here…It has no more importance than a cigarette ash flicked in the wind. But if a person’s life has no value, then the society that shapes that life has no value either. If the people mean no more than dust, then the society is worthless and does not deserve to continue. If the society should not continue then I should oppose it.” He made a promise to himself that he could not “slide into nothingness: one day we are all going to be a handful of dust. So we mustn’t waste our life.”
Harry had to reclaim some value from the fear and death that defined his life in the laogai, or Chinese prison camp system. He decided to do this by remembering everything he could about the camps, and by publicizing the truth about them when he was finally free. He began to train his mind by practicing elephant chess in his head, and retelling the plots of his favorite novels – Les Miserables by Victor Hugo and Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities among them. He used what Solzhenitsyn termed the “prisoners’ telegraph system: attentiveness, memory, chance meetings”. Whenever he was beaten during struggle sessions in the Cultural Revolution, he would shield his head from the blows. And when he was pulled from a coal mine after an accident, his first anxiety was that it might have affected his brain, and therefore his memory.
It was this promise that drove him to reveal to the world the true nature of the Chinese laogai system with the aim that it would take its place in history beside Treblinka and Dachau, and for the word laogai to enter the English dictionary, just as the acronym gulag has come to signify the Stalinist labour camps. In doing so, Harry had to “cross the line between life and death” once again.
More than 40 years after his release from the camps, Harry arrived in San Francisco with $40 in his pocket. His sister had arranged for him to be a visiting scholar at Berkeley, California, but she couldn’t support him financially, so he worked in a doughnut shop. At first, he tried to live a normal life, but he couldn’t forget the people he’d left behind, the prisoners like Chen Ming who had died. He was awarded a research scholarship at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University, and began the work he had prepared for during his imprisonment. He travelled the length and breadth of the USA to compile the first database of its kind of the experiences of laogai prisoners. He lobbied the US Congress and European MEPs about the prison camps and their exports to the West; he ploughed through Chinese internal documents to find the smallest details and the most shocking truths.
And then he decided he had to go back to China, risking his life, freedom and happiness to revisit the labor camps and gather evidence that would prove to the wider world that they exist. He found a devoted ally in his former wife, Ching-Lee, a Taiwanese secretary for the Minister of Economic Affairs in Taipei. Although Ching-Lee had never heard of the laogai until she met Harry in a coffee bar in Taipei, she became committed to his cause and in 1991, they spent their honeymoon filming labor camps undercover in China.
Harry made five dangerous journeys into China on his own and with Ching-Lee, documenting and exposing human rights abuses. For parts of the trips, he was accompanied by journalists from the American CBS network and Yorkshire TV, and once by the late, and much-missed, pioneering broadcaster Sue Lloyd-Roberts of the BBC. Each visit produced remarkable footage, giving the West its first glimpse inside the Chinese prison labor camp system. It forced the U.S. and European governments to take human rights abuses in China seriously, and U.S. Customs, under pressure from Congress, began to make seizure orders on suspicious goods coming in from China – it is illegal in the U.S. and U.K. to import prison labor. Once Harry disguised himself as a Chinese public security officer to enter a camp; at other times he posed as a U.S. businessman and a tourist.
Sue Lloyd-Roberts remembered that, during their undercover trip to China in 1994, Harry met a 29-year old prisoner who had been sentenced to 19 years for taking part in a street brawl. He was 23 when he was arrested, the same age as Harry when he was first detained in the late 1950s. Sue said: “Harry emptied our Jeep of food and gave it to the young man, who lived in a tiny shack guarding the piles of cotton picked by the prisoners. He sat with the prisoner, tears running down his cheeks, reliving and sharing the desolation and hopelessness that had overwhelmed him when, still in his twenties, he saw no future outside China’s prison camps. Our driver and I had to force him back into the Jeep before the guards returned and arrested us.”
On his trip in 1995, Harry was registered as a U.S. citizen and travelled under his legal name of Peter H. Wu. He got an entry visa, but knew that he was one of 49 dissidents who had been named on a secret government blacklist in May 1994. On this list he was labeled a ‘category 3’ person, which meant in effect that border authorities were to seek immediate instruction from higher authorities on how to handle the case, while their charges are kept either in isolation or under close surveillance. On 19 June, 1995, Harry was detained at the Chinese border post of Horgas when he tried to enter from Kazakhstan, together with North Carolina law student Sue Howell. They were escorted into Xinjiang and locked in a guest-house. Sue Howell was expelled, taking back a message for Ching-Lee from her husband: he told her that she should remember China was his home. His parents and his brother had died there under the Communist regime, and they were buried there. That was his place, and if he died there, that was OK he had said.
