Over the past 25 years in Tibet, repression has grown. But so has resistance.

[...]The biggest recent surge of resistance on the Tibetan side has been a wave of 33 self-immolations by Tibetan protesters since late February 2009, with 31 of them occurring in the last year alone.

The Chinese government has tried to discredit Tibetans who burn themselves to death by calling them criminals, terrorists, mentally ill, or losers in life.

This propaganda is likely to succeed with Chinese who don’t have access to the complete story.

But it is unlikely to work with most Tibetans, since many of those who have engaged in the extreme act of self-immolation have been monks and nuns who are respected in their communities.

As the trend of protest by self-immolation has continued (the most recent case by an exiled Tibetan on Monday), it has sparked a debate surrounding the efficacy of the practice, its root causes and its legitimacy in Buddhist tradition, in which Tibetan blogger/activist Woeser, exiled Prime Minister Lobsang Sangay, the Dalai Lama and the Chinese government have all weighed in. Today The Economist said that if Tibetan protesters are hoping for foreign diplomatic intervention, the self-immolations have been largely ineffective:

China does not seem worried that the recent unrest in Tibet might derail its diplomacy. And it has good reason not to be too concerned. Four years ago China came under international pressure when a series of protests and riots swept across the Tibetan plateau. That outbreak coincided with Chinese preparations to stage the Olympic Games in August 2008, a period when international attention was unusually focused on China’s human-rights record. The unrest erupted before the global financial crisis made Western leaders more than usually eager to co-operate with China rather than confront it over internal issues such as Tibet.

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Post tags: self-immolation, Tibet, Tibet protests
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On Saturday, the state-run news media sought to equate the Dalai Lama, a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, with the Nazis and their genocidal war on European Jews.

“The remarks of the Dalai Lama remind us of the cruel Nazis during the Second World War,” it said, adding, “How similar it is to the Holocaust committed by Hitler on the Jews!”

It also called him a “tricky liar skilled in double-dealing.”

The comments referred to past statements in which the Dalai Lama condemned policies that encouraged Han Chinese migration to Tibetan areas and others that favored Chinese-language instruction over Tibetan in predominately Tibetan schools.

The commentary continued to claim that the Dalai Lama is trying divide China, but the Dalai Lama has claimed that his goal is more autonomy within China. The Guardian adds:

An official of the Tibetan government-in-exile based in Dharmsala, India, said the Dalai Lama had stated that he did not support self-immolation. “We are concerned about China shifting the blame on the Dalai Lama, making him the scapegoat, rather than correcting their own repressive policies,” said Dicki Choyang, minister of the exile government’s Department of Information and International Affairs.

One activist group, the London-based Free Tibet, released a video on Friday of one of the most recent self-immolations, showing the death of Sonam Thargyal, a 44-year-old farmer who doused himself with kerosene before setting himself alight earlier this month.

Dicki Choyang, of the exiled government, said China’s description of the population proposal was “totally misleading”. The proposal “never suggested removing established communities but advised preventing a massive transfer in the future”, she said.

Read more about the Tibet protests and the Dalai Lama via CDT.

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Post tags: Dalai Lama, Tibet, tibet politics, tibetan government-in-exile, Tibetan protests
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For decades, Nepal has been a safe haven for Tibetans fleeing China but activists say their people’s peaceful existence is at threat because of Beijing’s growing influence over its Himalayan neighbour ….

In February, Nepal police arrested 13 students protesting in front of the United Nations headquarters in Kathmandu, releasing them only after they had spent two weeks in jail.

“They were just taking part in a human rights protest and they were arrested. Before, when people got arrested they would be released on the same night,” said Dolma, who has been detained twice in recent months.

“We get information that they got orders from China to be kept in detention for so long.”

Last month, a CNN team was harassed on the Nepalese side of the border by plain-clothed Chinese men while reporting on the same issue, as Nepalese guards looked on.

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Post tags: nepal, Tibet, Tibetan exiles, Tibetan refugees
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“So what would you like to ask premier Wen this year?” he says.

I tell him that I haven’t prepared any questions this year because the whole thing is rigged and I will never have an opportunity to ask one.

He giggles: “But what if you did have a chance …?”

“Well I won’t”, I say… and we go on like this for a while.

I point out to him that every year there’s one question from Russia, “how would you characterise China-Russia relations at the moment?”; one from India, “how would you characterise China-India relations at the moment?”; one from Japan, “how would you”…and so on; one from Taiwan, one from the US, one from Europe and never one from Australia.

He giggles: “But what if you could? Would you ask about Tibet? What would ask about Tibet?”

Via Robert Barnett.

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Post tags: Australia, NPC, Robert Barnett, Tibet, Wen Jiabao
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“What was … interesting was that messages you’d expect to have been deleted all the time – like mentions of the Falun Gong [spiritual movement] or the dissident and artist Ai Weiwei – were not done so every time. It would seem to suggest that there is no automatic, blanket deletion going on,” says Bamman. Rather it points to a high level of human involvement and a nuanced approach.

