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Analyzing Chinese Official Zhang Yijiong’s Remarks on Dalai Lama and Tibet

October 26, 2017

As part of the events connected with the just concluded 19th Chinese Communist Party National Congress, there was a press conference on October 21, 2017 during which, Zhang Yijiong, the executive vice minister of the Central United Front Work Department, talked about the Dalai Lama and Tibet.

A Phoenix TV correspondent had asked a two-part question: “Despite China’s firm opposition, some countries have been inviting him [the Dalai Lama] for a visit, and he has just concluded a visit to Europe. Will China take more steps to express such opposition? On the religious freedom in Tibet, in your opening remarks you said that we must ensure the Chinese orientation of religions. Will that be more work done in this regard?”

In his response, Zhang repeated the Party line about the Dalai Lama being “a leader of a separatist group that is engaging in separatist activities”, and therefore the Chinese Government oppose any meetings by governments and others with him.

However, it is a fact known not only to the international community, but even to the Chinese themselves that the Dalai Lama has since the mid-1970s been seeking a solution for a future Tibet that is within the framework of the People’s Republic of China. It is precisely for this reason that he could respond immediately and positively to the overture of then Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in 1979 who said other than the independence of Tibet anything else can be discussed and resolved. United Front leader Ding Guangen repeated, in 1992, this assurance by Deng Xiaoping and by a Chinese official spokesperson in 1993. On August 25, 1993, Xinhua quoted a spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry as saying, “The affairs of Tibet are an internal business of China’s and the door of negotiations between the central government and the Dalai Lama remains widely open. Except independence of Tibet, all other questions can be negotiated.”

The Dalai Lama had subsequently concretized his initiatives on the future of Tibet through his Middle Way Approach that called for genuine autonomy for the Tibetan people, something actually guaranteed (but not implemented) in the Chinese Constitution and Law on Regional Ethnic Autonomy. The Chinese authorities know that the Dalai Lama was not calling for “separatism”, but not having the political courage to acknowledge this, they sought recourse to semantics by saying they are against “semi-independence or disguised independence”.

Following the devolution of political power by the Dalai Lama to the elected Tibetan leadership in 2011, the Central Tibetan Administration has continued to be committed to the Middle Way Approach. Governments, even those close to China, are aware of this Tibetan position, as are people who know about the Dalai Lama, including the thousands of Chinese who are able to know the truth.

Since the Dalai Lama continues to garner unimaginable (for Chinese leaders) international public support, and since he has begun to focus on the younger generation (who are in schools) that can contribute positively to humanity, Zhang makes it seem as if the universities are the only space that is available now to the Dalai Lama.

During his visit to Latvia in September this year, when asked about some government leaders hesitating to receive him, the Dalai Lama said: “That’s ok,” my visit is entirely non-political. I’m not disappointed. The world belongs to its 7 billion people and each country belongs to its population, so I consider the general public to be more important.”

Which Chinese leader can hope to fill a stadium or an auditorium (often for several days at a stretch and with people willing to buy tickets)? The Dalai Lama does this all the time (most recently during his talks in Pisa and Florence in Italy in September).

While talking about money, unless the interpreter was wrong, Zhang says “Usually a university paid the Dalai to give a speech” making it seem as if His Holiness is making money out of them. Those who organize talks by the Dalai Lama, including universities, and those who attend such talks clearly know that he does not charge money for such events. In fact, the Dalai Lama’s website clearly says, “For your information, as a long-standing policy His Holiness the Dalai Lama does not accept any fees for his talks. Where tickets need to be purchased, organizers are requested by our office to charge the minimum entrance fee in order to cover their costs only.” Since I have had the privilege of being part of his entourage during several visits to North America, I know that at all such public talks by the Dalai Lama where tickets have to be purchased a public accounting of the finances is done at the conclusion. Where there is surplus money they are allocated to local and other charity work. None of the money goes to him.

On the matter of protection of Tibetan Buddhism, Zhang has the audacity to claim that “Tibetan Buddhism originated in ancient China; it is a special form of religion that originated within China.” He goes on to add that although it is true that it has been “influenced by other religions and other cultures” (read India), “but it is not acquired religion. It is originated [sic] within China; it has its roots in China. So it is an example of being Chinese. It has Chinese orientation.”

Zhang might be saying this to lay the ground for legitimizing the Chinese Government’s interference in Tibetan Buddhism; but anyone having only a cursory knowledge of Tibetan Buddhism would know that the spiritual knowledge came from India and had nothing to with China. For God sake, there is a reason why the term “Buddhism” is included in Tibetan Buddhism, because it is the religion founded by Lord Buddha.

Zhang’s utterance that Tibetan Buddhism “has Chinese orientation”, lays bare China’s political agenda of wanting to Sinicize Tibetan Buddhism and make it Chinese.

Thus, Zhang Yijiong’s statements might serve the narrow interest of that section of the Chinese leadership that does not want a resolution of the Tibetan issue and does not want the Tibetan people to enjoy their fundamental human rights, including religious freedom. But does this serve the long-term interest of China? Why should the Chinese people be concerned about views of individuals like Zhang?

Referring to viewpoints like this, Chinese intellectual Wang Lixiong said in 2009 in Washington D.C. while receiving the International Campaign for Tibet’s Light of Truth award, on behalf of the Chinese scholars, “This is the major long-term obstacle to resolving the Tibet question. Removing this obstacle should be the mission of China’s intellectuals, for there is no greater knowledge than the truth”.

Wang also added China’s fake propaganda and information blackouts prevented most Chinese from understanding that the Dalai Lama was seeking a non-violent “Middle Way” of greater rights for Tibetans under Chinese rule.

