Indian police to tighten security around Dalai Lama
January 4, 2016
By Pratibha Chauhan
Tribune News Service, December 30, 2015 – The state police have sought additional funds and manpower to beef up security at the palace of Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama in McLeodganj.
They have proposed to install high-resolution cameras, baggage scanners and other sophisticated equipment at his palace.
A detailed report has been sent by the police to the State Home Department. The state will be seeking funds from the Ministry of Home Affairs as it is responsible for the security of the spiritual leader who has made McLeodganj his abode since he sought refuge in India.
The enhanced security cover for the Dalai Lama has been proposed in view of the threat perception to his life as the entire Tibetan freedom struggle rests on his persona. There have been several instances in the recent past when alleged Chinese spies with maps and documents containing secret information have been arrested from around his residence. The Dalai Lama, who fled from Chinese-occupied Tibet in 1959, travels for more than 20 days in a month all around the world.
The plans to deploy additional force and install equipment at the Dalai Lama’s palace is a follow up of the review of his security by various agencies, including the state CID, Intelligence Bureau (IB), Military Intelligence and other security forces. The security of the Dalai Lama is managed by Tibetan security personnel who form the inner ring of security, along with more than 50 Himachal Police personnel.
The police have proposed to install high-resolution 360 degrees cameras, baggage scanners and sophisticated sabotage-check equipment at the entrance of the Dalai Lama’s palace. “We have proposed a full-fledged battalion for his security against the existing strength of 50 Himachal Police personnel,” said a senior police functionary. If the proposal is accepted, more than 100 personnel will guard him round the clock.
The police also want security at the residence of the 17th Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorjee, up. He heads the Karma Kagyu sect of Tibetan Buddhism. He fled from Tsurphu monastery in Tibet and landed in McLeodganj in January 5, 2000. He has been residing at Gyuto Monastery located in Sidhbari on the outskirts of Dharamsala.
Only 20 police personnel are deployed for his security. As followers, including a large number of foreigners come to Gyuto to seek his blessings every day, the police want the security cover enhanced WTN Canada

China to fortify border defences with focus on Tibet and Uighur region
December 21, 2015
By Ananth Krishnan
India Today, December 20, 2015 – An on-going reorganisation in China’s military that will unify two separate military commands currently in charge of guarding the border with India could see as many as one-third of all China’s land troops stationed in this expanded new western zone, a report said on Sunday.
While China’s 8.5 lakh land forces are currently spread across seven military area commands – of them two western commands, the Lanzhou and Chengdu regions, are tasked with the western and eastern sectors of the border with India respectively, besides Myanmar, Russia and a number of Central Asian countries – a major on-going overhaul of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is expected to create five new military zones directly under the command of the Central Military Commission headed by President Xi Jinping.
The move comes amid reforms to centralise and modernise the PLA to make it a smaller, nimbler and more high-tech military.
While the details of the reorganization are expected to be announced in coming weeks, the South China Morning Post reported on Sunday citing military sources that as many of one-third of all land forces may be included in the new West zone.
The new sprawling West zone will stretch across more than half of China’s territory: covering frontiers from Myanmar in the south to India and Central Asian countries in the west, and all the way north to Russia, and including the two vast and troubled regions of Xinjiang and Tibet.
This zone will be created by unifying the Lanzhou and Chengdu commands, and will for the first time bring both the western and eastern sectors of the border with India under one command.
While the reorganization holds significance for border defences, military sources told the South China Morning Post that internal security considerations were a prime factor in the reorganization.
“The West combat zone will concentrate on threats in Xinjiang and Tibet and other minority areas, close to Afghanistan and other states that are home to training bases for separatists, terrorists and extremists,” a military source was quoted as saying.
This could mean fortifying defences in the western Xinjiang region, which borders India, Pakistan-occupied Kashmir as well as Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Russia and other countries. Xinjiang has seen intermittent violence, which China has blamed on separatist Uighurs and suggested some have received training in camps in Pakistan or Afghanistan.
Underlying the importance of Xinjiang in this reorganization, the PLA may consider shifting the nodal centre of its entire western operations from Chengdu and Lanzhou, where two commands are currently based, to Urumqi, the regional capital of Xinjiang, which, according to the report on Sunday, could become the new headquarters of the PLA’s West zone WTN – Canada

‘I Am Telling The Story of The Invisible Tibet’
A commentary by Tsering Woeser
2015-12-09
The first big trouble I ran into in my life was over the Chinese edition of Notes on Tibet. That was more than 12 years ago now, but I remember it as if it were yesterday, because the dark shadow of this regime, which silences dissent and strips its citizens of their most basic rights, is still entwined in my psyche.
