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.

China Attempts Major PR Stunt in Tibet Amid Crackdown

http://www.rfa.org/english/commentaries/east-asia-beat/stunt-08162014183005.html
China may have pulled off a major public relations stunt this week in its campaign to dispel charges of human rights abuses and other injustices against Tibetans — thanks to Beijing’s well-oiled propaganda machine. When Chinese security forces were opening fire at peaceful Tibetan protesters in Sichuan province on Aug.12, Beijing’s state media reported that 100 politicians and other representatives from 30 countries met in Tibet’s capital Lhasa and adopted a joint statement saying Tibetans enjoyed “a happy life.”
The Xinhua news agency said participants from Britain, Japan, New Zealand, India and other countries had endorsed the Chinese government’s policies in Tibet despite claims by human rights groups that controls on Tibetan culture, religion and language have been tightened amid rampant rights abuses. The participants, apparently oblivious of the shooting of Tibetan protesters in the Kardze (Ganzi) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture that left nearly a dozen seriously wounded, reached what the Chinese media called the “Lhasa Consensus” at the end of the government-organized “2014 Forum on the Development of Tibet.”
Xinhua called it an unprecedented conference — “the first large-scale international conference themed on the development of Tibet held in Tibet Autonomous Region.” It said that participants also “unanimously” agreed that what they have actually seen in Tibet during their stay in the Himalayan region “differs radically” from the statements of Tibet’s spiritual leader the Dalai Lama which they said were “distorted and incorrect.” The declaration also said that “many Western media reports are biased and have led to much misunderstanding” of Tibet.
Tibet experts and advocacy groups said the joint statement appeared to be part of a well-organized propaganda campaign by the Chinese authorities. They asked whether the Lhasa Consensus was adopted with the knowledge of the foreign participants, including Britain’s opposition Labour party front-bencher in the House of Lords Lord Davidson, Japan’s opposition Democratic Party of Japan member of parliament Kondo Shoichi, and President of the Constitution Committee of the Austrian parliament Peter Wittmann. “It isn’t unusual for the [ruling Chinese Communist] Party to hold exercises of this kind dedicated entirely to producing a single statement of unquestioning praise for its policies in Tibet,” Columbia University Tibet scholar Robbie Barnett told RFA. “This is a legacy of much earlier propaganda traditions in the party which still persist in its handling of Tibet and certain other sensitive issues.”
‘Insignificant figures’
Barnett said it also is not unusual for the Communist Party to find foreign politicians to go along with its narrative, “though usually they are insignificant figures in their own country, and it’s hard to know why they agree to take part in these events.” “What is striking here, though, given that the event supposedly reflected foreigners’ views, is that the consensus statement went way beyond the brief of the conference — which was to study development —and instead specifically singled out the Dalai Lama and the Western media for attack,” he said. This, Barnett said, suggested an increasing level of confidence among Chinese officials handling Tibet policy.
Foreign participants at the Lhasa forum, who made field trips in the regional capital and Tibet’s Nyingtri (in Chinese, Linzhi) county, “appreciated the substantial efforts and considerable achievements” of the Chinese government “in promoting economic and social development, improving people’s well-being, preserving the culture and improving the ecology and environment of Tibet,” Xinhua reported.
London-based advocacy group Free Tibet director Eleanor Byrne-Rosengren said she was looking forward to strong statements of repudiation by all the international participants. “[B]ut that does not alter the fact that their participation was ill-advised at best and reprehensible at worst,” she said. “Economic development in Tibet is far from what it seems from the window of a car or a plush meeting room in Lhasa.”
Free Tibet said Tibetans were far from ‘happy’ as claimed by the Lhasa Consensus, which had stated that “ordinary people in Tibet are satisfied with their well-off lives, good education, sound medical care, housing and various social securities.” The U.N. Economic, Cultural and Social Rights committee recently issued a report noting that Tibet is the worst area in China for child malnutrition, Free Tibet said. It said the influx of Han Chinese into Tibet, the use of Chinese labor and restrictions on freedom of movement for Tibetans have excluded them from most of the benefits of the economic development that has taken place in the resource-rich region. The group also referred to China’s heavy investment in transport infrastructure in Tibet, saying it was designed to help security forces move quickly around the region and make it easier for Tibet’s natural resources — including copper, gold and lithium — to be exported.
UN assessments ignored
The Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) said the declaration at the Lhasa forum completely ignored assessments of the region by U.N. representatives, governments and independent non-governmental organizations. “It will do no favors to the credibility of those participating, and it raises serious questions for the political parties and academic institutions that the foreign delegates represent,” said Kai Mueller, Executive Director of ICT-Germany. The ICT has written to organizations represented by the foreign participants, including Austrian MP Wittman’s Social Democrat Party, asking whether they really supported the Lhasa Consensus.
So far, only one participant — Sir Bob Parker, a former mayor of Christchurch, New Zealand’s second largest city — has disavowed the Lhasa Consensus, saying he was “not happy to be included in a document that states some very powerful political perspectives.” “I came here as a New Zealander with a unique opportunity to get into Tibet and see some of these unique communities with my own eyes. There seems to be a good degree of openness and happiness in the communities that I’ve been to,” he told the BBC. “But I’m not a Tibet expert, I’m not a global politician, I’m just a citizen who had a chance to come to a very special part of the world to see some of these things with my own eyes.”
His statement however did not let him off the hook. “We welcome Sir Bob’s statement repudiating the so-called consensus but as he was enjoying China’s hospitality, peaceful Tibetan protesters were being shot by China’s security forces,” Free Tibet’s Byrne-Rosengren said. No Chinese media had reported the bloody Kardze shooting, which received wide coverage in the international press backed by photos, including victims reeling from multiple bullet wounds. “Sir Bob was naïve and foolish in taking at face value an invitation from the State Council Information Office of China to attend a meeting about the country it occupies and brutally oppresses: such invitations belong in the bin, not on the mantelpiece,” Byrne-Rosengren said.
New Lhasa Consensus on Tibet’s development (Chinese state TV news report)
Pat Breen (Irish Parliament), Peter Wittman (Australian State Council), and Richard Trappl (Confucius Institute Vienna) are quoted.