In fact, a 12-point suggestion, signed by several hundred mainland Chinese scholars, in the wake of the widespread demonstrations in Tibet in 2008 included a call to the Chinese Government not to do things that are not in the interest of China itself.

Its Point 4 reads: “In our opinion, such Cultural-Revolution-like language as “the Dalai Lama is a jackal in Buddhist monk’s robes and an evil spirit with a human face and the heart of a beast ” used by the Chinese Communist Party leadership in the Tibet Autonomous Region is of no help in easing the situation, nor is it beneficial to the Chinese government’s image. As the Chinese government is committed to integrating into the international community, we maintain that it should display a style of governing that conforms to the standards of modern civilization.”

As the new Chinese Party leadership begins their work, they should also be mindful of Point 12 of the suggestions: “We hold that we must eliminate animosity and bring about national reconciliation, not continue to increase divisions between nationalities. A country that wishes to avoid the partition of its territory must first avoid divisions among its nationalities. Therefore, we appeal to the leaders of our country to hold direct dialogue with the Dalai Lama. We hope that the Chinese and Tibetan people will do away with the misunderstandings between them, develop their interactions with each other, and achieve unity. Government departments as much as popular organizations and religious figures should make great efforts toward this goal.”

If the Chinese leadership in fact believes that the People’s Republic of China is a multi-ethnic nation, with Tibetans being equal citizens, they should walk the talk. Zhang Yijiong’s statement does not do that.

China’s 19th Party Congress and Tibetans

October 20, 2017

Bhuchung K. Tsering

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Lobsang Gyaltsen (second from right), who was just promoted as a full member of the Party Central Committee, reading Xi Jinping’s work report at the Party Congress on October 18.

While we await expectantly for the new lineup of the Chinese leadership after the 19th Party Congress that might happen on October 24, 2017, it might be worth our while to talk about some other issues related to the meeting; the Tibetan delegates, for instance.

China’s official media said there are 33 Tibetan delegates to this Party Congress: 17 are from the Tibet Autonomous Region (with seven being female), five from the Tibetan region that is now Qinghai, three from the Tibetan area now in Sichuan, and one each from the Tibetan areas in Yunnan and Gansu. Additionally, there are three Tibetans from the PLA contingent, out of which two are female. Then there is one from central party organs, departments directly under the Party Central Committee, while another one is from national state institutions. This makes the total 32. At the time of writing, I am not able to account for the remaining one Tibetan, if the total number is in fact 33. Most probably, he could be Wangchen Tseten, who is listed as a Mongolian, from the Qinghai Tibetan Medicine Hospital. As an aside, there are two delegates from TAR, who are listed as being Monpa and Lhopa, both within the broader Tibetan family.

Among the Tibetan delegates, majority of them are officials at different administrative levels; a few provincial level officials from Lhasa; a governor from Kanlho Prefecture; a vice governor of Sichuan Province whose name is written as Yao Sidan, but is actually Dorjee Rapten; and a few prefectural level party secretaries from Qinghai. There is a gynecologist from Ngari and a teacher from Lhasa.

Two among the Tibetan delegates have met envoys of H.H. the Dalai Lama during the 2002-2010 round of discussions. Che Dhala (Qi Zhala), currently governor of TAR, was governor of Dechen Prefecture in Yunnan when the envoys visited Gyalthang (Zhongdian/Shangrila) in 2003 and Penpa Tashi (currently a vice governor of TAR) participated in the talks between envoys of the Dalai Lama and Chinese officials in Guilin in 2006. Incidentally, there are two people named Penpa Tashi who are delegates to the 19th Party Congress.

As to how the delegates were chosen, Chinese officials were at pains to stress, “…that the election was a competitive one”. (Xinhua: Delegates to Party congress highly representative, October 17, 2017) There are limitations to elections in China, but any election would be better than no election, one might say. But the same Xinhua report has this additional information,”… except Tibet and Xinjiang, which had been approved to exercise non-competitive election.” Darn! I thought the Tibetans in Tibet would have had a taste of electoral campaigns, something those of us in diaspora are familiar.

Even as these Tibetan delegates are being used to glorify Chinese rule in Tibet, reality about the situation in Tibet comes out in different ways. The fact that the Chinese authorities closed the Tibet Autonomous Region to foreign visitors for the duration of the Party Congress is an indication of the volatile nature of the situation there. Or, if the situation there is not that bad then a case can be made that interest groups within the Chinese Government that do not want a more liberal atmosphere in Tibet are taking the opportunity to create a scene for a more hardline approach.

Similarly, even though China claims that Tibetans have greatly improved their livelihood under Chinese rule (Namsa Lawok Tabui Phogyur “Transformation as if the sky and the earth have changed places” is how they put it), there is unintentional admission of the state of affairs. In a Xinhua report on October 17, 2017 meant to brag about how a Tibetan has changed his life for the better under China (An Entrepreneur and his dream of poverty alleviation in Tibet), a reference is made to the hometown of the now well-endowed Paljor Lhundup. Xinhua says, “Although Penjolondru’s life has vastly improved since his humble beginnings, his hometown is still stricken by poverty.” (Italics mine) The Xinhua report continues, “Located at about 4,500 meters above the sea level, Lhunposhol Village in Nakartse has a population of 6,640, 25 percent of whom live in poverty. There is little arable land and villagers depend on livestock raising for living.” (Italics mine) I guess life in Tibet is not totally rosy after all!

