Patient no more
March 20th, 2008
Yes, I know — we just started the SIXTH YEAR of the horror in the Middle East and concerns that the Dub will yet play the last of his hand in Iran are in the news, but there’s a topic dear to my heart I want to talk about today.
For over fifty years, the Chinese government has rested its hobnail boot on the soil of Tibet and the necks of its inhabitants, denying the Dalai Lama leadership of his country and access to his spiritual community. His Buddhist patience has been legion but recently he accused the Chinese of ‘cultural genocide’ — and now the young people of Tibet have hearkened to the Aquarian freedom cry we all seem to be hearing, and are pushing back violently. That’s not the Buddhist way, but its certainly the Communist way — they are creatures of their environment, looks like … more children of militarism now than followers of the Middle Path. There have been riots and beatings, arrests and reported deaths.
The Dalai Lama threatened to resign his leadership in exile if the violence doesn’t stop — the Chinese have rushed additional soldiers to Lhasa to put these upstarts in their place — and all of this comes at a time when the Olympics will be hosted by this lumbering giant of a country, signifying [in its mind, anyway] its legitimacy in the company of civil nations.
This [r]evolution began months ago when it was announced that the Olympic Torch would be carried through Tibet and over the Himalaya’s, and the young group, Students For A Free Tibet, whom I keep an eye on, oganized a pilgrimage to Tibet in protest. [For the most part, Tibetans who do not live in their own country, no matter where they were born, consider themselves unwilling exiles.] The protest swelled and a number of pilgrims in India were stopped and arrested, creating more dissent. That seemed to be the match that lit the bonfire and now its burning bright in Tibet and elsewhere.
China will not budge on ideology — and its entry into capitalism has given it some bulletproofing, made it more difficult for those who would have robustly censured them previously, causing them to water down their commentary — but China has a big PR problem here, and it would no doubt like to save face at so auspicious an occasional as THE International Sporting Event of the world; that’s about our only leverage. The Bushy doesn’t see this as a reason not to participate in the Olympics, nor does he see China’s support of the Sudan as an issue directly impacting Darfur [although evidently Steven Spielberg felt differently when he recently resigned as an artistic adviser to the Olympics over the matter] but then our Dubby has ’selective sight,’ doesn’t he!
So — if FACE is the issue, let’s give these guys a BIG BLACK EYE.
There are a number of activist/op’s for you at the bottom of the page — and while the potency of our moral authority here in America is at question, we can join an international outcry for Tibetan rights and an end to violence. Add your name to any or all of these petitions, if you will.
Jude
The Videos China Doesn’t Want You To See
Attywood
Tibetan Youth Challenge Beijing — and Dalai Lama
PETER WONACOTT, Wall Street Journal
March 20, 2008; Front Page
DHARMSALA, India — A new generation of impatient activists is vying to seize control of the Tibetan freedom movement from the Dalai Lama.
Tsewang Rigzin, president of the 30,000-member Tibetan Youth Congress, has a clear goal: Tibet’s independence from China. To achieve it, the group has staged a march to Tibet from this north Indian Himalayan town, called for a boycott of the Beijing Olympics, supported hunger strikes and demonstrated outside China’s diplomatic missions around the world.
Such stands clash with the global symbol of the Tibetan movement, the Dalai Lama, who has long advocated a “Middle Way” that would give Tibetans inside China greater autonomy without a separate state. The Dalai Lama favors dialogue with the Chinese over confrontation and denounces violence. China made Tibet into an “autonomous region” in 1951, the year after its army marched into Tibet.
But as protests have erupted in Tibet this week marking the anniversary of a failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule, the younger activists have sought to tug the soul of the Tibetan struggle toward their views — even at the risk of enraging an emerging superpower. Supporters of independence, including the Youth Congress and a handful of other nongovernmental exile groups, argue coexisting with China can’t protect Tibet’s culture, language or people.
“As far as His Holiness’s stand on autonomy is concerned, I disagree with it,” said Mr. Rigzin, a 37-year-old former bank clerk. “I don’t see people out on the streets protesting for a ‘Middle Way.’”
For his part, the Dalai Lama, who won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, hasn’t tried to stop people from venting their grievances. But he has also questioned the goals and tactics of protest organizers. And if force ever becomes the means to seek freedom for his people, the Dalai Lama has warned, he would step down as the movement’s leader. “In our case, violence is like suicide,” the 72-year-old Buddhist monk told reporters during a news briefing on Sunday.
Mr. Rigzin’s outlook differs starkly from that of the Dalai Lama: He makes no promises about the forms resistance might take. “If they continue their brutal repression,” he says of the Chinese leaders, “we can’t guarantee our struggle will be nonviolent forever.”
Mr. Rigzin and his fellow Tibetan activists, most of whom are devout Buddhists, still uphold the Dalai Lama as a powerful religious symbol and leader of their people. But as years slide by, and many come no closer to returning to Tibet, the Dalai Lama’s political views on China have been increasingly challenged.
Defying China
Protests this month have unleashed a wave of violence inside Tibetan areas of China. Mr. Rigzin says the protests in Tibet were spontaneous, and had no backing from a group he helped establish in January, called the Tibetan People’s Uprising Movement.
He says the group — comprising five different nongovernmental exile organizations including the Youth Congress — has swapped information since the protests began with those inside Tibet through phone calls and text messages. That information has often made its way into news releases emailed to journalists or has been posted on the group’s Web site.
The Tibetan government-in-exile says that 80 people died around Tibet’s capital Lhasa and 19 people have been killed in Gansu province, east of Tibet, after Chinese security forces cracked down on protesters. Chinese officials say a total of 16 people have died, mostly bystanders who weren’t part of the protests. China’s state-controlled Xinhua news service reported Tuesday that rioters caused $14 million in damage in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa and that Tibetan protesters have also attacked overseas diplomatic missions. Lhasa prosecutors announced the arrest of 24 suspects on charges of endangering state security and other “grave crimes,” Reuters reported last night, citing the official Tibet Daily.
So far, China has laid the blame for the protests firmly at the feet of the Dalai Lama. “There is ample fact and plenty of evidence proving this incident was organized, premeditated, masterminded and incited by the Dalai clique,” said China’s premier, Wen Jiabao, at a news conference Tuesday.
The Dalai Lama has denied any role in the protests, and has called for an international investigation into the violence. Both he and the Chinese premier have maintained a willingness to talk, based on the precondition that independence isn’t on the table.
Mr. Rigzin and other members of groups that support independence are more eager to defy China’s wishes. On March 10, for instance, the Tibetan People’s Uprising Movement began a march to Tibet from Dharmsala in Northern India, with the goal of crossing the border into their homeland.
The Indian government halted the marchers, detaining about 100 of them. Undeterred, the protest organizers dispatched a fresh batch of recruits to pick up at the point where the first stopped. As of yesterday, they were still walking toward Tibet. In recent days, the Dalai Lama has expressed concern that the march accomplishes little more than provoking the Chinese.
