Tibetan Self-Immolator Described as Dedicated to Preserving His Culture
A relative of the Tibetan man who self-immolated last week says Lhamo Tashi was a student dedicated to preserving his Tibetan heritage.
The relative, who spoke to VOA on the condition that he not be identified, said Tashi’s family was informed of his death by security services. But when they went to reclaim the body, he had already been cremated.
Information on the death only emerged Sunday, as Chinese authorities usually clamp down on communication following such incidents.
The relative said Monday that it is still hard to get information from the area in Gansu Province. “It is very difficult to contact his family members, or anyone in the… area, due to the heightened security in the area. This makes the current situation impossible to access,” he said.
He added that he is not sure if the young man “left any notes before the self-immolation.”
Tashi set himself on fire last Wednesday while shouting slogans against Chinese rule in Tibet in front of a police station.
More than 130 Tibetans have burned themselves since the self-immolation protests began in 2009. The Tibetans are protesting what they say is Chinese repression of their culture and religion. China denies the charges and says the suicide protests are acts of terrorism.
The Tibetan government in exile has urged Tibetans not to take such drastic action, and the U.S. government has called on China to resolve the Tibetan issue with the resumption of dialogue with the representatives of the Dalai Lama.
This report was produced in collaboration with the VOA Tibetan service.
Tibetan Student Perishes in First Self-Immolation in Five Months
2014-09-21
A 22-year-old Tibetan student has burned himself to death in front of a police station in Gansu province in protest against Chinese rule —the first self-immolation in more than five months among disgruntled Tibetans in China, according to sources.
Lhamo Tashi set himself on fire last week, shouting slogans in front of the Kanlho (in Chinese, Gannan) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture’s police station in Tsoe (Hezuo) county before succumbing to his burns on the spot, the sources said.
Information of Tashi’s Sept. 17 fatal burning emerged only at the weekend, apparently due to communication clampdowns usually imposed by Chinese authorities following self-immolation protests.
Tashi’s burning protest occurred more than five months since the last reported self-immolation among Tibetans in China on April 15.
It brought the total number of self-immolations to 132 since the fiery protests began in 2009 challenging Chinese rule in Tibetan areas and calling for the return from exile of Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.
“Tashi self-immolated in front of the office of the police department of Kanlho Prefecture,” a local Tibetan told RFA’s Tibetan Service, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“He did it for Tibetan freedom and died in the self immolation,” the source said.
Chinese authorities seized Tashi’s remains but returned them to his parents a day later, the source said.
“After learning about their son’s self-immolation, they rushed to the site and demanded his body but the authorities refused to hand it over to the family. Only the next day, the family members were handed over some remains.”
2008 protest
A second Tibetan source, who confirmed the self-immolation, said Tashi had been studying in Tsoe.
“He was among those who protested against Chinese rule in 2008,” the source said, referring to a mass uprising which erupted in Tibet’s capital Lhasa in March that year before spreading to other Tibetan-populated areas.
Tashi was detained then and subsequently released for participating in the protest, the source said.
The Central Tibetan Administration, the India-based Tibetan government in exile, says about 220 Tibetans died in the 2008 unrest and nearly 7,000 were detained in the subsequent region-wide crackdown. The Chinese government had put the death toll at 22.
The last reported self-immolation before Tashi’s burning occurred in Sichuan province’s restive Kardze prefecture on April 15.
Thinley Namgyal, 32, had self-immolated in Tawu (in Chinese, Daofu) county in Kardze (Ganzi) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture “in protest against Chinese policy and rule [in Tibetan populated areas],” a Tibetan resident had said.
Chinese authorities have tightened controls in a bid to check self-immolation protests, arresting and jailing Tibetans linked to the burnings. Some have been jailed for up to 15 years.
Reported by RFA’s Tibetan Service. Translated by Karma Dorjee. Written in English by Parameswaran Ponnudurai.
Tibetan leadership urges China to open ‘earnest dialogue’
Written by Kelsang Gyaltsen on 8 September 2014 in Opinion
https://www.theparliamentmagazine.eu/articles/opinion/tibetan-leadership-urges-china-open-earnest-dialogue
Kelsang Gyaltsen says Tibet is not seeking independence, but is concerned only with preserving the “distinct Buddhist cultural heritage, language and natural environment of the Tibetan plateau”.
