Tibet Telegraph

If You Have Coronavirus Symptoms, Assume You Have the Illness, Even if You Test Negative

2020-04-02T19:38:00.001-07:00

By Harlan M. Krumholz, M. D. April, 2, 2020

Just because a coronavirus test says you don’t have the virus doesn’t mean you aren’t infected — or infectious.

You had some exposure that may put you at risk for coronavirus. A few days later you come down with a bad cough yourself and feel a little short of breath and really tired. You take your temperature: 101 degrees. A fever.

You suspect you might have Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. The days roll into each other, and your doctor urges you to stay home unless your condition worsens. You feel pretty bad, though, and finally get an appointment.

They test you for influenza by sticking a swab far up your nose, and you are told the test came back negative, you don’t have flu. They tell you they are saving the Covid-19 tests for those who are even worse off than you are. You go home with a prescription for antibiotics, possibly because they don’t know what else to do, and read about celebrities who are testing positive but don’t seem so sick.

A couple of days later, still with fevers, you go back, and the doctors relent and test you for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. They again stick something up your nose to what feels like the bottom of your eyeball.

They tell you that the results will be available in a couple of days and you go home and wait. Finally, the results come back and you are told you do not have Covid-19. Now what?

This is a real patient’s story. In fact, it is a lot of people’s story — at least some version of it. Across the world, people with signs and symptoms of Covid-19 are testing negative and wondering what it means. They are not showing up in the statistics, and they are left in limbo about what to do next.

The problem may be with the test. Current coronavirus tests may have a particularly high rate of missing infections. The good news is that the tests appear to be highly specific: If your test comes back positive, it is almost certain you have the infection.

The most common test to detect the coronavirus involves a process known as reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction, or RT-PCR, a jumble of words that describes a method capable of detecting virus particles that are generally present in respiratory secretions during the beginning of an infection. From a technical standpoint, under ideal conditions, these tests can detect small amounts of viral RNA.

In the real world, though, the experience can be quite different, and the virus can be missed. The best the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention can say is that if you test negative, “you probably were not infected at the time your specimen was collected.” The key word there is “probably.”

False-negative test results — tests that indicate you are not infected, when you are — seem to be uncomfortably common. Increasingly, and disturbingly, I hear a growing number of anecdotal stories from my fellow doctors of patients testing negative for coronavirus and then testing positive — or people who are almost certainly infected who are testing negative.

Unfortunately, we have very little public data on the false-negative rate for these tests in clinical practice. Research coming out of China indicates that the false-negative rate may be around 30 percent. Some of my colleagues, experts in laboratory medicine, express concerns the false-negative rate in this country could be even higher.

There are many reasons a test would be falsely negative under real-life conditions. Perhaps the sampling is inadequate. A common technique requires the collection of nasal secretions far back in the nose — and then rotating the swab several times. That is not an easy procedure to perform or for patients to tolerate. Other possible causes of false negative results are related to laboratory techniques and the substances used in the tests.

So, where does that leave us? Even with more testing, we are likely to be underestimating the spread of the virus. For now, we should assume that anyone could be carrying the virus. If you have had likely exposures and symptoms suggest Covid-19 infection, you probably have it — even if your test is negative. We should all continue to practice the behaviors — rigorous hand washing, not touching the face, social distancing — that impede its spread. And we need better information about the performance of these tests — including any new tests that are introduced — in the real world.

Even as better tests emerge, we should always put the test result in the context of the other information we have. It’s a lesson that endures throughout medicine: Look at the big picture, not a single piece of data. Triangulate on the truth, using all the sources of information you have, no matter how good a single test. And don’t be shy about questioning a conclusion that doesn’t fully fit the facts.

NOTE: Harlan Krumholz, M.D., is professor of medicine at Yale and director of the Yale New Haven Hospital Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation. This is article is republished from The New York Times.

New Delhi successful in alienating Karmapa

2019-02-02T18:57:00.003-08:00

By Lobsang Wangyal | February 2, 2019 |

Ogyen Trinley Dorje, the 17th Karmapa, in his New Year message to millions of his followers around the world, wished them good health, peace, and contentment. “I pray that in the year ahead we will all strive together in harmony and unity for the welfare of the earth and for the sake of all sentient beings,” he said. He released this message from Germany, although he is now based mostly in the US.

In March last year, he obtained citizenship of the Commonwealth of Dominica, an island country in the Caribbean (not to be confused with the Dominican Republic, a different country also in the Caribbean near Haiti.) Since acquiring his new citizenship, he travels without restrictions, and meets with anybody who comes to see him.

Before coming to the US in May 2017, the Karmapa’s every move was watched by Indian security agencies, and he was living under virtual house arrest. India held that he was a Chinese spy. A cash seizure was made from his office in Dharamshala in 2011, and the fact that Chinese Yuan were among the currencies found was used to substantiate India’s claim. There were currencies of 25 countries which had been offered to the Karmapa by his devotees over the years, totalling 6.5 crore (65,000,000) Indian rupees (approx 915,000 US dollars). His office was unable to deposit any of it in the bank due to the refusal of the Indian government to issue a Foreign Contributions Regulation Act (FCRA) certificate for him. This seized money was never returned to him.

The Karmapa’s dramatic flight in 2000 from Chinese-occupied Tibet to India captured the world’s attention, and was a massive slap in the face for China. He said that the reason for his escape was to prevent China using him against the Dalai Lama.

Enthronement of the 17th Karmapa

When the current 14th Dalai Lama was enthroned in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa in 1950, China did not dispute this. But it wasn’t China who had the authority to recognise the Dalai Lama. The process of recognising the lamas is a traditional one, conducted by his followers, not by non-believers or foreign governments.

In 1992, Tai Situ Lama, the head of the search party for the new Karmapa, following instructions given to him by the previous Karmapa, located “Apo Gaga” (the child who was the reincarnation the 17th Karmapa) in eastern Tibet. Feeling certain he had found the new Karmapa, he informed the Dalai Lama, who confirmed and endorsed Apo Gaga as the 17th Karmapa. Apo Gaga was then enthroned as the 17th Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje at Tsurphu Monastery in Tibet, the traditional seat of the Karmapa, when he was seven years old.

Apo Gaga himself did not claim to be a Karmapa. He was recognised to be the Karmapa by the authorities in his lineage. As with the Dalai Lama, his enthronement was also not disputed by the Chinese government. It is absurd that he is called a “claimant” by those who only have vested interests, but lack even the most basic awareness about the Tibetan culture and issues.

Constitution says India is a secular country

The recent statement by an unnamed “source” in Indian government quoted in Indian media, that the Government of India doesn’t recognise Ogyen Trinley Dorje as the 17th Karmapa, is in essence immature and senseless. Does India have the mandate to install a lama? Is it even constitutional to proclaim who is, and isn’t a religious leader? Could the Government of India decide who could be a baba (guru) or not? By this logic, then would the Pope need Indian government’s recognition in the future? For the unnamed “source” to give his verdict when the matter is sub-judice in Indian court is a matter of contempt of court. These are some issues, but now they are almost irrelevant given that the Karmapa doesn’t live in India anymore.

Having been born in China-occupied Tibet, and accepted by Beijing as the 17th Karmapa, wouldn’t India be interfering in China’s internal affairs (after all, India recognises Tibet as a part of China) by questioning his position as the Karmapa? Ogyen Trinley Dorje is now a citizen of Dominica. Could India decide the future of the citizens of another country? These are some other issues the “source” quoted by the Indian media has no awareness of.

Ogyen Trinley Dorje has been recognised as the 17th Karmapa by the Dalai Lama, the supreme spiritual leader of the Tibetan people, by the Central Tibetan Administration, and by 99% of the Tibetans both inside and outside Tibet. He doesn’t need any other or more recognition. He is the legitimate throne holder of the Karma Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism. Tibetans in exile welcomed him with full reverence as he joined them in their quest for a free Tibet. Since then it has been he as the Karmapa who has participated in official functions, NGO events, media interviews, or personal guidance of the majority of Tibetans in exile.

By seeking citizenship of Dominica, the Karmapa has clearly shown that he has no interest in gaining control of Rumtek Monastery in Sikkim, which again much of the Indian media seemed to think to be the traditional seat of the Karmapas. It is not. Tsurphu Monastery in Tibet is. It was built by the first Karmapa Dusum Khyenpa in 1159, becoming the original headquarters and the traditional seat.

Rumtek monastery in Sikkim (which is close to an old monastery built in the 1700s under the direction of the 12th Karmapa Changchub Dorje) became the exile seat of the 16th Karmapa in 1966 after he fled to India from Tibet via Bhutan. For this reason, Rumtek Monastery has great historical significance, particularly given the fact that it was once under independent Buddhist kingdom of Sikkim (later to become an Indian state in 1975). The Indian court is now free to decide about the future of Rumtek monastery, as Ogyen Trinley Dorje has left India.

Tibetan refugees in India

The Karmapa’s decision to get a travel document needs to be read in the context of the life of Tibetan refugees in India. In a statement in November to his devotees, the Karmapa said that he had sought citizenship of Dominica to make it easier to travel. He travelled out of India with a document called Identity Certificate, (popularly known as the Yellow Book, because of the colour of the cover of that document). This document enables a Tibetan living in India to travel abroad. What the officials, like the “source” and the Indian media, don’t seem to know is the enormous difficulties associated with travelling on this document, as well as many other problems such as land-grabbing by local Indians of land allocated to Tibetans, discrimination against Tibetans by locals, increasing resentment towards Tibetans, unemployment among Tibetans, and more.

A Yellow Book is issued to a Tibetan if that person is holding a Registration Certificate (RC), another document which is the stay permit for Tibetan refugees in India. The problem is that it takes at least a year, or years in some cases, to get the Yellow Book. Once it is processed, the holder needs an “exit permit” to leave the country. To process this may take weeks to months, and often involves shelling out thousands of rupees to Indian officials. Then, there is the need for a “return visa”, which follows the same procedure as the “exit permit”, and again involves wasting a lot of time and shelling out thousands of rupees.

The hardships related to the Yellow Book don’t end here. Even the Indian immigration officials often have no clue what is the Identity Certificate, let alone officials of other countries. Facing harassment is common at the immigration in Delhi. Overseas, a Yellow Book holder is brought out of the queue, causing embarrassment and discomfort in front of other travellers at the immigration gate. The holder is usually released after some questioning and confirmation. Many have wished that the Government of India change the name of “Identity Certificate” to “Travel Document”, which would make a lot more sense. But that hasn’t been done, and may never happen. For the officials concerned, it’s not their problem, and they don’t care.

Tibetans prefer to get the job done with the rupees rather than complain, as there is nowhere to bring this issue up, nor are any officials dealing with Tibetans at all interested (or who even try to understand the matter). Officials like this “source” who think they know the Tibetan issues and problems well, may not have any knowledge about such matters, or, again, would not be interested in understanding these issues. They must surely know that there are now only about 60,000 Tibetans living in India as compared to 90,000 according to the 2009 census of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA). This number would gradually shrink as the exile community naturally disintegrates against such odds and existential threats. They don’t know the real reason why. The Karmapa’s statement that he sought passport of Dominica to ease travelling problems could be used by the Government of India to reassess the situation of Tibetans in India.

Making travelling easier was indeed a good reason by the Karmapa to leave India — but could it also be the distress he felt for all these years with a “Chinese spy” tag, restrictions in travelling and meeting people, being confined to a two-room accommodation? It well could be all these causing him suffocation that led him to decide to leave India.

Benefits of spying for China

If the Karmapa was truly a Chinese spy, that would make the CTA, the Dalai Lama, and all the Tibetans who revered him complicit in this spying, as they recognize and support him to be the Karmapa. After 18 years, India, without any speck of evidence, didn’t change its position. But what the “source”, Indian intelligence, think tank, and the media do not explain is, what and how much could China pay the Karmapa to spy for them? What doesn’t he already have that China could give for working as a Chinese spy, putting his own life at risk? And what information could he possibly “spy” that could be of any use to China at all?

What Tibetans would say is, the “source” is shooting from the shoulders of the media. And to borrow Donald Trump’s favourite catch phrase “fake news”, the “source” is spreading fake news and misinformation when he says that the Karmapa didn’t apply for a visa. When the Karmapa clarified that he did apply, then the “source” changes his statement, saying the application was not complete. Should the government of India afford to keep such mediocre officials, when the matter concerns the important issue of India-Tibet-China.

The offer to the Karmapa of land in Delhi by the Government of India sounded like a desperate act to woo him back to India. But why would Karmapa want to build his centre in Delhi? Given the choice, he surely would like to be close to the Dalai Lama, and the main Tibetan hub McLeod Ganj, in Himachal Pradesh. Another indication of non-thinking on the part of the Government of India, was the refusal to accept the surrender of his Yellow Book when it was brought to the Indian mission in New York City in October. It is clearly mentioned on the Yellow Book itself that once a holder of the Yellow Book obtains any other travel document, it ceases to be valid, and must be surrendered to the nearest Indian passport-issuing authority.

In a new statement last week, the Karmapa clarified that attempts to surrender his Yellow Book to the Indian Mission in New York City were unsuccessful, with the chief official at the Mission saying that he needs to seek advice from Delhi. His India visa application was also not processed. The Karmapa further stated that there was some discussion between him and the chief. Learning about the situation, Tibet Sun reported on the same in November. It has now been learned that the chief insisted that the Karmapa withdraw from surrendering his Yellow Book, and that he should continue to travel on the same document, despite the fact that this would be against the rule enacted by the Government of India itself.

Copy of Identity Certificate showing the purpose and the rules.

It should be known that the Karmapa is needed by Tibetans in the US, Canada, and European countries, as much as he is needed by Tibetans in India. Such frequent travels are extremely challenging and almost impossible on the Yellow Book. He has been busy attending Tibetan events in these countries since moving to the US in May 2017. Since then he has been able to perform his duties as the Karmapa without any restrictions. He is free to travel anywhere he wants, and meet with anyone he chooses to. He even met with the claimant-Karmapa Thinley Thaye Dorje in France, stunning all the stakeholders — something that would have never been possible to do in India.

Shooting from the shoulders of media

The Karmapa has made his choice clear, and gotten himself a citizenship (which more or less, just a travel document), and wants to live outside India. He has made the right choice, one that anybody would choose if they were in his situation. India could choose whether it wanted to issue him a visa or not. But resorting to the usual cheap tactic of shooting from the shoulders of media without any clarity, let alone the name of the “source” shows a sense of confusion, desperation, mismanagement, as well as lack of sophistication and professionalism, by the handlers of the issue of Karmapa in the Government of India. In all earnestness, the Government of India should come out with an official statement through a spokesperson or even a press release to confirm the official position on the Karmapa, rather than giving silly comments such as that he had not applied for the visa, then later changing to the effect that he has not completed his visa application. Ogyen Trinley Dorje is the head of a global network of spiritual centres. He has top class people working for him. To say that his visa application was incomplete strikes as nothing less than ludicrous.

Indian officials shooting through media’s shoulder is counter-productive and the media mess confuses the situation further. It only prove India’s heavy-handed big brotherly strategy, especially without any sensitivity when dealing with religious minorities. Karmapa will have to clarify the fake news, and that would not reflect well on the image of the Government of India. Instead, if the officials could try to understand, they will see that the Karmapa had taken the passport of Dominica, not US Green Card. With his stature and circumstances, he could have easily sought asylum in any developed country of his choice (the US, Canada or Switzerland) within months. He didn’t because he did not want to complicate matters further, and it was not his goal to be exiled for the second time. All he needed was a travel document, and that is what he got.

Fair deal for possible return

If India wants him back, it should drop the “Chinese spy” tag, let him set up a centre according to his choice, lift all travel restrictions, and let him meet his followers, including the Chinese, without any paranoia. Indian government needs to move from being an arrogant big brother to be a wise elder brother and stop using the media as a manipulation tactic to control him. A proper diplomacy and dialogue, with some time and space, could easily bring a breakthrough. Or else, he is free now, and it wouldn’t make sense to go back to India to live where it suffocates him and face the security and media tamasha all over again. But if New Delhi’s plan is to keep the Karmapa away from India, then it is clearly succeeding!

NOTE: Lobsang Wangyal lives in McLeod Ganj, India, with some travelling overseas, and edits the Tibet Sun website. And the above article is reprinted from Tibet Sun.

The fate of freedom in Tibet hinges on democracy in China

2018-12-04T05:46:00.000-08:00

By Carl Gershman | Dec. 3, 2018 |

The death last month of Lodi Gyari, who as the Dalai Lama’s special envoy conducted nine rounds of negotiations with Beijing over Tibet’s status, offers an occasion to reflect on the increasingly troubled relationship between the United States and China.

The negotiations conducted by Gyari in 2002 through 2010 were based on the Dalai Lama’s Middle Way Approach, which seeks genuine autonomy for the Tibetan people within the framework of the existing Chinese state and constitution. Earlier in his career, when he was an interpreter for the Tibetan resistance fighters training in the United States and helped found the Tibetan Youth Congress, Gyari was committed to the struggle for Tibetan independence. He never changed his belief that Tibet is “in every sense an occupied nation, brutally occupied.” But he became persuaded that the Dalai Lama’s vision of autonomy offered a nonviolent way to preserve the Tibetan people’s religion, culture, language and identity. And after conducting exploratory talks in China in the 1980s during the period of reform under Deng Xiaoping and Hu Yaobang, he believed that such an approach was feasible.
But Beijing had no interest in finding a middle ground with the Dalai Lama, and the negotiations were unsuccessful. Beijing actually hardened its position on Tibet. In a speech Gyari gave after the breakdown of the talks, he charged that the regime had increased repression and was seeking the “cultural destruction” of the Tibetan people. China also issued a white paper denouncing the Middle Way and asserting that it wouldn’t resume talks until the Dalai Lama acknowledged that Tibet has been part of China “since antiquity,” a view rejected by all independent scholars. The growing repression, Gyari said, was responsible for “the terrible and tragic wave of self-immolations” by desperate Tibetans, whose resistance was likely to grow.

The bitter disappointment experienced by Gyari parallels the profound disenchantment with China in the United States and other advanced democracies, where policymakers once believed that as China modernized economically it would liberalize internally and become a responsible stakeholder in the rules-based world order.

In fact, exactly the opposite has happened. As China has risen economically, Beijing has become far more repressive, arresting dissidents and independent lawyers, creating mass concentration camps for Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang province, and using facial-recognition technology and other digital tools to establish what has ominously been called the “surveillance state.”

Internationally, it has militarized the South China Sea, despite President Xi Jinping’s pledge in the White House Rose Garden in 2015 not to take such action. China’s military buildup has been describedin a Pentagon study as “perhaps the most ambitious grand strategy undertaken by a single nation-state in modern times.” It has engaged in “cyber theft on a massive scale,” and through its $1 trillion Belt and Road Initiative, targets more than 60 countries in an effort to advance its economic and military goals, including securing access to strategic ports.

Such threatening behavior has provoked an international backlash that the Economist has called “the starkest reversal in modern geopolitics.” An example of this reversal was the harsh speech given by Vice President Pence last month at the Hudson Institute, which added the charge of meddling in American politics to all the other alarming Chinese actions. Some observers have seen this speech as a portent of a new Cold War. But one shot across the Chinese bow is not a coherent policy response to the greatest international challenge now facing the United States.