Be that as it may, how have Tibetans fared in terms of presence in the organizational aspect of the 19th Party Congress? Obviously, since no Tibetan is on the Politburo, no Tibetan finds a place in the most important 42-member Standing Committee members of the presidium (composed of the 24 incumbent Politburo members as well as retired members) that oversees the Congress proceedings. However, in the presidium of the Congress, consisting of 243 members, there are two Tibetans: Jampa Phuntsok (currently a Vice Chairman of the National People’s Congress) and Che Dalha. Also, Lobsang Gyaltsen finds a place in the 22-member delegate credentials committee, which, as its name suggests, examines the delegates’ qualifications.

Anyway, by this time next week, we will know how many Tibetans find a place on the 19th Party leadership roll. Until then we will have no choice but to go with the flow in terms of this political meeting with Chinese characteristics that is called the 19th Communist Party of China National Congress.

ICT’s push against the Chinese “divide and rule” strategy in Europe

October 4, 2017

Vincent Metten

Poster for the rally organized by ICT and other NGOs in the margins of the 19th EU-China Summit on 2 June 2017. (Photo: ICT)

Since I started leading ICT’s Brussels office in 2006, I have progressively witnessed the development of the Chinese government’s “divide and rule” strategy in Europe. This strategy tries to use the disparities among European member states to play them against each other, creating economic dependency as a tool for political leverage. Today, in light of the large amount of Chinese investment EU members states have received in recent years (and in particular in the framework of the 16+1, a structure of collaboration initiated by China together with 16 central and eastern European states – including eleven EU member states – in 2012), some European governments have become much more reluctant to criticize Beijing, including on human rights and “sensitive” issues such as Tibet. My office has regularly warned against the dangers of this strategy which undermines the EU’s position as a unified bloc, and has consistently called on member states to prioritize values over economic interest or trade relations.

A highly negative consequence of Beijing’s strategy has been the cancellation of the EU-China annual Human Rights Dialogue in 2016, due to the inability of the EU member states to find a common position on China’s demand to downgrade the level of this exchange. We have cosigned a joint letter with other NGOs, calling upon EU leaders to “lead the EU and its member states in demonstrating unified and unambiguous commitment to promoting human rights in China”. On the day of the EU-China summit on June 2 (2016), we organized, together with a coalition of NGOs, a rally in front of the EU institutions, which gathered over 200 people, including Tibetans, Uyghurs and European activists, calling on the EU to take a strong stand on the deteriorating human rights situation in the PRC. Finally, we welcomed the remarks given after the summit by the President of the European Council Donald Tusk saying that he had raised human rights issues with Prime Minister Li Keqiang including the situation of “minorities such as Tibetans and Uighurs”. It was also announced that the EU-China dialogue would finally take place – which it did, although at a downgraded level, setting an inacceptable precedent for future dialogues.

The effects of the Chinese “divide and rule” strategy in Europe are now also visible at the United Nations level, as shown by the Greeks’ decision to block an EU statement critical of China’s human rights record at the 35th session of the Human Rights Council this June. This development has, in my opinion, greatly damaged the EU’s credibility as a defender of human rights and undermined its efforts toward bringing positive change in China. It prompted us to write to the Greek Minister of Foreign Affairs, reminding him of his country’s commitment to human rights and obligation to cooperate with his European partners. In addition, we have sent letters to all the other EU member states, urging them to promote EU unity on the necessity to continue highlighting China’s abysmal human rights in international fora.

At the recent session of the Human Rights Council this September, the EU managed this time to deliver a statement on China’s human rights situation on behalf of all its member states, which also directly referred to the case of detained Tibetan language advocate Tashi Wangchuk. It was a relief, but the fight is far from over; as China’s political and economic influence continues to grow, more and more countries will be tempted to shy away from criticizing Beijing for fear of economic retaliation, and there will probably be other attempts to block such statements in the future. My office in Brussels, as well as other offices of the International Campaign for Tibet in Europe will therefore strengthen their efforts both at the EU and UN level to counter this divide and rule strategy. I am sure other NGOs such as Amnesty International, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), or Human Rights Watch will join in.

Beware the Sixth Tone

September 13, 2017

John N

A temple outside of Lhagang, Tibet.

Syllables in the Mandarin language all use one of four active tones, or a fifth ‘neutral’ tone. So, what is the sixth tone? Far from being a new linguistic addition to Mandarin, the Sixth Tone is a state-market hybrid news outlet created to spread Communist Party-approved viewpoints with a bit more subtlety than they normally employ. Combined with a web-savvy design, it’s part Ministry of Truth and part Vox.com.

Chinese media pieces on Tibet normally conform to one of a small number of recognizable tones. There are pieces that rage against the so-called Dalai Clique, pieces where Party cadres resolutely broadcast the Chinese government’s positions and slogans, and pieces that crow over purported evidence of progress in Tibet- the ‘happy, dancing Tibetans’ motif that Chinese media outlets have repeated for decades. One long-running problem is that these narratives have little appeal for people who have access to international media; essentially, this style of propaganda only works in a news vacuum.

Enter the Sixth Tone. In an attempt to find something less tonally off-putting for foreigners, the creators of this new site craft pieces that focus on telling personal stories while removing the broader political context that the Communist Party doesn’t like people to hear about. This dynamic is very much evident in an article they published earlier this week about life in Lhagang, a small town in eastern Tibet.

Consistently referring to this Tibetan town by its Chinese name, Tagong, Sixth Tone paints a picture of a town with nomadic roots in flux as the tourism industry reshapes people’s livelihoods. So far, so good; this is certainly a real and timely dilemma faced by many Tibetans. But Sixth Tone writes about the dwindling number of nomads without mentioning heavy-handed government drives to forcibly settle nomads across Tibet. Instead, they present the issue as an apolitical question of one way of life losing its appeal. The author also notes the presence of a picture of the Dalai Lama in a Tibetan home without mentioning government prohibitions on his image, and that Tibetans can be beaten or imprisoned for possessing it. Without this context, the open display of a photograph of the Tibetan spiritual leader may even look like a sign of religious freedom in Tibet, instead of a frequently-risky act of devotion to a man Sixth Tone’s owners in Beijing describes as a ‘wolf in monk’s robes.’