It has also put the Indian government in a delicate spot. India is anxious to avoid inflaming tensions with China, which linger from a 1962 border war. In a statement, the Indian foreign ministry warned the Tibetans about protests and illegal border crossings. “Like our other guests, Tibetan refugees, while they are in India, are expected to refrain from political activities and those activities that affect our relations with other friendly countries,” it said.
Mr. Rigzin says the Indians are being “overcautious.” But he also worries that Chinese agents will try to infiltrate the Tibetan protest movement and complicate ties with India. For such reasons, the details of future protest plans are closely guarded secrets. Mr. Rigzin says a big target is the Beijing Olympics. The Youth Congress and others want to put pressure on multinationals to withdraw sponsorships. Members plan to hang around training sites to publicize their cause among foreign athletes.
Mr. Rigzin says there might also be attempts to disrupt an Olympic torch relay that is expected to scale Mount Everest in Tibet. China has kept details of the torch relay, including the timing, secret. “This is a golden opportunity for our struggle,” Mr. Rigzin said, sitting outside a Buddhist temple on Sunday as shouts of protests could be heard on Dharmsala’s streets.
Later in the day, the Dalai Lama told reporters that Beijing deserves to host the Olympics, for China’s rich history and large population. At his own news conference the next day, Mr. Rigzin disagreed, saying China’s human-rights record should deprive it of host privileges.
Creating a Safe Harbor
The son of parents who fled Tibet nearly five decades ago, Mr. Rigzin longs to “return” to a place he has never lived. Part of that desire stems from his parents. Exiled in India, his father worked building roads and later became a driver. He has said he wants to return to Tibet before he dies.
The younger Mr. Rigzin grew up in southern India, but has spent one third of his life in the U.S. He speaks fluent, American-accented English.
In 1993, he headed to the U.S. under a Tibetan resettlement program. In Los Angeles, he served cappuccino. In Portland, Ore., he processed home mortgages. He says he became a U.S. citizen, bought a house outside of Portland, but all the while stayed active in Tibetan politics.
He says his main motivation for staying involved was patriotism. Older generations tended to think of Tibet as the land of their religion and culture. But Mr. Rigzin and other young activists talk about the need for a separate Tibetan state to serve as a safe harbor, a place where that religion and culture will be protected.
“Tibetans have become second-class citizens in their own country,” he says. “Our people are on the verge of extinction.”
Adding to Tibetan anger are Chinese development efforts that many Tibetans believe are endangering their heritage. An oft-cited culprit is the high-speed railway line connecting Lhasa to other parts of China, bringing more visitors and Chinese settlers to the once sparsely populated region.
Moving around the U.S., Mr. Rigzin headed different chapters of the Tibetan Youth Congress, a nongovernment organization founded in 1970 for young Tibetan exiles. The initiative had the backing of the Dalai Lama, who had led the mass exodus from Tibet during the uprising 11 years earlier.
Most members have grown up and been educated in India or the West. They use email and the Internet to build support, allowing protesters to spread information and build momentum much more quickly than their predecessors could.
In the late 1980s, for example, Tibetans only heard of an uprising in their homeland after it had been put down because news got out too late, says B. Tsering, president of the Tibetan Women’s Association, another nongovernmental group. During the most recent unrest, the Tibetan People’s Uprising Movement, the umbrella group, has been sending out regular press statements. These include names of Tibetans believed to have been killed protesting in China. “Times have changed,” says Ms. Tsering.
Different Tactics
In August 2007, Mr. Rigzin was elected president of the Youth Congress. He relocated to Dharmsala, where the group is based, while his wife — also Tibetan — and two daughters stayed in the U.S. “I came to serve my country,” Mr. Rigzin says.
His colleagues say his experience living overseas gives Mr. Rigzin a more well-rounded perspective on the movement, and an understanding of how it figures in the lives of people who are not Tibetan. “When you are overseas you can feel so small,” says Ms. Tsering, who also lived in the U.S. before moving to Dharmsala. “Tsewang has an appreciation for the commitment this takes.”
Mr. Rigzin’s group has helped stir up protests here in support of the actions in Tibet. For days after the March 10 protests in Tibet, monks, students and the elderly in the Himalayan town marched and held candlelight vigils. Many protesters have their faces painted with a yellow sun of the Tibetan flag. Some voices are raspy from so much slogan shouting: “Stop the killing! We want freedom!”
Across the street from the temple in Dharmsala, dozens of hunger strikers were sitting earlier this week in an enclosure chanting Buddhist slogans in front of cameras of journalists. A local chapter of the Tibetan Youth Congress helped organize the strike. “Autonomy from China isn’t realistic,” said Sonam Dechen, a 32-year-old Youth Congress spokeswoman who, like Mr. Rigzin, has never lived in Tibet. “We already have autonomy, and look where it’s got us.”
A half year into the job, Mr. Rigzin is still scrambling to get a hold on his huge organization. On a sunny morning earlier this week, he powwowed with other activists, tapped messages into his Apple iPhone on the status of protest marches, and read over remarks ahead of a news conference.
The biggest challenge, he says, has become managing his members as new recruits pour in. “The younger generation is really frustrated,” Mr. Rigzin said. “I don’t think anyone wants to be in India forever.”
The Dalai Lama has maintained his support for the Youth Congress in spite of divergent views on Tibetan independence in China. He says he believes the debates — including the recent criticism of his own moderate stands on China — foster democracy in a community long led by monks. “This is a healthy sign,” he said in his Sunday news briefing.
Aides to the Dalai Lama acknowledge that rising anti-China passions are carrying many Tibetans away from positions their spiritual leader has long advocated. Yet some of these officials see a silver lining. The protests could bring Beijing back to negotiations for Tibet’s autonomy, after several rounds of failed talks.
“Hopefully the Chinese will realize His Holiness represents the more moderate way,” said Tenzin Taklha, joint secretary in the office of the Dalai Lama in Dharmsala. “We are willing to continue dialogue.” ++
Ruthless campaign of cultural destruction
Barney Faulkner, Independent UK
Saturday, 15 March 2008
If you go round any Tibetan monastery – and the Chinese authorities encourage tourists to visit them as a cultural attraction – the first thing your guide tells you is not to ask any questions about politics or Chinese rule. “There are always monks in their pay who’ll report you and then I will lose my job.” Indeed yes.
When I went to visit a highly revered Rinpoche in a Lhasa monastery, he had just been hauled in by the authorities after one of his students had reported him for making a potentially subversive remarks in a sermon. He seemed to accept it as just part of his life in the monastery.
When the Dalai Llama broke his usual diplomatic reticence this month to accuse the Chinese of “cultural genocide”, he wasn’t exaggerating. What is going on now is a cultural hollowing out of a Buddhist country which Beijing refuses to accept as anything more than a Chinese province.
