The Agonist - Tibet

Lhasa's monks all but vanish in Chinese crackdown

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 22:53:10 -0700

Geoffrey York | Lhasa | June 23

Globe & Mail - Severe restrictions, including checkpoints and surveillance, imposed since wave of anti-government protests in March, exiles say.

The pilgrims returned to the Potala Palace yesterday, spinning their prayer wheels and prostrating themselves in front of the Dalai Lama's ancient palace on a mountaintop in Lhasa.

For two days, the Buddhist pilgrims had been pushed to the sidelines to make room for the Olympic torch relay in Lhasa. The traditional pilgrimage route at the Potala Palace was unceremoniously shut down, in one of many security measures by Chinese authorities, even though a month-long Buddhist festival has drawn thousands of pilgrims to the Tibetan capital.

Resistance snuffed out as Olympic torch tours Tibet

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 07:06:33 -0700

Clifford Coonan | Beijing | June 23

Independent - China paraded the Olympic torch through the streets of Lhasa at the weekend in a blaze of red flags, eager to present a picture of national unity and domestic harmony just three months after the Tibetan provincial capital was rocked by anti-Chinese riots.

With the Olympic Games to begin in Beijing on 8 August, senior Chinese Communist Party officials in charge of the restive province used the opportunity of the torch relay to denounce the Dalai Lama and underline China's tight grip on the Himalayan region. "Tibet's sky will never change and the red flag with five stars will forever flutter high above it," said Zhang Qingli, the hardliner who heads Tibet's Communist Party. "It is certain we will be able to totally smash the splittist schemes of the Dalai Lama's clique."

For Rural Tibetans, the Future Is in Town

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 02:14:21 -0700

Jill Drew | Geza, China | June 20

WaPo - Jian Hongmei pulls her blanket tight, trying for a few more minutes of sleep before acknowledging the new day, which opens as so many others have in her 19 years in this Tibetan mountain village.

But today is different. For the past month, Jian has been working in a new job at a small hotel about two hours away by bus. She's cleaning guest rooms and hustling for customers, making more money than the four adult farmers in her family put together. Today is her first visit back.

Tibetans, traditionally nomadic herders and farmers, are increasingly being lured into a commercial world, a place where Chinese and English language skills are prerequisites for success and ethnic identity is something to be marketed to tourists. Many young Tibetans like Jian jump at the chance to escape harsh farm work on mountain plateaus, but the opportunity means leaving behind a way of life that has defined one of the most romanticized cultures in the world

Students for a Free Tibet: Announcement

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 09:05:15 -0700

Subject: FreeTibet2008.org: SFT Launches New Olympics Website /Video

With the start of the Beijing Olympics only 49 days away, SFT HQ is stepping up our Olympic campaign efforts. To ensure that you are kept up to date with news, analysis, and ways to participate in creative, strategic and effective actions for Tibet leading up to and during the Games, we are excited to launch SFT's Olympics website: http://www.FreeTibet2008.org.

Visit http://www.FreeTibet2008.org now and watch our new SFT Olympics Campaign video, a moving account of what is at stake inside Tibet and the power we have – as Tibetans, supporters, and people of conscience – to make history for Tibet at this crucial time.

For Talks to Succeed, China Must Admit to a Tibet Problem

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 22:28:28 -0700

YaleGlobal
Sunday, June 01, 2008 15:47

China’s hard-line policy towards Tibet creates more problems than it solves. Beijing’s recent crackdown on Tibetan protesters has attracted condemnation from around the world, but did nothing to address the underlying problems in Tibet itself. If Beijing is serious about securing Tibet’s long-term future as part of China, it needs to put aside its past enmity towards the Dalai Lama – and Michael Davis, law professor at Chinese University of Hong Kong, offers a strategy for China to pursue. Only by acknowledging that the human-rights issue cannot be separated from the country’s unity and negotiating with the Dalai Lama will Beijing achieve the goal that both Beijing and the Dalai Lama claim to share: an autonomous Tibet that remains part of China while retaining its own Tibetan identity. - YaleGlobal

