Global Alliance for Tibet & Persecuted Minorities (GATPM)

(By Tsering Passang, Founder & Chair of Global Alliance for Tibet & Persecuted Minorities)

November 12th marks the Declaration of East Turkistan’s Independence Day.

China’s Communist regime is well known for its lies and false claims. The claim that “Xinjiang” aka “East Turkistan” has been part of China “since ancient times” is not only laughable but it is a blatant lie on historical ground. For the record this must be corrected.

Despite almost 2000 years of contact with East Turkistan, China never really established direct rule over the region until the late 19th century. Various dynasties briefly occupied parts of the region, brought parts of it into tributary relations, and manipulated local politics, but it was never successfully integrated into China’s empire.

In 1877, the Manchu Qing Dynasty invaded East Turkistan. After its formal annexation, in 1884, the Qing named the region “Xinjiang,” meaning “New Territory” in Mandarin. Han and Hui people (Chinese Muslims) were brought in and settled in China’s “New Territory”. After enduring nearly 50 years of foreign occupation, East Turkistani people regained their independence and declared East Turkistan Republic on 12 November 1933. Since then, the people of East Turkistan have celebrated this historic day as their country’s Independence Day. However, the country’s independence was short-lived due to the Soviet and Chinese invasion on 16 April 1934. Inspired by their past resistance and achievement, the amazing leaders and people of East Turkistan continued their freedom struggle movement over the next decade. They regained their independence on 12 November 1944 but lost it to the Communist China five years later.

East Turkistan and the People’s Republic of China

China’s long Civil War between Mao Tsetung-led Communist Party of China (CCP) and the ruling Kuomintang Government, led by Chiang Kai-Shek (The Nationalist – Republic of China), resulted in the overthrow of the Kuomintang Government. Chiang Kai-Shek fled to Formosa (now Taiwan), where the democratic Republic of China (ROC) is flourishing. In Peking, Mao Tsetung declared the establishment of the Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC) on 1st October 1949. This changed the fate of the people of East Turkistan forever. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops marched in and invaded East Turkistan on 12 October 1949. The independent East Turkistan Republic was forcibly overthrown a few months later on 22 December. Top leaders in East Turkistan’s Government were assassinated in a “mysterious plane crash”. China’s continued occupation and oppression of the East Turkistani people continues to this day.

After Xi Jinping came to power, especially since 2014, the Chinese State has been engaging in a genocide campaign that has resulted in the internment of several million Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other Turkic people in concentration camps, prisons, and labour camps. Independent rights groups and UN findings show that Uyghur and other Turkic detainees were subjected to forced indoctrination, torture, rape and sexual abuse, as well as organ harvesting, all of which constitute crimes against humanity. Government officials, parliaments, lawyers and rights groups worldwide have condemned the People’s Republic of China for committing genocide and human rights violations against the Uyghurs Muslims and other persecuted minorities.

Uyghurs and other Turkic people have consistently resisted China’s illegal occupation of their homelands whilst demanding the restoration of their rightful independence over the past seven decades. China claims that there were a total of 13.5 million Turkic population in East Turkistan as of 2015. However, the Uyghurs estimate this number to be around 30 million. Other non-Chinese ethnic groups including Kazakhs, Kryghyz, Mongols, Salurs, Tajiks, Uzbeks also number around 5 million. China’s continued invasion of East Turkistan meant that there are an estimated 12 million Chinese settlers from China in the “New Terrority”.

Xinjiang is officially known as the “Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region” (XUAR) by China’s authorities and they use it in their official communication with international partners. However, the Uyghurs and those persecuted minorities in China-occupied East Turkistan defy this imposition and name change of their homelands. It is evident that the occupied region has been a subject of international attention, particularly human rights issues, genocide and cultural suppression.

It is vital to note that China’s continued efforts to secure seats in international bodies such as the Human Rights Council has its own cunning interest. Beijing doesn’t want to be scrutinized by Member States on its appalling human rights records against its own people as well as those in East Turkistan and Tibet. China seeks these global forums to exert its interests, including rewriting what human rights meant from the CCP’s perspective and then imposing it upon the international community.

References and Useful Links:

Foreign Policy

News Vibes of India 

World Uyghur Congress

East Turkistan Government in Exile

East Turkistan National Awakening Movement

On November 27, the final stage of the trial of the “Hong Kong 47” will begin. On the eve of this final trial, on November 26, the Workers Against the CCP (WACCP) is organising a protest outside the Chinese Embassy in London and invites everyone, including the trade union members and activists to support and show their solidarity with the 47 people in Hong Kong, who face jail sentences simply for organising a democratic protest. The protest also aims to express solidarity with all those who are fighting for labor, democracy and justice in Hong Kong.

• Release Carol Ng, Winnie Yu, Leung Kwok-hung, Wu Minyi, Yu Huiming, Liang Guoxiong and everyone else in HK47!
• Release Li Zhuoren, Deng Yan’e, Free Lee Cheuk-yan, Elizabeth Tang and all those imprisoned and suppressed for organizing workers and democratic activities!
• Freedom to organize independent trade unions and political opposition in Hong Kong and China!
• The UK welcomes refugees: providing asylum to all those fleeing persecution fighting for labor and democratic justice – whether they are Hong Kong refugees or refugees from other countries!

As trade unionists and activists, the WACCP stands in solidarity with all those in Hong Kong and around the world who are fighting for democracy and organizational freedom. This cause is as important as oxygen to the labor movement and its struggle for the rights and power of the working class. When one person suffers, everyone suffers!

As trade unionists and activists, the WACCP stands in solidarity with all those in Hong Kong and around the world who are fighting for democracy and organizational freedom. This cause is as important as oxygen to the labor movement and its struggle for the rights and power of the working class. When one person suffers, everyone suffers!

Background

47 people in Hong Kong were charged with subversion simply because they participated in the pro-democracy primary elections in June 2020. They hope to win seats in Hong Kong’s semi-democratic parliament (Legislative Council) and, if elected, represent the demands of the pro-democracy movement. Those facing jail include union leaders Wu Min’er and Yu Huiming, as well as veteran socialist Liang Guoxiong (“Long Mao”).

Their trial, which had dragged on for years, finally entered its final stages this November. We demand their immediate release and the dropping of all charges.

They are not the only labor and democracy activists facing repression, harassment and imprisonment by Beijing’s puppet government. Under strong pressure and intimidation from the state, most independent trade unions were forced to dissolve. Lee Cheuk-yan, the former leader of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions, was jailed for organizing unauthorized protests under a British colonial-era public order law. Another former Hong Kong Labor Union leader, Deng Yin-ng, secretary-general of the International Domestic Workers Federation, was arrested this year under a totalitarian “national security law” imposed by Beijing. The Social Democratic Alliance is one of the few democratic dissident parties still openly protesting in Hong Kong, but faces constant harassment and police repression. HSBC, a British financial giant with significant operations in Hong Kong, closed the SDL’s bank account to disrupt its organizing activities.

The repression even spread to exiles. This year, the Hong Kong police issued an arrest warrant for Christopher Mung, a senior organizer of the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions, for meeting with French trade unions, and offered a reward of HK$1 million for instigating an attempted kidnapping.

We demand the release of all political prisoners and we particularly support our persecuted trade union, socialist and progressive brothers and sisters. Unity knows no borders!

About Workers Against the CCP

We are a new UK-based campaign, organizing solidarity in the labor movement to support the struggles of workers and oppressed and marginalized people in China and its occupied territories. Sign up for our email newsletter to keep in touch.

Our new coalition brings together a range of activists and existing groups to work together, including:

• Labor Movement Solidarity with Hong Kong
• Uyghur Solidarity Campaign
• Global Alliance for Tibet & Persecuted Minorities
• June 4 Sparks
• Left Chinese Student Association
• Peter Tatchell Foundation
• Democracy for Hong Kong
• Alliance for Workers’ Liberty
• Voice of Southern Mongolia
• Power To Hongkongers

To Control Tibet, Communist China Ventures Into the Spiritual Realm

By Lobsang Sangay | November 6, 2023 | Foreign Affairs

In 1954, China’s paramount leader Mao Zedong met Tenzin Gyatso, the then 19-year-old who was the 14th Dalai Lama, the spiritual and temporal leader of Tibet. “Religion,” Mao acerbically observed to the young Dalai Lama, “is poison.” Five years later, Chinese forces would roll into Tibet and take over the country, driving the Dalai Lama and many other Tibetans into exile. The communists, who espoused atheism and derided religions, sought to yoke Tibet to China by squashing its local culture and historical institutions; destroying Tibetan Buddhist monasteries, nunneries, and cultural artifacts; and suppressing the practice of the Tibetan Buddhist faith.

In more recent times, however, Beijing has taken an inordinate interest in the ins and outs of Tibetan Buddhism. The Global Times, a Chinese state mouthpiece, has published in the last two years a series of articles asserting the Chinese state’s control not just over territory but over souls. The articles claim that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has the final say over the traditions that guide the Tibetan belief in reincarnation—particularly over the reincarnation of the next Dalai Lama.

As the Dalai Lama gets older, China has become increasingly invested in the question of his succession. When a high lama—an important priest—dies, his post is typically filled by someone identified as his reincarnation. This tradition is deeply entrenched in the spiritual and cultural fabric of Tibetan Buddhism. Communist China, which under Mao was so vigorously and uncompromisingly atheist in its orientation, now seeks to control the process that will identify the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama. This audacious move points to China’s drive to consolidate its hold over Tibet, a strategy that not only seeks to fatally undermine the institution of the Dalai Lama but also encroaches on the Tibetan people, their rich culture, and their civilization.

In addition to a significant recent uptick in Chinese propaganda on this topic, Beijing has convened a committee composed of government-selected Tibetan monks and key Communist Party officials to preside over the process that will select the next Dalai Lama. Authorities have set up museum exhibitions about the reincarnation of Dalai Lamas in both Beijing and Lhasa, the capital city of Tibet, highlighting the Chinese government’s claims to legitimacy in supervising the selection. Such an orchestration will blatantly violate Tibetan tradition and is a move of monumental concern to the Tibetan people.     

The norms of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition of reincarnation and the Dalai Lama’s stance on his own reincarnation must steer the process of determining any future succession. In accordance with that tradition, instructions the Dalai Lama leaves before his death should be the basis of any search to identify his successor. Beijing, however, wants to usurp both spiritual and temporal authority in Tibet. The Chinese government’s transgressions are legion, including legislative interference, historical revisionism, and the outright denial of the Dalai Lama’s fundamental right to guide the choice of his successor. Along with the government’s broader efforts to suppress Tibetan culture, China’s actions constitute a grave violation of the basic human rights of the Tibetan people. 

THE OLD ORIGINS OF NEW BEGINNINGS   

The 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet is an esteemed spiritual leader who continues to amass a large following worldwide. His teachings, which emphasize peace and compassion, resonate across cultures and religions and have elevated him to remarkable heights over the past few decades. In recognition of his contributions toward global peace and nonviolence, he has received an array of international recognitions, including the Nobel Peace Prize and the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal. 

The respect the Dalai Lama receives around the world stands in stark contrast to the opprobrium heaped on him by the Chinese government. Chinese officials have persistently vilified him, calling him a “splittist” and “a wolf in monk’s clothing,” while deriding his followers as “the Dalai Clique.” Beijing sees the Dalai Lama as a threat, even though he has lived in exile in India since 1959. That threat is, of course, significantly overblown. The Dalai Lama has not advocated Tibetan independence since the 1970s but, rather, demands genuine autonomy for Tibet within the framework of the Chinese constitution. Since 2011, he has devolved all of his political and administrative responsibilities to a democratically elected Tibetan leadership. Yet the Chinese government continues to accuse him of inciting political unrest against the state.

The Dalai Lama turned a venerable 88 this July. At some point in the years ahead, the question of succession will arise. China wants to determine who the next Dalai Lama will be, and Chinese officials have taken a huge interest in the sacred Tibetan tradition of reincarnation, known as tulku. It dictates that a young lama of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition inherits the religious, economic, and political responsibilities of the predecessor following that person’s death. The process that leads to the identification of the reincarnated lama is guided by the instructions left by the previous incarnation and is carried out by highly trained Buddhist scholars, often chosen by the previous lama. In the case of the Dalai Lamas, this process is often supervised by the regent appointed by the Dalai Lama or by the government in Tibet. In the last eight centuries, many reincarnated lamas have been found throughout the Tibetan plateau but also elsewhere in the far-flung world of Tibetan Buddhism: in the Himalayan regions of Bhutan, India, and Nepal, and even in areas such as Mongolia and parts of Russia where there are many Tibetan Buddhist practitioners, particularly in the Russian republics of Buryatia, Kalmykia, and Tuva.   

LAMAS AND BUREAUCRATS

In 2007, the Chinese government asserted its jurisdiction over spiritual matters and proclaimed that the tulku system could operate only with state approval. Traditional precedents were not enough to govern the selection of reincarnated lamas; it now was subject to Chinese laws. Authorities promulgated a national-level decree through the State Administration and Religious Affairs department. This legislation formalized an earlier set of reincarnation rules announced by the Chinese-controlled Tibet Autonomous Region in 1995.   

China may officially be an atheist state, but through such legislation it continues to interject itself into the religious lives of its citizens. Its track record of meddling in the selection of Tibetan reincarnated lamas has proved largely unsuccessful, often leading to widespread anxiety and confusion among Tibetans. A distressing example is the case of the 11th Panchen Lama, the second-most well-known lama in Tibetan Buddhism, who was endorsed by the Dalai Lama in 1995 at the age of five as the reincarnation of the tenth Panchen Lama. That same year, the Chinese government forcibly disappeared him from his hometown in Tibet. Authorities then elevated their own choice of a boy as the 11th Panchen Lama. The disappeared boy remains missing after 29 years, as do his parents and the main members of the search committee that identified him. 

The atheist Chinese government has asserted its jurisdiction over spiritual matters.

