Tibet locked down, foreigners required to leave as sensitive anniversary approaches
January 30, 2017
Fédération internationale des ligues des droits de l’Homme/International Campaign for Tibet, January 27, 2017 – Tour operators have announced the closure of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) to tourists again next month, coinciding with the anniversary of the Tibetan Uprising in March 1959 and the related protests across Tibet in March 2008.
ICT’s President, Matteo Mecacci said: “This lockdown, taking place in an already restrictive political climate, has been imposed every year since 2008 but must not be accepted as ‘business as usual’. Chinese tourists travel in their millions across the world but foreigners are barred from seeing Tibet for themselves because of the Chinese Party’s counter-productive hardline security measures on the plateau. Foreign countries must call on China to abide to the principle of “reciprocity” and to stop limiting foreign and independent access to Tibet. This is unjustifiable and must be condemned.”
Tour operators announced on websites early in January that the ‘annual closure’ of Tibet to foreigners would run this year from February 25 to April 1, with all foreigners being instructed to leave before February 24.
March 10, 2017 will mark the 58th anniversary of the Tibetan Uprising leading to the Dalai Lama’s flight into exile in 1959, and the ninth anniversary of an unprecedented wave of protests that swept through Tibet in March 2008, transforming the political landscape. The TAR has since been closed annually to foreigners in March, in addition to an intensified militarization of the plateau and with a stronger emphasis from the central authorities on political control over Tibet linked to the ‘stability’ of the whole of the People’s Republic of China. Large-scale military drills, new border regulations, counter-terrorism training exercises for troops and virulent attacks against the Dalai Lama have also intensified since 2008.
The announcement of the closure of TAR this year follows increasing restrictions by China against the teachings of the Dalai Lama in exile. At the beginning of 2017, the Chinese authorities prevented thousands of Tibetan pilgrims from attending a major Buddhist ceremony with the Dalai Lama in Bodh Gaya, India. The authorities ordered Tibetans already in India to leave the country, and prevented others from leaving China at all, even though many had spent years obtaining passports for legal travel. Upon their return to China, some Tibetans have had their passports destroyed upon arrival at airports and have been interrogated by police.
The International Campaign for Tibet and FIDH urge the Chinese authorities to put an end to the closure and isolation of the TAR, to guarantee the fundamental freedoms of all Tibetans, and to allow foreigners free access to the TAR and to see the situation in Tibet for themselves.

Hundreds of Tibetans defy China, gather at birthplace of Buddhism in India
January 16, 2017
By Annie Gowan
Washington Post, January 13, 2017 – The young Tibetan monk was taking his elderly aunt and uncle on the trip of a lifetime — a tour of holy Buddhist sites in India and a chance to meet the Dalai Lama. But halfway through, word came from China: The family was to return right away.
Chinese police had descended on the monk’s home five times in December, fingerprinting his parents and forcing them to sign documents guaranteeing his return.
But the monk and his family were determined to see the Dalai Lama speak at Bodh Gaya, the Indian city that many consider the birthplace of Buddhism. So they defied Chinese authorities and continued their journey, risking imprisonment, harsh questioning or loss of identity cards on their return home.
“I’m very worried,” the monk said on a chilly evening, sitting in a tent not far from a teaching ground where thousands have gathered daily since Jan. 3 to pray, meditate and hear their religious leader. “If we are put in prison, they will interrogate us: ‘Why did you go to India?’ This can be very dangerous.”
Authorities from the Tibetan government-in-exile say the Chinese government barred an estimated 7,000 Tibetan pilgrims from attending this month’s 10-day gathering in India, an unprecedented move that further erodes the rights of 6 million people who live in the Tibetan region of China. It was also a fresh reminder that the Chinese are threatening to control the selection of the next Dalai Lama after the eventual demise of the renowned religious leader, who is now 81.
“It’s tragic,” said Lobsang ­Sangay, the head of Tibet’s ­government-in-exile, which is based in India. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime trip for Tibetans, like Muslims going to Mecca. It’s a sad commentary on the Chinese claim to have religious freedom — or any kind of freedom in Tibet.”
The Dalai Lama told reporters that the move was “unfortunate.”
