“We lost a true patriot of Tibet”: CTA mourns demise of Takna Jigme Sangpo, Tibet’s longest-serving political prisoner
October 17, 2020
Published By Bureau Reporter
Dharamshala: Tributes poured in from around the world on Saturday as word spread that the former Tibetan political prisoner who spent almost half his life in Chinese prison and had spent the remaining in exile relentlessly advocating of the Tibetan cause had died at the age of 91.
Takna Jigme Sangpo, Tibet’s longest political prisoner passed away earlier this morning at an elderly care home in Turbenthal, Switzerland, where he had been based since receiving political asylum in 2003, a year after he completed 37-year sentence in Chinese prison.
President Dr Lobsang Sangay of the Central Tibetan Administration expressed profound condolences at the demise, saying, “I have been an admirer of his courage since my youth days. It was an honour meeting him in person and I also took part in the launch of his autobiography in Dharamshala. We have lost a true patriot of Tibet.”
Having spent 37 years in Chinese prison, Takna Jigme Sangpo was the longest-serving Tibetan political prisoner. He was reportedly first arrested in 1960 while teaching at Lhasa Primary School and charged with “corrupting the minds of children with reactionary ideas”. In 1964 he was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment in Sangyip Prison over comments regarding Chinese repression of Tibetans and was sent to labour camp in Lhasa. He was again sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment in Sangyip Prison for ‘counter-revolutionary’ propaganda in 1970. He had been caught attempting to send a document reporting Chinese atrocities to His Holiness the Dalai Lama via his niece, who was trying to flee Tibet.
At the age of 53, Takna Jigme Sangpo was released from prison in 1979 and transferred to the ‘Reform-Through-Labor’ Unit 1 in Nyethang, west of Lhasa, but he was arrested again on September 3, 1983, by the Lhasa City Public Security Bureau for pasting a ‘personally written’ wall-poster protesting against Chinese authority on the main gate of the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa.
On 24 November 1983, he was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment for “spreading and inciting counter revolutionary propaganda,” and five years deprivation of political rights. On 1 December 1988, his sentence was increased by another five years for “spreading and inciting counter-revolutionary propaganda”.
On 6 December 1991, Takna Jigme made another bold attempt at an individual protest. During an official visit by a Swiss delegation, Jigme shouted “Free Tibet” in English, a phrase he had specially learnt for the occasion, and slogans in Chinese and Tibetan, from his cell. The authorities tried to explain away the incident by claiming to the delegates that he was ‘mad’.
Takna Jigme was subsequently sentenced on 4 April 1992 to a further eight years imprisonment, and an additional three years deprivation of civil and political rights, bringing his sentence to 28 years and by his release on 3 September 2011, he would have spent 41 years in prison.
He lost his eyesight as a result of suffering forced labour, prison atrocities and harsh prison conditions. “Torture and degrading ill-treatment, inhuman interrogation, solitary confinement, forced labour and indoctrination sessions are common practices used by the Chinese authorities in Tibet’s prisons,” he testified in 2003.
As a result of sustained efforts by the Central Tibetan Administration and international community pressing the Chinese government for his release, Takna Jigme was released on medical parole at the age of 76 in March 2002.
Thirty-seven years behind bars had not deterred the spirit of Takna Jigme Sangpo. In August 2002, he settled in Switzerland as a political refugee and relentlessly advocated for the issue of Tibet and testified at various human rights forums on the gross violations of human rights in Chinese-occupied Tibet. In April 2003, he first testified at the UN Commission on Human Rights, in which he said: “this old man from Tibet, appeals to all nations in this hall to help end the human suffering of the Tibetans. Please urge the Chinese government to open earnest negotiations with His Holiness the Dalai Lama to resolve the long-standing Tibetan Issue in the interest of both the Tibetan and Chinese peoples. The unfortunate people of Tibet, including the political prisoners, who are the same human being as everyone else in this hall, urgently need your support before it is too late…I pray for an end to the suffering of all political prisoners in this world”. On 6 June 2008, he addressed the UN Council. Takna Jigme Sangpo’s biography titled ‘Metse Nyongtsor’ was released on 24 January 2014 in Dharamshala by Sikyong Dr Lobsang Sangay and was published by Gu Chu Sum Movement of Tibet.