On 12 June 2012, the EU high representative Catherine Ashton called on China “to address the deep-rooted causes of the frustration of the Tibetan people”.
She also called for Beijing to ensure that Tibetans’ “civil, political, economic and social and cultural rights are respected…” and encouraged all parties concerned “to resume a meaningful dialogue”.
Two days after Ashton’s announcement, the European parliament voted through a resolution that endorsed “the principles set out in the memorandum on genuine autonomy for the Tibetan people, proposed by the envoys of his holiness the Dalai Lama to their Chinese counterparts in 2008, which provide the basis for a realistic and sustainable political solution to the issue of Tibet”.
Meanwhile, tragically, 86 more Tibetans have resorted to self-immolations to protest against Chinese policies – increasing the total number to 130. Moreover, the talks between the Tibetan leadership in exile and the Chinese government have been stalled since January 2010.
Consequently, today there is a political imperative for members of the international community to engage in a concerted effort to encourage and urge the Chinese leadership to enter into an earnest dialogue with the representatives of the Dalai Lama.
The policy of the Tibetan leadership in exile on a mutually acceptable solution is straightforward. We are not seeking separation and independence. What we are seeking is genuine self-rule for the Tibetan people within the framework of the constitution of the People’s Republic of China.
Our main concern is to ensure the survival of the Tibetan people with our distinct Buddhist cultural heritage, language and natural environment of the Tibetan plateau. This approach is called Umaylam – the middle way approach – and was conceived by his holiness the Dalai Lama in the spirit of non-violence, dialogue and reconciliation.
The basic features of the middle way approach are:
A fundamental belief in non-violent approach as the only human, sensible and intelligent way to overcome clashes of interests and conflicts in the 21st century;
The pursuit of dialogue and negotiations as the principal means to resolve conflicts and the exercise of political moderation and restraint from maximalist positions in the process of negotiations;
The conduct of dialogue and negotiations in the spirit of reconciliation aiming for mutual agreement and mutual benefit;
The belief in the political necessity of peaceful co-existence of different cultures, religions and ethnic groups without separation and segregation in today’s highly interconnected and interdependent world;
This requires the spirit of pluralism and cooperation and of solutions with no victor and no vanquished.
In June this year, the democratically elected Tibetan political leader Lobsang Sangay reiterated unequivocally that his administration stands ready to resume the dialogue anytime, anywhere.
Against this background the EU can play a leading role in urging for the resumption of dialogue between the representatives of his holiness the Dalai Lama and the Chinese leadership and thus in promoting a peaceful resolution to the conflict in Tibet.
About the author
Kelsang Gyaltsen is special representative of H.H. the Dalai Lama in Europe
Dalai Lama denied South Africa visa for Nobel summit
Tibetan spiritual leader cancels Cape Town trip after being refused entry to South Africa for third time in five years
Associated Press in Johannesburg
The Guardian, Thursday 4 September 2014 12.08 BST
The Dalai Lama has again been refused entry to South Africa, where he was scheduled to attend the 14th world summit of Nobel peace laureates, his representative has said.
Nangsa Choedon said officials from the department of international relations called her to say the Tibetan spiritual leader’s visa had been denied, the Cape Times newspaper reported on Thursday.
The office had not received written confirmation of the refusal, she said. “For now, the Dalai Lama has decided to cancel his trip to South Africa,” Choedon was reported as saying.
The department confirmed the South African high commission in India had received a visa application from the Dalai Lama’s office. “The application will be taken through normal due process. The relevant authorities will communicate with the applicant thereafter,” it said.
The annual summit is being held in Cape Town next month. Other Nobel laureates have warned the Anglican archbishop Desmond Tutu that they will not attend if the Dalai Lama is not permitted into the country, according to the newspaper.
This is the third time in five years the Dalai Lama has been refused a South African visa. In 2012, a South African court ruled that officials had acted unlawfully in failing to grant the Dalai Lama a visa in time for a 2011 trip to celebrate Tutu’s 80th birthday celebrations, largely out of fears of angering the Chinese government.
