by Nirmala Carvalho
February 7, 2009

Samdhong Rinpoche denounces arbitrary prison sentences, persecution, violations of rights. He says that the international community wavers between supporting Tibetans' rights and indifference. But he talks about his hope that proclaiming the truth is still valuable.

Dharamsala (AsiaNews) - "In China there is no rule of law, no fair trials, and many Tibetans have been sentenced arbitrarily to years in prison." Prof. Samdhong Rinpoche, prime minister of the Tibetan government in exile, tells AsiaNews about the daily violence carried out by the Chinese authorities against the rights of the Tibetan people. In anticipation of the upcoming session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, which from February 9-11 in Geneva (Switzerland) will discuss respect for rights in China.

Rinpoche says that many Tibetans have been sentenced to years in prison, "all . . . without any trial, or importantly without any evidence and even so-called ‘confessional statements’ were extracted under torture.

Our Tibetans were not even allowed to plead their own cases, let alone get a proper defence. And sadly, the world community is aware of their system or lack of the Chinese criminal justice system, and yet nothing has been done to rectify this.

"On 10th March 2008, the world was witness to the suppression and violence of the Tibetans inside Tibet, and even though many world leaders were very vocal in their support, the Chinese government continued in their oppression and on many occasions even intensified their violations against the Tibetans, and their reintensified religious reeducation programme is only one example of it. Since 1996, more than 11,000 monks and nuns were expelled since 1996 for opposing 'patriotic re-education' sessions conducted at monasteries and nunneries.

"For the past 50 years at the Human Rights Commission, not a single resolution was successfully passed condemning violations in the world.

So keeping in mind their record of inability to contain human rights violations, if I do know if this meeting in Geneva will also be a kind of ritual. However, it is important from the point of view of awareness, world leaders and governments and the international community will be reminded of the gross human rights violations of China.

"Repressive and unequal taxation system are further exacerbating the conditions of poverty for Tibetans in rural areas. Most of the basic rights associated with a welfare state, like the right to housing, education, health, remain unfulfilled.

"For the Tibetans also, China has intensified its birth control programmes in Tibet. For example, the authorities in Kandze (Ganzi in Chinese, Sichuan) have proposed changes to their existing family planning policies to 'reduce the number of children allowed to Tibetans'. The proposal call for a reduction in the numbers of children that Tibetan workers and urban residents in the prefecture can have from two to one and from three to two for farmers and herders. There are also reports that 'reduced child quotas' are also being imposed on Tibetans in some areas of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) and Gansu and Qinghai provinces, which comprise part of the Tibetan area of Amdo. Reductions in the number of children permitted would enable the local authorities to collect extra revenue from Tibetans in the form of penalties and fines for 'excess' children."

The situation is even worse for Tibetan women, who are effectively deprived of respect. Rinpoche says that "Tibetan women in prison for political reasons are subjected to torture, beating, and mistreatment.

Since 1987, 1 out of 22 of them has died in prison. Ngawang Sangdrol, a Tibetan nun first imprisoned at age 13, has been beaten badly on several occasions because of repeated participation in protests at the Drapchi prison. Her sentence was extended for a third time in late 1998 to a total of 21 years for her involvement in demonstrations, most recently during May of 1998."

2009 will mark the 50th anniversary of the Tibetan uprising and the exile of the Dalai Lama. Samdhong Rinpoche has also been in exile since then.

"I was born in Tibet, and for me this is a painful part of my life. We are grateful to India for welcoming us, and to the Tibetans around the world I want to encourage them to keep alive the hope of the resolution of the Tibetan issue. 50 years struggle in the life of a nation is not long, and one day the Tibetan issue will be resolved. Up until then, keep your faith, your Tibetan identity, culture, your rich religious heritage, and guard them for our future generations."

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By J. Michael Cole
Taipei Times
Sunday, Feb 08, 2009, Page 8

NEXT MONTH WILL mark the 50th anniversary of the “liberation” of Tibet by the people’s Liberation Army (PLA). As Beijing — and purportedly all Tibetans — ready themselves to rejoice in the festivities surrounding “Serf Emancipation Day” on March 28, people in Taiwan would be well advised to turn to the history books.