And that trouble has proved to be a blessing in disguise, because it set me on the path to becoming an independent author, where I found difficulty and danger, but also a precious kind of spiritual freedom for which I am deeply grateful.
As a writer living under an absolute authoritarian power, I have always been subjected to investigation because of my writings. But before Notes on Tibet, I mainly wrote poetry, where meanings are obscure and metaphorical, and can be carried out into the world as if hidden inside an amulet.
But as soon as I began writing nonfiction, albeit in a literary style, it became a matter of fact and the historical record, and I was very soon punished for it.
Notes on Tibet was published by the China Huacheng Publishing Co. in 2003, to an enthusiastic reception by its readers, and further editions soon followed, although one aspect of it caught the attention of the government.

‘Political errors’
For a start, the United Front Work Department of the [ruling] Chinese Communist Party said that the book contained “grave political errors.” The person in charge of ideological work on Tibet ordered an investigation and banned further sales of the book, seizing all copies still held by the publisher.
The book was a major target of criticism in 2004 at a meeting of the General Administration of Press and Publications (GAPP), where it was described as “committing the serious political errors of praising the 14th Dalai Lama, and the 17th Karmapa Lama, and of proselytizing and expressing religious devotion, while some chapters enter the territory of political misunderstanding to varying degrees.”
The Tibetan Literature Association, where I worked at the time, said that it “exaggerated and idealized the positive effects of religion on society, while many of its chapters exude a sense of reverence and worship for the Dalai Lama.”
“At times, it turns a blind eye to the huge successes of the past few decades of reform and opening up in Tibet, indulging in nostalgia for old Tibet and committing grave political errors and erroneous value judgments. It has lost sight of the political and social responsibilities incumbent on a writer to create a progressive literary culture,” the Association said.
I refused to admit to these so-called errors, and so, a year after of the publication and banning of Notes on Tibet, I lost my job, my home was confiscated and my insurance policies revoked, and I was banned from applying for a passport to leave China. I could only leave [Tibet’s regional capital] Lhasa to live in Beijing, which I still haven’t gotten used to, with my husband Wang Lixiong, an author who researches Tibet and Xinjiang.
Work continues
I have continued to write poetry, essays, short stories, and collections of oral history, 14 volumes in total, while Wang Lixiong has published three volumes. But of course these books, which are all written in Chinese, can’t be published in mainland China, only in Taiwan and Hong Kong in the case of one volume.
They are banned, and they can’t be brought back into China.
I am very pleased that 12 of my books have been translated into English, German, French, Japanese, Spanish, Catalan, Polish, Czech, and Tibetan, and I would like to thank the translators at this point for choosing my work, and the Czech Publishing Co. for its recognition, and my Czech readers for their concern.
The stories in the books may have been written many years ago, but these are no tales of mysticism and Tibetan demons.
I am telling the story of the invisible Tibet, the historical and real Tibet as it is experienced by all Tibetans.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie.

China deploys mass surveillance to secure streets around ancient Tibetan temple
December 7, 2015
By Nathalie Thomas
Reuters, November 30, 2015 – Once the site of violent clashes between Tibetans and Chinese security forces, the ancient area of Barkhor in the Tibetan capital has become one of the safest places in China, officials say, thanks in part to an on-the-ground surveillance network.
Guard posts erected among shops and in courtyards around the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa watch the comings and goings of residents. The posts are manned by locals who are selected by the residents’ management committee, though some appeared to be unstaffed. At night, the doors to the courtyards are locked, residents say.
Managing the remote Himalayan region of Tibet remains a difficult issue for China, which has struggled with decades of often violent unrest in protest at Chinese rule, which started when Chinese troops marched into Tibet in 1950.
The government’s strategy, which was formally rolled out across the region in November 2014, is a “grid management” surveillance system aimed at managing society “without gaps, without blind spots, without blanks,” according to state media.
“This is a Chinese specialty, where the masses participate in managing and controlling society and they also enjoy the results of managing their society,” said Qi Zhala, the top Communist Party official in Lhasa.