Here Gyari’s experience may help point a way forward. While he failed in his negotiations with Beijing, he was immensely successful as the Dalai Lama’s special envoy in Washington, building bipartisan backing for the Tibet Policy Act (2002), which institutionalized support for Tibet in U.S. foreign policy. He had many allies in this effort, but none was more devoted than Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat who is the presumptive next House speaker and whose heartfelt statement on the passing of Gyari emphasized that “members of Congress on both sides of the aisle benefitted from Lodi’s insight and wisdom.” She could be an important ally in building bipartisan congressional support for a new China policy.Two additional elements of such a policy are also tied to Gyari. The first is the importance

he attached to the role of India, which has given refuge to the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan

government-in-exile, and whose free political environment, he said, “has deeply enriched my

thinking.” The Trump administration has emphasized the growing strategic partnership with

India, which must be a core part of U.S. policy.
The second element is democracy. Gyari, like the Dalai Lama, believed in the paramount

importance of democracy for all people, not least for Tibetans and Chinese. Following the

Tibet uprising in 2008, Chinese dissident and future Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo wrote,

“Democratization for all of China is the necessary condition for any solution, whatever its

form, to the Tibet issue.”
It is not just Tibet that will benefit from democratization in China. So will the United States,

which is why this should be the long-term goal of the evolving U.S. policy toward China.

NOTE: Carl Gershman is president of the National Endowment for Democracy. And the article is originally published on The Washington Post on November 28, 2018.

Exiled Tibetans are confused about future

2018-07-30T20:57:00.000-07:00

By Jayadeva Ranade | July 30, 2018 |

Different Buddhist sects are quietly building bridges with Beijing.

For a while now there has been some confusion regarding the future among the almost 150,000-strong exiled Tibetans resident in India. There is similar uncertainty regarding the future direction in the wider community of Tibetan exiles settled abroad.

A combination of factors has contributed to this state of affairs. Important have been the sharp differences that erupted in the course of the elections to the post of Sikyong in 2016. The electoral contest was between the former Speaker of the Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile, or Assembly of Tibetan People’s Deputies (ATPD), Penpa Tsering, and Lobsang Sangay, the incumbent Sikyong contesting a second term. Notwithstanding publicised interventions by the official Nehchong “Oracle” and the Dalai Lama to calm things down, matters got exacerbated with the sudden “removal” of Penpa Tsering from his post in New York, which caused turbulence at the Five Fifty Conference held in Dharamshala in 2017. The action resulted in a vertical division in the Tibetan government-in-exile, with Penpa Tsering’s supporters launching a campaign against Lobsang Sangay. The differences have acquired wider political overtones, with supporters of the “Middle Way” mainly backing Penpa Tsering, and some backing Lobsang Sangay. The latter also has the backing of the supporters of “Rangzen” (independence).

The quiet resistance by the “old guard” to the loss of authority and privilege is another complication. Many of them were among the first batches of Tibetans who escaped to India along with the Dalai Lama and command personal loyalty and respect among the Tibetans.

The different Tibetan Buddhist lineages (sects) have also been quietly building bridges with the communist Chinese authorities in Beijing. High-ranking monks of the lineages are travelling to Tibet and China and many have received funds from the Chinese authorities to renovate their original monasteries inside Tibet. Importantly, in some cases, the reincarnations of prominent monks have been “discovered” inside Tibet and once they were formally recognised in compliance with procedures stipulated by the Chinese authorities their “enthronement” has been facilitated, and often funded, by the Chinese government. By doing so they have implicitly accepted Beijing’s assertion that it is the final authority to approve the reincarnation of “tulkus” or “living Buddhas” and high-ranking lamas. This has not gone unnoticed.

In the midst of these developments, China’s anxious efforts to prevent emergence of a situation of “two Dalai Lamas” like that of “two Panchen Lamas” have of late gained higher profile. Beijing is making persistent efforts to persuade the Dalai Lama to “return” to his “motherland”, or, at the least, afford some form of legitimacy to China’s occupation of Tibet. Channels of contact and communication exist between Beijing and the Dalai Lama, as evidenced by the visit of Prof Samdhong Rimpoche, possibly among the Dalai Lama’s closest and trusted advisors, to China in November 2017. More recently, last month the state-owned China Central Television showed a clip of Rinzin Wangmo, daughter of the Xth Panchen Lama, visiting the important Ramoche and Jokhang monasteries in Lhasa and Tashilhunpo in Shigatse, accompanied by her children.

Adding to this uncertainty among Tibetans is the extended sojourn in the United States of Uyghen Thinley Dorjee, who has been approved by China and the Dalai Lama as the XVIIth Gyalwa Karmapa, though the title is contested by three other claimants. Uyghen Thinley Dorjee has been in the US nearly a year now and is reported to have as yet given no indication of when he plans to return to India to emissaries who met him. News reports confirm that he attended the Dalai Lama’s 83rd birthday celebrations in New York.

Woodstock in the US is the second monastic seat of the XVIth Gyalwa Karmapa. The Karma Kagyu is one of the wealthiest lineages of Tibetan Buddhism and has almost 320 Kagyu Dharma Chakra Centres around the world. A Chinese who claims to have met Uyghen Thinley Dorjee in Dharamsala and recently again at the Mont Blanc store in Woodbury in the US, posted a blog this March. He claimed that Uyghen Thinley was “restricted while in India” but in the US he was free. There were no bodyguards around and Uyghen Thinley moved about freely. Mischievously, the author claimed he initially thought that “in India the police around Karmapa did not let him go out, but when he asked the head of the police in Dharamsala he was told they were listening to the government in exile!”

Jayadeva Ranade is a former additional secretary in the Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India and is President of the Centre for China Analysis and Strategy.

NOTE: The above opinion piece is republished from sundayguardianlive.com

'Secret City' is a true story

2018-07-01T15:39:00.000-07:00

By Tendar Tsering | July 1, 2018 |

Being glued to the television is my new addiction. And while surfing through Netflix, I came across with an Australian political drama, 'Secret City' several times but I never thought it is all about Tibet until I saw a post on Facebook saying, "the opening scene of 'Secret City' is a foreign woman self-immolating for a free Tibet."

Right after reading the post, I logged out of my Facebook account and logged in my Netflix account and started watching the Australian political drama. As indicated by the Facebook post, the T.V. show starts with an Australian woman shouting "Free Tibet! Free Tibet! Return the Dalai Lama to Tibet!" and setting herself on fire. The scene takes places somewhere in Bejing, China. The self-immolation scene lasts for a minute or so. The woman setting herself on fire and then the apparent police officials extinguishing the fire, it doesn't at all seem just a television show to me. For me, it is so real. I see Jamphel Yeshi and many others who died alive in protest against the Beijing government.

According to Australia's Showcase network, where television show was originally aired, the drama is based on two novels; The Marmalade Files and The Mandarin Code by Chris Uhlmann and Steve Lewis. Both novels are available on Amazon and I will be reading them shortly after. The Netflix's synopsis doesn't mention anything about Tibet, but throughout the episodes, Tibet is one of the main discussion topics and Tibetan national flag is shown several times in the show. Even in one scene, a Tibetan woman in traditional Tibetan dress is seen with a flag wrapped around herself. The show is sure to be banned in China but Tibetans, Uyghurs, Falun Gong practitioners would love watching the show and would be very grateful for highlighting their plight even if it is in the name of a fictional story.

As it is portrayed in the show, Chinese Confucius institutes and Confucius class rooms on Australian soil or elsewhere is a way not just to spread Chinese propaganda but to brutally censor any voice that Beijing considers anti-China.

The show is said to be a fiction but should be an eye opener to the Americans and Europeans. It should be taken as a warning or a forecast of China's infiltration into Australian, or American, and European politics.

Tibet is not a card

2018-06-23T08:38:00.004-07:00

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By Suhasini Haidar June 21, 2018

India must refresh its overseas China policy and its domestic engagement with the Tibetan community.

The government’s bid to ease tensions with China has been met with some criticism, particularly over a leaked memo to officials telling them to stay away from events that commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Dalai Lama’s 1959 flight to India. This has led to the cancellation of several public events related to Tibet. Much of the criticism stems from the perception that the government is attempting to appease China by giving up its “Tibet card”. Clearly, giving in to China’s aggression on the subject is the wrong pretext to nuance its Tibet policy, and as the government has said, where the Dalai Lama goes within India is a sovereign issue. However, the bigger error may be for the government to be using Tibetan refugees in India as a card in its relations with China.

Deteriorating ties

To begin with, ties between New Delhi and Beijing have deteriorated over the past few years for a number of reasons unconnected to the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan population in India: border incursions, including the standoff at the part of Doklam claimed by Bhutan; India’s strategic shift in line with the U.S.’s Indo-Pacific pivot that targets China; China’s ‘deep-pocket’ inroads into South Asia; and differences on the international stage, including over the Nuclear Suppliers Group membership and terror designations to Masood Azhar. It would be simplistic to assume that these problems would go away if India were to make the Tibetan community and its leader less visible. Therefore, while it is a mistake to play every visit of the Dalai Lama or official meeting with the leader of the ‘Tibetan government-in-exile’, Lobsang Sangay, as a ‘challenge to China’, it is equally ridiculous to portray strictures on their activities as a ‘peace offering to Beijing’.

Second, while Indian strategists have handed down the idea of a Tibet card for decades, it is time to revise this policy with a thorough evaluation of the ground, from New Delhi to Beijing and Lhasa to Dharamshala. For starters, the landscape of Tibet, now crisscrossed with railway lines, super-speed highways, tunnels and airports, has changed drastically in the past two decades. While many have written about the Beijing-Lhasa railway line, the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) now sees many more such engineering marvels (albeit at the cost of its environment), and downtown Lhasa has all the trappings of a modern city. All of this has made Tibet more self-reliant, with more jobs for the next generation. There’s an ongoing demographic shift in Tibet, with Beijing populating areas with majority ‘Han’ Chinese workers, encouraging mixed marriages, and mainstreaming Chinese culture into the region. At the same time, the outflow of refugees from Tibet has been curtailed by the Chinese authorities over the last decade, mainly by convincing Nepal to close a popular route. As a result, the number of new arrivals from Tibet into Dharamshala is down to a trickle and the once bustling informal trade route between India and Tibet has also dried up. Bollywood DVDs, once easily available in Lhasa’s bustling markets, have been replaced by Chinese and Tibetan films.

The new reality means that India’s population of the 100,000 or so registered Tibetan refugees are more cut off from developments in their homeland than ever before. New generations of Tibetans born in India are brought up as exiles, without a real sense of what Tibet may actually be like, should they ever return. As most live separately in about 40 settlements around India, they also have a tenuous link to the host country itself. The government’s attitude towards giving them citizenship has been stern, although it lost its case in the Delhi High Court (Namgyal Dolkar v. Government of India) and must give citizenship to all Tibetan refugees born between 1950 and 1987, the cut-off year. It will be equally important to devise a mechanism for those born after 1987, many now in their twenties, living in this limbo.

The bigger question that looms over the community is that of its future leadership. During his lifetime, the Dalai Lama has been a unifying force, guiding the community through their struggle in a peaceful manner, while accepting an autonomous Tibet as a part of China. While his spiritual incarnation will be chosen through a religious process, his political successor presents a more difficult task — he or she needs to be both groomed and publicly presented to the community at the earliest. The Dalai Lama himself has retained an air of mystery on the subject, suggesting at different times that his successor may be a woman, one born in a “free” land, or there may be none at all. Another possible leader, Ogyen Trinley Dorje, recognised by the Dalai Lama as the head of the Karma Kagyu sect after he escaped to Dharamshala in 2000, has been abroad for the past year. A cryptic message from his office says he will remain in the U.S. for “rest and recovery” from undisclosed “health concerns”, with no word on when he may return to India. The Central Tibetan Administration (CTA), which is empowered to run affairs and is headed by Mr. Sangay, may be the more democratic option, but it will need to carry the entire community with it. For the moment, the CTA is following a “five-50” path, to pursue talks with China in the next five years, while committing to a struggle for a more autonomous Tibet in the next 50 years. However, the past few years have seen a rise in the younger and more radical “Rangtsen” (freedom) groups that says they will settle for nothing short of an independent Tibet.

As a result, the government’s misgivings about officials attending the “Thank You, India” events with the Dalai Lama are minor compared to worries about the more restive Tibetan Youth Congress’s “Bharat Jagran Yatra”, with rallies in several cities across the country to “raise awareness for a free Tibet”. In his lifetime, there is no question that the Dalai Lama holds sway over the whole community; after him, the direction the community takes will be of vital interest to India as well.

Of equal interest are possible talks between the Dalai Lama and the Chinese government. Reports that the Dalai Lama’s special emissary, Samdhong Rinpoche, travelled to Yunnan last year have fuelled rumours that the Dalai Lama is preparing to re-enter talks with China, that were dropped in 2010. Chinese President Xi Jinping, who has now secured his position for the foreseeable future, may well take a more proactive interest in the Tibet issue, which his father once discussed with the Dalai Lama.

Ground realities

In short, the idea that India holds the “Tibet card” is out of step with all the shifts on the ground, and the government needs a proactive policy that takes into account these new realities. There is an urgent need for community outreach, surveys and a referendum, if necessary, to map what the Tibetan community in India wants in its future. For those who want to make India a permanent home, especially those in the new generation, India must reconsider its citizenship laws. Above all, the Indian foreign policy establishment needs to stop seeing the Tibetan population in India as a strategic tool.

NOTE: Suhasini Swamy Haidar is the Diplomatic Editor of The Hindu, an Indian newspaper based in Chennai, India. She can be reached at suhasini.h@thehindu.co.in

Between worlds: 60 years of the Tibetan community in India

2018-06-23T08:28:00.003-07:00

By Vidya Vankat June 20, 2018

Sitting in Dekchang’s Koko Restaurant in Majnu ka Tilla, a Tibetan resettlement colony, it’s easy to forget that you’re in the middle of New Delhi. Everything about the place evokes nostalgia for a lost homeland, from the serene Buddhist chant playing to the walls adorned with paintings capturing everyday scenes from rural Tibet — middle-aged men and women bent over their barley fields, Tibetan prayer flags fluttering atop a temple pagoda flanked by tall mountains — except that, as its Tibetan owner says nonchalantly, “I have never seen Tibet…”

Tenzin Choden, the restaurant’s owner, like most other second and third generation Tibetans in India, was born and raised in one of the refugee camps here, Doeguling, in Mundgod near Hubli in Karnataka. “Every time I hear stories of Tibet from my parents, of their carefree, self-sufficient life there, I feel the urge to return, but I know it’s not safe anymore,” he says. Choden arrived at the Delhi colony five years ago to start this restaurant. “Surviving in the city is not easy, rent is high and the business is competitive, but I’m scraping through somehow.”

Sixty years ago, when Tibetan refugees started arriving in India after the Chinese invasion, they came literally empty-handed. In his autobiography, Freedom in Exile, the 14th Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso recalls those early days, when in the sweltering heat of the Indian plains where the Tibetans had camped as refugees, many toiled as daily wage labourers in road-laying and construction sites to make ends meet, and many died. Today, the estimated 150,000 Tibetans in exile across India have come a long way, rebuilding their lives from scratch.

Karten Tsering, president of the Majnu ka Tilla Residents Welfare Association, chuckles: “I am more Indian now than Tibetan I have a ration card, I vote, I even have an Aadhaar card.” The yet-unauthorised colony has 362 registered houses and a mobile population of 4,000 Tibetans. They come from other camps across India for jobs in Delhi.

“My own children who are studying abroad now talk about returning to this colony to convert it into something like London’s Chinatown, a mini-Tibet in the middle of Delhi,” he says. Does he ever think of going back? Tsering is realistic, “There are no facilities for our people to develop there; it’s also become dangerous due to government repression. In fact, people in Tibet have been sending their children to India for decades now in the hope of a better life here.”

Gratitude for their new land reflects in the board that hangs outside the small Buddhist temple right next to the office of the Association, which announces that in the holy month of Saka Dawa starting May 16 (which falls in the fourth month of the Tibetan calendar and is believed to be the time when the Buddha attained enlightenment) the Tibetans in Delhi are praying for the wellbeing of India and its people.

****

Travelling through the hilly suburb of McLeod Ganj in Dharamsala, an overnight bus ride away from Delhi, one gets the feeling that Tibetans are caught in a time warp. The town is the base of the Tibetan government-in-exile and the office of the spiritual head of the Tibetans, the Dalai Lama, functions out of here.

On a Wednesday morning in late May, at the temple of the Dalai Lama in the Tsuglagkhang complex here, rows and rows of monks sit chanting in unison a prayer to the Buddha of medicine — Menla — asking for the good health of all the people in the world. Many local Tibetans sit around, prayer wheel in hand, joining in the chanting.

A woman worshipper says that at the end of the ceremony, Tibetan medicinal balls will be distributed to everyone and it will cure them of all illnesses. “Does it actually work,” I ask. “If you believe in it, it will,” is her reply.

To the uninitiated such practices may seem like mumbo jumbo, but a small museum at Men-Tsee-Khang, the Tibetan Medical and Astroscience Institute in Dharamsala, seeks to establish the scientific basis of Tibetan medicine. Kelsang Choden, curator of the museum, explains how the medicines — made from herbs sourced from the high-altitude Himalayas and from minerals extracted from rocks such as lapis lazuli — have been proven to cure a wide range of illnesses.

The astroscience, however, is more metaphysical in nature. The Tibetans believe that spirit beings — Nechung (oracle) and Palden Lhamo — act through a human medium, who communicates their predictions in a state of trance. Most Tibetans consult such an astrologer for all auspicious occasions from marriage to starting a new business, as an astrologer at the institute explains.

At the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives in Dharamsala, over 10,000 manuscripts from the Buddhist religious text Tripitaka have been preserved for posterity. Lobsang Kelsang, a staff member, says some of the wooden manuscripts here date back to 6 CE. “When the Chinese invaded Tibet, the monks feared that these precious manuscripts may be destroyed by them, so the Dalai Lama and his staff brought them to India for safekeeping,” he explains. The museum has murals from now-demolished monasteries in Tibet compiled into a massive book titled Murals of Tibet, by American photographer Thomas Laird.

Education has been another major way to preserve Buddhist cultural values. At the Tibetan Children’s Village in Upper Dharamsala, the principal, Ngawang Lhamo, says the students are taught regular school subjects alongside Buddhist value education. “One whole period is dedicated to teaching secular ethics and human values of love, kindness and compassion.” The non-profit residential school, which originally started in 1960 with 50 children picked up from refugee camps by Tsering Dolma, the 14th Dalai Lama’s older sister, today has 8,000 children across the country in various branches.

“We are preparing our children so that one day when we finally return to Tibet, they will be ready to take over social and administrative responsibilities,” says Lhamo. And how soon does she think that day will come? “Even India took 200 years to attain freedom, didn’t it,” she says.

