This is interesting:

With over 600,000 people, including hundreds of Chinese, following him on networking site Twitter, the Dalai Lama has said the non-resolution of the Tibet issue is making the voices of those seeking independence of Tibet from China grow stronger.

Answering questions from his Chinese followers on Twitter, which he joined last month, the Dalai Lama said: “There are forces within our community such as the Tibetan Youth Congress who criticise our Middle Way policy and demand complete independence (for Tibet). It seems their voices are growing stronger (these days).

“We cannot blame them for this since our successive efforts to bring about a mutually beneficial solution (to the issue of Tibet) have failed to produce any positive results and, under such a situation, their viewpoint is gaining momentum (in our society).”

The Dalai Lama whose middle path approach for the last few decade has been seeking autonomy for Tibet under China, was replying to a question from a Chinese follower who wanted to know whether Tibetans will resort to violence and terrorist activities after his death.

The 1989 Nobel Peace Prize winner was submitted 317 questions recently by 1,558 Chinese people through renowned Chinese writer Wang Lixiong. A total of 11,705 Chinese netizens voted for 10 most important questions out of which this was listed as the most important question.

For the Dalai Lama to speak publicly and recognize the growing call within the Tibetan community both inside and outside of Tibet for independence, and not autonomy, is a strong statement about where Tibetans are these days. It’s also a good sign in that it speaks to the volume of calls for independence being able to penetrate the Dalai Lama’s inner circle (or dare I say, bubble).

What’s more, the Dalai Lama is rightly placing blame on the Chinese government for their failure to be good faith negotiating partners with the Tibetan Government in Exile. The lack of progress in these occasional dialogues only serves to solidify the desire among Tibetans for real independence; the Chinese government has shown that they are not ready and willing partners with Tibetans. What is clear is that the Dalai Lama is cognizant of the consequences of fruitless dialogues with the Chinese government. The results are not going to go in the direction that the TGIE, nor even the Chinese government, want. Delay only strengthens the resolve for independence, as it validates the critique of Rangzen (independence) supporters of the Chinese government not having any interest in finding a solution to the Tibet question. Obviously it isn’t satisfying to be right when the lives of millions of people hang in the balance, but what this all shows is that those of us who have advocated for Rangzen have accurately understood the Chinese government’s long-term strategy in their relationship with the TGIE: delay and stall. To borrow a phrase from Dennis Green, they are who we thought they are.

My friend Josh Schrei happened to be traveling in Ladakh, a historically Tibetan region in northern India, when the area was hit by uncharacteristic rain storms that prompted massive flooding and mudslides. It is likely that over 1,000 people were killed in the landslides, which fundamentally changed the region. The quotes that follow from Josh are from a series of emails he’s sent, though I expect if he gets the opportunity, he will post them online. Josh reports (Update: at the Huffington Post):

If the scope of the devastation isn’t clear or is overshadowed by Gansu, let me just say that all the economic development that Ladakh has enjoyed over the last 15 years is totally gone. Every river valley and over a dozen villages are either effected or totally wiped out. Death toll will be above 1,000, and, given the remoteness here, probably never accurate. As of today the tourist death toll is 23. It is going to take them years and years to rebuild and they need help.

He describes the rarity of the situation:

I returned from Pangong to Leh to find something rather unusual. It had been raining there, which it almost never does. Ladakh is a desert, absolutely dry and free of vegetation, the lush river valleys fed entirely by Himalayan snowmelt. The monsoon weather of the Indian subcontinent is blocked by the vast wall of mountains to the south. For there to be successive days of rain was almost unheard of. I asked my guesthouse owner about it, and he was unequivocal in his answer. “It never does this. Global warming.”

And here is Josh’s description of the storm’s aftermath:

In one hour, the land of Ladakh was forever changed. This vast country shifted. Every valley in the Ladakh range of the Himalaya saw high mountains dislodge themselves downwards. Tragically, the way Ladakh is constructed, every village clings to a river valley of mountain snowmelt, and when these mountains dislodge themselves downwards, there are people living underneath.

The next morning I heard from my guesthouse owner that there had been “some problem” at the bus station from the rain. Instinctively, I grabbed my camera and headed down. As I went, rumors grew of the scale of the “problem.” One person along the route said that the Leh bus station was “gone.”

Yes, the bus station was gone. A vast river of mud and rock had torn through central Leh, ripping apart houses, demolishing shops, flattening structures to the ground. Buses were tossed about like toys, slammed up against buildings, wedged under trucks, flattened and twisted in incomprehensible shapes. As I walked down the length of the slide, I realized that it was far more than the bus station. The cascade extended all the way down the valley, 2 miles or more, and much of lower Leh was, well, utterly ruined. I saw a schoolyard buried under 8 feet of mud, its basketball hoops just managing to peer over the top of the slide. I saw bloated cows tossed about, and one lonely, dazed donkey, wandering through the wreckage, covered in dried mud and bleating sadly, perhaps just to hear the sound of his own voice. And yes, I saw bodies. Leh hospital was quickly lined with them. Bulldozers lifted splayed-limbed victims out of heaps and heaps of mud.