China has denied threatening pilgrims or blocking their departures, but local authorities in ­Tibet declared this ritual gathering, called the Kalachakra, illegal in 2012, the last time it was held in Bodh Gaya. Most of the 7,000 already had traveled legally to India and were forced to return early. Only 300 have remained.
“The government by no means threatened them to return, although the government does not encourage them to attend the ritual,” Xu Zhitao, an official with the Central Committee of China’s Communist Party, told the Global Times, a tabloid associated with the party.
Since unrest broke out across the Tibetan plateau in 2008, the Chinese government has enacted sweeping measures that have curtailed freedom of expression, notably by prioritizing Chinese over the Tibetan language in schools, posting police in monasteries and increasing surveillance.
Activists say the Communist Party seeks to break the connection between Tibetans and their revered leader to ensure compliance with ambitious party objectives in Tibet, a region rich in mineral and water resources.
“What we’re seeing is new,” said Kate Saunders of the International Campaign for Tibet. “It’s a systematic attempt to prevent Tibetans from having any access at all to the Dalai Lama.”
An estimated 10,000 Tibetans attended the 2012 Kalachakra in Bodh Gaya, but many were jailed or detained for “re-education” in military camps when they returned, Saunders said.
About 200,000 maroon- and saffron-robed monks and nuns as well as Buddhist devotees from around the world — including American actor Richard Gere — converged on the town in eastern India for days of chanting and lessons on Buddhist thought. As darkness descended, many of them performed prostrations and encircled the ancient stupa next to the tree — a descendant of the original — where the Buddha is believed to have attained enlightenment.
Since the Dalai Lama escaped over the mountains from Tibet to India in 1959, Indian governments have treated him as an honored guest in Dharamsala, a hill town in the country’s north, but they long kept him at arm’s length to avoid offending the Chinese. Now, that may be changing.
The Dalai Lama appeared prominently at an event with India’s president in Delhi last month. And Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made preserving India’s ancient heritage a priority, becoming the first prime minister in decades to visit Bodh Gaya.
“I don’t believe it’s a fundamental shift of position, but certainly what you’re seeing is trending towards perhaps a less self-conscious expression of our sentiments and our support for the Tibetan cultural identity and the high standing the Dalai Lama enjoys here in India,” said Nirupama Menon Rao, a former foreign secretary and ambassador to ­China.
The support is key, as the Tibetan exile community faces uncertain times. The Dalai Lama has said that when he dies, he may choose not to be reincarnated, as Buddhist belief holds, or that he could come back as a woman. But China has signaled that it will control the search for the next Dalai Lama by anointing its own Panchen Lama, another important religious figure in Tibetan Buddhism.
Some of the attendees said they are worried that this year’s Kalachakra will be the last the Dalai Lama will perform. The octogenarian moves and speaks more slowly now, and he had to be helped to the elaborate throne on the dais by two monks.
“He can’t go into top gear anymore,” said Gaden Tashi, a Tibetan from Kathmandu, Nepal. “But he keeps saying he’s happy and healthy.”
One young Tibetan-language tutor who made the risky journey from China recalled that when he unrolled his prayer mat at Bodh Gaya and got his first glimpse of the Dalai Lama, “I couldn’t control myself; I thought it was a dream.”
The tutor, 29, arrived Jan. 3, weeks after his trip began in a small village in the Tibetan area of Amdo. He paid a guide to take him to Kathmandu, where he received legal papers from the Indian Embassy to make the pilgrimage.
Almost immediately, he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity, frightening messages began appearing on his WeChat, China’s popular social-media platform. He said police sent a warning through his parents that he should return by Jan. 3, the day the Kalachakra would begin. His mother cried and begged him to come home soon. Others sent photos of pilgrims who were met at the airport only to have their passports sliced into pieces by police.
He said he now feels he cannot return to China, but he believes his sacrifice has been worth it.
“Every Tibetan has a dream — to meet the Dalai Lama,” he said. “I told my parents I have no regret, even if I die.”
Luna Lin in Beijing and Swati Gupta in New Delhi contributed to this report.

Eat, pray, love the Communist Party: a road trip through Tibetan lands, guided by China
January 16, 2017
By Jonathan Kaiman
Los Angeles Times, January 9, 2017 – It was a road trip through one of China’s most tightly controlled regions.
