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China news tagged with: Tibet (382)

• China to Seek Stability in Tibet via Development

  

  The New York Times reports:

  President Hu Jintao and other leaders at a Tibet planning conference decided that “more efforts must be made to greatly improve living standards of the people in Tibet, as well as ethnic unity and stability,” the Xinhua news agency reported.

  The emphasis on economic development indicates that Chinese leaders still see the solution to the problem of Tibet as one of supplying creature comforts. If the region can develop fast enough, the reasoning goes, then Tibetans will buy into Chinese rule.

  But a vast uprising among Tibetans in 2008 and continuing tensions since have shown that even though the region’s economy has been growing quickly for years, many Tibetans still feel economically disadvantaged and culturally threatened. In private conversations, Tibetans often express rage over the suppression of traditional Buddhist practice and over the influx of ethnic Han migrants to Tibetan areas.

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  • January 23, 2010 3:05 PM

• China and Tibet Skirmish at a Film Festival

  

  The New York Times has more on the Chinese government’s efforts to censor a documentary about Tibet at the Palm Springs Film Festival:

  The current wrangle is only the most recent protest by Chinese officials that the arts, and film specifically, are being used as a weapon to meddle in their internal affairs. In August, two American filmmakers were blocked from traveling to China to present their documentary about the more than 5,000 children in Sichuan Province who died when a 2008 earthquake caused numerous schools to collapse. Computer hackers and demonstrators took aim at the Melbourne International Film Festival in Australia in July to protest its screening of a documentary about a leader of Muslim Uighurs in the Xinjiang region of northwest China, where some 200 people were killed in ethnic violence last summer. And at last fall’s Frankfurt Book Fair, a diplomatic struggle emerged over the fair’s invitation to two dissident Chinese writers to speak at its official program honoring China.

  Darryl Macdonald, the director of the Palm Springs festival, said in an interview that the Chinese consul general in Los Angeles traveled to the desert city on Wednesday. The official told him that the directors of the two films, rather than the Chinese government, which financed the films, had decided that they would not allow their work to be screened unless the festival canceled its scheduled showing of “The Sun Behind the Clouds: Tibet’s Struggle for Freedom.”

  That documentary, by Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam, follows the Dalai Lama over a year through protests over the status of Tibet that were timed to coincide with preparations for the Beijing Olympics.

  The Chinese officials “repeatedly said the assertions presented in ‘The Sun Behind the Clouds’ were all lies, and they reminded us that the United States government had an official position that Tibet is a part of China,” Mr. Macdonald said. “I told them that we have freedom of expression in this country, and that we would not allow any foreign country to dictate what films we should or should not play.”

  Read more about recent cases of the Chinese government exporting censorship overseas, via CDT.

  » Read more
  • January 10, 2010 9:32 PM

• China Jails Senior Tibetan Lama For 8 1/2 Years

  

  From AP:

  China has sentenced a respected Tibetan lama to 8 1/2 years in jail for illegal land occupation and ammunition possession, possibly the first senior Buddhist leader tried on serious charges linked to riots in 2008 in the Tibetan capital, a lawyer said Thursday.

  A court in southwestern Sichuan province bordering Tibet convicted Phurbu Tsering Rinpoche, who headed a convent in Ganzi, a predominantly Tibetan prefecture in the province, Beijing-based attorney Jiang Tianyong said.

  Phurbu Tsering Rinpoche is a Buddhist priest, or lama, and is highly respected. He was arrested May 18, 2008, just days after more than 80 nuns in Ganzi held a demonstration against an official campaign to impose “patriotic re-education” on their convents, in which they were required to denounce Tibet’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

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  • December 31, 2009 5:10 AM

• China Confirms Two Tibet Executions

  

  The Chinese government has confirmed the previously-reported execution of two Tibetans for their role in the 2008 Lhasa riots. From The Guardian:

  A foreign ministry spokesman, Ma Zhaoxu, said two men had been put to death, and declined to provide further details. Overseas Tibetan groups have identified the dead as Lobsang Gyaltsen and Loyak.

