New report documents systemic abuse of human rights in Tibet in 2015
February 22, 2016
Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, February 19, 2016 – The TCHRD has released its 2015 Annual Report on human rights situation in Tibet. The report is available in Tibetan, English and Chinese.
In 2015, the human rights situation in Tibet did not improve and China continued to violate international law. At the same time, more and more issues involving Tibet have become issues of international concern. Ranging from the environment to the right to privacy to the treatment of Tibetans abroad, it is increasingly difficult for China to dismiss international attention and consideration. As China continues to violate human rights, it is also working to increase the legal justifications for repression.
In 2015, policies were implemented and laws passed to increase mass surveillance. Religious figures were targeted for disappearance, detention, and, sometimes, death. Local Chinese police also detained monks and laypeople, and in many cases, they used pretence to detain community leaders, who are frequently religious leaders.
Despite the global attention in Paris to reducing climate change, China has prioritized rhetoric over substance and failed to implement policies to actually protect and preserve the unique and fragile ecosystem in Tibet.
China passed laws on national security and counterterrorism that appear to do little but provide China with a convenient pretext to continue violating human rights. Also in 2015, China launched one of the largest crackdowns on human rights lawyers in recent history.
The trend of abusing human rights to silence dissent was frequently used in Tibet where solo protesters were quickly arrested and artists, poets, and intellectuals targeted for arrest.
Internationally, the rule of law prevailed despite attempts by States to please the Chinese by crushing dissent. In the United Kingdom, Denmark, and Australia, Tibetans exercising their right to peacefully protest were detained. In all three cases, pro-Tibet activists were released and not charged with crimes. However, it remains discouraging that the activists were detained in the first place.

To download the report, http://www.tchrd.org/annual-report-2015/

How Tibet’s epidemic of self-immolation threatens the Chinese government
February 8, 2016
By Tsering Woeser
The New Republic, February 5, 2016 – February 27, 2009, was the third day of Losar, the Tibetan New Year. It was also the day that self-immolation came to Tibet. The authorities had just cancelled a Great Prayer Festival (Monlam) to commemorate the victims of the government crackdown in 2008. A monk by the name of Tapey stepped out of the Kirti Monastery and set his body alight on the streets of Ngawa, in the region known in Tibetan as Amdo, a place of great religious reverence and relevance, now designated as part of China’s Sichuan Province. Losar is usually a celebratory festival, but it was marked by the majority of Tibetans in 2009 in silent mourning—a mourning that continues to this day. On account of the unrelenting government suppression that followed in the wake of protests across Tibet the year before, a slogan has spread secretly among the people of Tibet: “No Losar.” Tibetans had decided not to celebrate Losar, as a means of resisting Chinese rule. And continuing this resistance, Tapey’s final act would become the beginning of a series of self-immolations that have spread across Tibet and beyond in recent years.
Signal
These protestors undergo the ultimate pain of burning each and every cell of their bodies, without harming other living beings, simply to make their voices and grievances heard. Since that day in February 2009 when the flames of protest were first lit in Tibet, I have documented every act of self-immolation and shared this information on my blog. I have provided daily updates, just as I first chronicled the protest movement of 2008.
Back in February of 2009, as I read about Tapey’s final act, I never could have imagined that so many Tibetans would sacrifice their bodies and lives to these flames, in a series of protests unlike any that the world had ever seen. And I certainly never could have predicted that my blogging would barely be able to keep pace with the lives sacrificed for this cause. In Ngawa alone, thirty-nine more people have followed in Tapey’s footsteps. At least ten Tibetans have given themselves to the flames on the same street where Tapey self-immolated; it is now known among Tibetans as “Heroes’ Lane.” As of July 9, 2015, 146 Tibetans have chosen the path of self-immolation. This is unprecedented in human history.
The residents of Amchock are known for their devoutness and their unyielding struggles against Chinese rule. In the 1950s, almost all of the nomadic tribes of Amchok engaged in a lengthy uprising against the CCP’s army—a struggle that ended in state suppression that drove them nearly to the point of extinction. One of the few texts to explore this history is Tenzin Palbar’s unforgettable memoir The Tragic History of My Fatherland. In no uncertain terms, its author describes a “cruel and inhuman massacre” in which courageous local resistance fighters against CCP rule faced a well-armed opponent with no qualms about using the harshest means to crush rebels and punish the populace.