Lawmakers Warn US About Failing to Adapt to Growing Chinese Threat
https://www.voanews.com/usa/lawmakers-warn-us-about-failing-adapt-growing-chinese-threat
U.S. lawmakers are sounding alarms about the threat from China, warning Washington has so far failed to keep up with Beijing as it emerges as a global power. The concerns, voiced in two separate reports Wednesday, criticize U.S. intelligence agencies and policymakers for clinging too long to the notion that increased trade and interaction with China would push Beijing to eventually align itself with Western values.
Instead, the reports argue, the United States is struggling to push back as it faces a real danger of being replaced by China on the world stage. “The stakes are high,” according to a redacted report released by Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee. “Absent a significant realignment of resources, the U.S. government and intelligence community will fail to achieve the outcomes required to enable continued U.S. competition with China on the global stage for decades to come,” the report said.
The House Intelligence Committee report, based on hundreds of hours of interviews with intelligence officials and reviews of thousands of assessments, criticized U.S. intelligence agencies for becoming overly focused on their counterterrorism mission and for failing to adapt to the threats of a changing world. “While the United States was busy engaging al-Qaida, ISIS [Islamic State] and their affiliates, offshoots and acolytes, Washington’s unchallenged dominance over the global system slipped away,” the report said.
To better counter China and other emerging threats, the report said, U.S. intelligence agencies need to make better use of information commonly available on the internet, social media and elsewhere. The report also said U.S. intelligence officials need to pay more attention to nonimmediate, nonmilitary threats “such as global health, economic security and climate change.” And the report called for a greater focus on recruiting and mentoring what it described as “the next generation of China analysts.” “The good news is that we still have time to adapt,” said House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff in a statement. “It’s my hope that the intelligence community will work hand in hand with the congressional oversight committees to make these necessary changes quickly.”
A second report released Wednesday, by Republican lawmakers, was no less damning, recommending more than 400 changes to Washington’s China strategy. “To preserve democracy and freedom around the world, the U.S. must act decisively with our allies to regain the initiative,” the China Task Force report warned. Chinese Communist Party ideology “is undermining the core principles of the international system and putting Americans’ safety and prosperity at risk,” it said. “Leniency and accommodation of the CCP and its oppressive agenda is no longer an option.”
The report calls on policymakers to boost counterintelligence operations against China and to make sure that the U.S. medical and national security supply chains no longer need to reply on Chinese-made goods. It also recommends increased spending on defense to better counter Chinese nuclear capabilities as well as China’s growing conventional forces. “For more than 40 years, we have tried to bring them into the family of nations as a responsible partner, but they have refused to behave responsibly,” China Task Force Chairman Michael McCaul said in a statement.

Lhasa Braces For Air-Raid Drill as China Responds to India’s Purchase of French Jets
2020-09-18
Chinese authorities in Tibet’s regional capital Lhasa will conduct an air-raid drill on Saturday as China calls for combat readiness amid rising tensions along its undefined Himalayan border with India in the mountainous region of Ladakh.
The drill, running from 12:00 noon to 12:15, follows India’s deployment on the border this week of five French-made Rafale jet fighters, and will be held “in order to improve the general public’s national defense concept and civil air defense awareness,” Chinese state media said on Tuesday.
“Citizens, government agencies, enterprises, institutions, and social organization personnel” are being urged to pay close attention to alarms, China’s People’s Daily newspaper said on Tuesday, adding that the scheduled drill is not expected to disrupt the city’s normal life and activities.
A clash between Indian and Chinese security forces in the Galwan Valley in northwestern India’s region of Ladakh in June left dozens of soldiers dead on both sides, with both India and China saying that troops from the other side had crossed into their territory.
The governments of both countries meanwhile continue to accuse each other’s militaries of making provocative maneuvers along the Line of Actual Control, their de-facto Himalayan border.
India had ordered and received the French-made jet fighters at the end of July “as it moves to upgrade its air force amid a spike in tensions with China,” Tsewang Dorjee—a researcher at the Dharamsala, India-based Tibet Policy Institute—told RFA’s Tibetan Service.
“The air drill in Lhasa is aimed at strengthening combat readiness for [China’s] People’s Liberation Army in the event of an air strike in Lhasa or other Tibetan areas. This is a worrying and frightening situation for everyone, not only for Tibetans living in Tibet,” Dorjee said.