****

While many ordinary Tibetans dream of a ‘Free Tibet,’ the official position is one of autonomy for Tibet while remaining within the People’s Republic of China.Lobsang Sangay, 49, is the President of the Tibetan government-in-exile, a Harvard law graduate who has initiated the Five-Fifty Policy that aims to push for genuine autonomy for Tibet within the framework of the Chinese Constitution in the next five years. “If repression of our people ends, we will not seek political separation from China. For that we need to have a dialogue with the Chinese government. At the same time we need a 50-year plan so that we know how to deal with the situation if we don’t gain autonomy soon enough,” he says.

The long-term strategy of the government-in-exile is to maintain political solidarity with their compatriots inside Tibet, while continuing to seek external support from sympathetic nations. “Monks and nuns have come forward to resist the systematic destruction of monasteries in Tibet. There have also been several cases of self-immolation by young Tibetans [agitating] for freedom from Chinese rule,” says Sangay. The Tibetan museum inside the Tsuglagkhang complex commemorates 152 Tibetans who self-immolated in the past several years. “The fact that they are doing this shows their determination and desperation for a better life. Even after 60 years, the Tibetans’ sense of patriotism and longing for the return of the Dalai Lama has not declined,” he says.

However, seeking solidarity from other countries for their cause hasn’t been easy. “I have faced a lot of hostility from representatives of the Chinese government during my foreign tours. My talks have been cancelled and I have faced protests on several occasions,” he says.

Many young Tibetans are convinced that the ‘middle way’ of seeking autonomy within China is not going to bring justice. Some young activists have come together since 2012 to organise the Rangzen (freedom) Conference to arrive at a consensus on how to steer the movement for an independent Tibet.

When I am in Dharamsala, the fifth Rangzen Conference is organised, and Tibetan poet-activist Tenzin Tsundue, speaking on its sidelines, says the effort is to not only push for a Free Tibet but to also help the local community assume political responsibility for liberation, which so far was handled by the office of the Dalai Lama.

“We have been projected as rebels, who are opposed to the political position endorsed by the government-in-exile and the office of the Dalai Lama, but all we are doing is offering a different approach,” he says.

The Rangzen Conference is also aligned with the anti-globalisation movement because, as Tsundue explains, China’s takeover of Tibet ought to be seen from the lens of globally prevalent exploitation of resource-rich countries. He cites the example of Tibet being mined rampantly for lithium to manufacture cell phone batteries in China.

Passang Dolma studies history at Ramjas College in New Delhi, and is here to participate in the Conference. He says: “Though I was born and brought up in India, I know I don’t belong here. Like how you say with pride ‘I’m an Indian,’ I too await the day when I can represent my country and say with pride ‘I’m Tibetan’.”

NOTE: The above article is originally published on The Hindu.

The Unintended Consequences of India’s Policy on Citizenship for Tibetan Refugees

2018-03-01T08:18:00.000-08:00

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By Dr. Yeshi Choedon | March 1, 2018 |

Most Tibetan refugees arrived in India after the failed revolt against Chinese rule in March 1959. After the defeat of the Tibetan army at the Battle of Chamdo and the signing of the 17 point agreement of May 1951 set the stage for China’s occupation of Tibet, the Tibetan Government did make attempts to adjust to the situation. However, the unrest started after the realisation that China was satisfied not just with the occupation of Tibetan territory but was aiming at the systematic destruction of Tibetan civilization and its complete sinicization. A full-scale national uprising against China’s rule erupted on 10 March 1959, but it was crushed by Chinese military might. This event led to the flight of the Dalai Lama and around 8000 Tibetans, seeking refuge in India and other neighbouring South Asian countries.

The uniqueness of Tibetan refugees is that they sought refuge not only for personal safety but also for the preservation and protection of their culture and religion which was under relentless attack in their homeland under China’s rule. Out of the total Tibetan diasporic community of 128,944 worldwide, around 94,203 are currently based in India. Unlike many other refugee-hosting countries, India did not adopt the policy of integrating Tibetans into mainstream Indian society. Rather, it facilitated the preservation and promotion of their distinctive culture, tradition and identity by setting up separate Tibetan settlements in various parts of India, established separate schools for the Tibetan children and allowed the functioning of the Tibetan government-in-exile to manage their affairs. Most of the Tibetan refugees in India are residing in 39 major and minor settlements, and are involved in either agriculture or agro-industries or handicrafts for their livelihood.1 There are also many Tibetan refugees living outside these settlements.

The Government of India has given autonomous power to the government-in-exile to manage Tibetan settlements and schools in India. With the generous support and assistance of India and international aid agencies, the Tibetan refugees in India have not only attained self-sustenance but also successfully reconstructed their social, political and religious institutions in exile. Due to these achievements, Tibetan refugees are considered the ‘most successful’ refugee community in the world.2

Today, three generations of Tibetan refugees are living in India. The first generation comprises mainly of those who came from Tibet in the 1950s and 1960s. The second generation are between 20 and 50 years old and were mostly born and educated in India. And the third generation is that of children of school going age.

Challenges

Although Tibetan refugees are successfully rehabilitated and resettled in India, they are confronted with a series of new challenges. Some of the challenges have emanated from the very success of the rehabilitation and resettlement policy. Two such problems are: 1) educated but unemployed Tibetan youth, and, 2) difficulties of travelling abroad for studies, visiting relatives and other social engagements.

The unemployment problem of educated Tibetan youth is the offshoot of the remarkable achievement of transforming a largely illiterate society (in the modern sense of the term) to a fully literate society within two generations. According to the Second Tibetan Demographic Survey of 2009, the general literacy rate is 79.4 per cent, and the effective literacy rate is 82.4 per cent.3 As the number of Tibetan youth with a graduate degree has increased, the government-in-exile could not employ them all in its establishment. The youth do not wish to follow the older generation’s occupation of sweater-selling or running small shops in seasonal Tibetan markets in Indian cities. They are confronted with the challenge of finding employment according to their qualification and skill. According to the Second Tibetan Demographic Survey, over 17 per cent of the total workforce population is unemployed or underemployed.4

Their status of statelessness disqualifies Tibetan youth from many job opportunities in India. Further, any economic activities outside the Tibetan settlements encounter uncertainty and insecurity as Tibetans neither have the right to own businesses or obtain a licence to engage in business activities nor are allowed to own or buy land. Further, they are not entitled to secure bank loans. The number of unemployed youth has increased over the years with many of them succumbing to drug addiction in the absence of gainful employment.

Another major challenge relates to acquiring travel documents for travelling abroad. Tibetans wish to go abroad to meet their relatives or to study or for the purpose of running the monasteries spread over various parts of the world. The Government of India issues an “Identity Certificate” (IC) for Tibetans in lieu of a passport for travelling abroad. Apart from the long and complicated process of procuring the IC, they are also required to apply for a permit to exit the country as well as for re-entry so that they could come back to India. Tibetans with this travel document have encountered problems with immigration officials at various airports as many officials are unfamiliar with this kind of travel document.

Issue of Indian Citizenship

Due to the practical problems of getting jobs and earning a livelihood as well as difficulties in travelling abroad on an Identity Certificate, the issue of Tibetans applying for Indian citizenship has gained currency in recent years, especialy after the enactment of the Indian Citizenship Act (Amendment) of 1986 which allows for the acquiring of Indian citizenship by anyone born in India between January 26, 1950, and July 1, 1987. The amendment has made a large section of the second and third generations of Tibetan refugees eligible for Indian citizenship.

Although there are no formal restrictions imposed by the Tibetan government-in-exile on Tibetan refugees seeking Indian citizenship, it has actively discouraged them from taking this step.5 There is also a strong feeling amongst the Tibetan community that taking Indian citizenship would weaken the Tibetan movement and tantamount to giving up the hope of a Free Tibet. As a result, they condemn those of their compatriots who have adopted Indian citizenship.6 But, there are still many Tibetans who would like to take up Indian citizenship for the practical reasons mentioned above.

In 2010, when an India-born Tibetan woman challenged India's Ministry of External Affairs in the Delhi High Court for denying her an Indian passport, the court ruled in her favour.7 When there was no change in the Government of India’s stand despite the court ruling, another case was filed in the court by a Tibetan man in September 2016. Once again, the court ruled in his favour. This time, the court directed the Ministry of External Affairs to treat all Tibetans who meet the criteria for citizenship by birth as Indians and issue them Indian passports. This became the Government of India’s policy from March 2017.8 However, the Government soon added riders to this policy in June 2017. It listed the following four conditions for Tibetans seeking Indian citizenship: 1) they are required to get their Registration Certificate (RC) and Identity Certificate cancelled; 2) they should not be staying in designated Tibetan refugee settlements; 3) they should submit an undertaking that they no longer enjoy the benefits offered by the Tibetan government-in-exile; and, 4) they should submit a declaration that they no longer enjoy any privileges, including subsidies, by virtue of being RC holders.9

The government-in-exile has officially adopted a neutral position on this development. Its president, Dr Lobsang Sangay, stated that “The decision to apply for Indian or any other country’s citizenship is a personal choice. If you are eligible, you can apply. The Tibetan administration has no right nor does it intend to interfere in a person’s fundamental rights.”10

The conditions imposed by the Government of India and the neutral position adopted by the Tibetan government-in-exile have put the Tibetans in India in a dilemma. It amounts to requiring them to leave their homes in the Tibetan settlements where they were born and grew up, and become homeless once again. The fact is that Tibetans desire to take Indian citizenship for the purposes of career, livelihood, and ease of travel abroad. That is, they wish to take Indian citizenship for instrumental purposes rather than because of disaffection towards the Tibetan freedom movement or any policy difference within the Tibetan community in exile.

The government-in-exile seems to be applying double standards. On the one hand, it has been encouraging Tibetans living in other countries, especially those in the West, to take up the citizenship of their host countries and labels them as Tibetan Ambassadors to distant lands. On the other hand, it does not favour Tibetans in India adopting Indian citizenship. This double standard is creating disquiet and division among the Tibetan community in exile.

The latest policy of the Government of India is aimed at easing the regulations on Tibetan refugees for travel and study abroad. It has been reported that this new policy was also aimed at discouraging Tibetans from applying for Indian passports.11 Although this move might discourage Tibetans from applying for Indian passports, it would, however, make it easier for them to leave the Tibetan settlements and migrate to other countries. Once they manage to go abroad, many of them would try to get, if not citizenship, at least residential permits. This has been the everyday practice among Tibetan refugees to date. Once they manage to become residents or citizens in Western countries, they would get pension or allowance from the host governments. Thus, while India’s easing of regulations on travel abroad may dissuade Tibetan refugees from applying for Indian passport, there is no way to stop them from becoming citizens of other countries. So the question to ponder is: how does this serves the Tibetan national movement and preservation of Tibetan civilization.

Another issue to ponder is whether those Tibetans who migrated to other parts of the world surrendered the house and field allotted to them in the Tibetan settlements in India and whether those getting a pension from the Tibetan government-in-exile surrendered their pension once they started getting pension and allowance from their new host countries. As the Government of India, through its four conditions, is proactive in depriving all these facilities and privileges to those Tibetan refugees applying for Indian citizenship, it requires to consider this issue as well.

Policy Options

It seems to be obvious that the four conditions for acquiring Indian citizenship as well as the new regulations to ease the travel abroad of Tibetan refugees could have a negative consequence in terms of dismantling Tibetan settlements which are nerve centres for the preservation and promotion of Tibetan civilization. Further, the notion that acquiring Indian citizenship would dilute the Tibetan movement is not a convincing argument as the Tibetans in other parts of the world have retained their Tibetan identity and commitment to the Tibetan cause intact despite adopting the host countries’ citizenship.

The government-in-exile needs to take a proactive role in assisting Tibetans who desire to acquire Indian citizenship for livelihood and other instrumental purposes. From the long-term perspective, it makes sense to preserve Tibetan settlements intact, as the Tibetan diasporic communities all over the world regard India as their ‘second homeland’. Many of the second and third generations of Tibetans were born and raised in these settlements in India. Tibetans abroad not only keep in regular touch with their relatives in India but also visit their former schools and institutions in India. They also come for pilgrimage, visiting not only Tibetan monasteries and different Buddhist sites in India but also to reconnect with their memories of the life they spent in these settlements. So, for the preservation of the Tibetan civilization as well as for the sustenance of the Tibetan freedom movement, it makes eminent good sense to keep the existing Tibetan settlements intact and maintain the vibrancy of the community in these settlements alive. Given all this, the hands-off policy of the Tibetan government-in-exile on the citizenship issue is untenable.

For its part, the Government of India needs to rethink its four conditions as well as the relaxation of rules with regard to Tibetans travelling abroad. India has invested nearly six decades in these Tibetan settlements and in the preservation of the Tibetan civilization in general. The rest of the world, especially the Buddhist communities in various parts of the world, appreciates the Indian contribution in making the Tibetan refugee a most successful refugee in the world. To improve the conditions of Tibetans in these settlements, the Government of India needs to redouble efforts to implement the Tibetan Rehabilitation Policy of 2014 which it adopted in consultation with the Tibetan government-in-exile. The Government of India could project these thriving Tibetan settlements at the international level as a model for post-conflict reconstruction of war-devastated societies and try to project its expertise to acquire a greater role in United Nations’ post-conflict reconstruction and peacebuilding activities with local ownership. In effect, both the Government of India and the Tibetan government-in-exile need to adopt a long-term perspective and rethink their policy towards Tibetans acquiring Indian citizenship.

NOTE: Dr. Yeshi Choedon is Professor at the Centre for International Politics, Organization and Disarmament, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

And the above research paper is republished from idsa.in.

· 1.Department of Home, Central Tibetan Administration, http://centraltibetanreliefcommittee.org/doh/tibetan-settlements.html

· 2.Dawa Norbu, “The Settlements: Participation and Integration”, in Dagmar Bernstorff and Hubertus Von Welck, ed., Exile as Challenge: The Tibetan Diaspora (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2003), p. 190.

· 3.“Latest Report on ‘Second Tibetan Demographic Survey’ Released”, The Tibet Post International, 2010,http://www.thetibetpost.com/en/news/exile/1289-latest-report-on-qsecond-...

· 4.Ibid

· 5.Fiona McConnell, “A state within a state? Exploring relations between the Indian state and the Tibetan community and government-in-exile”, Contemporary South Asia, vol. 19, no. 3, September 2011, p. 303.

· 6.Julia Meredith Hess, “Statelessness and the State: Tibetans, Citizenship, and Nationalist Activism in a Transnational World”, International Migration, 44 (1), 2006, p. 84.

· 7.High Court of Delhi (2010), “Namgyal Dolkar versus Government of India, Ministry Of External Affairs”, http://www.mcrg.ac.in/AddReading/2013/NAMGYAL%20DOLKAR%20Case.pdf

· 8.“Tibetan refugees to get Indian passports”, The Times of India, April 18, 2017, https://www.pressreader.com/india/the-times-of-india-new-delhi-edition/2...

· 9.“Government sets conditions for Tibetans to get passports, says move out of settlements, forgo benefits”, Hindustan Times, June 26, 2017, http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/govt-riders-for-tibetans-to-get...

· 10.Central Tibetan Administration, “CTA President Iterates Kashag’s Position on Tibetans Applying for Indian Citizenship”, September 29, 2017, http://tibet.net/2017/09/cta-president-iterates-kashags-position-on-tibe...

· 11.Vijaita Singh, “Centre opens gates wider for Tibetans going abroad”, The Hindu, February 4, 2018, http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/centre-opens-gates-wider-for-tibet...

Myanmar: China’s new playground?

2017-12-10T12:47:00.000-08:00

By Col R Hariharan | Dec. 10, 2017 |

The first-ever visit of Pope Francis to Myanmar to convey a message of peace and conciliation to the nation wracked by ethnic confrontation is perhaps the latest among international efforts to defuse the Rohingya crisis. This year, the Pontiff had appealed twice to Myanmar government to end the campaign of ethnic cleansing of Rohingya minority from his balcony overlooking the St Peter’s square in Rome. However, his failure to mention Rohingyas in his meeting with Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi at Naypyidaw is significant. Perhaps, the fear that the use of R word would trigger anti-Christian backlash, rather than diplomatic nicety, prevented the Prince of Rome from specifically referring to Rohingya.

Myanmar’s allergy to the ‘R’ word is perhaps the essence of Rohingya problem. The international community alarmed after the number of Rohingya fleeing Myanmar swelled to 620,000 had taken a number of initiatives. These cover a wide range of issues. The UN-supported international humanitarian conference last month raised $344 million from donors to support aid efforts for the Rohingya refugees in Myanmar. India rushed hundred tons of food and clothing under Operation Insaniyat to enable Bangladesh to help the refugees and Sikh humanitarian organisations provided hands-on help. The UN Security Council issued a statement strongly condemning the violence that had caused Rohingya to flee while the US strongly condemned the Myanmar military excesses and threatened to slap additional sanctions upon military leaders.

CHINESE HAND

Among such interventions, China can claim credit for getting Bangladesh and Myanmar to sign an agreement on November 23, to allow the return of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslim refugees back to their homes in Rakhine state in Myanmar. The Chinese peace plan draws upon the detailed recommendations of Kofi Annan Commission (KFC) report on the Rohingya issue, submitted to Myanmar government in September 2017.

According to Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi, the first phase of the three-phase plan was “to effect a ceasefire on the ground, to return to stability and order, so the people can enjoy peace and no longer be forced to flee.” The second and third phases would facilitate an orderly return of those who have fled to Bangladesh and “work toward a long term solution on poverty alleviation” to resolve the Rohingya crisis in the long term.

According to an AFP report, since the signing of the agreement a week ago, more than 3000 refugees have crossed over to Bangladesh. This would indicate that Myanmar has not adhered to the first phase of the plan and announced a ceasefire on the ground in Rakhine State and take steps to halt the out flow of refugees to restore normalcy in Rakhine State. China will be able to provide economic assistance to Rakhine State as part of the long solution only after conditions for safe return of the refugees are created.

ARMY STAND

But this is more easily said than done, because Myanmar armed forces chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, who controls ministries of border affairs, home and defence, has continued to maintain that the Rohingya problem was created by British colonialists. “They [Rohingya] are not the natives and the records prove that they were not even called Rohingya but just Bengalis” brought into Myanmar by the British during the colonial period.

He has forcefully denied the allegations of army atrocities committed against Rohingya, though UN rights bodies and international NGOs like the Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have produced detailed reports on a host of violations committed by the army that triggered Rohingya exodus. The army’s internal investigation in November 2017 has absolved it of all wrongdoing during the Rakhine operations.

The army chief’s views are shared by many of the Buddhist majority, who have come out in support of the army operations in Rakhine state. On November 19, a group of “military supporters” organized an event in which thousands of people from adjacent regions gathered in Mandalay to show their solidarity with the military and “good” civil servants. They chanted slogans in support of General Min Aung Hlaing and the military, working towards the goal of “protecting Myanmar’s sovereignty and unity.” They also read out a message from the ultra-nationalist monk Wirathu, who had gained notoriety for anti-Muslim activism.

Perhaps Aung San Suu Kyi’s muted and cautious response to the Rohingya crisis is due to public opinion in support of the military. Aung San Suu Kyi’s welcome speech at the inauguration of the Asia-Europe Foreign Ministers Conference at Naypyidaw on November 21 was carefully worded avoiding any reference to the Rohingya exodus. She said conflicts around the world gave rise to new threats and emergencies, citing how illegal immigration spread “terrorism and violent extremism, social disharmony and even the threat of a nuclear war.”

