China lifts 17-year ban on Dalai Lama photos at Tibet monastery: group

(Reuters) - Chinese officials have lifted a ban on Tibetan monks displaying photographs of the Dalai Lama at a prominent monastery, a rights group said on Thursday, an unexpected policy shift which could ease tensions in the restive region.

The decision concerning the Gaden monastery in the Tibetan capital Lhasa - one of the most historically important religious establishments in Tibet - reversed a ban introduced in 1996, the Britain-based Free Tibet group told Reuters, citing sources with direct knowledge of the situation.

It was made as similar changes are being considered in other Tibetan regions of China, and may signal authorities are contemplating looser religious restrictions and a policy change over Tibet, three months after President Xi Jinping took office.

Chinese officials in western Qinghai province are also considering lifting a ban on Tibetans displaying pictures of the exiled spiritual leader, according to the International Campaign for Tibet, a U.S.-based advocacy group.

It said there were also draft proposals in the region to end the practice of forcing Tibetans to denounce the Dalai Lama, and to decrease the police presence at monasteries.

Officials in Lhasa and Qinghai could not immediately be reached for comment.

Such measures appear calculated to reduce tensions between the Tibetans and the government after a series of Tibetan self-immolation protests against Chinese rule.

Beijing considers the Dalai Lama, who fled China in 1959 after an abortive uprising against Chinese rule, a violent separatist. The Dalai Lama, who is based in India, says he is merely seeking greater autonomy for his Himalayan homeland.

Since 2009, at least 120 Tibetans have set themselves on fire in China in protest against Beijing's policies in Tibet and nearby regions with large Tibetan populations. Most were calling for the return of the Dalai Lama.

"Tibetans' reverence for and loyalty to the Dalai Lama has almost no equal among the world's communities and if this policy is extended beyond this individual monastery as other reports suggest, it will be very significant for the Tibetan people," Free Tibet spokesman Alistair Currie said.

The new policy at the Gaden monastery and the discussions in Qinghai come after a scholar from the Central Party School published an essay questioning China's policy on Tibet.

So far, President Xi has said very little publicly about Tibet. His late father, Xi Zhongxun, a liberal-minded former vice premier, was close to the Dalai Lama. The Tibetan leader once gave the elder Xi an expensive watch in the 1950s, a gift the senior party official still wore decades later.

"There's increasingly a view that due to the critical nature of the situation of Tibet, a discussion of a change in some hardline policies is merited and there's a need for the Dalai Lama to be involved in some way," Kate Saunders, spokeswoman for the International Campaign for Tibet, told Reuters.

Saunders said the draft proposals in Qinghai were likely to be implemented either in August or September.

Source: The Reuters

China urged to end forced resettlements in Tibet

(Reuters) - A human rights group appealed to Chinaon Thursday to end what it called forced "mass rehousing and relocation" of ethnic Tibetans that it said had uprooted more than two million people in the past seven years.

The report, by New York-based Human Rights Watch, said Chinese authorities threw lives into disarray by denying rights to forcibly relocated ethnic Tibetans with insufficient compensation, sub-par housing and lack of help in finding jobs.

"The scale and speed at which the Tibetan rural population is being remodeled by mass rehousing and relocation policies are unprecedented in the post-Mao era," said Human Rights Watch China Director Sophie Richardson.

"Tibetans have no say in the design of policies that are radically altering their way of life, and - in an already highly repressive context - no ways to challenge them."

More than two million Tibetans had been relocated in Tibet since 2006, as have hundreds of thousands of nomadic herders in the eastern part of the Tibetan plateau such as in Qinghai province, the report said.

The program's aim, it added, was to help economically, but also to combat separatist sentiment "and is designed to strengthen political control over the Tibetan rural population".

Phone calls to the Tibet autonomous region government office seeking comment were not answered.

CHINA DEFENDS DEVELOPMENT POLICY

Foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said she hoped those issuing the report could "remove their colored glasses" in terms of China's achievements in development policy.

Those examining Chinese policy, she told a news briefing, "should have a correct understanding of China's ethnic and religious policies and respect for the Chinese people's chosen path of development".

Violence has flared in Tibet since 1950, when Beijing says it "peacefully liberated" the region. Many Tibetans say Chinese rule has eroded their culture and religion and agitate for the return of their spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, who fled into exile in 1959 after an abortive uprising against Chinese rule.

The Chinese government, which brands the Dalai Lama a dangerous "splittist", denies trampling on Tibetan rights and says it brought prosperity to the region and ended serfdom.

Since 2009, at least 117 Tibetans have committed acts of self-immolation in China in protest against Beijing's policies. More than 90 have died.

But in a possible sign of a loosening of some restrictions, authorities in Tibetan-populated areas of Qinghai and Sichuan provinces are allowing monks to respect the Dalai Lama as a religious leader, though not as a political figure, Radio Free Asia said.

While the move appears limited to Sichuan and Qinghai, it contradicts the long-time policy of prohibiting veneration of the Dalai Lama, Radio Free Asia said, citing sources who in turn cited official documents introducing the experimental policy.

When asked about the report, Hua said she was unaware of the specific situation. She reiterated Beijing's stance that the Dalai Lama was "not a purely religious figure" and had long used religion to "engage in anti-China separatist activities".

The Dalai Lama denies he is a separatist and says he is merely seeking greater autonomy for his homeland.