China had already been holding air raid drills in other major cities in September to mark China’s annual National Defense Education Day, retired Indian Army colonel and satellite imagery analyst Vinayak Bhat said in a written response to questions from RFA.
“But the timing of this drill has raised many eyebrows, as the last time such an exercise was carried out in Lhasa was in 2009,” he said.
“In the current situation of the ongoing border standoff between China and India, this looks like a tactic of psychological warfare by Beijing to create a climate of fear among Tibetans,” he added.
Dual-purpose airports
Five airports are now in operation in the Tibet Autonomous Region: the Lhasa Gonggar Airport, Nyingchi Mainling Airport, Shigatse Peace Airport, Chamdo Bangda Airport, and Ngari Gunsa Airport. Three others—Lhuntze in Lhokha; Tingri in Shigatse county; and Burang in Ngari near the border with India—are being built.
Tsewang Dorjee noted that the airport at Burang will pose a particular threat to India’s security due to its proximity to the border. “The Burang airport will play a key role in the speedy deployment of weapons and military reinforcements in the wake of any military confrontation with India,” Dorjee said.
China’s airports in Tibet are dual-purpose and can quickly be deployed for military use, with civilian air control staff trained to work with China’s air force in cases of emergency, Vinayak Bhat said. “There are also a number of radar sites, and they have integrated air defense which is quite good.”
As many as 16 air-defense sites using surface-to-air (SAM) missiles have recently been established along the border with Tibet, with one set up in the politically sensitive area of Lake Manasarovar near Mount Kailash in Burang, Bhat said.
“They are well aware that Manasarovar is a holy place for India, and yet they are trying to make a battlefield out of it. That is just not acceptable.”
“But the Indian air force is a very mature air force,” Bhat said. “I am sure they will be monitoring these things very closely, and they will take care of these sites very well.”
Reported by Urgen Tenzin and Lobe Socktsang for RFA’s Tibetan Service. Translated by Tenzin Phakdon and Dorjee Damdul. Written in English by Richard Finney.

Tibet’s Exile Government Slams Call by China’s Xi Jinping to ‘Sinicize’ Tibetan Buddhism
2020-08-31
Tibet’s India-based exile government hit back this week at a call by China’s President Xi Jinping to Sinicize the Tibetan people’s Buddhist religion, describing the move as an attempt by China’s ruling Communist Party to destroy Tibet’s unique national identity.
“Tibetan Buddhism should be guided in adapting to [China’s] socialist society and should be developed in the Chinese context,” President Xi said on Aug. 29 at the 7th Central Symposium on Tibet held in Beijing.
Efforts to make Tibet’s centuries-old faith comply with China’s culture and political goals are misguided and unrealistic, though, Lobsang Sangay—political leader, or Sikyong, of Tibet’s exile Central Tibetan Administration—said in a response issued by the CTA this week.
“For Tibetans, Buddhism is more important than Communism,” Sangay said, calling Beijing’s attempt to raise China’s political system over the Tibetan people’s faith “a violation of international religious freedom.”
“[The] Sinicization of Tibetan Buddhism is never going to work,” Sangay said. “The last 60 years of Chinese rule in Tibet is a testament to that fact.”
“The root cause of instability in Tibet is not the Tibetan people’s faith, but the repressive and failed policies of the Chinese government. The continuation of these hard-line policies and repression is only going to make matters worse,” Sangay said.
Chinese police and surveillance teams now regularly monitor life in Tibetan monasteries for signs of opposition to China’s rule, source in the region say. Meanwhile, authorities interfere with Tibet’s traditional recognition of senior Buddhist monks and other religious leaders in order to install politically compliant figures of their own choosing.
“Yet the determination of the Tibetan people inside Tibet is still strong, and [they remain] faithfully devoted to His Holiness the Dalai Lama,” Sangay said.
Regarded by Chinese leaders as a separatist, the present Dalai Lama fled Tibet into exile in India in the midst of a failed 1959 Tibetan national uprising against rule by China, which marched into the formerly independent Himalayan country in 1950.
Fear of losing control
China’s continuing attacks on the Dalai Lama meanwhile “show that Tibet is very important to the Chinese government, and also reflect Chinese officials’ fear of losing control,” Ngodup Tsering—the Dalai Lama’s representative in the Washington-D.C. based Office of Tibet—told RFA’s Tibetan Service in an interview this week.