Everything is being done to deprive it of independent strength or legitimacy. Chinese Han immigrants are being poured in so that, within the space of barely a decade, they now probably outnumber local Tibetans. Tourism and services are now virtually all controlled by Chinese companies. The train across the mountains is there to increase the rate of immigration. Han settlers are, according to the local Tibetans, given cash grants if they marry local Tibetans and allowed two children instead of one.
The monasteries are at the heart of this process of deliberate deracination. You have to go to Tibet to understand the reverence ordinary people hold for the monasteries and for the Dalai Lama and other religious figures. Every day they come from the countryside to proceed around the Potala palace of the Dalai Llama and the Jokhang temple in Lhasa, some by prostrating themselves through the whole route. Woe betide you if you are a student, a monk or a employee of the state or any of its enterprises. You lose your job.
The Chinese have made Potala, the most revered pilgrimage spot, into a museum, the monks excluded, the guards wholly secular. As for the monasteries, nearly all of which were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, the monks have been allowed back and the buildings rebuilt but under strict control. Where once there were several thousand, the numbers are limited to a few hundred. Novices have to be approved by the authorities. The abbots are government appointed. As many as a third of the communities are thought to be in the pay of the security forces.
And yet it is the monks who remain the beacons of national resistance, who are prepared to demonstrate against what the Tibetans regard as Chinese occupation, who pull you aside to ask of news of the Dalai Lama and even a picture (you have to be careful as a tourist because some are leading you on), who continue to cry out that Buddhism in Tibet is not just a folk ritual, as the Chinese present it, but a living, evolving faith with the Dalai Lama as its head.
Can this culture survive being subsumed by the Chinese? Few Tibetans are optimistic. And yet, walking into one of the monasteries that are now the focal point of this revolt, I was taken aback by the sight of a young product of China’s new rich, his hair groomed in a riot of colour and conflicting angles, his girlfriend dressed as a baby doll and his hand holding an elegant little prayer wheel.
Approaching the main statue, he glanced furtively to the left and to the right and then threw himself in full prostration before it, before hastily getting up again and resuming his tour. A whim? A bad joke? Or is the Buddhism that makes Tibet so special finding its admirers even in China? If it is, it would be a rare point of hope for the beleaguered people of this oppressed nation. ++
Tibet: China ‘ready for for talks with Dalai Lama’
Philip Webster, Political Editor, and Jane Macartney in Beijing, Time UK
3/20/08
Britain called for resumption of negotiations between China and Tibetan representatives yesterday after Gordon Brown announced that he had spoken to the Chinese Premier and would meet the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, in May.
Last night China’s state media admitted for the first time that riots had spread to two provinces outside Tibet, but Beijing claimed that order was returning to the restive Himalayan region.
Mr Brown took the Commons by surprise when he informed MPs that Wen Jiabao, the Chinese Prime Minister, had told him in a telephone conversation yesterday that he was ready to enter into a dialogue with the Dalai Lama, provided that he did not support the total independence of Tibet and that he renounced violence.
Downing Street said that the Dalai Lama had already satisfied both conditions in recent statements and that Britain believed that conditions were in place for talks to resume between Beijing and Tibet’s spiritual leader.
Mr Brown’s announcement that he would see the Dalai Lama was welcomed by David Cameron, who will also meet him on his visit to London.
During their conversation, for which diplomats on both sides had prepared for several days, Mr Brown also called on China to show restraint in Tibet. He told Mr Wen of his intention to meet the Dalai Lama.
The formal reaction from China was one of dismay, however. China’s Foreign Ministry urged Britain to understand the Dalai Lama’s “true face” and offer him no support, the Xinhua news agency reported. A ministry spokesman said: “China is seriously concerned about the message. As we have repeatedly pointed out, Dalai is a political refugee engaged in activities of splitting China under the camouflage of religion.”
Beijing was enraged last year when Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, met the Dalai Lama, and relations were chilly for several months. By contrast, President Bush telephoned Chinese leaders to let them know of his decision to meet him.
That tactic, along with a promise to announce that he would attend the Olympics opening ceremony, mollified Beijing. It issued its standard statements of protest, but there was no sign that ties were affected by the meeting.
Sources close to Beijing told The Times yesterday that the Chinese Government remained enraged with the Dalai Lama over last week’s riots and there was no change in China’s conditions for talks with the Tibetan monk.
Beijing is unlikely to welcome other comments from Lord Malloch-Brown, the Foreign Office Minister, who said that the situation in Tibet could damage the reputation of the Olympics and China’s own interests. He called on British athletes to “speak the truth” about what was going on in China.
He told peers: “We will expect to see our athletes respect both the values of Britain — courtesy and respect for the country where the Games are — but also that supremely important value of speaking the truth as they see it and speaking openly of what they see.”
Britain, along with other Western countries, will use this year’s Beijing Olympics to put measured diplomatic pressure on the Chinese Government. Continued violence in Tibet will add to calls for Western nations to boycott the opening ceremony at the Games, or even the whole event. With the Olympics being staged in London in 2012, the Government has no intention of doing so.
Mr Brown told MPs: “I made it absolutely clear that there had to be an end to violence in Tibet. I also called for restraint, and I called for an end to the violence by dialogue between the different parties.”
David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, visited Mr Wen in China last month and emphasised yesterday that Britain would not boycott the Olympics over human rights. Tibetan exiles say that99 demonstrators have been killed in the Chinese crackdown. Beijing says that rioters in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, have killed 13. ++
India’s Tibetan Exiles Call for Help
A senior monk says the world, and especially India, must intervene to stop Chinese repression of pro-democracy protests in Lhasa
Manjeet Kripalani, Business Week
March 20, 2008
Tibet - It is dusk in Dharamsala, the Himalayan hilltop home of the Dalai Lama—the spiritual leader of 6 million Tibetans—and the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile. The air has begun to cool, and the bucolic mountain surroundings have become still. From a distance you can hear the chanting from a candlelight procession to the monastery where the Dalai Lama lives. As hundreds of monks and ordinary people file into the monastery, the prayers become clearer. “May the supreme jewel Bodhichitta that has not arisen, arise and flow; and may that which has arisen not diminish, but increase more and more.”
Woeser Rimpoche, one of the most senior lamas in Dharamsala, is watching. With his red robes and ramrod posture he is an impressive figure. But his face is full of sorrow. “That prayer is for the Chinese; we are the only ones praying for them. We pray that they may have compassion in their hearts, that they may leave our people to live in peace and retain their identity,” he says.
It may be an unrealistic wish. The procession has been a daily affair in Dharamsala since Mar. 7, when Tibetans began to demonstrate against Beijing. The Chinese repression of the Tibetan uprising is now in its second week and, despite the rimpoche’s prayers, Beijing shows no fatigue or remorse, only an increasing determination to curb the protests.
India’s Support is Crucial
In Tibet’s capital, Lhasa, there is an uneasy calm. The Chinese army is out in force, conducting house-to-house searches, and hundreds of young monks and students have been jailed. In the surrounding areas there are still protests. The latest news shows young Tibetans in the adjoining areas of Ando, Gansu, and Qinghai rushing through the streets, some on horseback, pulling down Chinese flags and hoisting the green and white flag of Tibet. According to the press office of the Dalai Lama, more Chinese soldiers are being sent in to suppress these protesters.
