Category: Tibet & China

They Write Op-Eds

Renowned Tibetan blogger Woeser has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. The piece is about the framing and railroading of Buramna Rinpoche, a 52-year-old Living Buddha who is the head of Pangri and Yatseg nunneries in Kardze. Buramna was tortured for four days following his arrest on charges of possessing weapons. His lawyers were denied access to him and the trial was inexplicably moved far from Kardze, one of many actions that has been done to deny Buramna, a major religious leader, due process under the law. Woeser’s whole piece is yet another description among the endless list of violations of Tibetans’ rights by the Chinese government.

Havel & Tutu Call on China to Stop Execution of Tibetans

Nobel Peace Prize winners Václav Havel and Archbishop Desmond Tutu have joined Prince Hassan Bin Talal, Vartan Gregorian and Yohei Sasakawa to pen an op-ed in The Guardian calling on the Chinese government to stop their planned execution of two Tibetans who protested for Tibetan independence last spring. Along with Lobsang Gyaltsen and Loyak, two other Tibetans were sentenced were also sentenced to death with sentences immediately suspended, and a third receiving life in prison. The piece focuses on the fact that these five Tibetans could not have received a fair trial, which was done in secret, and China’s legal treatment of Tibetans must be open and transparent. The op-ed closes with this powerful line:

Only by allowing an international presence to report, dispassionately and truthfully, on what is happening in Tibet, will China’s government dispel the idea that its continued rule there means that even more severe human rights abuses will be inflicted on members of China’s ethnic minorities.

I don’t expect the Chinese government to respond favorably to this request.

Obama Raises Tibet with Hu Jintao

President Barack Obama apparently raised the issue of human rights and Tibet with Chinese Communist Party chairman Hu Jintao while meeting during the G-20 summit. From the White House press office:

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: “They also discussed human rights and Tibet.”

“On Tibet, President — the President said that it’s — that human rights are an essential aspect, central component, of U.S. foreign policy; that we are going to speak frankly about differences as well as about areas of cooperation.

“But this is an area of difference. He expressed concern over the human rights situation in Tibet. He recognized that — you know, stated our view that Tibet is a part of China, but that we are concerned from a human rights point of view, and said he hoped that there would be progress in dialogue between the Dalai Lama’s representatives in China to address these concerns.”

They Write Op-Eds

Tenzin Tsundue of Friends of Tibet India is one of the Tibetan exile community’s strongest young voices for independence. He has a powerful op-ed on China’s occupation of Tibet and the history of Tibetan resistance to Chinese rule in the Indian weekly news magazine Tehelka.

The protestors of the 2008 uprising knew they, too, would suffer loss of life, incarceration and torture. Yet shepherds born under Mao — who had never seen the Tibetan flag — photocopied the design from a book smuggled into Tibet and flew it gaily in the air. A friend’s uncle, a nomad from a remote mountain region in Amdo, reported on the phone that since there were no Chinese in the mountains, he was running about with other nomads searching for them. The group hoped to “raise our fists and shout in their faces: ‘Chinese Go Home!’”

The 2008 uprising happened in the wake of the failing “dialogue process” between Dharamsala and Beijing. It historically signifies Tibetans’ rejection of Beijing’s bribes of material comforts and individual security. They repudiated Beijing’s lofty claims of development and its “gifts” like modern schools, hospitals, highways, shopping malls, discotheques and the much-admired railway linking Lhasa and Beijing. The Chinese Government described the people’s uprising as a “disturbance” instigated by the “Dalai Clique,” thereby belittling the Tibetan nation’s aspirations and insulting the ­intelligence of the six million Tibetans inside Tibet. This is symptomatic of colonial powers that treat colonies as treasure islands and their citizens as exotic beasts on leashes.

Beyond his report on Tibetan’s unrelenting patriotism, this paragraph on young Tibetans’ pursuit of their birthright stood out to me as one of the best encapsulations of what Tibetans seeking independence think in contrast to the TGIE’s search for an autonomous solution.

Beijing is not confident enough to invite the Dalai Lama to Tibet or China and has repeatedly rejected his autonomy proposal. Most Tibetan youth believe they can regain their identity and dignity of life through independence, and that without independence Tibet will die under the Chinese weight. Tomorrow, even if autonomy is granted, our struggle for Independence will continue in Tibet. The Tibetan people’s struggle to re-establish their lost independence is, therefore, not a secessionist movement — the difference is more philosophical than ideological.

Many prominent Tibet Support Groups advocate independence, not merely autonomy.  While achieving meaningful autonomy for Tibet would be a great step, many of these groups would continue to campaign for independence until it was achieved. Individual Tibetans would not cease their pursuit for freedom because a facsimile of it was given to them. Autonomy is a political solution to the problem that continued Chinese occupation of Tibet will almost certainly result in the annihilation of the Tibetan people and culture. But autonomy is not a human right — self-determination is. Until Tibetans are given their right of self-determination, there will be a moral imperative for Tibetans and their supporters to continue to campaign for Tibetan independence. As Tsundue wrote, this is a philosophical movement and it will not cease.