China’s interference in the reincarnation system has also fostered bad practices. Under Chinese law, all reincarnated lamas must register with the government, leading to the transformation of a sacred religious practice into a bureaucratic process open to sordid abuse. Jampel Gyatso, a prominent Tibetan scholar and senior member of the CCP, alleged in 2016 that bribery and corruption were rampant among Chinese officials involved in the process of recognizing reincarnated lamas. From 2007 to 2017, under the guise of religion and tradition, the number of registered lamas quadrupled from around 300 to over 1,300, an increase that has much more to do with corrupt political interests than spiritual needs. This political interference has cast a shadow of uncertainty and suspicion over a time-honored Tibetan tradition.

Along with its bureaucratization of a Tibetan cultural and spiritual practice, China relies heavily on historical distortion to assert its legitimacy in wading into Tibetan religious matters. A Global Times article in 2021 falsely claimed that all previous Dalai Lamas were born in China. Even under the presumption that Tibet has always been part of China, not all Dalai Lamas were born in what is recognized as Tibet. The fourth Dalai Lama, Yonten Gyatso, was an ethnic Mongolian born in Mongolia, while the sixth Dalai Lama, Tsangyang Gyatso, was an ethnic Monpa from present-day Arunachal Pradesh in India. Furthermore, the Chinese government incorrectly asserts that Qing Emperor Shunzhi granted the title of “the Dalai Lama” in 1653 to Tibetan spiritual leaders. In truth, the title “Dalai” is a Mongolian word meaning “Ocean” and was bestowed in 1578 by Mongol leader Altan Khan. “The Dalai Lama” translates to “Ocean of Wisdom” and bears no connection to the Chinese language or Chinese dynastic history.  

THE MISSING DECREE

History, or at least a particular understanding of it, underlies the Chinese intervention in the question of reincarnation. The Chinese government bases its right to appoint and recognize reincarnated lamas, particularly the Dalai Lamas, on a decree on governing Tibet that supposedly dates to the Qing dynasty during the late eighteenth century.   

And yet scholars have been unable to track down either an original version or a copy of this decree. It is conspicuously absent in numerous Qing-era archives, and no Chinese or Tibetan-language version has been found. Chinese authorities point to a document in Tibetan that they claim contains the notes compiled by an official of the amban, the Qing ambassador, in Tibet. The absence of an actual decree, if it existed at all, that supposedly set out laws on how to govern the whole of Tibet is not just curious: it is suspicious. This absence is even more startling given the reputation of the Chinese imperial archivists, especially those of the Qing dynasty, for meticulous and substantial record keeping. Nevertheless, the modern Chinese government claims its right to appoint the next Dalai Lama on the basis of an ordinance that is not extant.

It is also ironic that the CCP seeks to invoke the Qing past as justification for its control over Tibetan life. A century ago, communists and republican nationalists alike denounced the Qing—whose rulers hailed from Manchuria—as “foreign,” “divisive,” and “oppressive.” The CCP was founded to “topple the three mountains” of “imperialism” (Western interference in China), “feudalism” (Qing rule), and “bureaucrat-capitalism” (the nationalist rule of China). Not a single law or ordinance from the Qing era remains valid in public law in China today. Yet, somehow, Beijing thinks it can cite an eighteenth-century Qing ordinance when it comes to the question of the reincarnation of Tibetan lamas.

That cynicism is all the more galling when one considers why and, crucially, when Beijing began to take an interest in the reincarnation of lamas. Between 1959 and 1990, Chinese authorities simply didn’t allow Tibetans to choose new lamas in most Tibetan Buddhist reincarnation lineages. It was only in 1990, after the Dalai Lama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, that the Chinese government sought to revive religious institutions, such as the tulku tradition, within Tibet in a bid to counterbalance the growing popularity of the Dalai Lama. The introduction in 1995 of rules about reincarnations was calculated to allow the government to intervene in the selection of the 11th Panchen Lama. And China’s more recent attempts to invoke the inheritance of Qing-era institutions and insist on historical continuity—when it does not obtain in any other area of Chinese law—seem designed for one reason: to control the appointment of the next Dalai Lama.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE NEXT LIFE  

In Tibetan tradition, discussions about the next life of a spiritual teacher are discouraged while the individual is still alive. It is considered insensitive and disrespectful, almost as if the community is eagerly anticipating the lama’s death. The Chinese government has displayed a keen and intrusive interest in the future incarnation of the 14th Dalai Lama, while the Dalai Lama himself approaches these speculations lightly. For example, when asked in 2019 about his next life, the Dalai Lama humorously responded: “What is the hurry for my reincarnation? I may be 84, but my health is good.”

To be sure, the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan community are not oblivious to the profound impact his death and his reincarnation will have on the future of Tibet and the broader Buddhist world. The absurdity of an atheist communist state, which continuously vilifies the Dalai Lama and bans the display of his portrait, attempting to dictate his reincarnation is not lost on observers. Between 2009 and 2022, 157 people committed self-immolations in Tibet calling for the return of the Dalai Lama and freedom for Tibetans. The incongruity is further heightened by the fact that the CCP, after invading Tibet in the 1950s, was responsible for destroying nearly all of Tibet’s approximately 6,000 Tibetan monasteries and nunneries and disrobing almost all its monks and nuns. Several thousand tons of ancient Tibetan cultural artifacts, upward of three-quarters of the total kept in Tibetan sites, were destroyed, looted, or recycled for their components. That this same party is now claiming it has the right to choose Buddhist leaders, including the next Dalai Lama, is at best disingenuous. 

In 2011, the Dalai Lama issued his most explicit statement regarding his reincarnation, unequivocally rejecting China’s interference. He stated that he will leave clear, written instructions that will be implemented by the Gaden Phodrang Trust (the Dalai Lama’s private office), in consultation with high-ranking lamas of the Tibetan Buddhist lineages and others who follow Tibetan Buddhism. He further clarified that only the individual set to be reincarnated has authority over determining where and how his rebirth will happen and how that reincarnation can be recognized. He stated explicitly that if he dies in exile, then his reincarnation will be born outside of China. This was a clear denouncement of the Chinese government’s attempts to interfere in the reincarnation system, a sentiment that was reinforced at a 2019 conference of the spiritual leaders of Tibetan Buddhism and Bon (the Tibetan religious tradition that predated Buddhism), all living in exile. In the statement from 2011, the Dalai Lama specified that he would clarify his instructions for succession around the time he reaches the age of 90 (in 2025).

The Chinese government, however, will likely reject any decision regarding succession taken by the Tibetan Buddhists and the Dalai Lama’s office. It falls on the governments of countries that support the free expression of religion as a fundamental human right to lend their support and insist that the selection process for the next Dalai Lama take place without Chinese political interference. 

COMPLICITY IN SILENCE

For centuries, Tibetans have maintained a mystical and sophisticated tradition for managing the succession of the Dalai Lama. This established procedure has ensured largely smooth and uncomplicated transitions of power, with only a few exceptions. It is unacceptable for China to attempt to usurp the Dalai Lama’s fundamental right to determine how his successor will be selected, a tradition adhered to for five centuries.

China holds no moral or legal authority to intervene in the succession, and that it is doing so is an alarming situation that calls for a global response to protect religious freedom and ensure stability. The United States has already made a significant move in this direction by enacting the Tibetan Policy and Support Act in 2020, which states that “protecting the internationally recognized right to the freedom of religion and belief, including ensuring that the identification and installation of Tibetan Buddhist religious leaders, including a future 15th Dalai Lama, is a matter determined solely within the Tibetan Buddhist faith community, based on instructions of the 14th Dalai Lama, without interference by the Government of the People’s Republic of China.” Any Chinese officials interfering in this process will face sanctions.

Although the U.S. stance is helpful, this policy will not succeed without concrete support from other key countries and blocs. These include Europe and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), countries such as India and Mongolia with large communities that adhere to Tibetan Buddhism, and countries such as Canada, Japan, and South Korea that have a special relationship with the Dalai Lama.

China will likely reject the Dalai Lama’s instructions regarding his own succession.

The European Parliament should agree to similar legislation to that passed in the United States clearly stating the EU (where Buddhism is the third- or fourth-largest religion in many European countries) recognizes the sole right of the Dalai Lama to decide on his reincarnation. India, too, holds special responsibilities to take a public stand. The Dalai Lama has been living there as a guest for more than six decades and calls himself a son of India because Buddhism originated in the country over 2,000 years ago. Mongolia, with a majority Buddhist population, most of whom are followers of the Dalai Lama, should also clearly state that it is up to the Dalai Lama to decide on his reincarnation.

Japan, a frequent host of the Dalai Lama and home to many of his followers, should make similar statements. The Dalai Lama is an honorary citizen of Canada, and thus that government has the responsibility to protect his religious freedom. It is also important for Buddhist countries such as South Korea and several members of ASEAN to protect the tradition and customs of Buddhism. If the Chinese government selects the 15th Dalai Lama without protest, it sets the precedent for the CCP to assert its candidates as the heads of sanghas, or monasteries, in other Buddhist countries as well.

As the saying goes, “Silence is complicity.” This is true in the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama. Failure to defend justice and religious freedom will not only embolden an expansionist regime but also risk instability in Asia and Buddhist countries, with ramifications for both the global south and global north. Instead, governments around the world should take a stand on this matter of principle. Tibetan Buddhists have the right choose their own spiritual leader, and upholding that right is essential to protecting the human rights of all people.

LOBSANG SANGAY is Lecturer at Harvard Law School. He was Sikyong, or President, of the Tibetan government in exile from 2011 to 2021.

Professor Samdhong Rinpoche, a highly learned Tibetan Buddhist scholar, who currently lives in India, turns 84 on 5th November 2023. He is regarded as the right-hand man of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama. A former Prime Minister of Tibet’s “Government-in-exile” and former Speaker of the Tibetan Parliament in Exile, Professor Samdhong Rinpoche is still a very influential public figure in the Tibetan diaspora.

Lobsang Tenzin, better known by the titles Professor Venerable Samdhong Rinpoche and to Tibetans as the 5th Samdhong Rinpoche (born 5 November 1937), is a Tibetan Buddhist monk and former politician who served as the Prime Minister (then officially called the Kalon Tripa) of the cabinet of the Central Tibetan Administration, de facto Tibetan government-in-exile based in Dharamshala, India.

Venerable Samdhong Rinpoche was born in Jol, in eastern Tibet, Kham. At the age of five, he was recognised, according to Tibetan tradition, as the reincarnation of the 4th Samdhong Rinpoche and enthroned in Gaden Dechenling Monastery at Jol. Two years later he took vows as a monk, started his religious training at Drepung Monastery in Lhasa, Tibet’s capital, and completed it at the Madhyamika School of Buddhism.

After his training in Lhasa, he fled to India in 1959, after China’s illegal occupation of Tibet, along with many Tibetans who followed the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso into exile. From October 1961, he served as the religious teacher of Tibetan School in Shimla and in 1963 served as the acting Principal. In 1964 he worked as religious teacher at Central School for Tibetans, Darjeeling and in 1965 at the age of 26, he was appointed as the Principal of Central School for Tibetans, Dalhousie and served there till 1970. He received his Lharampa degree in the year 1968 and Ngagrimpa degree in 1969. In 1971 he became Principal of Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies (CIHTS) at Varanasi (Benares), and from 1988 to 2001 he was the director.

From 1994 to 1995, Professor Samdhong Rinpoche was awarded National Lectureship from Indian Council of Philosophical Research (ICPR), New Delhi. He assumed many important responsibilities including President of the Association of Indian Universities (AIU), a strong academic group of more than 250 Vice-Chancellors of Indian Universities, Chancellor of Sanchi University of Buddhist-Indic Studies and Chairman of various Trust and Foundations. He is regarded as one of the leading Tibetan scholars of Buddhism and is also an authority on the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. He is fluent in Hindi and English, Tibetan being his mother tongue. Rinpoche is one of the very few Buddhist scholars in the world with this depth, experience and clarity in Buddhist philosophy and he also spent many years exploring directly with J. Krishnamurti, who was one of the great educationists in India.Rinpoche has been an honored guest at many forums in India. He has spoken on challenges India faces today, and has stressed on inclusion of the poor masses in the development of the country.

In 1991 Lobsang Tenzin was appointed by the Dalai Lama as a member of the Assembly of Tibetan People’s Deputies, and later was unanimously elected as its Chairman. Rinpoche served twice as the Speaker of the Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile from 1991 to 2001. Between 1996 and 2001, he was an elected member of the Assembly representing exiled Tibetans from Kham province and also its chairman. Rinpoche contributed to drafting the new constitution of the Tibetan Government in Exile, introduced educational and economic reforms, and ensured a policy of non-violence, transparency, environmental sustainability, and organic farming.

In 2000 the Dalai Lama decided that the Tibetan people in exile should elect their own Prime Minister (Kalon Tripa), and in July 2001 Professor Samdhong Rinpoche was elected with about 29,000 votes, or about 84% of those cast, which is about 25% of the exile Tibetan population. Juchen Thubten Namgyal, the other candidate, won the remainder. Since 2001 he has travelled extensively to gain support for the cause of Tibetan autonomy and raise awareness of the Dalai Lama’s proposals for negotiating autonomy with the Chinese government.

During his Prime Ministership, Rinpoche negotiated many times with the Chinese officials to bring a suitable solution to the Tibetan cause. However no meaningful development could be made in this direction.

Professor Samdhong Rinpoche is an advocate of Gandhian philosophy, is a lifelong campaigner of nonviolence and is on the board of trustees of Swaraj Peeth Trust, a Gandhian centre for nonviolence and peace. He has held lectures and talks with exchange groups in Germany, Switzerland and USA, where he spoke extensively on Buddhist ideology and its importance in contemporary politics and economy. A large score of his lectures on general subjects like peace, happiness and compassion, electoral reforms, modern ethics, the environment, Swaraj and non violence are available in audio and video on his website and Soundcloud.

Professor Samdhong Rinpoche is a staunch supporter of the “Middle Way Approach” and in sync with the views of the Dalai Lama in regards to finding resolution to the China-Tibet conflict. He is of the opinion that the Tibet issue is alive on the international forum and has received widespread support due to its right direction and commitment to nonviolence.