PEACE PLAN

Though China has suggested the three-point plan to defuse the Rohingya crisis, it is significant that it has not condemned the human rights abuses committed against them. Its approach is carefully calibrated to retain its involvement in the critical issue without irking Myanmar and Bangladesh, which are astride China’s strategic access to South Asia.

Usually, China prides itself in not interfering in the internal affairs of other countries. By assuming the role of a mediator between Bangladesh and Myanmar, is China assuming a bigger role in keeping with its strength as a global power? Is it in response to the strategic dynamics of the region? Answers to both questions are in the affirmative.

A second aspect is China filling the space created by the US failure to suggest a suitable plan to enable its protégé Aung San Suu Kyi to handle the Rohingya crisis more effectively. The US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who vacillated upon the issue during his visit to Myanmar earlier in the month, condemned ethnic cleansing of Rohingya in a strong statement on November 22. He said “After careful and through analysis of available facts, it is clear that the situation in Northern Rakhine state constitutes ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya” and the US supported an independent investigation into what happened in Rakhine state. He added that the US would pursue actions including possible targeted sanctions. It is significant that Tillerson statement was made after China had announced its reconciliation plan.

Equally important is the failure of the ASEAN summit held mid-November to recommend concrete actions to resolve the Rohingya crisis. Apparently, the summit wanted to soft pedal the issue, though the UN Secretary General Antonio Guetteres cautioned ASEAN members of the consequence of bypassing the Rohingya issue might cause “regional instability and radicalization.”

INDIAN DIPLOMACY

India’s stand on the Rohingya crisis had been driven by its own strategic considerations, not dissimilar to China. Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his recent Myanmar visit had urged all stakeholders to find a solution that respects the country’s unity. Even as Bangladesh and Myanmar signed an agreement to implement the Chinese peace plan, Indian and Myanmar armies started on the first-ever counter-terrorism exercise in India, indicating India’s strategic priority. It was yet an affirmation of India’s reluctance to get involved in defusing a potential confrontational situation between the two neighbours, looked upon as strategic allies.

China assuming the role of a mediator in Myanmar is in keeping with its readiness to mediate in other confrontations in West Asia and even in South Asia between Pakistan and India. It demonstrates China’s desire to use its growing international influence to provide an alternative global narrative to the West. Whether China succeeds or not in resolving the Bangladesh-Myanmar gridlock, by taking the initiative, President Xi Jinping is living up to his vision of China as a global power.

The writer is a retired Military Intelligence specialist on South Asia, and is associated with the Chennai Centre for China Studies and International Law and Strategic Studies Institute.

Is India bracing for the potential fallouts?

2017-12-04T15:38:00.003-08:00

Chinese national flag raised in
front of Potala Palace in Tibet

By P. Stobdan | December 4, 2017 | The impact of the 19th Communist Party of China congress and affirmation of President Xi Jinping as China’s ‘most powerful’ leader in decades seems already to be having a bearing on India – especially on the ‘Tibet Issue’ that deeply intersects with boundary problem. Is India bracing for the potential fallout?

  There may be more to the Dalai Lama’s desire to return home than meet the eye. The Tibetan leader’s November 23 statement – “The past is past, Tibetans want to stay with China” – carries a serious political overtone, coming as it does immediately after the 19th party congress and the Doklam standoff between India and China.
          The Dalai Lama “not seeking independence for Tibet and wishing to stay with China” is not new though, but that “he would return to Tibet at once, if China agrees” sparks fresh speculation of a possible rapprochement between him and Beijing.
             The sign of rapid thawing strangely comes at the heels of President Donald Trump’s recent visit to Beijing. Most likely, Trump wouldn’t have made Tibet a pressure point in his dealings with Beijing; rather he would have dumped the Dalai Lama (who US fostered for over half a century) on the altar of a better trade deal and for securing China’s commitment to exert more pressure on North Korea. During US officials’ trip to Dharamshala prior to Trump’s visit, this prospect would probably have been discussed.
          The inevitability of this change was clear when the US had started faltering on Tibet even earlier, when Barack Obama had to welcome Dalai Lama through the back door of the White House, signalling Washington’s inability to withstand Beijing’s pressure.
            Trump was not even inclined to embrace the issue, as he refused to meet the Tibetan leader and instead proposed zero aid in 2018 to the Tibetans, reversing decades-old American policy. The State Department has also not appointed a special coordinator for Tibet.
             Surely it couldn’t have been a coincidence that a week after Trump’s China visit, the Dalai Lama abruptly selected two personal emissaries (for indefinite period) to represent him in all ‘global engagements’. He has cited increasing physical fatigue, but the decision to appoint two “trusted friends” – former prime minister-in-exile, Samdong Rinpoche, and current president of government, Lobsang Sangay – was meant to send a calibrated signal to China.
         Anyway, the Dalai Lama has been working on a new plan – 5/50 vision – that envisaged a five-year strategy for returning to dialogue with China, but preparing for a 50-year struggle if needed – along the “hope for the best and prepare for the worst” proverb. The 5/50 strategy reaffirmed his middle way approach (Umaylam) as a realistic political means to realise the dual aim of his early return to Tibet and fulfilling the aspirations of Tibetan people.
           Appointing personal emissaries satisfies China. Beijing has been emphatically asking Dalai Lama to stop travelling to Western capitals, if talks are to be resumed. At the 19th party congress, the Tibet Work Forum chief told reporters that international figures have no excuse for meeting with the Dalai Lama. Recently, the Dalai Lama even had to abort his planned visit to Botswana, citing physical “exhaustion”.
           In a rapidly-unfolding development, the Dalai Lama may have sent his envoy Samdong on a discreet visit to Kunming (China). Samdong’s visit, starting from mid November, must have been facilitated by no less than You Quan – newly-appointed head of the United Front Work Department that overseas Tibetan affairs. Quan, who formerly served as party secretary of Fujian, is a close associate of President Xi. He had earlier successfully dealt with Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan’s business communities.
       Clearly, Samdong going to China forms part of the first five-year plan to engage with China, while Lobsang Sangay’s 17-day tour to Europe and Canada is meant to sustain the struggle for next 50 year, if the first plan fails.
           Will the talks succeed now? In the past, Chinese leaders stymied the Dalai Lama’s desire to return to Tibet. But there is a distinct possibility that it may bear fruition this time.
               First, Xi, widely known to have a soft spot for Tibet, hitherto kept it close to his chest, fearing resistance from hardliners. Unlike others, he held the view that prospects for solving the Tibet problem would peter out once the Dalai Lama is no more. Xi now finds himself in a perfect position to resolve the issue as no other Chinese leader could do, for he also stands to gain personally both in political and moral terms, to become the most credible leader in China’s history.
              Second, the Dalai Lama too long hoped for Xi to change tack, as he hailed him as a “realist” and “open-minded” in contrast to his predecessors. In fact, the Tibetan leader has admitted to having received positive signals from top Chinese officials, especially from the moderate elements as streams of Han Chinese flocked out to meet him during Xi’s first term. In May this year, the party was shocked to find their own party members clandestinely funding the Dalai Lama.
           But, most critically, Tibetans living inside Tibet may have pressurised the Dalai Lama to seize the opportunity and resolve differences during Xi’s second term, before the window for a deal closes a few years from now.
With time running out fast, the Dalai Lama can be anything but hopeful. He has been steadily losing his international support in the face of China’s rise as a world power. No longer does any country dare to receive the Dalai Lama officially.
Apart from his own ageing, the Tibetan leader faces the challenge of keeping his flock together. For example, the delay in reaching a solution causes anxiety, uncertainty and division among his people. Even inside Tibet, rising frustration and hopelessness have been highlighted by people resorting to self-immolation. The number stands at 149 so far.
And so, in what must be an embarrassing climb-down for the Tibetans, all they can do now is settle for the cause of “development”, besides hoping that the Chinese will not resort to the repression of Tibetan people.
Therefore, in a way, we are likely witness the curtains finally being drawn on Tibet’s quest for an independent state. Tim Johnson new this when he aptly titled his book Tragedy in Crimson: How the Dalai Lama Conquered the World but Lost the Battle with China.
  And finally, for India, the question is whether New Delhi has any role to play in this rapidly-evolving scene, and if so under what political parameters. There is no sign of anyone having even considered the impact of this. But to be cautious, any Sino-Tibetan deal would seriously risk undercutting India’s position on the boundary dispute with China.
Seemingly fretful about impending developments, the Dalai Lama now finds himself walking a political tightrope by espousing reconciliation between India and China, “living peacefully by putting the differences aside”. He maintained a hands-off position and tried not to get drawn even into the Doklam standoff – instead he called for a peaceful solution. One hopes he is successful this time.

NOTE: P. Stobdan, a former Indian ambassador, specialises in Chinese, Tibetan, Mongolian and Uighur affairs. And this article is originally published on the wire.

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The Last Journey of a Great Tibetan Soldier

2017-11-25T07:09:00.000-08:00

By Vijay Kranti | Nov. 25, 2017 |
The sun finally went down on one more brave Tibetan. It was a very touching moment when the last remains of great Tibetan freedom fighter and Indian Armyman RATUK NGAWANG were consigned to flames yesterday ((13th Feb 2016) at Nigambodh Ghat in Delhi. He passed away very peacefully on 7th Feb at around 5.30 pm at his home in Majnu Ka Tila Tibetan settlement in Delhi.
Late Ratu Ngawang was the Political Officer in the ''22-Establishment' of Indian Army during its most glorious days when Indian Army liberated East Pakistan from the slavery of West Pakistan in 1971. He worked very closely under the command of my (late) friend Major Genral S.S. Uban in this special successful operation which finally ended in the liberation and establishment of Bangla Desh. Before joining '22' he participated in the anti-Chinese guerrilla war as a senior leader of 'Chu Shi Gang Druk'. He played an important role in protecting HH the Dalai Lama in his exle flight to India from Lhasa in March 1959.

At Nigam Bodh Ghat this brave soldier was presented last honours by his fellow serving soldiers of '22' (VIKAS). Following his body being wrapped in the Tibetan national flag, the '22' boys wrapped him further under the Indian national flag during the last stage of his final journey. I am sure if the Bangla Desh High Commission in New Delhi were informed in time, Ratuk la would have had the extraordinary privilege of being draped in three national flags.

In his last journey he was joined by some prominent Tibetan social personalities of Delhi besides his close family members and representatives of Tibetan organizations like Tibetan Youth Congress, Students for a Free Tibet (SFT), Tibetan Women's Association and Tibetan National Congress. It is strange that the only representative from the Government (exile) of Tibet was an officer from its Security Department. The Kashag (Cabinet), the Parliament (Chitue) and the Private Office of HH the Dalai Lama were conspicuous by their absence. However, Ms. Dolma Gyari, the Kalon (minister) for Home Affairs made a personal visit to the family to offer her personal condolence.

Ratuk la was cremated in traditional Buddhist way, almost identical to the prevailing Hindu style of consigning the mortal remains to fire. His son offered the fire and his wife, a former paratrooper and a fellow soldier of Ratuk la accepted the Tibetan and India flags from the soldiers just before the body was given last rest on the wood for cremation. It was a satisfying coincidence for the family that almost all members of his family were around him until his last moment.

As I pray for this great son of Tibet, I wish Tibet is blessed by many more such worthy sons who help her in winning back her lost freedom and independence.

NOTE: Vijay Kranti is a senior Indian journalist who is a hard core supporter of Tibetan freedom. And the above article is republished from phayul.com.

WHAT’S LEFT BEHIND

2017-11-17T03:54:00.002-08:00

By Mark Austin |Nov. 17, 2017|

Cover page of Two More Years

Leave your occupied country, and your family, for an outside chance at a better life. Know that in doing so you will see neither again for many years—if ever. Or stay, and see your whole life stretch ahead of you, a prisoner in your own land.
Tendar Tsering was a member of the multimedia class I taught at a journalism school in Bangalore, South India, in 2010-11. He was a quiet, sensitive lad; a little tongue-tied due to his limited English competency, though clearly very intelligent. It’s been a pleasure to follow his journey over the past half-dozen years from India to America, where he recently got his conditional green card and has been making a living as a freelance journalist. But Tendar undertook a far more arduous and dangerous journey when he left his home country of Tibet—one he recounts in his gripping memoir “Two More Years,” whose title is a melancholy reference to the promise, living in exile, he has made to his parents, time and again, over the phone when they begged to see him again—one he has yet to be able to keep, two decades later. When he contacted me a few months back to ask me if I would review his self-published book, the first thing I noticed was how much his English had improved. The second thing was how determined he was to tell the story of his departure from his beloved homeland, where sinicization has been accelerating for the past several decades.

The book is available on Amazon and
can also be ordered from Barnes and Noble.

Tendar was born in a village in northeast Tibet where no one had a clock or watch, and time was told by hearing a rooster’s cry or looking at the shadow cast by a stick. Aged 12, his father, a monk, asked him if he wanted to go to India. The question came without warning—if his father had mentioned the plan before, he knew his son would tell his friends, and the family might be jailed by the Chinese police. Within two hours, he was on his way to Lhasa, where he joined a party of around 40 other young Tibetans making the long, perilous trek to India. From Lhasa, they made their way to Shigatse, in U-Tsang Province, bordering Nepal, walking at night and sleeping during the day, hiding from other people for fear they might be spies, or might talk to spies. To enter Nepal meant crossing the mighty Himalayas. It was a journey not everyone would complete. “Two More Years” is a moving page-turner. The sometimes awkward English never hampers its author’s powers of description; rather, it heightens the reader’s engagement and sympathy with him. There may be more polished accounts of what it requires, and what it means, to escape from Tibet, to make a life as an exile, but surely none more heartfelt.

NOTE: Mark Austin is a senior journalist and former visiting professor at Indian Institute of Journalism and new media, Bangalore.

The Trojan Horse Dilemma of the Confucius Institute

2017-11-15T16:22:00.000-08:00

By Tenzing Wangdak | Nov. 15, 2017 |
China’s rise in the international theatre has been cause for bouts of nervousness among its neighboring countries and within the U.S. and European corridors of power. As U.S. Sinologist David Shambaugh argues, how China uses its power on the global scene and how it shapes future global affairs will be “the grand strategic questions of our era.” China’s rise has certainly peaked in the economic and military field, yet its bargaining power as a trusted and influential player on the global stage remains weak.

The massive Confucius Institute Project undertaken by Hanban, or the Office of Chinese Language Council International, has been seen as a manifestation of China’s power and its “Dream” of regaining its mantle as a global power. Alternatively, it has served as an active medium for cultural diplomacy, behind the front of promoting the Chinese language and cultural dissemination, with the purpose of transforming opinions and perceptions on “China’s Rise.”

The growing influence of these Confucius Institutes on American university campuses (the United States houses the largest number of these establishments, with more than a hundred) has been met with a large degree of alarm from the scholarly community. The National Association of Scholars and the American Association of University Professors have called for either the reformation or shut down of these institutes, in order to protect the independence and integrity of American universities. Many universities have followed suit, with the University of Chicago and Penn State University closing the operations of their Confucius Institutes, with the pressure mounting on other campuses to do the same.

These Confucius Institutes are not the first of their kind. France’s Alliance Francaise, the UK’s British Council and Germany’s Goethe’s Institutes have been in existence for several decades and serve as mediums of cultural diplomacy, similar to the way the Confucius Institutes claim to do so. However, the Confucius Institute Project is under such intense scrutiny primarily because, unlike the other educational/cultural establishments, Confucius Institutes are entwined deeply within the propaganda and political machinations of the Chinese state. The Hanban, which oversees these institutes, although termed as non-governmental and non-profit, is administered under the Chinese Ministry of Education, with Vice Premier Liu Yandong as its President. With a budget of more than 200 million dollars a year and more than 400 Confucius Institutes set up all over the world (with a higher number in regions with lower public approval of China), the Hanban has turned into one of China’s most influential bodies in foreign cultural diplomacy.

These institutes are run as a partnership between the foreign university and Hanban, with the latter providing the initial set-up funds as well as teachers and study materials. This is where one of the core tensions arises. Since every study material is approved by the Ministry, there is a growing concern that such materials hide Chinese state propaganda, showcasing the communist “One Party” system in a favorable light and deflecting all questions about China’s security issues, such as Tibet, Taiwan and human rights.

The regulations that state that the Confucius Institutes will not be used for any purpose that infringes Chinese law is controversial, since the degree of censorship and control is much higher than it is in western societies. Therefore the case of Sonia Zhao, a former teacher at the Confucius Institute in McMaster University in Hamilton, who claimed that all teachers had to sign an agreement to not to practice Falun Gong before joining their positions. She also stated that the teachers were told to deflect any questions that arose in the classrooms about sensitive issues, such as Taiwan and Tibet, and to have the official regime narrative ready if they were unable to do so.

Criticism has grown from American scholars who see the Confucius Institutes as a “Trojan Horse” in their campuses: as the propagation of Chinese state interests disguised under the cloak of language and cultural education. Prof. Robert Barnett of Columbia University (which has received $1 million over five years from Hanban for the establishment of a Confucius Institute on their campus) states that the Chinese government wants more than just a presence on campus: it wants a presence on the faculty and in the teaching departments.

China believes that the international community is dominated by Western culture, ideology and languages. This explains the emphasis on “soft power” and cultural diplomacy by former Chinese leader Hu Jintao and the current Premier Xi, who see China’s rise as implicitly linked to a rise in its ability to influence the public and governments of other countries. The fanfare over the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2008 Shanghai World Expo, the Silk Route Project and the successful bid for the 2022 Olympics are attempts by China to raise its global profile while throwing a cover over its less favorable track record of human rights violations, censorship and justice issues.

The Confucius Institutes are part of this vision of strengthening China’s geo-political influence on the international system, through developing an audience that is competent in its understanding of Chinese culture and linguistics. In the case of the U.S., according to the recent Pew Global Center survey, 47 percent of the American public do not view China in a favorable light and without surprise, the U.S. has the most Confucius Institutes by far. What is of interest is that Confucius was reviled during the Mao regime but has now become the face of this project, since the former is seen in a much better light than say a “Mao Institute” would be.

It is too soon to gauge the full extent of the impact Confucius Institutes have had on the American intellectual community, as many of the universities which house these institutes, such as Columbia and Stanford University, are too big to have academic terms, such as restrictions on classroom discussions or events such as seminars, dictated to them. What one cannot ignore is the effort the Chinese state has put into these institutes to try and realize its public diplomatic goals and create a “favorable environment” within the U.S. public sphere. The fears of the academic community over the “Trojan Horse” threat of these institutes cannot be simply ignored, and a long-term study of the Confucius Institutes and the path they take in the future is necessary.

NOTE: Tenzing Wangdak is a graduate student at New York University. The above article is originally published on www.chinausfocus.com.

Grace in Disguise

2017-09-15T12:12:00.004-07:00

This is the actual statement made
by the parents of the deceased.

By Tendar Tsering | Sept. 15, 2017 |

Tom was workaholic and friendly with everyone at his work. It was Tom, who would serve coffee, or make print copies for everyone. Every time. Every day. He was like that as long as he could remember. But in recent years, things had changed, and so was Tom.

