More Suicides Reported in Protest of Destruction at Sichuan’s Larung Gar
2016-08-29
Two more Buddhist nuns living at Sichuan’s Larung Gar Academy have killed themselves following a suicide in July to protest Chinese authorities’ destruction of large parts of the Tibetan Buddhist study center, with the attempted suicide of yet another woman blocked by friends at the last minute, according to Tibetan sources.
Tsering Dolma, aged about 20, hanged herself on Aug. 17 “when she could no longer bear the pain of seeing the destruction of Larung Gar,” a source living in the area told RFA’s Tibetan Service. “She left behind a note expressing her distress at the demolition and complaining that the Chinese will not let them live in peace.”
A native of Mewa township in Marthang (in Chinese, Hongyuan) county in Sichuan’s Ngaba (Aba) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Dolma had been seen before her death to be “depressed and worried” over Chinese authorities’ destruction of thousands of dwellings at the academy, RFA’s source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“So she hanged herself,” he said.
A nun named Semga, a native of Dowa village in Ngaba’s Dzamthang (Rangtang) county, also recently killed herself, though details on how and when she died were not immediately available, while a third nun attempted suicide “though others intervened in time and saved her,” the source said.
The deaths follow the suicide on July 20 of Rinzin Dolma, a nun who hanged herself as Chinese work crews began to tear down monks’ and nuns’ houses to reduce what authorities have described as overcrowding at the Larung Gar academy in Ngaba’s Serthar (Seda) county, sources said in earlier reports.
Many thousands of Tibetans and Han Chinese study at the sprawling Larung Gar complex, which was founded in 1980 by the late religious teacher Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok and is one of the world’s largest and most important centers for the study of Tibetan Buddhism.
Orders from higher-up
The order now to reduce the number of Larung Gar’s residents by about half to a maximum level of 5,000 is not a county plan “but comes from higher authorities,” with China’s president Xi Jinping taking a personal interest in the matter, sources told RFA in earlier reports.
Chinese authorities have stationed armed security forces at the work site and are warning that attempts at protest or resistance will be punished by arrests and incarceration, one source said, adding that armed police have also been deployed to nearby areas.
Informed by her friends of Dolma’s death, officials of Larung Gar’s government-appointed management committee said at first that they were unwilling to look into the case, but later came to try to claim the body, RFA’s source said.
“They said that their duty according to official instructions was to be sure that the demolition goes ahead, though, and that they would not be held responsible for anyone’s death.”
Hearing this, the nuns “wailed in grief,” he said.
Rights groups have slammed the government-ordered destruction at Larung Gar, with New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) saying that Beijing should allow the Tibetan people to decide for themselves how best to practice their religion.
“If authorities somehow believe that the Larung Gar facilities are overcrowded, the answer is simple,” HRW China director Sophie Richardson said in a statement in June.
“Allow Tibetans and other Buddhists to build more monasteries.”
Reported by Kunsang Tenzin for RFA’s Tibetan Service. Translated by Karma Dorjee. Written in English by Richard Finney.

Tibetan Monk Missing in Detention is Found Serving Prison Term in Sichuan
2016-09-01
A Tibetan monk missing since his detention by police last year following a solitary protest in southwestern China’s Sichuan province has been located by family members in a prison after being handed a three-year sentence in a secret trial, according to a Tibetan source.
Lobsang Kelsang, then 19, launched his protest at around 3:00 p.m. on September 7 on a central street of the main town of Sichuan’s Ngaba (in Chinese, Aba) county and was quickly overpowered by police stationed nearby, sources told RFA in earlier reports.
“He was carrying a photo of [exiled spiritual leader] His Holiness the Dalai Lama over his head and was calling out for Tibetan freedom,” one source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
A Tibetan layman who attempted to interfere with the arrest was also detained, and police at one point fired gunshots into the air to disperse a forming crowd, a local source said.
Frustrated for months in their attempts to learn Kelsang’s whereabouts in detention, family members have now learned he is being held in Deyang prison in Deyang City’s Huang Xu town in Sichuan, a local source told RFA’s Tibetan Service this week.
“He had been detained for a while in a prison in Maowun [Mao] county, and while there he was secretly sentenced to three years in prison and was moved to Deyang,” RFA’s source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“Family members still lack full details of Kelsang’s present condition, especially his health, and have not been allowed to meet with him,” the source said.
Kelsang, a native of Ngaba’s Meruma township, had been enrolled as a novice monk at Ngaba’s Kirti monastery, the scene of repeated self-immolations and other protests by Tibetan monks, former monks, and nuns opposed to Chinese rule, the source said.
“In August this year, another Kirti monk, named Adrak, was also secretly given a three-year term,” he said.
Sporadic demonstrations challenging Beijing’s rule have continued in Tibetan-populated areas of China since widespread protests swept the region in 2008.
A total of 145 Tibetans living in China have now set themselves ablaze in self-immolations since the wave of fiery protests began in 2009, with most protests featuring calls for Tibetan freedom and the Dalai Lama’s return from India, where he has lived since escaping Tibet during a failed national uprising in 1959.
Reported by Kunsang Tenzin for RFA’s Tibetan Service. Translated by Karma Dorjee. Written in English by Richard Finney.