The censorship mechanism is also agile – able to turn its attention to troublespots on demand. “This is the most surprising thing that we saw,” says Bamman. “In Tibet there was an overall deletion rate of 53 per cent – against 12 per cent in Beijing and 11 per cent in Shanghai ….”

Two other areas with relatively high minority populations, Qinghai and Ningxia, also suffered from particularly high rates of deletion according to Carnegie Mellon News, where the researchers’ methodology is explained in greater detail:

To study this “soft” censorship, the CMU team analyzed almost 57 million messages posted on Sina Weibo, a domestic Chinese microblog site similar to Twitter that has more than 200 million users. They collected samples of weibos from June 27 to Sept. 30, 2011, using an application programming interface (API) that Sina Weibo provides to developers so they can build related services.

Using the same API, they later checked a random subset of weibos to see if they still existed and another subset that included terms known to be politically sensitive. If a weibo was deleted, Sina would return what the researchers came to regard as an ominous message: “target weibo does not exist.”

In late June and early July, for instance, rumors began circulating of the death of Jiang Zemin …. On July 6, at the height of the rumor, 64 of 83 messages containing his name were deleted; on July 7, 29 of 31 such messages were deleted.

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Post tags: Ai Weiwei, Falun Gong, Internet censorship, Jiang Zemin, microblogging, Ningxia, qinghai, sina weibo, Tibet
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• Signing 08 Charter (the document for which Liu Xiaobo was sentenced to 10 years in jail);
• Attending, or expressing interest in, Jasmine gatherings;
• Signing online appeals, in one case, for improving prison management; in another, against the detention of a Uighur scholar;
• Intent to attend events organized by Ai Weiwei (this was before Ai Weiwei was detained and held for 86 days last year);
• Attending the memorial of a woman who self-immolated to protest against violent demolition;
• Writing blogs or articles on the themes of democracy and freedom, about June 4th, Tibet or Xinjiang;
• Twitter expressions;
• Sending a bouquet to the Norwegian Hall of Shanghai Expo in connection to the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to Liu Xiaobo;

Cao’s second post describes the typical content of a tea-drinking session, and the spectrum of invitees’ reactions, from defiance to fear or sadness:

Hecha, it appeared, doesn’t involve beating or sustained verbal abuse. That’s because it is the “low end” of the government intimidation and persecution, and depending on how big a threat you are in their perception, things can become much worse ….

Some people dealt with their hecha sessions with composure and even playfulness, others left useful advice, such as “be firm and you have done nothing wrong ….”

One way or the other, it is hard to exaggerate the kind of fear hecha can strike into ordinary people. It lays bare the fact that the state has every power over you, is prepared to use it in the most wanton way, while you no power, no rights, and there is nothing you can do to protect yourself.

See more on tea-drinking at CDT, including the Grass Mud Horse Lexicon’s entry on the term, translations of several first-hand accounts, and some tongue-in-cheek advice for tea-drinkers.

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Post tags: Ai Weiwei, drinking tea, DSD, interrogation, June 4th, Liu Xiaobo, Tibet, Twitter, Xinjiang
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“Everyone is equal before the law. No matter whether you are a monk or a nun, you are a citizen first,” Liu was quoted as saying. “There are no monasteries outside the law, nor are there individuals outside the law.”

In an apparent reference to the self-immolations, Liu said that according to Buddhist teachings, life is precious and “there should be no reason to destroy an innocent life.”

He told senior clerics to teach the younger monks to “cherish all living things, cherish their health and cherish their lives.”

In an interview at Asia Society, Columbia University’s Robert Barnett examines the argument that protest by self-immolation is an “un-Buddhist” act:

Is there any tradition to this particular kind of protest in Buddhist culture?

The Chinese press has been arguing that these protests violate Buddhist principles and rules, but in fact they resonate strongly with Buddhist tradition. Suicide is shunned in Buddhism if carried out for personal reasons, but self-sacrifice for a noble cause is highly regarded. There are many stories about the Buddha doing this in former lives, most famously one in which he sacrifices himself by giving his body to a dying tigress so she can feed her cubs. So an act that is done for the good of the community is considered noble, and especially so if it is done by a member of the clergy.

It is because these acts have been done by monks, nuns or former monks, that it has been so hard for the Chinese government to discredit the protestors — it would be very different if lay people had been involved. The government had almost total success in discrediting five Chinese people, said by the government to be adherents of the Falun Gong sect, who staged a mass self-immolation in Beijing in 2001: the event was presented as proof that these people had been brainwashed and manipulated by the Falun Gong. But despite some tentative attempts by the Chinese press to do this with the Tibetan monks and nuns, these efforts have failed, largely because they are so widely respected within the Tibetan community.