  Lobsang Gyaltsen was sentenced to death this year for an arson attack that killed a shop owner in Lhasa, according to a report at the time by Xinhua news agency. Loyak was handed the same penalty for starting a blaze at a motorcycle shop that killed five people, the agency said.

  The US-funded Radio Free Asia said Lobsang Gyaltsen was allowed a visit by his mother before he was executed. “I have nothing to say, except please take good care of my child and send him to school,” he was quoted as telling her.

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  • October 27, 2009 1:59 PM

• Dalai Lama Reaches Out To Chinese

  

  From AFP:

  The Dalai Lama on Wednesday reached out to China, saluting a Beijing-based novelist who has defied China by seeking reconciliation with the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader.

  On a visit to Washington, the Dalai Lama presented an award to Wang Lixiong, who helped spearhead a petition by more than 300 prominent Chinese who last year questioned a crackdown on major protests in Tibet.

  China has tried to isolate the Dalai Lama, pressing nations including the United States to publicly shun him. Organizers did not announce Wang’s attendance before the ceremony, saying it could put him at personal risk.

  At a theater in Washington’s Chinatown, Wang greeted the Dalai Lama by folding his hands in a traditional Tibetan greeting. The two men exchanged a lengthy embrace as the Tibetan leader draped him with a ceremonial white scarf.

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  • October 8, 2009 12:55 AM

• Xinhua: China Issues White Paper Stressing Harmony, Equality Among All Ethnic Groups

  

  From Xinhua News Agency:

  The Chinese government Sunday published a white paper on its ethnic policy, stressing harmony and equality among all ethnic groups.

  The paper, released by the State Council Information Office, reviewed the country’s basic situation of ethnic issues, the government policies over the past six decades and the economic, social and cultural progress in ethnic minority regions.

  It was the third white paper on China’s ethnic policy after two reports were issued respectively in 1999 and 2005, said an official with the State Ethnic Affairs Commission.

  “Through this white paper that summed up our ethnic policy and practice, we hope the international society could have a better understanding about the reality our policy is based, about what the policy is, and the impact it has on solving ethnic issues and promoting the development of ethnic minorities in China,” the official said.

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  • October 3, 2009 9:21 PM

• David L. Phillips: Treading Carefully on China and Tibet

  

  In the Boston Globe, David Phillips writes an op-ed on President Obama’s decision not to host the Dalai Lama at the White House next week:

  Obama has a long list of items to discuss with President Hu Jintao when they meet next month in Beijing. He knows that multilateralism cannot succeed without China’s cooperation on a whole host of issues, including the global economic crisis, global warming, and nuclear nonproliferation.

  However, Obama should not turn a blind eye to human rights in China. He should point out that stability is essential for social and economic development, and that China’s stability will give it greater self-confidence on the world stage.

  Obama should emphasize that, absent progress, Tibetans will become radicalized and the present opportunity to negotiate an autonomy arrangement that strengthens China’s territorial integrity could disappear. The Dalai Lama is best placed to endorse an arrangement that advances China’s interests as well as the interests of Tibetans. In exchange for verifiable autonomy, the Dalai Lama would put his moral authority behind an agreement that precludes separation or Tibetan independence.

  Meanwhile, the State Department has announced a new representative to handle Tibetan issues. From AFP:

  Clinton announced that Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs Maria Otero will also serve as special coordinator for Tibetan issues for President Barack Obama’s administration, the State Department said.

  “Otero will coordinate the US government’s policies, programs and projects on Tibetan issues within the context of our bilateral relationship with the People’s Republic of China,” it said in a statement.

  Her appointment was announced the same day as China — which sent troops into Tibet in 1950 and crushed protests there last year — celebrated 60 years of communist rule and received congratulations from Clinton on the occasion.

  “She will seek to foster an environment to promote substantive discussion between the Dalai Lama’s representatives and the Chinese government, as well as support initiatives to help safeguard Tibet’s unique culture,” it added.

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  • October 3, 2009 8:39 PM

• China Bans Travel to Tibet

  

  Tibet is off limits to foreign tourists until after the October 1 holiday, according to the New York Times:

  Tour operators who arrange the paperwork said the new regulations were issued on Sunday by the region’s tourism bureau without explanation. They said that foreigners already holding permits would be allowed to travel to Tibet but that restrictions would be placed on their movement, including requirements that they travel only with guides and stay in government-approved hotels. Tour operators said they were told the ban on new permits would remain in effect until at least Oct. 8.