My Vision of a Compassionate Future

Sat, 24 May 2008 22:23:56 -0700

Dalai Lama | October 21, 2007

This 2007 op-ed once again rings true ~qb

WaPo - Brute force can never subdue the basic human desire for freedom. The thousands of people who marched in the cities of Eastern Europe in recent decades, the unwavering determination of the people in my homeland of Tibet and the recent demonstrations in Burma are powerful reminders of this truth. Freedom is the very source of creativity and human development. It is not enough, as communist systems assumed, to provide people with food, shelter and clothing. If we have these things but lack the precious air of liberty to sustain our deeper nature, we remain only half human.

Tibet could be 'swamped' by mass Chinese settlement after Olympics, says Dalai Lama

Fri, 23 May 2008 19:14:55 -0700

Julian Borger | May 24

Guardian - Buddhist leader fears attempt to dilute identity; Meeting with Brown helpful despite problems.

The Dalai Lama claimed yesterday that Beijing was planning the mass settlement of 1 million ethnic Chinese people in Tibet after the Olympics with the aim of diluting Tibetan culture and identity.

Tibet's exiled spiritual leader also claimed that some of Asia's most important rivers which flow from the Tibetan plateau are being polluted and diminished by careless industrialisation and unplanned irrigation.

The Dalai Lama made the claims in an interview with the Guardian after a meeting yesterday with Gordon Brown at Lambeth Palace. He said the talks had been detailed and the prime minister had been helpful "in spite of his difficulties". The Dalai Lama said: "He met me and he showed genuine concern and he wants to help."

Karma chameleon: He charms the West, but can the Dalai Lama save Tibet?

Wed, 21 May 2008 10:30:00 -0700

Celebrities will be queueing up to meet the Dalai Lama when he visits Britain this week. But what is it about this self-proclaimed 'simple monk' that makes him such a star magnet? And will all that glad-handing actually help him save Tibet?

By Paul Vallely
Sunday, 18 May 2008

Independent - They took two knucklebones from a yak and put them at the temples of a man called Lungshar. They were bound in place with a tourniquet, which was tightened until his eyeballs popped out. That was the theory, at any rate. But this was the ancient Tibetan punishment of blinding and it had been outlawed by the 13th Dalai Lama, so no one was quite sure how to do it. The executioners proceeded on oral accounts handed down from those who had seen the penalty exacted in a previous age. They didn't get it quite right and one of the eyes had to be gouged out with a knife before the sockets were cauterised with boiling oil.

China's next-generation nationalists

Fri, 16 May 2008 23:08:34 -0700

Joshua Kurlantzick | May 6

LAT - They're educated, richer and more aggressive toward the West. As human rights protesters dogged the Beijing Olympics' torch relay around the world, as supporters of Tibet condemned the violent crackdown in Lhasa, and as Darfur activists demanded change in China's Sudan policy, Chinese young people worked themselves into a different form of righteous anger. In online forums and chat rooms, they blasted Beijing's leaders for not being tougher in Tibet. They agitated for boycotts against Western businesses based in nations that object to Beijing's policies, and they directed venomous fury against anyone critical of China.

China floats inviting Dalai Lama to Olympics:Tibet MP

Tue, 13 May 2008 19:30:11 -0700

Ralph Jennings | Taipei | May 12

Reuters - A senior Chinese official has asked whether Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama would agree to attend the Beijing Olympics to ease recent tensions, a Tibet government-in-exile legislator said on Monday.

The Dalai Lama would consider going, the law maker said.

Khedroob Thondup, a Taipei-based member of Tibet's parliament-in-exile, said a senior leader in Beijing had called him about two weeks ago to "sound out" the Olympic visit idea. He did not identify the leader.

China has blamed the Dalai Lama for unrest in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China since mid-March.

The gesture suggest that Beijing seeks to show the world that it can get along with Tibetan leaders following a world opinion backlash over China's handling of the Tibet violence.

