Lodi Gyari’s Summary of the Current Situation in Tibet

In brief, with little official information available, we can report that:

• Chinese government authorities have acknowledged the “surrender” or detention of some 4,000 Tibetans.
• We know of numerous deaths as a result of Chinese forces firing into crowds of demonstrators in several areas of Tibet.
• Many monasteries have been sealed off and under lockdown across Tibet, and monks within subjected to many deprivations and punishments.
• Police have been carrying out house-to-house night raids in Lhasa, in villages and nomad encampments, dragging away many Tibetans.
• Hundreds of Tibetans have been loaded onto the new train in Lhasa and taken away to prisons in China.
• Large numbers of Chinese forces have been sent to all the Tibetan areas where demonstrations have occurred. In the Amdo and Kham areas of eastern Tibet, demonstrations have been widespread and large-scale, and retaliation has been brutal.
• One or more instances of protest have been reported in at least 52 county-level locations, as well as Chengdu (the capital of Sichuan), Lanzhou (the capital of Gansu) and Beijing.
• More than 98 protests have been counted so far, and they are still happening. In only one of those protests, as far as we are aware, has violence been used against Chinese civilians.
• In recent weeks a new wave of protests has begun, in response to stringent patriotic education campaigns in monasteries and requirements to denounce the Dalai Lama. The actions of the authorities are doing nothing to create stability - they are provoking further resentment, despair and unrest. For instance, in a raid on Labrang monastery on April 15, Chinese forces smashed altars in monks’ cells and burned images of the Dalai Lama that some monks had kept at great risk. At Tongkor monastery in Kardze, photographs of His Holiness were trampled upon. When monks and laypeople protested about the actions of the work team and called for His Holiness to return to Tibet, troops fired into the crowd, killing 15 Tibetans including monks, a young woman and a teenage boy.
• In the Tibet Autonomous Region alone, authorities have announced that they will try some 1000 Tibetans by May 1st. China has virtually closed the TAR. With the exception of two show-tours, no journalists or diplomats have secured permission to visit the TAR since the crisis began, so these trials will be carried out absent outside observers.
• Major monasteries and townships including Labrang Monastery, Kanhlo TAP, Gansu; Amchok Monastery, Ngaba TAP, Sichuan; Kardze Monastery, Kardze TAP, Sichuan; Tonkhor Monastery, Kardze TAP, Qinghai; Thonggu Monastery, Kardze TAP, Qinghai; Kirti Monastery, Ngaba TAP, Sichuan; Wara Monastery, Kardze TAP; Shiwa Monastery, Nyarong Prefecture, Kardze, TAP and Larung Gar, Serthar, Sichuan, are sealed off or are under intense surveillance.

Extracted from U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations Testimony, April 23rd, 2008.

The full text is here.

More Recent Quotes on the Ongoing Crisis in Tibet

“We are like prisoners here. There are soldiers all over the place…It’s all lies. The worshippers are really government officials. They are lying. They are treating us very badly.”
Monks speaking out at the Jokhang temple, during the carefully orchestrated tour for the Western media

“How many people watching these images in the West will buy China’s story? Instead, what you see are these heroic monks who are risking a lot for their cause. That’s something your average Westerner is very sympathetic with.”
Steve Tsang, Oxford University

“It is absolutely clear that there are human rights abuses in Tibet. It’s clear-cut; we need to be upfront and absolutely straight about what’s going on.”"
Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd (who, incidentally, speaks Chinese)

“China has a lot to answer for, and I’ve been struggling with it; obviously I condemn what they’re doing. I think the situation is terrible, and I think that anyone who is doing [the relay] should speak out on their views.”
British TV Presenter Konnie Huq, on the moral dilemma of being an Olympic torch bearer in London

“China may rail against those seeking to “politicise” a sporting occasion. But it knows that it has itself introduced the most political elements: a torch relay taking the Olympic flame round the world and, provocatively, through Tibet; and an opening ceremony to which it has invited the world’s leaders.”
The Economist

“The most efficient route to peace in Tibet is through the Dalai Lama, whose return to Tibet would immediately alleviate a number of problems. Much of the current ill will, after all, is a direct result of the Chinese government’s verbal attacks on the Dalai Lama, who, for Tibetan monks, has an incomparably lofty status. To demand that monks denounce him is about as practical as asking that they vilify their own parents.”
Wang Lixong, leading Chinese intellectual, Wall Street Journal