Within days of his arrest, an international campaign in the USA and Europe was gearing up to free him and his case became an international cause celebre. The International Herald Tribune depicted him in a convict outfit with other prisoners busily sewing ‘Free Harry Wu’ T-shirts, with a guard saying, “Prisoner Wu, you’ll be assigned to Machine 309 on aisle 9! And step on it – a big rush order just came in!” One man locked in a lakeside villa guarded by men with machine guns had become the focus of a storm in an already strained relationship between China and the USA.
When Harry was arrested in 1957, he didn’t have the benefit of a trial. In 1995, he had a four-hour trial and a lawyer. He was handed a sentence of 15 years for spying. The sentence came in two parts, and the second was expulsion from China. Harry didn’t know whether it would mean he served the sentence before being expelled and was astonished to hear the expulsion was to take place immediately. “So I had no choice, I had to go home,” he used to say, deadpan. He disembarked at San Francisco wearing jeans and a baseball cap, and quoting Hemingway.
Later in his life, in exile, Harry’s sense of purpose was entwined with a strong spiritual awareness; he was a Catholic, connecting to the kindness and teachings he remembered from his childhood at school in Shanghai. He became close to the Dalai Lama and was a passionate advocate of the Tibetan cause, including the stories of Tibetan prisoners such as Ama Adhe, who spent 27 years in prison in Tibet, in his Laogai Museum in Washington.
In the camps, Harry had clung to his love of literature by keeping his small collection of books, despite the danger if they were discovered. He loved art, enjoying the work of Rembrandt and Monet, and once said to me that if his life had been different he would have loved to be a painter. But that last glance at the graveyard numbered 586 – with pieces of quilt still sticking up from the earth after Chen Ming was buried – had seared itself into Harry’s memory, never to be forgotten. He knew the truth of the Russian proverb: “Dwell on the past and you’ll lose an eye. Forget the past and you’ll lose both eyes.”
Also see:
‘Eighteen Layers of Hell: Stories from the Chinese Gulag’ by Kate Saunders, Cassell, 1996.
Tibetan Election Observation Mission members with the Tibetan election commissioners in Dharamsala on March 19, 2016.
On April 27, 2016, the Tibetan Election Commission announced the results of the Sikyong and parliamentary elections. Except in the case of some members of parliament, for the Sikyong and some other MPs, the results were already known and this is a mere formality.
There have been some discussions about the degeneration of the Tibetan society in diaspora in the months leading to the elections, with now even the politicians realizing their shortsightedness. There have been some damage but all is not lost in the broader scheme of things. In the past when there were concerns about his devolution of authority, His Holiness the Dalai Lama had said it is better that the people tread on this path of self-reliance while he was still active as he can then provide guidance if things go astray. Therefore, the recent development was something that would have happened at any time given the nature of the system and it was good that it happened now while corrective measures can be taken.
In any case, I wrote the following after the previous election cycle in 2011. Upon re-reading it, other than there being a change in the nomenclature from “Kalon Tripa” to “Sikyong” the rest of my assertion continues to be valid for the new administration under Sikyong Lobsang Sangay. Therefore, I am reposting it.
Message from the Tibetan Elections
Bhuchung K. Tsering
April 27, 2011
Today, the Tibetan Election Commission in Dharamsala, India, announced the results of the general elections held on March 20, 2011 to elect the Kalon Tripa, the Chairman of the Tibetan Cabinet, and members of the Tibetan Parliament. As pointed out in the statement our organization issued today, congratulations are due not just to the winners but also to all the Tibetan people who participated in this historic democratic process. Above all, this is yet another testimony to the foresight of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in his several decades-long efforts at democratizing the Tibetan governances system.
When campaigning began for the present election cycle in 2009, I wrote the following about what the next Kalon Tripa’s responsibilities would be.
“The next Kalon Tripa should devote his or her time and effort to the consolidation of the Tibetan community, becoming their spokesperson and look into creation of a system providing a continuation of leadership.
“There are three main ways to implement this provision of political leadership.
“First, the position needs to understand that the basis of the Tibetan people’s support to the leadership currently is the historical role of the institution of the Dalai Lamas. The next Kalon Tripa needs to work on a strategy to continuing this relationship and to strengthen the institution to prepare for any and all eventualities.