Earlier this month, Reuters reporters, along with a small group of journalists, were granted a rare visit to the region on a highly choreographed official tour. Chinese authorities restrict access for foreign journalists to Tibet, making independent assessments of the situation difficult.
For the Han Chinese, many of whom have moved to Lhasa in recent years, the scheme is popular.
“If there’s anyone suspicious entering the courtyard, then they know,” said Shou Tianjiang, a Barkhor resident, referring to the ramshackle guard post erected in the center of the courtyard where he rents a room for his sock business.
The changes that have transformed Lhasa are evident. Five years ago when Reuters was last allowed access to the Tibetan capital, squads of paramilitary officers patrolled the streets and armored personnel carriers were stationed on most roads. But the paramilitary presence was not visible on the visit this November.
Activists say, however, that the real aim of the program is to maintain absolute control over the Tibetan population. Beijing reviles exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama as a dangerous separatist.
“They want to detect and root out any sentiment that runs counter to the party state,” said Kate Saunders, spokeswoman for the International Campaign for Tibet.
Rights groups say China has violently tried to stamp out religious freedom and culture in Tibet. China rejects the criticism, saying its rule has ended serfdom and brought development to a backward region.
(Editing by Sui-Lee Wee and Nick Macfie)

Tibetan homes to be demolished, replaced by Chinese-style dwellings
December 7, 2015
Radio Free Asia, December 4, 2015 – Chinese authorities in Tibet have ordered the destruction of houses built in traditional style in three counties outside the regional capital Lhasa, with their replacement by Chinese-style dwellings scheduled for completion in five years, according to a local source.
Demolition and construction will begin in 2016 in Tagtse (in Chinese, Dazi), Lhundrub (Linzhou), and Maldro Gongkar (Mozhugongka) counties, located outside Lhasa city, a resident of the area told RFA’s Tibetan Service.
“We are being forced to accept and support the plan without any choice,” RFA’s source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“Our own house is in very good shape and doesn’t need reconstruction,” she said, adding that residents in all three counties have been ordered to register for their homes to be replaced by buildings of Chinese design.
“We haven’t turned in our own names yet,” she added.
The order for replacement was issued by the Lhasa city government and then communicated to Tibetan families by their county governments, with residents of Tagtse informed in September, Lhundrub in October, and Maldro Gongkar in December, RFA’s source said.
“The project will begin with those families who are recipients of government welfare, and then move on to those families who don’t receive benefits,” she said.
Though anticipated costs of the work in Tagtse and Lhundrub are still unclear, “families in Maldro Gongkar have been told to contribute 200,000 yuan [U.S. $31,340], with remaining expenses paid by the government,” she said.
“Families have been promised the keys to their new homes when the work is finished,” she added.
Details and costs of the planned reconstruction could not be independently confirmed, and calls seeking comment from the Lhasa city government rang unanswered on Thursday.
In 2013, a project to modernize Lhasa’s central Barkhor, or Old City, area ignited a storm of protest online and among international Tibet support groups, with some calling the move an attempt to destroy Tibetans’ “living connection” to their past.
Meanwhile, the demolition in October of Tibetan dwellings near a scenic lake in northwestern China’s Qinghai province has left over 900 homeless and living in tents, sources said in earlier reports.
Reported by Lobsang Choephel for RFA’s Tibetan Service. Translated by Karma Dorjee. Written in English by Richard Finn

China’s about-face on climate change
Carrie Gracie
China editor
• 30 November 2015
Carrie Gracie explains China’s plans for solar energy
With a hard pledge on peaking carbon emissions and with ever more ambitious targets on installing renewables, China has become one of the countries to watch at this week’s Paris conference.
The Qinghai Tibet plateau is the heart and lungs of Asia. Here, the continent’s weather is made and its great rivers are born.
The altitude and the cold make it one of the most extreme climates on earth.
When I visited, icy winds gusting at 50mph (80km/h) were whipping a sandstorm into Qie Qun Jia’s face as he herded his flock of sheep home to safety.
The 28-year-old Tibetan nomad has only ever known this life.
But climate change is turning the grasslands that once supported his yak herd to desert, and now Qie Qun Jia has only a flock of sheep.
“When I was little the grass grew tall and the mountains were covered with flowers,” he says.
“Summers were warmer and winters were much colder. But in recent years there’ve been so many sandstorms, the flowers are disappearing and the grazing gets worse year by year.