It has been more than a decade since the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s traditional ruler, handed his political authority over to Tibetan exile political leaders now chosen by popular vote, Tsering said. “But China’s continued denunciations of His Holiness the Dalai Lama show that they are still deeply afraid.”
President Xi’s speech signals a “doubling down” of China’s current hard-line and repressive policy in Tibet, said Pema Jungney, speaker of Tibet’s India-based exile parliament, adding, “I can’t interpret it any other way.”
“They are determined to wipe Tibet’s history from the face of the earth.”
China is now establishing Communist Party structures in all areas of Tibet “to strengthen their command, policies, and power, thus suppressing all the freedoms of Tibetans in the spheres of faith and belief, politics, the economy, and culture,” Boston-based Tibet analyst and former assistant director of the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy Jampel Monlam said, also speaking to RFA.
“If these policies of China’s continue much longer, I worry about what will happen to Tibet,” Monlam said.
Reported by Lobe Socktsang and Rigdhen Dolma for RFA’s Tibetan Service. Translated by Rigdhen Dolma and Dorjee Damdul. Written in English by Richard Finney.

US Presidential Candidate Joe Biden Vows Strong Policy Supporting Tibet
2020-09-04
Democratic Party presidential candidate Joe Biden said he would take a strong stand against China’s human rights abuses in Tibet, and take measures to support Tibetans’ cultural and religious rights, including meeting exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.
“As President, I’ll put values back at the center of American foreign policy,” Biden said in a Sept. 3 statement.
“I’ll meet with [exiled Tibetan spiritual leader] His Holiness the Dalai Lama, appoint a new Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues, and insist that the Chinese government restore access to Tibet for U.S. citizens, including our diplomats and journalists,” Biden said.
“My administration will [also] sanction Chinese officials responsible for human rights abuses in Tibet, and step up support for the Tibetan people, including by expanding Tibetan language services at Radio Free Asia and Voice of America to get information from the outside world into Tibet,” Biden said.
Biden also pledged to work with U.S. allies to press Beijing to return to talks with “representatives of the Tibetan people” to achieve greater freedoms and autonomy in the formerly independent Himalayan country, which China took over by force nearly 70 years ago.
Nine rounds of talks were held between envoys of the Dalai Lama and high-level Chinese officials beginning in 2002, but stalled in 2010 and were never resumed.
The Dalai Lama has met with the last four U.S. presidents, sometimes in unofficial drop-by encounters during scheduled meetings with other senior U.S. government figures, but has not yet met with Donald Trump, who has not invited him to the White House, media sources say.
Reached for comment, Karma Choeying—a spokesperson for the Central Tibetan Administration, Tibet’s India-based government in exile—welcomed Biden’s statement, noting that successive U.S. administrations and the U.S. Congress have “continuously supported the just cause of Tibet.”
“Today, the U.S. Democratic Presidential Candidate is promising to do the same, and we welcome his statement,” Choeying said.
“Whether it is religious freedom in Tibet, human rights, the preservation of culture and protection of the Tibetan people’s values, or expansion of the Radio Free Asia and Voice of America Tibetan language services—all of these agendas listed in Joe Biden’s statement are needed and good,” added Pema Jungney, Speaker of the Tibetan Parliament in Exile in Dharamsala, India.
“If he wins, I hope he will do what he’s promised,” Pema Jungney said.
“For now, [Biden] is a candidate and not yet elected,” Nima Dorjee, a Tibetan resident of Dharamsala, said. “And the words of a presidential candidate and a sitting president have different weight. If he wins and stays true to his words, this would be good news.”
Visas for Chinese officials restricted
Tibet policy initiatives of the Trump administration have drawn support from the India-based CTA and the Washington-based Tibetan advocacy group the International Campaign for Tibet.
On July 7, 2020, U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo announced U.S. visa restrictions on selected Chinese officials deemed responsible for policies restricting access for foreigners to Tibetan areas of China, pursuant to the Reciprocal Access to Tibet Act signed into law by President Trump in December 2018.
The law also requires the State Department to provide to the Congress each year a list of U.S. citizens denied entry into Tibet.
Washington has long complained that Chinese diplomats, scholars, and journalists enjoy unrestricted travel in the United States, while China tightly restricts the access of U.S. counterparts to Tibet and other areas.
A formerly independent nation, Tibet was invaded and incorporated into China by force nearly 70 years ago, following which the Dalai Lama and thousands of his followers fled into exile in India and other countries around the world.