  Yong Hong, deputy sales manager at Xigaze China International Travel Service in Lhasa, said the new rules were unexpected and not particularly welcome. “It was a sudden thing, but this year is unusual,” he said, referring to the Oct. 1 National Day celebrations marking the founding of the People’s Republic.

  Tourism, which makes up nearly 20 percent of the region’s economy, was battered by the rioting last year but has more than recovered, officials say. Nearly 1.4 million tourists visited the Tibet Autonomous Region in August, a monthly record, according to figures cited by Xinhua, the state news agency.

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  • September 22, 2009 1:22 PM

• Wall Street Journal: Shunning Tibet

  

  This Editorial is from the Wall Street Journal:

  The Obama Administration may think its decision to cold shoulder the Dalai Lama on the Tibetan leader’s upcoming trip to Washington is smart politics. But if the leader of the free world doesn’t stand up for religious freedom, who will?

  The news broke earlier this week when an Obama aide told the Tibetans that the President wants to meet Chinese leaders before he meets the Dalai Lama. This is par for the course for an Administration that gave only lackluster support to Iran’s democrats and has made conciliatory overtures to Putin’s Russia and Kim Jong Il’s North Korea.

  But it’s still a big departure from a significant and important tradition: President George Bush met the Dalai Lama every time the monk visited Washington; as did President Bill Clinton. The Tibetans hadn’t formally scheduled a meeting with President Obama for next month, but the Dalai Lama had expressed his hope to meet the President on the trip.

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  • September 16, 2009 8:34 PM

• China Renovates Former Palace Home Of Dalai Lamas

  

  From AP:

  China has completed a seven-year renovation of Tibet’s Potala Palace — home to the Dalai Lamas until the region’s current spiritual leader fled during an aborted uprising against Communist rule 50 years ago.

  China says the project is part of its plan to promote Tibetan culture and language in the region as it develops its economy, of which tourism forms a major part. The renovation, which also repaired the Norbu Lingka, a summer palace for the Dalai Lamas, cost 300 million yuan ($43.9 million), according to a report Monday from the state-run news agency.

  But many Tibetan exiles say the Himalayan region’s cultural heritage has been threatened by Beijing’s restrictions on the native Buddhist religion and the Tibetan language as well as a government-orchestrated mass migration of Han Chinese in the last three decades. A large number of monasteries and other artifacts also were destroyed during China’s Cultural Revolution, from 1966 to 1976, although the Potala was spared in the violence.

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  • August 24, 2009 7:30 AM

• Christian Le Mière: China’s Western Front

  

  Can Beijing Bring Order to Its Restive Provinces? This article on the Foreign Affairs says:

  Early last month, the mayor of Urumqi, the capital of the western Chinese province of Xinjiang, described the struggle to maintain China’s unity as “a political battle that’s fierce and of blood and fire.” His description was apt: a spate of ethnic violence in the city had left almost 200 people dead. For several days, armed mobs occupied the streets, and arsonists set the city ablaze.

  The recent violence in Urumqi resembles the unrest that occurred in March 2008 in Lhasa, another city in China’s far west. Although the two cities are one thousand miles apart and home to two very different ethnic groups — the Uighurs in Xinjiang are Turkic Muslims, the Tibetans are Asian Buddhists — local demonstrations in both places quickly inflamed existing discontent and ethnic tensions.

  In each case, Chinese paramilitary officers were eventually able to restore order. But on both occasions, at the national and provincial levels, Chinese politicians did little to address the root causes of the unrest — namely, the state’s encouragement of Han Chinese transmigration and the consequent subjugation of local cultures.

  China’s central planners have keenly eyed the country’s sparsely populated far western frontier for decades. In a country that has more than one hundred cities, with more than one million inhabitants, and where 90 percent of the population lives on only ten percent of the land, Beijing has seen the vast expanses of the west as unfulfilled potential. It is not just the vacant earth that interests China’s leaders but what lies beneath it — Xinjiang holds more than a quarter of China’s oil and gas reserves, and the Tibet Autonomous Region has nearly half of China’s mineral resources, such as gold, coal, chromite, lithium, and perhaps the world’s largest uranium deposits.