So our flocks of sheep are shrinking. We can’t afford to buy grass to feed them.”
Counting the cost
China is both a victim and a perpetrator of climate change.
After three-and-a-half decades of headlong industrial growth powered by coal, China is the world’s largest polluter, and now it is counting the cost in climate change and environmental damage.
In the north and west, it faces desertification. In the south and east, it battles flooding. Its population endures some of the world’s most polluted air, soil and water.
Since the last global UN climate conference in 2009 when Beijing was unwilling to commit to hard targets on reducing carbon emissions, it has realised that its dependence on fossil fuels has to stop. It has become a climate convert.
This about-face is driven not just by the ever more alarming threats from devastating climate change and pollution, but also by opportunity.
China believes the world is on the brink of an energy revolution and it sees a chance to dominate, and profit from, the new technologies of a greener century.
After putting industrial growth above the environment for so long, the Chinese government now believes sustainable growth can only come from rescuing the environment. Tackling climate change is in the national interest.
Solar energy’s big moment
The Huanghe solar farm on the Qinghai plateau claims to be the biggest of its kind in the world. Nearly four million solar panels tilt up towards a vast blue dome of sky.
As I walked between the rows with senior engineer Shen Youguo, tumble weed and sand blew into us and the wind was bitter, but he’s excited. It’s a big moment to be in solar energy in China.
“What we’re doing right now is for the sky to be bluer and the water to be clearer. We want a better future for everybody. So we’re committed to being a part of that push,” he says.
The International Energy Agency predicts that solar power will be the world’s leading source of electricity by the middle of this century.
China wants to dominate renewable technologies like this, and competition between its manufacturers is driving down costs not just in China but globally, as Mr Shen explains.
“As technology advances, the efficiency of our solar batteries improves and the costs come down. So there’s bound to come a day when solar power becomes cheaper than traditional energy.
Personally I’m very optimistic about it,” he says.
Even the environmental activists are impressed.
Yuan Ying of Greenpeace says there are still many challenges to integrate renewable energy fully on China’s national grid, but that the overall trend is positive.
“China is now showing more willingness to lead the international effort to tackle climate change. We also hope China’s efforts can inspire other countries to follow,” says Yuan Ying.
Back on the Qinghai plateau, Qie Qun Jia puts his sheep to bed and the sandstorm drives him in from the cold to sit by the stove with a bowl of steaming milk tea.
In the old days he lived in a tent, but he now has a two room house with a solar panel just outside the door.
The light bulb hanging from the ceiling is solar powered as is the TV on which his children are watching cartoons. He worries about what will become of them in the future.
“We grew up so freely, raising our cattle on this vast grassland. Every day was fun. But our sons and daughters can’t continue this herding life. There’s no road ahead for them. I feel very sad,” he says.
It will take generations to cure China’s addiction to coal and embed renewable energy at the heart of its economy. And all the while, the grassland is shrinking.
Even with an agreement in Paris and even with stronger pledges in the years ahead, the self-inflicted scars of climate change in China may yet deepen before they heal.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-34929561

China staged religious activities during US congressional delegation to Tibet
November 23, 2015
Radio Free Asia, November 20, 2015 – A visit to Tibet’s regional capital Lhasa by U.S. lawmakers last week was highly staged, with all signs of a typically heavy security presence removed from central areas in the city before the delegation’s arrival, according to a source inside Tibet.
U.S. Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi led a delegation of six lawmakers to the normally tense and tightly controlled city—the scene of violent 2008 protests against Chinese rule—on Nov. 10 for a three-day visit, a local resident told RFA’s Tibetan Service this week.
“On the eve of the visit … Chinese officials in Lhasa ordered 10 members from each division of each township, and six members from each neighborhood, to participate in staged religious activities,” RFA’s source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“They were summoned from all sectors of the Lhasa city government jurisdiction and forced to circumambulate around the religious sites, while the monasteries in the city were directed to organize religious activities during the three days.”
According to the source, many of the people called to stage religious activities “were paid for their participation.”
“Therefore, it would have been very difficult for Nancy Pelosi and others to see the true status of religious freedom in Tibet,” he said.
The source said that all of the metal-detector gates used to scan people entering the Jokhang—Lhasa’s central cathedral—and the police tents regularly pitched in the central Bakhor district were removed from the area before Pelosi’s arrival.
“The U.S. delegation did not see even one of those restrictive gates, so the visitors might have got a false impression of peace and calm in the area,” he said.