Chinese authorities maintain a tight grip on the region, restricting Tibetans’ political activities and peaceful expression of ethnic and religious identity, and subjecting Tibetans to persecution, torture, imprisonment, and extrajudicial killings.
Reported by Ugyen Tenzin for RFA’s Tibetan Service. Translated by Rigdhen Dolma. Written in English by Richard Finney.

Thousands of Tibetans Driven From Their Homes by China to Make Way For National Park
2020-09-09
Plans by China to build a national park in Tibetan-populated areas of Qinghai province are forcing thousands of nomads from their ancestral land, with final removal of the herders scheduled by the end of this year, Tibetan sources say.
The evictions will clear the way for the creation of the Mount Qilian National Park, a 50,200 square kilometer parkland and wild animal preserve straddling parts of Qinghai and neighboring Gansu, with the greater part lying in Gansu.
Around 4,000 Tibetan farmers and herders living in Themchen county’s Muru township and Suru and Drugkhyung villages have now been ordered off their land and told to move to Golmud city in Qinghai by the of 2020, one local resident told RFA’s Tibetan Service this week.
“The relocation project is in full swing right now, and the forced displacement of Tibetan nomads from their homes has become a matter of great concern for the local people,” RFA’s source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“The nomads from these areas are not willing to part from their ancestral land, but who is really able to defy China’s policies?” the source said.
On Sept. 3, Themchen county authorities held a meeting led by county governor Sengdrug in which Tibetan residents were pressured to comply with government orders to move, with officials adding that establishment of the national park was in line with Chinese president Xi Jinping’s concern for environmental conservation.
The official website of the Themchen county government on Sept. 3 confirmed the meeting had been held, saying it was “convened to appraise the local Tibetan nomads that the relocation project has to be completely carried out by the end of the year.”
Illegal mining had been carried on for many years at Mount Qilian, RFA’s source said.
“And now, in the name of environmental conservation and protection, Tibetan nomads must leave and move to Golmud. Local Chinese authorities have carried out a campaign to collect signatures and have held ‘awareness training sessions’ urging the nomads to willingly accept the project and their orders to move,” he said.
Also speaking to RFA, Tsering Dhondup—a former Tibetan political prisoner now living in Australia and a native of Bongtak Themchen, one of the affected areas—said that any Tibetan speaking out against China’s policy of displacement would face serious political consequences.
“In reality, in the name of environmental protection, the Tibetan people and their lives are being completely upended,” Dhondup said.
Resettlement schemes in Tibetan areas of China in recent years have driven thousands of Tibetans from their homes and into urban areas where they often live in crowded conditions with large families piled into single dwellings and opportunities for employment cut off, sources say.
According to the International Campaign for Tibet, Chinese authorities announced in 2017 in a policy criticized by Tibetans that “vast areas of Tibet will be turned into ‘national parks’ – contingent upon the removal of Tibetans from their ancestral lands.”
Reported by Thaklha Gyal. Translated by Dorjee Damdul. Written in English by Richard Finney.

Tibetan School Year Begins Under New Restrictions, Mandarin-only Instruction
2020-09-12
The school year for children living in Tibetan areas of China has started under harsh new restrictions, with children in one Qinghai county ordered by authorities out of their homes and into Chinese boarding schools, and the language of classroom instruction in another county switched from Tibetan to Chinese, Tibetan sources say.
In several towns in Qinghai’s Rebgong (in Chinese, Tongren) county, local primary schools have been closed by government order, and Tibetan children are being forced against their parents’ wishes into boarding schools in areas far away, a local source told RFA’s Tibetan Service this week.
“The Tibetan parents have appealed to Chinese authorities not to separate their children from them by sending them off to other regions for schooling,” RFA’s source said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “And when the authorities did not heed their request, some of them staged a protest.”
The parents’ protest quickly triggered a crackdown by police, with police vehicles and blaring sirens responding quickly to the protest scene, and one male protester was taken into custody, the source said.
“Several children at the protest were so frightened by all the commotion that they fainted,” the source said, adding that the children’s parents were finally forced to send their children away to the Chinese government-designated boarding schools.
The single protester taken into custody was later released, he said.
Classes taught only in Chinese
In Qinghai’s Themchen (in Chinese, Tianjun) county, two middle schools in the Bongtak area were meanwhile merged, forcing Tibetan schoolchildren into classes taught only in Chinese and following a similar merger of nearby primary schools, another local source told RFA.