Dalai Lama Photo on Open Display at Tibetan Horse-Race Festival
2014-07-29
In open defiance of authorities, Tibetans set up a portrait of exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama at a traditional horse-racing festival in China’s Sichuan province this week, inviting festival-goers to pray before the photo and make offerings, sources said.
The popular festival, held this year on July 27 in Dziwa village in Bathang (in Chinese, Batang) county in the Kardze (Ganzi) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, opened with the Dalai Lama portrait’s formal installation, a Tibetan living in exile told RFA’s Tibetan Service on Tuesday.
“Though Chinese authorities imposed restrictions on the festival, the Tibetans brought in a portrait of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and placed it on a throne,” Tsultrim Choedar said, citing local sources.
“The organizers also invited Tibetans gathered at the festival to view the photo and offer ceremonial scarves,” he said.
“They prayed for the long life of the Dalai Lama and other prominent religious teachers, and also prayed for a resolution of the question of Tibet.”
The Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet into exile in India in 1959, is reviled by Chinese leaders as a dangerous separatist who seeks to split the formerly self-governing region from Beijing’s rule.
In what he calls a Middle Way Approach, though, the Dalai Lama himself says that he seeks only a meaningful autonomy for Tibet as a part of China, with protections for the region’s language, religion, and culture.
A popular tradition
Horse racing festivals date back to the time of the Tibetan emperor Songtsen Gampo in the seventh century, and are still popular in Tibetan rural nomadic areas—especially in the historical southeastern Tibetan region of Kham, which has largely been absorbed into Chinese provinces, Choedar said.
“This time, when the horse race was organized in Dziwa village, the festival began with an invitation to all who came to the festival to participate in the installation of Dalai Lama’s portrait and to receive blessings,” he said.
Most of the horse-racing events are held annually “but in some places the event is organized twice each year.”
Many travel for days to attend the festivals, he said.
In September 2012, Bathang-area Tibetans also defied authorities by parading large portraits of the Dalai Lama during the enthronement of a local religious leader, Tibetan sources told RFA in earlier reports.
Several thousand Tibetans, many on motorbikes, took part in the enthronement ceremony to welcome the young lama, one source said, adding, “Many displayed huge photos of the Dalai Lama on their motorbikes and paraded in the ceremony.”
And in March this year, a 31-year-old nun named Drolma self-immolated near a monastery in Bathang to protest Beijing’s rule, sources in the region and in exile said.
Sporadic demonstrations challenging Chinese rule have continued in Tibetan-populated areas of China since widespread protests swept the region in 2008, with 131 Tibetans to date setting themselves ablaze to oppose Beijing’s rule and call for the Dalai Lama’s return.
Reported by Pema Ngodup for RFA’s Tibetan Service. Translated by Karma Dorjee. Written in English by Richard Finney.