“In reality, the situation is very different.”
The delegation was shown a Potemkin Lhasa where religious freedom and economic progress is enjoyed by all, the source said.
“They likely did not see any of the darker aspects of Tibetan life in Lhasa, and thus [didn’t understand the problems] in the wider Tibetan region,” he said.
“Whatever they saw was all staged and part of a deceptive plan to paint the wrong picture, so it is important for all to know the truth.”
Confidential letter
The Tibetan government-in-exile on Friday cited a “confidential letter” from a resident of Lhasa who said the city was under a severe lockdown in late October and early November, and described repressive measures taken by the Chinese government to silence Tibetans ahead of the delegation’s visit.
“Lhasa was placed under extreme repression and the people were being constantly indoctrinated in political thoughts, using both violent and softer approaches,” said the letter, according to the report by the Central Tibetan Administration in Dharamsala, India.
“Free speech was also severely curtailed. So much so that people felt it difficult to even move their bodies.”
The letter echoed the account of RFA’s source, saying the gates to Barkhor, which were constantly guarded by security personnel, “were all of a sudden removed and replaced with new doors and lesser security.”
“We were confused at first for the cause of these replacements. However, we realized their intent after learning about the U.S. delegation’s visit,” the letter said.
The letter welcomed the fact-finding visit to Lhasa and expressed the Tibetan people’s desire to meet with the delegation, but acknowledged that it would be hard for Pelosi and the other lawmakers to learn the aspirations of Tibetans because their visit was being guided by Chinese authorities.
‘We saw what they wanted’
On Tuesday, Pelosi and the other members of the delegation—Democratic Representatives Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, Betty McCollum and Tim Walz of Minnesota, Joyce Beatty of Ohio and Alan Lowenthal and Ted Lieu of California—thanked Chinese President Xi Jinping for inviting them on the state visit, which also included stops in the capital Beijing and Hong Kong.
McGovern, the co-chair of the bipartisan Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, said it was clear that the Chinese government “has invested a great deal in Tibet,” but warned that the investment “should not come at the price of an entire culture.”
“You cannot confine a people’s culture and heritage—their very sense of identity—to a museum or a market of handicrafts,” he said.
Pelosi, who has been highly critical of the situation in Tibet, agreed that China’s government was not doing enough to preserve the traditions of the Tibetan people.
“It’s beautiful if the Chinese government spends a lot of money to gild the temple roof … but we’re interested in what’s happening in the minds of the children, and the education and the perpetuation of the culture there,” she said, adding that a large scale resettlement of majority Han Chinese to the region is “diluting that culture.”
The lawmakers were also quick to acknowledge that their delegation had been guided by handlers and encountered difficulty meeting with Tibetan residents of the city.
“I think it’s fair to say that … the Chinese government wanted to control as much of our visit as they could. And we saw what they wanted us to see,” McGovern said.
Pelosi said that 30 Chinese officers guiding their delegation “is probably a conservative estimate because there were people who—shall we say—had walkie talkies that may not have been identified as security” joining the entourage through Lhasa, making sure the lawmakers stuck to a prescribed route.
“Well, what they wanted us to see was housing. And we did,” she said.
“Did we see families? I’m not sure.”
Ambassador visit
In June 2013, sources in Tibet told RFA that a visit to the region by then-U.S. Ambassador to China Gary Locke was met with a similarly staged welcome, including police officers dressed as Tibetans from remote rural and nomadic communities, carrying prayer wheels and rosaries in their hands.
During his trip, Locke emphasized the importance of preserving the Tibetan people’s cultural heritage, including its unique linguistic, religious, and cultural traditions, the U.S. State Department said at the time.
A riot in Lhasa in March 2008 followed the suppression by Chinese police of four days of peaceful protests by Tibetans, and led to the destruction of Han Chinese shops in the city and deadly attacks on Han Chinese residents.
More than a dozen civilians were killed in the clashes, according to various reports.
The riot sparked a wave of mostly peaceful protests against Chinese rule that spread across Tibet and into Tibetan-populated regions of western Chinese provinces.
Hundreds of Tibetans were detained, beaten, or shot as Chinese security forces quelled the protests.
Meanwhile, a total of 143 Tibetans to date have self-immolated to challenge Beijing’s rule in Tibetan-populated areas and to call for the return of exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.