Pico Iyer on Tibet, China and the Dalai Lama

Mon, 12 May 2008 15:29:51 -0700

Truthdig

Posted on May 10, 2008

By Jon Wiener

As opening day of the Beijing Olympics approaches, the Chinese government and official media have intensified their attacks on Tibet’s Dalai Lama, blaming him for the recent violent demonstrations in Lhasa, where Tibetans have been protesting against China’s restrictions on their religion and culture. The Tibetan government in exile, based in India, says the Chinese have killed more than 200 people in these protests, which started in March. Pico Iyer has been following the story—his new book is “The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama.” He spoke recently with Truthdig’s Jon Wiener.

Tibet: Autonomy vs Independence

Sat, 10 May 2008 11:08:57 -0700

R. Venkatesan Iyengar

10 May 2008, Saturday

MeriNews

The snow-clad icy heights of Mount Everest were treated to a rare spectacle on May 8, 2008. Five Chinese climbers, all dressed in red, unfurled the Chinese national flag, the Olympic flag and a flag, bearing the Beijing Olympic logo atop the world’s highest peak and shouted jubilantly, “Long live Tibet, long live Beijing!”

Literally translating the Chinese government’s dream of taking the torch onto the Himalayan heights, one of the climbers carried the Olympic torch in the last few steps to the top of Everest. Interestingly, the climber who took the Olympic torch to the summit happened to be a Tibetan woman, did not go unnoticed by the world.

Dalai Lama envoys to go to China

Sun, 04 May 2008 03:43:49 -0700

May 3

BBC - Envoys of the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, are due to hold talks with officials in China, the Dalai Lama's office says.

Two Tibetan envoys are expected to arrive on Saturday for talks on ending the crisis in Tibetan areas of China.

This would be the first contact between the two sides since anti-China protests in Tibet in March turned violent.

Chinese state media has renewed its criticism of the Dalai Lama, who it blames for masterminding the protests.

This is a charge the Dalai Lama has always denied.

He and the Tibetan government-in-exile have been based in India since fleeing Tibet in 1959.

Dalai Lama welcomes talks

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 05:55:01 -0700

Dharamshala, India | April 26

AFP - The Dalai Lama on Saturday welcomed China's offer of talks to help resolve unrest in his Tibetan homeland but warned that anything other than "serious discussions" would be meaningless.

In a move welcomed around the world, Chinese state media said Friday that government officials would meet soon with a representative of the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader.

"I have not received yet any detailed information (about the talks) but basically talk is good," the Dalai Lama said on his return to his northern Indian base of Dharamshala after a visit to the United States.

The Buddhist icon told reporters at the airport in Dharamshala he wanted "serious discussions about how to reduce Tibetan resentment and a thorough discussion" of the problems in Tibet.

Human Rights and China

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 12:20:22 -0700

(huliq.com) Human Rights Watch . . . reminds us that China ‘remains a one-party state that does not hold national elections, has no independent judiciary, leads the world in executions, aggressively censors the Internet, bans independent trade unions, and represses minorities such as Tibetans, Uighurs, and Mongolians’. Social unrest arising from distress about housing, migration, political freedoms, poverty and other domestic issues is dealt with severely.

www.hrw.org/english/docs/2006/01/18/china12270.htm

Moreover, in asserting that a country’s domestic politics are its own affair alone, China aims to prevent the international community from scrutinising its interactions abroad. But in joining the global community, China must realise that this is not how the world works today. We have moved beyond the 1950s. Decades of marching against the Bomb, of anti-colonialist and anti-apartheid campaigning, a string of anti-poverty events linked up across the globe, the coming together of civil activists from all over the world to work on poverty, the emergence of an international climate-change coalition, the wide-spread revulsion of the American invasion of Iraq, the creation of international agreements on blood diamonds and corporate corruption – these and other global movements demonstrate that citizens and states increasingly see events, wherever they take place, as interconnected.