  The problem for Beijing, however, has been how to persuade Han Chinese — the ethnic group that makes up more than 90 percent of China’s population — to relocate to a forbidding area that is several days’ travel from the country’s more developed east. In response, the Chinese government has made enormous investments in infrastructure, meant to make the remote regions of Xinjiang and Tibet — separated from the rest of China by the Gobi Desert and Tibetan plateau — more accessible. At the same time, it has sought to pacify native populations by stimulating local economic activity.

  Christian Le Mière is Editor of Jane’s Intelligence Review.

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  • August 20, 2009 9:59 PM

• Unraveling of A Livelihood

  

  “Tibetans in Nepal Watch Carpet Factories Succumb to Economic, Political Pressures” Emily Wax of the Washington Post reports:

  Nepal is home to the world’s second-largest Tibetan exile community after India. Buddhist prayer flags flutter along Kathmandu’s alleyways and in its markets. Some of the world’s most celebrated stupas — whitewashed temples resembling enormous birthday cakes crossed with spaceships — draw Buddhist monks and nuns and foreign tourists to the city’s crowded squares. Recordings of the Buddhist mantra “Om mani padme hum,” played by shopkeepers, echo through the narrow streets.

  Since a wave of protests against Chinese rule that began in Tibet in March 2008, Nepal has been under increasing pressure from Beijing to take sterner measures against pro-Tibet demonstrations here, according to diplomats, government officials and human rights workers. A recent press statement by Nepal’s Ministry of Home Affairs appears to support the tougher stance: “Nepal stands firm not to allow any external forces to use its soil against its neighbors and it sticks to its One China policy.”

  China accuses the Dalai Lama, the Buddhist spiritual leader, of trying to split Tibet from China. The Dalai Lama, who lives in exile in northern India, has said that although he desires greater autonomy for Tibet, he does not advocate independence.

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  • August 4, 2009 5:53 PM

• Temtsel Hao: Xinjiang, Tibet, Beyond: China’s Ethnic Relations

  

  The interplay between local identity, state policy, and economic change is at the core of the violent events in Tibet in 2008 and Xinjiang in 2009. The Chinese government’s predicament in finding a workable policy in response is severe, says Temtsel Hao on the DemoracyNow:

  For the Uyghurs in Xinjiang and other non-Chinese minorities, the great concern is how far Chinese authority can resist increasingly populist opinion and retain this limited neutrality. The answer to this question will affect how far and how much non-Chinese minorities can identify with the state. As China’s society becomes more loose and state power recedes, government policy is more and more subject to social influences.

  The Chinese authorities face a tough choice over how they maintain the state’s legitimacy and deal with ethnic relations (see Tsering Shakya, “Tibet and China: the past in the present”, 18 March 2009). If they seek to respond to growing Han Chinese ethnic nationalism by accelerating assimilation of non-Chinese groups, this would provoke the minority-nationalist causes with which the Chinese state found some accommodation in 1949: national self-determination and national liberation. But if they seek to amend and improve existing multi-ethnic arrangements to improve inter-ethnic relations in autonomous regions, they risk severe problems with Chinese business interests and popular opinions.

  China has no easy way out. The fires of Lhasa, and now Urumqi, cannot be extinguished without the most intelligent and sophisticated policy mix. But even that might not be enough. Several genies are out of the bottle, and flying free. Welcome to the 21st century, China.

  Temtsel Hao is a journalist with the BBC World Service, based in London.

  » Read more
  • July 27, 2009 9:31 AM

• Dui Hua Human Rights Journal: Tibetan Guide’s Incitement Case Surfaces: 3-Year Sentence for Emails, Text Messages

  

  From the Dui Hua Human Rights Journal:

  Dui Hua has obtained and produced English translations of the indictment and verdict (original documents in PDF) for a previously unknown case of a Tibetan sentenced to three years in prison for “inciting splittism” after the March 14 riots in Lhasa. The case against Gonpo Tserang (贡保才让), a well-respected expedition guide who has trekked with foreign celebrities and participated in high-profile mountain rescue efforts, involved a series of emails and text messages sent over three days to acquaintances outside of China. These messages, which prosecutors claim “distorted the facts and true situation regarding social stability in the Tibetan area following the ‘March 14 incident” were considered by the court to be deserving of severe punishment.