“Previously, Tibetan parents had a choice of sending their children to a Tibetan-language or a Mandarin-language school, and the Tibetans would send their children to the Tibetan schools,” RFA’s source said, also speaking on condition his name not be used.
“But now most of these schools have been merged, creating ethnically mixed classes, which is a huge concern for us,” the source said.
“The Tibetan language itself is now the only subject taught in Tibetan, leaving Mandarin as the medium of instruction for all the other subjects taught in school,” the source said, adding that the move appears aimed at implementing China’s new policy of eroding language rights to destroy minority cultures.
The enactment of similar policies in China’s Inner Mongolia region have led in recent weeks to widespread protests and boycotts of the schools, with hundreds of ethnic Mongolians arrested or forced to resign from public office after they resisted the changes to the curriculum, which were kept under wraps until the start of the new semester at the end of August.
China’s Regional Ethnic Autonomy Law says that agencies in ethnic autonomous areas have the right to make decisions about education, including the language used in classroom instruction, said U.S.-based China analyst Ganze Kyab Lama.
“But many restrictive policies have now gained momentum under the leadership of Chinese president Xin Jinping as local officials look after their own political advantage and gain,” Kyab said.
Language rights have become a particular focus for Tibetan efforts to assert national identity in recent years, with informally organized language courses in the monasteries and towns typically deemed “illegal associations” and teachers subject to detention and arrest, sources say.
Reported by Chakmo Tso and Dorjee Tso for RFA’s Tibetan Service. Translated by Dorjee Damdul. Written in English by Richard Finney.

It is time India gave its policy on Tibet some strategic coherence
September 16, 2020
Beijing is in a strong position but New Delhi should resist China’s efforts to consolidate its current hold on Tibetan politics
In a development that attracted relatively little international attention, Xi Jinping unveiled the Communist Party of China’s (CPC’s) new policy towards Tibet at a conclave in late August. As my colleague Manoj Kewalramani explained in the Hindustan Times last week, Xi’s new strategy “entails a mix of persuasion, development, connectivity, indoctrination and coercion”. Beijing intends to construct an “ironclad shield to safeguard stability” against separatists and hostile foreign interests by sinicizing Tibetan Buddhism, stepping up ideological education, manufacturing a favourable historical narrative, strengthening border defence, deepening surveillance and enhancing connectivity to neighbouring Chinese provinces. The new policy continues to betray the CPC’s insecurities vis-a-vis Tibet, but it also indicates that Xi believes Beijing occupies the dominating heights of its relationship with Tibet.
He is not wrong in thinking so. Over the past two decades, Beijing has used its growing power to limit the Dalai Lama’s global outreach, severely constrain protests in Tibet, and change the demography of the region. Transforming the Tibetan landscape and economy, it has created vested interests in favour of Beijing’s rule among Tibetans and Han Chinese alike. It has found numerous ways to put pressure on New Delhi to limit formal interactions with the Dharamsala-based Central Tibetan Administration. Even as the PLA has increased transgressions across the length of the India-Tibet border, Beijing has become more forceful in pressing its claims to the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which it claims as “South Tibet”.
There is one major inescapable event that stands in the way of China having its way—that of identifying the next Dalai Lama once the ageing Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, passes away. Beijing’s plan to manage this is by invoking the so-called Golden Urn process—a bureaucratic device used by Emperor Qianlong of the Qing dynasty to manage the politics of reincarnation in the late-18th century by drawing lots. Just in case the lottery doesn’t go the way Beijing wants it to, it has declared that all reincarnations require the approval of the Chinese government. With the Panchen Lama, who by tradition is the preceptor of the Dalai Lama, already under Chinese control, Beijing has decided to wait out the Dalai Lama rather than negotiate with him. If things go by China’s plan, its problem with the institution of the Dalai Lama will end with Tenzin Gyatso’s departure.
Once it has Tibet completely in its bag, there is nothing to stop Beijing from asserting territorial claims all along the Himalayas, from Ladakh to Arunachal Pradesh. It is in this context that we must see Xi’s desire to shape a historical narrative that retrospectively legitimises the People Republic of China’s (PRC) annexation of Tibet. There was a time when Zhou Enlai and even Deng Xiaoping were amenable to a settlement where Beijing would accept Arunachal Pradesh as part of India were New Delhi to surrender claims to Aksai Chin. Now, and presumably in the future, with the balance of power shifting massively in favour of China, Beijing believes it can realize its claims without conceding anything to India, Nepal, Bhutan or Pakistan.
