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On making a difference

February 18, 2021
Ashwin Verghese
2 Comments

Chinese military helicopters fly over the Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet.

When you’re trying to help the victims of oppression, it can sometimes feel hard to believe that anything you’re doing actually improves their lives. But recently, the passage of new legislation—and the sight of Chinese military helicopters—reminded me that our community of compassion at the International Campaign for Tibet is making a difference.

A few months ago, I joined all of you in celebrating when the Tibetan Policy and Support Act, the watershed bill we spent years advocating for, became law. The TPSA promised to upgrade US support for Tibetans, defend the succession of the Dalai Lama from China’s interference, address water security and climate change in Tibet, and much, much more.

The enactment of the TPSA was the triumph the Tibet movement had been waiting for, and it was one we saw play out in votes on the floor of the US Congress and statements from the White House. So it was jarring, then, a few days later when I began to see photos of China’s helicopters flying over Lhasa, Tibet’s capital, in an apparent response to the TPSA.

China’s response to the TPSA

According to Indian news outlet the Hindustan Times, the aerial drill could have signaled that China planned to accelerate its “Sinicization” of Tibet—an effort to eliminate Tibet’s unique culture and force Tibetans to assimilate into Chinese society—in light of the TPSA’s passage.

“China wouldn’t want anything to happen in Tibet that reflects support for the US law …” an analyst told the newspaper. “The military drill was a preemptive move and would be followed by other steps to stem any potential dissent.”

I remembered those articles this week when Lobsang Sangay, president of the Central Tibetan Administration, described the Chinese government’s reaction to the TPSA during a virtual celebration of the law hosted by the Regional Tibetan Association of Massachusetts, Amherst.

“They brought helicopters over Potala Palace,” Sangay said, referring to the historic winter residence of the Dalai Lama. “They brought military in the streets of Lhasa and various other places. They had a war drill or anti-riot drill for days, some say for weeks, to intimidate Tibetans, to create fear that there might be another uprising in Tibet in appreciation of the support of the bill.”

Sangay added that the Chinese government has been holding workshops on the TPSA for its officials in Tibet and ordering scholars to write articles against the legislation. That helps explain why I’ve seen so many anti-TPSA stories in Chinese state media since the bill passed.

Here and there

Like the vast majority of my International Campaign for Tibet colleagues—including the Tibetan ones—I’ve never set foot in Tibet. The only images I’ve seen of it have come from photos and video snippets. All the advocating I’ve done for the Tibetan people has taken place far away, more than 7,500 miles from Lhasa, in the comfort and safety of Washington, DC (which, granted, feels a little less safe this year for reasons you can probably imagine).

Because the Chinese government makes it almost impossible for foreigners to enter Tibet and keeps information about Tibet from reaching the outside world, I’ve never gotten much of a glimpse into the effect our work at ICT has on Tibetans living under China’s authoritarian rule. I, of course, have always hoped that we’re helping to raise their spirits after decades of China’s oppression and laying seeds for greater freedom and justice in Tibet in the future.

I did understand that China might respond to the legislation we’ve helped pass by cracking down on Tibetans. But speculating about that felt a lot different than actually seeing images of the Chinese military bearing down on Tibet.

I hope this goes without saying, but the thought of any Tibetan suffering because of something I contributed to horrifies me. Obviously, it’s the opposite of what I want.

Reaction by Tibetans

I trust you’ll also believe me when I say I don’t feel I have the right to decide how much suffering in Tibet is okay in the short run so that Tibetans can get human rights over the long term. I think it’s important for Tibetans themselves to take the lead in making those decisions. (I know that’s a standard disclaimer these days in social justice discourse, but I still want to make it clear.)

One group non-Tibetans should look to for guidance is the Central Tibetan Administration, which provides democratic representation for Tibetans in exile. Although Sangay, the administration’s president, unnerved me with his vivid description of China’s response to the TPSA, he gave me a smile by talking about the response from Tibetans.

“Inside Tibet, they were celebrating it,” he said. “In monasteries, they were praying, they were burning incense to appreciate the US government for what you have done.”

Sangay added: “Yes, there’s a clampdown. There’s repression. And obviously, they cannot say much. But deep down, I know in the dark cells of prisons also, they are very, very appreciative for passing this bill.”

There were other inspiring moments at the TPSA celebration this week, which featured remarks by Congressional leaders, Tibetan association presidents, the North American representative of the Dalai Lama and ICT Interim President Bhuchung K. Tsering, among others.

More than ever

One of the featured guests of the event was Rep. James McGovern, D-Mass., who introduced the TPSA in the House of Representatives alongside Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J. Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Ben Cardin, D-Md., introduced the bipartisan bill in the Senate.

McGovern pointed out the TPSA is part of a wave of recent Tibet legislation that has also included the Reciprocal Access to Tibet Act, which became law in 2018 and led to the State Department announcing last summer that it had banned Chinese officials from entering the United States over their role in keeping Americans out of Tibet.

“In the last couple years, we have passed more legislation on human rights in China and on issues related to Tibet than at any other time in Congress,” McGovern said.

He added that he hopes the Dalai Lama will be able to return to the United States to meet with President Biden and Vice President Harris. The Tibetan spiritual leader has previously met with Presidents George H. W. Bush, Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama.

McGovern said he believes the Biden administration will soon appoint a new high-ranking special coordinator for Tibetan issues in the State Department. ICT has stressed the importance of appointing someone for the role at the undersecretary of state level or above so that person has the resources and authority needed to be successful.

New administration

Meeting with the Dalai Lama and appointing a new special coordinator for Tibetan issues are two promises Biden made during his campaign.

Since taking office, his administration has taken a number of steps to show support for the Tibetan people.

  • At the beginning of this month, the State Department gave a statement to Radio Free Asia pledging that the US will pressure China to re-enter dialogue with the representatives of the Dalai Lama; end its interference in the selection of Tibetan Buddhist leaders; and respect Tibetans’ unique culture, religion, language and environment.
  • A few days later, on Feb. 5, during his first phone call with China’s top diplomat, the new secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said the United States will continue to push for human rights and democratic values in Tibet.
  • And just last week, Blinken delivered a video message at the State Department’s annual reception for Losar, the Tibetan New Year. The department has held the reception every year since 2015; Blinken was the first secretary of state to speak at it. Blinken later tweeted his Losar greetings and called for the preservation of Tibet’s “rich traditions.”

These actions have added to the momentum from the bipartisan passage of the TPSA and the Reciprocal Access to Tibet Act during the last administration.

Global support

The new laws have also echoed across Europe and the democratic world.

In July 2020, Josep Borrell, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, said the EU opposes any interference in the Dalai Lama’s succession by the Chinese government. (The TPSA requires the State Department to work at the international level to build support for Tibetan Buddhists’ freedom to choose their own leaders. Borrell’s statement was a nice head start.)

Earlier, Borrell, who is also vice president of the European Commission, responded to a question from Member of the European Parliament Isabel Santos by saying, “The Commission will continue to call on the Chinese authorities to allow reciprocal access to Tibet” as part of the EU’s human rights dialogue with China.

In addition, officials in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands have also recently stated their position that Tibetans have the right to choose their own religious leaders without China’s influence. ICT’s European offices have helped spearhead efforts to build support for Tibetans in Europe.

Last month, the European Foundation for South Asian Studies, a think tank, suggested the TPSA could lead to more democratic countries expressing support for Tibet.

“It would be worth watching whether a few such democracies take the cue from the US and acknowledge the sufferings of the Tibetans more substantially,” the foundation said in a report.

The report added that the TPSA could “provide a template and options for India”—the world’s largest democracy and the exile capital of the Tibetan people—“to examine and expand upon in its future dealings” with China.

Pushing forward

During the celebration of the TPSA this week, Bhuchung K. Tsering, ICT’s interim president, said “Congress has done its part in passing the legislation. We now look forward to working with Congressman McGovern, Senator Rubio and their colleagues in the Congress to see that the Biden administration fully implements the TPSA” and the Reciprocal Access to Tibet Act.

Bethany Poulos, policy analyst in Rubio’s office, added that the TPSA “wasn’t a one off.”

“We’re going to continue to work on this issue,” she said. “It’s going to be a priority in Congress.”

That should encourage all of us who care about Tibet to keep pushing forward with our advocacy. We know that whatever we do, China won’t stop its repression in Tibet tomorrow, as its recent show of military force in Lhasa made clear. But at the same time, our actions are having a clear impact.

“Don’t ever, ever think that your voices don’t matter,” McGovern said. “That is what made the difference here. People in the Tibetan community, throughout the world but in the United States, raised their voices, advocated and made a difference.”

As an ICT member, you’ve made a difference for Tibet and contributed to the unprecedented momentum of the Tibet movement. The last few months have provided a startling reminder of the real-world results of our activism. As we look ahead to the rest of 2021 and the future, let’s try to give our dear friends in Tibet more reasons for hope and celebration.

Long march to perfecting the state of surveillance in China

November 17, 2020
Tenzin Norgay
facial recognition

File photo of Hikvision’s facial recognition technology capable of recognizing “ethnic minorities”.