For starters, the so-called liberation of Tibet did not occur in 1959, but rather nine years earlier, when the PLA made its first incursion into Tibet. Along with thousands of soldiers, the liberators brought the Seventeen-Point Agreement, a document that was purportedly intended as a blueprint for the “modernization” of “backward” and “barbaric” Tibet by a benevolent China and which called for the ouster of “reactionary governments” and “imperialist” forces that had thrown Tibet “into the depths of enslavement and suffering.”

It is less well known that, although the Seventeen-Point Agreement was a creature of Beijing in which Tibetans had had no say, Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama sought to make the best of the situation by agreeing to give China’s “offer” a chance and to facilitate the implementation of the agreement. This was a decision that, as it turns out, essentially spelled the death of Tibet as a sovereign country. Seeing no incompatibility between Buddhism and communism, the young Dalai Lama accepted an invitation to visit Beijing, where he held talks with the upper echelons of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), including personal meetings with Mao Zedong. During a succession of banquets, the Dalai Lama also had exchanges with “chew and lie” — the Tibetan delegations’

telling sobriquet for then-Chinese premier Zhou Enlai — and other CCP cadres.

Soon enough and in spite of the many attempts by the Tibetan leadership to make the best of a difficult situation, Beijing began reneging on its own agreements and cracked down on the growing number of Tibetans who felt betrayed by the turn of events. Aside from a few improvements in certain technical sectors, it was becoming increasingly evident that the benefits of modernization were mostly being enjoyed by the Chinese settlers, while the environment and cultural heritage of Tibet were being dismantled one piece at a time. The Tibetan leadership appealed to Beijing, which cajoled and threatened while painting an optimistic portrait of the situation in Tibet. All was well and in time Tibetans would prosper, Beijing officials said, a lie that failed to deceive the Dalai Lama and his entourage.

Things came to a boil in 1955 after Beijing imposed collectivization on Tibet, sparking an uprising in the eastern part of the country. With that began a long succession of demonstrations and uprisings, to which the PLA responded with increasing force. Monks were arrested, humiliated, tortured and murdered, as was anyone who opposed Chinese benevolence. Surrounded by the PLA, facing certain arrest (or death) and amid preparations for a major uprising in Lhasa, in March 1959 the Dalai Lama and his followers fled Tibet and were granted asylum in India, ending, in Beijing’s view, years of “theocratic slavery” in Tibet, hence the “Serf Emancipation Day” holiday. For those who still care about history, March 28, 1959, is the day China dissolved the Tibetan government after 18 days of uprising.

During the ensuing half-?century, China continued to dismantle and disfigure the Tibetan state, poisoning parts of its territory with uranium and nuclear weapons tests, while crushing anyone who stood in its way. As of the early 1990s, when the Dalai Lama published his autobiography Freedom in Exile, more than 1 million Tibetans had died as a result of PLA violence, starvation or suicide, while hundreds of thousands were forced to flee to refugee camps abroad. Symbols of Tibetan spirituality — temples, practices and so on — were for all intents and purposes extinguished, and the country was virtually isolated from the outside world. Through population transfers, meanwhile, China turned Tibetans into a minority group within their own country, adding yet one more violation of international law to an already towering list.

From his exile, the Dalai Lama was accused by Beijing of being a “splittist” for refusing to go along with China’s destruction of his native land — an irony that was not lost on the Tibetan leader, as prior to liberation China had inked official documents, such as the “perpetual treaty” of 821AD, which clearly referred to Tibet as an independent country. A report by the International Commission of Jurists issued after Tibet’s “return to the motherland” also attested to Tibet’s existence as a sovereign legal entity. But in China’s world, international law was a very malleable concept indeed.

The lessons for Taiwan at this juncture in its history could not be any starker, nor the need for a close reading of historical precedents any greater. Under President Ma Ying-jeou, Taiwan has embarked on efforts to improve ties with Beijing, in the process inking its own series of agreements, first in November during the visit to Taipei by Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) Chairman Chen Yunlin, with more agreements expected for April, probably in Nanjing or Beijing.