Layoff after layoff, Tom was merely a layoff survivor. He was struggling with increased workloads and heightened stress— often doing the works of three or four people. He was badly waiting for his retirement. He had a long list of to do things after retirement. He wanted to volunteer at the local church. He wanted to tour Europe. He wanted to spend time with his grand children, and his ex-wives. His list went on and on.

And yesterday, he finally retired. He was deliriously delighted to inform the news to his friends in the town. As soon as, he passed the highway, and entered into the much quiet, and familiar street, he canceled the GPS on his cell phone, and tried to pick up the phone from behind the steering wheel. He slipped the phone, and as he tried to catch the falling phone, his hand momentarily struck in the steering wheel, and he lost control of the car, and he landed his car in someone else’s driveway. He heard a thud as if his car hit a deer, or garbage can. He stopped the car, and got out, but saw nothing. He looked around, and got back in the car again. As he drove away from the driveway, he saw a child around two years old totally crushed, and bleeding. Tom was motionless. Senseless. Absolute numbness. After seconds, his senses came back, and his hands were shivering. He tried to open the car door and get out, then, he saw a woman in late 40s screaming and running from the house. Tom stood still in the car, sweating and shacking.

Within minutes, the woman held up the toddler in her arms, shouting, “Ngi bhu, ngi bhu.” Soon, a man in early forties, apparently the father of the child came out of the house, and the two rushed the child to the nearest hospital. Tom was still in his car, and still in the family’s driveway.

After some time, Tom called his son, and explained what happened to him. Tom told his son to come and pick him up as his hands were still shacking. Shortly, Tom’s son and his wife came. Tom and his son headed to the local police station to confess the fatal crush. And Tom’s daughter in law drove Tom’s car back to their house.

Tom spent the night at the police station confessing and cooperating with the officers. Early this morning, Tom received a letter from the parents of the toddler. In the letter, it was written like this, “Our son, our two year old son, Tenzin is no more with us, because of the tragic accident, and as this is as unbearable as, is an opportunity for us to practice compassion and understand that we all are here for momentarily. So, we forgive you, and hope, you will forgive yourself, and everyone will take this as a lesson to drive carefully in the future.”

Tom was speechless. So were the police officers. And officers drove Tom back to his house.

NOTE: The above piece is a fictional account in the characterization of the driver who crushed a Tibetan toddler to death in Florida this week. And the writer has no knowledge of the actual car accident rather than moved to tears by the act of the parents of the child, who publicly announced to forgive the man responsible for their child’s death.

What China Wants By Provoking India At Sikkim Border

2017-06-29T11:13:00.003-07:00

By Chandan Mitra | June 29, 2017 |

Those who saw the quasi-friendly, quasi-hostile sledging between Indian and Chinese soldiers on a barren patch of land strewn with stones, apparently near the Nathu La Pass on the Sikkim-Tibet border, must have been left quite bewildered. The first reaction of most would have been that some harmless jostling was in progress in inhospitable heights where Indian and Chinese forward positions exist face-to-face across an unmarked border. But when Chinese troops unceremoniously pushed back a batch of Indian pilgrims and stopped them from proceeding to Kailash-Mansarovar, matters looked more serious than initially thought.

Tuesday's official statement from the Chinese authorities made it plain that the Nathu-La route will not be reopened for pilgrims till certain issues are resolved. The statement was followed by a belligerent article by a Chinese "scholar" - normally a euphemism for a Communist Party hack - warning India not to fall into America's trap, clearly a reference to the bonhomie on display during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the US and the equation he struck with President Donald Trump.

Undoubtedly, Beijing is unnerved by New Delhi's close association with Washington and is sending a message to both capitals against bolstering equations between India and the US. If in the process, 49 hapless pilgrims are victimized by Chinese high-handedness, well, so be it!

Clear and irrefutable details of precisely what happened along the border are not forthcoming despite the Chinese media's blatantly untruthful jibe that the Indian military establishment "spoon feeds" our media without disclosing the "facts". In fact, both the government of India and the army authorities have been spectacularly silent on the issue. Apparently, in a typical demonstration of military might, Chinese soldiers intruded into Indian territory and destroyed at least two Indian Army bunkers. Our forces had apparently intervened on finding the Chinese were building one more road in the sensitive border area. Beijing claims that the road is being built inside "undisputed" Chinese territory. Paradoxically, China, which does not recognize the McMahon Line calling it a "colonially imposed" arbitrary demarcation of the Indo-Tibet border, now refers to an Anglo-Sikkim Agreement to assert that the new road is being constructed outside the territorial limits of the erstwhile Kingdom of Sikkim.

The matter may or may not be too serious as admittedly the undemarcated portions of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) are frequently violated by Chinese troops and occasionally even by Indian forces when they notice suspicious activities on the other side. On large stretches along the Himalayan ranges, the border is unmarked, and in the Aksai Chin region of Ladakh (occupied by China since the 1962 conflict), this is a frequent occurrence. The Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) is known to periodically flex its muscles, enter Indian territory and even construct a helipad or two (as they did in Sumdorong Chu in Arunanchal Pradesh in the early 1980s). Usually the Chinese authorities either live in denial about such incidents or mildly rebuke India for "intruding" into their territory.

But this time, the matter is more contentious. To begin with, it is the first occasion that the Chinese have blocked access to the holy Mount Kailash through the Nathu-La route since it was opened in 2006 to facilitate both trade and pilgrimage. Till 2003, China claimed Sikkim was an independent country whose monarch had in the past accepted Beijing's suzerainty. This make-believe assertion was finally dropped by China during then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's visit to Beijing in 2003. It was also agreed during that visit that the two countries would progress rapidly to formally delineate unmarked portions of the Line of Actual Control as the first step towards settling the long-standing border dispute. India and China appointed two Special Representatives (then National Security Advisor Brajesh Mishra was New Delhi's nominee) to take the negotiations forward. Informally, the two countries agreed to demarcate a permanent border "without unsettling settled populations". Shorn of diplomatic verbiage, this was interpreted to mean China giving up its claim on 90,000 sq. kms of Arunachal Pradesh, particularly the district of Tawang (which was well-populated), in exchange for India officially recognizing China's occupation of the unpopulated cold desert of Akasi Chin, most of which has been under Chine occupation. This still left the issue of the slice of Indian territory seized by Pakistan and subsequently "gifted" or ceded to China by Islamabad. It is through this piece of mountainous terrain that the controversial China-Pakistan Economic Corridor is being built to give China access to the warm waters of the Arabian Sea through the Gwadar port

While the latest hostile action on the Nathu La Pass and the verbal conflagration that followed may not escalate into something bigger, India needs to clearly size up China's Big Power aspirations. Beijing has always aspired to be the Asian hegemon. It is intensely distrustful of its two economically powerful neighbours - Japan across the sea and India across the mountains. India, however, is a huge market for Chinese consumer goods. And that is an opportunity Beijing does not want to forgo. But India's growing economic and diplomatic clout ruffles China. The evident camaraderie between two tough-talking leaders, President Trump and Prime Minister Modi disturbs China's long-term goals. India's unflinching opposition to China's grandiose One Belt One Road (OBOR) idea marks a setback for Beijing's strategic economic and political pursuits. Clearly, China wants to keep India engaged in territorial issues with it and its ally Pakistan. Since it has surged way ahead of India in terms of economic development, China wants to zealously guard the advantage, pricking India from time to time to register its military superiority.

Arguably, India has to both compete and, in many cases, cooperate with China and cannot afford permanent hostility. But there is an in-built economic conflict between the two countries that is bound to spill over into active hostility, spurred mainly by China. Beijing prides itself for settling border disputes with all its neighbours except India. But these settlements have mostly been among unequals (barring Russia). India's status in the world today nettles China but New Delhi too needs to tread cautiously without escalating tensions.

Disruption of the Kailash-Mansarovar Yatra may seem humiliating, but if China insists on flexing its muscles in this manner, we may need to ignore it for the present and await a suitable opportunity to demonstrate our growing clout in the world. But for that, India's economic growth must catch up with China at least in the medium term. Resolving the border issue cannot be our priority till then.

(Dr. Chandan Mitra is a journalist, currently Editor of The Pioneer Group of Publications. He is also former BJP MP, Rajya Sabha.)

President Trump, meet the Dalai Lama

2017-05-24T08:13:00.003-07:00

By Lobsang Sangay | May 24, 2017 |

The Dalai Lama

On his first foreign trip, President Trump has met with King Salman in Saudi Arabia, the home of Mecca and Medina, the holiest shrines of Islam. He met Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel and visited the Western Wall, all that remains of the Jewish Temple Mount. And he then met with Pope Francis in the Vatican.

As the president has reached out to adherents of the world’s interconnected monotheistic religions — Islam, Christianity and Judaism — he should also meet with His Holiness the Dalai Lama. His Holiness is the most visible and important Buddhist leader in the world and has throughout his life been a proponent of the highest ideals of Buddhism, including non-violence, compassion, equanimity and kindness.

Such a meeting would assist in bringing these principles to bear on issues of world peace and nonviolence. There are an estimated 700 million Buddhists in the world today, including 300 million in China, and 6 million in Tibet.

It is critical that President Trump understand how the situation in Tibet could be improved.

The 2017 Freedom House report ranked Tibet as the second-worst place in the world for civil and political rights, just behind Syria. An estimated 1.2 million Tibetans have died since the Chinese occupation of Tibet and over 6,000 monasteries in Tibet have been reduced to rubble. Forced cultural assimilation of Tibetans in fueled by replacement of Tibetan-language education with Mandarin. Government-sponsored migration of large numbers of Han Chinese into the Tibet is a major component of sinicization.

Lack of access has made visiting Tibet sometimes even more difficult than hermetic North Korea. Demonstrating their profound hopelessness, 149 Tibetans have self-immolated in Tibet since 2009, including four this year. The Chinese government has also installed an Orwellian electronic and human surveillance system covering every area of the Tibet Autonomous Region, which is vast, intrusive and permanent.

The United States is the leading nation of the free world. It alone among all nations is best positioned to help China become a more open society, one where its leadership realizes that true stability and prosperity comes not from the barrel of a gun but through rule of law and freedom of expression. Among the many problems confronting the Chinese leadership, the Tibet issue should be relatively easier to address because of the "Middle Way" approach that has been the position of His Holiness the Dalai Lama for over three decades years and is strongly supported by the Tibetan people.

While recognizing and respecting the One China policy of the U.S. government, the Middle Way envisages genuine autonomy for Tibetan people and the restoration of human rights and religious freedom for people in Tibet. It contemplates a constructive dialogue to develop an appropriate framework and solution that will work for everyone. The U.S. government has consistently supported the Middle Way that the Central Tibetan Administration, of which I am the president, has advocated for more than 30 years. This approach is supported by the Tibetan Policy Act adopted by the Congress in 2002 and has been supported by U.S. presidents ever since.

Like in the case of Israel-Palestine issue, where the President Trump has showed optimism, he should use his growing relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping to facilitate autonomy and fundamental rights for the Tibetan people consistent with both the One China policy and the Middle Way. In the meantime, it is crucial that the president appoint a Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues at the State Department as soon as possible. The position has been vacant since the inauguration, and the person in this role has played a critical function engaging in political and humanitarian efforts.

Each and every U.S. president since George H.W. Bush has met with His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Each of these presidents reported the meeting provided a fresh and unique view on political and spiritual issues that currently confront us as a global community. President Trump and His Holiness the Dalai Lama would certainly find much to discuss as we see the world torn by violence and conflict.

Adding a Buddhist voice and perspective to those that President Trump undoubtedly heard this week from Christian, Muslim and Jewish friends can only be helpful and broadening. In addition, it would provide an opportunity to discuss the situation in Tibet and to revisit, revitalize and advance U.S. support for the Middle Way approach.

NOTE: This above opinion piece is reprinted from The Hill, and Lobsang Sangay is the president of Central Tibetan Administration.

The 19th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party

2017-05-21T10:14:00.000-07:00

By Jayadeva Ranade | May 21, 2017 |

The upcoming 19th Congress of the nearly 88-million strong Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is important not only for Xi Jinping and China, but potentially for China’s neighbours and the world. It will consolidate the course on which China is set.

The standard preparations for the 19th Congress have been underway since last year. 2300 delegates representing the CCP’s 88 million members divided into 40 blocs representing workers, farmers, peasants, soldiers, women, entrepreneurs etc. will be elected by June 2017. The CCP Central Committee (CC)’s General Office and groups in the CCP CC including veteran cadres, who though retired remain very influential, are finalising drafts of the report to be read by Xi Jinping. There are indications that the Party Constitution is likely to be amended and a major inclusion will probably be Xi Jinping’s speeches and instructions as ‘Xi Jinping Thought’ or ‘Xi Jinping Theory’. In July 2014 the authoritative Party theoretical journal ‘Qiu Shi’ (Seeking Truth) had called Xi Jinping as “one of China’s greatest communist leaders” who had put forward “new thinking, new views and new conclusions”. More recently the Head of the CCP CC General Office Liu Zhanshu stated in an internal address given in February and published on the social media account of the People’s Daily ’s overseas edition on April 30, 2017, that Xi Jinping’s key speeches formed a “complete theoretical system”. He said “They cover all aspects of reform and stability, domestic and diplomatic affairs, military operations and party rule.” No other CCP Chief has gained such stature yet!

Whether the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will retain its strength in the 19th Congress and the CC it elects is unclear. The PLA is being streamlined and reduced in size which means that the number of full and alternate members that it has in the CC could drop. The 7 Military Regions have since been replaced by 5 Theatre Commands. Also pertinent is that since last year Xi Jinping has pushed a trend for professionalising the PLA and quietly ‘pushing it back into the barracks’ as it were. Official reports last year publicised that 86 PLA officers of the rank of Major General and above had been dismissed for corruption. China’s official news agency ‘Xinhua’ on March 27, 2017, stated that a total of 4,885 military officials were punished for disciplinary offenses in 2016. It quoted a PLA Daily commentary which called for strict scrutiny in personnel work and especially in the promotion and selection of military cadres. It asserted that "Malpractice, including spreading political rumours, reckless comments on the Party's theories and policies, and participation of illegal associations should all be prohibited and punished" and urged servicemen not to be distracted, and concentrate on building a strong military and maintaining a high degree of focus in combat training. The number of provinces which now have a PLA representative in their Provincial Party Standing Committee has drastically reduced. While Xi Jinping may not advocate a reduction in PLA representation at this Congress it is something that will happen definitely by the 20th Congress.

Like at the last Congress when in a departure from past practice appointments at senior levels of the PLA and Central Military Commission (CMC) were filled before the Congress, it seems that this could be the case this time too. The PLA Navy Commander and the Commander of the Southern Theatre – for the first time ever a PLA Navy officer – were appointed this January. Reports have been in circulation since early last year that decisions have already been taken regarding the next PLA Air Force (PLAAF) Commander and some other appointments.

The 19th CCP CC will witness a major personnel turnover. Over 200 vacancies, or exceeding 60 per cent, in the 376-member CC are anticipated – occasioned by deaths, people reaching the retirement age and dismissals on charges of corruption. It is assessed that 208 of the CC members are to retire in the normal course with another nearly 35 purged for corruption. If the retirement criteria informally decided at the 17th Party Congress stays in force then of the present 7 Politburo Standing Committee (PBSC) members 5 will retire as also 11 of the 25 Politburo (PB) members. The most important of these bodies is the PBSC and the selection of cadres for elevation to the PBSC will be the focus of the greatest attention not only of Xi Jinping but also of the Party ‘elders’.

Reports have, however, been circulating in Beijing since the Sixth Party Plenum in October 2016, which designated Xi Jinping as the “core of the Party leadership”, that Xi Jinping may retain 68-year old Wang Qishan, his school friend and current Chairman of the Central Discipline Inspection Commission (CDIC) that spearheads the anti-corruption campaign, in the PBSC. If so, then Xi Jinping will have ignored the informal rules in force since the 17th Party Congress that cadres of 67 years of age would be ineligible for elevation to the PB/PBSC. But such a change is under consideration for “special cases” as indicated by the remarks of Deng Maosheng, a Director with the Policy Research Office of the CCP CC, who in November 2016 described it as a “perceived convention only”. He added that “the arrangement can be flexible with reference to circumstances” and that “‘Seven up, Eight down’ is not set in stone”.

In case such an exception is made then PBSC member Liu Yunshun, who is exactly a year older than Wang Qishan, can also advance a claim. He has held charge of the powerful and important propaganda apparatus and formulated and enforced progressively tough control measures in academia, the official media, cultural scene etc. over the past decade. He also heads the important CCP CC Secretariat, which under Xi Jinping is very powerful. It opens the way also for Xi Jinping’s continuance beyond the 20th Congress.

In addition reports are circulating in Beijing that the PBSC may be further downsized from the present 7 to 5 or even scrapped altogether. The latter would very obviously strengthen Xi Jinping’s authority immensely and possibly undermine collective decision-making in the CCP. It would accelerate China’s moving on its new trajectory where it is expanding its economic, strategic and diplomatic ‘reach’ well beyond its borders with OBOR, CPEC, SCO, AIIB etc. Xi Jinping’s acolytes have been saying since 2013 that China under Xi Jinping has embarked on a new 30 year era like that of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping before him.

Xi Jinping will try and induct as many of his protégés into the CC, PB, and PBSC. On the basis of appointments made by him so far, it is assessed that Xi Jinping’s choice of cadres will largely be from among those of ‘Red families’ or ‘Red nobility’; those with a military/security background; educated cadres who have served in difficult, remote or poverty-stricken provinces like Guizhou; and cadres not affiliated or aligned to factions of any surviving senior leaders. A number of those identified as Xi Jinping’s protégés are younger cadres born in 1956 or after and many will be first time entrants to the CC. By February 2017, Xi Jinping had already promoted and positioned 130 cadres in important posts.

Some of Xi Jinping’s key cadres can be considered as reasonably certain to enter the PBSC, like Liu Zhanshu. He is a third generation ‘Red’, has served in a poverty-stricken province and is a long time highly trusted confidant of Xi Jinping. He is already a PB member and if age is the criteria is just eligible for elevation as he was born in 1950 and is 67 years old. There are others like Ding Xuexiang (DOB: 1963) who is presently an alternate member of the 18th CC but is tipped to take over from Liu Zhanshu and could be promoted to the PB at the 19th Congress. Others include PB members Hu Chunhua (DOB: 1963) who is Party Secretary of the important Guangdong province; Sun Zhengcai (DOB: 1963) who is Party Secretary of Chongqing Municipality; and Vice Premier Wang Yang (DOB: 1955), all of whom were earmarked for higher office during Hu Jintao’s tenure. Among other likely entrants to the PB are Huang Kunming (DOB: 1956) who is a princeling and an alternate member of the 18th CC and Li Shulei (DOB: 1964), reputedly a child prodigy and member of the 18th CC.

Finally, the 19th Party Congress has implications for China’s neighbours and the world. If, as is expected, Xi Jinping emerges strengthened from the Congress then China’s already assertive posture will be accentuated. There are signs, however, that some sections have differences with Xi Jinping on strategic issues. For example, when Xi Jinping initiated the request for a meeting with US President Donald Trump, retired PLA Major General Jin Yinan, a national security strategy expert and former Director of the Institute of Strategy Study at the PLA’s National Defence University, questioned the timing of the meeting in a posting on internet which received wide circulation inside China. China’s push to dominate the South China Sea will nonetheless gather strength. For Xi Jinping it is important to enhance China’s stature on the world stage.