Reported by Sonam Wangdu for RFA’s Tibetan Service. Translated by Karma

US, China officials get into heated argument over Tibet
Published November 18, 2015 Associated Press
WASHINGTON – U.S. lawmakers on a rare congressional visit to Tibet last week had “heated exchanges” with Chinese officials as they called for Beijing to renew dialogue with exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, one participant said Tuesday.
Seven Democrats led by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi made the first visit by U.S. lawmakers to Tibet since anti-government unrest in 2008. The region has also been largely off-limits to foreign media and diplomats since then.
Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts said the visit was an important gesture by the Chinese government but “too often” they heard characterizations of Tibet and the Dalai Lama that reflected old prejudices.
“I believe that the Dalai Lama is part of the solution, not the problem, to resolving the issues confronting Tibetan autonomy,” McGovern said, calling for genuine dialogue to address the concerns of Tibetans who are seeking more autonomy, the freedom to practice their Buddhist religion and preservation of their culture.
The Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959 amid an abortive uprising against Chinese rule and is shunned by Beijing as a separatist.
Pelosi, who last traveled to China in 2009, said the delegation’s visit, which also took them to Hong Kong and Beijing, followed an invitation to “come see for yourself” when she raised congressional concerns over human rights with Chinese President Xi Jinping during a Washington visit in September. In Beijing, they met Chinese Premier Li Keqiang.
“I considered the trip constructive, bridge-building, and we want to continue building that bridge through reconciliation and clearer understanding,” Pelosi said. They also discussed cybersecurity and climate change.
McGovern said the delegation saw what Chinese officials wanted them to see in Tibet, but at Pelosi’s insistence, visited religious sites too.
They came away uncertain about what steps the Chinese government was willing to take on reconciliation in Tibet, but not feeling “the door was entirely closed to anything,” including to opening a U.S. consulate in the regional capital of Lhasa.
“Some discussions were more heated than others and there were some discussions that I felt signaled openness to a constructive dialogue,” McGovern said.
Also joining the trip were Democratic Reps. Betty McCollum and Tim Walz of Minnesota, Joyce Beatty of Ohio and Alan Lowenthal and Ted Lieu of California

Amnesty: Chinese Police Use Torture to Extract Confessions
http://www.voatibetanenglish.com/content/report-finds-chinese-police-using-torture-to-extract-confessions/3054963.html
Chinese police still routinely use torture to extract confessions from criminal suspects, Amnesty International said Thursday, despite Beijing’s recent criminal justice and legal reforms. The report, entitled “No End in Sight,” is based in part on interviews with dozens of human rights lawyers, and comes as the United Nations is set to conduct a regular review of China’s record on torture. “For the police, obtaining a confession is still the easiest way to secure a conviction,” said Patrick Poon, a China researcher at the London-based rights group.
Methods of torture outlined by Amnesty include beatings, sleep deprivation, being forced into painful positions for long periods, and withholding food, water, or medication. Since 2010, China has introduced a number of guidelines it says have successfully reduced torture, including laws explicitly banning the practice. But the measures have been ineffective, says Amnesty, partly because the courts that are supposed to punish such behavior are controlled by the ruling Communist Party. “China’s police authority still wields too much power within the judicial system,” the report said, “As a result, few perpetrators of torture are held to account.”
Amnesty also faulted the “deep-rooted practices” of China’s criminal justice system. “The system still overly relies on ‘confessions’ as the basis of most convictions, providing an almost irresistible incentive for law enforcement agencies to obtain them by any means necessary,” it said. While it did not directly respond to the report, Beijing’s Foreign Ministry Thursday insisted Chinese law is committed to ensuring “fairness and justice.” “Extorting a confession by torture is explicitly banned by China’s laws. The person who is found exercising torture during interrogation will be subject to punishment,” said ministry spokesman Hong Lei.
The Amnesty findings were corroborated by other recent reports, including a May investigation by Human Rights Watch, which dismissed China’s criminal justice reforms as being “easily circumvented.” China next week will be scrutinized by the U.N. Convention against Torture, an international panel of experts that judges whether signatory nations are complying with the U.N.’s anti-torture convention. “Torture remains a daily reality in China, and this is a critical moment for Beijing to answer tough questions about why this problem still exists,” said HRW China director Sophie Richardson in a statement on Thursday. “Dishonesty, evasion, or obfuscation from officials at the review can only deepen torture survivors’ agony. An honest discussion that commits to accountability for torturers might help mitigate survivors’ pain and indicate willingness to reform.”