Three years ago, during a mock exercise Chinese police in Guiyang City challenged the BBC’s John Sudworth to go anywhere in the city without being found by them. Within seven minutes after the reporter left the surveillance control room, he was caught by security officers based on his location caught on camera. Through this mock exercise, China sent a loud message: the Chinese state is omniscient and omnipresent.

A lot has been written about the technological surveillance prowess of China and its trialing in Tibet prior to wider rollout. To a significant degree, surveillance aided by technology has deterred human rights activists in China for the fear of being caught by the state’s eyes all around them. Deterrence of freedom and rights activism in Tibet has also taken a hit due to stepped-up surveillance in Tibet in the wake of popular protests against Chinese rule in the spring of 2008. This raises the pertinent question of how powerful the surveillance technology is and whether China has perfected surveillance technology. Making the location of citizens scrutable and legible to surveillance data gathering is not the same as knowing what they think or say or intend. How useful is this knowledge to a party-state seeking complete control?

Sinologists Jessica Batke and Mareike Ohlberg set out to answer these questions. In their quest to understand the State of Surveillance in China, Jessica Batke and Mareike Ohlberg asked six questions: “To what degree is Xinjiang a model for the rest of the People’s Republic of China (PRC)? Who, exactly, are local governments elsewhere trying to track? Why do they think such surveillance is necessary? How much does the application of national surveillance plans vary from place to place? How costly is it to local governments? And how well do any of these systems actually work?”

Based upon analysis of 76,000 surveillance technology procurement documents on the government procurement network spanning 16 years between 2004-2020, the authors conclude that China has not perfected surveillance technology although the intent is clearly “to eliminate any public spaces where people might remain unwatched.” China is not yet an Orwellian state as Chinese leaders would want us to believe to project the infallibility of the Communist Party of China. But it may be well on course to become one in the long run by training both machines and humans.

The authors argue that the surveillance technology and conceptual framework is the same across China, although scale and purpose of deployment may vary from location to location. While dissidents and potential criminals may be the object of surveillance in parts of the Chinese heartland, all members of a particular “ethnic” or religious group are targeted for their “ethnic” or religious affiliation. This finding comports with what Tibetans and Uyghurs have experienced for several decades solely due to their distinct identity and the socio-political-historical context under which the two territories and peoples became “ethnic” minorities under Beijing’s rule.

Parsing through 76,000 documents surely is overwhelming, and explaining the nuanced findings is a huge challenge without boring your audience to death with statistical and technical jargon. The authors skillfully told the story by doing a comparative analysis of three case studies in terms of demand and deployment of surveillance technology. The case studies focused on Shawan County in far west Xinjiang, Xijiao in southeast coastal Guangdong province, and Harbin in northeast Heilongjiang province. The three locations are scattered on the map of China, thereby making the case studies representative of the research conclusion.

The authors found that the local authorities have wide latitude in deciding the type of surveillance technology, and the scale of deployment in the three places varies according to threat perception. In Xiqiao, surveillance is deployed to check daily activities of the people with a focus on “key persons,” a term for types of people the authorities view as dangerous. Officials in Harbin were working on surveillance capacity to predict where the city residents will go and what they are likely to do. In Xinjiang, unlike other parts of China, surveillance pervades daily life not only through technology but the massive presence of “convenience police stations” and security checkpoints throughout the region. Other parts of China pale in comparison to the intense scrutiny that exist in Xinjiang although the technology and conceptual frameworks are the same as in other parts of China.

The following are notable takeaways from the report:

  • The pervasive and invasive surveillance system in Xinjiang is designed to target the Uyghurs as a group. It is discriminatory by design to distinguish Uyghurs from other groups present in the region. For example, the 8 million Han Chinese in Xinjiang accounting for 40% of the Xinjiang population are not subject to the same level of surveillance meted out to the Uyghurs. The authorities target Uyghurs as a group instead of focusing on outsiders, dissidents and criminals like in other parts of China.
  • The state of surveillance technology, conceptual frameworks and programs in Xinjiang is not unique, although the scale of deployment and the intensity are when compared to other regions in China.
  • Purchase of surveillance technology has increased dramatically in the past two years.
  • 14 billion RMB ($2.1 billion) was spent between 2016 and 2020 for deploying the “Sharp Eyes” program alone, in addition to expenditures on other surveillance projects. Surveillance expenditure sometimes reached half of the annual total public security expenses.
  • Last year, at least 998 counties spread across China purchased surveillance equipment of some type.
  • Facial recognition cameras are not omnipresent, although they are gaining traction in deployment.
  • The Public Security Bureau accounts for 65% of purchase of surveillance technology.

Surveillance in Tibet

The authors mention Tibet only one time in the 17-page report. But this does not mean that Tibet is not a concern in terms of deployment of surveillance technology. In fact, both Tibet and Xinjiang are at the same extreme end of the surveillance spectrum in China. Both are outliers in terms of scale compared to surveillance practice in the Chinese heartland. Both have a massive presence of so-called “convenience police stations” and security checkpoints installed across their homeland. Surveillance technology is being used not only to monitor “criminals” but for “social management” of Tibetans and “social stability” in Tibet.

A simple keyword query for Tibet in the Chinese government procurement network reveals that the public security bureau in Tibet has no intent of scaling down the level of surveillance already in place. Besides the usual oppressive tools of choice, it is most likely that drones will soon be part of the surveillance mix to monitor the Tibetans.

A wide range of documents are available on the Chinese government procurement network (www.ccgp.gov.cn), but three items of interest in terms of recent procurement notices will be highlighted here.

  • Genome surveillance   Based on anecdotes, it has been known for long that DNA of Tibetans is being profiled by the state. The project does not seem to be complete yet, although some observers had earlier reported the project to have been completed. Select recent procurement notices for DNA database construction (July 8, 2019), DNA reagents and Consumables (July 21, 2020), Ultra-micro magnetic bead method DNA extraction kit (June 27, 2020) show that it is an ongoing project. Since DNA profiling is highly controversial, the strategy so far appears to be to keep the project out of view to avoid condemnation for mass profiling. But recent procurement notices reveal that the strategy has changed, as the public security bureau is actively bidding for rigorous DNA profiling; one such procurement notice comes with a price tag of 1 billion yuan. DNA data of Tibetans is scrutinized intensely by the Chinese authorities. Geneticist Yves Moreau, an engineer and professor at the Catholic University in Leuven, Belgium, said in an interview with NPR that the DNA profiles of “Tibetans are studied 40 times more intensely than the Hans, and the Uighurs are studied 30 times more intensely than the Hans.” In Crackdown on Genomic Surveillance, Moreau wrote that half of the genome studies of Tibetans and Uyghurs are authored by the police force, military or judiciary.

    The official justification to profile DNA is to catch criminals. However, such a justification is problematic, as a wide range of Tibetan activism for language, environment, culture, freedom of opinion and expression, etc., is criminal by the official Chinese definition. In recent years, even discussing the Dalai Lama’s Middle Way Approach for conflict resolution has been criminalized through law.

    DNA-profiling technology has made great headway in solving crimes worldwide, and it is legitimate for law-enforcement agencies to use the technology with stringent safeguards and oversight. However, use of such technology is problematic in Tibet and in China, where the Communist Party of China is the final authority free of any oversight for human rights abuses.

    It is not outlandish to imagine Chinese leaders ordering targeted extradition of Tibetans in exile by furnishing DNA of family members back home as proof of their Chinese citizenship to foreign governments. For example, last month Indonesia extradited three Uyghurs to China instead of Turkey on the merit of China producing DNA of their family members in Xinjiang to prove their Chinese citizenship. China’s claim of universal jurisdiction of its national security law also throws open a range of imaginable situations under which DNA profiles can be used for extradition of dissidents (read: criminals in Chinese) including Tibetans from foreign countries.
  • Drone surveillance   Use of drones for domestic surveillance is another controversial issue worldwide. Drones to surveil civilian Tibetans has not been observed so far—at least publicly—but that looks to change soon. In light of a procurement notice (June 22, 2020) on the Chinese government procurement network, the Lhasa Public Security Bureau will soon deploy drones to surveil the Tibetans in Lhasa.

    In the ongoing global Covid-19 pandemic, journalists and observers have reported authorities in China stepping up collection of citizen’s personal data through a variety of health surveillance apps. With the deployment of talking drones, authorities warned ordinary Chinese citizens to confine themselves in their homes at the height of Covid outbreak in China.

    But the deployment of drones to surveil Tibetans would be altogether at a different level given the political context under which the technology will be put to use. The Chinese authorities already operate with a combat mindset in Tibet. It is anticipated that sending drones to surveil Tibetans won’t be as mundane as ordering someone to lock themselves up in the house to escape from Covid.
  • Big data analytics   Big data analytics feature prominently in the government of China’s plan to surveil and control everyone under the rule of Beijing. For Tibetans and Uyghurs as the two minority groups most distrusted for “stability maintenance,” Chinese security authorities deploy big data analytics and policing techniques to surveil and control Tibetans. Although it is not unique to Tibet, a skewed dataset is a major concern when compared to big data analytics in other parts of China.