U.N. rights envoy says Chinese authorities interfered with his work
August 29, 2016
By Ben Blanchard
Reuters, August 23, 2016 – A United Nations-appointed human rights envoy said on Tuesday that the Chinese government interfered with his work during a visit to China by blocking access to individuals whom he had hoped to meet.
Philip Alston, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, told reporters at the end of a nine-day visit to China that he had notified the government in advance of academics he wanted to meet on his visit, a routine practice for a U.N. special rapporteur.
“None of those meetings were arranged, and the message I got from many of the people I contacted was that they had been advised that they should be on vacation at this time,” said Alston, an Australian who is a law professor at the New York University School of Law.
China’s Foreign Ministry did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
“The position that the United Nations has always followed and that I’ve followed in every other country that I’ve visited, and there are many, is that the rapporteur is entitled to meet with whomsoever he wants to meet with, that he’s entitled to go wherever he wants to,” Alston said.
Alston’s end-of-mission statement points to higher levels of poverty among ethnic minorities in China. Read his statement at: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=20402&LangID=E

Opinion – Blinded in Beijing: Trudeau, China and human rights
August 22, 2016
Politics, August 19, 2016 – News that Prime Minister Trudeau will soon be visiting China came as no surprise to anyone. The G20 meeting has long been scheduled to take place in Shanghai. What the announcement did reveal, however, was the level of importance that will be assigned to human rights within Canada’s new “strategic partnership” with China: none at all, apparently.
I’m all for good governance and “growing” the middle class. These are noble (although somewhat ill-defined) objectives. But like many Canadians, I had hoped for more from this government which came into power with the glorious promise of principled foreign policy based on international law and Canadian values.
As a Tibetan human rights activist, I had accompanied His Holiness the Dalai Lama during his meetings with Canadian Prime Ministers including Pierre Trudeau, Jean Chretien, Paul Martin, and Stephen Harper. Each one passionately assured His Holiness that the promotion of human rights is a cornerstone of Canadian foreign policy.
But Canadian foreign policy apparently doesn’t extend to China.
In the late 1990s when Canada de-linked trade and human rights, human rights in China were the immediate casualty. Canada quickly withdrew its traditional support for a resolution on China at the UN Commission on Human Rights – now the Human Rights Council. Subsequently bilateral discussions with Chinese officials about human rights were relegated to quiet behind-the-scenes exchanges between diplomats, hidden from public scrutiny. They have never re-emerged from the shadows.
What that decision actually means today, twenty years later, is that Canada will openly defend human rights only when there is no economic price to pay.
It doesn’t matter what political party is in power; it’s always the same. This is despite consistent national polling that shows Canadians are uncomfortable doing business with countries that violate human rights.
Consider the amount of government resources devoted to enhancing economic cooperation with China. It far outweighs the resources assigned to protect or advocate human rights in China. I would like to imagine a Canadian “human rights delegation” to China headed by the Prime Minister – but I know that instead I will be hoping for a polite reference to human rights somewhere in the context of a trade mission.
In fact, requesting government advocacy around human rights tends to be treated as an irritant, dismissed in opinion pieces as someone hanging on to an old approach to the new modern China. We all saw it play out when a Canadian journalist had the nerve to Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi about human rights and received an immediate public rebuke. China has learned that it can violate the human rights of its citizens with impunity.
Meanwhile, the situation in Tibet today has reached a crisis point. The appeals of more than 140 Tibetans who have self-immolated since 2009 in protest of China’s policies have gone unheard. As I write, Chinese authorities are in the process of demolishing the largest Tibetan Buddhist institute, apparently to make way for development.
Tibet’s Panchen Lama, Gendhun Choekyi Nyima, second only to the Dalai Lama, has not been seen or heard from since May 1995 when he was abducted at age 6. The Dalai Lama himself – a Nobel Peace Laureate and honourary citizen of Canada – is constantly denegrated in public statements by Chinese leaders who reject his reasoned approach to resolving the conflict in Tibet.
Even Canada’s newly announced decision to welcome significantly higher numbers of Chinese tourists, students, and unskilled workers to this country risks inadvertently supporting China’s discriminatory policies against Tibetans. Since 2012 China has denied passports to Tibetans in contravention of even its own laws. Those very few who have been able to secure passports are subject to tight restrictions that do not apply to Chinese nationals.