“Secondly, the Kalon Tripa needs to be the seen as the leader of all Tibetans and not just of the hundred thousand or so Tibetans in exile. The strength of the Tibetan leadership under His Holiness the Dalai Lama today is that it enjoys the loyalty and support of the broad majority of Tibetans who are in Tibet. The millions of Tibetans in Tibet have shown this in different ways, time and again. The next Kalon Tripa needs to find creative ways to strengthen this special bond between the Tibetan people and the leadership.
“Thirdly, the next Kalon Tripa needs to clearly comprehend the reality of the position in terms of relationship with the international community and the governments throughout the world, including that of India. Accordingly, he or she needs to come up with a strategy to secure the formal or de facto acceptance by the governments as a spokesman for the Tibetan people. He or she needs to be able to stand on his or her own feet (think beyond the structure of Dharamsala) and be recognized as being on the helms of the Tibetan leadership by the international community.”
I had written the above before there was any inkling of His Holiness the Dalai Lama deciding to devolve his political authority to an elected leadership. Now that we are faced with this new reality, Kalon Tripa-elect Lobsang Sangay la as well as our newly elected parliamentarians have greater responsibilities than before. I would urge them to think on the above points as they prepare to take charge.
As I write this, Lobsang Sangay la has, while speaking to Voice of Tibet about the election results, opined that one individual alone would not be able to do much but that he would work to the best of his ability. I believe team work is certainly something that needs to be given serious consideration as the new Kalon Tripa begins his work. Secondly, Lobsang Sangay la also said that his election is a strong message to China that under the guidance of His Holiness the Dalai Lama a new generation has taken responsibility. The Kalon Tripa-elect also went live on Radio Free Asia and Voice of America Tibetan services in Washington, D.C. today expanding on his views.
As for China, the authorities seem to have already got the message from the Tibetan elections and there is an article today entitled “On 14th Dalai Lama’s view of ‘political reform’ “ that is very defensive of the Chinese system. Given that the Chinese system does not permit Tibetans in Tibet to have a direct say in who becomes their leader (for that matter even Chinese do not have that right), the Chinese authorities cannot have the courage to welcome the positive message that the tiny Tibetan community in exile is sending in terms of political governance.
The international community, as reflected through the media coverage, has shown great interest in this Tibetan democratic process. It remains to be seen how the governments will react to the new reality and the new Administration in Dharamsala. There is continued public support whether in the United States, Europe or elsewhere to the just cause of the Tibetan people and the political leadership in all the countries would need to keep this in consideration as they try to frame a new approach to the Tibetan issue.
My Tashi Delek to all the winners in this election and wish them all success as they begin their work for the wellbeing of the Tibetan people.
The day before UK PM Cameron entertained Xi Jinping for a pint in his local pub last week, a Chinese Tiananmen survivor and two young Tibetan women were locked up overnight by police in London and informed they were not allowed to be ‘within 100 metres’ of the ‘victim’ of their ‘harassment’, Chinese Communist Party boss Xi.
It was a troubling conclusion to a week in which the UK government faced an angry public backlash to ‘the great British kowtow’, in which the authoritarian leader of the Chinese Communist Party, currently presiding over the most serious crackdown in the PRC in a generation, was accorded a glittering surfeit of Royal pomp and obsequiousness in line with Chancellor Osborne’s new China policy of doing whatever the Beijing leadership wants.
As the golden carriage bearing Xi Jinping and the Queen progressed down a Mall lined with cheering Chinese students with immense red flags, uniform tee-shirts, drummers and dragons, dissident writer Ma Jian had tears in his eyes. “The message from the Chinese tyrants to their subjects is clear: if the queen of the UK, the oldest democracy in the world, lavishes your president with such respect and approbation, then what right have you to criticise him?” Ma Jian wrote.
Sonam and Jamphel, the two Tibetan protesters arrested during Xi Jinping’s London visit, welcomed by members of the Tibetan community in London on their release.
There were numerous attempts by the Chinese students and security personnel to obscure or intimidate the small number of Tibetans, Chinese (Falun Gong and others), Uyghur and other protesters on the Mall. Carole Beavis wrote that she was “singled out by three official looking Chinese men, who effectively herded me away from the event, lowered my arm holding the camera.”