    Analysts, including Batke and Ohlberg, point to the ease of generating vast amounts of data, which are then analyzed according to algorithms that predetermine propensity for criminalized behaviors according to rules, categories written into the algorithms. The naïve faith in high tech creates the illusion that algorithms are objective and capable of discovering criminal intent well in advance. In reality the old GIGO maxim holds: garbage in, garbage out.

    Besides the TAR CCP’s procurement notice for a classical video surveillance network (July 10, 2019), the public security bureau of the Tibet Autonomous Region is actively building cloud computing for data sets of Tibetans in the TAR in view of select procurement notices for cloud investigation (October 22, 2020) and Nagchu City cloud video surveillance network (September 10, 2019). These clouds are expected to be plugged into the national level police cloud maintained by China’s Ministry of Public Security. According to the Rand Corporation’s Chinese Views of Big Data Analytics, “The MPS [Ministry of Public Security Bureau] is exploiting new data sets that it plans to centralize in a ‘police cloud’. Eventually accessible to all provincial and municipal police authorities, the police cloud will increase the ease with which police can make connections across disparate databases—including non-crime-related systems, such as housing and employment records—to rapidly identify people, places, and businesses of interest.”

    The goal for building a police cloud is to preempt any demonstration or protest by Tibetans by proactively tracking activities of all Tibetans. Those deemed to harbor “ill thoughts” against the government or who have expressed their dissent in the past form the focus of people in big data analytics.

    Human Rights Watch warned that the police cloud “scoops up information from people’s medical history, to their supermarket membership, to delivery records … the Police Cloud system track where the individuals have been, who they are with, and what they have been doing, as well as make predictions about their future activities.” In other words, privacy is not a right, but a luxury Tibetans in Tibet can only dream of.

    Predictive policing based on big data analytics compounds the issue of human rights abuses committed by Chinese law enforcement agencies. Preempting the “culprits” before they have even carried out any activism is highly worrisome, given Chinese authorities’ track record of decades-old repression in Tibet and racial biases against Tibetans. Predictive policing is already a reality in Xinjiang that looks to be on the verge of replication in Tibet.

The Communist Party of China’s reliance on surveillance technology to govern everyone under its rule is widely known. The party wants the people it rules to believe that it is infallible by internalizing fear of its surveillance prowess. Jessica Batke and Mareike Ohlberg’s research gives the crucial analytical conclusion that the surveillance technology in China is not perfect. Despite its deep-seated intent, the party still has a long march ahead of it in perfecting the panopticon system. The implication of this research work is that the Chinese surveillance state is navigable, and there is still time to reverse or at least stop the state of surveillance at its current stage. The party’s mastery of surveillance at the expense of the people it rules is no longer confined within the domestic borders of China. Over 80 countries worldwide in awe of the government of China’s ability to control its citizens import surveillance technology from China. The state of surveillance technology in China has direct implications for liberties and freedoms of everyone on the face of the planet. The liberties and freedoms of people across the globe, irrespective of the political systems under which they live, are tied to whether the surveillance technology in China is perfected or not.

Tibetans have reason to fear China’s delusions of omniscience and omnipotence. Yet in the long run, more and more Tibetans are criminalized, classified as security threats and punished, without having done anything criminal. This only alienates Tibetans further and undermines the credibility of the state. China will eventually discover this has been counterproductive.

Why Takna Jigme Sangpo Matters

October 19, 2020
Bhuchung K. Tsering
For those working in the field of human rights, there are few occasions when we can feel our effort is having concrete and positive impact. This is particularly so when the issue concerns political prisoners as then there is the measurable output in the form of their release. Over the years the International Campaign for Tibet has taken up a number of cases with the United States Government as well as with the United Nations. There have been occasions when we have had the pleasure of seeing some of the Tibetan political prisoners not only released, but also sent abroad for a variety of reasons.

Such occasions arose for us in the early 2000s when the Chinese authorities released four Tibetan political prisoners between 2002 and 2004, who were subsequently sent to the United States. Since the International Campaign for Tibet was then providing support to the Special Envoy of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Washington, D.C. we were closely involved in arranging for the resettlement of the former political prisoners. Takna Jigme Sangpo was the second in the group, the others being (in order of their dispatch to the United States) ethnomusicologist Ngawang Choephel, Drapchi nuns Ngawang Sangdrol and Phuntsok Nyidron.

The process would be something like this: Special Envoy Lodi G.Gyari is informed by the State Department about the impending release of a Tibetan. ICT then steps in to work on the logistics; housing, medical treatment, long-term stay, etc. We would work with the individual to discuss future plans and how we could help realize them. Accordingly, from the four that were sent to the United States, Takna Jigme Sangpo and Phuntsok Nyidron opted to be resettled in Switzerland as it had also taken an active interest in their cases (we facilitated their interaction with the Swiss Embassy) while Ngawang Choephel and Ngawang Sangdrol (we assisted in their documentation) settled themselves in the United States.

Although in his seventies when he arrived in the United States, he was mentally very alert. One of the very first things he told us during our first meeting with him was how he noticed that we were all mistaken in calling him “Tanak” (which we were doing then) and that the correct form was “Takna” like it is in “Tiger’s nose”. Also, following his medical checkup at Georgetown hospital, he took it in his strides when the doctors kept him in an isolated room for a few days after they suspected him of having TB.

While John Kamm, American businessman and human rights campaigner, is to be rightly complimented for relentlessly taking up the cases of Takna Jigme Sangpo and the three other Tibetan prisoners who were released, his work was helped by strong support by the United States Congress and the Administration. In the case of Jigme Sangpo, Congressman Tom Lantos (since deceased) was among those who took a lead on his behalf.

Since then there have not been any more Tibetan political prisoners released to the United States by the Chinese authorities. In general, the four Tibetan political prisoners were released and sent to the United States not because the Chinese authorities felt that that was their right, but because they thought they would win the support of the United States, on this.

That was the period when President Jiang Zemin and his successor President Hu Jintao were desirous of improving relations with the United States to fulfil their own agenda for China. Similarly, the United States Congress and Administration were sending the right message to China. In a report on October 18, 2002, the Washington Post analyzed the circumstances leading to the release of prisoners by China saying:

“When President Bush last met with Chinese President Jiang Zemin, a senior State Department official passed a list of 13 jailed dissidents and other prisoners to a Chinese counterpart and delivered a message: If China wanted better relations with the United States, it should let these people go.

“The Chinese government responded in the following months by releasing two of the individuals on the list. They were Jigme Sangpo, a Tibetan teacher who was one of China’s longest-held political prisoners, and David Chow, a U.S. businessman jailed eight years ago on questionable fraud charges. Today, eight days before Bush and Jiang are scheduled to meet again, China released a third person on the list, a young Tibetan nun named Ngawang Sangdrol who was imprisoned in 1992 at the age of 15.”

So Takna Jigme Sangpo symbolized a few things. He symbolized the determination of the Tibetans in Tibet in standing up for their rights. The governmental support for his release symbolized the international community’s concern for the Tibetan people. His release and subsequent dispatch to the United States indicated the fact that if the Chinese Government is placed in a situation where it is in their interest to change their approach to issues relating to Tibet, they will do so.

Takna Jigme Sangpo passed away on October 17, 2020. This article was written for Swirling Red Dust, the story of Tibet’s longest-serving political prisoner, Blackneck Books in collaboration with ICT-Europe, 2017. Although China did not release any Tibetan political prisoners in a similar way in recent years, in a different circumstance, ICT had the opportunity to assist Dhondup Wangchen when he arrived in the United States in 2017.

Why Does Tibetan Democracy Matter?

September 3, 2020
Bhuchung K. Tsering
On September 2, 2020 we celebrated the 60th anniversary of Tibetan Democracy Day, marking the day in 1960 when the first Tibetan parliament in exile was established.

During these six decades, much water has flowed not only down Bhagsunag, the small stream in Dharamsala, India, the headquarters of the Central Tibetan Administration, but also in rivers in more than 30 countries where Tibetans reside today. Similarly, Tibetan democracy has also gone through much evolution during this period.

Until 2011, the Tibetan democratic experiment had been a top-down one. It began with His Holiness the Dalai Lama implementing his political vision once he escaped from Tibet to freedom in India in 1959.

In February 1960, while in the sacred town of Bodhgaya in India, the Dalai Lama made an address to the Tibetan people explaining his political vision of a future Tibet. He told them then, “Since in Tibet, unlike in the past situation, it is important to establish a democratic governmental system with a blend of religion and politics, there needs to be a people’s assembly that has been constituted by the general public through an electoral system. You should, on your return, identify people in the community who are educated, capable, patriotic, and have the confidence of the people. For the moment, you should elect a deputy each from each of the four major religious [Buddhist] traditions and three each from each of the three provinces [of Tibet].”

Tibetans in Dharamsala voting in the Sikyong and parliamentary elections in March 2016.

The Dalai Lama continued with his quest to educate the Tibetan people about democracy. In mid-1960, during a visit to the Indian hill station of Dalhousie, the Dalai Lama explained to the Tibetan people his vision of reform in the Tibetan society. He said, “Changes must come in all spheres. The government structure will also have to undergo far-reaching reforms so that the people are more intimately associated with the policies of the government and the administration of the country. The task and responsibility of establishing improved political and religious institutions lies upon all of us.”