Albert Einstein is believed to have once defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result each time. I am not sure who is more insane – the Government of Canada for still believing that quiet behind-the-scenes diplomacy will move China, or myself for still believing that the Government of Canada will stand up for human rights and help resolve the crisis in Tibet.
Clearly this visit to China – the first by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau – is an opportunity to reset the tone of Canada’s future relationship with China. I hope the Prime Minister seizes the opportunity to build that relationship based on a foundation of mutual respect, which includes being free to raise human rights concerns whenever they occur.
I hope he seizes the opportunity. But I’m not holding my breath.
Thubten Samdup is co-founder of the Canada Tibet Committee, former parliamentary representative of Tibetans in North America, and former representative of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in the UK.

Opinion – Blinded in Beijing: Trudeau, China and human rights
August 22, 2016
iPolitics, August 19, 2016 – News that Prime Minister Trudeau will soon be visiting China came as no surprise to anyone. The G20 meeting has long been scheduled to take place in Shanghai. What the announcement did reveal, however, was the level of importance that will be assigned to human rights within Canada’s new “strategic partnership” with China: none at all, apparently.
I’m all for good governance and “growing” the middle class. These are noble (although somewhat ill-defined) objectives. But like many Canadians, I had hoped for more from this government which came into power with the glorious promise of principled foreign policy based on international law and Canadian values.
As a Tibetan human rights activist, I had accompanied His Holiness the Dalai Lama during his meetings with Canadian Prime Ministers including Pierre Trudeau, Jean Chretien, Paul Martin, and Stephen Harper. Each one passionately assured His Holiness that the promotion of human rights is a cornerstone of Canadian foreign policy.
But Canadian foreign policy apparently doesn’t extend to China.
In the late 1990s when Canada de-linked trade and human rights, human rights in China were the immediate casualty. Canada quickly withdrew its traditional support for a resolution on China at the UN Commission on Human Rights – now the Human Rights Council. Subsequently bilateral discussions with Chinese officials about human rights were relegated to quiet behind-the-scenes exchanges between diplomats, hidden from public scrutiny. They have never re-emerged from the shadows.
What that decision actually means today, twenty years later, is that Canada will openly defend human rights only when there is no economic price to pay.
It doesn’t matter what political party is in power; it’s always the same. This is despite consistent national polling that shows Canadians are uncomfortable doing business with countries that violate human rights.
Consider the amount of government resources devoted to enhancing economic cooperation with China. It far outweighs the resources assigned to protect or advocate human rights in China. I would like to imagine a Canadian “human rights delegation” to China headed by the Prime Minister – but I know that instead I will be hoping for a polite reference to human rights somewhere in the context of a trade mission.
In fact, requesting government advocacy around human rights tends to be treated as an irritant, dismissed in opinion pieces as someone hanging on to an old approach to the new modern China. We all saw it play out when a Canadian journalist had the nerve to Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi about human rights and received an immediate public rebuke. China has learned that it can violate the human rights of its citizens with impunity.
Meanwhile, the situation in Tibet today has reached a crisis point. The appeals of more than 140 Tibetans who have self-immolated since 2009 in protest of China’s policies have gone unheard. As I write, Chinese authorities are in the process of demolishing the largest Tibetan Buddhist institute, apparently to make way for development.
Tibet’s Panchen Lama, Gendhun Choekyi Nyima, second only to the Dalai Lama, has not been seen or heard from since May 1995 when he was abducted at age 6. The Dalai Lama himself – a Nobel Peace Laureate and honourary citizen of Canada – is constantly denegrated in public statements by Chinese leaders who reject his reasoned approach to resolving the conflict in Tibet.
Even Canada’s newly announced decision to welcome significantly higher numbers of Chinese tourists, students, and unskilled workers to this country risks inadvertently supporting China’s discriminatory policies against Tibetans. Since 2012 China has denied passports to Tibetans in contravention of even its own laws. Those very few who have been able to secure passports are subject to tight restrictions that do not apply to Chinese nationals.