In his own words:

“Tibet cause is a just cause and not a power struggle. It is neither a political struggle nor a battle against the system. It is the struggle between truth and falsehood; justice and injustice.”

A lifelong campaigner of Gandhian principles, he seeks not only political freedom for the Tibetan people but also to preserve the Tibetan Culture. In an interview he said,

“Our ultimate goal is not just political freedom but the preservation of Tibetan culture. What will we gain if we win political freedom but lose what gives value to our lives? It is why we reject the option of violence. For respect for life is an inseparable aspect of the Tibetan culture we are fighting for.”

Useful Links:

Source/Reference: Wikipedia

https://samdhongrinpoche.com/

China should look closer home and end its illegal occupation of Tibet if it wants to be taken seriously on the world stage.

By Tsering Passang, Founder & Chair, Global Alliance for Tibet & Persecuted Minorities

Beijing’s ever closer ties with terrorist groups such as the Taliban and the Hamas shows the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has the same trademark of terrorizing people, no matter who they are. From Mao Tsetung’s era to the current brutal dictator Xi Jinping, the CCP regime continues to cause atrocities against its own people as well as all those in People’s Republic of China (PRC) occupied countries such as Tibet and East Turkestan.

China now has a choice. Beijing’s continued occupation of Tibet and the denial of basic freedoms, including universal human rights and religious freedom, as well as the curtailment of free speech must stop. Today, nearly a million Tibetan children, aged between 4 and 18, are forcefully being admitted in residential schools across the Tibetan plateau (China’s colonial-style boarding schools) with core intent to annihilate Tibetan identity, language, their history and culture. This is a continuation of the regime’s sinicization policy against the oppressed people of Tibet.

Sixty-four years ago, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama was forced into exile after China’s illegal occupation of Tibet. When the news reached the residents of Lhasa that the Chinese troops were plotting to kidnap or hurt the young Dalai Lama, tens of thousands of Tibetans surrounded the Norbulingka Palace, summer residence of the Dalai Lamas, in no time, and shielded their temporal and spiritual leader from China’s advanced military forces. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops were shelling mortars and detonations mercilessly to cause chaos, destruction and killing people in the landlocked Buddhist nation. The Tibetan Buddhist Leader, who was 24 at the time, left Norbulingka Palace in Lhasa, on the night of 17th March 1959, to save lives and to avoid further bloodshed against his people from brutal attacks by the Chinese military forces.

Resistance against China’s military aggression started on eastern frontiers from where Mao Tsetung’s PLA troops entered Tibet in 1950. It was an unprovoked military aggression on a small and peaceful Buddhist nation by a giant neighbour, Communist China. Due to this foreign invasion, displacements of Tibetan citizens ensued in the 1950s, who became refugees in their own homelands. Tibetans moved from the eastern region to more central in Lhasa, Tibet’s capital, as China’s armed forces marched further into the hinterland.

For a brief period in Lhasa, Tibet’s spiritual heartland became a war zone, spilling blood and dead bodies into the Kyichu River, a tributary of the Yarlung Tsangpo, which is the upper section of the Brahmaputra River in India. Communist China’s illegal invasion of Tibet has directly resulted in the death of over 1.2 million Tibetans, an equivalent to 20% of Tibet’s population at the time. In addition, China destroyed over 6,000 Buddhist monasteries and great learning centres, a huge loss to Tibet’s rich heritage. Tibetans believe that they have some tangible contributions to make to the world through their spiritual technology and ancient wisdom which they have been developing for centuries in this hidden Buddhist nation.

After nearly two weeks of treks and horse-riding, the Dalai Lama reached Indian soil on 31st March 1959. After granting political asylum by the Government of India, under Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the Dalai Lama has remained in exile in India ever since. The Tibetan leader then established Tibet’s “Government-in-exile” officially known as the Central Tibetan Administration, to take care of some 80,000 Tibetan refugees, who followed him into exile, as well as to secure justice and freedom for his people. Today, there are about 140,000 Tibetans in exile with the majority residing in the Indian subcontinent.

On 10th December 1989, the Dalai Lama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, by the Norwegian Nobel Committee in recognition of his nonviolent campaign to end Chinese rule in Tibet. For many decades, the Dalai Lama travelled across the world to secure support for the Tibetan cause. The Dalai Lama has also reached out to the Chinese leaders in Beijing. Despite his sincere efforts, no meaningful political resolution has so far materialised to the China-Tibet conflict. This is solely due to lack of political will on the part of the Chinese side.

In July this year, the Tibetan spiritual leader turned 88. The Dalai Lama is in good health considering his advanced age. However, on 20th October, his office issued a statement: “In view of His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s recent bout of the flu, his personal physicians have strongly advised that any travel will be taxing on His Holiness and more importantly hamper his full recovery. We have, therefore, after careful consideration, decided not to visit Sikkim in the month of November 2023 and to also cancel His Holiness’ planned visit to South India (Bylakuppe and Hunsur) scheduled in the second half of November to mid-December 2023.”

To the delight of thousands of Buddhist pilgrims from all around the world, the recent statement also added: “There is no change to His Holiness’ planned visit to Bodhgaya, Bihar, starting in the second half of December 2023.” If this schedule remains unchanged, then the Dalai Lama will give three days of teachings at the Kalachakra Teaching Ground in the sacred Buddhist site in India. On 29th and 30th December, His Holiness will give teachings on Nagarjuna’s In Praise of Dhammadhatu (choying toepa). On 31st December, His Holiness will confer the Manjushri Empowerment (jamphel yang jenang). On 1st January 2024, His Holiness the Dalai Lama will attend a Long Life Prayer offered to him at the same venue.

Since his full retirement from the Tibetan political leadership in 2011, the Dalai Lama has been dedicating more time on his Four Principal Commitments: (i) promotion of human values like compassion, forgiveness, tolerance and self-discipline; (ii) promotion of religious harmony; (iii) preservation of Tibetan culture, which currently faces mortal danger from China’s occupation of Tibet; and (iv) revival of India’s ancient civilisational heritage – Buddhism came to Tibet from India.

In Dharamsala, the Tibetan Nobel Peace laureate continues to entertain a busy daily schedule and engages with visitors from around the world. Followers from mainland China and Taiwan also come to receive Buddhist teachings. Recently, His Holiness the Dalai Lama has acknowledged that some kind of backdoor channel of communication exists between Dharamsala and Beijing. In the past, the Tibetan Buddhist leader has openly stated his desire to visit his homelands and pilgrimage in China. He has also expressed his hope of conferring Buddhist teachings to his followers in front of the Potala Palace in Lhasa very soon. Perhaps, materialisation of these hopes could be one step closer to bringing back freedom to his people from exile in India.

An exclusive interview with the exiled Tibetan leader – Sikyong Penpa Tsering, President of the Central Tibetan Administration (aka Tibet’s ‘Government-in-exile’) based in Dharamsala, northern India, by Voice of America Chinese (VOA) reporter Huang Yaoyi.

The interview, conducted in Dharamsala before Sikyong Penpa Tsering embarked on foreign visits to south and north America, was broadcast to coincide with his arrival in the US last week. In Washington DC, the Tibetan leader met with senior figures from both political parties. He is due to meet with the US government officials.

Sikyong Penpa Tsering candidly talks about his administration’s relations with the Biden and the Tsai Ing-wen administrations in Washington DC and Taipei respectively. He also speaks about the Central Tibetan Administration’s relations with India. In addition, the Tibetan leader shares his view on the growing political situation around the world.

Sikyong Penpa Tsering says that Taiwan’s policy on Tibet supports the Tibetan people’s right to “self-determination”. This has warmed up the relationship between Dharamsala and Taipei. Since he took the Office of Sikyong over two years ago, there were several exchanges of ministerial visits between the two sides, the Tibetan leader adds.

Whilst reiterating Tibet’s historical independence status, Sikyong Penpa Tsering expresses his commitment to the Dalai Lama’s proposed “Middle-Way” policy towards finding a lasting political resolution to the China-Tibet conflict. However, the Tibetan elected leader refutes China’s attempt to apply “One-China” principle to Tibet. He also criticises China’s cultural genocide in Tibet. He says that there is currently no “official” communication between Dharamsala and Beijing.

China’s occupation of Tibet

After the Communist Party of China (CCP) came to power and with the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Mao Tsetung declared the so-called “peaceful liberation” of Tibet from foreign imperialists, on 1st October 1949. Soon, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops marched into Tibet from the eastern frontiers. For Tibetans, this was the beginning of modern China’s invasion of Tibet in the post Second World War.

On the night of 17th March 1959, the Dalai Lama decided to leave Lhasa immediately. According to his autobiography, the Dalai Lama, disguised as an ordinary soldier, rode out of his palace on horseback “unchallenged [and moved] towards the dark road beyond”.

After nearly two weeks of a treacherous journey, with protection provided by the volunteer Tibetan resistance forces, the Dalai Lama reached safety in India, on 31st March 1959. He then set up the ‘Tibet’s Government-in-exile’ – officially known as the Central Tibetan Administration. A staunch believer in democracy, the Dalai Lama has introduced this western democratic system into Tibetan society, little by little since 1960.

In 2011, the Dalai Lama decided to fully relinquish his previously inherited political leadership, which had been sustained for nearly 400 years, by passing the historic seal to the directly elected Sikyong Dr. Lobsang Sangay, a legal scholar from Harvard University, who served two terms until May 2021.

Useful Links

Voice of America

Central Tibetan Administration

Sikyong Penpa Tsering

A Sunday Post by Tsering Passang

Xi Jinping’s #CCPRegime supports terror groups including #Hamas. Beijing continues to arm and train militant groups worldwide and make friends with them. Beijing’s reluctance to condemn the brutal #terror attacks by #Hamas against the Israeli people is an evidence of #CCPChina’s real support to terror groups.

For Tibetans, #CCPRegime is a terror group, the big bully neighbour, who deployed its military forces and occupied #Tibet soon after the #PRC was established on 1st October 1949.

It is also a fact that the peaceful Tibetans had never provoked the China nation that deserved military occupation by #CCPChina. Over a million Tibetans were killed by #CCPChina’s PLA troops in the name of “peaceful liberation” of Tibet from foreign imperialists.

Moreso, #CCPChina forced Tibetan children to kill their parents. #CCPChina troops raped Tibetan mothers in front of their children, raped daughters in front of their parents. They even forced Tibetan monks and nuns out of their Buddhist learning centres.

Over 6000 Tibetan learning centres were destroyed by #CCPChina. China exploited Tibet’s rich natural resources, which were never exploited before.

Today, children from the age of 4 to 18 are forcefully admitted in Chinese-style colonial boarding schools with key intent to annihilate the Tibetan identity, language and culture.

The recent re-election of #CCPChina to the #UN #HumanRightsCouncil is a reflection of real deterioration of human rights in today’s world. Those nations, who supported #CCPChina’s re-election to the #UN #HumanRightsCouncil should be ashamed of their alignment with the China’s poor human rights records and its big bully attitude.

By International Campaign for Tibet|October 13, 2023

A negotiated resolution to the Tibet-China conflict provides the best hope for long-term regional stability, the State Department says in a new report to Congress that calls on China to create the conditions for a sustainable agreement.

In its annual Report to Congress on Tibet Negotiations, the State Department says: “The U.S. government believes that a negotiated resolution that leads to meaningful autonomy for Tibetans and ensures they are able to freely practice their religion, culture, and language provides the best hope for long-term stability in the region.”

The report arrives as Penpa Tsering, the Tibetan Sikyong (President), is set to visit Washington, DC next week, where he will meet with State Department officials, members of Congress, journalists and others.

The report, which is a requirement of the Tibetan Policy Act of 2002, notes that China has not taken part in negotiations with Tibetan leaders since 2010.

International Campaign for Tibet President Tencho Gyatso said: “This report is mandated by Congress for the administration to address the need for resolution of the Tibet-China conflict.

“ICT calls on Congress and the State Department to embrace the bipartisan Promoting a Resolution to the Tibet-China Conflict Act, which will pressure the Chinese government to get back to the negotiating table.”

Creating the conditions

The Chinese government has occupied Tibet for over 60 years, turning it into the least-free country on Earth alongside South Sudan and Syria, according to watchdog group Freedom House.

The State Department report says the US “remains concerned by the lack of meaningful autonomy for Tibetans within the [People’s Republic of China], ongoing abuses of the human rights of Tibetans in the PRC, and efforts by PRC authorities to eliminate the distinct religious, linguistic, and cultural identity of Tibetans.

“The United States believes the PRC government must address these concerns to create conditions for a sustainable settlement, which is essential to the long-term stability of the region,” the report adds.

China met for 10 rounds of dialogue with the Dalai Lama’s envoys beginning in 2002. However, no dialogue has taken place in 13 years.

The report says the US is also concerned about Chinese government interference in the selection, education and veneration of Tibetan Buddhist leaders. Beijing has long said it plans to appoint a successor to the 88-year-old Dalai Lama, which the US vowed to oppose in the Tibetan Policy and Support Act of 2020.

The report also urges China to give diplomats, journalists, tourists and others unrestricted access to Tibet. The report says Secretary of State Antony Blinken determined this year that China’s restrictions on access to Tibetan areas meet the standard under the Reciprocal Access to Tibet Act of 2018 “for mandatory visa ineligibilities for officials substantially involved in such restrictions.”

US efforts

The report highlights efforts by US officials over the reporting year, May 1, 2022 to April 30, 2023, to encourage a renewal of the dialogue process and establish the conditions for a sustainable settlement.

According to the report, these efforts included:

• Under Secretary of State Uzra Zeya, who serves as Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues, calling on China to return to dialogue at an event hosted by the US Mission in Geneva on the human rights implications of the Dalai Lama’s succession.
• President Joe Biden raising concerns about China’s policies in Tibet during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in November 2022.
• US officials calling out China’s mass DNA collection in Tibet, forced separation of over 1 million Tibetan children from their families and other outrageous human rights abuses.
• The US designating Chinese officials Wu Yingjie and Zhang Hongbo with the first sanctions for serious human rights abuses in Tibet under the Global Magnitsky program.