Meanwhile, on their return to their respective places in the Indian subcontinent, these Tibetan refugees introduced the process of democratic elections and 13 ‘Deputies’ were elected to what was known in English as the Commission of Tibetan People’s Deputies. The deputies took their oath of office on September 2, 1960. This historic date was later celebrated as ‘Tibetan Democracy Day.’

The Dalai Lama’s next step towards democratization was the introduction of the rule of law. He set up the process of the drafting of a constitution for future Tibet, the provision of which could be applied in the exile situation to the extent possible. He provided an outline of the principles of the Constitution on October 10, 1961 and subsequently a detailed document was prepared based on it. He promulgated the draft Constitution for Tibet on March 10, 1963.

The Dalai Lama highlighted the blend of Tibetan values and modern systems in this democratic constitution by saying in the foreword, “This takes into consideration the doctrines enunciated by Lord Buddha, the spiritual and temporal heritage of Tibet and the ideas and ideals of the modern world. It is thus intended to secure for the people of Tibet a system of democracy based on justice and equality and ensure their cultural, religious and economic advancement.”

The name of the Commission subsequently changed to Assembly of Tibetan People’s Deputies and thereafter to the current Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile. Its role in the administration also began to be further institutionalized.

Rule of Law in exile

In 1990 the Dalai Lama took the next step in his quest toward further democratization and establishment of the rule of law when he asked for a specific Charter for the Tibetans in Exile that would be the law for the Tibetan administration. The Charter was to incorporate the best of modern democratic system and traditional Tibetan values. Thus, the Charter was adopted by the Assembly of Tibetan People’s Deputies on June 14, 1991.

Under the section on “Principles of the Tibetan Administration” the Charter highlighted the Tibetan desire to be responsible members of the international community. It said, “It shall be the duty of the Tibetan Administration to adhere to the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as specified by the United Nations, and to also urge and encourage all other countries of the world to respect and comply with such Declarations, and shall emphasize the promotion of the moral and material well-being of the Tibetan people, the safeguarding of their social, cultural, religious and political rights, and in particular, the ultimate achievement of their common goal.”

With the establishment of the Tibetan Supreme Justice Commission, as stipulated by the Charter, on March 11, 1992, the three pillars of democracy became fully functional in the Tibetan democratic set up in exile. The Kashag, the administrative wing, was made more answerable to the parliament and the Justice Commission began adjudicating on cases within the framework of arbitration laws. The membership of the parliament was also expanded to give more voices to the people in the policy decision making process.

Despite these incremental steps, the Dalai Lama continued to be directly involved in the Administration, whether it was in the appointment of the members of the Kashag or being the final authority on assenting to bills before they became law.

Era of Direct Elections of the Administrative Head

In 2001, the Dalai Lama democratized the system further when he mandated amendments to the Charter giving authority to the public and their representatives the authority to select and appoint members of the Kashag. Since then the Chairman of the Kashag began to be directly elected by the people. The Chairman in turn sent his nominations for members of the Kashag to the parliament to decide. Prior to this, the convention was for the Dalai Lama to appoint the members of the Cabinet.

In this way, the Dalai Lama’s vision of having the people “intimately associated with the policies of the government and the administration” began to be realized. It may be pertinent to mention here that the parliament took this role seriously and even rejected a nomination by the very popular Prof. Samdhong Rinpoche to his cabinet. Of course, internal politics was involved here, but even then democracy was practiced, whether rightly or wrongly.

With this, the Dalai Lama said he was now in a period of semi-retirement with the elected leadership assuming the major role in the governance system.

End of era of top-down democracy

As the years passed His Holiness the Dalai Lama undertook the most significant step in 2011 to alter the Tibetan democratic structure. He announced the devolution of his authority to the three pillars of democracy. The Charter was amended to reflect this and the Kashag began to be totally answerable to the parliament.

The Dalai Lama announced then that he was ending more than 300 years of rule by the Dalai Lamas over the central Tibetan government. Equally important was the message that henceforth it was totally up to the Tibetan people to assume their responsibilities of Tibetan democracy.

The most important transformation since 2011 is the change in role of the Dalai Lama. From being the virtual head of state, he became the “symbol” of Tibetan identity, unity, and the free spokesman of all the Tibetan people. He no longer had any direct role in the governance system, with final authority being shouldered by the three pillars of democracy. As the Dalai Lama, he is now completely retired from any political responsibilities.

To the international community, the most visible aspect of this change is that since then the Dalai Lama stopped issuing his annual statement on March 10, the anniversary of the Tibetan National Uprising. Conventionally, that statement used to be considered his “state of the nation” speech reflecting political developments relating to the Tibetan issue.

Since then, we have had two elections for the post of Sikyong, the administrative head, and the parliament, including a very partisan and divisive campaigning for Sikyong in 2016. I wrote about that situation at the time, calling for civility.

As another Tibetan Democracy Day passes us by, we need to realize that the era of top-down democracy is over. We are in a period where we no longer enjoy the advantages of any direct intervention by the Dalai Lama and so whatever directions we are heading, it is up to the Tibetan people to take charge.

Having a proper democracy does not mean doing away with dissenting voices. Far from it, democracy will not work well when there is just one point of view. However, the way the views are expressed and acted upon are equally critical to the survival of Tibetan democracy. One can use dissent to create chaos and divisive environment or the same can be used to provoke candid discussions leading to considered decisions.

To put this in context, it is said that in the Tibetan community there are two broad political movements, one for independence and the other for the Middle Way Approach. What has often ended up happening is attacks and counter attacks between sections of followers of these two movements rather than finding common grounds and moving the struggle forward. I for one feel that if one doesn’t know how to express one’s devotion to the issue of Middle Way rightly, merely espousing it might even be counterproductive. Conversely, if one knows to project one’s adherence to the cause of Tibetan independence appropriately, it could even be supportive of the Tibetan leadership’s efforts through the Middle Way Approach to resolve the issue with the Chinese leadership.

It is generally understood that when we talk about the Tibetan struggle, it is between the Tibetans and the Chinese. But in another sense, the Tibetan struggle is as much about us Tibetans facing the challenges of democracy head on and exercising our rights as well as duties responsibly.

As I write this, we have upcoming elections for the Sikyong and parliament. We are already beginning to see the campaigning for Sikyong and to a lesser extent for the parliament. Will we see a repeat of the bitter experiences of 2015-2016, or will the Tibetan people in the free world show their maturity and together make Tibetan democracy a success? The jury is out, but it is all in the hands of the Tibetan people.

That is why Tibetan democracy matters.

John Lewis and the efficacy of nonviolence

July 21, 2020
Ashwin Verghese
1 Comment

“It’s in keeping with the philosophy of nonviolence. That’s what the movement was always about, to have the capacity to forgive and move toward reconciliation.”—John Lewis

For obvious reasons, the timing of John Lewis’ death last week felt like a heavy blow. Not only have most of our lives ground to a halt in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, but our country is also in the midst of a massive reckoning over racial injustice. And now we have lost the light of one of the last remaining luminaries of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s. (The Rev. C.T. Vivian, another high-profile figure from the movement, died the same day as Lewis, July 17, 2020.)

As a believer in the Dalai Lama’s nonviolent activism, I lament the passing of Congressman Lewis. I often fear that great moral leaders like Rep. Lewis, the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and their forebears are a rare species in our modern world, which—for whatever progress it has made—is also more fractured and imperiled than it ever has been in many of our lifetimes. The death of John Lewis only makes this frightening landscape feel a little dimmer.

Prayers from the Dalai Lama

Given everything Lewis stood for (and got beaten for) during his lifetime, it’s no surprise the Dalai Lama mourned his death in a statement this past weekend. “Through his principled adherence to the fundamental democratic values of liberty, equality and justice, Congressman Lewis won admiration even among those who did not share his political outlook,” His Holiness wrote. “In the course of many years of public service, he inspired many Americans to take up the cause of justice and peace through nonviolence.”

The Dalai Lama’s website also shared a photo of the Tibetan Buddhist leader clasping hands with Rep. Lewis—a striking image of two beaming avatars of wisdom and compassion. Lewis supported Tibet during his decades in Congress, including by signing onto several letters calling for greater US action to advance Tibetans’ rights.

Two avatars of wisdom and compassion: Congressman John Lewis and His Holiness the Dalai Lama

In his statement, the Dalai Lama also connected Lewis to other icons of nonviolence:

Whenever I talk about nonviolence, I cite the examples of Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Dr. Martin Luther King. Congressman Lewis not only knew Dr. King, but also gave him crucial support. Although I did not have the privilege of meeting Dr. King myself, in meeting Congressman Lewis, I feel [I] have made a direct connection with him.

The power of forgiveness

I’ve written before on this blog about my admiration for Gandhi (as well as, of course, my love for His Holiness). But as an Indian immigrant in the US, I feel simultaneously proud that the civil rights movement borrowed methods and ideas from Gandhi’s “satyagraha” campaign and indebted to Black leaders like Congressman Lewis and Dr. King, who suffered horrific abuse—and even death in King’s case—so that people of color could have the same freedoms as their fellow citizens. I know the opportunities I’ve had in this country would not have been possible without those visionary activists, so I will forever be grateful.