The rimpoche says, with passion, “The Indian government really needs to support us at this time. Their support is critical to us.” It certainly is. India has been host to Tibet’s exiled political and religious leaders since 1959, after Beijing established official rule over Tibet and the Dalai Lama and his followers were given refuge. Since then about 100,000 Tibetans have made India their home, creating a mini-Tibet wherever they live—Tibetan schools and monasteries flourish in India, most financed by India.
The rimpoche was one of those refugees—but a more recent one. He fled in 1990, and his memories are fresh, the relationships in Tibet still strong. “The most devastating thing happening is to the monks. I feel so sad,” he says. The lama is a tall, muscular man of 42, with a determined jaw and plenty of inner passion. While the Dalai Lama has advocated the “Middle Path” with China—whereby Tibet would remain within China but with its own religion and culture—many Tibetans, led by the Tibet Youth Congress, would like Tibet to be independent. The rimpoche, who was one of the founders of the Tibet Youth Congress, sounds torn about which path would be the best one.
“They Beat You Ceaselessly”
But about this he is clear: Neither the exiled government nor the Dalai Lama instigated the protests in Tibet, as Beijing has repeatedly suggested. Contact between Tibet and the world is limited to begin with; it would be difficult to manage such a thing from India. Instead, he says, what’s happening in Tibet is a people’s movement, a spontaneous uprising. He says it is coming from a second generation of Tibetans who, despite China’s investment in Tibet, have not seen a better life. They are tired of being marginalized in their own homeland and are tired of the destruction of their identity and culture.
The rimpoche should know. He was born in eastern Tibet. He comes from the Woesar monastery and is the highest ranking monk in that area. He is believed to be a reincarnated lama. When he became political he was imprisoned. The prison conditions were grim. “There is no food. You sleep and stand on the cold, cold ground. They beat you on your knuckles, they beat you ceaselessly. They electrocute your body, and especially inside the mouth,” he recalls.
He fled to India and, once in Dharamsala, he founded a movement called Gu Chu Sam—the former political prisoners’ association. The group, along with the Tibetan Youth Congress, is one of the most influential and vocal groups in Dharamsala. He worries terribly about the young monks who could be facing the same harsh treatment he endured in Chinese prisons.
China’s Economic Might May Stifle Response
But the protests in his home country are a relief, an inevitable venting of suppressed anger. “I’m relieved that the struggle and desperation in Tibet has released its steam. If this had not happened inside Tibet, the sympathy of the world may not have taken place,” he says. His friends in Tibet have sent him a message: They’ve been resisting for 50 years, and the world has not listened. Now, in the run-up to the Olympics and on the 49th anniversary of the Tibetan exodus to India, they decided vigorous protest was the only way to get world attention.
Like many Tibetans, the rimpoche is frustrated with India’s silence on Tibet. The lama says India is not looking at her historical, thousand-year connection with Tibet and Buddhism (Gautama Buddha was born in India). Instead, India is looking at Tibet from a recent historical perspective—since 1959, and more importantly, since 1962, when China won a border war with India. “If India steps up to the issue of Tibet, it could really claim its place as a global leader,” he says.
But the world’s economic interest in China has resulted in a meek global response. Under these circumstances, the Tibetan protests could peter out; the Olympics don’t start until August, and the world has a short memory. The rimpoche, meanwhile, will continue his prayer for China to develop inner compassion. ++
- Activist Opportunities
From Alternet
The Chinese government is brutally cracking down on Tibetans. As your senators and representatives to stand up in support of Tibet. You can learn more and take action at this link. ++
From AVAAZ
Please sign this urgent petition calling on the Chinese government to respect human rights in Tibet and engage in meaningful dialogue with the Dalai Lama. After nearly 50 years of Chinese rule, the Tibetans are sending out a global cry for change. But violence is spreading across Tibet and neighbouring regions, and the Chinese regime is right now considering a choice between increasing brutality or dialogue, that could determine the future of Tibet and China.
We can affect this historic choice. China does care about its international reputation. Its economy is totally dependent on “Made in China” exports that we all buy, and it is keen to make the Olympics in Beijing this summer a celebration of a new China that is a respected world power.
President Hu needs to hear that ‘Brand China’ and the Olympics can succeed only if he makes the right choice. But it will take an avalanche of global people power to get his attention. Click below to join me and sign a petition to President Hu calling for restraint in Tibet and dialogue with the Dalai Lama — and tell absolutely everyone you can right away. The petition is organized by Avaaz, and they are urgently aiming to reach 1 million signatures to deliver directly to Chinese officials. ++
Tell IOC No Torch in Tibet!
Students for a Free Tibet
3/20/08
As Chinese troops intensify their crackdown against Tibetans, the Chinese government prepares to launch its Olympic Torch Relay next week. On Monday, March 24th, the torch will be lit in Olympia and start what the Chinese government is calling a global “Journey of Harmony”. Beijing plans to run the torch through Lhasa and other Tibetan territories including to the top of Mount Everest in a propaganda exercise designed to convince the world that Tibet belongs to China.
In the past week, tens of thousands of Tibetans have risen up across Tibet, risking everything to demand their independence. The global community must stop China from parading the Olympic torch through Tibetan territory while hundreds, possibly thousands, of Tibetans are being tortured and brutalized in Chinese detention cells.
Please take action now and demand the International Olympic Committee (IOC) immediately withdraw the Tibet Autonomous Region and the Tibetan provinces of Amdo and Kham from the Olympic torch relay route. ++
Students For A Free Tibet
3/13/08
Update from India: On orders from the Indian government, the March to Tibet was forcibly stopped this morning and all the marchers, including SFT India’s National Director, Tenzin Choeying, were arrested. They were sentenced to 14 days in judicial custody and are now being held under house arrest at Jwalamukhi, approximately 53 kilometers from Dharamsala.
Please send the letter below to Ronen Sen, Indian Ambassador to the United States, calling for the immediate release of the marchers.
To see incredible CNN video footage of Indian police breaking up the marchers who staged a Gandhian style sit-in before being carried away in 5 police buses, go here.
Our warmest thoughts go out to Choeying and all of the Tibetans involved in the march; their courage and determination to return to their homeland is a true testament to the Tibetan spirit.
Also reports from inside Tibet today suggest that protests are spreading to Eastern Tibet. All major monasteries in Lhasa have been surrounded by thousands of armed police. The monks at Sera monastery have gone on hunger strike to demand the release of all those detained over the past few days and the withdrawal of the People’s Armed Police from the monastery compound. To read more, go here.