A portrait of the Dalai Lama defaced by Chinese police in neighboring Ngaba prefecture, March 2008.

The article touches on lithium mining in Tibet, too, and here the author swerves to avoid mentioning that it was none other than the town of Lhagang that made international headlines last year when Tibetan villagers staged a sit-in protest to demand an end to mining in the area. Chinese authorities responded by dispatching armed police in riot gear. This wasn’t the first protest to take place in Lhagang; in 2008 Tibetans scaled a cellular tower next to the town and flew a Tibetan flag from the top.

Sixth Tone’s snappy content and light touch makes it potentially much more palatable to a foreign audience, an audience that generally dislikes the strident tone of traditional Global Times or Xinhua-style propaganda. We should take note of the way they frame these issues, though. Serious problems created by Communist Party policies are reduced to personal choices, with no mention made of government diktats that force Tibetans to put their safety (and all too often their lives) at risk when they protest poisoned rivers or display photographs of the Dalai Lama. For a publication that claims to “highlight the nuances and complexities of today’s China,” their dedication to glossing over issues and ignoring vital pieces of context seems noteworthy.

Nomads land: ICT advocacy at UNESCO

August 17, 2017

Kate Saunders

“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.”

The Panchen Lama and Legitimacy

April 25, 2017

Bhuchung K. Tsering

6 Comments

The Dalai Lama with the previous Panchen Lama.

Today is the 28th birthday of the Panchen Lama Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, who continues to remain in detention since 1995. From being the youngest Tibetan political prisoner, he might well be the only Tibetan who grew into his teens under detention by the Chinese Government.

First a recap: the Panchen Lama Gedhun Choekyi Nyima disappeared (detained by the Chinese authorities) in May 1995, when he was a six year old child, a few days after the Dalai Lama recognized him as the reincarnation of the 10th Panchen Lama. Subsequently, violating the Tibetan spiritual process, the Chinese authorities selected another boy (through illegal means, as we learn from an eyewitness, Arjia Rinpoche, a senior Tibetan Buddhist Master who was closely involved with the process before he fled to freedom a few years later). Since then, despite repeated attempts to gain access to him, no international agencies or human rights organizations – including the United Nations — has been allowed to visit the Panchen Lama or his family, and their condition remains uncertain. The Chinese authorities have even refused to provide any information on his health status or on the pertinent issue of his spiritual education and upbringing.

In an open letter to the Panchen Lama on his birthday U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) Commissioner Tenzin Dorjee (who was a monk for some years) says, “By the age of 28, I had received both a Tibetan and modern education, as well as advanced Buddhist studies in the Tibetan diaspora in India. I would like to know more about you, especially about your well-being and the education you have received. I fear that the Chinese government has taken away your religious identity.”

Meanwhile, the de facto Panchen Lama (I am using the term “de facto” in the legal sense of “existing in fact whether with lawful authority or not”) is having occasional exposure in the Chinese media and being projected as assuming his spiritual responsibility.

Six years ago, I wrote a piece titled, “Why Doesn’t the China-appointed Panchen Lama Speak Out?” The issue is still valid. Granted that since then the individual appointed by China has been seen conducting public events and talking about issues along Party lines. This does not amount to speaking out in the way the 10th Panchen Lama did. As I mentioned in my blog, a Tibetan Buddhist leader chooses to be reborn to work for his spiritual community and to further the work of the previous incarnation. Tibetans, both inside Tibet and outside, know on how the Chinese appointed individual has fared so far.

China’s political agenda behind their selection of the de facto Panchen Lama became clear in 2010 when he was formally appointed to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. Since the selection, the Chinese authorities have used all means to grant him legitimacy. But as of now, he does not enjoy the confidence nor the reverence of the Tibetan people (the Chinese government knows this and so is constantly trying to find ways to impress the Tibetan people, the latest being having him bestow the sacred Kalachakra initiation).

If Gyaltsen Norbu is truly a Tibetan Buddhist leader and has been provided with the necessary spiritual upbringing, it will be seen from his action. In 1995, after the Chinese authorities installed him, I wrote, “Ultimately, as per Tibetan belief, a lama himself will reveal, as he grows up, whether he is a genuine reincarnation or note, and behave accordingly. The late Panchen Lama was a classic example of this. Even though he was in Chinese hands, a look at his life story reveals the scorn he had for Chinese rule in Tibet.”

Without any recognition from the Dalai Lama, the Chinese authorities can never be able to put the stamp of legitimacy to their selection of any religious leader, whether it is the Panchen Lama or a future Dalai Lama.

Unfortunately, Chinese authorities have not been able to understand Tibetan mentality. To Tibetans, China’s interference in their religious life affects them equally, if not more, to its occupation of Tibet. The tenth Panchen Lama put the case in a more subtle way when he, in October 1988, three months before his demise, called for an end to “traditional interference of religious activities with administrative measures over the years.” He said this was harming “the harmony of nationalities, as religions have close relations with minorities.”

In other words, China might want to have its own version of Rule by Incarnation, but it is the will of the believers that will really matter. The earlier the Chinese authorities realize this, the better it is for them.

‘Burning against the Dying of the Light’: Politics of protest and self-immolations in Tibet highlighted in major international exhibition

April 6, 2017

Kate Saunders

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An unflinching examination of the politics of protest in Tibet, confronting new audiences with the anguish of self-immolations in Tibet, is currently a part of an international art Bienniale in Belgium on the theme of justice, until May 21.