Yet as inspired as I feel by how much Lewis, the son of Alabama sharecroppers, managed to achieve in his 80 years on this Earth, I am perhaps just as moved by how much he was willing to forgive.

As Michael A. Fletcher recalls in an excellent piece for The Undefeated, the beatific Lewis once faced criticism from his peers for having too much anger. At the legendary 1963 March on Washington where Dr. King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, the 23-year-old Lewis—who was one of the “Big Six” organizers of the event and the last one to die—had to tone down his remarks at the request of King, A. Philip Randolph and others, who feared the oration he planned to give was too divisive and combative.

Years later, Lewis fully embraced the need for forgiveness and reconciliation. According to Fletcher, he forgave “Bull” Connor, the notorious former public safety commissioner of Birmingham, Ala., who unleashed firehoses and attack dogs on peaceful protestors.

The capacity to change

Perhaps most strikingly of all, Lewis even forgave George Wallace, the man who famously pledged in his 1963 inauguration as Alabama governor, “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”

Growing up decades after the fact, I knew Wallace only as a caricature of midcentury racism. What I did not learn until years later was that during the final stages of his life, Wallace—who by then was bound to a wheelchair following an attempt on his life—expressed remorse for the damage he caused African Americans. He met with Lewis in 1979 and with other civil rights leaders too.

Many people felt—and still feel—that Wallace’s about-face on racism was less than sincere. Yet in an astonishing op-ed he wrote for The New York Times the week Wallace died in 1998, Lewis said the Wallace he got to know “was a changed man.” “When I met George Wallace, I had to forgive him,” he wrote, “because to do otherwise — to hate him — would only perpetuate the evil system we sought to destroy.”

Lewis went on to say that Wallace “should be remembered for his capacity to change.” “I can never forget what George Wallace said and did as governor, as a national leader and as a political opportunist,” he wrote. “But our ability to forgive serves a higher moral purpose in our society.”

The effectiveness of nonviolence

Lewis was also willing to forgive less well-known figures too. In one of the most startling examples of his grace, he forgave Elwin Wilson, a Ku Klux Klan member who viciously beat Lewis and a fellow Freedom Rider at a bus station in the early 60s—Lewis and the other activist refused to fight back or press charges—before seeking him out to apologize and make amends decades later.

Lewis beautifully recalled their meeting about 10 years ago in Washington, DC: “He started crying, his son started crying, and I started crying,” he said. The quote from Lewis at the top of this post explains why he never hesitated to accept Wilson’s apology.

For his part, Wilson, who wanted to set things right with his God before it was too late, had wisdom of his own to dispense. “[M]y daddy always told me that a fool never changes his mind, and a smart man changes his mind,” he said. “And that’s what I’ve done and I’m not ashamed of it.” He and Lewis made several TV appearances together over the next few years, and when he died in 2013, Lewis issued a statement saying he was “very sorry to learn of Elwin Wilson’s passing.”

“He demonstrated the power of love and the effectiveness of nonviolent direct action,” Lewis said, “not only to fix legislative injustice but to mend the wounded souls in our society, the soul of the victim as well as the perpetrator.”

Hope for Tibet, hope for tomorrow

Though I’m sad that Congressman Lewis no longer walks this Earth with the rest of us, reading about him over the past few days has refocused my belief in the Tibetan cause and the vision of the Dalai Lama. Lewis’ success in changing the world, and changing individual people, renews my hope that change can come to Tibet.

I’m not saying it will be easy. Do I believe that Chen Quanguo, the architect of mass atrocities against Tibetans and Uyghurs, will undergo the same change of heart that Wallace and Wilson said they did? Not really, no. As Lewis himself noted in his op-ed, Wallace’s conversion was a rare feat for a politician.

Many of you probably also question whether it even matters to convert or forgive people like Wallace and Chen, given the immense harm they’ve caused. On top of that, even though I’ve followed the Dalai Lama and other nonviolent leaders for many years now, I’m still never sure how to put their teachings into practice—how to combat injustice and stand up for what’s right without becoming unjust or unkind myself.

I can also assure you that I have many of the same fears that many of you do about the coronavirus and its effect on our health, our economy, our future. There’s also the threat of climate change, the rise of authoritarianism and numerous other concerns to worry about.

Spirit of healing

Yet I know that whatever the next few months, as well as the next few years and decades, bring, I would prefer to face them with the spirit of compassion, nonviolence and healing that Lewis embodied, rather than with anger and vindictiveness.

That’s a big part of what drew me to Tibet in the first place, and I suspect it’s what drew many of you as well. It’s not about achieving victory over the Chinese, but about creating conditions for Tibetans and Chinese to live together peacefully, the way Lewis and his peers hoped different races in the US could live as equals.

Below is His Holiness’ full letter about the loss of Congressman Lewis. I hope you take a moment to read it, and I hope you stay committed to the cause of nonviolence and peace.

RIP JOHN LEWIS.

What the killing of George Floyd means to me

June 2, 2020
Matteo Mecacci
6 Comments

During the last few months, we at the International Campaign for Tibet have been continuing our work in support of the people of Tibet and to oppose the systematic discrimination they suffer at the hands of the Chinese government.

A few days ago, like everyone living in America, I saw the images of the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and I shared my thoughts about that tragedy on my personal Facebook page. Today, I want to share those thoughts with all of you who support ICT.

For a few days I had trouble watching the video of the killing of George Floyd. I could not stand hearing a man begging a policeman not to suffocate him, and seeing him succumbing.

Now, I think that this image represents something which is way bigger than the tragic loss of a precious human life. It represents the universal pain of all those who are oppressed by the arrogance of power.

The arrogance of power takes many, different forms: it’s institutional, it’s economic, it’s discriminatory, it’s racist, it’s intolerant and it’s bigoted.

That arrogance now needs to be stopped. With determination, but without violence, with strength and compassion for the opponent and with the indomitable will to overcome the obstacles.

Remember that when we accept injustice, we become complicit with it. Change is possible, and it starts with each of us saying that enough is enough.

Overdue: Telegraph discontinues CCP propaganda supplement

April 16, 2020
Kai Mueller
3 Comments

The end came as a surprise to many observers: Without further comment, the British newspaper Daily Telegraph recently stopped publishing Chinese propaganda content and also deleted it from its homepage.

As the British newspaper The Guardian reported, the Telegraph had maintained the lucrative connection with the Chinese propaganda sheet China Daily for more than 10 years and, together with its print edition, had delivered its supplement China Watch. In addition, the newspaper maintained a subsection on its website that originated from People’s Daily Online and naturally also ran unrestrained Beijing PR. No wonder, since this is the English version of the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee. The Guardian quotes some typical headlines from articles that have since been deleted. The headlines read, for example, “Why are some framing China’s heroic efforts to stop coronavirus as inhumane?”; “Traditional Chinese medicine ‘helps fight coronavirus’”; and “Coronavirus outbreak is not an opportunity to score points against China.” The Telegraph is reported to have received about £750,000 a year for supporting Chinese state propaganda.

The step by the Telegraph comes late, and the motives for it remain hidden. The paper follows newspapers such as the Süddeutsche Zeitung and The New York Times, which have also withdrawn from such cooperation. Until the end of 2019, the Handelsblatt was the only German newspaper to carry China Watch. Despite several inquiries, its management does not want to comment on the conditions of cooperation with the Communist Party. And also Le Figaro in France or Le Soir of Belgium refuse to respond to appeals from civil society, including the International Campaign for Tibet. Transparency and openness would be essential, especially for newspapers that are important watchdogs in a democratic society. This lack of transparency does not match the image of independent media and damages their credibility.

The termination of China Watch by the Telegraph is a long overdue step. It was and is a shame for free Western media to disseminate propaganda of a regime that uses violence to attack freedom of expression and mercilessly censors the media. It is incomprehensible why free Western media can be bought by a system that harasses, persecutes and imprisons countless people who dare to insist on their human right to freedom of expression. It is high time that the remaining China Watch inserts in Western newspapers are now discontinued.

Coronavirus leaves China no excuses in Tibet

April 7, 2020
Ashwin Verghese
6 Comments

A photo of a Tibetan police officer (right) whom Chinese state media mysteriously claim died from “overwork” fighting the coronavirus outbreak in Tibet.

The coronavirus outbreak has tragically caught much of the world off guard. But knowing the Chinese government’s repression in Tibet, I’m not at all surprised by how this pandemic spread.

Instead, I’m outraged.

A lot of disinformation is now percolating about the roots of our current global crisis, both because Chinese officials are deliberately trying to confuse the issue, and because some outside China are helping them deny the blame. So let’s be clear about what happened.

In December, laboratories in the central Chinese city of Wuhan identified the emergence of the new virus. But rather than act decisively to prevent it from mushrooming, Chinese authorities ordered the scientists to stop their tests and destroy the samples.

That was hardly all. Chinese police also detained a young doctor who warned his colleagues about the dawning outbreak. That young man later died of COVID-19, the disease the coronavirus causes (more on that below).

Chinese state-controlled media avoided discussing the topic for weeks. The Chinese government denied to the World Health Organization that the coronavirus spreads from human to human. And Chinese officials allowed a potluck banquet for tens of thousands in Wuhan to go forward as planned.