Free Tibet: Fake Twitter Accounts Spread Chinese Propaganda
VOA News
A human rights group says it has uncovered at least 100 fake Twitter accounts used to spread Chinese government’s propaganda about Tibet.
The accounts, found by the organization Free Tibet, often used awkwardly constructed Western names and were accompanied by profile pictures that included photographs of American schoolgirls taken by professional photographers. Others used commercial stock images or pictures of dead celebrities.
Free Tibet spokesman Alistair Currie told VOA’s Tibetan service many of the fake accounts trace back to the Chinese capital.
“The accounts that we have identified are completely phony accounts,” he said. “They don’t relate to any individuals. Many of these accounts link to a website which is a Beijing-based website of a company which denies knowledge of the accounts. It says it is responsible for the website, but not the fake accounts.”
The London-based rights group says the accounts posted English-language articles that attacked the Dalai Lama and that portrayed Tibet as a “contented and idyllic Chinese province.”
The New York Times says many of the fake Twitter accounts now appear to be suspended, just hours after the release of the Free Tibet report.
China has gone to great lengths to paint a picture of stability in Tibet, where more than 130 people have set themselves on fire since 2009 to protest Beijing’s rule. It blames the Dalai Lama for inciting the self-immolations, a charge he rejects.
The Chinese government has not responded to the allegations found in the report by Free Tibet, which worked with the Times in its investigation.
Free Tibet did not explicitly accuse the Chinese government of setting up the accounts. But in a letter, it urged Twitter CEO Dick Costolo to ensure that the social media service “cannot be used for deceptive propaganda interests of authoritarian regimes in the future.”
The campaign group said the accounts are “an act of cynical deception designed to manipulate public opinion regarding an occupied and brutally repressed country.”
It is unclear whether the Twitter accounts had any impact on public opinion. But Free Tibet pointed out that one tweet attacking the Dalai Lama had been re-tweeted (shared on Twitter) more than 6,500 times.
By early Tuesday, Twitter had suspended many of the fake accounts found in the report. Free Tibet warned there are likely hundreds more fake accounts that have not been discovered.
Twitter and all other major Western social media are blocked in China, although Beijing’s state-run media outlets do have Twitter accounts that disseminate the government’s stances on domestic and international issues.
This report was produced in collaboration with the VOA Tibetan service.

Dalai Lama Calls for a ‘Realistic’ Approach to Break Tibet Impasse
2014-07-15
Tibet’s spiritual leader the Dalai Lama on Tuesday called for a “realistic” approach to resolving the Tibet question, warning that viewing the dispute merely through the prism of history would only aggravate the situation.
Citing the Israeli-Palestinian turmoil as an example, he said the Middle East conflict had been prolonged because both sides had used the historical context to back their territorial claims.
The Dalai Lama said that Beijing and Tibetans should make efforts to bring an end to their dispute through compromise and by considering mutual interests.
“Political changes should be looked at from a realistic angle, not just through the prism of history; doing so would only provoke conflict,” the Dalai Lama told RFA’s Tibetan Service in an interview in the Himalayan town of Choglamsar in Leh, the capital of Ladakh district of India-administered Kashmir.
“For instance, the Palestinians and the Israeli Jews both lay claim to territory from the past. Dealing with the issue based on historical records has only aggravated the Middle East conflict since 1948,” he said.
Example
The Chinese authorities and Tibetans should regard the Middle East crisis as an example to understand the “reality” of the situation, he said.
“On the Tibetan issue too, we need to think of mutual interests of both [Tibet and Beijing] instead of pursuing a ‘I win, you lose’ policy, which is not appropriate, and will not help resolve the situation,” the Dalai Lama said.
The 79-year-old Dalai Lama, who is living in exile in India where he fled to following a failed 1959 Tibet national uprising against Chinese occupation, has been the face and symbol of the Tibetan struggle for freedom for more than five decades.
He has been seeking “genuine” autonomy for Tibet based on his Middle Way approach, which does not seek separation from China.
A dialogue between Beijing and the Dalai Lama’s envoys since 2002 to consider prospects of “genuine” autonomy had ground to a halt in 2010 without any breakthrough after nine formal rounds of discussion and one informal meeting.
Beijing has rebuffed calls for a resumption of the dialogue.
Living up to slogan
The Dalai Lama said Tuesday that Beijing should live up to its “brotherhood of nationalities” slogan by giving equal treatment to all groups in China for mutual benefit.
“From a historical point of view, Tibetans and Chinese have a unique relationship. From that perspective, we should think about mutual benefit,” he said.
“The Chinese government’s official political announcements usually refer to brotherhood of nationalities. If this is true, and the nationalities are truly equal, then China and Tibet can mutually benefit,” said the Dalai Lama, who was in Ladakh to confer Kalachakra, a Buddhist process that empowers his disciples to attain enlightenment.
Asked whether he still wanted to achieve his long held objective of conducting a Kalachakra ceremony in China, he said Buddhism has been growing rapidly in the world’s most populous nation.
Buddhism in China
He then referred to a speech by Chinese President Xi Jinping during a visit to France recently in which Xi said that Buddhism had played a significant role in China’s culture.
“For a leader of the Communist Party of China to say such a thing is a matter of amazement, a new idiom, a new statement,” the Dalai Lama said.
Xi had said in his address at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris in March that after Buddhism was introduced into China, the religion went through an extended period of integrated development with the indigenous Confucianism and Taoism and “finally became the Buddhism with Chinese characteristics.”
It made “a deep impact on the religious belief, philosophy, literature, art, etiquette and customs of the Chinese people,” Xi said.
Reported by Kalden Lodoe for RFA’s Tibetan Service. Translated by Benpa Topgyal. Written in English by Parameswaran Ponnudurai.