China Says Tibetan “Protest” Was Celebration
Following reports that monks in a Tibetan area of Sichuan staged a protest over the weekend, authorities are now saying the participants were in fact celebrating a new administrator at their monastery. From Reuters:
Shi Jun, Communist Party boss in an ethnically Tibetan part of western Sichuan province, said there is complete religious freedom in his area and foreign news reports had misrepresented a simple celebration, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
“Having elected a lama to the post of a monastery administrator … lamas with the Se Monastery were overjoyed and congratulated the electee on his success,” Shi told Xinhua. Overseas Tibetans and some Buddhists call the monastery Sey.
Violent rioting rocked Aba Prefecture, where Shi holds office, last year and discontent appeared to resurface last week when a young monk set himself on fire in the street on Friday.
From the Xinhua report:
“Having elected a lama to the post of a monastery administrator, known as “tiebang lama”, which is literally translated as ‘iron-rod lama’, Sunday, lamas with the Se Monastery were overjoyed and congratulated the electee on his success,” the official recounted.
[...] “This was a normal religious activity but had been distorted as ‘Tibetan lamas protest’ by some foreign media with ulterior motives, we are indignant toward the distorted news reports based on hearsays and are disappointed at those western media which have long touted they are observing ‘objectivity and fairness’ in news reporting”, said Shi.
Some local residents also said they did not hear or see any lama protest on Sunday.
POSTED COMMENTS: 5 Responses
This reminds me of George Orwell’s “1984″ novel, and the concept of “DOUBLETHINK”:
“The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them….To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.”
On the face of it, this sounds absurd… but then I think back to something I saw in Qinghai years ago, where monks were clambering to see some important figure in such an uncontrollable figure that they were being viciously whipped back. It was a strange scene that could easily be misunderstood. Of course, I don’t think a lie like this is beyond the authorities, but thinking back to what I saw, the seemingly ridiculous explanation doesn’t seem so impossible.
I don’t think people are not that stupid to believe in some childish communist propagenda. If you want to convience us communist propagenda machine can come up wiht better than this. What a pin head
More “information” coming from the PRC’s officials that equates to nothing more than completely inapropriate jokes!
I’ve seen lots of guys set themselves on fire when they were celebrating…
…but never on purpose.
These guys were generally completely drunk and playing with cans of hairspray and lighters.