You can take action on this alert via the web. We encourage you to take action by April 12, 2008. Tell the Indian Government to Release the Tibetan Marchers! ++
“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
Entry Filed under: Political Waves
Patient no more
March 20th, 2008
Yes, I know — we just started the SIXTH YEAR of the horror in the Middle East and concerns that the Dub will yet play the last of his hand in Iran are in the news, but there’s a topic dear to my heart I want to talk about today.
For over fifty years, the Chinese government has rested its hobnail boot on the soil of Tibet and the necks of its inhabitants, denying the Dalai Lama leadership of his country and access to his spiritual community. His Buddhist patience has been legion but recently he accused the Chinese of ‘cultural genocide’ — and now the young people of Tibet have hearkened to the Aquarian freedom cry we all seem to be hearing, and are pushing back violently. That’s not the Buddhist way, but its certainly the Communist way — they are creatures of their environment, looks like … more children of militarism now than followers of the Middle Path. There have been riots and beatings, arrests and reported deaths.
The Dalai Lama threatened to resign his leadership in exile if the violence doesn’t stop — the Chinese have rushed additional soldiers to Lhasa to put these upstarts in their place — and all of this comes at a time when the Olympics will be hosted by this lumbering giant of a country, signifying [in its mind, anyway] its legitimacy in the company of civil nations.
This [r]evolution began months ago when it was announced that the Olympic Torch would be carried through Tibet and over the Himalaya’s, and the young group, Students For A Free Tibet, whom I keep an eye on, oganized a pilgrimage to Tibet in protest. [For the most part, Tibetans who do not live in their own country, no matter where they were born, consider themselves unwilling exiles.] The protest swelled and a number of pilgrims in India were stopped and arrested, creating more dissent. That seemed to be the match that lit the bonfire and now its burning bright in Tibet and elsewhere.
China will not budge on ideology — and its entry into capitalism has given it some bulletproofing, made it more difficult for those who would have robustly censured them previously, causing them to water down their commentary — but China has a big PR problem here, and it would no doubt like to save face at so auspicious an occasional as THE International Sporting Event of the world; that’s about our only leverage. The Bushy doesn’t see this as a reason not to participate in the Olympics, nor does he see China’s support of the Sudan as an issue directly impacting Darfur [although evidently Steven Spielberg felt differently when he recently resigned as an artistic adviser to the Olympics over the matter] but then our Dubby has ’selective sight,’ doesn’t he!
So — if FACE is the issue, let’s give these guys a BIG BLACK EYE.
There are a number of activist/op’s for you at the bottom of the page — and while the potency of our moral authority here in America is at question, we can join an international outcry for Tibetan rights and an end to violence. Add your name to any or all of these petitions, if you will.
Jude
The Videos China Doesn’t Want You To See
Attywood
Tibetan Youth Challenge Beijing — and Dalai Lama
PETER WONACOTT, Wall Street Journal
March 20, 2008; Front Page
DHARMSALA, India — A new generation of impatient activists is vying to seize control of the Tibetan freedom movement from the Dalai Lama.
Tsewang Rigzin, president of the 30,000-member Tibetan Youth Congress, has a clear goal: Tibet’s independence from China. To achieve it, the group has staged a march to Tibet from this north Indian Himalayan town, called for a boycott of the Beijing Olympics, supported hunger strikes and demonstrated outside China’s diplomatic missions around the world.
Such stands clash with the global symbol of the Tibetan movement, the Dalai Lama, who has long advocated a “Middle Way” that would give Tibetans inside China greater autonomy without a separate state. The Dalai Lama favors dialogue with the Chinese over confrontation and denounces violence. China made Tibet into an “autonomous region” in 1951, the year after its army marched into Tibet.
But as protests have erupted in Tibet this week marking the anniversary of a failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule, the younger activists have sought to tug the soul of the Tibetan struggle toward their views — even at the risk of enraging an emerging superpower. Supporters of independence, including the Youth Congress and a handful of other nongovernmental exile groups, argue coexisting with China can’t protect Tibet’s culture, language or people.
“As far as His Holiness’s stand on autonomy is concerned, I disagree with it,” said Mr. Rigzin, a 37-year-old former bank clerk. “I don’t see people out on the streets protesting for a ‘Middle Way.’”
For his part, the Dalai Lama, who won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, hasn’t tried to stop people from venting their grievances. But he has also questioned the goals and tactics of protest organizers. And if force ever becomes the means to seek freedom for his people, the Dalai Lama has warned, he would step down as the movement’s leader. “In our case, violence is like suicide,” the 72-year-old Buddhist monk told reporters during a news briefing on Sunday.
Mr. Rigzin’s outlook differs starkly from that of the Dalai Lama: He makes no promises about the forms resistance might take. “If they continue their brutal repression,” he says of the Chinese leaders, “we can’t guarantee our struggle will be nonviolent forever.”
Mr. Rigzin and his fellow Tibetan activists, most of whom are devout Buddhists, still uphold the Dalai Lama as a powerful religious symbol and leader of their people. But as years slide by, and many come no closer to returning to Tibet, the Dalai Lama’s political views on China have been increasingly challenged.
Defying China
Protests this month have unleashed a wave of violence inside Tibetan areas of China. Mr. Rigzin says the protests in Tibet were spontaneous, and had no backing from a group he helped establish in January, called the Tibetan People’s Uprising Movement.
He says the group — comprising five different nongovernmental exile organizations including the Youth Congress — has swapped information since the protests began with those inside Tibet through phone calls and text messages. That information has often made its way into news releases emailed to journalists or has been posted on the group’s Web site.
The Tibetan government-in-exile says that 80 people died around Tibet’s capital Lhasa and 19 people have been killed in Gansu province, east of Tibet, after Chinese security forces cracked down on protesters. Chinese officials say a total of 16 people have died, mostly bystanders who weren’t part of the protests. China’s state-controlled Xinhua news service reported Tuesday that rioters caused $14 million in damage in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa and that Tibetan protesters have also attacked overseas diplomatic missions. Lhasa prosecutors announced the arrest of 24 suspects on charges of endangering state security and other “grave crimes,” Reuters reported last night, citing the official Tibet Daily.
So far, China has laid the blame for the protests firmly at the feet of the Dalai Lama. “There is ample fact and plenty of evidence proving this incident was organized, premeditated, masterminded and incited by the Dalai clique,” said China’s premier, Wen Jiabao, at a news conference Tuesday.
The Dalai Lama has denied any role in the protests, and has called for an international investigation into the violence. Both he and the Chinese premier have maintained a willingness to talk, based on the precondition that independence isn’t on the table.
Mr. Rigzin and other members of groups that support independence are more eager to defy China’s wishes. On March 10, for instance, the Tibetan People’s Uprising Movement began a march to Tibet from Dharmsala in Northern India, with the goal of crossing the border into their homeland.
The Indian government halted the marchers, detaining about 100 of them. Undeterred, the protest organizers dispatched a fresh batch of recruits to pick up at the point where the first stopped. As of yesterday, they were still walking toward Tibet. In recent days, the Dalai Lama has expressed concern that the march accomplishes little more than provoking the Chinese.