The ‘China Dream’ and OBOR are flagship national projects identified with Xi Jinping. Their respective target dates are 2021, or the CCP’s centenary and 2049, or the hundredth year of the founding of the People’s Republic of China! Xi Jinping will strive to achieve both. This will imply greater pressure on countries to endorse the OBOR and a toughening of China’s already assertive stance.

NOTE: The author is a former Additional Secretary in the Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India and is President of the Centre for China Analysis and Strategy.

TWO MORE YEARS: A Memoir Book in the Making

2017-05-09T08:06:00.000-07:00

By Tendar Tsering | May 8, 2017 |

I could call my family in Tibet twice a year, but they couldn’t contact me. There was no

international out call service in most of the places in Tibet. It was a forbidden region. I would call them once in awhile. Occasionally I was able to reach them but most of the time, they were unreachable.
“Duibuqi, ni de dianhua buzai choe” –Your call is not reachable— was the answer most of the time, but occasionally, I was able to reach them after hours of trying over and over again.
Whenever I spoke with my parents over the phone, I sensed both of my parents were living in agony and regret. My mother would often apologize to me for sending me away to an unknown country. She would always keep sobbing. Her agony and her tears would always remind me that the pain in her heart was still an open wound. Knowing my tears would be like rubbing salt into her open wound, I would always calm myself, and hold in my tears. But I often cried in silence while lying on my bed, drowning myself with tears.

At a time when I was unable to reach them through phone calls, I never dreamed that a day would come where we could do video chat. But since 2010, things were different. We had several free, cross-platform and instant messaging applications where we could talk regularly. And there was the possibility where we could do video chat if my parents or my brother knew how to start or accept a video call. So, I told my family to seek help from someone to make sure that they could come online and do a video chat with their long lost son. We had in fact tried to have a video chat for years but we failed.
For days, I was glued on my bed as my family and I had decided to see each other face to face via video chat. I combed my hair with my fingers. I washed my face. And with my best clothes on, I was just lying down with my laptop on my lap and waiting for my parents to come online. My eyes were motionless fully focused on my laptop screen as if I was going to enter into the screen. One hour after another, more than six hours passed, my parents still didn’t show up. I was not surprised, because that was not the first time where we failed to meet online. I was not that hopeful to see their faces either. The previous year, my parents had travelled hundreds of miles from our hometown in order to have a video chat with me but we failed to do that. However, a part of myself was still hopeful. I felt the day I had been dreading was finally coming. From dawn to dusk, I didn’t sleep a wink. Apart from constantly rushing to the toilet to pee, I was totally glued on my bed with my laptop on my lap. I could hear the echo of my fingers constantly drumming on the keyboard. My face, rigid with excitement and then frustration, I truly seemed to have aged decades in last two days. At the last minute that I almost knocked off my laptop in anger and frustration, finally the call rang on my laptop. I clicked the green button to accept the video call. I was suddenly transported back to my family. It was like a returning home, but at the same time, I felt strange, as everything had changed in my absence. My three-year-old, younger brother had turned into a young man, much like my father. My parents who were then in their early thirties had turned into much like my grandparents and sadly my grandparents were nowhere to be seen; probably they were waiting for me at the heaven’s gate.
My mother with her toothless mouth wide open, started wailing as if she was going to get a stroke out of crying. My father in his Buddhist monk robe stood behind with tears racing down on his cheek, sniffing and patting on my mother’s shoulder, trying to console her. We were all speechless. Then, my younger brother started speaking.
“Ani?” he said trying to start the conversation.
I turned my head away from them for a minute. I wiped my tears, and said, “I am going to the United States.”
“Then, when would you be able to come home?” said my brother.
“Two more year,” I replied as I swallowed the lump in my throat.
“Ga re shey ge dub?” my mom asked while struggling to still herself up.
“Two more years,” translated my brother.
My younger brother was our interpreter. My mother knew only our regional dialect, and I had forgotten our regional dialect.
“Tsering lho gya, khe lama kyab,” my mother wished me long life, and requested me to come and see them as soon as possible. I could understand what my mother was saying but I didn’t know how to speak in our regional dialect. So, I said, ‘yes’ to whatever my mom was saying. As usual, she did not say much, she just kept sobbing and apologizing to me.
My dad jumped in and spoke a few words. He was also a man of a few words, at least with me. Both of my parents were apologetic. No matter, how many times I told them that I had grown up into a fine, “educated man”, all thanks to them, they were still living in regret and agony. They didn’t say much, just kept quiet, shed tears, and urged me to visit them as soon as possible.
“When are you coming home?” was what my mother never missed to ask me, but to their despair, my answer was always, “two more years.” For years, I had been giving that same answer.
“Life expectancy of people in our town is short, people are dying around 60s,” said my brother, after an hour of video chat, an hour of sobbing and staring at each other to be precise.
“Okay,” I replied with a heavy heart. What my brother just said was like an icy wind running down through every inches of my nerves, numbing my senses and making me go blind for a moment. With our trembling hands and tears in our eyes, we waved at each other to say ‘good bye’. Within minutes, my laptop screen went black. So was I. Slowly as I gained my senses back, I reflected back what I just saw— my three-year-old younger brother turned into a man, much like my father and my parents turned into much like my grandparents— everything had changed in my absence.

It was my foolishness, but I could not let go off of the images of my younger brother as a three-year old toddler, and my parents in their early thirties. I could see my pa in my younger brother and my younger brother in my nephew. No matter how hard I tried to let go off of the past and embrace the reality, a part of myself was still stuck in the past. There was no turning point. The emptiness was always there, I merely hid the nostalgia by masking it with a smile.

NOTE: This is an excerpt from an unpublished Tibetan memoir book titled TWO MORE YEARS. The author hopes to get a publisher by the end of this year or early next year.

The Dalai Lama in Mongolia: 'Tournament of Shadows' Reborn

2016-12-03T12:24:00.006-08:00

By M.A. Aldrich | December 03, 2016 |

On November 19, 2016, the Dalai Lama arrived in Ulaanbaatar for a five-day visit that was called a religious event by the Government of Mongolia. In fact, the trip can be seen as the latest move in a geopolitical chess game that has been going on since the 16th century. On his fourth day in Ulaanbaatar, the Dalai Lama held a press conference where he said that he is convinced of the recent rebirth of the Jebtsundampa Khatagt in Mongolia. The Jebtsundampa Khatagt, meaning the “Reverend Noble Incarnate Lama,” is the traditional title bestowed upon the patriarchs of Mongolian Buddhism, which, as an institution, follows the teachings of the “Yellow Hat” sect under the Dalai Lama’s leadership.

The newly born Tenth Patriarch is believed to be a reincarnation of a highly placed lama or tulku in a lineage that had nearly been extinguished in the early 20th century. The announcement puts into play a geopolitical contest where the exiled Tibetan leader and the Governments of Mongolia, China, and India all have a stake in its outcome, to varying degrees.

The Buddhist Patriarchs of Mongolia

Yellow Hat Buddhism arrived in northern Mongolia in 1586 when the Third Dalai Lama initiated the Abatai Khan, the ruler of a central province, into an esoteric ritual and philosophy called the Kalachakra. It is from this time that Buddhism firmly put down its roots in the region of what is today the sovereign state of Mongolia

Fifty years later, the ruling grandson of the Abatai Khan arranged for one of his sons to be inducted as a Yellow Hat monk with the Sanskrit name Zanabazar. In 1639, Zanabazar was recognized as the reincarnation of Taranatha, a revered Tibetan scholar and founder of the Jonangpa philosophical school of Tibetan Buddhism. In 1647, Zanabazar’s clan took him to Beijing as the Jebtsundampa Khatagt to pay homage to the recently installed Manchu emperor of China.

Zanabazar was the first of eight patriarchs officially recognized by the Qing Court as the ecclesiastical leaders of northern Mongolia. In their homeland, the patriarchs were the third most senior lamas after the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama. Zanabazar is remembered as both a distinguished polymath noted for his bronze artwork, religious texts, and scientific experiments as well as a shrewd political strategist who allied his clan’s interests with the rising Qing Empire. After Zanabazar’s death in 1723, the Second Patriarch was found in northern Mongolia in the person of the one of the great-grandsons of Zanabazar’s brother and duly enthroned with the support of the Manchu throne and the Yellow Hat clergy in Lhasa.

Manchu Imperial Intervention

By the middle of the 18th century, tensions had arisen between the Manchu court and the ruling elites in northern Mongolia. In 1756, a cousin of the Second Patriarch led an unsuccessful rebellion against Manchu rule, a disturbance that convinced the Qianlong Emperor of the need to break the potentially seditious relationship between the Mongolian elites and the leader of their Buddhist clergy. In 1758, the emperor declared that upon the death of the Second Patriarch, all subsequent reincarnations had to be found in Tibet and born of Tibetan parents in a process closely supervised by the Manchu court.

The Qianlong Emperor was able to command these changes since he was more than just a secular ruler in the view of the Buddhist clergy. The Dalai Lamas had declared the Qing emperors to be the reincarnations of Manjusri, the bodhisattva of wisdom. This brought about an unintended extension of secular power into the domain of the spiritual, a situation that continues to provoke unrest in Tibet to this day. The Tibetan-born nominees for the position of Mongolian Patriarch had to be approved by the emperor’s court in Beijing, then by the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama, and finally the name of the candidate had to be drawn from a golden urn in the Yonghegong temple in Beijing.

The final performance of this imperial ritual occurred in the 1870s for the Eighth Patriarch, the last Jebtsundampa Khatagt recognized by the Qing Empire. The Eighth Patriarch was brought to northern Mongolia at a time of decay for the Manchu court and rising imperialist aspirations for Mongolia’s neighbors. Despite his foreign birth and his persistent violations of his monastic vows, the Eighth Patriarch identified with Mongolian nationalism and became a rallying point for Mongolians seeking independence.

Post-Manchu Changes in a Tumultuous Time and the End of the Lineage

In December 1911, northern Mongolia declared its independence from the failing Manchu empire and established a theocracy with the Eighth Patriarch as its sovereign. The theocratic state soon fell prey to the intrigues among a Chinese warlord government in Beijing and the Tsarist government in Saint Petersburg as well as Japanese imperial ambitions. In 1919, the Beijing warlord government reoccupied Ulaanbaatar and forced the Eighth Patriarch to renounce Mongolian independence. As a virtual prisoner of the warlord army, the patriarch frantically searched for a powerful benefactor and invited the army of a White Russian adventurer, Baron Ungern von Sternberg, to come to his aid and force the warlord army from Mongolia. Ungern von Sternberg defeated the Chinese invaders but almost immediately embarked upon a psychotic campaign of murder in the capital. The Eighth Patriarch was forced to appeal for help once again by sending a group of Mongolian proto-revolutionaries to Irkutsk to discuss the crisis with the Bolsheviks.

In July 1921, Mongolian partisans retook the capital with the support of the Soviet Red Army. The new government slowly eased the Eighth Patriarch from any participation in political affairs. In May 1924, he passed away, but because of Buddhism’s popularity, the newly established government of the Mongolian People’s Republic had to tread slowly before declaring an end of the lineage in 1929 and prohibiting any attempt to locate the Ninth Patriarch. The Buddhist monastic community was all but destroyed during a Stalinist purge in 1937-8 but managed to be revived by a handful of monks in the later 1940s at the Gandan Tegchenling Monastery in Ulaanbaatar, which had been retained by the Communist government as a shallow Potemkin symbol of religious tolerance.

A Secret Revival of the Lineage

Despite the official line of the Communist authorities, the lineage did not die out. In 1936, the Reting Rinpoche, the ruling regent of Tibet for the interregnum between the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Dalai Lamas, recognized a boy named Jambal Namdo Choiji in Lhasa as the reincarnation of the Eighth Patriarch. The boy’s identity remained a carefully guarded secret because of possible assassination attempts by Communist Mongolian agents. Jambal Namdo was inducted incognito into Lhasa’s clergy without the financial support usually provided to important tulkus. In the 1940s, he left the clergy, started a family, and earned his living peacefully as a farmer. However, in the aftermath of the Tibetan Uprising in 1959, he fled to India with the Dalai Lama because of his fear of being discovered and used as a propaganda tool by the Chinese Communists. In the 1980s, he resumed his monastic vows and lived a quiet life in Karnataka.

In September 1991, the Dalai Lama publicly announced that the Ninth Patriarch was alive and a member of the monastic community in India. The announcement was reportedly made at the request of the leading clergy at the Gandan Tegchenling Monastery. The stage had been set for this unexpected development thanks to the efforts of the diplomatic representative of the Government of India in Ulaanbaatar.

India’s Role in the Revival of Mongolian Buddhism

Following a policy first laid down by Pandit Nehru, the Government of India has been consistently supportive of the Tibetan community within its borders since the Dalai Lama’s flight from Tibet.

A talented Indian politician played an important role as an intermediary for the Dalai Lama in foreign affairs. This politician was the Nineteenth Kushok Bakula Rinpoche, a practicing tulku from the province of Jammu-Kashmir who was born into a Ladkhaki noble family. The Bakula Rinpoche had entered government service in the Lok Sabha or Lower House and later in the National Parliament of the Republic of India. In the 1979, he assisted the Dalai Lama by arranging for his first official visit to Ulaanbaatar and subsequently helped arrange for further visits there and to the Buryat Buddhist community in the Soviet Union.

In 1990, the Government of India appointed the Bakula Rinpoche as its ambassador to the Mongolian People’s Republic. During his 10-year term, he played a significant role in supporting the revival of Yellow Hat Buddhism in post-Communist Mongolia and bringing the Dalai Lama to Mongolia to consecrate revived monastic colleges. In 1999, he helped the Ninth Holy One to come for his first visit to Mongolia, an event that touched off a brief political firestorm over allowing a potential political figure of foreign birth into the country. After two months of the controversy, the Ninth Patriarch returned to India. The Bakula Rinpoche retired as ambassador the following year.

The Last Days of the Ninth Patriarch

Toward the end of his life, the Ninth Patriarch told the Dalai Lama of his desire to return to Mongolia for his passing. In November 2011, the Ninth Patriarch, in poor health, took up residency at the Gandan Tegchenling Monastery. He died there in March 2012.

According to Buddhist tradition, the Ninth Patriarch’s wish to pass away in Mongolia was a significant indication that his next rebirth would be in Mongolia. By spending his last days at the Gandan Tegchenling Monastery, the Ninth Patriarch helped to set the stage for the discovery of the first Mongolian-born patriarch in nearly 300 years.

As if to remove potential objections to this plan, the Government of Mongolia granted citizenship to the Ninth Patriarch just before his death. This shrewdly lessened anxieties about a foreign ecclesiastical leader living in Mongolia’s foremost Buddhist monastery. Further, it also deflected criticisms by hyper-nationalist Mongolians about a non-Mongolian patriarch of Mongolian Buddhism.

Little discussion took place in the media about the possible reincarnation of the Tenth Patriarch in Mongolia until the Dalai Lama’s press team and the Government of Mongolia announced his ninth pastoral visit to Ulaanbaatar just before his departure from Japan on November 19, 2016.

Contesting Interests in Mongolian Buddhism

While Mongolia adopted a democratic system of government in 1992, the country’s elites have taken over the controls of politics and the economy through factions that are sometimes in a bitter rivalry. The existence of such battles is typically cloaked from the view of foreign observers. Moreover, the local press in Mongolia is beholden to the views of their corporate owners. Public discussion of shadowy private rivalries is discouraged. While speculation about cleavages in the power structure abounds, it is difficult to obtain confirmation, especially since factional alliances continually shift.

Buddhism has become one of many forums for rivalries, which are often motivated by the business relationships among the factions of the Mongolian power elite. A faction may organize its business activities, and its policies when in government, to seek support from politico-business interests in Russia, or China, or “third neighbors,” the generic term used to describe other nations that have the resources to play a role in the Mongolian economy. It appears that the use of Buddhism by factions is often unrelated to a genuine commitment to the faith’s underlying spiritual message. Rather it can be a tool for self-interest.

For instance, while the Dalai Lama was still in Ulaanbaatar, some of the local media queried whether the Tenth Patriarch had been born into a wealthy family, thus implying a monetary incentive or other unseemly motivation for the Dalai Lama’s announcement. The Dalai Lama resisted efforts to disclose the Tenth Patriarch’s identity, explaining, correctly, that the child needs to undergo several years of preparation before his elevation. This explanation has not dulled suspicions among some Mongolians, however.

Another example is how the Dorje Shugden controversy has played out in Mongolia. Starting in 1976, this theological controversy has descended into an acrimonious dispute between the Dalai Lama’s followers and the followers of a 17th century Tibetan deity called Dorje Shugden. The hub of the dispute is contrasting views on sectarianism and the correct path for Yellow Hat Buddhism. The Shugden followers insist upon an aggressive purge of heterodox forms of Tibetan Buddhism while the Dalai Lama has called for non-sectarian cooperation among all branches of Tibet’s religions. Accusations of assassinations, denial of civil liberties, and collusion with the Chinese government have caused the dispute to degenerate into vitriol during the past two decades. While it is strenuously denied, the sect appears to receive support from the Chinese government as a countermeasure against the Dalai Lama.

The Dalai Lama believes that aggressive sectarianism threatens Tibetan unity. He has decreed that while the followers of Dorje Shugden may continue to worship the deity, his own followers should not permit devotees of Shugden to be initiated into the Kalachakra. In Mongolia, all but one temple has heeded his call. Nevertheless, in 2014, the Trijang Rinpoche, a 32 year-old monk and a leader in the Shugden sect, visited Ulaanbaatar to perform rites to Dorje Shugden in a state museum that once was a temple associated with the deity.

Mongolian supporters of the Dalai Lama sometimes imply that the Shugden sect is a front for Chinese politico-business interests that pose a threat to Mongolian sovereignty. Devotees of the Shugden sect in Mongolia claim that the Dalai Lama’s supporters seek to derail economic cooperation between Ulaanbaatar and Beijing in furtherance of the interests of allies in Russia. Such views are mostly promoted through whispering campaigns rather than a full and open discussion of the issue.

The announcement of the birth of the Tenth Patriarch comes at a time of considerable uncertainty for Mongolians. Despite an impressive uptick in GDP growth and direct foreign investment in the late 2000s, the Government of Mongolia implemented disastrous economic policies in the aftermath of the general election of 2012. The collapse of the local currency, falling global commodities’ prices, and a dramatic decrease in the volume of direct foreign investment have contributed to a sharply declining economy. Next year, Mongolia must make repayment under an ill-conceived U.S. dollar sovereign bond issue while other needed infrastructure projects are moth-balled or struggle to find funding.

Prior to the Dalai Lama’s visit, China and Mongolia had been in negotiations for a $4.2 billion loan to assist Mongolia in meeting these repayment obligations. Unsurprisingly, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the visit by His Holiness, called off the loan negotiations, and canceled state-to-state meetings for the forthcoming year. For those Mongolians seeking to build closer ties with China, Beijing’s reaction was a considerable set-back.