Amchok is located within the larger Amdo region, and any discussion of history or the contemporary situation here must begin with the year 1958. It was in 1958 that the Chinese army and government perpetrated a human tragedy that affected nearly every family across Tibet, but especially here. This history is engraved deeply in the hearts and minds of the Tibetan people, so that some refer to the Cultural Revolution simply as “1958,” despite the fact that the Cultural Revolution did not begin until 1966. The year 1958 has become a shorthand for tragedy—a symbolic gathering point for all of the misfortunes that befell us after “liberation.”
Since 2009, twenty-one people in the Kanlho (Gannan) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture have self-immolated. Other than one middle school student and another youth working in Lhasa, all of the self-immolators were nomads. In Amchok alone, there have been four cases of nomads committing self-immolation, while at least sixteen out of Kanlho’s twenty-one self-immolations have been carried out by members of the traditional nomadic tribes of Amchok—survivors or descendants of the “rebel bandits” slaughtered in the 1950s.
On January 12, 2013, a twenty-two-year-old nomad from Amchok, Tsering Tashi, followed the path of self-immolation. That morning, he had put on a clean set of traditional Tibetan clothes and let out his livestock to graze. Around noon, he wrapped his body in wire and then walked into town. His family had no idea of where he was going or what he was about to do.
Its roads not even paved, Amchok township is the type of simple and nondescript small town that you will find in many Tibetan areas. No one saw Tsering Tashi pouring the gasoline onto his body, but we do know that the iron wire wrapped around him made his clothing, soaked in gasoline, burn even more intensely. There, on the dirt road in Amchok, Tsering Tashi set his body alight, as he repeatedly called out a Tibetan term of respect and endearment for the Dalai Lama: “Oh Gyalwa Tenzin Gyatso, oh Gyalwa Tenzin Gyatso . . .”
Soon he fell to the ground. The military police arrived and tried to take his body away, but the people surrounding him kept them away, reciting prayers as the flames continued to consume his charred corpse, then lifting up his body and walking past the heavily armed military police to bring him home. Neighbors, family members, and monks brought khatas and conducted a final heartfelt prayer ceremony for him. But officials and public security arrived soon thereafter, demanding that Tsering Tashi’s grieving family cremate him immediately. One official, beating his fist on the family’s table, declared: “Your family has ties to the ‘splittist Dalai Lama clique.’”
More police soon arrived to seal off the entrance to the village, in order to block people from nearby villages coming to pay their final respects. Concerned for the safety of his family and his entire village, Tsering Tashi’s father agreed to have his son’s body creamated that night. Unable to cope with all that was happening around her, his mother passed out and had to be taken to the hospital. In the middle of that cold, dark night, under official monitoring that felt even colder, Tsering Tashi was yet again engulfed in flames, completing his final sacrifice.
In late 2012, my husband Wang Lixiong, a Chinese scholar engaged in the research on Tibet, analyzed the twenty-six final statements from self-immolators available at that time. Wang’s approach was based in his belief that interpreting protestors’ final statements was essential to understanding these acts: even if some statements were only a few words long, he felt certain that classifying them into categories and analyzing their most common themes could provide a clearer picture of the aspirations behind these acts of protest.
Today, more than three years later, we have access to a significantly larger sample of forty-nine final statements. They include written statements, recordings, and comments made to friends and family. Of the forty-nine cases of self-immolation represented by these statements, forty-four self-immolators are deceased, while two recovered and are living in exile, and the fate of three others remains unknown.
Facing unimaginable pain in order to voice support for all suffering Tibetans, while at the same time maintaining one’s sense of dignity within a dehumanizing political environment, self-immolation enacts an extreme form of self-sublimation. “They think we are scared of their weapons and their repression, but they are wrong,” wrote Tenzin Phuntsok in a leaflet he distributed before his self-immolation at the age of forty-six. “My head held high, I step forward and set my body alight . . . for the dignity of Nangdrol, and for the Tibetan people, to whom I owe unending gratitude” wrote Nangdrol, an eighteen-year-old who self-immolated in Ngawa in 2012. “I am willing to take on this pain for the multitudes of living beings who are suffering,” wrote Rechok, a mother of three who set her body alight and died outside a monastery in Ngawa’s Barma Township in 2012. “I am willing to sacrifice my body and my blood to show my support and respect,” wrote Golok Tulku Sobha Rinpoche, the most senior monastic figure to have self-immolated.