It has also put the Indian government in a delicate spot. India is anxious to avoid inflaming tensions with China, which linger from a 1962 border war. In a statement, the Indian foreign ministry warned the Tibetans about protests and illegal border crossings. “Like our other guests, Tibetan refugees, while they are in India, are expected to refrain from political activities and those activities that affect our relations with other friendly countries,” it said.
Mr. Rigzin says the Indians are being “overcautious.” But he also worries that Chinese agents will try to infiltrate the Tibetan protest movement and complicate ties with India. For such reasons, the details of future protest plans are closely guarded secrets. Mr. Rigzin says a big target is the Beijing Olympics. The Youth Congress and others want to put pressure on multinationals to withdraw sponsorships. Members plan to hang around training sites to publicize their cause among foreign athletes.
Mr. Rigzin says there might also be attempts to disrupt an Olympic torch relay that is expected to scale Mount Everest in Tibet. China has kept details of the torch relay, including the timing, secret. “This is a golden opportunity for our struggle,” Mr. Rigzin said, sitting outside a Buddhist temple on Sunday as shouts of protests could be heard on Dharmsala’s streets.
Later in the day, the Dalai Lama told reporters that Beijing deserves to host the Olympics, for China’s rich history and large population. At his own news conference the next day, Mr. Rigzin disagreed, saying China’s human-rights record should deprive it of host privileges.
Creating a Safe Harbor
The son of parents who fled Tibet nearly five decades ago, Mr. Rigzin longs to “return” to a place he has never lived. Part of that desire stems from his parents. Exiled in India, his father worked building roads and later became a driver. He has said he wants to return to Tibet before he dies.
The younger Mr. Rigzin grew up in southern India, but has spent one third of his life in the U.S. He speaks fluent, American-accented English.
In 1993, he headed to the U.S. under a Tibetan resettlement program. In Los Angeles, he served cappuccino. In Portland, Ore., he processed home mortgages. He says he became a U.S. citizen, bought a house outside of Portland, but all the while stayed active in Tibetan politics.
He says his main motivation for staying involved was patriotism. Older generations tended to think of Tibet as the land of their religion and culture. But Mr. Rigzin and other young activists talk about the need for a separate Tibetan state to serve as a safe harbor, a place where that religion and culture will be protected.
“Tibetans have become second-class citizens in their own country,” he says. “Our people are on the verge of extinction.”
Adding to Tibetan anger are Chinese development efforts that many Tibetans believe are endangering their heritage. An oft-cited culprit is the high-speed railway line connecting Lhasa to other parts of China, bringing more visitors and Chinese settlers to the once sparsely populated region.
Moving around the U.S., Mr. Rigzin headed different chapters of the Tibetan Youth Congress, a nongovernment organization founded in 1970 for young Tibetan exiles. The initiative had the backing of the Dalai Lama, who had led the mass exodus from Tibet during the uprising 11 years earlier.
Most members have grown up and been educated in India or the West. They use email and the Internet to build support, allowing protesters to spread information and build momentum much more quickly than their predecessors could.
In the late 1980s, for example, Tibetans only heard of an uprising in their homeland after it had been put down because news got out too late, says B. Tsering, president of the Tibetan Women’s Association, another nongovernmental group. During the most recent unrest, the Tibetan People’s Uprising Movement, the umbrella group, has been sending out regular press statements. These include names of Tibetans believed to have been killed protesting in China. “Times have changed,” says Ms. Tsering.
Different Tactics
In August 2007, Mr. Rigzin was elected president of the Youth Congress. He relocated to Dharmsala, where the group is based, while his wife — also Tibetan — and two daughters stayed in the U.S. “I came to serve my country,” Mr. Rigzin says.
His colleagues say his experience living overseas gives Mr. Rigzin a more well-rounded perspective on the movement, and an understanding of how it figures in the lives of people who are not Tibetan. “When you are overseas you can feel so small,” says Ms. Tsering, who also lived in the U.S. before moving to Dharmsala. “Tsewang has an appreciation for the commitment this takes.”
Mr. Rigzin’s group has helped stir up protests here in support of the actions in Tibet. For days after the March 10 protests in Tibet, monks, students and the elderly in the Himalayan town marched and held candlelight vigils. Many protesters have their faces painted with a yellow sun of the Tibetan flag. Some voices are raspy from so much slogan shouting: “Stop the killing! We want freedom!”
Across the street from the temple in Dharmsala, dozens of hunger strikers were sitting earlier this week in an enclosure chanting Buddhist slogans in front of cameras of journalists. A local chapter of the Tibetan Youth Congress helped organize the strike. “Autonomy from China isn’t realistic,” said Sonam Dechen, a 32-year-old Youth Congress spokeswoman who, like Mr. Rigzin, has never lived in Tibet. “We already have autonomy, and look where it’s got us.”
A half year into the job, Mr. Rigzin is still scrambling to get a hold on his huge organization. On a sunny morning earlier this week, he powwowed with other activists, tapped messages into his Apple iPhone on the status of protest marches, and read over remarks ahead of a news conference.
The biggest challenge, he says, has become managing his members as new recruits pour in. “The younger generation is really frustrated,” Mr. Rigzin said. “I don’t think anyone wants to be in India forever.”
The Dalai Lama has maintained his support for the Youth Congress in spite of divergent views on Tibetan independence in China. He says he believes the debates — including the recent criticism of his own moderate stands on China — foster democracy in a community long led by monks. “This is a healthy sign,” he said in his Sunday news briefing.
Aides to the Dalai Lama acknowledge that rising anti-China passions are carrying many Tibetans away from positions their spiritual leader has long advocated. Yet some of these officials see a silver lining. The protests could bring Beijing back to negotiations for Tibet’s autonomy, after several rounds of failed talks.
“Hopefully the Chinese will realize His Holiness represents the more moderate way,” said Tenzin Taklha, joint secretary in the office of the Dalai Lama in Dharmsala. “We are willing to continue dialogue.” ++
Ruthless campaign of cultural destruction
Barney Faulkner, Independent UK
Saturday, 15 March 2008
If you go round any Tibetan monastery – and the Chinese authorities encourage tourists to visit them as a cultural attraction – the first thing your guide tells you is not to ask any questions about politics or Chinese rule. “There are always monks in their pay who’ll report you and then I will lose my job.” Indeed yes.
When I went to visit a highly revered Rinpoche in a Lhasa monastery, he had just been hauled in by the authorities after one of his students had reported him for making a potentially subversive remarks in a sermon. He seemed to accept it as just part of his life in the monastery.
When the Dalai Llama broke his usual diplomatic reticence this month to accuse the Chinese of “cultural genocide”, he wasn’t exaggerating. What is going on now is a cultural hollowing out of a Buddhist country which Beijing refuses to accept as anything more than a Chinese province.