But was Beijing truly blindsided by the Dalai Lama’s visit? Given the state of Mongolia’s cybersecurity, it is unlikely that Beijing had no forewarning. Further, in early November, a delegation of government officials from the Tibet Autonomous Region visited Ulaanbaatar for high-level talks. While no explicit information was forthcoming about the details of the meetings, it may very well have taken place because of Beijing’s concerns over the Dalai Lama’s trip and the prospect of his recognition of the Tenth Patriarch. Did China suspect that it had been cut out of a process that arguably impacts upon its national interests in a religious group that it regards as seditious? Moreover, Chinese negotiators, and any of their allies in Mongolia, may secretly welcome the disruption of negotiations as a way to extract more onerous concessions for any loan agreement with the Government of Mongolia.

China has another national interest triggered by the discovery of the Tenth Patriarch, one that relates to an obscure aspect of 17th century Tibetan history.

The Mongolian Patriarchs were believed to be successive reincarnations of Taranatha, a 17th century Tibet monastic leader whose order, the Jonongpa, was aggressively absorbed into mainstream Yellow Hat Buddhism by the Fifth Dalai Lama. It had been assumed that the Jonangpa had died out, but then, in the 1990s, Tibetan studies scholars discovered several communities of Jonangpa monks in remote parts of Qinghai and Western Sichuan province. The Dalai Lama appointed the Ninth Patriarch in India to be the leader of the lineage, a decision in keeping with reincarnation theory but in direct conflict with China’s laws requiring strict administrative control over the appointment of tulkus within its territory. This “internal affair” for China may very well have been a topic of disputation between the TAR delegation and the Government of Mongolia.

India’s foreign policy objectives in this regard are more opaque but its support of Yellow Hat Buddhism can be seen as a part of a “Tibet card” to be played by New Delhi against China. Certainly, the Indian ambassador to Mongolia signaled his country’s interest in the visit by meeting His Holiness at Ulaanbaatar’s international airport and accompanying him.

It is a mistake to imbue the Dalai Lama’s visit to Mongolia with a solely political complexion, however. In terms of Dalai Lama’s objectives, this was an important pastoral visit for the promotion of a modern, reformed, and more participatory Buddhism in contrast to the ritualistic and superstitious practices that made the faith seem like a relic from the Dark Ages to early 20th century visitors to Mongolia. His Holiness exhorted Mongolians to cultivate a personal understanding of the tenets of the religion rather than simply seeking a “quick fix” cure or blessing from a lama in times of trouble. His modern Buddhist message is possibly at odds with the practices of some Mongolian monks who have come to regard Buddhism as an expeditious vehicle for raising funds in the free market world of post-Communist Mongolia.

Finally, while no information has been disclosed about the process of identifying the Tenth Patriarch, it is possible that the ritual is a “dry run” for the discovery of a Fifteenth Dalai Lama outside the territorial limits of China. This may be of critical importance for the mission of Yellow Hat Buddhism given the conflict that arose over the enthronement of the Panchen Lama in 1995.

Nineteenth century Russian strategists called the diplomatic maneuvers among hegemonic powers in Central Asia the “Tournament of Shadows.” It is a name that has a renewed relevance for the 21s century version of this geopolitical chess game.

M.A. Aldrich is a lawyer, author and resident for nearly 30 years in East and Central Asia. His book Ulaanbaatar: Beyond Water and Grass is due to be published by Hong Kong University Press next year.

For a Few Tanks More

2016-07-29T08:11:00.003-07:00

By Claude Arpi / July 29, 2016 /

The Chinese are not happy!

Last week, they were furious after the announcement of the verdict of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA). The International Tribunal in The Hague had given its ruling on a reference by the Philippines over the South China Sea (SCS): China has no historic ‘rights’ over the natural resources in most of the areas of the SCS; further any right must not exceed what’s permitted by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
Now, China is upset again.
This time, it is because the Indian press reported the deployment of T-72 battle tanks in Ladakh.

Quoting official sources, The Tribune, whose correspondent visited Ladakh, spoke of a possibility for China and Pakistan to launch a collusive two-front war against India: “In the past four-five years, ground troops have been added to pre-positioned locations along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), or the de facto border, that is not marked on the ground.”
Since the past 36 months, ground forces and artillery guns have been backed by T-72 Russian-origin tanks and another tank unit is slated to move to Eastern Ladakh facing China: “This adds a new dimension to any future war in the area that is marked by an average height of 14,000 feet, where oxygen is scarce,” says The Tribune.

According to The Daily Excelsior published from Jammu, for the Indian Army “the move is part of the winter drill to validate the capability of the tanks at such heights and is not an inimical move against China.”

Colonel Vijay Dalal, Commanding Officer of the tank regiment explained: “What we have done is that we have procured special additives and lubricants for high altitude terrain such as winter grade diesel and additives for the lubrication system, which prevents it from freezing in the tank.''

The Colonel added: “While the tanks and crew have acclimatised, they have not been able to test their fire power in the heights here due to lack of firing ranges. There is a need to verify their firing capacity at higher altitudes.”

The Global Times objected to this move: “Deploying tanks on Indo-China border hinders potential for Chinese investment.”

How can protecting the Indian borders ‘hinder’ Chinese investments?
Are the Chinese doing India a favour by investing?
The Global Times links the deployment of the Indian forces on the border to Chinese business investments in India: “A media report stating that nearly 100 Indian tanks have been positioned near the Indo-China border to counter any possible threat grabbed people's attention as more Chinese firms are looking to increase their investment in India.”
Then it quotes statistics of the China’s Ministry of Commerce: “Chinese outbound investment [in India] increased by 58.7 percent in the first half of the year, as the country [India] has sought to further integrate itself into the world economy.”

Probably referring to the announcement by Delhi of a new foreign direct investment (FDI) policy, opening up several sectors, including defense, to 100 per cent equity, The People's Daily says: “the Modi administration has recently promoted a second round of reforms to attract more overseas investment by allowing foreign firms to increase their shareholding in local enterprises.” It however adds that “it is puzzling that while deploying tanks near China's border, India still strives to woo Chinese investment.”
What have the tanks to do with the investment policy?
You may call this ‘logic with Chinese characteristics’, especially at a time China is behaving badly and illegally the South China Sea.

Though it sounded like a threat, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Lu Kang was more courteous; Lu just said: “There have been a series of significant agreements and consensus reached between China and India on upholding stability of the border area. …The two countries should abide by relevant agreements and consensus, work in concert to maintain peace and tranquillity of the border area and create a favourable environment for improving bilateral mutual trust and bolstering the proper settlement of the boundary question.” He further pointed out: “The China-India border area has long been peaceful and stable.”
To come back to The Global Times article, it paternalistically explains: “In an index on the ease of doing business, from the World Bank, India currently ranks 130 out of 189. Despite India's stated goal to rise to within the top 100 this year, the nation has its work cut out for them.”

In other words, it tells Delhi, ‘forget about your borders, make business easier for us’.
What is amazing is that China has developed its dual-use infrastructure on the Tibetan plateau at a very rapid pace during the last few decades, but now it objects to India occupying its own territory and taking necessary measures to defend its borders.
Further, China recently raised the level of the Tibet Military Command's (TMC) authority. China Military Online admitted: “China continues to strengthen its military presence in the autonomous region and aims to allow the military command to shoulder more combat assignments. …The TMC's political rank will be elevated to one level higher than its counterpart provincial-level military commands, and will come under the leadership of the PLA Army.” It added that the promotion marks a "new journey for the Tibet military command's construction."

Zhao Zhong, deputy director of the Political Work Department of the TMC told the PLA website: “The elevation of the authority level is not only an improvement for the troops' designation, but also an expansion of their function and mission.”

Song Zhongping, a Beijing-based military expert, told The Global Times that the TMC “bears great responsibility to prepare for possible conflicts between China and India, and currently it is difficult [for the TMC] to secure all the military resources they need.”
So why make so much fuss for a few Indian tanks at a time when China moved its 15th Airborne Corps to Tibet?

The Global Times’ conclusion is that deploying tanks near the Indo-China border “may hit a nerve within the Chinese business community, causing investors to weigh the threat of political instability when they make investment decisions.”

According to the same principle, Delhi should stop doing business with China because Beijing has illegally (according to the La Hague Tribunal) occupied most of the South China Sea, where it has built mega infrastructures, even on ‘rocks’?
This is one more example of Chinese double standards.
But Delhi has probably touched a raw nerve.

After the announcement of the verdict of the PCA, a PLA commentator wrote: “The great rejuvenation of Chinese nation is an unstoppable historical trend that won't be diverted by the will of any individual country or person.”

A rejuvenated China is bound to bully its neighbours and economic partners.
India has to take all measures to counter the Chinese tactics, investment or no investment.

NOTE: Claude Arpi is a writer based in India, and he regularly writes about Tibet, China and India. The above article is republished from blog http://claudearpi.blogspot.com/

The lion and the tiger—the two fighting for the Sikyong post

2016-02-06T15:53:00.000-08:00

By Tenzin Phuntsok / February 06, 2016 /

Lobsang Sangay, left, and Penpa Tsering, right.

In Tibetan community, a religious man can take the role of political leadership while the otherwise wouldn’t be possible for a layman unless he/she is an incarnated being. Ever since the Dalai Lama renounced his political leadership, the election for Sikyong (Tibetan political leader equivalent to prime minister) assumed significant attention from every nook and corner of the Tibetan community. There is no denying of the fact that the Tibetan leadership has democratically well grounded as the two most popular and powerful leaders of the decade are fighting for the prime ministerial post.

Though His Holiness the Great 14^th Dalai Lama doesn’t play any role and throw any view of his in the election and on who-should-be head of the Kashag (cabinet) as he normally used to do before 2001 elections, he still remains the symbol of Tibetan cause. His Holiness is the supreme leader above the law and constitution in exile though the Tibetan Nobel Peace Prize laureate refuses to be entitled so. Every Sikyong candidate has one slogan to quote “I will ensure to fulfill His Holiness’ advice”. This has shown despite His Holiness’ positive attempt to completely democratize the Tibetan polity and leave the struggle for the Tibetan people to decide, and His Holiness still remains the most forceful leader for the Tibetan cause to continue.

Are Lobsang Sangay and Penpa Tsering really the big two in this 2016 Tibetan Sikyong Election? What can we expect from them given the past contributions they made to both Tibetan exile polity and society? Whoever wins, he would rule for the next five years and will there be anything new for the Tibetan people in exile and inside Tibet? Will the next five years at least result in the resumption of dialogue with the Chinese government, the most important thing to be achieved and which can be achieved only with the leadership role? We don’t know how they will move with the next five years once they get elected to the most popular exile post in the world?

As the primaries were over and the main election is just a month away, the Tibetan Election Commission has already declared final candidates for the Sikyong post who were more or less a foregone conclusion. Dr. Lobsang Sangay often says during a speech or audience with students “I am Lobsang Sangay” meaning he is the “Lion” leaving aside the “Warm Hearted”. If the sitting Sikyong is ‘Lion’, then there is no doubt that the sitting Speaker of Tibetan Parliament and the rival of Sikyong, Mr. Penpa Tseing is the ‘Tiger’. If Dr. Lobsang Sangay could boast of having had doctorate from the world’s most famous university, Penpa Tsering at least could boast of having graduated from India’s top ten colleges. This is just from the academic side of the two most popular candidates.

Dr. Lobsang Sangay short to fame after having made news as the first Tibetan ever to have earned doctorate from Harvard University in 2006. Mr. Penpa Tsering became a well known face when he was nominated by then Tibetan Prime Minister Prof. Samdhong Rinpoche as his Finister (Finance Minister) at the young age of 36 though he failed to get the Parliamentary nod to be a Minister. We have witnessed in the earlier (2011) election that both the big twos of 2016 were wonderful speakers. At this time, their talks are the most listened and pondered amongst the exile Tibetans. Both bring cheers to their supporters and public to a large extend when they speak. Both are witty and humorous. Both were born in exile in India and had faced the hardships of their families. Dr. Lobsang Sangay often speaks of having worked in field while Penpa Tsering once worked in restaurant while pursuing college in Chennai. If Dr. Lobsang Sangay was once an executive of Tibetan Youth Congress, the largest and perhaps most influential group in exile, Penpa Tsering was secretary of Tibetan-Nigerian-Association in Chennai. If Dr. Lobsang Sangay could boast of having organized a talks between His Holiness the Great 14^th Dalai Lama and Oversea Chinese intellectuals in United States, Penpa Tsering was instrumental in reviving the Indian Parliamentary Tibet Support Group in India during his tenure as director of Tibetan Parliamentary and Policy Research Centre. If Dr. Lobsang Sangay often appears in news in the last five years as Sikyong, so did Penpa Tsering as Speaker of Tibetan Parliament in Exile. These two candidates, both of whom are staunch Middle Pathist had the advantage of being incumbent heads of the two most important exile post viz; Tibetan executive (Kashag) and legislature (Parliament), to be politically correct. The remaining three candidates had to ensure their campaign reaches the mass on their own.

I hardly have heard of these two leaders until 2005. Prof. Samdhong Rinpoche’s popularity in exile as the first ever directly elected Tibetan Prime Minister at the time had put every other leaders in the back burner. I first met Penpa Tsering in Lower TCV and Dr. Lobsang Sangay in Chennai in 2005 and 2011 respectively.

My first encounter with Mr. Penpa Tsering happened when he was director of TPPRC. They had organized a workshop for the senior students of the Tibetan schools at Lower TCV and sent notices to different schools. I couldn’t become part of it officially as my school principal refused to include my name in the list of participants for the workshop on positive ground. I insisted due to my natural and keen interest in knowing about Tibetan Administration and Polity, but it couldn’t happen. I therefore, sought the help of my then favorite and political science teacher, Ms. Tenzin Chokey to help include in the participatory list as voluntary if they have seats available. I was finally approved to be part of the workshop with her help and drove to Lower TCV for the workshop. Mr. Penpa Tsering was then being assisted by managing director Acharya Yeshi Phuntsok. I was taken aback little by the smoking habit of Penpa Tsering. A teacher participant who accompanied his school children said during a tea break “smoking in the midst of students is bad, they should show example to students” referring to Penpa Tsering. I returned him seeing what he was doing, “I too feel the same. One should look at mirror before pointing finger at others. Consuming Khani (golden) is worse than smoking. As a teacher you should give it up first and tell Penpa Tsering he should quit smoking. It would be more ethical”.

One day was over and the next day Penpa Tsering enquired us on the condition of meals provided for the participants. Few outspoken participants like us expressed, “Kongoe (respectful way of calling Mr.) meal is bit poor. Even Tingmo doesn’t look good”. “Really?” he asked in composed manner, “Yes, Kongoe” we confirmed. The next day we experienced a wonderful meal which continued till the end of the seminar. Later, I learned that the organizer brought a new chef purposely for the workshop. I was surprised at the Parliamentarian’s immediate attention given upon our request for the meal improvement.

During the question hour session of the workshop to which he was speaker for the period, I raised the pertinent question of why he couldn’t be appointed Minister despite then Prime Minister’s nomination. He replied without any hesitation as to why he couldn’t become a Minister. While touring the departments of CTA, he provided a wonderful company to the student participants and hardly let us down. His simple, down-to-earth and amiable nature of mingling with common people made us feel most comfortable in raising questions of important nature. His colleagues were fond of his leadership and would often praise him for his ability. Sooner than few years, he was elected in tie with Karma Chophel as the speaker of Tibetan Parliament in Exile. I felt how this man could be elected as speaker when he failed to muster a support in the parliament to be Minister despite the most popular leader in exile after His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Prof. Samdhong Rinpoche nominating him. Most probably his actions spoke louder than his critics. It is called blessing in disguise. Failing to be Minister, he became Speaker, a job and post more prestigious and perhaps powerful than a Minister. He was again elected as Speaker in 2011 further silencing his critics.

In his 19 year career as politician and Parliamentarian, there were no critics beyond being murder of Kartag Tulku. Not a single bureaucrat, nor leader or common people dare to criticize him on the failures of any public duty. This was and is his biggest credentials to run for next Sikyong. What bolsters him to campaign so hard outside India was his sheer trust in the people and the past work he had done. Many people had even told me “Penpa Tsering is a wonderful leader, outspoken, straight-forward and down-to-earth”. He is the main leader who had been pillar behind His Holiness. A protégé of Prof. Samdhong Rinpochey, he is a force to reckon with.

My first encounter with Dr. Lobsang Sangay was when I was in Chennai. He came as a chief guest for the 4^th Tibetan College Students’ Conference. It was just few months before 2011 Tibetan Elections were to be declared. I listened to him as he said “I did studied in United States, but my final venue of service is Dharamsala”. He clearly hinted his willingness to contest 2011 Katri election even before the dates were declared and the election which he won against veteran leader Tethong Tenzin Namgyal.

My second encounter with him was in New Delhi at India International Centre. I attended a conference on Democracy in Asia held at the centre representing NDPT. Sikyong Dr. Lobsang Sangay was amongst the top speakers of the inauguration to which His Holiness the Great 14^th Dalai Lama was the Chief Guest. He gave a wonderful speech in English particularly on the importance of Tibetan rivers to Asia to a gathering of more than 200 delegates from 20 different countries. He even stayed the whole day even during the informal sessions and introduced us as the political party in exile. His way of reaching out to foreign leaders and dealing with them earned our admiration. One final occasion during which I was able to meet Sikyong Dr. Lobsang Sangay was when NDPT (I was then General Secretary) organized workshop to college going Tibetan students and sought his permission for an audience with the students. He readily agreed despite lack of time and sought off-duty time of more than an hour and interacted with students. Speaker Penpa Tsering came as chief guest for the workshop and spoke during inauguration and Dr. Lobsang Sangay’s audience was sought at the near end for his informal speech.

In nutshell, the race for 2016 Sikyong post has been hugely ruled by the two—‘the lion and the tiger’, and probably there is no one who can snatch the opportunity for the exile’s top post. There are the Kings in their own and let us wait to see who roars louder in the electoral result in March—the sitting lion or the sitting tiger.

NOTE: Pam Tenzin alias Doring Tenzin Phuntsok (Tenzin Phuntsok) is an independent Tibetan political observer, and he holds a M. Phil degree in Political Science from the University of Madras, India.

China’s Dalai Lama: Another Miscalculation?

2016-01-13T07:54:00.005-08:00

By Apa Lhamo |January 13, 2016|

Although the Communist Party of China officially proclaims its firm adherence to atheism in its ideology, in its promotions and rankings, and in its policies, it also rather consistently undermines its own atheistic position when it comes to Tibetan Buddhism, specifically, with regard to its policy involving the reincarnations of the Tibetan Lamas.

Recently, Zhu Weiqun, Chairman of the Committee for Ethnic and Religious Affairs of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), stated that the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama had never been a “purely religious matter”, and that the search for the reincarnation of the Tibetan Lama on the part of Chinese Communists is indicative of “China's sovereignty over Tibet.” Zhu Weiqun, who continues to have a major say in issues related to Tibet and Tibetans, recently criticised the Dalai Lama at the fourth session of the 12th National People’s Congress held in March 2015, for suggesting that he might discontinue the institution of the Dalai Lama. Weiqun then insisted on its continuance, all the while asserting that only Beijing has the right to recognise the reincarnations of high Lamas. The reason why atheistic Beijing claims the right to weigh in on such a spiritual precept as reincarnation was never explained by Weiqun.