Now, with the number of deaths mounting across the globe, China is taking a bow on the world stage, claiming it has wrestled the coronavirus into submission and flaunting offers to help countries still under siege. Yet this narrative conveniently leaves out the part at the beginning where Beijing dumped Pandora’s box on all of humanity.

The reality is this: According to a University of Southampton study, if the Chinese government had acted to combat the coronavirus three weeks earlier than it did, it could have reduced COVID-19 cases by 95 percent.

Instead, Chinese authorities spent that time bullying, deceiving and denying, and as of today, the virus has reportedly infected more than 1.3 million people worldwide—although the real number is almost certainly larger, in part because Beijing is likely underreporting cases in China, and because too few people have access to testing here in the United States and elsewhere.

Whatever the figure is, it doesn’t begin to convey the holistic toll of the outbreak: the jobs lost, the families separated, the communities broken, the traumas inflicted, the civil liberties expunged and the lives forever worsened.

So for whatever bouquets people want to give Beijing for its eventual performance in controlling the outbreak, they must also lay the blame at its feet for exposing the world to this debilitating crisis in the first place.

And the next time the Chinese government claims its actions in Tibet are of no concern to the global community, we should all remember that the duplicity and malignancy of this regime have the horrifying power to bring our entire world to a crashing halt.

Same story in Tibet

If you’re a Tibet supporter like I am, you’ve seen this movie before. Only it’s not “Outbreak” or “Contagion.” Instead it’s a documentary about the Chinese government’s long-running, ideologically driven ineptitude.

I mentioned earlier Li Wenliang, the heroic physician who became world-famous after police interrogated and threatened him over a post he made on the messaging app WeChat about a possible new viral outbreak.

Li and I were born the same year—but the big difference between us is that he’s now dead. The courageous doctor died after police reproached him for “disturbing the social order” and he returned to work, only to contract the virus the officials compelled him to deny.

From my perch at the International Campaign for Tibet, I recognized the Kafkaesque nature of Li’s story immediately, because I’ve seen it so often in Tibet, which China has brutally occupied for more than six decades.

Four years ago, police in Tibet arrested businessman Tashi Wangchuk after he appeared in a New York Times video calling for the protection of Tibetans’ native language. In the video, Tashi travels to Beijing, where he tried to file a lawsuit requiring officials to improve Tibetan-language instruction in his home city of Yushu.

Under China’s constitution, ethnic minorities have the right to use their mother tongue, and Tashi says explicitly in the video that he wanted to “try to use the People’s Republic of China’s laws to solve the problem.”

Despite this, in 2018, a court in Yushu handed him a five-year prison sentence. ICT later translated his court documents, which reveal his prosecution to be a sham and his confession to be the result of possible torture. (One can only imagine what authorities would have done to Dr. Li had he been ethnically Tibetan rather than Chinese.)

I automatically thought of Tashi when I first heard of the ordeals Li faced before his tragic death. Although the details differ, the pattern is largely the same. Both men tried to draw attention to an issue of public concern. Both attempted to act according to the law. Both were careful and measured. And for their troubles, both were detained and accused of undermining society.

Now, Tashi is languishing in prison, while Li has become just another of the more than 76,000 people around the world known to have died so far from the disease his government punished him for warning people about.

Sick regime

Of course, I don’t believe the Chinese government is solely to blame for our current peril. Governments across the world have failed to prove themselves capable during this crisis. You are unlikely to hear me utter a word in defense of our own country’s ill-prepared and inadequate response, and I am continuously appalled by a system that favors profits over public health and people’s welfare.

And yet, having worked at ICT since 2018, I cannot get over how the denialism and pathology I’ve observed in Tibet during that time have now helped unleash this scourge on the entire planet. (I don’t think I’ve felt this angry since the 2008 financial crisis, which also had a rotten belief system as a primary cause.) More importantly, I think we would be derelict if we failed to hold the Chinese government accountable for its catalyzing role in this disaster.

I can’t make the point any better than Kapil Komireddi does in the British news outlet The Critic, so I will simply share his words: “The calamity unfolding all around us did not emerge from a void. It originated in China. And its eruption into a global pandemic is inseparable from the nature of the regime that has ruled China since 1949.”

I won’t claim to be an expert on the Chinese government after less than two years in this field. But I do sense that the Chinese Communist Party is obsessed with staying in power above all else and views any potential challenge—including the coronavirus—through that lens.

Chinese officials often cast peaceful protest and cultural expression by Tibetans as threats to social stability (and therefore a threat to the government’s continued rule). They reacted to the coronavirus the same blinkered way but found that an infectious disease is not as easy to suppress as nonviolent resistance.

Despite my familiarity with China’s institutional irrationality, I hoped somewhere in the back of my mind that it would respond to its failures with some much-warranted humility. Unsurprisingly, that has not proven to be the case. In the midst of this crisis that it helped spawn, the CCP has only doubled down on its routine of praising itself while throwing elbows at its geopolitical rivals, especially the United States.

Perhaps the most outlandish part of that effort has been the claim by Chinese officials that the US army introduced the coronavirus to Wuhan during a visit in October. Although that’s blatant demagoguery, Beijing has gone even further in using the pandemic to attack Americans, with a state media article in March implying that China could halt its export of pharmaceutical ingredients to the United States, which would cause the country to “fall into the hell of a novel coronavirus epidemic.”

Last month, China announced it would expel US journalists from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post and subject those three outlets, along with Time and Voice of America, to increased red tape. The Chinese Foreign Ministry claimed this was retaliation against the US decision to decrease the number of Chinese state media journalists allowed to work in the United States.

But China’s action was a major escalation, not an equivalent response. Even worse, it promises to increase the Chinese government’s lack of transparency after that lack of transparency enabled the coronavirus to spread.

Inoculated from criticism

For me personally, one of the most confounding parts of this pandemic has been the accusations of racism. It has been heartbreaking to see bigots in the United States and other parts of the world target people of Chinese and East and Southeast Asian descent for violence and intimidation. The thought of students facing bullying in their schools saddens me in particular. I was in high school during 9/11 with

brown skin and a foreign-sounding name, so I understand the fear and self-consciousness racial profiling can bring, and I don’t wish that on anyone.

Speaking only for myself, I think it’s a mistake to refer to the coronavirus as “the Chinese virus” or “the Chinese coronavirus,” because doing so seems likely to provide grist for anti-Asian xenophobes, which is too serious a risk to ignore. But it would also be a mistake to let the Chinese government off the hook for its inciting role in this outbreak.

Indeed, Beijing seems more than happy to use accusations of bigotry to inoculate itself from judgment. For instance, when Nobel Prize-winning Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa wrote a column about the pandemic stating that, “none of this could have happened in the world if popular China was a free country and democratic rather than a dictatorship,” the Chinese embassy to Peru accused him of making “discriminatory and defamatory statements”—a charge that deliberately conflates criticism of the Chinese government with racism toward the Chinese people.

Similarly, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Geng Shuang—the bane of my existence in my work as ICT’s communication officer—urged Llosa to “discard his prejudice and look at the issue in an all-round, correct manner.” What that “correct manner” is is apparently up to Beijing to decide and the rest of us to adhere to.

Sadly, some seemingly well-meaning people are playing into Beijing’s hands, allowing their commendable aversion to racism to distract from the Chinese government’s misdeeds. Especially perplexing to me is a “Late Night with Seth Meyers” segment in which the host—whose humor I often enjoy—appears to brush off criticism of the Chinese government as racist, then almost immediately pivots to using a mock Italian accent to talk about the coronavirus in Italy. I’m not claiming the experience of Italians and Europeans in the modern world is precisely the same as that of Asians. But I still find the whiplash reasoning of that segment hard to believe.

I’ve also seen some commentators suggest that looking back at how this pandemic began is a waste of time now that we’re in the middle of it, and that we should focus more on criticizing our own government than on criticizing China’s. With all due respect to the people who hold those views, I think we can do more than one thing at a time.

We can confront the crisis we have on our hands while leaving space to figure out how it could have been prevented in the first place. We can (and should) demand more from our own leaders—indeed, I’m sure many of you will feel the criticisms I make of Beijing in this piece also apply to Washington, DC—while demanding greater transparency and respect for whistleblowers in China. And we can oppose the authoritarian blundering of the Chinese government while recognizing that governments and people are not the same thing.

Continued oppression in Tibet

We’ll get no help in that last effort, however, from the Chinese government itself, which is more than content to paint any criticism of its repressive system as a hate-fueled attack on Chinese people themselves. But that red-herring maneuver is a bit much coming from a regime that has built an entire colonial apparatus in Tibet based on the racist idea that Tibetans are culturally inferior and deserve to live as second-class to China’s Han majority.

Even since the coronavirus outbreak set in, the Chinese government has kept up its repression of the Tibetan people. As with Dr. Li, police have cracked down on Tibetan netizens who make statements about the outbreak, including a man named Tse from the city of Chamdo (Chinese: Changdu), who posted a message on WeChat urging people to recite a prayer in order to ward off infection. For that spiritual sin, he was given seven days in administrative detention.

