Tibetan Struggle and Cyberspace

Tibet.net is an official website of Tibetan Government in Exile based in Dharamsala, India. There has been a significant change in Tibetan Polity with the devolution of Political power by Dalai lama and subsequent popular election of New Kalon Tripa ( Prime Minister equivalent). Tibet.net is the reliable source for all information and news related to Tibetan Administration and Tibet. However, there is substantive delay in updating news and information based on the currency of the news. If you visit the website and browse the section that says "Whos Who", it still shows name of the previous Kashag. It is very important that who ever is responsible for updating information in the website needs to be more proactive.

Internet is a good source to disseminate information cheaply provided information are regularly updated, otherwise it will not serve its purpose of providing information and current news.

China replaces Tibet's hard-line party boss

Source Credit: AP

BEIJING (AP) — China on Thursday replaced Tibet's hard-line Communist Party boss under whom bloody rioting broke out in the Himalayan region three years ago.

The official Xinhua News Agency said Zhang Qingli, the region's highest-ranking official, is being moved to another position which it did not identify. It said he will be replaced by Chen Quanguo, a longtime party official in the eastern province of Henan who last served as governor of Hebei province surrounding Beijing.

Like all of Tibet's party chiefs, Chen is not Tibetan but a member of China's majority Han ethnic group.

No reason was given for the move, although Zhang has served five years in the position, roughly the standard term for provincial officials.

China's policies for Tibet are set at the highest levels in Beijing and there is no reason to believe the move heralds any major change.

Zhang, a former top official in Xinjiang, another ethnically troubled region, took over as Tibet party secretary in 2006 during a relatively quiet period.

Two years later, deadly anti-government rioting broke out among Tibetans in the capital, Lhasa, spreading quickly to Tibetan areas of western China in the most severe and sustained unrest in decades.

Security forces poured in and a massive crackdown ensued, with China closing Tibet to foreign tourists for a year. Foreign journalists remain barred from Tibet except on rare, tightly scripted government-organized trips.

During his term, Zhang saved his harshest rhetoric for Tibet's exiled Buddhist leader, the Dalai Lama, calling the 76-year-old cleric a "wolf in monk's robes" and the "scum of Buddhism."

Beijing considers Chinese sovereignty over Tibet unquestionable and inviolable. It says Tibet has been its territory for centuries, although many Tibetans say they were essentially an independent nation until Communist forces invaded in 1950.

The Dalai Lama recently shifted his political responsibilities to the prime minister of the self-proclaimed India-based Tibetan government-in-exile, Lobsang Sangay, a 43-year-old Harvard legal scholar who grew up a refugee.

Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

China Says Dalai Lama Rival Visits Tibetans

Source Credit: Bloomberg News
China’s official Tibetan spiritual leader, the Panchen Lama, in a visit to the country’s northwest has told Tibetan Buddhists to obey the law in what analysts say is a government effort to undermine anti-Chinese protest and the exiled Dalai Lama.
The government-appointed lama, Gyaltsen Norbu, 21, made a 13-day visit from his home in Beijing to an ethnic Tibetan region and performed rituals at one of Tibetan Buddhism’s most prominent monasteries,Xinhua reported. The visit was part of China’s attempt to boost Norbu’s religious credentials for an eventual role in choosing a successor to Tibet’s main spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, said D.S. Rajan, director of the independent Chennai Centre for China Studies in India.

With the Dalai Lama, 76, continuing his 50-year-old campaign for Tibetan autonomy from Chinese rule, “China’s government says it will choose his successor and the Panchen Lama traditionally has a voice” in that process, Rajan said in a phone interview yesterday. “They want to create a cooperative Tibetan religious leadership” to undermine anti-Chinese protests that have erupted each year since 2008 riots that were the deadliest in Tibet for two decades, Rajan said.