China publishes new rules to curb protest and use of social media in Tibet
August 22, 2016
Phayul, August 22, 2016 – The Chinese authorities have distributed a manual in Tibetan and Chinese in monasteries of Ngaba County as their latest move to curb and criminalize self-immolation, solo protests carrying portrait of the Dalai Lama and sending information outside Tibet through social media.
The book issues stringent orders prohibiting self-immolations, solo protest and dissemination of news outside Tibet. It gives strict directive for the monks to follow the said rules or be deemed a ‘separatist’ and penalized.
“The authorities view this new laws introduced by China as a means to justify and legalize the suppression of Tibetans. This shows the real situation inside Tibet and proves an authoritarian rule in Tibet,” said Lobsang Yeshi, a monk of Kirti Monastery here in exile.
The manual also indicates that those who are indirectly involved with the self immolation protest or a solo protest will also be punished as co-conspirators. Two monks of the monastery, Lobsang Tsultrim and Lobsang Jangchup were sentenced to 11 years and eight years respectively for their involvement in the self-immolation of teen monk Gepey in 2012.
China on January 31, 2013 sentenced six Tibetans to heavy jail terms of up to 12 years for their alleged roles in trying to rescue a Tibetan self-immolator from falling into the hands of Chinese officials.

Urbanization threatens livelihoods and ecology in the Tibetan grasslands
August 15, 2016
Reuters, August 9, 2016 – Under a twinkling starlit sky, the glow of an electric light is the only sign that a Tibetan nomad’s way of life has changed in hundreds of years.
Yaks are still milked using wooden buckets with rope handles, and the animal’s waste is dried and burned for fuel — a necessity at the high altitude where trees are scarce. But the number of Tibetans maintaining the pastoral lifestyle is dwindling, with the Chinese government pushing to decrease the Tibetan nomad population and move them into resettlement villages, sometimes by force.
Chinese authorities say urbanisation in Tibetan areas and elsewhere will increase industrialisation and economic development, offering former nomads higher living standards and better protecting the environment.
Since 2000, government statistics show that urban residents have leaped by more than half in the Tibet region itself, where officials launched a programme five years ago to establish Communist cadre teams in every locality.
In Qinghai province, much of which is ethnically Tibetan, the urbanisation rate has increased from 40 percent to nearly 50 percent in the past decade, but one Tibetan member of a Communist party committee in the area told AFP that the process was happening “too fast”.
Those sentiments highlight the drastic changes since 1951, when Chinese forces occupied Tibet.
While some pastoralists maintain their traditional way of living, the new urban settlements are increasingly taking up land once used for livestock.
“Because of the villages we can’t get enough grassland for our yaks,” said Jargaringqin, a 31-year-old herder who lives in the mountains of Qinghai, in northwestern China. He spends the winter in a house while the summer is spent roaming across the grasslands in tents. Yaks give the family milk, butter and cheese and occasionally meat.
Environmental experts say grazing is essential to maintaining the ecology of the grasslands, and with fewer nomadic families more invasive plants are taking hold.