The Tibet Policy Act mandates that “The President and the Secretary should encourage the Government of the People’s Republic of China to enter into a dialogue with the Dalai Lama or his representatives leading to a negotiated agreement on Tibet.” Further, it says reports on negotiations should detail steps taken by the President and the Secretary.

Need to redouble efforts

However, ICT underscores that the report fails to provide details regarding meetings by President Biden and Secretary Blinken with Chinese leaders on how Tibet was raised.

During the reporting year, Biden had one meeting (November 2022) with Xi and a phone call with him (July 2022). During the same period, Blinken had three meetings (July 2022, September 2022 and February 2023) with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi and two phone calls with him (November 2022 and February 2023). Other White House and State Department officials, including the US Ambassador to China, had at least six meetings with Chinese officials during the period.

The State Department report does not detail any elevation of greater American efforts to support the dialogue, despite the extended period of time since the last negotiations between envoys of the Dalai Lama and the Chinese leadership. In light of the 13 years that have passed since the ninth round of dialogue, the United States must redouble its efforts to bring the PRC back to the table and effectively help in bringing about a negotiated settlement on Tibet.

Sikyong visit

The report also notes that US leaders met several times with the Dalai Lama and with Penpa Tsering, the President (Sikyong) of the exile-based Central Tibetan Administration.

Penpa will arrive in Washington on Sunday for several days of engagements, including speaking at the National Press Club on Oct. 18 at 2 pm EDT.

Read the State Department’s 2023 Report to Congress on Tibet Negotiations.

Joint Statement Opposing China’s Candidacy to the Human Rights Council

October 10, 2023

We, the undersigned human rights organizations, write to firmly oppose the candidacy of the People’s Republic of China for re-election to the UN Human Rights Council, and urge Member States at the General Assembly not to vote for China and to leave an empty seat. China is demonstrably unfit to hold a seat on the UN’s top body responsible for the promotion and protection of all human rights around the globe.

On October 10, the UN General Assembly will elect 15 new Council members that will serve for a period of three years starting in January 2024, including four seats in the group of Asia-Pacific States. China is competing on a “closed slate” for these seats along with Kuwait, Indonesia, and Japan, meaning they are running effectively unopposed.

UN Member States voting for Human Rights Council candidates are urged, under General Assembly Resolution 60/251, to “take into account the contribution of candidates to the promotion and protection of human rights.”

Furthermore, candidates commit themselves to “uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights,” and to fully cooperate with the Council and its mechanisms. China has utterly failed to meet these expectations for candidates, and has actively sought to undermine the promotion and protection of universal human rights around the world.

The Chinese government has used its power and influence to attempt to silence the voice of civil society at the UN. The UN Secretary-General has recognized China as engaging in “patterns of intimidation and reprisals” against human rights defenders and remains one of the top perpetrators of reprisals globally.

Despite indicating its willingness to “cooperate” with UN mechanisms and special procedures mandate-holders, China has allowed access to only one UN expert since 2018. Multiple, repeated requests for country visits by at least 15 human rights experts stretching back two decades have gone ignored. China has consistently dismissed all concerns about human rights violations raised at the Human Rights Council or by UN Special Procedures and Treaty Bodies, and attacked Special Procedures mandate-holders in public statements.

The High Commissioner for Human Rights was granted limited access in May 2022, where she said was “accompanied by government officials” and not able to speak with Uyghurs detained or their families. China concurrently sought to halt the publication of an OHCHR report on serious human rights violations in the Uyghur region, and said that it would not cooperate with OHCHR following its release.

Over 40 UN experts have also called for “decisive measures to protect fundamental freedoms” in China and called on the Human Rights Council “to act with a sense of urgency” to address human rights violations. Experts have also urged the Human Rights Council to establish a special session or create “an impartial and independent United Nations mechanism” to monitor, analyze, and report annually on the human rights situation in China.

The Chinese government has also cracked down on human rights defenders and rights lawyers with increasing severity. Most independent civil society groups have been disbanded and their members jailed, tortured, or forced to continue their work underground or forced into exile. Even so, they face harassment, surveillance, and detention for attempting to continue to defend the rights of those left behind or repressed by the Chinese system. UN experts and treaty bodies have repeatedly raised grave concerns about the repression of human rights defenders. The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention noted that it has made more than 100 arbitrary detention findings in China and that such systematic violation of international law may itself constitute crimes against humanity.

In East Turkistan, the Chinese government has subjected Uyghurs and other Turkic groups to widespread, systematic persecution on the basis of their ethnic identity. In August 2022, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights released an assessment documenting widespread human rights abuses in the Uyghur region, and found that these abuses may amount to crimes against humanity. The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, in an Opinion from November 2022, reminded China of its “responsibility to cooperate to bring to an end … serious violations of the peremptory norm of the prohibition of racial discrimination,” and referred the issue to the Special Advisor of the Secretary-General on the Responsibility to Protect. Numerous UN experts and Treaty Bodies have similarly raised serious concerns about arbitrary detention, forced labour, cultural and language rights, and sexual and gender-based violence.

Over the past 12 months, multiple UN human rights bodies have raised alarm at the escalation of human rights abuses in Tibet, including the residential school system that has seen at least one million Tibetan children separated from their families and communities; an extensive labour transfer programme and a massive involuntary relocation policy; the imprisonment of Tibetan environmental defenders; the systematic suppression of religious freedom; and the sidelining of Tibetan language education. Tibetans continue to be subject to omnipresent surveillance, enforced disappearances, torture and death in custody and UN experts have warned of a “worrying pattern of arbitrary and incommunicado detentions [against Tibetans].” In early 2023, the UN Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights and UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women called on China to immediately abolish the coercive residential school system in Tibet.

In Hong Kong, the promulgation of the National Security Law (NSL) by the Central Government in 2020 dismantled the civil society and people’s fundamental rights and freedom, targeting academics, media outlets, and civil society organisations and affecting millions of Hong Kongers in the city. UN experts have expressed concerns about arrests and detentions under the NSL, including those involving Chow Hang-Tung and Jimmy Lai. The UN Human Rights Committee has urged the government to repeal the NSL. Yet, the Chinese and Hong Kong governments have shown no sign of ceasing its crackdown on Hong Kong people with the recent issuance of bounties on eight exiled activists in the U.S., the U.K., and Australia and harassing their families in Hong Kong.

No country has a perfect rights record, and membership in the Human Rights Council can play a constructive role in improving human rights conditions in every country. The Chinese government, however, has consistently demonstrated a clear unwillingness to engage in good faith with the UN human rights system, and has taken steps to actively undermine internationally recognized human rights norms.

Of all 2020 Human Rights Council election candidates, China received the fewest number of votes, and lost a significant number of votes since its previous bid. Any increase in support would send the wrong message from the international community.

We therefore urge UN Member States at the General Assembly not to vote for China and to leave an empty seat.

Signed:

1. Alberta Uyghur Association
2. Association France-Tibet
3. Australia Tibet Council
4. Australian Uyghur Association
5. Australian Uyghur Tangritagh Women’s Association
6. Austria Uyghur Association
7. Bay Area Friends of Tibet 
8. Belgium Uyghur Association
9. Bonham Tree Aid
10. Britons in Hong Kong
11. Campaign For Uyghurs
12. Center for Uyghur Studies
13. Chicago Solidarity with Hong Kong
14. China Against the Death Penalty
15. China Aid Association
16. Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD)
17. Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation
18. Czech Support Tibet
19. Democracy for Hong Kong (D4HK)
20. Dutch Uyghur Human Rights Foundation
21. East Turkistan Association of Canada
22. East Turkistan Foundation
23. East Turkistan Science and Enlightenment Foundation
24. European East Turkistan Association 
25. Filipino American Human Rights Alliance
26. Freiheit für Hongkong e.V.
27. German Cultural and Education Union
28. Global Alliance for Tibet & Persecuted Minorities
29. Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (GCR2P) 
30. Grupo de Apoio ao Tibete-Portugal
31. Hong Kong Committee in Norway
32. Hong Kong Democracy Council
33. Hong Kong Forum, Los Angeles
34. Hong Kong Watch
35. Hong Kongers in San Francisco Bay Area 
36. Hongkongers in Britain
37. Human Rights Action Group
38. Humanitarian China
39. Ilham Tohti Initiative
40. Institute For China’s Democratic Transition
41. International Campaign for Tibet
42. International Society for Human Rights, Munich chapter
43. International Tibet Network
44. International Uyghur Pen
45. Isa Yusuf Alptekin Foundation
46. Italia Tibet Associazione
47. Japan Uyghur Association
48. Justice 4 Uyghurs
49. Lady Liberty HK
50. NGO DEI
51. National Democratic Party of Tibet
52. New Yorkers Supporting Hong Kong
53. Norwegian Uyghur Committee
54. René Cassin, the Jewish Voice for Human Rights 
55. Santa Barbara Friends of Tibet 
56. Stop Uyghur Genocide Australia
57. Stop Uyghur Genocide UK
58. Swedish Tibet Committee
59. Swedish Uyghur Union
60. The Norwegian Tibet Committee 
61. The Norwegian Uyghur Committee
62. Tibet Initiative Deutschland
63. Tibet Justice Center
64. Tibet Solidarity
65. Tibetan National Congress 
66. Torontonian HongKongers Action Group
67. UK Uyghur Community
68. US Tibet Committee 
69. Uyghur Academy
70. Uyghur Academy Foundation
71. Uyghur American Association
72. Uyghur American Association
73. Uyghur Association Switzerland
74. Uyghur Association of Victoria
75. Uyghur Center for Human Rights and Democracy
76. Uyghur Human Rights Project
77. Uyghur Project Foundation
78. Uyghur Projects Foundation
79. Uyghur Refugee Relief Fund 
80. Uyghur Research Institute
81. Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project
82. Uyghur Youth Union in Kazakhstan
83. Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation
84. Washingtonians Supporting Hong Kong
85. We The Hongkongers
86. Western Australian Association for Pan-Asian Democracy
87. World Uyghur Congress
88. World Uyghur Congress Foundation

Keywords: United Nations

Crowded hospital halls, frantic doctors and nurses in protective suits, patients lying in the corridors, body bags piled up in a funeral van outside a hospital… In early February 2020, 57-year-old businessman Fang Bin drove around Wuhan and documented what he saw in five hospitals. The short videos he posted on social media gave a rare glimpse into what was happening in the epicentre of the pandemic under lockdown.

Mr Fang was detained by police briefly on 1 February 2020. In the next few days, he became more outspoken. Videos were widely shared on social media in which he commented that ‘tyranny lies at the root of this virus’. Then, on 9 February 2020, he vanished after calling ‘all citizens to resist’ tyranny and the government to ‘return the power to the people’ on YouTube, a platform banned in China.

The disappearances of Fang Bin, Zhang Zhan and at least two other citizen journalists drew the attention of world media. Although Mr Fang and his wife are known to the authorities as veteran Falun Gong activists, people who are familiar with him hesitated in mentioning his faith background when calling for his release. They may have been conscious of the social stigma attached to this belief group in China, or feared that he might be jailed not for his online speech but for his faith, or even that he might face mistreatment for it in police custody.

After all, that is what happened to his wife Feng Yunqing.

Ms Feng, who had a career in the internet industry starting in the 1990s, made videos about the government’s persecution of Falun Gong, Christian house churches and human rights activists with materials downloaded from the internet. Some of her videos were widely shared in groups on WeChat, China’s popular social media platform.

In May 2017, she was detained by police. However, she was not accused of disseminating information censored by the state: ‘picking quarrels and provoking trouble’ would be the typical charge. Instead, she was convicted of ‘using a cult to undermine law enforcement’, an offense applied widely to Falun Gong followers under Article 300 of China’s Criminal Law. She was jailed for seven years and six months, and remains in Wuhan Women’s Prison today.

Little was known about Fang Bin’s situation until he was released from prison on 30 April 2023. He had been imprisoned for three years for ‘picking quarrels and provoking trouble’. Friends believe that it was thanks to the continuous international attention to his case that Fang Bin was not given a harsher sentence by the authorities, either under Article 300 or for ‘inciting subversion’, a more serious crime, and was able to return home in one piece at all.

Sadly, there isn’t a home for him anymore.

A family separated for decades

At this point Fang and Feng are no strangers to the persecution of the Chinese Communist Party. In July 1999, they were enjoying a comfortable life with their young son in a village called ‘Happiness’ in Beijing, each having a well-paid job. Then came the crackdown on Falun Gong.

When the Chinese Communist Party began its full-scale crackdown on Falun Gong, life was shattered for this family; all happiness was destroyed.

In August 1999, when their boy was only three, Ms Feng was detained for her faith for the first time. She was released after 15 days, but since then the family has suffered forced evictions, harassment, long periods of separation, and the couple has been subjected to repeated detention and incarceration ever since.

Mr Fang was twice sentenced to re-education through labour (in 2000 and 2004), totalling five years.

Before her detention in 2017, Ms Feng had been sentenced to re-education through labour three times (in 2001, 2003 and 2007), totalling eight years. What landed them in all this trouble? Meeting with other Falun Gong practitioners; possessing or sharing Falun Gong materials; writing articles for overseas media…

Their son was deprived of a normal childhood. With either or both parents locked up most of the time while growing up, he had to be looked after by relatives in Beijing.  

A friend recalls: ‘When his mother was taken away in 2003, Liangliang, who was only seven, watched the horrific scene. The young boy blocked the door to prevent the police officers from entering. He was shouting and begging the men not to take away his mother. At such a young age, he had already witnessed the cruel reality of his father and mother being taken away from him so many times, causing great trauma to that little heart.’

Today, father, mother and son still live in three places, with little prospect of family reunion: Fang Bin remains under strict surveillance since his release from prison; his jailed wife has been denied family visits by the authorities.

‘This was our happy family life in Beijing. Now we have been forced to separate from each other. It’s even difficult for the three of us to meet up.’