The last testimonies of self-immolators, smartphone videos, portraits and Tarkovsky-like official footage are brought together by film-making duo Tenzin Sonam and Ritu Sarin to shattering effect in ‘Burning against the Dying of the Light’ at the Contour 8 Bienniale.

Tenzin and Ritu, a film-making duo based in Dharamsala, India, frame the self-immolations within the context of the worldview of Tibetan Buddhism – “as do the self-immolators themselves” – and the stark threat to the survival of Tibet as a civilization, a sovereign and distinct entity. They write that the work “attempts to locate this unprecedented and dramatic expansion of dissent within a historical continuum that has its roots in the occupation and colonization of Tibet under Chinese rule six decades ago.”

At the heart of the exhibition, a prayer wheel slowly turns, adorned with a single khatag and tolling a bell, its ring intended to dispel ignorance. Unlike a typical Buddhist prayer wheel, it consists of its bare armature, ringed by metal bars with rolls of religious text exposed at its centre. Embedded within it is a video screen showing footage of self-immolations shot on camera-phones in close, unsparing detail by witnesses whose names we will never know, and who may have been thrown into prison as a result.

In ‘Two Friends’, a single channel video depicts 22-year old former monk, Ngawang Norphel, blackened almost beyond recognition as a human being, speaking on camera to monks who are tending him after his self-immolation.

“When we hear of a self-immolator, we pray that he or she has died,” says one Tibetan friend. The video of Ngawang Norphel, lying covered in an orange quilt in the monastery, is utterly harrowing. Struggling to form words, he asks the monks more than once of the fate of his friend Tenzin Khedup, 24, who set fire to himself at the same time and died. In an unbearably poignant exchange, Ngawang Norphel asks whether his friend has died, and the monks reassure him that: “Tenzin Khedup is fine. He is home.” “Is he dead?” “He is not dead.” Ngawang Norphel survived for several more weeks before dying in a Chinese hospital.

Many Tibetans who have self-immolated have sought to underline the religious context of their acts, or have sought to be close to monks with the belief that the appropriate prayers will then be offered after their death by fire. Some have died with their hands clasped in prayer, while many of those who have self-immolated have done so beside a stupa, monastery or nunnery. Others have self-immolated during important prayer ceremonies. Overwhelmingly, Tibetans who have set fire to themselves and who have risked their lives in peaceful protest have called for the Dalai Lama to be allowed to return to Tibet.

Lines from the famous letter by Thich Nhat Hanh to Martin Luther King in Ritu and Tenzin’s exhibition further illuminate the sacrifice of those individuals burning their bodies: “A man who burns himself too much must die. The importance is not to take one’s life, but to burn. What he really aims at is the expression of his will and determination, not death. In the Buddhist belief, life is not confined to a period of 60 or 80 or 100 years: life is eternal. Life is not confined to the body; life is universal. To express will by burning oneself, therefore, is not to commit an act of destruction but to perform an act of construction, ie to suffer and to die for the sake of one’s people.”

On the wall, lines from a poem left by 17-year old nun Sangye Dolma, whose luminous and beautiful face appears here more as a classical painting than selfie, reveal a message of hope beyond despair. Like many of those who set themselves on fire in Tibet, it is not addressed to the U.N., the international community but to fellow Tibetans, written in solidarity, and urging them to “Look my Tibetan brothers and sisters! Look at the land of the snow. Our destiny is on the rise. […] Children of the snow lion! Do not forget that you are Tibetan. Tibet is an independent country.”

Tenzin and Ritu, whose feature films and documentaries include ‘Dreaming Lhasa’ and ‘The Sun Behind the Clouds’ (http://whitecranefilms.com/), have also created a 25-minute film, Drapchi Elegy. It tells the story of Namdrol Lhamo, one of the 14 ‘singing nuns’ imprisoned in the notorious Drapchi prison in Lhasa in the early 1990s for peacefully demonstrating against Chinese occupation and rule. This deeply poignant film, showing Namdrol at work in an elderly people’s home, and at home in Belgium, “reflects on the loneliness of political exile, and on the direct progression of the Tibetan freedom struggle, from the defiance of the nuns in the 1990s to the sacrifice of the self-immolators 20 years later.”

Remembering her time in prison, Namdrol weeps as she remembers the remarkable solidarity that exists, and continues to exist today in exile, between her sisters in prison – “We used to comfort each other – when we were doing this, or singing silly songs, we were happy”. You can see the film at: http://www.ibraaz.org/channel/164

‘Burning against the Dying of the Light’ is on display in the historic town of Mechelen, half an hour by train from Brussels, until May 21. Contour Biennale 8, with its theme this year of ‘Polyphonic Worlds: Justice as Medium’ is symbolically sited in the grounds of the Great Council, established in Mechelen during the 15th Century for law to be enacted across Dutch, German and French territories. Consistent with the theme, other works include the transformation of the wine cellar of a 15th century manor once owned by the city’s watchmakers into an underwater oceanic zone reflecting on ideas of ecological solidarity. In the House of the Great Salmon, originally owned by a monastery for lepers, the Karrabing Film Collective looks at barriers for indigenous people – racialised and colonized incarceration, poverty and securitization.

‘Burning against the Dying of the Light’ compels new audiences unfamiliar with the Tibet story to confront the self-immolation protests in Tibet “as part of a continuing struggle to prevent the light of an entire civilization from dying out”, according to Tenzin and Ritu. They write: “A number of these fiery protests have been captured on mobile phones and secretly made available to the outside world. This act itself is punishable by long prison sentences. The hurriedly shot videos bring home in graphic and horrific detail, the physical reality of self-immolations. To witness a living human body engulfed in flames is a truly distressing and disturbing sight. But what right do we have to turn away our faces when the very point of such a public protest is to draw our attention to the cause they represent?”