As demolitions continue, Larung Gar residents forced to return to family homes
August 15, 2016
Radio Free Asia, August 11, 2016 – As Chinese work crews continue to demolish dwellings at Sichuan’s Larung Gar Buddhist Academy, authorities are forcing many monks and nuns living at the academy back to their family homes in the neighboring Tibet Autonomous Region, sources in the region say.
The move supporting China’s plan to reduce the size of the sprawling complex has been aimed so far only at residents coming from the TAR prefectures of Lhasa (in Chinese, Lasa), Ngari (Ali), Nagchu (Naqu), and Chamdo (Changdu), a local source told RFA’s Tibetan Service.
“The family members of monks and nuns from these areas in the TAR have been ordered to come to Larung Gar to take their relatives home,” RFA’s source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Academy residents coming from these areas had previously been summoned by authorities and “harassed with questions and ‘political education’ classes,” the source said, adding, “These sessions went on for weeks, and in some cases even months.”
Monks and nuns native to Tibetan-populated areas of China’s Sichuan, Qinghai, and Gansu provinces have so far not been subject to the expulsion order, he said.
“But monks and nuns coming from Driru [Biru] county in Nagchu were among the first forced out,” he said.
“They were warned of ‘consequences’ to their families in Driru if they refused to leave, including their right to collect cordyceps,” a fungus highly valued for its medicinal qualities and an important source of income.
Tibetans in Driru, a county considered “politically unstable” by Chinese authorities, have long resisted forced displays of loyalty to Beijing, which has imposed tight restrictions in the area for the past several years.
‘Heartbreaking scenes’
Many thousands of Tibetans and Han Chinese study at Larung Gar, which was founded in 1980 by the late religious teacher Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok and is one of the world’s largest and most important centers for the study of Tibetan Buddhism.
The order now to reduce the number of Larung Gar’s residents by about half to a maximum level of 5,000 is not a county plan “but comes from higher authorities,” with China’s president Xi Jinping taking a personal interest in the matter, sources told RFA in earlier reports.
Monastic leaders at Larung Gar have urged the institute’s monks and nuns not to resist the destruction of their homes, and the work is believed to have gone ahead so far without interference, though one suicide has been reported.
“Despite the heartbreaking scenes of the demolition of their houses, the monks and nuns at Larung Gar are exercising patience and restraint and hoping for the Buddhist institute’s survival,” RFA’s source said.
Reported by Kunsang Tenzin for RFA’s Tibetan Service. Translated by Karma Dorjee. Written in English by Richard Finney

A writer’s quest to unearth the roots of Tibet’s unrest
August 15, 2016
By Luo Siling
New York Times, August 14, 2016 – Generations of Chinese have been taught that the Tibetan people are grateful to China for having liberated them from “feudalism and serfdom,” and yet Tibetan protests, including self-immolations, continue to erupt against Chinese rule. In “Tibet in Agony: Lhasa 1959”,’’ to be published in October by Harvard University Press, the Chinese-born writer Jianglin Li explores the roots of Tibetan unrest in China’s occupation of Tibet in the 1950s, culminating in March 1959 with the People’s Liberation Army’s shelling of Lhasa and the Dalai Lama’s’s flight to India. In an interview, she shared her findings.
You’ve drawn parallels between the killings in Lhasa in 1959 and the 1989 military crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Beijing.
China was better able to cover up its actions in Lhasa in 1959, before the advent of instantaneous global media coverage, but the two have much in common. In both, the Chinese Communists used military might to crush popular uprisings, and both involved egregious massacres of civilians. But for Tibetans, what sets the Lhasa massacre apart is their bitter sense of China as a foreign occupying power. The Tibetans were subjugated by force, and they are still protesting today.
What happened in 1959?