Fang Bin, 27 August 2023

The double vulnerability of being a Falun Gong human rights defender

The sad story of Fang Bin and his family is one of suffering and struggles against the backdrop of decades-long state oppression of a religious group. They are not the only activists who have been punished particularly severely for peacefully defending basic human rights as well as practising Falun Gong. Artist Xu Na and her ten friends have been imprisoned after releasing photos that show scenes in Beijing under Zero-COVID policy since July 2020.

Many Falun Gong detainees have been denied access to legal counsel; on the other hand, some human rights lawyers have had their licenses revoked for representing Falun Gong clients, for instance, Liang Xiaojun and Ren Quanniu. There have also been far too many reports of jailed Falun Gong practitioners dying due to torture.

Some practitioners and Falun Gong sympathisers have observed improvement in their situation in the Chinese society, compared to two decades ago, as the public is now remarkably less hostile towards the spiritual movement. However, the Chinese government’s persecution of this group has not stopped; criminal charges are still being brought against Falun Gong followers, purely for practising their faith, on a daily basis.

We must continue to stand with all courageous human rights defenders in China, such as Fang Bin, Feng Yunqing and Zhang Zhan. We should also honour their endeavours by speaking truth and fighting propaganda including the CCP’s official narrative surrounding the coronavirus pandemic.

The Chinese government must be held accountable for trampling on its citizens’ basic right to freedom of conscience and religion and freedom of opinion and expression.

By CSW’s China Team

This article was first published in The China Corner.

By Tsering Passang, Founder & Chair, Global Alliance for Tibet & Persecuted Minorities

To coincide with the 74th founding anniversary of the People’s Republic of China, a coalition of UK rights groups and community organisations staged a peaceful protest in central London on Sunday, 1st October, to highlight gross violations of human rights and atrocities committed by the Chinese State.

Under Mao Tsetung’s dictatorship, the Communist Party of China (CCP) came to power and established the People’s Republic of China, on 1^st October 1949, after the then ruling Kuomintang Government (The Nationalist – Republic of China – now Taiwan) was overthrown. Mao then ordered his PLA troops to invade East Turkestan and Tibet. Both these countries are still under the illegal occupation of the People’s Republic of China.

“Nothing to celebrate” was the central theme of the protest, organised by China’s persecuted communities, including Hongkongers, Southern Mongolians, Tibetans and Uyghurs. At 3pm, crowds of protesters gathered at St Martins-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, where leading activists addressed the rally. Tenzin Kunga, Chairman of the Tibetan Community in Britain, who is also Advocacy Officer at Free Tibet, spoke on the purpose of organising the annual protest. Rahima Mahmut of the Stop Uyghur Genocide and Finn Lau of Hong Kong Liberty addressed the rally. Speakers highlighted how 74 years of Communist Party of China (CCP) rule have affected their nations and communities, from military invasions and occupations of their countries in 1950 to modern day human rights violations and crimes against humanity, including mass detentions, torture, religious repression, cultural eradication and violence from police and security forces.

Statement by All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Tibet

A Statement issued by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Tibet was read at the rally. An excerpt of the statement says: “Even after more than seven decades of international campaign and advocacy for freedom, Tibet continues to remain under a brutal Chinese occupation. Since 2009, over 155 Tibetans have made the ultimate sacrifice, giving their lives in self-immolations protests, a reflection of the pain Tibetans feel at the occupation of their country and the systematic eradication of their identity. 

“Furthermore, the Chinese government operates a coercive residential school system in Tibet with the aim of cultural assimilation of Tibetan children into the majority Han culture. At the same time, it shuts Tibetan-language schools and marginalises the Tibetan language. The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) has strongly criticised the residential schools policy, calling for it to be immediately abolished.

“Despite this despair, Tibetans inside Tibet  have never stopped resisting. We salute their bravery and support their struggle for freedom.

“We need the UK government to hold China accountable for its actions in Tibet, as well as for its repressive policies against Uyghurs and Hongkongers. China’s Universal Periodic Review at the UN Human Rights Council early next year is a prime opportunity to do this”, the statement from the parliamentary group for Tibet concluded.

March and Rally outside Chinese Embassy

Protesters then marched to the Chinese Embassy, where a bigger rally was held. Whilst marching through Leicester Square, China Town, Regent Street and Oxford Circus, the protesters chanted loud slogans such as “Free Tibet”, “Free East Turkestan”, “Free Hong Kong”, “Free Southern Mongolia” and “Stop Uyghur Genocide”, “Down Down – CCP” “China lies – People die”.

Outside the Chinese Embassy, Maira Aisa, Chair of UK Uyghur Community and Engherjirgalang U, Founder and Chair of the Voice of Southern Mongolia (VOSM) spoke, who called for freedom and justice in their respective countries. National anthems from the respective community groups were sung.

Sir Iain Duncan Smith MP, former Leader of the Conservative Party, who is a Co-Chair of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) has sent his support. 

Statement by Sir Iain Duncan Smith MP

“It is of great regret that I am unable to join you in person today to show my support for the Uyghur, Tibetan, Hong Kong, and Southern Mongolia communities in light of the 74th founding anniversary of the People’s Republic of China.

I speak to you both as a Member of the British Parliament and as a founding Co-Chair of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC). Together our alliance spans over 250 legislators from 32 countries working to reform the approach of democracies towards China. 

IPAC was formed in 2020 out of a recognition that the Chinese government, under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party represents a systemic threat to the free world. Under President Xi, the Chinese government has carried out a Genocide against the Uyghur people of Xinjiang, trashed the Sino/British treaty on Hong Kong, dismantled Hong Kong’s democracy and made continuous threats and actions on Taiwan. Not least, it has continued the brutal persecution of the Tibetan people and other religious minorities in China. 

China poses a threat not just militarily but also to the human rights and freedoms upon which our democracy is based. This threat can only be dealt with by strength and by being clear to China that their behaviour is unacceptable and will have consequences.

I, alongside other colleagues including our families, were sanctioned by the Chinese government for exposing Beijing’s growing threat and the increased restrictions on Chinese people within China and on British soil. In Parliament, I will continue to speak out against the genocide of the Uyghurs and remind our Government that the nature of the CCP’s regimehas not changed, together with its appalling behaviour towards minorities and dissents. I will continue to call on our Government for tougher action to stand by and protect human rights defenders, pro-democracy activists and ethnic minorities who are targeted by the CCP. 

I pledge to stand up for the rights and freedom of all those now oppressed by this brutal Chinese Communist Government.” 

UK Human Rights Ambassador Statement at the UN Human Rights Council 

It is important to note that only last month, on 26th September, the UK Human Rights Ambassador, Rita French delivered a Statement under Item 4 General Debate. On China, the UK Ambassador said: 

“China continues to disregard human rights. Constraining civil society, denying freedom of expression, and of religion or belief. Systematic violations persist in Xinjiang and Tibet, where the UN reports a million Tibetan children have been separated from their families to assimilate them into Han culture. In Hong Kong politicised prosecutions against Jimmy Lai, the ‘NSL 47’, and journalists exemplify authorities’ targeted campaign to repress criticism. We urge China to uphold its human rights obligations, and the rights of its own people enshrined in its own Constitution.”

This year’s protest was organised by Global Alliance for Tibet and Persecuted Minorities  Free Tibet  Hong Kong Aid  Hongkongers in Britain  Hong Kong Liberty  Stop Uyghur Genocide  Tibetan Community in Britain  UK Uyghur Community  Voice of Southern Mongolia  World Uyghur Congress.

The EU reiterates its concerns about the very serious human rights situation in China. During the ongoing 54th session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, from 11 September to 13 October 2022, the European Union in its statement under Item 4 called on the government of the People’s Republic of China “to abide by its obligations under national law, including its own Constitution, and international law, to respect, protect and fulfil human rights for all, including Uyghurs, Tibetans and persons belonging to ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities across China.”

The EU Statement was made on 26th September.

“The EU reiterates its concerns about the very serious human rights situation in China. Based on numerous reports by UN Special Rapporteurs and in particular evidenced based the assessment report of human rights concerns in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region by the OHCHR, the human rights situation requires the immediate attention of the Government of China, United Nations intergovernmental bodies and the human rights system. Of particular EU concern remain political re-education camps, mass arbitrary detentions, widespread surveillance, tracking and control measures, systemic and severe restrictions on the exercise of fundamental freedoms, including freedom of religion or belief, as well as the use of forced labour, torture, forced abortion and sterilisation, birth control and family separation policies, and sexual and gender-based violence, especially in Xinjiang. Obligatory boarding schooling and DNA sampling, as reported recently by civil society organisations, can further indicate of the dire human rights situation in Tibet. Uyghurs, Tibetans and persons belonging to ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities continue to be subjected to human rights violations. Human rights defenders, human rights lawyers, journalists, independent reporters, other media workers and intellectuals continue to be exposed to harassment, intimidation and surveillance and subjected to exit bans, house arrest, torture and ill-treatment, unlawful detention, sentencing and enforced disappearance including via Residential Surveillance in a Designated Location (RSDL) that could amount to torture and ill-treatment. With a view to the seriousness of the human rights situation, the EU urges China to abide by its obligations under national law, including its own Constitution, and international law, to respect, protect and fulfil human rights for all, including Uyghurs, Tibetans and persons belonging to ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities across China. This includes fully respecting the rule of law. China must also respect the principle of non-refoulement, and refrain from any extraterritorial activity (including coercion) that is not in line with international law. The EU encourages China to effectively cooperate with the OHCHR, including towards the implementation of the recommendations of the assessment report and with all international human rights mechanisms. The EU continues to closely monitor the situation and calls for the immediate and unconditional release of, among others, Pastor Cao Sanqiang, Chang Weiping, Chen Jianfang, Chen Yunfei, Cheng Yuan, Ding Jiaxi, Dong Guangping, Gao Zhisheng, Go Sherab Gyatso, Guo Quan, He Fangmei, Huang Qi, Huang Xueqin, Sakharov Prize winner Ilham Tohti, Kamile Wayit, Li Qiaochu, Li Yanhe, Li Yuhan, Peng Lifa, Qin Yongming, Qin Yongpei, Rinchen Tsultrim, Ruan Xiaohuan, Tashi Dorje, Tashpolat Tiyip, Wang Aizhong, Wang Bingzhang, Wang Jianbing, Pastor Wang Yi, Wang Zang, Xu Na, Xu Qin, Xu Yan, Xu Zhiyong, Yang Maodong, Yu Wensheng, Pastor Zhang Chunlei and Zhang Zhan, as well as EU citizen Gui Minhai whose right to consular access must be respected.

The EU remains concerned about the human rights situation in Hong Kong. The repressive use of the National Security Law and of the Sedition Law undermine fundamental freedoms. Of particular concern is the extraterritorial application of the national security legislation, including the Hong Kong authorities’ decision to issue arrest warrants for eight individuals living outside of Hong Kong. The sweeping changes in the electoral system erode democratic principles and political pluralism. The EU is following with great concern the trials of politicians and pro-democracy actors. The EU urges the Chinese central government and the Hong Kong authorities to restore full respect for the rule of law, fundamental freedoms, and democratic principles. These are key to preserve Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy under the ‘one country, two systems’ principle, in compliance with Hong Kong’s Basic Law and China’s domestic and international obligations.”

Link to HRC54 – EU Statement under Item 4

By Tsering Passang, Global Alliance for Tibet & Persecuted Minorities

October 1st marks the 74^th founding anniversary of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

Under the brutal dictatorship of Mao Tsetung, the Communist Party of China (CCP) came to power and established the People’s Republic of China on 1^st October 1949 after overthrowing the Kuomintang Government (The Nationalist – Republic of China – now Taiwan). Mao then ordered his PLA troops to invade East Turkestan and Tibet. Both these countries are still under the illegal occupation of the PRC.

“This Sunday 1 October, a coalition of Chinese, Hongkongers, Southern Mongolians, Tibetans, Uyghurs and other people affected by Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rule will unite in central London in protest against the Chinese government”, the organisers’ media release stated.

“Nothing to celebrate” is the central theme of this year’s protest by China’s persecuted communities in the UK. The coalition has planned a range of actions to highlight how 74 years of CCP rule have affected their nations and communities, from military invasions and occupations of their countries in 1950 to modern day human rights violations and crimes against humanity, including mass detentions, torture, religious repression, cultural eradication and violence from police and security forces.

Members and supporters of China’s persecuted communities will gather at the St Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, where activists and speakers will give speeches from 3pm to 3.30pm. This will be followed by a march from Trafalgar Square to the Chinese Embassy at Portland Place [via Leicester Square, China Town, Regent Street and Oxford Circus].

From 4.15pm to 5.30pm a large and loud protest will be held outside the Chinese Embassy where leading activists and community members will give speeches.

Mr Enghejirgalang U, Chair and Founder of Voice of Southern Mongolia, said: “China’s ongoing systematic policy of ethnic cleansing in Southern Mongolia, similar to what they have been doing in Tibet and East Turkistan, must be stopped. The Chinese authorities must adhere to its own constitution and the UN regulations, whilst respecting the self-determination and cultural rights of its oppressed peoples. China’s fascist nationalism and push for uniformity are not acceptable and we condemn the CCP regime for its ongoing violations of human rights in its occupied territories.”

Tenzin Kunga, Chair of the Tibetan Community in Britain and Advocacy Officer at Free Tibet, said: “By cutting my homeland of Tibet off from the world, the CCP has been able to move from colonial occupation and mass surveillance to full-scale cultural eradication. Every aspect of Tibet’s unique identity, including its culture, language, history and religion, is being targeted by the CCP, which clearly hopes that within a generation, the existence of Tibet will be forgotten. Our next generation is at particular risk: China’s policy of pushing a million Tibetan children into colonial boarding schools was condemned by the United Nations in February and must be halted. So long as policies like these continue, China National Day is nothing to celebrate; it is a day to confront the Chinese government and make it clear that Tibet will never be forgotten. Our struggle will continue until Tibetans can enjoy freedom and human rights.”