Tibet Party Chief declares renewed crackdown on religious belief
November 16, 2015
By Edward Wong
New York Times, November 11, 2015 – The Chinese Communist Party in central Tibet is aiming to peer into the hearts of its members to hunt down secret worshipers of the Dalai Lama or people who secretly hold religious beliefs.
That seemingly difficult mission was laid out by the party chief of the Tibet Autonomous Region, Chen Quanguo, in a question-and-answer published online by the party’s central anticorruption and discipline agency.
“We must severely punish those party members and cadres who don’t have firm beliefs and ideals, who don’t share the same mind with the party and the people, who have ‘two faces’ when it comes to the important question of what’s right and wrong,” Mr. Chen said, according to the transcript of the question-and-answer session that was published on Monday.
Mr. Chen said it was important to go after party members who “pretend not to be religious but indeed are” and those who “follow the clique of the 14th Dalai Lama.” He said that party investigators should seek out members who have gone to India, where the Dalai Lama lives, to “worship” him or ones who send their children or other relatives to schools run by the Dalai Lama.
There are skeptics of this approach. Global Times, a nationalistic, state-run newspaper, ran an article in its English edition citing an expert based in Tibet who said, in the newspaper’s words, that “it’s hard to identify such people because separatism is an ideological issue and is usually difficult to spot during recruitment simply through their words and deeds.”
The expert also said, again in the newspaper’s words, that the Dalai Lama “has been deodorizing his image, and local governments should provide more information of his activities in a transparent and open manner.” Global Times did not name the expert.
The party has vilified the widely revered Dalai Lama, 80, the Tibetan spiritual leader, since he fled to India in 1959, saying he is plotting Tibetan independence even though he has insisted he wants only self-autonomy for the Tibetans, as guaranteed in the Chinese Constitution. The Dalai Lama’s image is generally banned from mainland China and Tibetan regions, though local officials occasionally allow people to openly display it.
Each year, many Tibetans and even some ethnic Han, the dominant group in China, try to go to Dharamsala, India, to seek the Dalai Lama’s blessing or to hear him speak. Many Buddhist institutions of learning have been established by Tibetans in Dharamsala.
Since a widespread uprising of Tibetans in 2008, Chinese officials have tried to clamp down on the border between Tibet and Nepal to prevent most Tibetan pilgrims from leaving via a popular route. In 2012, security officers in Tibet detained hundreds of people returning from a Kalachakra religious teaching ceremony in India over which the Dalai Lama had presided. The ceremony is sometimes held in India, and officials had turned a blind eye to some Tibetans seeking to attend, but the 2012 mass detention showed that Mr. Chen, an ethnic Han, and other regional leaders were intent on taking a harder line.
Mr. Chen said in the question-and-answer transcript that officials in the Tibet Autonomous Region, which includes Lhasa and the central Tibetan plateau, had uncovered 19 cases of violations of political discipline and had punished 20 people. “In 2015, not one person from the Tibet Autonomous Region has gone to the 14th Dalai Lama’s prayer sessions,” he said.
In August, an official publication of the party’s Organization Department, which manages postings for party members, said the party in central Tibet was tightening discipline. The publication, China Organization and Human Resources News, said the party there had issued a policy called the “six absolutely don’t-use,” which described criteria for rejecting potential party members or officials. Those include people who have gone abroad to “worship” the Dalai Lama or to prayer sessions and teachings, and ones who “intentionally manufacture ethnic conflict or disrupt ethnic unity.”
Though the party denounces the Dalai Lama, it has insisted that he must reincarnate after his death, rebutting declarations by the current Dalai Lama that he may be the last one. The party is seeking to control the reincarnation process so it can give the title of Dalai Lama to someone whom it can control, as it has done with the Panchen Lama.
Two decades ago, officials took a 6-year-old boy, Gendun Choekyi Nyima, from his home in Tibet after the Dalai Lama said he was the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama, the second-ranking figure in the Gelugpa school of Tibetan Buddhism. The party then installed its own boy as the reincarnation.
In September, an official in the party’s United Front Work Department in Tibet, Norbu Dunzhub, made a rare reference to the boy who had vanished in 1995, now 26. The official said he “is being educated, living a normal life, growing up healthily and does not wish to be disturbed.”