The Dalai Lama wants increased autonomy for Tibet, from which he has been exiled since 1959. China accuses him of being a separatist.
He was welcomed to South Africa in 1996 and held talks with Nelson Mandela. But in 2009, the government kept the Dalai Lama from attending a Nobel laureates’ peace conference, saying it would detract attention from the 2010 World Cup.
China’s campaign for mixed marriages spreads to troubled Xinjiang
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/09/01/chinas-campaign-for-mixed-marriages-spreads-to-troubled-xinjiang/
China is offering cash rewards for interracial marriages in its troubled Muslim-majority region of Xinjiang, according to news reports, mirroring a policy now being promoted in Tibet. President Xi Jinping has responded to ethnic unrest in Xinjiang and Tibet with a familiar strategy: putting in place suffocating security controls and promising significant investment in development and infrastructure, the moves buttressed by the continued migration of China’s majority Han people into both regions. But Xi has also shifted policy toward a concept of “inter-ethnic fusion,” according to James Leibold, an expert on China’s ethnic policies who teaches at Melbourne’s La Trobe University. That is a move away from China’s long-standing idea of “separate but equal” ethnicities and toward a more American-style concept of a melting pot — or, in Xi’s own words, the binding together of China’s ethnic groups as tightly as the seeds in a pomegranate.
As well as encouraging more Han people to come to Xinjiang, Xi has said that he wants to see more of Xinjiang’s Muslim Uighur people move to other parts of China. Now, according to Washington-based Radio Free Asia, officials want to use marriage to bind the two communities closer together. In some Xinjiang districts, officials are piloting a scheme to offer annual cash payouts to couples who marry from Aug. 21 onward, provided one is Han Chinese and the other is a member of a minority ethnic group, RFA reported. Mixed-race couples will also enjoy privileged access to housing, medical care and education for their children, officials said.
Dilxat Raxit, a Munich-based spokesman for the World Uyghur Congress (WUC), an exiled pressure group, condemned the move. “They are using marriage as a means to achieve Beijing’s political ends,” he told RFA, adding that such marriages are rare and unlikely to succeed. “The Turkic culture of the Uighurs and Han culture is different in almost every way, and Uighurs basically don’t marry Han Chinese.” Indeed, research published by the China Academy of Social Sciences in 2012 showed low and falling levels of marriage between Han and Uighur people over recent decades, reflecting both rising mutual antagonism and growing efforts by Uighurs to preserve their religion and culture in the face of the mass migration of the Han people into Xinjiang. According to the 2000 census, only 1.05 percent of Uighur marriages were with members of another ethnic group, the lowest ratio among all of China’s 56 officially recognized ethnicities.
In 1949, when the Communist Party swept to power in China, Han Chinese made up less than 7 percent of Xinjiang’s population: today, that number stands at 40 percent. Uighurs, at 43 percent, are a minority in the region, with other, mainly Muslim ethnic groups making up the remainder. Ethnic riots in Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi, in 2009 left more than 200 people dead. In the wake of that violence, ordinary people from both communities swapped apartments to cement a division of the city into Han north and Uighur south, creating a situation in which many Han taxi drivers refuse to pick up Uighur passengers and folks barely venture past the city’s undeclared dividing line, residents say.
Leibold warns that Xi’s new policy — along with stronger grass-roots surveillance and efforts to prevent women from wearing veils — is only likely to spark more competition between ethnic groups and more conflict, thanks to “deep-seated racism and cultural misunderstanding.” “What is keeping the lid on the violence now is that the two communities are largely segregated,” he said. “The ‘melting-pot’ route is going to be paved with a lot of blood in my opinion.”
In Tibet in recent weeks, officials have ordered a run of stories in newspapers promoting mixed marriages. The government has also been offering favorable treatment to such couples and their children for years. In a report published last month celebrating such policies, the Communist Party’s research office in Tibet said mixed marriages have increased annually by double-digit percentages for five years, from 666 couples in 2008 to 4,795 couples in 2013.
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