We drove uphill and deeper into the Aba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture, an area of southwestern China’s Sichuan province, adjacent to Tibet, where more than half the residents are Tibetan.
There were five of us foreign journalists, packed into two minibuses along with camera crews, interpreters and scores of Chinese journalists, all seated shoulder to shoulder with the people in control: party officials from Sichuan and Shanghai. We passed scattered villages, high-altitude grasslands and towering peaks.
Countless propaganda billboards, some many stories high, lined the highway.
“Religious Belief Must Be in Accordance With Socialism,” said one. “Love the Country, Love the Party, Love Religion,” said another. “Construct an Excellent Political Environment,” said a third.
In 2016, the Chinese government embarked on a Tibet publicity blitz, hosting several delegations of foreign journalists to previously closed areas.
Tibetan advocacy groups often cast China’s sovereignty over Tibet — and surrounding areas like Aba — as a brutal, exploitative occupation by a foreign power. The Communist Party is trying to take back the narrative — to show that China has improved life for Tibetans by giving them roads, electricity, healthcare, education and other portals to modern affluence.
Aba has a long history of unrest, and though it falls outside the highly restricted Tibet Autonomous Region, swaths of the prefecture have also been off limits to foreigners and little is known to the outside world about daily life there.
In 2008, anti-Chinese riots rocked China’s Tibetan regions. Authorities responded with mass detentions, shows of force, and “patriotic reeducation campaigns,” demanding that monks hang portraits of Chinese leaders in their monasteries. Since 2009, more than 140 Tibetans have self-immolated in protest. About a third of them lived in Aba.
We would be on the road for eight days, traveling 1,000 miles through the prefecture and meeting some of its 920,000 people.
Every day stretched out over 12 jam-packed hours or longer; we were forbidden to eat any meals on our own or conduct unchaperoned interviews. But the trip offered a rare chance to report on Aba without risk of government retaliation.
We toured a solar power facility, a Tibetan medicine factory and a yak milk powder processing plant. Each boasted of high productivity figures, but all we saw were long sterile corridors without workers, and pristine metal machines.
We visited a home for Tibetan elders, a school for Tibetan children, and several tourism encampments, where Han Chinese urbanites come to ride horses and sleep in tents, paying top dollar for a taste of nomadic life.
We most looked forward to the interview with a “living Buddha” — our opportunity to ask about the religious repression that Tibetans in China often face.
Living Buddhas are highly respected, government-sanctioned practitioners of Buddhism in China. Officials on the trip repeatedly emphasized that Tibetans are free to worship as they please — and the interview, planned for our fourth day, was their chance to prove it.
A 49-year-old Tibetan monk at the Dazha Monastery blew into the monastery meeting room on a cloud of effortless charm, wearing a burgundy robe and spectacles. He was so affable that even the Chinese Communist Party officials, ill-humored and imperious, seemed to bow a bit in his presence. He gave his name in Chinese as Zhada.
He approached the journalists and officials and shook our hands. “I’m a fan of German soccer,” he told a German reporter and feigned a kick with his right foot. The reporter laughed. Then the monk sat at the front of the room, and we picked up our notebooks.
He began the interview on script. He praised the government for donating books to the monastery library. He said the area’s new highways and cellphone towers have improved monks’ lives by enabling them to share Tibetan culture with the world.
“What do you think of the Dalai Lama?” a Singaporean reporter asked.
The question was extraordinarily charged. Many Tibetans adore the Dalai Lama as their spiritual leader; he fled the Himalayan region in 1959 after a failed uprising, and Chinese authorities, who revile him as a “separatist,” won’t let him return. In China, publicly praising the 81-year-old monk could result in a visit from state security or even a jail term.
The living Buddha took a breath, and the room fell quiet.
His response was peculiar. “The Dalai Lama, the Panchen Lamaand many other Lamas are all living Buddhas,” he said. “We have respect for all of them.”
Was this Zhada’s way, under extreme pressure, of expressing support for the spiritual leader? Had he crossed a line?
The reporters stared quizzically. Other people we had encountered on the trip — both officials and Tibetans — had refused to speak about the Dalai Lama or branded him a separatist in keeping with the party line.