  This case is significant in a number of respects. First, it is the only case Dui Hua is aware of in which a Tibetan in Yunnan Province has been convicted of a state security crime following the Tibetan protests of 2008. Second, it is not at all apparent that the charge of “inciting splittism” was properly applied. The content of the messages is never specified, and it is questionable whether individuals who are not located in China are even capable of carrying out acts that would “split the nation or undermine national unity.” An argument could thus be made that, never imagining that his messages could “incite splittism,” Gonpo Tserang did not intend to do so. This is perhaps an argument that an attorney could have raised in his defense. Unfortunately, it appears that, at least for his appeal, Gonpo Tserang was not represented by counsel—very likely a result of the reluctance of most lawyers to take on criminal defense work in political cases and the threats made warning of serious consequences for lawyers who volunteered to defend Tibetans.

  Below is an excerpt of Gongbo Tserang’s indictment and verdict, translated by Dui Hua:

  Defendant Gonpo Tserang, male, born December 13, 1976, identification number: 523232197612131519, from Ruoergai [Dzoege] County, Aba [Ngaba] Prefecture, Sichuan Province, understands Tibetan and English and [is employed as a] guide in the expeditions department of the Xianggelila Travel Service. Prior to arrest, resided at 3-1-2 Old Civil Aviation Development, Jiantang Town, Xianggelila County. Placed under criminal detention by the Diqing Prefecture Public Security Bureau on March 23, 2008, on suspicion of inciting splittism. On April 26 of the same year, after approval from our procuratorate, he was arrested by the Diqing Prefecture Public Security Bureau in accordance with the law. He is now in custody and has no prior criminal record.

  The Diqing Prefecture Public Security Bureau completed its investigation and sent the case of Gonpo Tserang, suspected of the crime of inciting splittism, to our procuratorate on June 25, 2008, for review and prosecution. After receiving the case, we notified the defendant of his right to retain defense counsel, questioned the defendant in accordance with the law, and reviewed all of the case materials. On July 31, 2008, the case was sent back to the Diqing Prefecture Public Security Bureau for additional investigation, and on August 29 the bureau concluded its investigation and reported [its findings] back to our procuratorate.

  Following investigation in accordance with the law, it was ascertained that from March 16 to 18, 2008, defendant Gonpo Tserang used the Internet and a mobile telephone to send inflammatory emails and messages that distorted the facts and true situation regarding social stability in the Tibetan area following the “March 14 incident” to Daiwei, Jimu, and Pan Feilaici, [who were all] outside the country.

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  • June 23, 2009 6:52 PM

• Tibetan Monks Tell Tale of Escape From China

  

  The New York Times follows up with monks who staged a public protest during a visit to their monastery by foreign journalists in April 2008, following widespread protests throughout Tibetan areas:

  That daring protest, in April 2008, was transmitted around the world by the journalists on the government tour, putting a dramatic face on Tibetan defiance. Chinese officials had brought the journalists to the sprawling Labrang Monastery, in the town of Xiahe to show that Tibetans were content under Chinese rule, despite the widespread Tibetan uprising the previous month. The enraged monks, about 15 in all, punctured the official narrative.

  “If we monks hadn’t seized the opportunity to express our feelings, which are feelings in all Tibetan monks, then we would have missed a chance to tell the world,” said Lobsang, 24, a squat man with a thin goatee who now lives in India. Following Tibetan custom, he goes by his given name.

  The journalists left later that afternoon without knowing the names or the fates of the protesters. Some would be arrested and beaten, Lobsang said. For him and two other monks, it was the start of a harrowing year of flight from the Chinese authorities that ended only last month, when they arrived in this Himalayan hill town where the Dalai Lama lives in exile.

  » Read more
  • June 20, 2009 7:28 PM

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