Everything is being done to deprive it of independent strength or legitimacy. Chinese Han immigrants are being poured in so that, within the space of barely a decade, they now probably outnumber local Tibetans. Tourism and services are now virtually all controlled by Chinese companies. The train across the mountains is there to increase the rate of immigration. Han settlers are, according to the local Tibetans, given cash grants if they marry local Tibetans and allowed two children instead of one.
The monasteries are at the heart of this process of deliberate deracination. You have to go to Tibet to understand the reverence ordinary people hold for the monasteries and for the Dalai Lama and other religious figures. Every day they come from the countryside to proceed around the Potala palace of the Dalai Llama and the Jokhang temple in Lhasa, some by prostrating themselves through the whole route. Woe betide you if you are a student, a monk or a employee of the state or any of its enterprises. You lose your job.
The Chinese have made Potala, the most revered pilgrimage spot, into a museum, the monks excluded, the guards wholly secular. As for the monasteries, nearly all of which were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, the monks have been allowed back and the buildings rebuilt but under strict control. Where once there were several thousand, the numbers are limited to a few hundred. Novices have to be approved by the authorities. The abbots are government appointed. As many as a third of the communities are thought to be in the pay of the security forces.
And yet it is the monks who remain the beacons of national resistance, who are prepared to demonstrate against what the Tibetans regard as Chinese occupation, who pull you aside to ask of news of the Dalai Lama and even a picture (you have to be careful as a tourist because some are leading you on), who continue to cry out that Buddhism in Tibet is not just a folk ritual, as the Chinese present it, but a living, evolving faith with the Dalai Lama as its head.
Can this culture survive being subsumed by the Chinese? Few Tibetans are optimistic. And yet, walking into one of the monasteries that are now the focal point of this revolt, I was taken aback by the sight of a young product of China’s new rich, his hair groomed in a riot of colour and conflicting angles, his girlfriend dressed as a baby doll and his hand holding an elegant little prayer wheel.
Approaching the main statue, he glanced furtively to the left and to the right and then threw himself in full prostration before it, before hastily getting up again and resuming his tour. A whim? A bad joke? Or is the Buddhism that makes Tibet so special finding its admirers even in China? If it is, it would be a rare point of hope for the beleaguered people of this oppressed nation. ++
Tibet: China ‘ready for for talks with Dalai Lama’
Philip Webster, Political Editor, and Jane Macartney in Beijing, Time UK
3/20/08
Britain called for resumption of negotiations between China and Tibetan representatives yesterday after Gordon Brown announced that he had spoken to the Chinese Premier and would meet the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, in May.
Last night China’s state media admitted for the first time that riots had spread to two provinces outside Tibet, but Beijing claimed that order was returning to the restive Himalayan region.
Mr Brown took the Commons by surprise when he informed MPs that Wen Jiabao, the Chinese Prime Minister, had told him in a telephone conversation yesterday that he was ready to enter into a dialogue with the Dalai Lama, provided that he did not support the total independence of Tibet and that he renounced violence.
Downing Street said that the Dalai Lama had already satisfied both conditions in recent statements and that Britain believed that conditions were in place for talks to resume between Beijing and Tibet’s spiritual leader.
Mr Brown’s announcement that he would see the Dalai Lama was welcomed by David Cameron, who will also meet him on his visit to London.
During their conversation, for which diplomats on both sides had prepared for several days, Mr Brown also called on China to show restraint in Tibet. He told Mr Wen of his intention to meet the Dalai Lama.
The formal reaction from China was one of dismay, however. China’s Foreign Ministry urged Britain to understand the Dalai Lama’s “true face” and offer him no support, the Xinhua news agency reported. A ministry spokesman said: “China is seriously concerned about the message. As we have repeatedly pointed out, Dalai is a political refugee engaged in activities of splitting China under the camouflage of religion.”
Beijing was enraged last year when Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, met the Dalai Lama, and relations were chilly for several months. By contrast, President Bush telephoned Chinese leaders to let them know of his decision to meet him.
That tactic, along with a promise to announce that he would attend the Olympics opening ceremony, mollified Beijing. It issued its standard statements of protest, but there was no sign that ties were affected by the meeting.
Sources close to Beijing told The Times yesterday that the Chinese Government remained enraged with the Dalai Lama over last week’s riots and there was no change in China’s conditions for talks with the Tibetan monk.
Beijing is unlikely to welcome other comments from Lord Malloch-Brown, the Foreign Office Minister, who said that the situation in Tibet could damage the reputation of the Olympics and China’s own interests. He called on British athletes to “speak the truth” about what was going on in China.
He told peers: “We will expect to see our athletes respect both the values of Britain — courtesy and respect for the country where the Games are — but also that supremely important value of speaking the truth as they see it and speaking openly of what they see.”
Britain, along with other Western countries, will use this year’s Beijing Olympics to put measured diplomatic pressure on the Chinese Government. Continued violence in Tibet will add to calls for Western nations to boycott the opening ceremony at the Games, or even the whole event. With the Olympics being staged in London in 2012, the Government has no intention of doing so.
Mr Brown told MPs: “I made it absolutely clear that there had to be an end to violence in Tibet. I also called for restraint, and I called for an end to the violence by dialogue between the different parties.”
David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, visited Mr Wen in China last month and emphasised yesterday that Britain would not boycott the Olympics over human rights. Tibetan exiles say that99 demonstrators have been killed in the Chinese crackdown. Beijing says that rioters in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, have killed 13. ++
India’s Tibetan Exiles Call for Help
A senior monk says the world, and especially India, must intervene to stop Chinese repression of pro-democracy protests in Lhasa
Manjeet Kripalani, Business Week
March 20, 2008
Tibet - It is dusk in Dharamsala, the Himalayan hilltop home of the Dalai Lama—the spiritual leader of 6 million Tibetans—and the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile. The air has begun to cool, and the bucolic mountain surroundings have become still. From a distance you can hear the chanting from a candlelight procession to the monastery where the Dalai Lama lives. As hundreds of monks and ordinary people file into the monastery, the prayers become clearer. “May the supreme jewel Bodhichitta that has not arisen, arise and flow; and may that which has arisen not diminish, but increase more and more.”
Woeser Rimpoche, one of the most senior lamas in Dharamsala, is watching. With his red robes and ramrod posture he is an impressive figure. But his face is full of sorrow. “That prayer is for the Chinese; we are the only ones praying for them. We pray that they may have compassion in their hearts, that they may leave our people to live in peace and retain their identity,” he says.
It may be an unrealistic wish. The procession has been a daily affair in Dharamsala since Mar. 7, when Tibetans began to demonstrate against Beijing. The Chinese repression of the Tibetan uprising is now in its second week and, despite the rimpoche’s prayers, Beijing shows no fatigue or remorse, only an increasing determination to curb the protests.
India’s Support is Crucial
In Tibet’s capital, Lhasa, there is an uneasy calm. The Chinese army is out in force, conducting house-to-house searches, and hundreds of young monks and students have been jailed. In the surrounding areas there are still protests. The latest news shows young Tibetans in the adjoining areas of Ando, Gansu, and Qinghai rushing through the streets, some on horseback, pulling down Chinese flags and hoisting the green and white flag of Tibet. According to the press office of the Dalai Lama, more Chinese soldiers are being sent in to suppress these protesters.