There was also a strange report in state media claiming a Tibetan police officer died from “overwork” fighting the outbreak. The report, which fails to explain why the officer was overworking and whether it was voluntary, appears to be yet another attempt by the Chinese government to falsely depict Tibetans as loyal to the Communist Party and its bankrupt ideology.

Despite the dangers of spreading the virus, Chinese officials in January said they were moving ahead with a new campaign in Tibet described as a “million police entering 10 million homes,” which involves police “visiting the people, resolving people’s concerns, resolving conflicts, preventing risks, investigating problems and controlling chaos.”

In contrast to the Chinese government’s predictably heavy-handed response, Tibetans have reacted to the coronavirus with compassion. Inside Tibet, Tibetan Buddhist monasteries have donated money for the purchase of facemasks and other urgently needed supplies. Kumbum monastery in the region of Amdo contributed 1 million yuan to Wuhan.

In exile, His Holiness the Dalai Lama responded to requests from people around the world by sharing a message offering comfort and strength to all of us as we struggle through this pandemic. And here in the United States, Tibetan American medical professionals are fighting the virus on the frontlines, including 400-500 brave nurses in New York City, the new epicenter of the outbreak.

Interdependent world

For millennia, Buddhism has taught that all of our lives are interdependent, and today, that lesson is more obvious than it has been at any other time since most of us were born.

It seems likely to me that even after this pandemic ends, our world will remain different for the foreseeable future. Already we’re seeing democracies collapse, inequality grow, mass surveillance expand and industries die out. Even for those of us who never get infected, the trauma of losing loved ones, not to mention the hardship of rebuilding our communities, won’t soon fade.

But as bleak as the future might look, I still hope that at least some positive changes will emerge. Perhaps we will come to a better understanding that individual health quickly scales up to public health. Maybe we’ll start to take climate change more seriously. It’s possible we’ll even see a renewal of compassion and solidarity.

But wherever we go from here, we should never again accept the Chinese government’s claim that its decisions don’t involve the rest of the world. That notion is now invalid forever.

In the case of Tibet, China has proven it can’t be trusted to govern the country as a responsible member of the international community. Although the situation in Tibet may not cause the same global shock waves the coronavirus has, the boiling unrest there will certainly have spillover effects into the surrounding region and even farther afield, especially if Chinese officials pursue their unconscionable plan to appoint the next Dalai Lama.

For years, Beijing has said its oppression in Tibet is a domestic issue that foreigners have no right to get involved in. That never made sense, since Tibet has never truly been part of China. But in the wake of the coronavirus, all of us should make it clear to Chinese leaders that they don’t get to use that excuse anymore.

80 years of the Dalai Lama: An appreciation

February 21, 2020
Ashwin Verghese
6 Comments

The four-year-old Dalai Lama glances at the camera during his enthronement ceremony in Lhasa, Tibet on Feb. 22, 1940

It’s no exaggeration to say that when I was growing up, the Dalai Lama was one of the most visible and popular figures in the United States. And though I’m loathe to pat myself on the back, I often think that if I could travel back in time and tell my adolescent self that someday I’d work in service of the Dalai Lama and his people, the younger me would break into a big smile.

In fact, when I took my job with the International Campaign for Tibet two summers ago, my first thought was that after about a decade as a professional, I’d finally made it in the world. That had nothing to do with money (the public sector is not exactly a goldmine) or reputation (I had been working for the Pew Charitable Trusts, a household name among nonprofits) or even the type of work I do here (which is pretty much the same as what I’ve done in past jobs). Instead, it had everything to do with His Holiness the Dalai Lama and what he represents.

Tomorrow, the world will celebrate 80 years since the enthronement of this icon from Tibet. On Feb. 22, 1940, the four-year-old Dalai Lama officially took the throne in a glorious ceremony at the Potala Palace in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa. The photo above provides an extraordinary glimpse at the child who—according to Tibetan Buddhist beliefs—is an incarnation of Avalokiteśvara, a Bodhisattva of compassion, and who, unlike his 13 predecessors, would go on to bridge the gap between Tibet’s unique culture and the outer world while leading his people and their supporters in an epochal moral and political struggle against the Chinese Communist Party.

I am not the most qualified person to deliver a biography of His Holiness, nor am I in a position to offer a rigorous study of his religious and philosophical ideas. Instead, I plan to use this post to share some personal reflections on what the Dalai Lama has done for me, a non-Tibetan living in the West whose almost entire life has been limned by the gentle glow of his wisdom and beneficence.

Little Dalai Lama

I cannot say when I first learned of the Dalai Lama, but my earliest intact memories of him date back to when we were both kids—sort of. In 1997, two major films came out that focused on the early life of His Holiness: “Seven Years in Tibet,” starring Brad Pitt as the Austrian mountain climber Heinrich Harrer, and “Kundun,” directed by Martin Scorsese. (This was back before China managed to almost completely censor any mention of Tibet in Hollywood.) Watching those movies with my father helped familiarize me with Tibet and the ongoing human rights crisis there.

I can recall having two distinct emotional reactions to “Seven Years in Tibet” and especially “Kundun.” The first was that I felt sorry for the little boy Dalai Lama, because I was a kid too, and I thought it must have been so boring for him to spend all his time indoors meditating, rather than going outside to play. To me, it was like having to go to church every day.

My other reaction was pride in knowing that His Holiness eventually took refuge in India. Although I had no real memories of India, I knew that I was born there and that I was Indian, so I thought it was pretty cool that this revered world leader lived in my homeland. Today, that immature sense of ethnic self-satisfaction has been replaced by my appreciation for His Holiness’ role as a spokesperson for ancient Indian philosophy. The Dalai Lama often now talks about his commitment to reviving India’s traditional knowledge, especially the teachings of the Nalanda Buddhist academy and the Indian masters’ understanding of psychology and mental training—things I too think are urgently needed for curing the modern world’s spiritual and psychic maladies.

Nonviolence

It’s no surprise, then, that my next vital memory of the Dalai Lama’s influence in my life involves another Indian sage. When I was a freshman in college and trying to sort out my political views, my roommate had me take a political compass test that placed my beliefs along X and Y coordinates on a plot graph that also charted the ideology of famous figures. If I recall correctly, my roommate ended up in the quadrant of the graph that had Karl Marx and Che Guevara, but that didn’t seem quite right for me. Thankfully, the quadrant my beliefs landed me in was home to His Holiness and to Mahatma Gandhi—two great avatars of nonviolence and moral resistance.

A few months ago, I wrote another post for this blog touching on His Holiness’ affinity for the Mahatma and drawing comparisons between the movements these two wise men have led. Most significant to me was the fact that neither Gandhi nor the Dalai Lama are revolutionaries or freedom fighters in the most commonly understood meanings of those terms. Gandhi never wanted India to become a contemporary nation like its colonial ruler, Great Britain. Rather, he dreamed of an India that would repudiate modern civilization and embrace traditional notions of simplicity, neighborliness, local self-rule and nonviolence. Similarly, the Dalai Lama has even been willing to accept less than total independence for Tibet in favor of a Middle Way Approach of genuine autonomy and mutual benefit with the Chinese. He has also, to my immense satisfaction, guided Tibetans in exile to adopt democracy and relinquished his own political authority.

No need to worry

My youthful sense of identification with the Dalai Lama was a source of background comfort through the first quarter-century of my life, but it was not until just under a decade ago that I really began to look more closely at his beliefs. At the time, I was going through the kind of existential confusion common to people in that age group. I had drifted away from my childhood religion (Christianity), I had struggled to find my place in the world in my first few years out of college, and I felt profound anxiety and uncertainty over my future.

During that period, I began to gravitate toward Buddhism, which presented me with a radically different understanding of the world and the self than the one I had been raised with. Of course, the Dalai Lama is likely the world’s most famous Buddhist, so he quickly emerged as my go-to source of guidance, as well as my biggest hero. Through my fervent consumption of his YouTube clips (my favorite was this one where he laughs uncontrollably at an Australian reporter’s unsuccessful attempt to tell a joke; I challenge any of you to watch it without giggling) and his pithy sayings, His Holiness quickly became the most prophetic voice in this world reminding me that life is actually good. I even went so far as to tape a small postcard of the Dalai Lama to the side of my dresser, so that when I was getting ready in the morning, I could see his beaming smile and remember to embody his teachings as I went about my day.

That summer, 2011, I saw—for the only time so far in my life—the Dalai Lama in person when he spoke outside the US Capitol here in Washington, DC. I will never forget that I went there that day with a slightly older friend of mine who tragically died just a few years later from an unexpected health issue. Thus my memories of this friend, who was a person of deep compassion, will forever be intertwined with my memories of seeing the Dalai Lama, which seems fitting.

A couple years after that day at the Capitol, when the brilliance of the Dalai Lama’s beliefs had begun to take root in my mind, I shared with another close friend of mine my favorite quote from His Holiness, which by then had become my words to live by:

“If you have fear of some pain or suffering, you should examine whether there is anything you can do about it. If you can, there is no need to worry about it; if you cannot do anything, then there is also no need to worry.”

Today and tomorrow

Today, I feel blessed to be part of the Tibet movement, because I always knew I wanted to try to do something good for the world, but I never could have guessed I would get to do something as good as serve the vision of His Holiness.