Answers were not forthcoming. Soon afterward, the living Buddha stood, and the officials shuffled us out of the room.::
At one village, our tour guide, Yan Danfeng, a Han Chinese government official, led us through immaculate rows of gorgeous stone homes, each three stories high. The interiors smelled like sawdust.
She said the village was home to 202 former nomads who were displaced by a devastating earthquake in 2008. They had bought the homes themselves, she said, and turned them into bed-and-breakfasts.
But out of 45 households, only seven were operational hotels; the rest were under construction. We spotted just two tourists. Villagers were reluctant to give even minor details about their lives, much less describe their feelings on resettlement.
The officials led us into a meeting room, where locals — most of them elderly — sat in a circle to receive us. “Now this is a very brief meeting with normal people,” said Xiao Yonggang, a provincial official. “If you have any questions, you can ask.”
One correspondent asked whether villagers could describe their daily routine.
“Our village is run as a commune,” responded Yan, the tour guide. “Our daily life is just what we’ve been seeing.”
“Can we hear from one of the local villagers?” I asked.
The locals shifted uncomfortably. “Tell them what your days are like,” Yan said. Nobody spoke.
“Just say something,” Xiao said.
After about a minute, the officials identified a young, Mandarin-speaking villager, and he walked to the front of the room.
“Our life is, we get up every day, then we eat,” said the 32-year-old man, who gave his name in Chinese as Baimamu. “Then we go out and work, we farm. Then we eat, and in the afternoons, if it’s summer, we work again. Then we eat dinner.
“That’s what our day is like,” he said. “That’s all.”
Both the officials and local Tibetans appeared anxious that any deviation from the party line would destroy their facade of normality, revealing the discord and uncertainty roiling beneath.
When asked why authorities generally prohibit foreign reporters from visiting the Tibet Autonomous Region, one trip organizer, Chen Weide — a Sichuan provincial media official — said that it was because “the altitude is very high” and that authorities fear for visitors’ safety. (The area remains open to foreign tourists.)
We were closely monitored. Each time we stopped at an attraction, two to five SUVs full of middle-aged men — brooding smokers, most wearing ill-fitting polo shirts — would park behind us. The men followed along as we reported. They did not introduce themselves, and they did not respond to questions.
Everything was recorded. The foreign journalists recorded the tour guides, and Chinese reporters recorded the foreign ones. The shadowy men recorded us all.
Late one night, another journalist and I sneaked out of the hotel and wound through the darkened side streets of Hongyuan County, a cluster of slapdash mid-rises on the edge of the grasslands. We stepped into a small shop, where a Tibetan family sold silver jewelry and Buddha statuettes.
The shopkeeper, a young man, agreed to answer some questions. But as soon as we shifted the conversation to religion, he seized up, and his eyes darted anxiously. “We have a bit” of religious freedom, he said. He stuttered briefly and acknowledged that, yes, he revered the Dalai Lama.
“It’s our belief,” he said. He clasped his hands. We left after about two minutes, ashamed of even asking.
Outside, I scanned the empty streets, vigilant for tailing cars and footsteps, and lurking threats that may or may not have been there.
Nearing the end of our tour, we drove down from the highlands and spent the weekend hopping among scenic spots and small cities. The officials seemed to relax slightly, and Chinese media began running stories about the trip.
“A group of foreign reporters, who just concluded a weeklong tour of a Tibetan-inhabited area in southwest China, have said they were amazed by the experience,” reported the official New China News Agency. Other reports quoted foreign journalists praising the area’s development and natural beauty.
The reports included no acknowledgment of restrictions, no skepticism about the authenticity of the villagers presented for interviews, and nothing at all about the “living Buddha” — no quotes, no name, no description. Even mentioning our discussion about religion, it appeared, was off-limits. It was as if the monk did not exist.

China blocks Tibetans from visiting India
January 9, 2017
Press Trust of India, January 4, 2017 – The Chinese government has imposed travel restrictions on Tibetans to block their travel to India for attending Kalachakra teachings, sources from the Tibetan ‘government-in-exile’ claimed on Tuesday.
News emanating from Tibet reported that the Chinese government began confiscating passports from Tibetans in Tibet since November this year, they said.