The rimpoche says, with passion, “The Indian government really needs to support us at this time. Their support is critical to us.” It certainly is. India has been host to Tibet’s exiled political and religious leaders since 1959, after Beijing established official rule over Tibet and the Dalai Lama and his followers were given refuge. Since then about 100,000 Tibetans have made India their home, creating a mini-Tibet wherever they live—Tibetan schools and monasteries flourish in India, most financed by India.
The rimpoche was one of those refugees—but a more recent one. He fled in 1990, and his memories are fresh, the relationships in Tibet still strong. “The most devastating thing happening is to the monks. I feel so sad,” he says. The lama is a tall, muscular man of 42, with a determined jaw and plenty of inner passion. While the Dalai Lama has advocated the “Middle Path” with China—whereby Tibet would remain within China but with its own religion and culture—many Tibetans, led by the Tibet Youth Congress, would like Tibet to be independent. The rimpoche, who was one of the founders of the Tibet Youth Congress, sounds torn about which path would be the best one.
“They Beat You Ceaselessly”
But about this he is clear: Neither the exiled government nor the Dalai Lama instigated the protests in Tibet, as Beijing has repeatedly suggested. Contact between Tibet and the world is limited to begin with; it would be difficult to manage such a thing from India. Instead, he says, what’s happening in Tibet is a people’s movement, a spontaneous uprising. He says it is coming from a second generation of Tibetans who, despite China’s investment in Tibet, have not seen a better life. They are tired of being marginalized in their own homeland and are tired of the destruction of their identity and culture.
The rimpoche should know. He was born in eastern Tibet. He comes from the Woesar monastery and is the highest ranking monk in that area. He is believed to be a reincarnated lama. When he became political he was imprisoned. The prison conditions were grim. “There is no food. You sleep and stand on the cold, cold ground. They beat you on your knuckles, they beat you ceaselessly. They electrocute your body, and especially inside the mouth,” he recalls.
He fled to India and, once in Dharamsala, he founded a movement called Gu Chu Sam—the former political prisoners’ association. The group, along with the Tibetan Youth Congress, is one of the most influential and vocal groups in Dharamsala. He worries terribly about the young monks who could be facing the same harsh treatment he endured in Chinese prisons.
China’s Economic Might May Stifle Response
But the protests in his home country are a relief, an inevitable venting of suppressed anger. “I’m relieved that the struggle and desperation in Tibet has released its steam. If this had not happened inside Tibet, the sympathy of the world may not have taken place,” he says. His friends in Tibet have sent him a message: They’ve been resisting for 50 years, and the world has not listened. Now, in the run-up to the Olympics and on the 49th anniversary of the Tibetan exodus to India, they decided vigorous protest was the only way to get world attention.
Like many Tibetans, the rimpoche is frustrated with India’s silence on Tibet. The lama says India is not looking at her historical, thousand-year connection with Tibet and Buddhism (Gautama Buddha was born in India). Instead, India is looking at Tibet from a recent historical perspective—since 1959, and more importantly, since 1962, when China won a border war with India. “If India steps up to the issue of Tibet, it could really claim its place as a global leader,” he says.
But the world’s economic interest in China has resulted in a meek global response. Under these circumstances, the Tibetan protests could peter out; the Olympics don’t start until August, and the world has a short memory. The rimpoche, meanwhile, will continue his prayer for China to develop inner compassion. ++
- Activist Opportunities
From Alternet
The Chinese government is brutally cracking down on Tibetans. As your senators and representatives to stand up in support of Tibet. You can learn more and take action at this link. ++
From AVAAZ
Please sign this urgent petition calling on the Chinese government to respect human rights in Tibet and engage in meaningful dialogue with the Dalai Lama. After nearly 50 years of Chinese rule, the Tibetans are sending out a global cry for change. But violence is spreading across Tibet and neighbouring regions, and the Chinese regime is right now considering a choice between increasing brutality or dialogue, that could determine the future of Tibet and China.
We can affect this historic choice. China does care about its international reputation. Its economy is totally dependent on “Made in China” exports that we all buy, and it is keen to make the Olympics in Beijing this summer a celebration of a new China that is a respected world power.
President Hu needs to hear that ‘Brand China’ and the Olympics can succeed only if he makes the right choice. But it will take an avalanche of global people power to get his attention. Click below to join me and sign a petition to President Hu calling for restraint in Tibet and dialogue with the Dalai Lama — and tell absolutely everyone you can right away. The petition is organized by Avaaz, and they are urgently aiming to reach 1 million signatures to deliver directly to Chinese officials. ++
Tell IOC No Torch in Tibet!
Students for a Free Tibet
3/20/08
As Chinese troops intensify their crackdown against Tibetans, the Chinese government prepares to launch its Olympic Torch Relay next week. On Monday, March 24th, the torch will be lit in Olympia and start what the Chinese government is calling a global “Journey of Harmony”. Beijing plans to run the torch through Lhasa and other Tibetan territories including to the top of Mount Everest in a propaganda exercise designed to convince the world that Tibet belongs to China.
In the past week, tens of thousands of Tibetans have risen up across Tibet, risking everything to demand their independence. The global community must stop China from parading the Olympic torch through Tibetan territory while hundreds, possibly thousands, of Tibetans are being tortured and brutalized in Chinese detention cells.
Please take action now and demand the International Olympic Committee (IOC) immediately withdraw the Tibet Autonomous Region and the Tibetan provinces of Amdo and Kham from the Olympic torch relay route. ++
Students For A Free Tibet
3/13/08
Update from India: On orders from the Indian government, the March to Tibet was forcibly stopped this morning and all the marchers, including SFT India’s National Director, Tenzin Choeying, were arrested. They were sentenced to 14 days in judicial custody and are now being held under house arrest at Jwalamukhi, approximately 53 kilometers from Dharamsala.
Please send the letter below to Ronen Sen, Indian Ambassador to the United States, calling for the immediate release of the marchers.
To see incredible CNN video footage of Indian police breaking up the marchers who staged a Gandhian style sit-in before being carried away in 5 police buses, go here.
Our warmest thoughts go out to Choeying and all of the Tibetans involved in the march; their courage and determination to return to their homeland is a true testament to the Tibetan spirit.
Also reports from inside Tibet today suggest that protests are spreading to Eastern Tibet. All major monasteries in Lhasa have been surrounded by thousands of armed police. The monks at Sera monastery have gone on hunger strike to demand the release of all those detained over the past few days and the withdrawal of the People’s Armed Police from the monastery compound. To read more, go here.
You can take action on this alert via the web. We encourage you to take action by April 12, 2008. Tell the Indian Government to Release the Tibetan Marchers! ++
“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
Entry Filed under: Political Waves
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