As China pursues its wicked plans to appoint the Dalai Lama’s eventual successor, it is more important than ever for all of us to take action to protect the legacy and the teachings of this great man.

I hope you will join me tomorrow in celebrating the 80th anniversary of His Holiness’ enthronement. And, if you have not already done so, please write to your Senators to ask them to support the Tibetan Policy and Support Act, which will make it official US policy that only Tibetan Buddhists can decide the Dalai Lama’s succession—and will sanction any Chinese officials who attempt to name their own Dalai Lama in the future.

Tell your Senators to pass the TPSA!

China gives the game away

October 9, 2019
Ashwin Verghese
3 Comments

The scandalous—and quickly deleted—tweet in which Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey showed support for Hong Kong protestors.

In the polarized age in which we live, American sports fans are often forced to confront whether we can separate our favorite pastimes from their surrounding social and political context. But after seeing all hell break loose over an NBA executive’s mundane tweet about Hong Kong, we should be asking ourselves whether we can still detach sports—or any part of our shared public life—from the tentacles of China’s asphyxiating censors.

In case you haven’t heard, a public relations catastrophe has erupted in the National Basketball Association since Daryl Morey, general manager of the Houston Rockets, tweeted an image late last week captioned “Fight For Freedom. Stand With Hong Kong.” Morey later deleted the tweet and apologized, but that didn’t spare him or the league from China’s predictable wrath.

The Chinese consulate in Houston proclaimed it was “deeply shocked” by Morey’s “erroneous comments” and urged the Rockets to “take immediate concrete measures” to repair the damage. The Chinese Basketball Association suspended cooperation with the Rockets (which was particularly stinging, since the association is led by Chinese basketball legend Yao Ming, who spent his entire NBA career in Houston). Some Chinese businesses also ended their sponsorship deals with the Rockets.

Chinese entities also took revenge on the NBA itself, in part because of the league’s qualified response to Morey’s tweet. State broadcaster CCTV declared it would no longer air two NBA preseason games that were scheduled to be played in China; CCTV also said it was reviewing its cooperation with the NBA in toto. And on Wednesday, a press event in Shanghai with LeBron James, the greatest NBA player of this generation, was cancelled just hours before it was slated to begin.

Morey marooned by NBA peers

While this histrionic response from China was no surprise to anyone who monitors the country, the reaction of the NBA community has been far more troubling. It’s important to note that Morey, who helped revolutionize the NBA through his use of analytics, is often considered one of the best general managers in the league and was already a household name among basketball fans. But because he provoked China, his team allegedly considered firing him. The team’s owner, Tilman Fertitta, tweeted that Morey “does NOT speak” for the Rockets and that the Rockets “are NOT a political organization”—as if Hong Kongers’ fight for their basic freedoms were tantamount to voting for the local school board.

Another badge of shame goes to Rockets star James Harden, the 2018 NBA Most Valuable Player award winner, who responded to his general manager’s tweet by saying, “We apologize. You know, we love China.” In the past, Harden has rightly spoken up about racial injustice in the US. But when it comes to justice for Hong Kong, he is apparently willing to look the other way.

Perhaps most eye-roll-inducing was the “Open letter to all NBA fans” from Joe Tsai, owner of the Brooklyn Nets and executive vice chairman of the Alibaba Group, one of China’s most powerful companies. In his lengthy screed, Tsai writes that “1.4 billion Chinese citizens stand united when it comes to the territorial integrity of China and the country’s sovereignty over her homeland. This issue is non-negotiable.” I would like to tell Tsai that earlier this month, I attended an event on Capitol Hill led by Chinese dissidents who decried the 70th anniversary of Communist Party rule in their homeland; does Tsai believe he also speaks for them? In addition, the protestors in Hong Kong are Chinese people who appear to have a different take on national sovereignty than Tsai does. (If only the wealthy could realize that being rich doesn’t qualify them to act as spokespeople for the unwashed masses.)

To his credit, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver—after a confusing initial statement that any communications professional would recognize as the stitched-together work of multiple PR flaks—said the league would protect its employees’ freedom of speech and would live with the consequences of Morey’s tweet. However, Silver’s qualified response stands in contrast to the decisive action he took when he led the ouster of former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling, who was caught on tape making repulsive, racist remarks.

Today Hong Kong, yesterday Tibet

Tibet supporters have seen this script before. In recent years, several Western businesses have prostrated themselves before China after invoking Tibet and Tibetans in ways that displeased the Communist Party.

Last year, Marriott President Arne Sorenson issued a statement saying “we don’t support anyone who subverts the sovereignty and territorial integrity of China.” That came after China shut down the hotel chain’s Chinese website as punishment for listing Tibet, along with Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, as separate countries from China. The International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) responded to Sorenson with a letter seeking clarification of his views on Tibetan human rights.

Most egregiously of all, Marriott then fired a US employee in Nebraska who accidentally liked a pro-Tibet tweet from a company account. As Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said at the time, “This is the long arm of China. They can get an ‘American’ company to fire an American worker in America.”

Also in 2018, Mercedes-Benz apologized for quoting the Dalai Lama in an Instagram post. The quote itself—“Look at situations from all angles, and you will become more open”—was not overtly political, but the German carmaker disowned the post as an “extremely erroneous message.” As ICT Germany Executive Director Kai Müller said at the time, “Mercedes-Benz not only adapts to the language rules of the Chinese Communist Party, but even pledges to support Beijing in its worldwide effort to export its censorship.”

The film industry has also fallen under China’s sway. In December of last year, I wrote a blog post exploring how, after the 1997 twin releases of “Seven Years in Tibet” and “Kundun,” Beijing has been able to cut Tibet almost entirely out of Hollywood films. One galling example was how Disney changed the character of the Ancient One in “Doctor Strange” from a Tibetan in the original comic books to a Celt played by Tilda Swinton in the movie version, cynically claiming its goal was to avoid racial stereotyping. However, the screenwriter of “Doctor Strange” admitted that, “If you acknowledge that Tibet is a place and that [the character is] Tibetan, you risk alienating 1 billion people.”

In my post, I pointed out that it is not just businesses that are adhering to Chinese views on Tibet. According to the 2018 annual report of the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, European diplomats choose not to discuss Tibet because they don’t want to face Beijing’s wrath.

As I wrote, “The result is arguably the most insidious form of censorship: self-censorship. And it’s becoming more common on the issue of Tibet.”

Taking a page from Orwell

To understand how self-censorship works, we can look to George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”—not the main narrative itself, but rather the stunning preface that Orwell wrote.

“Animal Farm” is, of course, a thinly-veiled allegory about the Soviet Union, the West’s great adversary during the Cold War. So it is a bit surprising to read in the preface just how difficult it was for Orwell to get British and American publishers to accept the book. At the time, the Soviets were allies of the UK and US in the war against Nazi Germany. That made Orwell’s anti-Stalinist drama simply unpalatable.

What’s most shocking is that the British government never outright banned publishers from printing Orwell’s book. Instead, publishers simply felt it “wouldn’t do” to distribute the book in light of Britain’s alliance with the Soviets. One publisher even voluntarily ran the book past the UK’s ministry of information. That publisher later wrote to Orwell that “the choice of pigs” to represent Soviet leaders “will no doubt give offence to many people, and particularly to anyone who is a bit touchy, as undoubtedly the Russians are.”

Substitute “Chinese” for Russians, and swap out pigs that mock Stalin with tweets that support Hong Kongers or Tibetans or Uyghurs, and you basically have the situation we’re in today.

Resist Chinese censorship

Though Orwell is recognized as one of the most acute critics of totalitarian societies, such as China, his preface to “Animal Farm” is invaluable for understanding how censorship is imposed on supposedly free societies such as ours. In place of government restrictions, private entities like the Houston Rockets, Marriott and Mercedes act as consenting enforcers of Chinese thought proscription. That’s how an action as mild as Daryl Morey tweeting could incite such a firestorm.

The actual substance of his tweet—fight for democracy and freedom, stand with those who are doing so—is so unremarkable that it’s hard to imagine many Americans disagreeing with it. But because the tweet agitated the people in charge of one of the most important business partners for the NBA, Morey was hung out to dry. (Thankfully, while US businesses have demonstrated time and again that they can’t be trusted on the issue of China, US lawmakers on both sides of the aisle continue to stand up to Chinese attacks on our free speech.)

In the long run, the Pandora’s Box that Morey’s tweet seems to have opened may come back to bite China, because the American public is now much more aware of how the Chinese Communist Party impedes their ability to speak freely. It’s one thing for China to strong-arm a car company or hotel chain; it’s quite another to mess with the highly visible and opinionated arena of sports fandom. (It also helps that “South Park” just aired an episode mocking Chinese censorship, followed by a sarcastic ‘apology’ to China from the show’s creators.)

Americans should be terrified by the way Chinese censorship has taken hold in our public life and determined to prevent it from going any further. Let this moment be a turning point where all of us speak out against the deep reach of Chinese free speech curtailment in the US and refuse to be quiet about our support for Hong Kongers, Uyghurs, Chinese dissidents and Tibetans.