Josh has already spent days helping dig out from under the wreckage. He asks that if you want to help in the relief efforts, you can make a donation to the Ladakhi Buddhist Association, the main relief organization on the ground, at www.gadenrelief.org.

The Times UK (subscription link) is reporting that Dorje Tashi, believed to be the wealthiest Tibetan in Tibet, has been sentenced to life in prison by the Chinese government. No charges have been disclosed, though it is suspected that Dorje Tashi is being targeted for political activities. His trial lasted only three days and his brother was also sentenced to six years in jail, again on unknown charges.

Dorje Tashi was arrested and held without charges after the spring 2008 national uprising; his brother was arrested shortly after and held as well.

What’s particularly notable with the Times’ report is this passage:

Dorje Tashi had many other business interests and was believed to have close links with the Chinese authorities in Tibet that had enabled him to build up his enterprises and which prompted many Tibetans to regard him as something of a turncoat.

Shortly after his arrest, reports surfaced that he had been held on charges of corruption. However, Tibetan sources said there were also rumours that, like many other well-off Tibetans, he had donated some of his wealth to monasteries or even to the Dalai Lama.

Such donations would have enraged the authorities after most of the main monasteries in and around Lhasa staged peaceful demonstrations in the days leading up to the March 14, 2008 riot.

Robbie Barnett, a Tibet expert at Columbia University, said the harsh sentence underlined talk in Tibet of a pattern or retribution against prosperous Tibetans suspected of giving money to monasteries.

He said: “It looks like a long-term drive among Tibet officials to oppose and criticise lay donations to monasteries. It is baffling because leading businessmen have always avoided politics as far as anyone has ever known and have benefited from the current Chinese economic system.”

This isn’t terribly different from other prominent cases we’ve seen over the last two years. Dorje Tashi had close ties to the occupying Chinese government and officialdom. He was a respected businessman who ran one of the most successful hotels in Lhasa. He had no history of public political action. And yet, he was detained and disappeared for over two years and even now, there is no clarity about what charges he faced and why he was convicted.

This is a fairly similar set of facts to the jailing and subsequent disappearance of Karma Samdrup, a prominent Tibetan environmentalist and philanthropist who was long considered to be a widely respected Tibetan with close ties to the Chinese government.

While there is similarity between Dorje Tashi and Karma Samdrup’s cases – prominent, wealthy, non-political Tibetans with close ties to the Chinese government – there is not the same degree of similarity to the cases of Tibetan artists and cultural figures who have recently been arrested. Some of the most prominent are the writer Shogdung, the musician Tashi Dhondup, the blogger Kunchok Tsephel, and the film maker Dhondup Wangchen. While these are very famous and prominent individuals, they were somewhat more openly political than what we know about Dorje Tashi and Karma Samdrup. These cultural figures have been first and foremost advocates for Tibetan culture. But the culture has become political, as Tibet is undergoing an intellectual and artistic Renaissance.

The common denominator in all of these cases is that the Chinese government is cracking down on any Tibetan individual who achieves prominence, even within the colonial system, and maintains a Tibetan identity. Cultural leadership and preservation of the Tibetan identity is a threat to the continued Chinese occupation of Tibet. As cultural outlets become more consistent avenues for expressions of political views, the Chinese government’s stranglehold on power will only be more threatened.

The problem with this is that culture should be an outlet that every nation has free and open recourse to, regardless of the content of the ideas expressed in song, poem, film, and art.  Cracking down on cultural figures, environmentalists and businessmen is the sign of a powerful dynamic in Tibet: ever-increasing sickness of Chinese rule and ever-increasing strength of the Tibetan identity. In the long run, it is exactly this dynamic that is most likely to bring change to Tibet.

It hasn’t been widely reported in the US media, but late last week there was massive flooding which caused a landslide in Drugchu, Amdo, Tibet (Chinese: Zhouqu, Gansu Province). Drugchu is in north eastern Tibet; the Tibet Action mapping project is keeping track of incoming reports (as well as of recent flooding in Ladakh, a Tibetan area of northern India). The latest update is that there are over 700 confirmed dead and over 1,000 people still missing.

It appears that many Tibetans on the ground believe this disaster to be directly or indirectly caused (or exacerbated) by large scale mining activities, damming and major deforestation in the region. Oiwan Lam at Global Voices Online has a report on this, based around work by Tibetan poet and blogger Woeser, who is combing Twitter for updates and responses.  Oiwan Lam documents a long history of warnings coming from Tibetans about the dangers of flooding and landslides in Drugchu from many construction projects and logging, as well as a lack of adequate notification systems for landslides and flooding. In short, this was not a natural disaster, but a man-made disaster, caused by the Chinese government’s reckless resource exploitation policies, which coincidentally displayed a massive disregard for the value of Tibetan life.