Xi Jinping’s visit to the UK coincides with a terrifying crackdown on civil society in China in which lawyers and human rights defenders have been targeted, with many enduring horrific torture. More than 140 Tibetans have set themselves on fire, an act emerging from anguish at unbearable oppression, while moderate Uyghur academic Ilham Tohti is serving life in prison for peacefully advocating dialogue.
But it is not only within the PRC. Xi and the top Party leadership are aggressively seeking to export their assault on civil society and to roll back freedom and democracy in other parts of the world.
The three arrests in London last Wednesday are in the context of police being pressed elsewhere in Europe to take stronger measures against peaceful demonstrations (for example in Denmark and Belgium.
TV footage shows Shao Jiang, a British citizen who was imprisoned for 18 months after involvement with the Tiananmen Square protests, stepping into the road with two small white placards bearing the statements ‘end autocracy’ and ‘democracy now’. Several police officers charge towards him, knocking him off his feet, helmets flying, and take him into custody.
At the police station that night, the duty officer told me that they were accused of ‘conspiracy’ ‘to commit threatening behaviour’. But Shao Jiang had been on his own – could they mean that perhaps he had been thinking of standing in another part of the public highway with his two placards? Perhaps the two young women, Sonam and Jamphel, were conspiring to go and grab a cup of tea afterwards, as it was a grey and rainy day?
As they were being held in custody, police went to each of their homes and seized laptops, phones, and USB sticks. All three depend on their laptops for work; the computer of Johanna Zhang, Shao Jiang’s wife, who works as an artist and translator, was even taken. This was a chilling step, particularly given the obvious resonances; in Tibet and China, people understand the visceral fear associated with a knock on the door in the middle of the night.
Chinese Tiananmen survivor Shao Jiang is released on bail at Bishopsgate police station (charges are now dropped) by Tsering Passang, head of the Tibetan Community in Britain, and Kate Saunders.
In a debate in Parliament on Monday (October 26), Shao Jiang’s MP, Emily Thornberry, asked for the Home Office Minister to advise her “how I can hold to account those who made the disgraceful decisions to arrest someone who was, on the face of it, behaving in a way that was entirely peaceful, who should not have been arrested and whose house should not have been searched?” MP David Winnick, referred to “British police action with Chinese characteristics”. (Video available here.)
The arrests made front page news in the UK, in the context of an overwhelming public backlash against the UK government’s ‘epic kowtow’ to Communist Party boss Xi. Business leader and expert on China James McGregor, chairman of consultancy APCO Worldwide, told the BBC’s influential Today programme: “If you act like panting puppy the object of your attention is going to think they’ve got you on a leash. China does not respect people who suck up to them.” Mark Steel mused in The Independent: “If trade helps improve human rights, it’s about time we let North Korea and Isis run some of our industries.”
Steve Hilton, the UK PM’s former strategy advisor, tore into his friend Chancellor Osborne, arguing that kowtowing to China does nothing for Britain’s economic health: “Of course the Beijing oppressors would prefer not to be lectured in public on human rights. But if a convicted murderer said he’d prefer not to be lectured in public on the morality of killing people, would we say: ‘OK, we’ll keep your verdict secret’? […]
China is a superpower, aggressively spreading its influence. Our security and economic opportunity depend on an orderly world, underpinned by the values of openness. We need to stand up, strongly, for openness. If the world slides towards the opposite values, those of the Beijing dictators, we should be very nervous.”
In the meantime, The Times reported that senior military and intelligence figures have warned ministers that plans to give China a big stake in Britain’s nuclear power industry pose a threat to national security (see this great video).
In a bizarre media postscript to the visit, I was invited to join a Sunday morning TV show on which Ken Livingstone bucked the trend with the bizarre claim that the Dalai Lama had no credibility because he was a CIA stooge, while TV presenter Tricia Goddard did agree that the Duchess of Cambridge’s dress at the state banquet was a step too far.
Kate looked stunning as she clinked glasses with President Xi, but did she need to wear red, in homage to a man who is China’s most authoritarian and paranoid leader since Mao? A man who is so controlling that he even banned cartoons of Pooh Bear, after Chinese micro-bloggers picked up on an uncanny resemblance between a photograph of Xi and President Obama and a cartoon image of A. A. Milne’s cartoon creations.
On Wednesday night, two days after questions were raised in Parliament about their arrests, Scotland Yard said that the three protesters had been “released from their bail with no further action”. Their laptops and phones were returned today.