Taking a Step for Tibet — My Experience with Tibet Lobby Day in Washington, D.C.

February 13, 2017

Guest

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By: Nancy Lindberg

Nancy Lindberg with her husband (Tenzin Chophel), and two children (Tsering and Tenzin) as well as fellow members of the Tibetan Association of Vermont, Tseten Anak Kalsang GGT, during Tibet Lobby Day in Washington, DC.

Here we are in the United States, far from Tibet, wondering what we can and should do. Some of us have been to Tibet or exile communities in India and Nepal, and fell in love with the culture. Some of us are followers of the Dharma. Some of us are Tibetan American immigrants or their children. Our existences are linked together, firmly or tenuously, by Tibet.

I am a Vermont native, wife of a Tibetan, mother of Tibetan American children, past traveler in Tibet and past student and volunteer in Tibetan exile communities. Recently, I’ve noticed that as life proceeds, we sometimes give more time and sometimes less, to things we care about, adjusting our distribution of time according to life’s circumstances. Like so many of our friends, my husband Tenzin and I, gave our time to nurturing our children through their childhood. Part of that nurturing included speaking Tibetan at home, traveling to their father’s childhood home of Dharamsala India, and participating in Vermont’s local Tibetan community and its various events, such as Tibetan New Year (Losar) and the March 10th commemoration of Tibetan Uprising Day.

In 2012, when our daughter was in eighth grade, we decided to travel to Washington D.C. to participate in Tibet Lobby Day. On our way, we stopped in New York City to pay our respects to three determined Tibetan hunger strikers camped out in front of the United Nations, refusing sustenance until their demands for Tibet were acknowledged. They called for fact-finding missions to look into the human rights abuses in Tibet. They wanted journalists to be allowed into Tibet to illuminate the atrocities that were leading Tibetans there to use their bodies as their last statements. The year 2012 will be remembered for the heart-breaking rash of self-immolations in Tibet. Tibetans in Tibet were shaking us all awake.

Arriving in D.C., a Tibetan family opened their home to us. We felt welcome, like family from afar, reunited after a long journey. The International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) had organized everything for the three-day event. The program started with an afternoon of orientation and lobbying practice. We learned about the ‘asks’ for the occasion – specific, tangible requests we could make when we visited each of Vermont’s representatives over the next several days. The ‘asks’ were not the big statements we see on bumper stickers, T-shirts or rally placards, such as ‘Free Tibet’ or ‘China Go Home’. These ‘asks’ pointed our representatives down a progressive path, one small step leading to the next. These ‘asks’ connected Tibet to the reality of the U.S. government’s daily business. We would ask our representatives to support budget initiatives, like continued funding for radio broadcasts inside Tibet – a source of news and hope for Tibetans inside and out. We would ask them to sign a letter that their colleague would be circulating. The letter would request Secretary of State John Kerry to make Tibet a priority issue during an upcoming visit to China. We received brief bios of Tibet’s prisoners, and prepared to highlight the plight of several individuals to our representatives (sadly, there were many from which to choose). We also practiced introducing ourselves and sharing our personal connection to Tibet (in a minute or less!)

It had been 20-years since my husband had immigrated from Dharamsala to the U.S., and in those few days in D.C., people from his life in India suddenly surrounded him. His young friends from TCV, were now here beside him, middle aged, preparing to gather not at the edge of the road in Dharamsala to greet His Holiness’s motorcade, but on Capitol Hill in the Halls of Congress. This was our next step.

The first steps had been those of his father and mother, and his friends’ fathers and mothers. They took decisive yet painful and reluctant steps across the Himalayas to northeastern India and later to Himachal. Steps that left behind everything, except the hope that they would return, later in life, when the time for freedom had come.

But as we know, most fathers and mothers have not yet returned. They raised their families and reminded them, incessantly, that they were Tibetan. They attended rallies, educated their children, celebrated and mourned. They passed on the torch. In the early nineties, thousands of Tibetans began relocating to the United States. They were pulled by opportunities for them personally, for their children…and hopefully, for Tibet. The rhythm of daily life changed. Tibetan parents in the U.S. started working two jobs or split shifts, learning to afford life in America and to follow its storied dream. Tibetans in the U.S. adapted quickly and successfully, just as their parents had in India and Nepal. As in India and Nepal, their close proximity to one another (living in approximately 20 cluster sites including Boston, N.Y.C., Chicago, Minneapolis, Burlington, VT etc.) enabled them to keep their culture and hopes alive, albeit in new ways.

Like my husband’s friends surrounding us, we had reached a plateau in life. Our son in college, and our daughter maturing into a young woman in high school, it was time to think about reinventing our personal commitment to Tibet, in a way that extended beyond the bounds of our family and community. So it is that my husband, daughter and I found ourselves, slightly intimidated, wandering the Halls of Congress. Dressed in our best business attire, adorned with Tibetan/American flag lapel pins and armed with khatas and a briefcase full of information provided by ICT, we went forth to punctually attend appointments at each office of our state’s representatives.

Like anything in life, lobbying is a process. Prepare, practice, be on time, be thankful, get to the point, express more gratitude, take photos, share your successes, and remember to follow-up periodically when you get home. Then there were the opportunities for on-the-spot interviews in the halls in between meetings. Members of the press, both Radio Free Asia and the Voice of America were there, curious about how our meetings had gone. We told them…hopefully our friends and family in Tibet heard. In the evening, we met other lobbyists, reminisced about our day and our lives, and felt good.