It is for this unsentimental reason that it is in India’s interests to ensure that China does not consolidate its hold over Tibet. To the extent that Beijing is insecure about the loyalties of ethnic Tibetans under its rule and about the external legitimacy of its annexation, it will find it harder to actively pursue territorial ambitions in the Himalayas. India’s interests with regard to Tibet are thus subtler than mere support for Tibetan aspirations for autonomy or freedom from Chinese rule. The Kautilyan logic of the rajamandala, after all, is structural.
There is no doubt that China is in as strong a position in Tibet than it ever was. It does not mean that the future it desires is a foregone conclusion. Beijing still does not control two important factors: how the Tibetan people conduct politics; and the existence of credible, legitimate spiritual and political leadership outside China’s control. India’s Tibet policy should concern itself with shaping these to our advantage. On the latter, New Delhi should ensure that senior lamas of all sects of Tibetan Buddhism, including the Dalai and Karmapa, remain free to pursue their religion and politics. With India hosting the largest population of ethnic Tibetans outside their homeland, there is no reason why the next incarnation of the Dalai Lama cannot be from, say, Karnataka.
The Indian government must neither accept the legitimacy of the Golden Urn process nor Beijing’s self-arrogated authority to recognize religious reincarnations. Even if the patron-priest relationship that Chinese emperors had with Tibetan high lamas might sometimes have given them privileges in religious matters, by no stretch of imagination can the atheist leaders of today’s PRC claim any.
India’s own policy on Tibet suffered a lack of focus over the past decade because New Delhi did not want to offend Beijing. This led to a degree of incoherence in the way different government departments and political actors approached the matter. There have been periodic, isolated acts of symbolism. However, unless backed by purposeful policy and substantive actions, symbolism alone is dangerous and can be counterproductive. The time has come for India to review its approach towards Tibet.
Nitin Pai is co-founder and director of The Takshashila Institution, an independent centre for research and education in public policy

Hollywood Censors Films for Content ‘Offensive’ to China, Fearing Loss of Business There
https://www.rfa.org/english/news/tibet/censors-08172020170532.html
Fearing loss of market share in China, Hollywood studios are now removing from their films any content related to Tibet or other human rights issues considered politically sensitive by Beijing, according to a U.S.-based media freedoms group. “As U.S. film studios compete for the opportunity to access Chinese audiences, many are making difficult and troubling compromises on free expression,” PEN America says in a recent report, “Made in Hollywood, Censored by Beijing.” Film content is now frequently changed even for American audiences, while studios provide censored versions of films specifically for Chinese audiences and sometimes invite Chinese censors onto film sets to advise them on how to avoid “tripping the censors’ wires,” PEN America said. Studios’ decisions on casting, plot, dialogue, and settings are now made “based on a desire to avoid antagonizing Chinese officials who control whether their films gain access to the booming Chinese market,” PEN America said, adding that these decisions are carefully made “behind closed doors” and out of public view.
After making two films in 1997—Kundun and Seven Years in Tibet–depicting China’s conquest of Tibet,  two major studios were banned from doing business in China for the next five years, and Hollywood quickly got the message, with Disney CEO Michael Eisner going to Beijing to apologize for his company’s production of Kundun and its sympathetic treatment of exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama. Seven Years in Tibet, starring Brad Pitt, was also supportive of Tibet and would never be made again today, Emily Jashinsky—Cultural Editor at The Federalist—told RFA’s Tibetan Service in an interview. “Seven Years in Tibet is a great example of a film that would never be made in today’s Hollywood, and this is because everybody in the industry is absolutely petrified of being blacklisted by the Chinese Communist Party,” Jashinsky said. “Hollywood would be terrified even if they made that movie just for viewing in the United States and elsewhere, and not to be shown in China,” Jashinsky said, adding that movies with sympathetic treatments of Tibet are “politically against what the CCP wants their narrative to be.”