These protestors undergo the ultimate pain of burning each and every cell of their bodies, without harming other living beings, simply to make their voices and grievances heard. Yet the Chinese government has labeled them “terrorists.” The Chinese government has declared self-immolation a crime, thus making those who commit this act “criminals.” And the state has furthermore unveiled an ambitious “campaign against self-immolation” that extends throughout Tibetan areas of the country. One aspect of this campaign has been collective punishment of the Tibetan community, including the arrest and sentencing of relatives, friends, and neighbors of self-immolators. Another has been a resolute blockade on any and all information related to instances of self-immolation. In this environment, news of such incidents only manages to find its way out of Tibet days, weeks, or even months after the fact. And because of this information blockade, the real number of self-immolations may be considerably higher than is currently known.
Can self-immolation really resolve the issues facing Tibet? No one knows for sure. But as Tenzin Phuntsok wrote in his final statement, these protestors are “unable to go on just waiting for the rest of their lives.” As heartbreaking as this may seem, this statement merits careful consideration by anyone who hopes to understand the origins and motivations of this wave of self-immolations: the need to take action, and to make one’s voice heard in an environment in which there is no other means of doing so.
Readers should not that there is not the slightest trace of violence in any of these statements: the action they refer to is of a different type. The Tibetan people’s religious beliefs, combined with His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s unwavering stance on nonviolence, place strong restraints upon our people. These teachings are embodied in the act of self-immolation: the self can be annihilated, but no one else may be harmed. Choepak Kyap and Sonam, two young men in their twenties who self-immolated together in Ngawa’s Barma Township in 2012, left a final statement in which they explicitly stated: “We do not want anyone else to be harmed.”
The final statements of nine self-immolators clearly articulated protests against the Chinese government, or demands directed at it. Furthermore, a number of protestors have shouted protest slogans at the moment of immolation, such as “Allow His Holiness the Dalai Lama to return to Tibet!” “Free Tibet!” and “Release the Panchen Lama!” Finally, even in those cases where no final statement was left and no slogans were shouted, self-immolation in itself is clearly a deeply symbolic act of protest and demand for change in Tibet.
Tsering Woeser is a Beijing-based writer and blogger. This article is excerpted from her book, Tibet on Fire: Self-Immolation Against Chinese Rule.

High ranking monks detained for holding prayer ceremony for the Dalai Lama
February 15, 2016
Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, February 8, 2016 – Chinese authorities have arbitrarily detained two high-ranking monks of Chogri Monastery in connection with a mass prayer ceremony held recently for the good health and well-being of the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Drango (Ch: Luhuo) County in Kardze (Ch: Ganzi) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province, in the Tibetan province of Kham.
According to reliable information received by TCHRD, the abbot named Pagah and Geshe Orgyen of Chogri Monastery were recently detained after a mass prayer ceremony was organized on 25 January by both the monastic and lay community in Tehor Township in Drango County.
The prayer ceremony was held following the news of the Dalai Lama’s medical treatment at the Mayo Clinic in the United States. In and out of Tibet, the news of the mass prayer ceremony at Chogri Monastery spread widely on social media platforms. Despite this, no immediate detention or arrests were made by the local authorities in Tehor.
However, on 31 January, local authorities issued an order banning the display of the Dalai Lama’s photos in shops and places where crowds gather. The order signed by four different local offices including the Drango County Cultural Tourism Bureau, Drango County Public Security Bureau and County Religious Affairs Bureau, further announced that display of the Dalai Lama’s photos sends the wrong message to the masses and called for mandatory submission of all photos of Dalai Lama by 2 February. Those defying the order would be dealt with severely, according to the order.
Abbot Pagah and Geshe Orgyen were most likely detained in the first week of this month, although TCHRD source is unable to confirm the exact date. Pagah is almost 40 years old and hails from Tsogo Township in Drango County. Geshe Orgyen is about 50 years old and was born in Tehor Township. Both had completed their religious education in south India before returning to Tibet: Pagah from Drepung Monastery in Mungod and Orgyen from Sera Monastery in Bylakuppe in the Indian state of Karnataka.
Following the detention of the abbot and the senior monk of Chogri Monastery, local authorities have deployed a large number of Chinese security forces to monitor and control both the monastic and lay community in Tehor.