Since March, two Tibetan monks in Sichuan province have immolated themselves while others have demonstrated in favor of the Dalai Lama’s return to China, leading to police curfews and detentions of hundreds of monks, Tibetan exile groups say. Those protests are several hundred kilometers south of the area visited by Norbu.

‘Puppet Figure’

“This Tibetan boy has no credibility or legitimacy in the eyes of the Tibetan people,” said Lobsang Sangay, the new prime minister of the Dalai Lama’s exile government. “He has become a puppet figure who parrots those things that Beijing dictates for him to do,” Sangay said in an interview last week in the Indian capital, New Delhi.

The Dalai Lama says Chinese rule is destroying Tibet’s distinct culture and environment. While China calls him a “splittist” who secretly seeks independence for the region, President Barack Obama met him last month and renewed the U.S. call for Chinese leaders to negotiate with him.

In Tibetan Buddhism, the Panchen Lama traditionally ranks second only to the Dalai Lama. In 1995, the Dalai Lama recognized a six-year-old, Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, as the reincarnated Panchen Lama, and authorities took custody of the boy and his family a few days later.

Soon after, the Chinese government recognized Norbu as the Panchen Lama, and he was moved to the Chinese capital. He made his first visit to Lhasa, the Tibetan capital in 1999, Xinhua reported at the time, and he has visited Tibet every year or two since, according to Sangay and Chinese state media accounts.

Foreigners Barred

Last year, China named Norbu to the government’s top advisory body, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, Xinhua reported.

On Aug. 21 Norbu ended a trip to Gansu, a province on the northern edge of China’s Tibetan-inhabited area. He visited the Labrang Monastery, where monks joined Tibet-wide protests in 2008 against Chinese rule. Chinese troops reinforced the area and foreigners were barred from visiting in the days leading to Norbu’s arrival, said the Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet, which backs the Dalai Lama.

Xinhua said Norbu gave lessons and blessings to 50,000 Tibetan Buddhists in which he “reminded local Buddhists to abide by the law” and “said he was impressed with religious freedom enjoyed by local people.” He visited new government housing built for nomads and “made cash donations to several families living in poverty,” Xinhua said.

While little is known of Nyima’s fate, Tibet’s Chinese- appointed governor said last year he is living in Tibet. Sangay said the Dalai Lama’s government believes that is unlikely.

“We know that his parents are kept in China, not in a Tibetan area, and the family is kept separated,” with Nyima, his siblings and his parents in different locations, Sangay said, citing informants in China. “They are all watched and monitored on a daily basis,” he said.

US Vice President Joe Biden visits China for economic talks

Source Credit: BBC News

US Vice President Joe Biden is flying to China for talks likely to focus on the economy after the downgrading of US debt and ensuing market turmoil.

China is the US government's biggest foreign creditor, holding $1tn (£608bn) of debt, and has called on it to do more to reduce its budget deficit.

Officials say Mr Biden will explain the finer points of a "very strong deficit reduction package" agreed by Congress.

He will also talk of "tremendous mutual interest" in global economic recovery.

The White House would not put it quite this bluntly but Vice-President Biden is hoping to reassure Beijing that President Barack Obama's administration has a handle on economic policy in the wake of ratings agency Standard & Poor's' downgrade.

Human rights

From the American side, there are continuing concerns about China's currency - which is seen as artificially strong - and over a sharp increase in military spending by Beijing.

In recent months there have been claims of cyber-attacks emanating from China, while long-standing differences over human rights and Tibet are likely to surface.

But overall, Washington insists this is fundamentally a partnership and dismisses suggestions that US-China relations are a zero-sum game.

Mr Biden is travelling at the invitation of his counterpart, Xi Jinping, as the Obama administration seeks to strengthen ties with the next generation of Chinese leaders.

The vice-president's official visit to the region will also take in Japan and Mongolia.

