Serious questions are raised by the lecture on 4th December at EIAS by a Chinese Communist Party official who has been notable for his attempts to stifle independent debate and adherence to aggressive policies against the Dalai Lama. Pema Thrinley (Chinese transliteration: Baima Chilin) the Vice Chairman of the Ethnic Affairs Committee, National People's Congress of China spoke about "Assessing Economic Development in Tibet".
We are pleased this year to present to you a Special Edition 2016 ICT wall calendar titled “My Tibet” in honor of His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s 80th birthday. The calendar is now available for purchase at the ICT online store. All the photographs and text featured in the calendar are from a special book titled "My Tibet" by the late photographer and adventure mountaineer, Galen Rowell. Galen’s passion for Tibet grew after travelling on assignment to Tibet a number of times in the mid to late 1980’s.
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...
It was pouring heavily in New York City — June 1, 2015. My friend Tenzin who was also heading to Washington, DC, for the Tibetan Youth Leadership Program was anxiously waiting for me as the train departure was nearing. Bouncing along the streets in full swing, I eventually made it Penn Station right on time, but I was completely soaked, my glasses, backpack, suitcase and everything. No sooner, we settled down and the train started to move, and as I changed my shirt and jacket, I turned to my friend and told her with sigh, “Thank, God! We are escaping this nasty rain.”
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.
On September 24 later this month, China's President Xi Jinping will arrive in Washington to meet President Obama for an important state visit. The context is a growing alarm about China's less than peaceful rise, and provides a rare opportunity for the president to give an important message on Tibet. It has been noted in Washington that President Xi's self-proclaimed "China Dream" -- a vision of a peaceful and rising China on the world stage -- has become a Kafka-esque nightmare for many.
Communist Party officials visiting Beijing for annual meetings shook up the internet and saddled themselves with reams of bad press last week when they harshly attacked the Dalai Lama. That in itself isn’t anything new; even headline-grabbing accusations like claims that the Dalai Lama ‘betrays his country and his religion’ are just new iterations of Beijing’s old themes. What really got people’s attention is the way Party officials claimed ownership and mastery over the Tibetan Buddhist concept of reincarnate lamas: “Decision-making power over the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama, and over...
Imagine a country which is openly denying ethnic minorities the right to check into hotels, and to receive passports. Imagine a country where a rights lawyer from the majority ethnicity calls these kinds of policies 'ridiculous.' And finally, imagine a country where the criminal charge of 'inciting ethnic hatred' that soon follows is brought against the lawyer for opposing these policies, and not against the government agencies responsible for instituting them.
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.
Last week, we heard once again Chinese Communist Party’s officials reiterating their concept of religious freedom in Tibet. Chen Quanguo, the Tibet Autonomous Region’s Party chief, wrote in the People’s Daily newspaper that monks and nuns should be evaluated for their "patriotism," a word they use to describe their allegiance to the Communist Party. In China's one-party system the Party is institutionally more important than the State.
