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"The Dalai Lama And His Government In Exile"
Dalai Lama: China's actions 'cultural genocide'
Tibet spiritual leader calls for an international investigation
BEIJING - The Dalai Lama called Sunday for an international investigation into China's crackdown against protesters in Tibet, which he said is facing a "cultural genocide" and where his exiled government said 80 people were killed in the violence.
The demonstrations were the fiercest challenge to Beijing's rule in the region in nearly two decades, leading to sympathy protests elsewhere and embarrassing China ahead of the Olympic Games.
Along with 80 killed, some 72 people were injured in the protests, said Thubten Samphel, a spokesman for the exiles. He said the figures were confirmed by multiple sources inside Tibet who had counted corpses. China's state media said 10 people died.
Meanwhile, hundreds of armed police and soldiers patrolled the streets of Lhasa two days after Tibetans torched buildings and stoned Chinese residents. Hong Kong Cable TV reported some 200 military vehicles, carrying 40 to 60 armed soldiers each, drove into the city center of Lhasa on Sunday.
Streets mostly empty
Footage showed the streets were mostly empty other than the security forces. Messages on loudspeakers warned residents to "Discern between enemies and friends, maintain order" and "Have a clear stand to oppose violence, maintain stability."
The Tibetan spiritual leader, speaking in Dharmsala, the north Indian hill town where Tibet's government-in-exile is based, said "Some respected international organization can find out what the situation is in Tibet and what is the cause."
"Whether the (Chinese) government there admits or not, there is a problem. There is an ancient cultural heritage that is facing serious danger," the Dalai Lama said. "Whether intentionally or unintentionally, some kind of cultural genocide is taking place."
It was not immediately clear if he was referring to China's overall policies in Tibet when he spoke of a genocide, or the recent crackdown.
The violence erupted just two weeks before China's Summer Olympic celebrations kick off with the start of the torch relay, which passes through Tibet. China is gambling that its crackdown will not draw an international outcry over human rights violations that could lead to boycotts of the Olympics.
Travel alert
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called on China "to exercise restraint in dealing with these protests," while the State Department issued a travel alert for Americans in the region. Her statement also called for China to release monks and others jailed for protesting.
China's official Xinhua News Agency reported at least 10 civilians were burned to death on Friday. But the Tibetan exiles said that, of the 80 they confirmed were killed, 26 alone died Saturday next to the Drapchi prison in Lhasa. Five girls were killed in the town's central Tibetan neighborhood, said Tenzin Taklha, the senior aide to the Dalai Lama.
China restricts access to Tibet for foreign media, making it difficult to independently verify the casualties and the scale of protests and suppression.
The latest unrest began Monday on the anniversary of a 1959 uprising against Chinese rule. Tibet was effectively independent for decades before communist troops entered in 1950.
Initially, the protests were led by Buddhist monks demanding the release of other detained monks. Their demands spiraled to include cries for Tibet's independence and turned violent Friday when police tried to stop a group of protesting monks. Pent-up grievances against Chinese rule came to the fore, as Tibetans directed their anger against Chinese and their shops, hotels and other businesses.
Amid the clampdown that followed, foreign tourists in Lhasa were told to leave, a hotel manager and travel guide said, with the guide adding that some were turned back at the airport.
Sympathy protests
Even as Chinese forces appeared to reassert control in Lhasa, sympathy protests had erupted on Saturday in an important Tibetan town 750 miles away in Gansu Province.
Police fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of Buddhist monks and other Tibetans after they marched from the historic Labrang monastery and smashed windows in the county police headquarters in Xiahe, witnesses said.
On Sunday, Gansu provincial Governor Xu Shousheng called the protests "a planned and organized destructive activity" and blamed the "outside Dalai group" for instigating the riots.
Also in recent days, demonstrations by Tibetan exiles and their supporters sprouted up in neighboring Nepal, New York, Switzerland and Australia.