Every time I watch the video of Tibetan nomad Runggye Adak going off-script while giving a speech at a major festival in Eastern Tibet, I’m struck by the disconnect between the simple action he took and the enormous consequences that followed. Adak, in full view of thousands of people, said what so many Tibetans think: “If we cannot invite the Dalai Lama home, we will not have freedom of religion and happiness in Tibet.” He went on to call for the 11th Panchen Lama and Tenzin Delek Rinpoche to be freed.
These are extremely common sentiments among Tibetans, but Adak paid a high price for voicing them out loud. After he walked away from the microphone he was seized by Chinese police, and within a month he had been charged with ‘provocation to subvert state power.’ During his trial he defended himself, saying: “I wanted to raise Tibetan concerns and grievances, as there is no outlet for us to do so.” Just the same, he was given 8 years in prison.
With that incident in mind, it was shocking and disappointing to see a co-owner of Politics & Prose bookstore in Washington DC help Chinese agents remove Lhadon Tethong from their store last week. Lhadon, the director of the Tibet Action Institute, had come to an event featuring Chinese State Council Information Office Deputy Director Guo Weimin with the intention of asking him about Tibet. As seen in the video below she started speaking several minutes into his remarks, which were delivered in promotion of Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping’s book The Governance of China:
Xi Jinping's Book Launch – PART 1:Lhadon Tethong, Director of Tibet Action Institute, and Pema Yoko, Acting Executive…
Politics & Prose co-owner Bradley Graham, seen here pushing Lhadon out of the store, once wrote in the Washington Post that he’s concerned about the erosion of democratic discourse. Isn’t democratic discourse eroded when a store owner helps silence a Tibetan voice in favor of a state propaganda official from an authoritarian government? The Party has annihilated democratic discourse inside China. Last week they were able to export a small piece of their repression to a bookstore in America’s capital which bills itself as “a forum for discussion addressing the salient ideas of the day.”
While we’re on the subject, are there any salient ideas in Xi’s book? The Atlanticdescribes it as having “portcullises of dullness” which seem to “forbid readers from entering any further.” The “droning cadences” of Communist Party propaganda feature “familiar abstractions, the insistent buzzwords, and the numbing repetitions.” Xi’s description of the Chinese dream contains “unsettling echoes of 20th-century ethnic nationalism,” a paradise “primarily built for people of a single race.” The Chinese race, naturally- and to be clear, the idea that Tibetans and Uyghurs and Chinese are somehow all Chinese is a rhetorical fig leaf over the racial reality of the People’s Republic of China.
Tibetans inside Tibet run incredible risks whenever they speak their minds. It’s deplorable to see them silenced when they find opportunities to demand answers from Chinese officials outside China- especially when the author of the book is the leader of a police state sustained by the denial of free expression.
ICT has translated into English the first major speech in Beijing by Gyaltsen Norbu, known as the ‘Chinese Panchen (Gya Panchen)’ because he was selected by the CCP after the boy recognized by the Dalai Lama and acknowledged by Tibetans as the authentic incarnation, Gendun Choekyi Nyima, was ‘disappeared’ in 1995. There is no indication of his whereabouts or welfare 20 years later.[1]
Gyaltsen (Gyalcain) Norbu, 25, was installed by the Chinese authorities as part of their efforts to ensure control of Tibet and assert their authority over a future incarnation of the Dalai Lama,[2] and is compelled to conform to the role of ‘official’ Panchen Lama as a ‘patriotic’ figurehead with allegiance to the CCP. This perhaps makes one of his statements in the March 2 speech, before top Chinese leaders at a Party meeting,[3] all the more telling. Because of the shortage of monks in Tibet and “quotas set too low”, he says, there is “a danger of Buddhism existing in name only”.
Gyaltsen Norbu made the usual provisos in line with Party policy, asserting that Tibetan Buddhism is thriving in Tibet, just as the 10th Panchen Lama carefully framed his arguments.[4] But his main contention counters existing policy – for instance, officials do not even admit to monastic ‘quotas’.
The context of the March 2 speech, which has appeared so far only in Chinese in the state media, is an intense debate on the future of Buddhism in Tibet and China. More Chinese people are becoming devout followers of Tibetan lamas,[5] and Xi Jinping talks about the importance of China’s ‘traditional cultures or faiths’ including Buddhism. The Chinese Communist Party wants to give an impression that Buddhist faith is flourishing in Tibet and is acutely aware that the leaders of its main schools all reside in exile, with the Dalai Lama a globally respected figure. So they may be seeking to use Gyaltsen (Chinese: Gyalcain) Norbu in a more sophisticated way than before, and his comments may reflect an approach that some officials want to convey. Even so, Gyaltsen Norbu’s speech was reminiscent of the skillful phrasing used by the 10th Panchen Lama in parts, and he has made lengthy visits to a number of Tibetan monasteries, with senior lamas and scholars as his teachers. Their concerns appear to be reflected in his comments.