The crisis began on the morning of March 10, when thousands of Tibetans rallied around the Dalai Lama’s Norbulingka palace to prevent him from leaving. He had accepted an invitation to a theatrical performance at the People’s Liberation Army headquarters, but rumors that the Chinese were planning to abduct him set off general panic. Even after he canceled his excursion to mollify the demonstrators, they refused to leave and insisted on staying to guard his palace. The demonstrations included a strong outcry against Chinese rule, and China promptly labeled them an “armed insurrection,” warranting military action. About a week after the turmoil began, the Dalai Lama secretly escaped, and on March 20, Chinese troops began a concerted assault on Lhasa. After taking over the city in a matter of days, inflicting heavy casualties and damaging heritage sites, they moved quickly to consolidate control over all Tibet.
Why did the Dalai Lama flee to India?
Mainly he hoped to prevent a massacre. He thought the crowds around his palace would disperse once he left, robbing the Chinese of a pretext to attack. In fact, not even his departure could have prevented the blood bath that ensued, because Mao Zedong had already mobilized his troops for a “final showdown” in Tibet.
When the Dalai Lama left, he didn’t plan to go as far as India. He hoped to return to Lhasa after negotiating peace with the Chinese from the safety of the Tibetan hinterlands. But once he heard about the destruction in Lhasa — several days into his journey — he realized that plan was no longer feasible.
Why were the Tibetans afraid the Chinese would abduct the Dalai Lama?
For Tibetans, he is a sacred being, to be protected at all costs. He had traveled to Beijing to meet Mao in 1954 without setting off mass protests. By 1959, however, tensions had risen, and Tibetans had reason to fear the Chinese theater invitation might be a trap.
The trouble actually started in the Tibetan regions of nearby Chinese provinces — Yunnan, Sichuan, Qinghai and Gansu, home to about 60 percent of the Tibetan population. When the Chinese Communists forced collectivization on these Tibetan nomads and farmers in the latter half of the 1950s, the results were catastrophic. Riots and rebellions spread like wildfire. The Communists responded with military force, and there were terrible massacres. Refugees streamed into Tibet, bringing their horror stories into Lhasa.
Some of the most frightening reports had to do with the disappearances of Tibetan leaders in Sichuan and Qinghai. It was party policy to try to pre-empt Tibetan rebellion by luring prominent Tibetans from their communities with invitations to banquets, shows or study classes — from which many never returned. People in Lhasa thought the Dalai Lama could be next.
You’ve documented the massacres of Tibetans in the Chinese provinces in the late 1950s.

In 2012, I drove across Qinghai to a remote place an elderly Tibetan refugee in India had told me about: a ravine where a flood one year brought down a torrent of skeletons, clogging the Yellow River. From his description, I identified the location as Drongthil Gully, in the mountains of Tsolho Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture. I had read in Chinese sources about major campaigns against Tibetans in that area in 1958 and 1959. About 10,000 Tibetans — entire families with their livestock — had fled to the hills there to escape the Chinese. At Drongthil Gully, the Chinese deployed six ground regiments, including infantry, cavalry and artillery, and something the Tibetans had never heard of: aircraft with 100-kilogram bombs. The few Tibetans who were armed — the head of a nomad household normally carried a gun to protect his herds — shot back, but they were no match for the Chinese, who recorded that more than 8,000 “rebel bandits” were “annihilated” — killed, wounded or captured — in these campaigns.
I wondered about the skeletons until I saw the place for myself, and then it seemed entirely plausible. The river at the bottom of the ravine there flows into a relatively narrow section of the Yellow River. In desolate areas like this, Chinese troops were known to withdraw after a victory, leaving the ground littered with corpses.
The Tibetans in Sichuan, Yunnan, Gansu and Qinghai were already under nominal Chinese administration when the Communists took over in 1949. How was Tibet annexed?
It was Mao’s goal from the moment he came to power. Tibet “is strategically located,” he said in January 1950, “and we must occupy it and transform it into a people’s democracy.”
He started by sending troops to invade Tibet at Chamdo in October 1950, forcing the Tibetans to sign the 17-Point Agreement for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet, which ceded Tibetan sovereignty to China. Next, the People’s Liberation Army marched into Lhasa in 1951, at the same time — in disregard of the Chinese promise in the agreement to leave the Tibetan sociopolitical system intact — smuggling an underground Communist Party cell into the city to build a party presence in Tibet.
Meanwhile, Mao was preparing his military and awaiting the right moment to strike. “Our time has come,” he declared in March 1959, seizing on the demonstrations in Lhasa. After conquering the city, China dissolved the Tibetan government and — under the slogan of “simultaneous battle and reform” — imposed the full Communist program throughout Tibet, culminating in the establishment of the Tibet Autonomous Region in 1965.
How did Mao prepare his military for Tibet?