Tibetan Man Who Refused to Fly Chinese Flag Dies in Prison
2016-02-08
A Tibetan man has died from injuries sustained under torture by Chinese authorities while serving a 13-year prison sentence for refusing to fly a Chinese flag, sources tell RFA’s Tibetan service.
The body of the man known as Trigyal was recently turned over to family members, said Driru Samdrub, a Tibetan resident living in Europe with close contacts in the region.
“He died due to severe torture under Chinese detention,” Samdrub said.
Trigyal was one of three men from Mukhyim village in Tibet’s restive Driru (in Chinese, Biru) county who received stiff sentences for refusing to fly the Chinese national flag in 2014. County residents were being required to fly the flag from their houses in a government campaign to force them to show loyalty to Beijing. Some of the more than 1,000 residents protesting the order threw the flags in a nearby river.
While Trigyal was given a 13 year sentence in 2014, the two other men, Ngangdrak and Rigsal, were handed 10-year terms, sources told RFA in earlier reports.
Driru is one of three neighboring counties in the Tibet Autonomous Region’s Nagchu (Naqu) prefecture that Beijing considers “politically unstable.” Chinese authorities fear that political unrest there may spread unchecked to other parts of the region.
Loyalty campaign
About 1,000 Driru-area Tibetans were detained when authorities launched a crackdown in September 2014 designed to enforce the loyalty campaign, sources say.
The campaign intensified in early October 2014 when villagers refused to fly Chinese national flags, throwing them instead into a river and prompting a deadly security crackdown in which Chinese police fired into unarmed crowds.
Chinese security forces were accused of killing four Tibetan villagers and wounding 50 others in 2013 during Driru-area opposing the government campaign forcing displays of loyalty to the Chinese state.
Bachen Gyalwa, the leader of Ushung village in Driru county’s Gyashoe Yangshok township was killed on Nov. 21, 2014 “on the orders of the local [ruling Chinese] Communist Party authorities,” the India-based Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) said in a statement at the time.
Sporadic demonstrations challenging Beijing’s rule have continued in Tibetan-populated areas of China since widespread protests swept the region in 2008.
Reported by Sonam Wangdue for RFA’s Tibetan Service. Translated by Karma Dorjee. Written in English by Brooks Boliek.

Message from the Dalai Lama:Tibetan New Year (Losar) greeting
February 8, 2016
Office of the Dalai Lama, February 6, 2016 – His Holiness the Dalai Lama extended Losar greetings from Mayo Clinic to Tibetans inside Tibet and exile. The video (Tibetan with English sub-titles) can be viewed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiZF_wPvI9g
“Here I am undergoing precautionary prostate treatment, and I want to take this opportunity to convey my greetings to our people, ordained and lay, young and old, especially those inside Tibet, as well as those in exile.
Since the Tibetan New Year is approaching, I want to wish you ‘Tashi Delek’.
One reason I want to tell you this today is that since I have been here undergoing treatment, many people in Tibet and in exile who have strong devotion and faith in me, have taken the responsibility of dedicating prayers and performing rituals for my well being. I want to thank you all. Today it’s as if I am here meeting you all, and I want to tell you that I am doing very well. The treatment only takes few minutes everyday, but it will take time to complete the treatment. Its nothing complicated nor serious. There’s nothing to worry about. I am relaxed and taking it easy. Its almost as if I am taking rest. I spend my time doing my daily recitations in morning and evening and reading other scripture. I want to tell you to not worry at all.
During Tibetan New Year, it’s our custom to greet each other and wish each other ‘tashi delek’. This is not just an opportunity to offer ‘chema’, drink ‘chaang’, and gamble. According to ‘Chanting the Names of Manjushri’, ‘Tashi’ means, since everybody wants to be happy and no one wants to be miserable, the cause of happiness is giving benefit and joy to others. If you create the causes of happiness, and live your life benefitting others and not harming them, that’s a meaningful life, a life that is essentially ‘tashi’.
‘Delek’ is the result of creating the cause of happiness, ‘De’ meaning attainment of momentary happiness and “lek’ meaning attainment of ultimate enlightenment.
I want to wish all of you ‘Losar Tashi Delek’ and at the same time, request that please try to live up to the meaning of ‘Tashi Delek’.