Nepali media reported that “China has reportedly issued a temporary travel restriction on its citizens visiting Nepal and asked its travel agencies and airlines to cancel all travel plans and bookings made until January 10 with immediate effect.”
According to these sources, Chinese authorities have instructed the family members of the pilgrims to inform them to return to Tibet by January 3 before the Dalai Lama begins his teachings.
Kalachakra means wheel of time or “time-cycles” and it is usually used to refer to a complex teaching and practice in Buddhism.
The sources quoted a Tibetan pilgrim who chose to remain anonymous as saying that the authorities had taken signatures from their family members to make sure that the pilgrims have been informed and that they must return to Tibet.
In the light of these developments, the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama addressed the Tibetan pilgrims in Dharamsala, Delhi and Bodh Gaya advising them not to be disheartened.
He said that during the Kalachakra initiation, which runs for three days -from January 11-13, Tibetans in Tibet whose faith and devotion remain invincible and stands undefeated, can pray from inside Tibet. “From the Kalachakra ground, I will keep the Tibetans inside Tibet in my deepest prayers.”
The Dalai Lama said there are a substantial number of Chinese Buddhists in mainland China wishing to attend the Kalachakra and that he will remember them in his prayers.
“Distance cannot dampen the sacred ties between a lama and a disciple. You can all pray from the far-flung areas in Tibet and I assure you that you will receive the Kalachakra empowerment,” said the Dalai Lama who arrived in Bodhgaya on December 28.
The Kalachakra initiation began with a ritual preparation on January 2 and will end with a life-long prayer ceremony on January 14 and is streamed live on Tibet TV’s YouTube (www.tibetonline.tv) and Facebook page.
The 34th Kalachakra initiation is being organised by Central Tibetan Administration for the first time in Tibet’s history. The 13-day religious gathering will draw over 200,000 devotees from across the globe, officials in the Tibetan ‘government-in-exile’ said.

Rethink in New Delhi: Dalai Lama, Karmapa to be in the public gaze
January 9, 2017
By Jyoti Malhotra
Indian Express, January 4, 2017 – Two years after he was taken in a car with darkened windows and no personal aide to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi at his residence in New Delhi, Tibetan Buddhism’s holiest leader, the Dalai Lama, is being given pride of place at an international Buddhist conference to be held in March in Rajgir-Nalanda, Bihar.
Equally significant, Delhi has finally come around to accepting that the Karmapa Lama, the head of the Karma Kagyu sect, is “not a Chinese spy” 17 years after he fled from the Tsurphu monastery in Tibet, but a genuine leader.
These moves are being quietly welcomed by the large Tibetan community as well as the influential strategic affairs establishment which believes “there is nothing to be ashamed or embarrassed about” publicising the Dalai Lama’s activities even if it bothers Beijing.
Delhi, highly placed sources said, has come to the realisation that the Dalai Lama is an “asset, not a liability”.
As China exercises its muscle vis-à-vis Buddhist leaders living in India or those visiting abroad — for example, the Dalai Lama’s visit to Mongolia in November was so heavily criticised by Beijing that the Mongolian foreign minister has since promised it will never happen again — Delhi has taken the decision to nevertheless allow Tibetan Buddhism’s two most senior monks to increasingly move into the public gaze.
The Dalai Lama will travel to Arunachal Pradesh from the Buddhist conference in Rajgir-Nalanda, which takes place from March 17-19.
Beijing had objected to the visit at the time it was announced in October last year. It will be the Tibetan leader’s fourth visit to that state.
While the Karmapa is expected to soon visit Sikkim — the only state in the country from which he had been barred for the last 17 years, because the Rumtek monastery located there contains the ceremonial “Black Hat”, said to be the ultimate adornment of the rightful heir of the Karma Kagyu sect — although not yet to Rumtek, because a case against his presence there is still valid in court.
The Nalanda conference, called “Buddhism in the 21st Century”, is being formally hosted by the Ministry of Culture. The presence of the Dalai Lama for two whole days at Nalanda, along with all the top Buddhist monks, especially from Sri Lanka, Thailand and Myanmar — as well as, possibly, Richard Gere, who is attending the ongoing Kalachakra celebrations in Bodh Gaya and may or may not be able to come back to Bihar so soon — is certain to draw international attention.