Second Tibetan Monk Burns Himself to Death in Protest

A Tibetan Buddhist monk protesting Chinese policies immolated himself publicly in a Tibetan area of Sichuan Province in southwestChina on Monday, an outside advocacy group reported. It was the second such act in the area in the past five months and appeared to reflect resistance to increased Chinese repression of loyalty to Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

Related

• Tibetan Who Set Himself Afire Dies (March 18, 2011)

• Times Topic: Tibet

The monk was heard calling, “We Tibetan people want freedom,” “Long live the Dalai Lama” and “Let the Dalai Lama return to Tibet,” after he drank gasoline, doused himself with it and set himself alight on a bridge in the center of Daofu, a town in Ganzi County in Sichuan, according to the advocacy group Free Tibet. The group is based in London, but has a network of contacts in Tibet and Tibetan-populated areas elsewhere in China.

Xinhua, China’s official news agency, reported the death of a monk in Daofu, but did not provide details.

Ganzi, known in Tibetan as Kardze, is overwhelmingly populated by ethnic Tibetans. It has been an area of chronic tensions for the Chinese authorities, most related to the country’s Han ethnic majority.

China’s government regards the vast Himalayan region of Tibet as an integral part of China and is sensitive to expressions of support for the Dalai Lama, who fled into exile in 1959 and who has accused China of stifling Tibetan culture. The Chinese consider the Dalai Lama a subversive advocate of Tibetan independence, although he has said he only wants greater autonomy for Tibet.

Stephanie Brigden, the director of Free Tibet, identified the monk who killed himself as Tsewang Norbu, 29. She said he was protesting what she described as the harsh treatment of Tibetans following the March 16 immolation by a monk from the Kirti monastery in Aba, or Ngaba in Tibetan, in the same region of Sichuan. She said the repression worsened further when Tibetans in Daofu and elsewhere defied a government ban on celebrating the Dalai Lama’s 76th birthday on July 6.

“We’ve basically seen an escalation in the clamping down,” she said in a telephone interview. “It is not just limited to this area.”

In a news release, Ms. Brigden said her group had “grave concerns” about what could happen in Daofu in the aftermath of the monk’s immolation, and at his monastery, Nyitso. She said that telephone and Internet access had been cut and that the group had “received reports that the army has surrounded the monastery.”

The resilient support for the Dalai Lama among China’s five million Tibetans has taken on increased significance with time. The Dalai Lama has said he may choose his own successor, deviating from the practice in which senior lamas identify each Dalai Lama’s reincarnation after his death. In response, Chinese authorities in Beijing have said they have the authority to name the next Dalai Lama. They have been seeking to promote their own handpicked successor, the Panchen Lama, second only to the Dalai Lama in the Tibetan Buddhist hierarchy.

The so-called Chinese Panchen Lama, who has spent most of his life in Beijing, went on apolitically significant trip last week to a town that is home to a cherished monastery in a Tibetan-populated area of Gansu Province, where he was expected to study and meditate for weeks. Experts on Tibet said the trip appeared to have been part of the Chinese government’s attempt to give the Panchen Lama more legitimacy among monks and other Tibetans by broadening his exposure outside the capital.

Source Credit: NYTimes

Dalai Lama says 'happy' to be free of political tasks

TOULOUSE, France — The Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader, arrived in Toulouse in southwest France Friday to spread his teachings there, saying he was "happy" to be free of political tasks.

Lobsang Sangay, a 43-year-old Harvard scholar, took office Monday as head of the Tibetan government in exile, taking over the role of prime minister from the the 76-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

"Today I am just a spiritual person, I have no political responsibility," the Dalai Lama said on his arrival in France, where he will over the next few days address people on "the meaning of human values" and promote religious harmony.

He stressed he had given up political power "voluntarily", adding: "I'm very happy."

He applauded progress made among Chinese "intellectuals (and) writers" which, he said, has boosted hopes of establishing improved relations between China and Tibet.

He also restated that Tibet's political leadership is "not seeking separation" from Beijing.

In his speech after being sworn in as Tibet's new prime minister in exile, Sangay stressed his commitment to the principle of non-violence and support for the Dalai Lama's "middle-way" policy, which seeks "meaningful autonomy" for Tibet under Chinese rule.