At the first Tibet Lobby Day my family and I attended, we took a step…many steps even. My family has attended lobby day annually ever since that first experience. It’s on our calendars – somewhere near Losar and March 10th. It’s as important to us as both of those occasions. With each Tibet Lobby Day, we are grateful for the opportunity to personally tell our elected representatives something about Tibet.

Life repeats itself on an annual cycle. Despite the repetition, we are blessed to be able to enter each New Year with a new perspective and a sense of new possibilities. Tibet Lobby Day gives its participants a way to take a few important steps for Tibet. It is all of our combined steps that make an incredible impact. At Tibet Lobby Day 2017, I look forward to connecting with old friends and making many new ones. Together, let’s visit Capitol Hill, and make a difference for Tibet.

Nancy Lindberg
Shelburne, Vermont

China’s Greater Leap Backward

December 16, 2016

John N

Part of Oliver Munday’s illustration for The Atlantic.

James Fallows’ recent cover article for The Atlantic, entitled “China’s Great Leap Backward,” is an important and timely piece. In it the veteran China writer describes how repression in the PRC has grown under Xi Jinping, and considers the implications for the United States. His article is especially significant because it arrives during a time of potential upheaval for America’s China policy under the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump, which has already deviated from long-standing diplomatic precedent by accepting a congratulatory phone call from Tsai Ing-wen, the president of Taiwan.

To briefly summarize his points, Fallows notes an increasingly hard line being taken in a number of key areas: communication, where China’s censorship of the internet and press grows ever stricter; civil society, where the Party is turning the screws ever tighter on religious groups, NGOs, and unions; extraterritorial actions, where attempts to enforce Beijing’s will outside the borders of the PRC grow ever bolder; failed reform, where the political climate grows ever darker; anti-foreign sentiment, where foreigners living inside China and foreign companies doing business inside the country are viewed with ever more suspicion; and the Chinese military, which grows ever more aggressive as territorial disputes with a dozen neighboring countries continue to fester.

These are all serious issues, and Fallows lays them out with the care and insight that comes from his long experience with China. Reading the article, though, I couldn’t help but to think that another crucial factor had been omitted: Increasing repression in Tibet and East Turkestan. The way China treats “minority nationalities” serves as an essential indicator of how committed it is to using violence and repression to stay in power. If you want to know how far the Party might go to control Chinese citizens tomorrow, you need only look at what they’re doing to Tibetans and Uyghurs today.

Including the Tibetan and Uyghur experience in his article would only strengthen Fallow’s case, too. Take his first category, communication: As bad as things are in China proper for internet usage and journalism, they are far, far worse in Tibet and East Turkestan. Tibet remains largely closed to foreign journalists; in recent years they’ve been chased out by police and government officials, denied entry, and forced to sign a document promising they wouldn’t try to return. Other journalists successfully reported from Tibet only after entering through subterfuge (in one case incurring subsequent blowback from Chinese embassy officials who harassed the writer in multiple countries), or after bypassing police checkpoints by hiding in the backseat of a car (this happened multiple times). In 2008 foreign journalists in Tibet faced mass expulsion, and since then reporting from inside the Tibet Autonomous Region has been limited to Potemkin tours arranged by the Communist Party.

Chinese snipers disappear from their usual positions on Lhasa rooftops when foreign journalists visit the TAR.

On the internet front, too, struggles with finding a good VPN might seem quaint to some people in Tibet and East Turkestan. Chinese authorities have taken to pulling the plug entirely and removing all internet access when they feel the need arises; they did so most famously in East Turkestan. The entire area, which has a population of 22 million, went without internet access for ten months in 2009. The BBC reported that those who needed to get online were forced to travel hundreds of miles to neighboring provinces to do so.

Hooded and armed Chinese police raid an internet café in northern Tibet.

The plug has been pulled repeatedly in Tibet as well, inspiring one New Republic writer to visit the Tibetan region of Ngaba to take a look at life behind China’s ‘cyber curtain.’ A few years ago one resident of Tsoe, a city in Gansu’s Kanlho Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, complained to me about the unpredictability of these outages. The internet would disappear after a protest or before a sensitive date, and the entire area would remain offline for days, or weeks, or months. Beijing may be more comfortable doing this to Tibetans and Uyghurs than to the inhabitants of well-to-do Chinese megacities like Shanghai, but we should be mindful of the fact that they’ve developed these tools, and that they’re willing to use them.

In reviewing the repression of civil society, Fallows mentions restrictions on religious practice and the demolition of churches in China. The flattening of churches is cruel, but today it’s hard to read the word ‘demolition’ without thinking about the campaign of destruction at Larung Gar in Tibet, the largest Buddhist institute in the world. More than 9,000 monks and nuns have been expelled since the demolitions began in late July, according to the latest reports from Radio Free Asia. In broader Tibetan civil society, the case of Tashi Wangchuk is illustrative of how little room non-Chinese grassroots activists are afforded in the PRC: He now faces up to 15 years in prison for his efforts to support the implementation of truly bilingual Tibetan and Chinese education systems in Tibet.

Finally, no account of China’s growing use of extraterritorial repression could be complete without a look at Nepal:

Nepal is a case study in how a rising China has come to exert itself over its neighbors. Landlocked and impoverished, with a chaotic political system and recovering from natural disaster, Nepal has capitulated easily to Beijing’s will — and nowhere has that been more strongly expressed than in the fate of would-be immigrants from Tibet.

…

Responding to demands from China, the Nepalese have installed heightened security on the border. A phalanx of undercover police and informants now makes it almost impossible for Tibetans to cross into Nepal, except by extraordinary means such as the zipline.

Tibetans already in Nepal — many of them born here — are facing new restrictions on getting refugee certificates, jobs, drivers licenses and even exit visas to leave the country.