The interview as a whole is highly recommended reading. For another perspective on self-immolation’s compatibility with Buddhism, via Kelley Currie, a 1965 letter from Thich Nhat Nanh to Martin Luther King.

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Post tags: Buddhism, Robert Barnett, self-immolation, Sichuan, Tibet
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Drubpa Kyab’s disappearance comes amid a huge clampdown in Tibetan-inhabited areas following several bouts of deadly unrest, and ahead of the March anniversary of the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama’s flight into exile.

A government official in Seda told AFP that he was unaware of the arrest of Drubpa Kyab. Police in the county did not answer phones on Sunday.

China has imposed virtual martial law in numerous Tibetan-inhabited regions as tensions have escalated, leading to the deaths last month of at least two people in clashes between police and locals in Sichuan, which borders Tibet.

Over the past year at least 20 Tibetans, many of them Buddhist monks, have set themselves on fire in protest at what they say is religious and cultural repression.

See more coverage on Tibet and recent protests via CDT. See also a report about the differences in relations between Han officials and Tibetans in areas of Qinghai vs areas of Sichuan, where many of the protests and subsequent violence have been centered.

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Post tags: political prisoners, Tibet, Tibet protests, writers
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French newspaper Courrier International published an article entitled ‘Dalai clique intends to undermine the unity of China’, in which it mentioned that after some interviews in Tibetan-inhabited areas, its reporters found that pursuing harmony and development are the most universal desire of ordinary people in these areas.

Those extreme political claims, such as “Tibet independence” and “high-degree autonomy”, are of no social foundation. What common people care about is how to live a better life. Appeals of some self-immolating individuals and political extremists do not conform to the fundamental interest of the local rea, because they are transplanted from outside and “airborned” to the masses in Tibetan-inhabited areas.

However, it was the Chinese-language Global Times whose “reporters found that pursuing harmony and development are the most universal desire of ordinary people in these areas.” Courrier International collects and translates news articles from sources around the world to present foreign perspectives: in this case, a Global Times piece demonstrating the view that unrest in Sichuan “is engineered by Tibetans in exile, infamous minions of the West” (from the translation’s introduction).

Courrier International’s reference page for Global Times does not lavish unreserved praise upon it: “a quality newspaper at its launch, it now freely surfs the wave of national pride that has accompanied China’s emergence onto the world stage.”

For actual Western media coverage from the troubled region, see reports by The Guardian’s Jonathan Watts and McClatchy’s Tom Lasseter, via CDT.

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Post tags: France, Global Times, Tibet, Tibet coverage
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Against a backdrop of rapid socio-economic change and modernization, China continues to be an authoritarian one-party state that imposes sharp curbs on freedom of expression, association, and religion; openly rejects judicial independence and press freedom; and arbitrarily restricts and suppresses human rights defenders and organizations, often through extra-judicial measures.

The government also censors the internet; maintains highly repressive policies in ethnic minority areas such as Tibet, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia; systematically condones—with rare exceptions—abuses of power in the name of “social stability” ; and rejects domestic and international scrutiny of its human rights record as attempts to destabilize and impose “Western values” on the country. The security apparatus—hostile to liberalization and legal reform—seems to have steadily increased its power since the 2008 Beijing Olympics. China’s “social stability maintenance” expenses are now larger than its defense budget.

At the same time Chinese citizens are increasingly rights-conscious and challenging the authorities over livelihood issues, land seizures, forced evictions, abuses of power by corrupt cadres, discrimination, and economic inequalities. Official and scholarly statistics estimate that 250-500 protests occur per day; participants number from ten to tens of thousands. Internet users and reform-oriented media are aggressively pushing the boundaries of censorship, despite the risks of doing so, by advocating for the rule of law and transparency, exposing official wrong-doing, and calling for reforms.

China’s state media has responded to the report with a flurry of indignation, as HRW’s Nicholas Bequelin noted:

此地无银三百两： People’s Daily and China Daily have published a total of 10 (!) articles on Human Rights Watch (@hrw) in one week.

— Nicholas Bequelin 林伟 (@Bequelin) January 31, 2012

(“此地无银三百两”: “No 300 taels of silver here”; to draw attention to something by denying it.)

People’s Daily, for example, suggested that criticism of China’s rights record arose from Western insecurity:

It seems that some Western countries and NGOs have set out to attack China over its human rights issues. They first assume that human rights are being ignored, then seek evidence from rumors, and make speculations to blindly accuse China of violating human rights with the real purpose of distorting China’s international image ….

Why does the West still hold a prejudice against China’s human rights? The only reason is that the Cold War mentality and ideological hegemony still prevails. As long as China is a socialist country, the West will insist on distorting its image and see China as a threat to the Western system.

Since the end of the Cold War, the West has been too boastful of its political system, believing it is the only system that has universal value in the world.