The Chinese government is hoping a successful Olympics will boost its popularity at home as well as its image abroad. But Beijing's hosting of the Olympics has already attracted scrutiny of China's human rights record and its pollution problems.
So far, international criticism of the crackdown in Tibet has been mild. The U.S. and European Union called for Chinese restraint without any threats of an Olympic boycott or other sanctions.
"What is happening in Tibet and Beijing's responses to it will not affect the games very much unless the issue really gets out of control," said Xu Guoqi, a China-born historian at Kalamazoo College in Michigan.
International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge said Saturday he opposed an Olympic boycott over Tibet. "We believe that the boycott doesn't solve anything," Rogge told reporters on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts. "On the contrary, it is penalizing innocent athletes and it is stopping the organization from something that definitely is worthwhile organizing."
The details emerging from witness accounts and government statements suggested Beijing was preparing a methodical campaign to deal with the unrest _ one that if carefully modulated would minimize bloodshed and avoid wrecking Beijing's grand plans for the Aug. 8-24 Olympics.
In Lhasa, law-enforcement agencies issued a notice offering leniency for demonstrators who surrender before the end of Monday and threatening severe punishment for those who do not. '
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id
Tibet
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tibet is a plateau region in Central Asia and the home to the indigenous Tibetan people. With an average elevation of 4,900 metres (16,000 ft), it is the highest region on Earth and is commonly referred to as the "Roof of the World."
Tibet is currently part of the People's Republic of China (PRC) (with a small part, depending on definitions, controlled by India). As an exclusive mandate, Tibet is also officially claimed by the Republic of China (Taiwan). In the Tibetan sovereignty debate, the government of the People's Republic of China and the Government of Tibet in Exile disagree over when Tibet became a part of China, and whether this incorporation into China is legitimate according to international law. Geographically, UNESCO and Encyclopædia Britannica[1] consider Tibet to be part of Central Asia, while several academic organizations controversially consider it part of South Asia.
Many parts of the region were united in the seventh century by King Songtsän Gampo. From the early 1600s the Dalai Lamas, commonly known as spiritual leaders of the region, have been heads of a centralised Tibetan administration (at least nominally),[2] and are believed to be the emanations of Avalokiteśvara ("Chenrezig" [spyan ras gzigs] in Tibetan), the bodhisattva of compassion.
In 1751, the Manchurian (Qing) government, which ruled China between from 1644 to 1912, established the Dalai Lama as both the spiritual leader and political leader of Tibet who lead a government (Kashag) with four Kalöns in it.[3] Between the 17th century and 1959, the Dalai Lama and his regents were the predominant political power administering religious and administrative authority[2] over large parts of Tibet from the traditional capital Lhasa.
Neither the Republic of China nor the People's Republic of China have ever renounced China's claim to sovereignty over Tibet.[76]
Since 1951, Tibet has been under China's control. According to the "Seventeen Point Agreement for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet" (1951) between the Tibetan and Chinese central governments, the Dalai Lama-ruled Tibetan area was supposed to be a highly autonomous area of China. According to anthropologists, a vast majority of the people of Tibet were serfs ("mi ser"),[77][78][79][80] often bound to land owned by monasteries and aristocrats, Tibetans in exile have claimed that the serfs and their masters formed only a small part of Tibetan society, and argued that Tibet would have modernized itself without China's intervention. However, the Chinese government claims that most Tibetans were still serfs in 1951,[81], and have proclaimed that the Tibetan government inhibited the development of Tibet during its self-rule from 1913 to 1959, and opposed modernization efforts by the Chinese government.[81]
This 1951 agreement was initially put into effect in Central Tibet (Ch: Xizang). However, Eastern Kham and Amdo were considered by the Chinese to be outside the administration of the government of Tibet in Lhasa, and were thus treated like any other Chinese province with land redistribution implemented in full. Most lands were taken away from noblemen and monasteries and re-distributed to serfs. As a result, a rebellion led by noblemen and monasteries broke out in Amdo and eastern Kham in June 1956. The insurrection, supported by the American CIA, eventually spread to Lhasa. It was crushed by 1959. During this campaign, tens of thousands of Tibetans were killed. The 14th Dalai Lama and other government principals fled to exile in India, but isolated resistance continued in Tibet until 1969 when the CIA abruptly withdrew its support. After the Lhasa rebellion in 1959, the Chinese government lowered the level of autonomy of Central Tibet, and implemented full-scale land redistribution in all areas of Tibet.