Government sources said it is one way of returning the compliment to the Dalai Lama, who has always said that as a “son of India,” he owes a great deal of his learning to the “Nalanda masters”.
But in the new year, Delhi wants to take a leaf from Beijing’s book — as well as its calendar, which has marked 2017 as the Year of the Rooster — and hopes to crow about its own strengths as well. “Buddhism took birth in India, so we must use it as our soft power,” the sources said.
National Security Advisor Ajit Doval is leading the charge on the invocation of Buddhism as strategic gain. Minister of State (Home) and MP from Arunachal Pradesh Kiren Rijiju has been the public go-between the Dalai Lama’s people and the government. Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar, who wears a Buddhist rosary since he went to China as ambassador just under a decade ago, is brushing up his contacts with the Tibetan community in India.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of External Affairs is carefully watching the unfolding spat between Mongolia and China, in the wake of the Dalai Lama’s visit to Ulaanbaatar.After a Chinese paper called it “politically hare-brained” for Mongolia to seek help from Delhi at the same time it has asked for a cash loan from Beijing, Mongolian foreign minister Tsend Munkh-Orgil told the local ‘Onoodor’ newspaper that he “feels sorry” for allowing the Dalai Lama to visit and that he “probably wont be visiting Mongolia again during this administration”.
The Dalai Lama’s emergence from purdah in recent weeks has been nothing short of extraordinary. He was seen at Rashtrapati Bhavan, sitting beside PresidentPranab Mukherjee, only a few weeks ago. During his visit to Mongolia, he announced that the Jebtsundama Khutuktu — the third most important leader in the Gelugpa school, after the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama — had been reincarnated. And his teachings, in Dharamsala and Delhi, in several languages including Russian, have only grown.

Tibetans in China defy warnings, support the Kalachakra
January 9, 2017
Radio Free Asia, January 6, 2017 – Defying warnings by authorities, Tibetans living in northwest China’s Qinghai province are privately engaging in religious observances coinciding with a major Buddhist gathering in India led by exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, sources in the region say.
Chinese authorities have called the Dalai Lama’s Kalachakra ceremony being held this month in Bodh Gaya “illegal” and have threatened punishment for Tibetans spreading news of the event or organizing local ceremonies in support.
Practicing privately or meeting in small groups, Tibetans living in townships and villages across Qinghai are doing whatever they can to be involved, though, a source living in the Malho (in Chinese, Huangnan) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture told RFA’s Tibetan Service.
“In my own village, people are engaged in virtuous activities such as fasting, performing prostrations, and setting animals free,” RFA’s source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“The same things are happening in other places, too,” he said.
“Families are hosting gatherings to recite mantras and other prayers, and this is being done in secret as the monasteries and communities are being careful not to do anything more openly,” he said.
“The Chinese authorities cannot prevent this, because it is being done discreetly.”
Blessings of the ceremony
Noting that the Dalai Lama has promised Tibetans living in China that he will pray for them during the Kalachakra rituals, “Tibetans feel confident they will receive the blessings of the ceremony,” the source said.
Speaking separately, another Qinghai source said that local observances connected to the Kalachakra began on Jan. 2 and will continue until Jan. 14, the day that the rituals and teachings held in India end.
“There are many things it is inconvenient to share in the open,” a third source said. “Faith in one’s spiritual teacher does not need to be publicly displayed.”
Kalachakra, which means Wheel of Time, is a ritual that prepares devotees to be reborn in Shambhala, a celestial kingdom which, it is said, will vanquish the forces of evil in a future cosmic battle.
The ceremony and teachings are often conducted outside Tibet by the Dalai Lama, who is widely reviled by Chinese leaders as a “splittist” seeking to separate Tibet, which was invaded by Communist China in 1950, from Beijing’s control.
In a bid to reduce attendance at this year’s ceremony, Chinese officials moved beginning in November to confiscate the passports of Tibetans authorized to travel abroad, at the same time ordering Tibetans already present in India and Nepal to return home.
Many had been told their families would be harmed if they failed to go back, sources told RFA in earlier reports.
Reported by Kunsang Tenzin for RFA’s Tibetan Service. Translated by Dorjee Damdul. Written in English by Richard Finney.