“Of all world leaders at this time, the Dalai Lama most convincingly provides spiritual, intellectual, and ethical leadership, exemplifying and elucidating the most reasonable path to peace and happiness. This is the secret of his worldwide popularity. His person and teaching really do matter, to the Tibetans, to the Chinese, and to all of us and our future generations.”
Professor Robert Thurman, ‘China Needs the Dalai Lama’, Washington Post

Latest News: Tibetan Parliament in Exile on Hunger Strike

All members of the Tibetan Parliament in exile are on an unprecedented one-day hunger strike on 19 March 2008 in order to appeal urgently to the world’s governments, international bodies and community to undertake the following to redress the crisis in Tibet:

1. Support the immediate dispatch of a fact-finding representative(s) to monitor the situation inside Tibet.
2. Intervene to stop further bloodbath in Tibet and demand the immediate release of all those arrested.
3. Urge the Chinese leadership to lift its ban on the media and allow the free movement of the press in Tibet.
4. Ensure immediate and adequate medical relief for injured innocent civilians demonstrating peacefully in Tibet.

More details here.

Press Release from His Holiness the Dalai Lama

I would like to take this opportunity to express my deep gratitude to world leaders and the international community for their concern over the recent sad turn of events in Tibet and for their attempts to persuade the Chinese authorities to exercise restraint in dealing with the demonstrations.

Since the Chinese Government has accused me of orchestrating these protests in Tibet, I call for a thorough investigation by a respected body, which should include Chinese representatives, to look into these allegations. Such a body would need to visit Tibet, the traditional Tibetan areas outside the Tibet Autonomous Region, and also the Central Tibetan Administration here in India. In order for the international community, and especially the more than one billion Chinese people who do not have access to uncensored information, to find out what is really going on in Tibet, it would be tremendously helpful if representatives of the international media also undertook such investigations.

Whether it was intended or not, I believe that a form of cultural genocide has taken place in Tibet, where the Tibetan identity has been under constant attack. Tibetans have been reduced to an insignificant minority in their own land as a result of the huge transfer of non-Tibetans into Tibet. The distinctive Tibetan cultural heritage with its characteristic language, customs and traditions is fading away. Instead of working to unify its nationalities, the Chinese government discriminates against these minority nationalities, the Tibetans among them.

It is common knowledge that Tibetan monasteries, which constitute our principal seats of learning, besides being the repository of Tibetan Buddhist culture, have been severely reduced in both in number and population. In those monasteries that do still exist, serious study of Tibetan Buddhism is no longer allowed; in fact, even admission to these centres of learning is being strictly regulated. In reality, there is no religious freedom in Tibet. Even to call for a little more freedom is to risk being labeled a separatist. Nor is there any real autonomy in Tibet, even though these basic freedoms are guaranteed by the Chinese constitution.

I believe the demonstrations and protests taking place in Tibet are a spontaneous outburst of public resentment built up by years of repression in defiance of authorities that are oblivious to the sentiments of the local populace. They mistakenly believe that further repressive measures are the way to achieve their declared aim of long-term unity and stability.

On our part, we remain committed to taking the Middle Way approach and pursuing a process of dialogue in order to find a mutually beneficial solution to the Tibetan issue.

With these points in mind, I also seek the international community’s support for our efforts to resolve Tibet’s problems through dialogue, and I urge them to call upon the Chinese leadership to exercise the utmost restraint in dealing with the current disturbed situation and to treat those who are being arrested properly and fairly.

Dalai Lama
Dharamsala March 18, 2008

Gordon Brown’s Muted Response to Tibet Crisis

Gordon Brown has said he is “very concerned” about what is happening in Tibet. That’s it. No condemnation. No promises to follow up with the Chinese leadership, or at the UN.

Mr. Brown would do well to remember the words of the late Hugh E. Richardson, Britain’s representative in Lhasa, who served there from 1936 to 1940 and from 1946-1950. “The British government, the only government among Western countries to have had treaty relations with Tibet, sold the Tibetans down the river,” Richardson wrote, “and since then have constantly cold-shouldered the Tibetans so that in 1959 they could not even support a resolution in the UN condemning the violation of human rights in Tibet by the Chinese.” With all the naive opinions about Tibetan history floating around the internet at the moment, many would certainly benefit from referring to Richardson’s own account of his dealings with an independent Tibet.

More than 7000 people (as of writing) have signed the online petition calling on Gordon Brown to announce that he will meet His Holiness the Dalai Lama when he visits the UK in May. The deadline for signing the petition is today. Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, has also joined the call for the Prime Minister to meet the Dalai Lama. We (Phuntsog Nyidrol included) await that announcement.