So far, the agreements have covered economic matters, with both sides leaving the more contentious political discussions for future consideration. What we should bear in mind as Taipei welcomes Beijing’s goodwill and signs official pacts with China, however, is that even when the other side participates in good faith and willingly — as Tibet did in the early 1950s — Beijing has a propensity to break agreements and to bully the other party when the latter raises objections.

In his memoirs, the Dalai Lama makes the observation that behind the reveling, toasts and smiles at the many banquets he attended, Chinese diplomats had a tendency to intertwine handshakes with threats and laughter with bullying, especially when they regard their counterpart as an inferior (including Taiwanese, as demonstrated by the long ?history of discrimination by Chinese against Taiwanese). There is no reason to believe that Chinese diplomats have grown any less perfidious, or that the meetings between ARATS and Straits Exchange Foundation officials were a departure from that age-old practice.

The Dalai Lama came close to making the mistake of believing that change within the CCP was possible when Deng Xiaoping — as moderate and pragmatic a CCP leader as there ever was — seemingly extended a friendly hand in the late 1970s, only to realize that the offer was nothing more than a trap. To this day, nothing the Chinese government has done, what with the Tiananmen Square Massacre almost 20 years ago to its more recent crackdowns in Xinjiang and Tibet, would indicate that the CCP has abandoned the duplicitous mindset that marked the Mao era, when Tibet was taken over.

The implications for the future of Taiwan are therefore of the utmost seriousness. Even if Taipei negotiates in good faith and sticks to its side of the agreements it reaches with Beijing, we can expect that in time China will alter, reinterpret or moot those pacts and make short shrift of anyone who stands in its way.

Regardless of whether the agreements are perceived by Taipei as means to “reduce tensions in the Taiwan Strait,” “reunify” the two sides, “modernize” or simply rescue the economy, Ma and his negotiators had better tread cautiously, for through CCP eyes and the historical revisionism the party has refined into an art form, Taiwan is just like Tibet half a century ago, “lost” property that needs to be “liberated.”

Taiwan is blessed with a substantial Tibetan refugee population. As China prepares to celebrate the “liberation” of Tibet, Taiwanese would benefit tremendously from listening to what Tibetans have to say about what “liberation” meant for them, or just how trustworthy a negotiator Beijing can be.

J. Michael Cole is a writer based in Taipei.

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When Lhasa rioted a year ago, Tibetans in exile logged on to the only site they trust

Jane Macartney, The Times, February 11, 2009

Catching up with Tibet's most popular blogger isn't simple. Tsering Woeser is under constant surveillance, so we agree to meet on a street corner in Beijing. The subterfuge seems pointless: Woeser is easy to spot. Her slightly hippy style sets her apart - for our meeting she has chosen dangling earrings and a glass pendant in Buddhist colours, bought on her last visit to the Tibetan plateau. Its blues, reds and yellows remind her of the colours of the banned Tibetan Snow Lion flag. “I mentioned it to the shopkeeper as a joke,” she says. “He was shocked. Of course, I bought it.”

By birth, upbringing and education, Woeser should be a Tibetan at ease in the Chinese system, a successful member of the Tibetan elite. But this vivacious woman, who looks much younger than her 44 years, is the most outspoken Tibetan voice in China, a fierce critic of Beijing rule in the deeply Buddhist Himalayan region. Her views have won her
widespread fame among Tibetans in exile - and, not surprisingly, the attention of the Chinese security apparatus. These days, her books are banned and her movements are monitored. She was detained by police last year during a trip to her birthplace to see her mother. None of this deters her. “If it happens, it happens. I write what I write.”

What she writes is not only poetry but a blog that openly criticises Chinese rule in Tibet. It is already in its fifth incarnation. After it was closed down repeatedly by the authorities in 2006 and 2007, she posted it on an overseas server. Then, after the riots a year ago in
Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, in which 22 people were killed - mostly ethnic Han Chinese - and unrest spread across Tibetan regions, the overseas blog was hacked and closed down twice. Undaunted, she resumed writing about “Invisible Tibet” on woeser.middle-way.net.

Figures compiled overseas show more than three million hits on her blog in the past year, mostly after the March unrest, when it was the main source of information for Tibetans looking for an alternative to propaganda. Now her account of the unrest, with photographs, is to be published in Taiwan to coincide with the first anniversary of the riots.
“It seems that people look to me,” she says, humbly.

