China threatens countermeasures after Dalai Lama speaks at EU Parliament
September 19, 2016
Reuters, September 19, 2016 – China expressed anger on Monday and threatened countermeasures after exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama spoke at the European Parliament in the French city of Strasbourg and met its president, Martin Schulz.
China regards the 80-year-old, Nobel Peace Prize-winning monk as a separatist, though he says he merely seeks genuine autonomy for his Himalayan homeland, which Communist Chinese troops “peacefully liberated” in 1950.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said the European Parliament and Schultz had ignored China’s “strong opposition” about meeting the Dalai Lama, which ran contrary to the European Union’s promises to China on the issue of Tibet.
“China is resolutely opposed to the mistaken actions of the European Parliament,” Lu told a daily news briefing, adding that its leaders’ insistence on taking an erroneous position had damaged China’s core interests.
“China absolutely cannot remain indifferent, and we will make the correct choice in accordance with our judgment of the situation,” he added, without elaborating on what China may do.
Few foreign leaders are willing to meet the Dalai Lama these days, fearful of provoking a strong reaction from China, the world’s second-largest economy.
Last week, Beijing warned Taiwan not to allow the Dalai Lama to visit, after a high-profile Taiwan legislator invited him to the self-ruled island Beijing claims as its own.
Tibet’s spiritual leader told the European Parliament last week he hoped the Tibetan issue would be resolved but urged the outside world and the European Union in particular not to hold back from criticizing Beijing.
The Dalai Lama, who also met the European Parliament’s foreign affairs chairman, Elmar Brok, fled to India in 1959 following a failed uprising against the Chinese.
Rights groups and exiles accuse China of trampling on the religious and cultural rights of the Tibetan people, charges strongly denied by Beijing, which says its rule has brought prosperity to a once backward region.
(Reporting by Sue-Lin Wong; Editing by Ben Blanchard and Clarence Fernandez)

Seventh International Conference of Tibet Support Groups
Brussels, September 8 – 10th. 2016
Statement
September 12, 2016
The Seventh International Conference of Tibet Support Groups (TSGs) was convened in Brussels by the Tibet Interest Group in the European Parliament, and co-hosted by the International Campaign for Tibet, Lights on Tibet, les Amis du Tibet and the Tibetan Community in Belgium and facilitated by the Department of Information and International Relations of the Central Tibetan Administration. Over 250 delegates representing support groups from 50 countries and all continents, members of other NGOs and special guests participated in the conference.
The Conference drew inspiration and strategic benefit from the diverse skills and perspectives and from the sense of common purpose of TSGs from around the world. It examined the current situation in occupied Tibet, especially the political, human rights and environmental developments there, assessed the state of the Tibet freedom movement, and drew up plans for coordinated action.
During the inaugural ceremony on September 8, 2016, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who addressed the Conference as the Guest of Honour, explained his three commitments, in view of his recent devolution of political authority. Other speakers at the inaugural session included members of the European Parliament, Thomas Mann and Cristian Dan Preda, and the Speaker of the Flemish Parliament, Jan Peumans, as well as the former President of the European Economic and Social Committee, Henri Malosse, and the Chairman of the International Campaign for Tibet, Richard Gere. Sikyong Dr. Lobsang Sangay reiterated the Tibetan leadership’s commitment to resolve the issue of Tibet through the Middle Way approach and called on the international community to support these efforts. The Conference was graced by the participation of the Speaker of the Tibetan Parliament, Khenpo Sonam Tenphel, the Vice President of the German Parliament, Claudia Roth, and member of the European Parliament, Csaba Sogor, who addressed the closing session.
The Conference welcomes the strong participation of Chinese lawyers, scholars and human rights activists in its deliberations and regards their engagement as an expression of the growing solidarity between the Chinese people and the Tibetan people.
The Conference notes with great concern the worsening of the human rights situation in Tibet, including the repression of religious freedom and the suppression of the Tibetan national identity and language under the increasingly authoritarian regime. It expresses solidarity with all Political Prisoners in Tibet. In this context, the Conference welcomes recent joint actions by concerned governments on China and, building on this, urges increased action on Tibet.
The Conference is dismayed at the hardening of the positions of the Chinese Communist Party and the government authorities towards His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Central Tibetan Administration and their refusal to engage in dialogue with them to resolve the issue of Tibet. It is deeply saddened by the many Tibetan men and women who have chosen the ultimate sacrifice –of taking their own lives– to express their yearning for freedom and determination to save the Tibetan identity and religion, to protest the destruction of both by the PRC, and call for His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s return.
The Conference is profoundly concerned about the devastating impact of China’s policies on Tibet’s fragile and globally vital environment, notably the damming of Asia’s rivers, destructive mining practices and coercive settlement of nomads, all of which exacerbates the impacts of climate change and environmental destruction on the Tibetan Plateau and the surrounding regions.
The Conference expresses its complete and continuing solidarity with the non-violent struggle of the Tibetan people for freedom and for a restoration of their fundamental human rights. It commends the initiatives of parliamentarians and government officials of many countries who persist in pressing the PRC to respect the rights of the Tibetan people and who urge its leadership to resume dialogue with representatives of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and to respond positively to his efforts to pursue a mutually beneficial solution through the Middle Way approach, which calls for genuine autonomy for the whole Tibetan people.
The Conference considers the Chinese government’s demand that His Holiness declare that Tibet has been a part of China since antiquity entirely unacceptable both because of the falseness of this historical claim and because this precondition forms an obstacle to earnest negotiations. It reaffirms its conviction that Tibet has not historically been a part of China and that the Tibetan people have the right to determine their own destiny. The Conference emphasizes that the PRC cannot obtain legitimacy for its rule over Tibet by attempting to force His Holiness and members of the international community to endorse its untruthful claims. It can only gain legitimacy for a role in Tibet from the Tibetan people themselves, through a mutually beneficial agreement and by implementing real changes in its policies and behavior towards the Tibetans in accordance with the latter’s needs and aspirations. The conference consequently calls on the Chinese government to unconditionally resume dialogue and on other governments to resist Chinese government pressure to endorse China’s claim to Tibet, and to persuade China’s leaders to abandon the shameless precondition.
The Conference commends the Tibetan community in exile and individual Tibetans for exercising their democratic rights in electing the leadership of the Central Tibetan Administration, the legitimate representative of the Tibetan nation and people.
Conference participants reaffirm their commitment to supporting the Tibetan people in their struggle for freedom and for respect of their human rights and protect the plateau’s environment. They fully support His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Central Tibetan Administration leadership’s persistent call for earnest dialogue to resolve the Tibetan issue and will strengthen their efforts to press the international community to persuade the Chinese leadership to do so. The Tibet Support Groups will continue their dedication until a satisfactory solution has been achieved.

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