China’s Global Cyber Spying

The story has been circulating for a few days, but I wanted to highlight it anyway. The Tibetan Government in Exile, other world governments, and many Tibet Support Groups have been the target of malicious cyber attacks and spying from China. The New York Times has a long piece on China’s GhostNet and the research team at the Munk Center for International Studies at the University of Toronto who have been tracking it. Here’s an excerpt:

The newly reported spying operation is by far the largest to come to light in terms of countries affected.

This is also believed to be the first time researchers have been able to expose the workings of a computer system used in an intrusion of this magnitude.

Still going strong, the operation continues to invade and monitor more than a dozen new computers a week, the researchers said in their report, “Tracking ‘GhostNet’: Investigating a Cyber Espionage Network.” They said they had found no evidence that United States government offices had been infiltrated, although a NATO computer was monitored by the spies for half a day and computers of the Indian Embassy in Washington were infiltrated.

The malware is remarkable both for its sweep — in computer jargon, it has not been merely “phishing” for random consumers’ information, but “whaling” for particular important targets — and for its Big Brother-style capacities. It can, for example, turn on the camera and audio-recording functions of an infected computer, enabling monitors to see and hear what goes on in a room. The investigators say they do not know if this facet has been employed.

The researchers were able to monitor the commands given to infected computers and to see the names of documents retrieved by the spies, but in most cases the contents of the stolen files have not been determined. Working with the Tibetans, however, the researchers found that specific correspondence had been stolen and that the intruders had gained control of the electronic mail server computers of the Dalai Lama’s organization.

The electronic spy game has had at least some real-world impact, they said. For example, they said, after an e-mail invitation was sent by the Dalai Lama’s office to a foreign diplomat, the Chinese government made a call to the diplomat discouraging a visit. And a woman working for a group making Internet contacts between Tibetan exiles and Chinese citizens was stopped by Chinese intelligence officers on her way back to Tibet, shown transcripts of her online conversations and warned to stop her political activities.

China Hand at the China Matters blog also has a long analysis of China’s GhostNet and the research into it that’s worth a read.

The full University of Toronto report can be viewed here. Researchers at Cambridge University who participated in the Munk research have published their own independent report as well: “The snooping dragon: social-malware surveillance of the Tibetan movement.”

James Powderly on Tibet & China at SXSW

James Powderly of the Graffiti Research Lab talks about his work with Students for a Free Tibet during the Olympics, as well as his detention and deportation by the Chinese government. James went with the intention of using a laser to project messages in support of Tibet. James said this on the laser he planned to use:

 So this is like a really dangerous thing to only people who are nuts. Like to the rest of the world, this is just a silly toy. You can buy a version of this at the store that literally puts smiley faces and hearts and things like that. But to everybody else, this is just a silly toy.

They are who we thought they were

The International Olympic Committee has announced that they are banning international torch relays of the Olympic flame. This follows the Beijing Olympic torch relay which faced massive protest wherever it went around the world, but most especially in London, Paris, Hong Kong, and San Francisco.

The 2008 relay’s London leg was hit by several incidents and criticism over China’s ‘torch police’ security staff.

Organisers of the 2012 London Olympics have already said they had no plans to take the torch outside Britain.

Instead of representing a symbol of hope and inspiration, the Olympic torch became a magnet for protesters in 2008 en route to Beijing, sparking sometimes violent protests over China’s human rights record.

IOC executive director Gilbert Felli said: “After the (2004) relay in Athens, which was the first international relay, we came to the conclusion it was easier for the torch to stay inside the (host) country.

“There were difficulties with the NOCs (National Olympic Committees), and we also saw the risk with a torch relay going around the world.

“Beijing had planned an international torch relay and we accepted it. We saw in the debrief that the risk was there and the IOC decided not to do it (again).

“I think when the torch relay is inside the host country there is more control.”

They are who we thought they were: anti-democratic cowards who only want an anesthetized view of their host countries, polished to the satisfaction of international sponsors and prime-time TV specials. The problem for the IOC isn’t that they partnered with a brutal Chinese government that used the Olympics to sanitize their ongoing military occupation of Tibet and repression of dissent; no – the IOC’s problem is that protests made the Olympics look bad. It is the protesters that are the problem. You see, the IOC continues to refuse to confront the underlying disease – partnership with bad governments – and instead is focused only on the protests, a symptom of the disease of doing bad business with bad governments.

Keeping a torch relay in the host country ensures that the IOC can partner with whichever government they want to in the future and rely on any internal capacities for stifling protest and dissent to keep the IOC’s nose clean.

Woeser on Chinese Brutality

Tibetan blogger Woeser has a post with a great deal of background information connected to a recent video release from the Tibetan Government in Exile of footage from China’s brutal crackdown on Tibetans following the spring 2008 national uprising. Woeser’s original post is here. The China Digital Times has translated it. Woeser gives great detail on the beating, torture, and eventual murder of a young Tibetan named Tendar, who worked for  a mobile phone company in Lhasa.  She closes her post with a plea to the world:

June 19, the day the innocent Tibetan youth Tendar died a cruel death, was the day before the Beijing Olympic Torch arrived in Lhasa.

How many other Tibetans are locked away behind dark curtains, who like Tendar, suffered a cruel, inhumane violent treatment at the hands of the government’s state apparatus? How many more Tibetan tragedies are there that the world doesn’t know about? People of conscience, if they still have a conscience, please speak out about the tragic fate of the Tibetan people!