Robert Barnett, a Tibet expert at Columbia University in the US, says that Woeser has entered unknown territory: “No Tibetan has spoken out so openly in print or in the media. She has never faltered, and the risks she took were off the chart.”

She is now the best-known Tibetan after religious figures such as the Dalai Lama, whose photograph smiles from a shrine in her home. “She is something very rare - a deeply feeling, caring person and a poet who forgot to be afraid ,” says Barnett.

Woeser seems surprised by her fame. “I'm a very ordinary person,” she says, “but not many Tibetans have the means to get around the censors.” She was born in Lhasa to a father who was a half-Tibetan, half-Han Chinese officer in the People's Liberation Army and a mother who was the daughter of a minor aristocratic Tibetan family. Her parents were young
and idealistic converts to the Communist cause, although some in the military were opposed to her father's decision to wed a Tibetan woman.

Woeser was born in 1966, the first year of the ultra-leftist Cultural Revolution. Within four years the family left for her father's native Sichuan province, to escape the worst excesses of revolutionary fervour.

It was the start of a new life for Woeser. Her parents switched to speaking Chinese rather than Tibetan. Her schooling was also in Chinese - the language by which Woeser could rise in society but also the only way for Tibetans, with so many dialects, to communicate with each other.

“My parents spoke Tibetan together but Mandarin with us,” Woeser says.

She did well at school and won entry to a high school in the provincial capital, Chengdu, for ethnic minority children. But while she and her classmates used the same textbooks as Chinese children, the exams were simpler because Tibetans were seen as less able. Although she wanted to go on to the prestigious Sichuan University to study Chinese, she was
only offered a place at the Southwest Nationalities School.

Woeser began to write poetry and planned to become a journalist. She dreamt of returning to Lhasa and when, at the age of 24, a novel that she wrote was published by the Tibetan Literary Association, the publishers fulfilled her dream by offering her an editing job there.

Her father decided that the whole family should return.Within a year, though, he was dead. His blood pressure failed in the rarefied air of Lhasa, 12,000ft above sea level. Woeser was devastated. “He always felt that my ideas were out of line, too dangerous, and he worried about me,” she says. “But it was after he died that I really began to feel that I
was a Tibetan. ”

Shortly before her father's death she had come across a translation of a book available only to government officials. It was a banned work, In Exile in the Land of Snows by John Avedon, describing the 1959 flight into exile of the Dalai Lama and Chinese repression of the abortive uprising that triggered his escape. She had been taught to regard Tibet's god-king as a bad man; now she wondered. She asked her father, and “he told me that 70 per cent of the book was true”. Then an aunt, also in the Army, told her that 90 per cent of it was correct.

Thus began a loss of innocence and of trust in the Communist Party that had nurtured her. Her writing began to change. She devoted herself to studying Tibetan, although she still writes in Chinese, and began to take classes in Buddhism.

She produced a volume of prose essays, Notes from Tibet. “I expected the publishers to censor mentions of the Dalai Lama,” she says, “but they left almost everything.” Its publication, in 2003, marked the start of her internal exile.

Recalled to to Lhasa from a visit to Beijing, Woeser was ordered to make a self-criticism for Notes from Tibet. She refused. She parted ways with the Tibetan Literary Association, losing her salary, pension, flat and all the other perks of a government employee. But she had found her vocation.

Encouraged by the Chinese author Wang Lixiong, whom she later married, she sifted through a collection of photographs taken by her father during the Cultural Revolution in Tibet. A book of these searing images of persecution, accompanied by her interviews with survivors, was published in Taiwan, and her fame spread.

The rebellious spirit that once angered her father now irks the Chinese authorities, who have refused to give her a passport. She has vowed to take them to court.

After the March riot, police confined her to her flat - but with no proof that she had broken the law, their only options were to cut off her internet connection or detain her, both methods of last resort for a Government keen to avoid bad publicity.

Woeser says modestly that Tibet's monks are the real heroes, and admits fearing arrest. “But it would give me time to study the Buddhist scriptures,” she laughs. “My main worry is whether they will let me wear my contact lenses in prison.

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