Mao welcomed the campaigns to suppress minority uprisings within China’s borders as practice for war in Tibet. There were new weapons for his troops to master, to say nothing of the unfamiliar challenges of battle on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau.
The new weapons included 10 Tupolev TU-4 bombers, which Stalin gave Mao in 1953. Mao tested them in airstrikes at three Tibetan monasteries in Sichuan, starting with Jamchen Choekhor Ling, in Lithang. On March 29, 1956, while thousands of Chinese troops fought Tibetans at the monastery, two of the new planes were deployed. The Tibetans saw giant “birds” approach and drop some strange objects, but they had no word for airplane, or for bomb. According to Chinese records, more than 2,000 Tibetans were “annihilated” in the battle, including civilians who had sought refuge in the monastery.
Mao used his most seasoned troops in Tibet. Gen. Ding Sheng and his 54th Army, veterans of the Korean War, had gained experience suppressing minority uprisings in Qinghai and Gansu in 1958 before heading to Tibet in 1959.
How often was the Chinese military used against Tibetans, and how many Tibetan casualties were there?
We don’t have an exact tally of military encounters, since many went unrecorded. My best estimate based on official Chinese materials — public and classified — is about 15,000 in all Tibetan regions between 1956 and 1962.
Precise casualty figures are hard to come by, but according to a classified Chinese military document I found in a Hong Kong library, more than 456,000 Tibetans were “annihilated” from 1956 to 1962.
How does this history relate to recent Tibetan self-immolations?
I think they’re a direct consequence. I’ve compared a map of the self-immolations with my map of Chinese crackdowns on Tibetans between 1956 and 1962, and there’s a striking correlation. Most of the self-immolations and the worst cases of historical repression are in the same spots in the Chinese provinces near Tibet.
How did you get interested in this?
Like everyone in China, I was raised on the party line. I never thought to question it until I came to the U.S. for graduate study in 1988 and discovered how differently people here think of Tibet.
Since 2007, I’ve been making annual research trips to Asia, where I’ve recorded interviews with hundreds of Tibetan refugees in India and Nepal, including the Dalai Lama and his brother. In 2012, I explored Tibetan historical sites in Sichuan, Qinghai, Gansu and Yunnan and interviewed people there. I crosscheck what I learn in the field with written data: official annals of the Tibetan regions, Chinese documents, and Tibetan and Chinese memoirs.
How has the Chinese government responded to your work?

The only official response to my books has been to ban them, but I’ve been denied a visa since my trip to sensitive Tibetan regions in 2012. This has been painful because my 84-year-old mother still lives in China.
This article was adapted from a two-part interview on the Chinese-language site of The New York Times and translated by Susan Wilf.

Tibetan Nun Commits Suicide Due to Ongoing Demolition in Larung Gar
A Tibetan nun has died from suicide by hanging at the largest Buddhist academy in Serther County, Ganze Tibetan Autonomous Region in today’s Sichuan Province on July 20, 2016.
According to sources, Rinzin Dolma left a note behind blaming the endless harassment of the Chinese government towards Tibetans and the sight of systematic demotion of the Larung Gar institute as the reason behind her suicide.
In the meanwhile, U.S. State Department urged the Chinese government to “cease any actions that escalates the tension” and calls for respect of Tibetan people’s religious freedom.
The Chinese government, claiming renovation work as the reason for the demolition, has destroyed more than 600 residential structures since the government has begun its demolition operations on July 20.
Founded in 1980 by Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok, a highly regarded Tibetan Buddhist master, the academy attracts Tibetan Buddhist monks and nuns for short- and long-term study in the religion’s more esoteric aspects. They typically stay in a sprawling mountainside settlement made of thousands of log cabin, and the institute houses both Tibetan and Chinese Buddhist students and practitioners.