Rahima Mahmut, Executive Director of Stop Uyghur Genocide and UK Director of the World Uyghur Congress, said: “Amidst celebrations in China on October 1 commemorating the 74th anniversary of the formation of the PRC, it is imperative to acknowledge that these festivities cannot conceal the decades of repression and crackdowns endured by my people under the Chinese government. Since 2017, Uyghurs and other ethnic groups have faced the horrifying reality of genocide, marked by torture, rape, forced sterilizations, forced labour, and severe medical abuses – all with the intent to eradicate our ethnicity and culture. It is disheartening that the world’s silence inadvertently empowers the CCP’s regime and lends legitimacy to their celebratory events. It is long overdue for the international community to unite in unwavering solidarity against CCP’s grave crimes.”

Organisers of this year’s protest: Global Alliance for Tibet and Persecuted Minorities Free Tibet Hong Kong Aid Hongkongers in Britain Hong Kong Liberty Stop Uyghur Genocide Tibetan Community in Britain UK Uyghur Community Voice of Southern Mongolia World Uyghur Congress

Useful Links

• Free Tibet
• Hong Kong Aid
• Hong Kong Liberty
• Hongkongers in Britain
• Stop Uyghur Genocide
• Tibetan Community in Britain
• Uyghur Community UK
• Voice of Southern Mongolia
• World Uyghur Congress
• Global Alliance for Tibet and Persecuted Minorities

To mark the 74th founding anniversary of the People’s Republic of China, a coalition of UK-based Tibetan, Hong Kong, Southern Mongolia and Uyghur communities are staging a public protest in central London to highlight the CCP regime’s continued brutal crackdown and curtailment of freedom of speech and human dignity in their countries. Rights groups and NGOs such as Free Tibet, World Uyghur Congress and Global Alliance for Tibet & Persecuted Minorities are supporting these communities, who are calling for their basic freedoms, human dignity and democracy.

Resist the CCP Day – Joint London Rally 

Date: Sunday, 1st October 2023 | From 3pm – 5.30pm

3pm – We meet in Trafalgar Square (near National Portrait Gallery), where a brief ceremony will be held.

3.20pm – We begin our march from Trafalgar Square to the Chinese Embassy, 49 Portland Place, London W1B 1JL. We march via Leicester Square, China Town, Regent Street, Oxford Circus, Portland Place (Chinese Embassy).

4pm: The final Rally will be held opposite the Chinese Embassy.

Speakers will remind the CCP regime about China’s continued atrocities being committed in its occupied nations including in East Turkestan and Tibet.

Please join us, show your support and solidarity with the peoples
of East Turkistan, Hong Kong, Southern Mongolia and Tibet.

Organisers:

• Free Tibet
• Hong Kong Aid
• Hong Kong Liberty
• Hongkongers in Britain
• Stop Uyghur Genocide
• Tibetan Community in Britain
• Uyghur Community UK
• Voice of Southern Mongolia
• World Uyghur Congress
• Global Alliance for Tibet and Persecuted Minorities

By Gyal Lo

Dr. Lo is an educational sociologist and a Tibetan activist based in Canada.

Original link: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/15/opinion/the-one-million-tibetan-children-in-chinas-boarding-schools.html

ON SEPTEMBER 15, 2023

One day in late November 2016, back home in Tibet, I received a distressing call from my brother telling me I needed to check on his granddaughters. “Something very strange is happening,” he said.

My young relatives, who were 4 and 5 years old at the time, had just enrolled in a boarding preschool that the Chinese government had established in my hometown, Kanlho, a seminomadic region in the northeast corner of the Tibetan plateau. Their new school was one of many — I have personally tracked about 160 in three Tibetan prefectures alone — and part of Beijing’s growing network of preschools in which Tibetan children are separated from their families and communities and assimilated into Chinese culture.

Though it had only been three months since the girls had started at the school, my brother described how they were already beginning to distance themselves from their Tibetan identity. On weekends, when they could return from school to their family, they rejected the food at home. They became less interested in our Buddhist traditions and spoke Tibetan less frequently. Most alarmingly, they were growing emotionally estranged from our family. “I might lose them if something isn’t done,” my brother worried.

Concerned, I set out to the girls’ school a few days later to pick them up for the weekend. When they walked out of the gates, they waved to me but barely spoke. When we arrived home, the girls didn’t hug their parents. They spoke only Mandarin to each other and remained silent during our family dinner. They had become strangers in their own home.

When I asked the girls about school, the older one recounted how on the first day several children, anxious from being unable to communicate with teachers who only spoke Mandarin, urinated and defecated in their pants.

As the Chinese government continues its 70-year quest to build legitimacy and control over Tibet, it is pivoting increasingly to using education as a battlefield to gain political control. By separating children from their families and familiar surroundings and funneling them into residential schools where they can become assimilated into Chinese subjects, the state is betting on a future where younger generations of Tibetans will become groomed Chinese Communist Party loyalists, model subjects easy to control and manipulate.

Today these boarding schools house roughly one million children between ages 4 and 18, approximately 80 percent of that population. At least 100,000 of those children — and I believe there are many more — are only 4 or 5 years old, like my nieces were.

After listening to the girls’ stories, I asked my brother what would happen if he just refused to send them. He teared up. Disobeying the new policy would mean having his name blacklisted from government benefits. Others who have protested the new schools have suffered terrible consequences, he said.

He also didn’t have any other choice. Though Chinese boarding schools for Tibetan children have been around since the early 1980s, until fairly recently they had mostly enrolled middle and high school students. But beginning around 2010, the government, in preparation for the new wave of residential preschools, began shutting down local village schools, including the one in our hometown. Then it made preschool a prerequisite for elementary school. Though many of the new boarding schools are far from children’s hometowns, refusing to enroll in them would mean children would grow up with little to no education and become further marginalized from an economy that many Tibetans are already excluded from.

Distressed by the changes I observed in my family, I set out over the next few years to visit more than 50 boarding preschools across northern and eastern Tibet, areas that China calls the Qinghai, Sichuan and Gansu provinces. Over the course of my three years of fieldwork and meetings with students, parents and teachers, what I discovered was worse than anything I could have imagined.

I met young Tibetan children who could no longer speak their native tongue. The schools strictly controlled parental visits. In some cases, schoolchildren saw their families only once every six months. Dormitories, playgrounds and teachers’ offices were heavily surveilled. I saw security cameras installed in classrooms, no doubt to make sure teachers — many of whom were young Chinese undergraduates with little to no background in Tibetan language and culture — only used C.C.P.-approved textbooks.

In one school I visited in the nomadic town of Zorge, a homesick child, in a very quiet tone, said: “When it gets dark in the evening and I can’t take care of myself, I miss my mom and grandparents.”

A woman in my village whose small children had been sent to a boarding school told me: “Whenever I came home exhausted after working all day on the farm, I wanted to hug my 4- and 5-year-old kids. But they were not there.” To heal the pain of their separation, she and a group of other young mothers from her village organized a 1,200-kilometer walking pilgrimage to Lhasa.

One villager told me: “We realize that the government is not ours. When officials come to our town, they don’t know our language or how to communicate with us.”

Another asked: “How can our language and culture survive if we are not able to stop what is happening?”

Beijing’s use of schools to erase Tibetan culture isn’t new. During the Cultural Revolution, the government banned the teaching of Tibetan in many schools. Then, in 1985, in addition to the boarding schools that had been set up inside Tibet, Beijing pioneered its Inland Schooling Program, which sent Tibetan students off to boarding schools in mainland China. James Leibold, an expert in Chinese ethnic policies, described the schools as “a military-style boot camp in how to be ‘Chinese’ and how to conform to acceptable ways of acting, thinking and being.” By 2005, 29,000 Tibetan students had attended these schools.

The trend has only accelerated — and reached younger and younger children. In March 2018, at an annual Parliament meeting, President Xi Jinping said that “core socialist values should set the tone of the common spiritual home of all ethnic groups” and “should be nurtured among the people, particularly children and even in kindergartens.”

Beijing’s focus on separating younger Tibetans from their culture has finally caught Washington’s attention. Last month, the U.S. secretary of state, Antony Blinken, announced that the United States would impose visa restrictions on Chinese officials who are involved in “the coercion of Tibetan children into government-run boarding schools.” As other countries like Canada and Australia reckon with their own history of colonial boarding schools, I hope they follow in Secretary Blinken’s footsteps and intervene as China enthusiastically replicates these horrors in my homeland.

I can only hope that the international attention will force Beijing to rethink its policy and alter the fates of children like my young relatives. After years of fieldwork, I am deeply concerned for the fate of Tibetan culture: that it will slowly disappear as more and more children are forced to become Chinese, and the Tibetan culture that I know and cherish will not survive for future generations. Or else I worry that they will grow up as perpetual strangers in their own homes, in their own homeland.

This article is taken from Tibet Action Institute‘s website.

By Tsering Passang, Founder & Chair, GATPM / 18th September 2023

China’s persecuted communities and rights groups staged a peaceful protest outside the InterContinent Hotel in Mayfair, London on Sunday 17th September, where the Chinese Embassy was hosting its 74th anniversary celebration of the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Ahead of the 1st October PRC National Day, this secretive official function of the Chinese Embassy states: ‘A gala dinner to celebrate the 74th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, attended by Ambassador Zheng Zeguang and other embassy officials’.

Attending the protest were leading activists and leaders of China’s persecuted communities and rights groups from Global Alliance for Tibet & Persecuted Minorities, Hong Kong Aid, Hong Kong Liberty, Stop Uyghur Genocide, Tibetan Community UK and UK Uyghur Community. They chanted “No Celebrations – China’s Dictatorship”, “No Celebrations – Genocides demand Justice”, “Free Tibet”, “Free East Turkestan” and “Free Hong Kong”. Chinese officials were seen taking photos of the peaceful protesters.

The coalition of rights groups are now getting ready for their next annual protest, on 1st October, when their members and supporters will join in from London’s Trafalgar Square to the Chinese Embassy to protest against the CCP regime.

After the protest, Rahima Mahmut, Executive Director of Stop Uyghur Genocide, posted on her social media: “This evening, officials from the Chinese Embassy marked their National Celebration Day with a dinner at the Inter Continental Hotel in London. Together with our friends from Hong Kong and Tibet, we organized a small protest outside the hotel to emphasize that there can be no true celebration amid genocide and dictatorship.”

Tenzin Kunga, Chairman of Tibetan Community UK also tweeted, “We made sure that our voices calling for #FreeTibet #FreeHongkong #FreeUyghurs echoed through the hotel doors to those attending the Chinese event. Our groups united in #resistance.”

The People’s Republic of China was established soon after the Communist Party of China (CCP) defeated the Kuomintang (The Nationalist – Republic of China (ROC), now Taiwan) on 1st October 1949. China’s ruthless dictator Mao Tsetung ordered his PLA troops to invade Tibet. Since the CCP came to power through brutal force, immeasurable atrocities and destruction have been committed by the Chinese regime, including tens of millions of people killed. The Uyghur genocide in China’s occupied East Turkestan is the evidence of CCP’s atrocities committed against the Uyghur people. Over 800,000 Tibetan children are forcefully being admitted in China’s ‘colonial boarding schools’ with the main object of annihilation of the Tibetan identity, language and culture. Mongolians still cannot exercise their native language rights in Southern Mongolia, which is still under China’s occupation. Since the CCP imposed their “National Security Law”, the fundamental rights of the people of Hong Kong, including the rights to protest and free speech, have been taken away by the Chinese authorities. Consequently, several hundred thousands of Hongkongers have fled their homeland.

Useful links

Hong Kong Aid

Hong Kong Liberty

Stop Uyghur Genocide

Tibetan Community UK

UK Uyghur Community

Global Alliance for Tibet & Persecuted Minorities

China’s brutal dictator Mao Tsetung ordered his PLA troops to invade Tibet in 1950. Over a million Tibetans died as a direct result of China’s occupation. Beijing took full control of the peaceful Buddhist nation after the 24-year-old Dalai Lama fled to India in March 1959, where he was given political asylum.

After establishing Tibet’s Government-in-Exile (aka the Central Tibetan Administration), the young Dalai Lama continued to promote the democratic reforms for his people which he had sought to implement in Tibet before forced to flee in 1959. Today, based in Dharamsala, northern India, the Central Tibetan Administration continues to carry out its mission of securing political freedom for Tibetans in Tibet whilst taking care of its refugee community. 

During an early public gathering in February 1960, in Bodh Gaya, where the Lord Buddha achieved his enlightenment, the Dalai Lama advised the exiled Tibetans to set up an elected body. The Commission of Tibetan People’s Deputies (CTPD) took its first oath on 2nd September 1960. Since then, this historic date is observed by the Tibetan diaspora as Mang-tso Dus-chen – Tibetan Democracy Day. The final stage of this democratisation process was achieved when the Dalai Lama voluntarily relinquished his remaining political authority to the elected Tibetan leadership in 2011 after a young Tibetan legal scholar from Harvard University, Dr Lobsang Sangay, had secured a landslide victory in the general election. Dr Sangay held the highest Office of Sikyong (formerly Kalon Tripa) for two consecutive terms, until 2021. Sikyong Penpa Tsering is the incumbent President of the Central Tibetan Administration.

On 2nd September, the Tibetan diaspora marked their 63rd anniversary of democracy (Mang-tso Dus-chen).

Statement of Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile on 63rd Tibetan Democracy Day

It was on this 2nd day of September in 1960 that the fruit of His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s gift of the excellence of the democratic system of government to the Tibetan people was realized with the establishment of the Tibetan parliament which was made up of elected representatives from all the three provinces as well as the religious orders of Tibet. And so, on this universal calendar day in the Tibetan Royal Year 2150, when we mark the 63rd anniversary of that momentous occasion, the Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile, with the humility of a profound gratitude to His Holiness, wishes to extend its greetings and good wishes to all the Tibetan people, governments and parliaments that have extended support for Tibet and the Tibetan people, to the Tibet support groups, as well as to the entirety of the public in the international community that aspire peace, fairness and truth.