Source : the Reuters

Tibet policy Bold new proposals

Welcome signs that some officials are at last starting to question policies on Tibet

FEW outside China think the Communist Party’s strategy for Tibet is working. A combination of economic development and political repression was meant to reconcile Tibetans to Chinese rule and wean them off their loyalty to the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader. Instead disaffection is still rife, especially among the young. And all across Tibetan areas of China, Tibetans still display the Dalai Lama’s portrait, sometimes openly. Since March 2011 more than 100 Tibetans—especially in Tibetan areas of provinces bordering what China calls the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR)—have set themselves on fire. Most have done so in part to call for the Dalai Lama’s homecoming. An overwhelming security presence and the Dalai Lama’s commitment to non-violence mean that the unrest is easily contained. Hence little has suggested that China’s leaders are concerned about the bleak implications for the future: that their rule in Tibet can be maintained only by the indefinite deployment of massive coercive force.

So for a Chinese scholar, Jin Wei, who is director of ethnic and religious studies at the Central Party School in Beijing, to call for a “creative” new approach is startling. For her to do so publicly, in an interview this month with a Hong Kong magazine, Asia Weekly, suggests that she has high-level backing. A report from a Beijing think-tank in 2009 challenged the official line that rioting in Tibet the year before was instigated from abroad. But Robert Barnett, a professor of Tibetan studies at Columbia University in New York, describes Ms Jin’s intervention as a sign that, after two decades, “debate has re-emerged within China about the government’s hard-line policies in Tibet”. Ms Jin even accused former party chiefs in Tibet of being “biased against the practice of religious affairs”. This, she said, “foreshadowed the accumulation of grievances today.”

One former party secretary in Tibet (from 1988-92) was Hu Jintao, who went on to head the party nationally for ten years until last November, when he gave way to Xi Jinping. Those who have forecast that Mr Xi might prove a bolder reformer than the cautious Mr Hu have so far seen little to back them up. Here, on Tibet, is at least a hint of a crack in the hardline consensus. Some have detected another in the appointment of Yu Zhengsheng to head the party’s main policy group on Tibet and Xinjiang, a Muslim-majority region in the north-west. Mr Yu is the head of an advisory body designed to promote national unity. Previous heads of the group have been security specialists.

Ms Jin’s analysis, though couched in the terminology of party orthodoxy, is similar to that of many foreign observers. She argues that, by demonising the Dalai Lama, and viewing any expression of Tibetan culture as potentially subversive, the party has turned even those Tibetans sympathetic to its aims against it. The struggle has evolved from “a contradiction between the central government and the Dalai Lama separatist clique into an ethnic conflict between Han Chinese and Tibetans”.

She is not advocating a new soft approach to “political” issues, such as the Dalai Lama’s call for greater autonomy for Tibet and Tibetans’ hankering after a “greater Tibet”—ie, within its historic borders, beyond the TAR. But in fact, most protests in Tibet are not about “politics”, defined like this. Many have been sparked by anger at Chinese repression—of Tibetan culture, language and tradition, or of individual protesters. It is a vicious circle, made worse by anger at the large-scale immigration into Tibet of Han Chinese.

This is new

Ms Jin has ideas on how to break the impasse. Talks with the Dalai Lama’s representatives, stalled since the most recent of nine fruitless rounds in 2010, should resume, she says. They should concentrate on “easy” issues first, setting contentious debate about Tibet’s status to one side for now. China should consider inviting the Dalai Lama to visit one of its semi-autonomous cities, Hong Kong or Macau, and eventually allowing him back to Tibet. It should also try to defuse the crisis his death will bring by agreeing with him on a chosen reincarnation from inside China’s borders. Otherwise, China risks having to deal with two incarnations: one it endorses and one in exile who is more likely to be revered by most Tibetans.

One of the many obstacles to Ms Jin’s unlikely vision is the identity of China’s negotiating partner. China will only talk to the Dalai Lama’s representative. But two years ago the Dalai Lama retired from his “political” role, ceding it to an elected “prime minister” of the exiles’ government, Lobsang Sangay. Mr Sangay has not done a good job of uniting the exiles and winning their trust. In any event China will not even contemplate talking to him. The Dalai Lama may need, in one respect at least, to come out of retirement.

The debate Ms Jin’s comments have provoked will not bring any immediate relief to Tibetans in Tibet. The infrastructure of Chinese repression is being enhanced and refined, with the implementation of a new “grid” system of street-level surveillance (see article). Dissenters are still locked up every week.

Moreover Ms Jin’s is still a lone voice, at least in public. Few others seem to realise that a new approach in Tibet is in China’s interest. Not only would it ease tension in Tibet; it would help relations with other minorities in China, make reunification with Taiwan more likely and improve China’s relations with the outside world. The more conventional Chinese view is the one voiced recently by a scholar at a Beijing think-tank: “The old Dalai will die soon. End of problem.” Though the Dalai Lama seems in good health, he turns 78 next month. The hope is that Ms Jin will not be the only Chinese adviser to understand that the dying in exile of this Dalai Lama would not be the end of China’s difficulties in Tibet. Rather, his death risks an explosion of violence and the rekindling of a Tibetan independence movement that is for now kept in check by the Dalai Lama’s search for a “middle way”.

Source: The Economist