Gyaltsen Norbu’s speech is framed carefully in accordance with the Party line on religion, stating that in the “glow of the Party’s ethnic and religious policies”, Tibetans, Uyghurs and other ethnicities enjoy “freedom of religious belief” and normal religious practice and preservation of culture. But his main contention differs from policies that threaten the survival of Tibetan Buddhism in Tibet today, as he pinpoints the shortage of monks in Tibet and “quotas set too low” as serious problems.
The Chinese authorities do not openly admit that ‘quotas’ on monks and nuns in monasteries and nunneries exist. The government line is that the correct number of monks varies according to the monastery’s capacity to support them; Buddhist associations and monastic management committees are the proxies for the government in approving or reviewing such matters. In effect, this represents a government-approved ‘quota’.[6]
On February 12, Gyaltsen Norbu was pictured by the state media with Sun Chunlun, the head of the United Front Work Department who is also on the top Politburo.[7] It is unlikely that Gyaltsen Norbu would make the March 4 speech before members of China’s top leadership[8] without any official approval beforehand, although this may not have been from the United Front Work Department, which seeks to uphold a strong line on religious policies in Tibet and hostile approach towards the Dalai Lama. By directly addressing his remarks to Yu Zhengsheng, one of China’s top leaders who heads an important Party committee on ethnic and religious affairs, Gyaltsen Norbu effectively cut out any attempts by Tibetan or other less senior officials to filter his comments. Such officials, including from the United Front, normally serve as a buffer telling the central government that central religious policies are a success and there is no need for concern.
The context of the Chinese Panchen Lama’s comments is a deteriorating environment for Tibetan Buddhism which worsened significantly after overwhelmingly peaceful protests swept across Tibet in March and April 2008. The Chinese Communist Party state responded to the protests by intensifying an established anti-Dalai Lama campaign, issuing sweeping regulatory measures that intrude upon Tibetan Buddhist monastic affairs and implementing aggressive “legal education” programs that pressure monks and nuns to study and accept expanded government control over their religion, monasteries, and nunneries.
A further factor contributing to the shortage of monks – and one that is not mentioned in Gyaltsen Norbu’s speech, although it is perhaps implied – is the expulsion of monks and nuns from many monasteries, particularly in the Tibet Autonomous Region. Since a wave of overwhelmingly protests spread across Tibet in March, 2008, monasteries of historic and cultural significance have been targeted by the authorities. After monks from the ‘Great Three’ monasteries in Lhasa of Sera, Drepung and Ganden took to the streets in March, 2008, the monastic population has been subject to intensified suppression and the strengthening of control mechanisms.[9] Hundreds of monks have been expelled and arrested from these three monasteries, leading to serious fears for their survival as religious institutions.[10]
Gyaltsen Norbu’s comments appear to reflect a genuine alarm that monasteries in the Tibet Autonomous Region that once housed thousands of monks are now reduced to a few hundred whose main responsibility is no longer religious study but tending to the buildings and tourists. Many of the monks in these major monasteries were from Amdo, Kham, Mongolia, and the broader Himalayan region, and Gyaltsen Norbu does not mention in his speech the policies restricting them from studying in the Tibet Autonomous Region. The number of monks studying at large religious encampments in Tibetan areas of Kham, such as Larung Gar (Serthar) serves as a visible reminder of the potential that monasteries in the Tibet Autonomous Region are not allowed to fulfill.
After the 2008 protests, Tibetan language, culture and monasteries have been depicted by many Party officials as a source of instability. In his speech, Gyaltsen Norbu re-frames the issue by depicting them instead as a source of “stability”, saying: “Tibetan Buddhism is capable of playing a huge role in national economic and social development, and social harmony and stability.” In this way he opens a discussion of Buddhism and Buddhist ceremonies and rituals as something that people in the Tibet Autonomous Region require, and the lack of ability to provide these services as a shortcoming.