 The democratic system of government is based on a political ideology that does not differentiate people on the basis of the question whether a person is strong or weak, rich or poor, male or female, or on the basis of their race or lineage, and so forth with regard to their status in society. Rather, it postulates the founding of a society in which everyone is seen as equal, viewed through the prism of the generality or commonality of everyone. Such a system is seen as being based on an ideology that reflects the primacy of the will of the people. It does not bear saying that in the records of the histories of many nations, people have had to make many great sacrifices for the purpose of finally realizing the establishment of a system of government that is based on this great ideology. However, in the case of the Tibetan democracy, we never felt the need to strive for realizing or achieving the present system of democracy, it was bestowed upon us by our pre-eminent leader, His Holiness the Great Fourteenth Dalai Lama, on the basis of the importance He attached to His great foresight and concern for the wellbeing of His people.

 Immediately on assuming political and spiritual leadership of Tibet in 1950, His Holiness embarked on a quest to modernize the system of working of the Tibetan society, for which purpose He newly established in 1952 a reform office. But before this office could work out its full order of plans of action, Communist Chinese invaders launched an armed aggression on Tibet and soon overran the entire territory, thus creating a huge obstacle to the implementation of His reform agenda. However, as soon as He reached the holy land of India in exile, His Holiness, in tandem with the establishment of a Tibetan government in exile, oversaw the establishment in 1960 of the Tibetan parliament with its members elected by the Tibetan people. In 1961, He publicized a document outlining the salient features of a democratic constitution for a future free Tibet. He followed it up, in 1963, with the proclamation of a democratic constitution for a future free Tibet. This was followed, in 1991, by His Holiness taking further action to transform the Tibetan parliament into a true legislative body. Pursuant to this development, His Holiness, on the 28th of June in 1991, granted His assent to the Charter of Tibetans in exile following its adoption by the 11th Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile. His Holiness thereby transformed the Tibetan government in exile into a charter-based body which functions in accordance with a modern democratic system. Further, in the year 2001, a major step was taken in continuing the development of Tibetan democracy with a decision for the Kalon Tripa being elected directly by the Tibetan people. Later, in the year 2011, His Holiness transferred to the leadership elected directly by the Tibetan people the entirety of His political and government powers to make them effective representatives who have a mandate to serve the interests of both those living in Tibet and in exile. And so, we owe a debt of gratitude to His Holiness the Dalai Lama that the Central Tibetan Administration has today become a fully functioning government system within a democratic framework in every aspect.

 Although we have been refugees over the last more than six decades, the leaders of Tibetan government in exile or the Central Tibetan Administration are being directly elected by the Tibetan people in diaspora, like the major independent and progressive democratic countries. Similarly, the local bodies under the CTA, scattered all over the world also exercise democratic electoral system in appointing their representatives – such as the members of the Local Tibetan Assemblies, a section of the Tibetan Settlement Offices, and members of the Regional Tibetan Freedom Movement. Besides, the manner of taking decisions in these bodies is subject to the democratic procedure of majority vote. These bear ample testimony to the gradual progress and development of Tibetan democracy achieved through the meticulous process of refinement in the way a goldsmith tests the purity of gold with regard to the system of Tibetan democracy, its basic framework, and in the manner of the people’s participation in it since His Holiness the Dalai Lama granted to the general Tibetan populace the noble gift of democracy. And so, when in future, the just cause of Tibet prevails and the fortunate era of sunshine dawns on Tibetan people being able to return to their homeland, the best contribution we can make in the exchange of experiences with those who had remained in Tibet would obviously be the democracy that we practice in exile.

 Among the numerous features of the democratic system, one of the more important is the guaranteeing of respect for basic human rights and adhering to the rule of law. There is no person who does not consider his personal freedoms and rights to be important. In the same way, it is equally important that the freedoms and rights of other people, and likewise, their desire to be governed by rule of law, should also be respected. This, while, no doubt, being true, is also fundamental for maintaining harmony in society. In particular, what Tibetans living in exile need to bear in mind is that during their period of living as refugees in foreign countries, they should value the opportunity they enjoy of their freedom and equality by directing their efforts towards the realization of a system of Tibetan democracy which is characterized by attributes of a modern democratic system as well as ethical values rooted in Tibetan culture more than ever before. This has become vital.

When it comes to talking about the situation in Tibet today, it does not bear mentioning that not only are the Tibetan people living there deprived of their democratic freedoms, they also lack even the most fundamental of human rights recognized and proclaimed by the United Nations Organization. Pursuing a series of hard line policies during the past many decades, the Communist Chinese government has subjected the Tibetan people to all manners of hardship on successive occasions that affected every aspect of their day-to-day living conditions. And this was not all. It has even been engaged in implementing a policy to obliterate without a trace the linguistic heritage, religion, culture, traditions and customs, natural environment and so forth which are the defining characteristics of the Tibetan people and their nation. This entailed the indiscriminate arrest or forcible taking away of Tibetan people on false incriminations, their detention and imprisonment, beating and torture, and all others sorts of ill-treatment which continue to be rampant to this day. The government of China is presently engaged in a policy to forcibly assimilate more than a million Tibetan children in boarding schools which has been especially set up for this purpose. This was the reason why recently, on the 22ndof August this year, the Department of State of the United States government announced the imposition of visa sanctions on a section of Chinese leaders involved in this policy. The Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile welcomes this action from the United States government. Still, it bears emphasizing that the situation wherein the government of China continues to carry out a policy to Sinicize the Tibetan people, religion, culture, and nation and to trample on the human rights of the Tibetan people in Tibet remain an abiding cause for great anxiety.

 On the 10th of August in 2023, three United Nations human rights experts – the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders Ms. Mary Lawlor; the Special Rapporteur on freedom of assembly and association Mr. Clément Nyaletsossi Voule; and the Special Rapporteur on human rights obligations relating to the enjoyment of a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment Mr. David Boyd – issued a joint statement. This statement questioned the government of China for its long term imprisonment of nine Tibetan environment activists whose names it mentioned. “If China is committed to tackle the impacts of climate change, it should refrain from persecuting environmental human rights defenders and release all nine immediately,” the experts said. The Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile wishes to express its appreciation to these United Nations human rights experts. Along with it, we wish to appeal to the United Nations as well as governments across the world to pressure and appeal to the government of China to grant freedom to the people in Tibet to engage in initiative and activities on issues of respect for their religious, cultural, linguistic, and fundamental human rights.

 As the current, 17th Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile nears the end of the second year of its term, its members have undertaken visit and inspection tours to the settlements and other areas where Tibetan people have settled, for which purpose settlement destinations were allocated to them at the start of the parliamentary term. Along with undertaking their visits and inspections, the members have, as and when occasions arose, spoken to the Tibetan public about the noble activities and services being undertaken by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and developments in political activities; they also inspected the state of wellbeing of the Tibetan public. By these means, the members of the Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile have acted, and continue to act, as a sort of bridge between the Tibetan public and their administration. Also by these means, a significant number of grievances and problems of the Tibetan public have been solved.

 A large number of political activities of various types have been undertaken, and continues to be undertaken, by the Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile for furthering the fundamental cause of Tibet. These include, and have included, lobbying for support for the Tibetan struggle in a number of countries, with focus on members of parliament of India and other countries, leaders of governments in their respective countries, Tibet support groups and their members through meetings and making of requests for support through various programmes, and also by means of organizing a meeting of the World Parliamentarians’ Convention on Tibet. In order to ensure further improvement in the parliamentary conduct of the members of the Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile, a number of training and strategy meetings were held on successive occasions. Local Assemblies in the Tibetan settlement areas are also important institutions within the democratic framework of the Tibetan people living in exile. Hence, in order to further and improve success in their functioning, the Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile has undertaken, and continues to undertake, programmes to impart training to the members of the Local Tibetan Assemblies at their various locations from time to time. This year, a new initiative was launched, and continues to be carried out, to spread awareness of the issue of Tibet among the Indian youths in different states of the country, with the main focus being on college and university students, for which purpose visit allocations of states were made for the members of the Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile. To sum up, the Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile wishes to apprise the Tibetan public about the activities it has undertaken, and continues to undertake, to the best of its means, directed at efforts to realize the just cause of Tibet and towards overcoming the grievances and solving the problems of the general Tibetan public.

 The Tibetan democracy being practiced by us in exile is the result of a vision long held by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and is based on the foundation of truth and fairness, and of ethical conduct. It is therefore established on the recognition of the values of democracy, on the foundation of which we have continued to pool whatever capabilities we possessed to cumulatively enrich it with our experiences in our pursuit of the democratic way. Nevertheless, it bears pointing out that from the start of the year 2020 following the outbreak of the Covid-19 global pandemic in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, the entire world got plunged into hardship and suffering, engulfed by its spread. This had a great deleterious effect on our Tibetan community in exile too, including the fact that the Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile was unable to hold its regular session in accordance with the laws and rules governing it. But now, following an agreement reached during the 5thsession of the 17th Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile, resolution No. 2023/17/5/5 was adopted under which a Rules and Regulation Review Committee made up of five members of the Parliament was constituted. The mandate of this committee is to review the laws, and the rules and regulations of the Central Tibetan Administration, and submit its report and recommendations to the Parliamentary Secretariat by the end of Feb 2024. As such, the committee is already fully immersed in carrying out this task. The Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile remains hopeful that by means of this approach, greater clarity will be achieved in carrying out its works in accordance with the laws and the rules and regulations governing the conduct of its business and affairs.

 It is solely on account of the kindness of and the debt of gratitude we owe to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the unsurpassable leader of the Tibetan people, that there has been a groundswell of assistance and support for Tibet and the Tibetan people from governments, parliaments, organizations and associations, as well as private individuals from countries across the world, including especially India, the United States of America, and across Europe. To all of them, the Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile takes the opportunity provided by this occasion to express its immense gratitude.

 Finally, we pray that His Holiness the Great 14th Dalai Lama, the refuge of the Tibetan people for this life as well as hereafter, and our unsurpassable leader, may continue to live for ten thousand eons; that, on this basis, all His great and noble desires may be seen fulfilled with spontaneity and without obstacles; and that the noble path of Tibetan democracy may continue to develop and progress and, on that basis, the just cause of the Tibetan people may definitely prevail in all speediness.

The Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile

2 September 2023

Statement of Kashag on Sixty-third Anniversary of Tibetan Democracy Day

Today, as we celebrate the historic occasion of the sixty-third anniversary of the Tibetan Democracy Day, on behalf of Tibetans both in and outside Tibet, the Kashag submits our deepest obeisance to His Holiness the Great Fourteenth Dalai Lama for democratizing the system of Tibetan polity. The Kashag would also like to extend our sincere greetings to the distinguished guests-the Swedish parliamentary delegates-Honourable MPs Margareta Elisabeth Cederfelt, Johanna Hornberger, Marie Charlotte Nicholson, Maria Viktoriam Stockhaus, Alexandra Anstrell, Ann-Sofie Lifvenhage, John E Weinerhall from the Moderate Party; Hon. MPs Richard Johannes Jomshof and Björn Söder from the Sweden Democrats Party; Hon. MP Gudrun Margareta Brunegard from the Christian Democrats Party; Hon. MP Janine Sofia Alm Ericson from the Green Party and Mr. Carl Mattias and Ms. Kristina Eva Maria Bjornerstedt of Swedish Tibet Committee. We would also like to extend a warm welcome to the delegates of the CTA’s Donor Conference from different parts of the world. On this occasion, we would also like to send our hearty greetings to all Tibetans, both in and outside Tibet, as well as to the supporters of Tibet and Tibetan people spread across the globe.

The Kashag’s last two statements issued on Tibetan Democracy Day briefly touched upon how His Holiness the Dalai Lama has instilled and conferred a culture of democracy among the Tibetan people over the years. These statements also provided a general overview of the development of the three pillars of democracy within the Tibetan administration. Today, we shall delve briefly into the phases of evolution of the constitutional history of Tibet.

When we look back into the history of our legal system, we had the Laws of Two Penalties and Five Approaches during the reign of Nyatri Tsenpo, the first king of Tibet; Ten Divine Virtues and 16 Codes of Conduct during Emperor Songtsen Gampo; and the Five Codes and Five Laws during the Tibetan imperial period. The period of disintegration of Tibet witnessed some deterioration in our legal system. The reign of Sakya adopted the best practices of then prevailing Mongolian laws, followed by The 15 Legal Codes during the reign of Phagmodrupa, The 16 Legal Codes during Depa Tsangpa and The 13 Legal Codes during the Gaden Phodrang. Thus, Tibet throughout its history had evolved its own national laws, religious laws and laws governing human conduct.

After coming into exile, His Holiness the Dalai Lama promulgated the Constitution in 1963 which initiated major reforms in the traditional administrative structure and introduced a system of check and balance amongst the three pillars of democratic governance. While upholding the core values of our traditional temporal and religious legal codes, such as compassion, justice, equality, non-violence, and environmental consciousness, the Constitution also safeguarded the fundamental rights and freedoms of the people. Moreover, this Constitution laid the essential groundwork for the adoption of the Charter of the Tibetans-in-Exile in 1991 by the democratically elected members of the 11th Assembly of Tibetan People’s Deputies.

From 1960 to 1990, before the adoption of the Charter of the Tibetans-in-Exile, the deputies served as members of both the Assembly of the Tibetan People’s Deputies (ATPD) as well as the Standing Commission of the National Assembly. Half-yearly and yearly work assembly meetings of both central and local civil servants as well as representatives from all settlements were convened by the ATPD to discuss and deliberate upon all issues concerning administration and public welfare. These meetings provided a platform for the representatives of people at the grassroots level to participate extensively in the decision-making process of the administration. Between 1972 to 1974, the rules and regulations governing the functioning of the Election Commission, the Public Service Commission and the Tibetan Freedom Movement were also formulated. A high-level National Committee comprising of Kalons, MPs and senior civil servants was formed to discuss and decide on important national matters. All these developments laid a robust foundation for ultimately realizing a democratic system of governance within the exile community.