The Dalai Lama's visit to Toulouse, which includes a two-day Buddhist conference starting Saturday, has a "pastoral" aim, his staff have said, and some 10,000 people have signed up to hear him speak.

There are believed to be some 800,000 practicing Buddhists in France.

The Dalai Lama will retain the significant role of Tibet's spiritual leader and a major influence on policy-making decisions.

He fled Tibet following a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959. He later founded the government in exile in Dharamshala, northern India.

Source Credit: AFP

Lobsang Sangay sworn-in as Tibet's PM-in-exile

New Delhi:  Lobsang Sangay, political successor to the Dalai Lama, was sworn-in as Prime Minister of the Tibetan government-in-exile at a public ceremony in Dharamshala on Monday.

Mr Sangay, 43, was administered the oath of office at a ceremony in the central courtyard of the main Tibetan temple, opposite to the office of the Dalai Lama. He succeeds Samdhong Rinpoche as the Kalon Tripa or the Prime Minister of the Central Tibetan Administration.

The oath will be administered by Ngawang Phelgyal, the Chief Justice Commissioner, in the presence of the spiritual leader of Tibetans -- the Dalai Lama.

Mr Sangay will be the first to take charge of the office after the Dalai Lama announced his decision to devolve his political authority to the elected leadership. These changes were ratified by the Tibetan Parliament in May.

Born in Darjeeling and educated in Delhi, Mr Sangay pursued higher studies in the US and was a senior Fellow at the Harvard Law School before being elected as the Kalon Tripa in April.

Besides pursuing law, he also organised conferences and seminars which were attended by several Chinese scholars during his 16-year stay in the US.

In an interview to NDTV, on the eve of his inauguration Mr Sangay acknowledged that the Dalai Lama was irreplaceable but said that he represented the restless "young Tibet." 

Committing himself to the cause of non-violence he voiced his frustration at being a Prime Minister without a country. 

''I wish the world would understand what China can do, what they are doing to us. I don't know what it is like to have a country, for a week, month even a day." (With PTI inputs)  

Source Credit: NDTV

Tibetan Refugee Woman arrested while trying to obtain a fake Nepali passport

Source Credit: Ground Report

Kathmandu August 1, 2011: A Tibetan woman refugee was arrested here in Nepal while trying to obtain a fake Nepali passport. The 22-year-old woman who is suspected to be a refugee living in Bangalore, was arrested red handed when she tried to obtain a Nepali passport in the name of Chhintal Tamang. The Nepal police also arrested 3 Nepali citizens,  Bhakta Bahadur Tamang, K.P. Thapaliya and  Devendra Neupane as her accomplish.

According to the Government of Nepal, Tibetans entering Nepal after 1989 do not have permission to stay as legal refugees within Nepal, nor does the law protect their human rights. However, the principle of non-refoulement, laid out in 1954 in the UN-Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, provides in Article 33(1) that:"No Contracting State shall expel or return ('refouler') a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion."

The arrest came in action within weeks of Nepal’s Central Investigation Bureau arrest of two minors at Tribhuvan International Airport while trying to leave the country with fake Nepali passports under valid US Visa.  The  under aged  Tibetan kids 15-year-old Jayang Tenzin, and his sister, Tsering Lhamo, 12, were arrested while trying to board a Qatar Airways flight to Turkey with other members of their family who have been living in the US under the status of Tibetan refugees. 

With China trying to use its bilateral relationship and USA trying to be more flexible towards the refugee issue of Tibet, Nepal is stranded with no option except to pretend accordingly to both the sides. From the past activism practices to the recent arrest shows Nepal’s position and lack of clarity. Nepal seems to be sandwiched between the giant powers with no standing on the issue, more or less China putting  ban and USA being more flexible toward the Tibetan asylum cases , Nepal has been a ground reality for the Tibetans who have been suffering from both ways.