Gyaltsen Norbu gives a higher number of monks and nuns in Tibetan areas than usually acknowledged in official statistics, indicating that even this higher figure is not enough. He refers to 1,787 religious venues with 46,000 resident monks and nuns in the Tibet Autonomous Region, plus 783 monasteries and 68,000 monks and nuns in Sichuan, and 660 monasteries and 44,500 monks and nuns in Qinghai. This is a total of 158,500 without including the Tibetan areas of Gansu and Yunnan. The figure of 46,000 resident monks in the Tibet Autonomous Region has been standard in official representations since the 1990s.[11] More recently United Front Work Department official Zhu Weiqun gave the figure of 140,000 monks and nuns in the Tibet Autonomous Region and other Tibetan areas.[12]
While not recognized as the legitimate Panchen Lama by Tibetans, Gyaltsen Norbu has made lengthy visits to a number of Tibetan monasteries and had access to senior Buddhist teachers and scholars. Their concerns may be reflected in his comments; he makes specific reference to particular areas, for instance to the western area of the Tibet Autonomous Region where the sacred Mount Kailash is situated, saying: “I went to Ngari, and I learned: Ngari [Chinese: Ali, Tibet Autonomous Region] has 75 monasteries, and not one of them can hold a Buddhist meeting [in accordance with proper religious procedures and protocols.]”[13]
Few insights have been available into Gyaltsen Norbu’s views due to the stringent oversight of his activities and management of his public appearances by the Party authorities, who require him to convey the message that Tibetans have freedom to practice their religion. Although monks are often instructed to display his photographs, there is little evidence that many adhere to this request. After arriving in exile in India, a monk from Tashilhunpo monastery in Shigatse, the Panchen Lama’s seat, told ICT: “Since Gyaltsen Norbu was chosen as the Gya Panchen Lama, the majority of monks have lost their trust in the monastery, as well as lacking loyalty to the Chinese choice. When Gyaltsen Norbu visits [our monastery], you are not allowed to leave for two days before and after his visit, or it will be considered a political act. Usually young monks don’t display his photos in our rooms but elderly monks, for example my teacher, they always tell us to display it but they say, ‘Don’t worry. Just do whatever they say. If you don’t accept him from your heart then it doesn’t make any difference whether you display his photo or not.’”[14]
The Chinese Panchen Lama’s comments are made in the context of a complex, changing picture in Tibet. Beyond the stringent measures of state control, there are of course other social and economic factors involved in the decline in numbers of monks at many monastic institutions.[15]
In Tibet today, an oppressive crackdown co-exists with the resilient spirit of the Tibetan people in defending their religion and culture, and a growing Chinese interest in Tibetan Buddhism. Last month, remarkable footage from Kumbum monastery, one of the great Gelugpa institutions in Tibet, showed thousands of Tibetan pilgrims gathering at a prayer ceremony despite an intimidating paramilitary troop presence.[16]
At the same time, Tibet’s religious culture is inspiring millions inside the PRC; increasing numbers of Chinese people are becoming practitioners, with many making devout pilgrimages to Tibet, or following Tibetan lamas. Some popular lamas have tremendous influence and following among Chinese, and prominent indications of this trend include a front page story about a Tibetan lama in a Chinese magazine, People Weekly, telling the story of “how a young shepherd becomes a great Tibetan Buddhist teacher of millions of students, with over 1.5 million followers on Weibo”.[17] In January, a former Chinese Communist Party official Xiao Wunan invited the BBC into his home and showed them footage of his audience with the Dalai Lama.[18]
While these developments are of immense importance to Tibet’s future, and despite the evidence of some moderate and progressive views, a White Paper released by the Chinese state media on April 15 provided sobering confirmation of the current dominance of the anti-Dalai Lama, ‘anti-separatist’ power-bloc in the Beijing establishment.[19]
[2] Tibetans refer to Gyaltsen Norbu as ‘Gya Panchen’, meaning Chinese Panchen. Panchen Lamas have previously played a role in the recognition and subsequent education of Dalai Lamas, and vice versa, which is why control over the institution is considered to be so crucial by Beijing.
[4] The Tenth Panchen Lama died on January 28, 1989, after enduring 14 years in prison in the Mao era. He had submitted what is believed to be the most extensive internal criticism of Chinese Communist policies ever submitted to the leadership, documenting the mass arrests, executions and oppressions in Tibet that followed the 1959 Uprising. Mao Zedong famously denounced the report as “a poisoned arrow shot at the Party” and its author as a “reactionary feudal overlord”. It was published by Tibet Information Network in London (now closed) in 1997, in English translation.