A Special Tibetan People’s Meeting was convened in Dharmshala from 11 to 17 May 1990, which was attended by 369 people. Members of the Kashag, members of the ATPD, senior civil servants, representatives of various Tibetan Buddhist traditions, Tibetan NGOs, people’s representatives from various Tibetan settlements and representatives of the newly-arrived Tibetans from Tibet participated in this meeting. At this historic meeting, His Holiness the Dalai Lama dissolved the Kashag (Kalons appointed by His Holiness the Dalai Lama) and the 10th Assembly of Tibetan People’s Deputies. As authorized by His Holiness, this special meeting elected three Kalons to the interim Kashag. His Holiness urged the meeting to discuss and propose any necessary democratic reforms. Subsequently, 14 important resolutions were passed at the meeting, which paved the way for the establishment of the Tibetan Justice Commission and the expansion of the strength of the Tibetan Parliament to 10 MPs from each of the three traditional regions of Tibet, two each from the four sects of Tibetan Buddhism and native Tibetan Bon religion as well as three MPs nominated by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Furthermore, a five-member Constitution Drafting Committee was constituted.

Assuming its role as the Constituent Assembly, members of the 11th Tibetan parliament and the constitution drafting committee discussed and deliberated upon the draft Charter on 30 May 1991. On 31st May, following the election of the officiating Speaker and Deputy Speaker, the Rules and Regulation of Parliamentary Procedure and Conduct of Business was adopted. After intensive discussions on the content of draft Charter from 3 to 13 June 1991, all the sitting MPs signed the Charter of the Tibetans-in-Exile on 14 June 1991. His Holiness the Dalai Lama assented the Charter on 28 June 1991.

Over the last 35 years, the Charter has undergone 35 amendments. Over 85% of them are related with the qualifications, election processes and responsibilities of the dignitaries of the three pillars of Tibetan polity: Kashag, Parliament and Supreme Justice Commission. About fifteen of these amendments were specifically related to the Kashag, including six which were made after 2011.

If we look at the legislative accomplishments, eleven legislations were passed within just two years of the adoption of the Charter. These include: Rules and Regulation of Parliamentary Procedure and Conduct of Business; Rules and Regulations of the Standing Committee of the Tibetan Parliament; Administrative Rules and Regulations of Central Tibetan Administration Rules; Rules and Regulations of the Public Service Commission; Exile Tibetan Rules and Regulations on Raising funds, Annual Budget and Financial Management; Rules and Regulations of Regional Tibetan Freedom Movement Committee; Rules and Regulations of Tibetan Voluntary Contribution and Other Contributions Act; Rules and Regulations of the Office of Auditor General; Rules and Regulations of the Tibetan Parliamentary Secretariat; Rules and Regulations for the Allotment of Staff Quarters and Retired Staff Quarters; and Rules and Regulations for the Presentation of Excellency Award to the Outstanding Staff of CTA.

Between 1995 to 2015, within a span of twenty years, fifteen rules and regulations were adopted, including six related with the privileges and benefits of the dignitaries. For instance, Tibetan Parliamentarian Housing Rules (1995); Tibetan Parliament Speaker’s Relief Trust Fund Rules (1997); exile Tibetan Electoral Rules (2000); the Central Council of Tibetan Medicine Act (2003); six different rules and regulations related to the salaries, allowances and privileges of Justice Commissioners, MPs, Sikyong, Kalons and the heads of the three autonomous bodies (2004); Settlement Housing and Land Use Regulations (2005); the act regulating the Council of Tibetan Religious Affairs (2009); Daily Allowance and Other Entitlements of the Members of Local Tibetan Assembly Rules (2010); rules on collecting general donation (2011); rules on officialization of the works of non-standing committee members of Tibetan parliament (2015). However, since 2015, no new legislation has been passed.

Among the rules and regulations mentioned above, the act regulating the council of Tibetan Religious Affairs, remains unimplemented, whereas certain others have gradually lost their effectiveness.

The rules and regulations of the Tibetan Public Service Commission saw the highest number of amendments (26 times), followed by the exile Tibetan Election Rules (20 times), and the Allocation of Staff Quarters and Retired Staff Quarter Rules (19 times). The parliament has already endorsed the bill put forth by the 16th Kashag, aiming to standardize workforce demarcation within the Tibetan administration and establish structured criteria and prerequisites for special appointments. Once again, the Kashag is preparing to introduce a new bill during the upcoming session of the Tibetan parliament. This proposed bill aims to introduce additional amendments to the rules and regulations of the Public Service Commission, with the goal of enhancing the overall structure of the Tibetan workforce and fostering uniformity in their privileges and benefits. Similarly, in alignment with the amended articles of the Charter, we are currently engaged in a thorough review of the regulations that oversee our electoral processes. The parliament has already granted approval to our proposed bill, which aims to enlarge the residential quarters for our entry-level civil servants. This bill also includes provisions to address any conflicting perspectives that might arise during the allocation of staff accommodations. To secure long-term sustainability of Tibetan settlements, the Kashag has initiated measures to enable the internal transfer of land and housing among Tibetans. Additionally, provisions have been established for individuals residing abroad; if they occupy their settlement residences for a minimum of one month within every two-year period, they will retain their house and land rights and will not be required to relinquish them to the administration.

In yet another advancement in our legal system, as per Article 67 of the Charter, which empowers the Tibetan Supreme Justice Commission (TSJC) to establish its own rules of procedure and codes of law, the Judiciary Code, Civil Procedure Code, and Evidence Code of the TSJC were formulated in 1996.

In accordance with the provisions outlined in the Charter, additional regulations governing the operations of our Election Commission, Public Service Commission, and the Office of the Auditor General were developed. Similarly, the Kashag has also established a series of administrative rules and regulations. These rules and regulations are continuously undergoing revision to adapt to the evolving needs of the times. Furthermore, as per Article 82 of the Charter, which empowers the Local Tibetan Assembly to create its own rules and regulations governing local activities, a total of 39 local assemblies have enacted their respective rules and regulations.

These rules and regulations have established a strong legal groundwork for the administration and its financial management, the entitlements of dignitaries and civil servants, as well as the rights and liberties of the populace. These regulations have not only bolstered the effectiveness of all aspects of our democratic governance but have also safeguarded the rights and freedoms of our people.

In the Guidelines for Future Tibet’s Polity and Basic Features of its Constitution promulgated in 1992, His Holiness the Dalai Lama has stated that “Personally, I have made up my mind that I will not play any role in the future government of Tibet, let alone seek the Dalai Lama’s traditional political position in the government.” Consequently, in 2011, His Holiness devolved all his political and administrative authority to the elected leadership.

Last year, on the Democracy Day, the Kashag appealed to constitute a charter review committee, and finally, the Parliament’s newly constituted Charter Review Committee has commenced its work. We, the Kashag, have also submitted our proposals. We earnestly hope that both the committee and the Parliament will give due consideration to the insights and opinions received extensively from the general population, including the civil servants of the CTA.

The Kashag upholds that the rule of law stands as a cornerstone in guaranteeing equality and justice, which are the embodiment of democratic values. For those of us who believe in the democratic principle of ultimate power residing in the hands of the people, a nation’s trajectory of progress depends upon the active participation of its citizens in shaping and implementing the CTA’s fundamental objectives and public policies. Even though we have made remarkable achievements over the years, our aspiration for freedom in Tibet remains unrealized. Hence, the Kashag would like to reiterate our appeal to stand united in the face of challenges.

On this occasion, we would like to take this opportunity to convey our deepest gratitude and appreciation to all the supporters for your unwavering support for the just cause of Tibet and its people. We look forward to your continued solidarity and friendship.

In conclusion, we pray for the long life of His Holiness the Great Fourteenth Dalai Lama and the perpetual flourishing of His Holiness’ endeavours and fulfilment of all His noble aspirations.

The Kashag

2 September 2023

(N.B. This is the English translation of the Tibetan original. If there are any discrepancies, please consider the Tibetan version as final and authoritative.)

By International Campaign for Tibet | August 29, 2023

Lobsang Yangtso had been to UN climate conferences and other water conferences before. But last week’s panel on water security in the Himalayas was different in one key way: the participants were willing to discuss Tibet.

“In the other conferences that I have participated in earlier, when we talked about water security in the Himalayas, none of these countries or the speakers dared to speak what is happening in the upstream of all the Himalayan regions” in Tibet, said Lobsang, a senior researcher at the International Tibet Network. “So I’m really glad right now that we are discussing this,” she added.

The panel, “Addressing Water Security Challenges in the Himalayan Region,” took place Aug. 24 at the World Water Week Conference in Stockholm.

The US State Department convened the panel in partnership with the International Water Management Institute.

In addition to Lobsang, the panel featured fellow Tibetan exile Tsechu Dolma, founder of the Mountain Resiliency Project, as well as Manohara Khadka, the water management institute’s Nepal country representative.

US and Indian officials also gave remarks during the discussion.

“A central theme of World Water Week was the necessity of using water for peace. In Tibet, the People’s Republic of China is miles away from this goal,” said Franz Matzner, government relations director of the International Campaign for Tibet, which cosponsored the event. “Cooperation is not abstract, it’s a choice. All around the globe countries are working together to better manage growing water scarcity and the natural disasters that climate change is already making dangerously commonplace. It is time for China to join in choosing peace over its agenda of authoritarian control.”

Himalayan water security

The Himalayan region is home to one-fifth of the world’s freshwater supply. Glacial runoff forms rivers in almost every country across South and Southeast Asia, with an estimated 1.8 billion people dependent on this water’s healthy, unimpeded flow.

The integrity of Tibet’s ecology is critical to the Tibetan people’s way of life and directly contributes to the stability and economic wellbeing of downstream countries in South and Southeast Asia.

However, large-scale water diversion projects and hydropower development are having dramatic downstream consequences, including lack of access to freshwater, economic disruption and negative impacts on downstream ecosystems.

US and India

The panel in Stockholm began with remarks from US Under Secretary of State Uzra Zeya, who delivered an introduction by video.

Zeya, who also serves as the US Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues, warned that the Chinese government—which has illegally occupied Tibet for over 60 years—has dramatically increased large-scale water diversion projects and hydropower development across the Tibetan Plateau in recent years.

“These policies have been designed and implemented without input from the 6 million Tibetans in China, leading to the displacement of traditional Tibetan communities,” she said. “These projects have also had negative implications for the water security of downstream nations.”

Rebecca Peters, a water policy advisor to the State Department, addressed the panel next. She said the rapid development of large-scale infrastructure in Tibet has compounded the effects of climate change and growing demands for water.

“As an example,” she said, “proposed diversions of billions of cubic meters of water from the [Tibetan] Plateau further into China with little to no consultation risks further undermining water security in the region.”

Peters said the US is committed to supporting a collaborative approach in the Himalayas, noting that the Tibetan Policy and Support Act of 2020 “calls for increased collaboration, transparency and information sharing between the People’s Republic of China, Himalayan and other downstream nations, as well as the Tibetan community.”

The panel also featured remarks by Asok Kumar, the director general of the National Mission for Clean Ganga, Ministry of Jal Shakti, government of India.

Kumar’s remarks touched on the significance of the Himalayan water supply to downstream countries. He noted that the Ganga or Ganges river, which provides a basin for about 40% of India’s population, originates in the Himalayas.

“Hence we are also very much concerned about the environmental set up in the Himalayan regions,” Kumar said.

Panel

During the panel, the three panelists spoke about the challenges of environmental sustainability and climate change on the “Third Pole,” as the Himalayan region is known.

Tsechu of the Mountain Resiliency Project said the Chinese government has been using water in the region in an adversarial way.

“With water as a transboundary issue, cooperation, collaboration, that’s the only way you can ensure a sustainable future for all,” she said. “But when you’re using it as a tool of assertion of dominance and power and control, then you’re going to create a lot of adverse relationships with downstream communities.

Lobsang of the International Tibet Network pointed out that UN experts criticized the Chinese government this month for sentencing nine Tibetan environmental defenders to up to 11 years in prison.

“With the case of Tibet,” she said, “when you raise concerns or raise issues against the government policy, you end up in jail.”

Lobsang added that more panels like this one are needed.

“I feel that we need more platforms to have an open and clear discussion among ourselves,” she said, “so that we can put pressure on the Chinese government and make them accountable for what is happening in the environment, not only in the Himalayas but to other countries as well.”

A white paper from the panel is expected.

Watch the panel.

DOWNLOAD AS PDF

Source: ICT

The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) released its annual Country Report on the religious freedom issues in Nepal.

This annual Country Report, released on 17th August, also highlighted the challenges and violation of religious freedom for Tibetan refugees in Nepal, where about 20,000 have been residing since China took full control of Tibet in 1959.

The report reads: “Finally, the Tibetan Buddhist refugee population has faced continued legal impediments to their right to freedom of religion or belief. Approximately 20,000 Tibetan refugees currently reside in Nepal, which is viewed as the closest destination to escape persecution from Chinese authorities who engage in systematic arrests, suppression, and punishment of those protesting against its influence in Tibet. After Tibetans make the treacherous journey across the Himalayas into Nepal, however, the government denies the refugee population identity cards, which prevents them from securing work and educational opportunities in the country and abroad. Further, while the government in 2022 did provide the refugees with a two-hour window to celebrate the birthday of their religious leader, the Dalai Lama, the population is generally prohibited from displaying public devotion to him. The Nepali government enforces this prohibition through ongoing surveillance of refugees, including home visits and searches. Fears of surveillance are further compounded by an extradition treaty with China, which would require both countries to hand over individuals found crossing the border within seven days of detainment. While Nepal has signed but not yet ratified the agreement, human rights groups note that the government has sent back some Tibetans found near the Nepal-China border. Tibetan refugees returned to China are at a heightened risk of persecution at the hands of the Chinese government, including violations of their right to life and their right to freedom from torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. As such, Nepal returning Tibetan refugees to China violates the principle of non-refoulement under international humanitarian and human rights law, which provides that no individual shall be returned to a country where they are likely to face persecution.”

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) is an independent, bipartisan federal government entity established by the U.S. Congress to monitor, analyze, and report on religious freedom abroad. USCIRF makes foreign policy recommendations to the President, the Secretary of State, and Congress intended to deter religious persecution and promote freedom of religion and belief. 

Link: USCIRF’s full Country Report on Nepal