China’s significant economic progress has stirred Western anxieties. Distorting China’s human rights becomes the only political choice.

Elsewhere, People’s Daily also criticised the report for failing to acknowledge China’s progress in legal reform. From Xinhua:

The World Report “gave no word on the great progress in terms of China’s judicial reforms that have been demonstrated in the Criminal Procedural Law draft amendment,” the article said.

Legal experts say the draft amendment will help improve the protection of criminal suspects’ human rights, by preventing judges from accepting confessions from tortured suspects and giving these suspects more defense options.

In fact, the report does acknowledge the amendment, but reiterates concern at the prospect of legalised enforced disappearances:

In August 2011, in an effort to … improve the administration of justice, the government published new rules to eliminate unlawfully obtained evidence and strengthened the procedural rights of the defense in its draft revisions to the Criminal Procedure Law. It is likely it will be adopted in March 2012.

However, the draft revisions also introduced an alarming provision that would effectively legalize enforced disappearances by allowing police to secretly detain suspects for up to six months at a location of their choice in “state security, terrorism and major corruption cases.” The measure would put suspects at great risk of torture while giving the government justification for the “disappearance” of dissidents and activists in the future. Adoption of this measure—which is hotly criticized in Chinese media by human rights lawyers, activists, and part of the legal community—would significantly deviate from China’s previous stance of gradual convergence with international norms on administering justice, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which China signed in 1997 but has yet to ratify.

See more on CDT.

People’s Daily also objected to the report’s claim that “the government continues to build a ‘new socialist countryside’ [in Tibet] by relocating and rehousing up to 80 percent of the TAR population, including all pastoralists and nomads.” From Xinhua:

The People’s Daily article, jointly published by two Tibet experts, said the HRW’s conclusion was groundless and contradictory to basic facts.

The two authors, Zhang Ming, or Lorong Dramadul, with the China Tibetology Research Center, and Professor Yang Minghong with Sichuan University, hoped that their experiences and observations from over 20 years of field research in Tibet could help clarify the misunderstandings.

They cited official statistics and said that in 2011, 1.85 million Tibetans, or 61 percent of the total population, had settled in permanent residences.

“No more than 150,000 people, or less than 5 percent of the Tibetan population, had left their original residence,” the experts wrote.

Chinese Academy of Social Sciences researcher Pan Xizhe’s op-ed at China Daily accused Human Rights Watch of sloppy methodology and political motivations:

At first glance, Human Rights Watch appears to be keen on the protection of international human rights. But it actually carries out its work with double standards and bias. Its observations lack political neutrality and its research methods are questionable. The organization’s employment of unqualified workers has also hurt the credibility of its report. Human Rights Watch should reflect inward before passing on judgment to others.

The media and international observers have long criticized Human Rights Watch for passing judgment of human rights conditions of a country or region through tinted lens. It turns a blind eye to human rights issues in some countries while criticizing others vehemently. The Sunday Times quoted a human rights insider in the United States as saying that the organization caters its reports to the US government, which greatly affects its objectivity ….

In the China portion of its report, Human Rights Watch used expressions such as “estimate”, “possibly”, and “probably”. It criticized China’s judiciary system, religious institutions, regional autonomy by ethnic groups, family planning policy as well as foreign and economic policies.

The US section of the report, which criticises the Obama White House’s failure to pursue Bush administration officials for approving the use of torture and decries America’s “abusive” counterterrorism policies, growing poverty and world-leading prison population, can be read here.

While the World Report looked back at 2011, at The Diplomat, HRW’s Phelim Kine looks ahead to 2012:

These cases represent more than the Chinese government’s well-documented contempt for freedom of expression explicitly guaranteed in Article 35 of the Constitution. They are also clear efforts to breed fear and sow silence among China’s beleaguered community of human rights defenders and civil society activists. The aim: to ensure that the 12-month senior Communist Party leadership transition this year proceeds without public challenges to the Party’s 61-year monopoly on power. China’s President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao are preparing to step aside for a new generation of leaders, widely touted to be Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang, in a secretive political succession that won’t be complete until in March 2013 ….

The government’s overriding obsession with maintaining its monopoly on power make it likely that these abuses will continue under the leadership of Xi Jinping. Foreign governments could help reverse this trend and give support to Chinese who want a more accountable government by more vigorously engaging the government on such violations. Thirty years since the launch of China’s economic reform and opening, a decade after China entered the World Trade Organization, and five years since the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the deterioration in respect for human rights and rule of law in China should be of serious concern for all countries seeking long-term, sustainable and mutually-beneficial bilateral relations with China.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: censorship, criminal procedure law, disabled, human rights watch, industrial pollution, leadership transition, legal reform, Li Keqiang, migrants, minorities, press freedom, religious freedom, Tibet, women, Xi Jinping
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