In all of these categories, the Party’s political crackdowns are hitting Tibetans and Uyghurs harder and more regularly than the average Zhou in China. The results can be deadly, as in these cases where Tibetans were tortured to death in Chinese prisons over the last few years. Another high-profile case is that of Tenzin Delek Rinpoche, a beloved Tibetan religious leader who died in custody last year while serving an unjust sentence. Just last week the number of Tibetan self-immolation protests against Chinese rule reached 146 when a man named Tashi Rabten set himself on fire and died. His wife and children were detained and beaten by the police when they asked that his body be returned to the family. The situation in East Turkestan is no better; a Times reporter who visited earlier this year found the region seething with anger under a sustained crackdown. The recent transfer of Communist Party official Chen Quanguo from the Tibet Autonomous Region to East Turkestan is another bad omen; the man distinguished himself by developing and applying innovative new techniques of repression.

Heavily armed police, a constant presence in the heart of Lhasa and in towns across Tibet, would be considered a very unusual sight in Chinese-populated regions of the PRC.

Fallows notes that the United States still has the power to shape the realities in which China chooses its future course. It is vitally important for this power to be used to make concrete improvements in the human rights situation in Tibet and East Turkestan. As the next administration shapes a new China policy, prominent writers like James Fallows can play an important role in ensuring that the human rights concerns of Tibetans and Uyghurs aren’t overlooked. He starts his piece with a question: “What if China is going bad?” I might answer that with another question: Looking at how it treats ‘ethnic minorities,’ how can we say that it hasn’t already gone bad?

The Dalai Lama on China becoming a ‘Compassionate Nation’ under the Communist Party

December 1, 2016

Bhuchung K. Tsering

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I have just watched a fascinating interview with His Holiness the Dalai Lama by Qin Weiping, a US-based Chinese blogger, who visited Dharamsala in October 2016. The interview (conducted in Tibetan and Chinese) is interesting not only because His Holiness shares his thoughts on how China could become a compassionate nation, but more so because he says that such a transformation should be, and can be, led by the Chinese Communist Party. His Holiness believes that through such a transformation China has the opportunity to alter the current negative perception of Communism in the world.

In the interview, the Dalai Lama (speaking in Tibetan) says he has been calling for the world to become more compassionate and says that scientists maintain that mankind is inherently compassionate. So, when he is calling for the world to be compassionate, he feels that China, a traditionally Buddhist nation, has the possibility and the opportunity to do so.

The Dalai Lama says when he addresses Western audiences on the need for compassion, there is some slight discomfort on his part as he is basing himself on an inherently Buddhist approach (although he has never thought of proselytization). But in China the situation is different as almost all Chinese have a closer relationship with Buddhism, he says.

He feels it will be good if the Chinese Communist Party can take the lead on this. His Holiness gives a theoretical reason why this should be done. He says it is a known fact that in terms of his socio-economic belief, he calls himself a Marxist. When Marx is talking about the rights of the working class, there is the talk of kindness. The Dalai Lama opines that Karl Marx’s theory was, however, ruined by Lenin. Therefore, he says while he believes in Marxism, he is against Leninism.

The Dalai Lama feels many of the problems that China has faced in the past may have been due to the influence of Leninism and Stalinism. He refers to an opinion of the former Israeli President and Nobel Laureate Shimon Peres, who, as a socialist, had positive feelings towards China. However, when he had asked Mr. Peres some years back whether China is a socialist nation or not, the response was negative, with Mr. Peres saying that China is a capitalist nation. However, in Western capitalism there are rule of law and free media, which are absent in China, the Dalai Lama adds alluding to these as serving as checks and balances.

The Dalai Lama refers to Deng Xiaoping, who had, with great courage, changed the economic system through his open door policy, which benefited China greatly. Now if Xi Jinping can bring about a bit of a change in the political system, the Dalai Lama thinks it will be beneficial. He says by change in the political system, he is not referring to changing from Communist Party rule. He says Deng Xiaoping changed the economic system under the leadership of the Communist Party. Therefore, it is possible that under the leadership of the Communist Party, there can be efforts at spreading compassion in China.

The Dalai Lama thinks it would be interesting if there was a new Cultural Revolution in China, based on kindness this time, as the earlier Cultural Revolution was based on hatred.

The Dalai Lama refers to Communism as being organized and says that if it can be liberal as well it will be good. He said today Communism is considered something negative in the world. But a situation can be created so that the world can start looking at China saying its form of Communism is something special. The Dalai Lama adds that maybe he is dreaming.

The Dalai Lama feels he could make a contribution, if there is such an opportunity, toward spreading compassion in China, and that he could do so in earnest. As a follower of Buddhism who has been talking about the issue in Western countries, he says he could do so in China, a Buddhist country. He clarifies that he has no desire for any privileges or position, adding that in 2011 he had completely ended the historical tradition of the Dalai Lamas serving as both spiritual and temporal leader.

In order for that to happen and for China to be a powerful and effective nation, His Holiness feels it is essential that it earns trust and respect, particularly of its neighbors. Taking it to a personal level, His Holiness refers to Chinese leadership’s attitude of castigating him and asks how China was benefiting by doing so. He says that only makes the possibility of his visiting China become more remote. He says under the current situation, he wonders how much use he can be if he were to go to China. Therefore, he thinks that it is better that he be in a place where he can be of benefit.

The Dalai Lama concludes (switching to English) saying he is an 81-year-old Buddhist monk and might have another 10-15-20 years. “My life should be something useful to humanity,” he says, adding that this was his commitment.

So there you have it, a possibility of a compassionate China with Dalai Lama characteristics, if I may!