An invisible phenomenon
As an industry, Hollywood should develop a mechanism for disclosure that would reveal censorship requests made to it by foreign governments and say how studios responded, said James Tager, PEN Deputy Director of Free Expression Research and Policy. “Ultimately, self-censorship flourishes in obscurity or in invisibility. So if we want to tackle this issue, we have to start discussing this more honestly and address the fact that this is largely an invisible phenomenon.” China’s influence over Hollywood reflects the country’s growing success in forcing foreign corporate compliance with Beijing’s propaganda goals, with international companies as diverse as Mercedes-Benz and Marriott giving in to Chinese censorship demands, PEN America said in its report.
Meanwhile, the media freedoms group said, Hollywood films reach billions, and “help to shape the way people think.”  In a statement sent to RFA, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz said that one way Beijing attempts to advance its preferred narrative about Tibet and other issues sensitive to China is by “coercing Americans into self-censorship—especially in Hollywood.” “That’s why I have introduced the SCRIPT Act, which would cut off Hollywood studios from assistance they receive from the U.S. Government if those studios censor their films for screening in China,” Cruz said, calling the proposed legislation a “wake-up call” for Hollywood. “I remain committed to protecting our national security and ensuring that the Chinese Communist Party is held accountable for their censorship, human rights abuses, propaganda campaigns, and espionage operations,” Cruz said.

UN experts write to China on Panchen Lama, reincarnation rules
August 4, 2020
Five UN human rights experts and expert bodies have raised concerns with the Chinese government about Tibet’s “disappeared” Panchen Lama and Beijing’s reincarnation rules, citing fears about Chinese interference in the succession of the Dalai Lama.
In a statement to the Chinese government, the experts “express grave concern at the continued refusal by the Government of China to disclose precisely the whereabouts of Gedhun Choekyi Nyima,” the 11th Panchen Lama, and call for an independent monitor to visit him.
The Panchen Lama, one of the most important figures in Tibetan Buddhism, has been missing since the Chinese government kidnapped him and his family in 1995 just days after the Dalai Lama identified him as the reincarnation of the previous Panchen Lama. Gedhun Choekyi Nyima was only six years old at the time.
The Chinese government’s rules on the appointment of Tibetan Buddhist leaders “may interfere and possibly undermine[s], in a discriminatory way, the religious traditions and practices of the Tibetan Buddhist minority,” the statement from the UN experts says.
The experts appeal to the Chinese government “to ensure that Tibetan Buddhists are able to freely practice their religion, traditions and cultures without interference,” as freedom of religion includes the right of Tibetan Buddhists “to determine their clergy and religious leaders in accordance with their own religious traditions and practices.”
The statement was made public on August 1 and submitted by the mandates of the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances; the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention; the Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights; the Special Rapporteur on minority issues; and the Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief.
Dalai Lama succession
The International Campaign for Tibet welcomes the statement by the UN experts. “The abduction of the Panchen Lama, Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, 25 years ago is an open wound in the hearts and minds of Tibetan Buddhists,” ICT said. “The Chinese government, after years of bluntly ignoring UN bodies and international criticism, must finally allow free access to him.”
The organization added: “The UN experts also underline that any state interference with the appointment of Tibetan Buddhist leaders stands in clear contravention of international human rights law. As they rightly acknowledge such fears, this would be the case with Beijing’s stated intention to appoint a future Dalai Lama. The international community should therefore double its efforts to safeguard the rights of the Tibetans to choose a future Dalai Lama without interference by the Chinese government.”
The Chinese government has repeatedly claimed the right to choose the successor to the current 14th Dalai Lama and has passed rules and regulations to support this claim, despite criticism by Tibetan Buddhists, especially the Dalai Lama himself.
Recently, the high representative of the European Union, Josep Borrell, stated that the “selection of religious leaders should happen without any government interference and in respect of religious norms. The implementation of any legal provision should take these principles into account. The Chinese revised regulations on Religious Affairs pose serious questions in this respect and it will be therefore important to monitor their implementation … China needed to respect the succession process of the Dalai Lama.”
Tibetan Policy and Support ActLast year, the US Congress introduced the bipartisan Tibetan Policy and Support Act, a comprehensive bill that will dramatically upgrade US support for Tibetans, including by making it official US policy that only Tibetan Buddhists can decide on the Dalai Lama’s succession.
If Chinese officials attempt to name their own Dalai Lama in the future, they will face sanctions under the act.
The House of Representatives passed the bill by an overwhelming majority in January. ICT is now working to get the bill passed by the Senate and signed into law by the president this year.