The hospital staff here are really looking after me with utmost care and attention. I am relaxed and calm and Besides that, many other people I know around the world, some of them spiritual, some of them not including many scientists, even young children have written to me wishing me well. I want to thank them all. I appreciate everyone who has prayed for me and exerted efforts on my behalf. Thank you.” WTN – Canada

Tibet’s borders to be closed for foreign visitors from February 25
February 1, 2016
Phayul, January 30, 2016 – The Chinese government has announced that the Tibet Autonomous Region shall be shut down for all foreign travelers from February 25, days ahead of some politically sensitive anniversaries including the 2008 March uprising that rocked the plateau in the run up to Beijing Olympics.
According to a post of tripadvisor, the entire TAR will be closed from February 25 to March 30 with the authorities issuing a notice to all major cities and counties that all foreign visitors must leave the region by the deadline.
It is not known when the region, which strongly depends of tourism industry, will reopen for backpackers. However, travel agencies expect that the first week of April might be the likely date for the reopening of the region for tourism.
Phelim Kine, Deputy Director, Human Rights Watch’s Asia Division Tweets, “Something to hide?” after the Chinese government’s move to bar all foreign visitors.
According to the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) 2300 Tibetans were arrested by the Chinese authorities aTibetans from various parts of Tibet in 2008. Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) claims more than 140 people were killed in the crackdown though some sources put the number even higher.
Since 2009, a staggering 143 Tibetans have resorted to self-immolation as a form of protest against the Chinese rule in Tibet.

Bottling Tibet’s water could be bad for the region’s environment
February 1, 2016
The Economist, January 30, 2016 – China is so vast, it quickly becomes the largest market for almost anything it consumes. Such is the case with bottled water. Chinese drink 40 billion litres (70 billion pints) of the stuff each year, up over 13-fold since 1998. That growth has a long way to go if China ever consumes as much per person as Mexico (see chart). But finding clean supplies is difficult; rivers, lakes and even groundwater in China are often foul. Hence the huge demand for a seemingly inexhaustible source of pristine water that is cheap to extract, sells at a premium and can now, thanks to massive investment in infrastructure, be taken to coastal cities: Tibetan glaciers.
Tibet already sells Qomolangma Glacier water, named after the Tibetan word for Mount Everest. Last year Sinopec, a state-owned energy group, put another brand on sale at its petrol stations: Tibet 5100. It is bottled 5,100 metres (16,700 feet) up in the Nyenchen Tanglha range. The Tibetan government has licensed 28 more companies to increase the province’s bottling capacity 50-fold by 2020.
Assuming companies do not mine the glacier ice itself, they will bottle only the meltwater that flows out of glaciers in summer. It is true that Himalayan glaciers on the Tibet-Qinghai plateau have retreated over the past 30 years by about 15%. But this is because of climate change. Bottling will not cause them to lose mass any quicker.
Nor will the bottled-water industry have much impact on the volume of water that flows from Tibet—a crucial source for neighbouring countries as well as China itself. About 1 billion people depend on the giant rivers—the Yellow river, the Brahmaputra, the Indus, the Ganges, the Yangzi, the Mekong and the Salween—that rise in the Himalayas, a region with the largest reserves of fresh water after the north and south poles. The manufacturing of bottled water consumes three times more water than ends up being sold. Yet even the projected expansion of Tibet’s bottled-water output would amount to only a tiny fraction of the region’s runoff.
More worrying is the possible threat that the industry will pose to the Tibetan environment. China has an atrocious record of looking after its pristine areas. Liu Hongqiao of China Water Risk, an NGO, says no water company has published any environmental-impact study in Tibet. The bottling industry may spawn other, heavy-polluting ones, on the plateau, for the production of bottles and the plastic they use.
Tibet’s government is bribing bottlers with tax cuts, tax holidays and cheap loans. It charges companies only 3 yuan (50 cents) to extract a cubic metre of water, compared with up to 50 yuan elsewhere. But the government in Beijing may have other plans. Alarmed by water scarcity, it wants to reduce groundwater extraction. It has plans for a nationwide cap in 2020 and wants all provinces—even water-rich ones like Tibet—to set quotas for water use. This may make Tibet’s policies unsustainable (which may be no bad thing). In Jilin province in the north-east, the local government had even more ambitious plans than Tibet’s for ramping up mineral-water production. But it was forced to cut them by half because of mandated quotas. Bubbles, it seems, are an integral part of China’s bottled-water business. WTN Canada