[8] It was at the Third Session of the 12th Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) National Committee.
[9] Numerous reports detail the suffering of monks in custody. Tibetan writer Woeser wrote on her blog: “During the monks’ time in detention, a 22-year-old monk called Jigme Phuntsog who had fallen ill and been seriously misdiagnosed by the military hospital deteriorated suddenly after 20 days and died without being treated. Another monk of around 30 years old simply couldn’t bear it any longer. He started banging his head against the wall and then jumped from the window when he was taken to hospital. He broke several bones and is deaf in one ear.” See ICT report, ‘A Great Mountain Burned by Fire’, https://www.savetibet.nl/fileadmin/images/ictreports/A_Great_Mountain_Burned_by_Fire_ICTReport.pdf
[10] Monks in other areas of Tibet, who traditionally visited these monasteries for period of study, are no longer allowed to do so. The Chinese state media acknowledged that a total of 1200 monks from Drepung and Sera had been expelled in 2008. For full details, see ICT report, ‘A Great Mountain Burned by Fire’, https://www.savetibet.nl/fileadmin/images/ictreports/A_Great_Mountain_Burned_by_Fire_ICTReport.pdf. The Chinese authorities have also singled out other important and influential centres of Tibetan Buddhist culture outside the Tibet Autonomous Region – notably Kirti monastery in Ngaba (Chinese: Aba), Sichuan (the Tibetan area of Amdo), where the current wave of self-immolations in Tibet began in 2009. The situation at Kirti escalated in 2011 when monks from the age of 18-40 were taken away from the monastery under the pretext of giving them “legal education”. Local laypeople who tried to prevent them being removed were violently beaten by troops surrounding the monastery. As with Sera, Ganden and Drepung in Lhasa, the authorities used the pretext of taking monks away “for study” or “legal education” as a means to reduce and control the monastic population at Kirti. A full account of these developments is given in International Campaign for Tibet’s report, “Storm in the Grasslands: Self-Immolations in Tibet and Chinese Policy”, December 2012, http://www.savetibet.org/resource-center/ictpublications/reports/storm-grasslands-self-immolations-tibet-and-chinese-policy.
[11] The figure of 1,787 religious ‘venues’ in the Tibet Autonomous Region has also been given in previous official statistics, such as an article in China Daily on December 24, 2012. The same article referred to progress made in the ‘patriotic education’ campaign in the Tibet Autonomous Region, reporting that: “In 2014, more than 50,000 copies of [patriotic education] documents were distributed [….] to Buddhist monasteries across the Tibet Autonomous Region and more than 100,000 Tibetan Buddhist monks and nuns participated the sessions.” The article noted that one of the main subjects of the campaign was for monks and nuns to declare their dissociation with the “Dalai clique”.
[12] His comment in 2012 was as follows: “There are 3,542 monasteries and 140,000 monks and nuns in Tibet and other Tibetan-populated regions.” (Xinhua, 7 March, 2012).
[13] In his speech, Gyaltsen Norbu says that Buddhism has specified that where four or more monks have formed a group, they should regularly hold Buddhist meetings in order to discuss and inspect their adherence to the precepts.
[14] The same monk said that even so, ordinary Tibetans recognize the pressures that Gyaltsen Norbu is under given his unique role: “I have heard that Gyaltsen Norbu is smart and recognizes his Tibetan identity and responsibility.” ‘An Insight into the Gya Panchen’, p 53-55, ‘The Communist Party as Living Buddha: The Crisis facing Tibetan Religion under Chinese control’, ICT report, http://www.savetibet.org/the-communist-party-as-living-buddha/
[15] For instance, see papers by Dr Jane Caple from Manchester University, who writes: “Monastic actors are facing serious challenges as they attempt to ‘move with the times’ while maintaining the soteriological and mundane bases of monastic Buddhism in rapidly changing political, economic and social contexts. Thus far, accounts of the revival have largely been framed in relation to the Chinese state, the shifting public space for religion and culture and the ‘Tibet question’. This study attempts to ‘see beyond the state’ to examine other contingent factors in the ongoing process of renewal and development.” (‘Seeing beyond the state: The negotiation of moral boundaries in the revival and development of Tibetan Buddhist monasticism in contemporary China’, Jane Caple, 2011, https://www.escholar.manchester.ac.uk/uk-ac-man-scw:199630.)