In 1965, the area that had been under the control of the Dalai Lama's government from the 1910s to 1959 (U-Tsang and western Kham) was set up as an Autonomous Region. The monastic estates were broken up and secular education introduced. During the Cultural Revolution, fanatical youths, called "Red Guards", inflicted a campaign of organised vandalism against religious and cultural sites across the PRC, including Tibet's Buddhist heritage. In Tibet, as was the case elsewhere in mainland China, local (Tibetan) youths were often incited towards violence by youths from other parts of the country, keen to spread their ideological fervour.[87][88] and involuntarily due to the fear of being denounced as enemies of the people.[89] Of the several thousand monasteries in Tibet, over 6,500 were destroyed,[90] only a handful of the most important, religiously or culturally, monasteries remained without major damage.[91] Hundreds of thousands of Buddhist monks and nuns were forced to return to secular life.[92] Some were even imprisoned or killed.
The PRC continues to portray its rule over Tibet as an unalloyed improvement, but foreign governments continue to make occasional protests about aspects of PRC rule in Tibet because of alleged reports of human rights violation in Tibet by groups such as Human Rights Watch. All governments, however, recognize the PRC's sovereignty over Tibet today, and none have recognized the Government of Tibet in Exile in India.
In 2005, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's offered to hold talks with the 14th Dalai Lama on the Tibet issue, provided he dropped the demand for independence. The Dalai Lama said in an interview with the South China Morning Post "We are willing to be part of the People's Republic of China, to have it govern and guarantee to preserve our Tibetan culture, spirituality and our environment." A statement that was seen as a renewed diplomatic offensive by the Tibetan government-in-exile. He had already said he would accept Chinese sovereignty over Tibet but insisted on real autonomy over its religious and cultural life. Tibetan government-in-exile, called on the Chinese government to respond.[96] The move was seen to be unpopular with many Tibetans in exile.[96]
In January 2007 the Dalai Lama, in an interview on a private television channel, said "What we demand from the Chinese authority is more autonomy for Tibetans to protect their culture." He added that he had told the Tibetan people not to think in terms of history and to accept Tibet as a part of China.[97]
In the eyes of the Western World there is a tendency to equate the conflict in Tibet against China with the conflict in Myanmar against the ruling military junta. In my opinion, they are not the same. The Burmese people and their brave "saffron army" of monks want democracy in Myanmar. The Tibetan people led by the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan "government in exile" want political independence from China. The two struggles are not the same. The people of Tibet recognize the Dalai Lama as both a spiritual and political leader, much the same as the Pope and the Vatican used to be. For centuries the Tibetan Dalai Lamas and monks ruled like feudal lords over the people of Tibet. Although in the '60's under the Chinese "cultural revolution" China did attempt to destroy the religion and culture of Tibet, the government of China now offers religious and cultural autonomy to Tibet. The Dalai Lama gives lip service to acceptance of this offer but, in my opinion, as done nothing more than that. In my opinion, the Dalai Lama should abolish the Tibet "government in exile" and return to Tibet solely as a spiritual leader, if he truly is concerned about the "cultural genocide" he claims is being perpetrated by China. In my opinion, the Dalai Lama has been a "wolf in sheep's clothing", appearing to the world as a man of peace while encouraging Tibetan resistance to China's rule. In my opinion, the Dalai Lama should accept his role as solely a spiritual and religious leader like the Roman Catholic Pope. China is not the "bad guy" in Tibet, in my opinion.