The debate concerning Communist Party’s claim to authority in deciding the reincarnation of the next Dalai Lama originated shortly after the 14th Dalai Lama stated that the Tibetan people have the final say on the institution of the Dalai Lama. He further added that he might be the last Dalai Lama. The implication is that a Chinese appointed Dalai Lama might become a political stooge for Beijing, bringing disgrace to the institution of Dalai Lama. This somber yet realistic statement from the Dalai Lama rattled the nerves of the Communist Party officials, as indicated by their response: repetitive and incessant official statements and pronouncements asserting their sole legitimacy in determining the next Dalai Lama.

China’s repeated assertion of its right to determine the next Dalai Lama is part of larger strategies to tighten its grip over various aspects of Tibetan culture, including Tibet’s complex Buddhist traditions of succession and rituals. China believes that installing a Dalai Lama under its patronage will bring stability in the Tibetan areas, where more than 143 Tibetans (mostly monks and nuns) have self-immolated themselves as protest against the repressive governmental policies. In addition to its plan to install a puppet Dalai Lama, China has also adopted other measures to address the problematic spiritual traditions of Tibetan Buddhism. The Tibet Autonomous Region party officials have recently established “Temple Management Committees”, and have appointed cadres and representatives in monasteries to control the activities of Tibetan monastic community and maintain stability. To win over the hearts and minds of the monks and nuns, the party functionaries have organized regular award ceremonies to recognize “role model and law abiding monks, nuns, and monasteries”, and present the most obedient ones with cash awards for their service to the state. However, this monastic specific policy has failed to win over the hearts and minds of the Tibetan people in general and the monks and nuns in particular as protest of various forms continue to happen in Tibet.

Selecting an official and politically correct 15th Dalai Lama would be a major foreign and domestic debacle for China. Tibet is already an exacerbating and problematic issue for China; it would be disastrous on their part to venture into the complex realms of Tibetan Buddhist tradition, especially with regard to the reincarnation of Tibetan lamas. Having failed to win over the current Dalai Lama, China hopes that collaboration with his successor - a successor selected by atheistic China itself - will stabilize and consolidate its rule over Tibet. However, China still doesn’t seem to grasp the lesson from the Panchen Lama experience. In 1995, the Dalai Lama named a six-year-old boy living in Tibet as the reincarnation of the 10th Panchen Lama, widely considered the second holiest spiritual leader in Tibetan Buddhism. The Chinese government responded by installing a boy handpicked by them. For 20 years, the boy chosen by the Dalai Lama has not been seen in public and his whereabouts are kept secret. Meanwhile, Gyaltsen Norbu (Ch: Gyaincain Norbu), the Chinese appointed Panchen Lama who swore allegiance to the CCP, is considered a fake and usurper by majority of Tibetans, and "reverence" for him has to be bought by the Chinese government whenever he visits Tibet from his official residence in Beijing. Therefore, a similar situation of two Dalai Lamas will be a big trouble for China.

The creation of a Chinese doppelganger of the Dalai Lama would be a catastrophic move on the part of the Chinese government, both for its Tibet policy and its international reputation. Furthermore, it is highly likely that the Tibetans people and followers of Buddhism (which comprises more than 500 million of the world's population) will reject a Chinese appointed Dalai Lama, bringing the potential for further embarrassment to the rising global power.

NOTE: Apa Lhamo is an MPhil student at Jawaharlal Nehru University and research officer at Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies.

Rangzen Needs to be Reviewed

2016-01-01T07:52:00.000-08:00

By Tendar Tsering |Jan. 1, 2016 |

Rangzen means more than freedom from oppressors and suppressors, it means the sheer joy and liberty to own and run the whole sovereignty of a nation independently but unlike Rangzen, Umaylam—the Middle Way Approach is a strategy set and voted by the public. So, contrary to the growing number of Rangzen activists demanding to end the Middle Way Approach, recent incidents in New York/ New Jersey and else where speak other wise— making many mull over that maybe it’s the Rangzen which needs to be reviewed.

For long, Tibetan Youth Congress has been the largest, strongest and most prominent Tibetan organization whose sole goal is to overthrow the Chinese rule and lead an independent nation but for whatever reason, recent incidents in New York/New Jersey and else where indicate that the organization has become or is at the verge of becoming a giant shallow shell and its members as just numbers read from its old records that date back to 1990s or so. The vibration and cracking sound of that shallow shell is echoing from the mountains of Ladakh to the plain areas of Bylakuppe, from New Delhi to New York, and Tibetans in Europe and else where are also likely to feel that vibration sooner or later.

The birth of Umaylum traces back to the Dalai Lama as he made the proposal but he didn’t make the proposal arbitrarily, he had sought suggestions and held discussions to make that proposal, and finally after a series of debate and discussions, the Tibetan public voted and adopted it as the most pragmatic way to put an end to the ongoing tragedies in Tibet. Despite zero response from the Beijing government, Tibetans’ faith in its Middle Way Approach is growing stronger and stronger in recent years and for many, its kind of irony but the reason looks like simply because of the ever increasing empathy and sympathy from the Chinese public and the surprisingly increasing number of Chinese following Tibetan Buddhism and visiting Tibetan spiritual leaders inside as well as outside Tibet. As of now, it looks good and hopeful but its difficult to predict if that bet on hope will once again betray us as we are known to be betrayed by the hope when it comes to the issue of Tibet and China.

Rangzen activists are getting alarmed and angry as the larger Tibetan public is once again betting on its hope in its religion, and these activists got every reason to be alarmed as the bet is too risky. And in the eyes of many of the Rangzen activists, these Middle Way Approach followers are old and orthodox and simply and blindly following the proposal set by the Dalai Lama. But the bitter fact for these Rangzen activists is that more and more Tibetans are becoming more and more rational and starting to genuinely appreciate and follow the vision set by the Dalai Lama. The general Tibetan public is neither blindly following the Dalai Lama’s visions nor respecting him merely just because he is the Dalai Lama but his visions are realistic and his contributions towards the Tibetan cause is unfathomable.

If the Rangzen spirit has to grow, not just to survive, then the Tibetan independence advocates have to understand that most of the Middle Way Approach followers are not just blindly following the proposal set by the Dalai Lama but they are concerned about the real situation in Tibet amidst China’s rapidly growing strength in the global power arena. And the Tibetan Youth Congress has to come up with a strategy or plan that can convince the general public why they should not merely rely on the Middle Way Approach. Unfortunately Tibetan Youth Congress, the backbone of the central force for Tibetan independence has been already neck locked by few individuals who care more about their ideologies than the ongoing situation inside Tibet.

Most of the founders of the Tibetan Youth Congress are now staunch supporters of the Middle Way Approach and it’s an open secret that the organization’s reputation was built by the public’s support with the blessing from the Dalai Lama. For decades, both the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government in exile had been indirectly supporting the organization as well.

If the Tibetan Youth Congress has to remain as a tiger where the Beijing sheep shiver just by the existence of the organization, then the general public should decide the ideology of the organization rather than letting the organization be hijacked by few narcissistic individuals who are ready to kick and kill the organization for one’s own individual benefit— be it a chance to settle down in the states or have a high post in the Tibetan government in exile.

NOTE— Tendar Tsering is a Tibetan journalist based in Minnesota, U.S.A.

Why I vote for Amdo Warrior Penpa Tsering for 2016 Sikyong

2015-12-30T04:51:00.000-08:00

By Mila Rangzen | Dec. 30, 2015|

My candidate, Lukar Jam, is out of the race after a brave and historic fight.

We are now left with two choices: Penpa Tsering and Lobsang Sangay.

I choose Penpa Tsering. I prioritize qualities, not issues with my choice. This is because the dismissal of Lukar Jam was also the loss of issues important to our struggle. Both Tsering and Sangay are Umaylam followers: I choose the horse from the mule.

Penpa Tsering is a man with two decades of governmental experience. This experience is an asset that has propelled him into becoming a competent leader. On any topic he speaks there is depth to it. His moderation skill at parliamentary proceedings is well known. He is a man of the people– a leader, not a narcissist like Lobsang Sangay whose results have failed to match his promises.

Lobsang Sangay’s declaration of Lithang pungdrik is a classic case of negative regionalism. It is perhaps for this reason that Lobsang Sangay does not support the reinstatement of a local assembly in Byllakuppe, the biggest settlement in exile where Utsangs form the majority. Obviously he can’t stand Utsangs running the show democratically.

Every important CTA related post is given by Sangay to people from his province. He appointed Lobsang Nyandak as head of Tibet Fund, Kaydor Aukatsang as Washington Dhonchoe and Chophel as South Zone Chief, India. All the appointees are people from his province. Does this ring a bell? Each of his appointee has a demotion/termination history for unsatisfactory performance. But he reinstated them anyway. There are many more such examples.

The Dalai Lama’s security was breached by a shugden nun in California under Lobsang Sangay’s watch. It does not come as a surprise because it was under his watch Kaydor removed the Dalai Lama’s photo from the Washington Dhonchoe Office and replaced it with Sangay’s picture. This egoistic behavior on his part is highly disrespectful to the Tibetan people and to the Dalai Lama who served Tibetans for well over 60 years of his life.

Also on his house mortgage allegation, to this day he has not come clean. All he needs to do is to show his tax papers which he has not done since Tibet supporter Maura Moynihan charged him 3 years ago. He could not respond to her allegation even once. If you are not guilty, why remain silent? 9 RTYCs broke up from the TYC Centrex under his watch. Think about it. Who could be behind it? Sit there and take it? This is his style of innovation and unity. Seriously, can we afford to let him get away like that?

Lobsang Sangay states that CTA got Rs 1000 million during Samdhong Rinpoche’s tenure and he boasts he got Rs 2008 million during his tenure. This is no big deal; foreign aid is no individual leader’s achievement. The grant is pre-decided largely based on inflation of everyday expenses. It does not depend on how skillful a Sikyong is. All he has to do is ask. And they grant. From 2016 to 2021 the next Sikyong Penpa Tsering shall have got Rs 4016 millions but again no big deal.Besides, begging foreign governments or NGOs for funds is certainly not a good example of the self-reliance mantra that Lobsang Sangay has been reciting for five long years.

He will go down in history as the first Sikyong to make the following staggering statements to international media: –

1. “Tibetans, we never had a country.”

2. “We are not asking the democracy be implemented or be allowed inside Tibet.”

3. “We are not asking for democracy for Tibetans inside Tibet.”

Lobsang Sangay has dashed all our hopes to the ground. Forget genuine autonomy, he did not succeed in securing even a single round of talks with the Chinese counterpart during his entire tenure. On the education of Tibetan children, he failed us. The overall achievement in education during his term is portrayed as being 1000 times better than Samdhong Rinpoche’s term. How does he account for that when the standard of our children’s literary Tibetan has gone from good to worse? Regardless of how successful or unsuccessful Lobsang Sangay has been all these 5 years we the people have given him a chance but not any more! This time Penpa Tsering, with a clean record of dedication and performance for 20 years of governmental service, deserves a chance.

One Lithangpa by the name of Lobsang Jampel – a sanjor and an ex monk from Hunsur Gyumey monastery-who lives in New York–went as far as issuing death threats to Largya Dhakpo–a Utsang community leader for criticizing Lobsang Sangay’s poor performance and lack of transparency in the execution of his official duties. Police investigation is underway. Well, his threat illustrates the degree to which regional pride and interest are involved in Sikyong election. “If you do not vote for Lobsang Sangay and if he loses the election we will not pay the greenbook contribution,” said Karsang, a Lobsang Sangay supporter, on a chat app. I wish him good luck on this because I can’t care less.” If Lobsang Sangay loses, provincial frictions and violence will emerge and the Dalai Lama will be disturbed and he will not live long,” said another supporter of Lobsang Sangay. This is a scare tactic. Do not fall into this trap. Give back as hot as you get. Trust me life will go on. The poll I conducted over the phone with 20 friends and acquaintances from each province produced this result. 70% of the Utsangs, 20% of the Amdos and 100% of the Dhotoes voted for Lobsang Sangay. What do you see here? Judge for yourself. And choose your path.

The qualities we voters should be looking for in our Sikyong are initiative, experience, integrity, creativity, and problem solving skill. Penpa Tsering possesses all of these. He is bold, confident and articulate. We witness this in the parliamentary sessions and in his speeches. If there is one man Lobsang Sangay is afraid of in Gangchen Kyishong, it is Penpa Tsering! Penpa Tsering is honest. Also he is a tough nut to mess with. He is shrewd, decisive and resolute. It is for these qualities that chithues like Tenpa Yarphel can’t stand him and hurl baseless murder allegations in the parliament to let doubt settle in the public opinion. It is a hate and vote politics. What the allegation ironically achieved is more sympathy and support toward Penpa Tsering from Utsang public.

Neither Juchen Thupten nor Sonam Topgyal nor Tenpa Yarphel had the guts to report him to police or take him to court. Because they don’t have a case in the first place. Also Penpa Tsering’s ex-wife acha Pema and her three grown up children have never ever supported the murder allegation. Realizing that this murder allegation is not holding much water, supporters of Lobsang Sangay have stooped down to attacking his occasional love for whisky. What’s the big deal if Penpa Tsering drinks? Lobsang Sangay has drinking parties every weekend at his official residence with his chamchas and of course his aunty number one from a southern settlement whom I know personally.

To this day Penpa Tsering has not slacked off once on his official duties. Penpa Tsering deals comfortably with regional and sectarian tensions that comes with the job. For example, during 2009 parliamentary commotion fueled by regional politics, and 2015 Jonang demonstration for 2 religious seats he proved his mettle. He didn’t flinch once. Under such circumstances, a male Utsang leader would probably weep like a wimp. Former CEC Dorjee Damdul wept like a kid in the 90s. But can he admit mistakes and learn from them? Can he be straight and not lie just to get votes? Can he sift through complex ideas? Can he recognize bullshit when it comes from his staff or supporters? Does he know how to hire a good team? Most important of all like the Dalai Lama he is inclusive and non-provincial, non-regional and non-sectarian. Yes, he can! And he’s proved so with 20 years of experience.

Does he know how to deliver a good speech? Unlike Lobsang Sangay whose spoken Tibetan is that of an 8th grade student from a CST school, Penpa Tsering speaks the best Tibetan! Natural, macho and assertive with the right volume, pace, tone and timbre at the right occasion. With no shortage of inspiring speeches, he is at the top of the political game. Despite coming from non-English medium school his English is far better than Lobsang Sangay’s Harvard chicken shit scattered all over the wall.

Does he know when to stay quiet? He is emotionally stable and stoic even in the midst of chaos in the parliament. Like a true Amdo warrior he looks problems squarely in the eye and does not shy away behind the wall of diplomatic neutrality for so called community harmony which is typically a Utsang disease. Does he know how to read public opinion? Has this candidate ever faced a true crisis? Does he have the equanimity to handle the erratic and unpredictable pressures of the office? How is he with uncertainty? He is strong like a rock, a calm boulder that weather storms.

Leadership is actually the sum of these attributes. On primary Election Day, 100,000 Utsang voters must take a leap and vote for Penpa Tsering!

Attend every Penpa Tsering talk in thousands. Every time he enters a stage for speech or debate in the coming months; serve him with screams, loud applauses and multiple standing ovations.

Slogans can be” The Leader of leaders!”” Samdhong Rinpoche’s son–Our Choice!” ” Penpa Tsering, 2016 Sikyong!”

Will Penpa Tsering Win?

Honestly at this point I am not sure he will win. 70% of the voters in exile are people from Utsang province, my province. And my people are sleeping. Not only are they sleeping, but they unashamedly admit their deep love for sleeping. It is as if a sleeping beauty contest is being conducted. They have invested so much in their sleep for so long that they refuse to be awakened. They resist and fight me to ask “Who are you to interfere in my sleep?” Their fallacious reasoning is that as long as a candidate is a good man it doesn’t matter who gets there. That’s as vague as it gets. Mark Twain said, “It is easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled!” How should we, supporters of Penpa Tsering, tackle this kind of foolhardy slave mindset?

NOTE: Mila Rangzen is a US armed forces veteran serving New York Community as an immigration translator. He can be reached at milarangzen@gmail.com And the views expressed in the article are that of the author and Tibet Telegraph does not necessarily endorse the views of the author.

The politics of Tibet’s poisonous religious divide

2015-12-21T13:33:00.001-08:00

By David Lague, Paul Mooney and Benjamin Kang Lim / Dec. 21

The doctrinal schism that the Chinese Communist Party is using to hound the Dalai Lama arose long ago in the internecine politics of his own school of Tibetan Buddhism.Dalai Lamas are drawn from the dominant Gelugpa School, one of the four major Buddhist traditions in Tibet.

When the 5th Dalai Lama united Tibet in the 17th Century, he made an effort to embrace the other schools to enhance political unity, according to the French Tibetologist Thierry Dodin.

This move angered other senior members of the Gelugpa School who opposed sharing power and privilege. They united in a clique within their school around the worship of Dorje Shugden, then a little-known “protector deity.”

Over the centuries, Shugden devotees came to dominate the Gelugpa School and the religious politics of Tibet. After the Communists came to power in 1949, Shugden practitioners became influential in the exiled Tibetan communities in India and Nepal. At first, they were hostile to Beijing, particularly after Tibetan monasteries and cultural relics were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution.

That changed with the current Dalai Lama, 14th in the line. He too had been educated under senior Shugden monks. But from the mid-1970s, he began to shape a more inclusive doctrine. In part, this was a political move aimed at unifying the different traditions in Tibetan Buddhism in the face of pressure from Beijing, according to Dodin and other Tibet scholars.

During a period of reflection, the Dalai Lama began to question the value of Shugden worship on the grounds it was harmful. In 1996, he publicly advised his followers to shun the practice. Since then, scholars say, there has been a gradual shift toward Beijing by the Shugden movement - a move that accelerated in the past decade.

China is careful to avoid obvious public references to its Shugden strategy. But on the ground, evidence abounds that Beijing has thrown its weight behind Shugden devotees.

GENEROUS FUNDING

Chinese authorities have poured funds into rebuilding and maintaining Shugden monasteries in the Tibet Autonomous Region and surrounding provinces. Reports in the state-run media show that China has financed extensive restoration at the Ganden Sumtseling Monastery in Yunnan Province and the Dungkar Monastery near Tibet’s frontier with India, both leading Shugden monasteries.

“There’s a massive drive to keep the remaining Shugden strongholds alive with a lot of support from the party,” said Dodin, director of the website TibetInfoNet. “This does not mean that others are left in decrepitude, but there is no such thing as a poor Shugden monastery.”

Buddhists who openly follow the Dalai Lama’s teachings face persecution by Chinese authorities, according to human rights groups and exiled Tibetans. It is now a criminal offence to discourage Shugden worship, they say.

Beijing also allows Shugden monks to travel overseas to teach and study with foreign Buddhists and exiled Tibetans.

In December 2012, Beijing sponsored the visit to Switzerland of Lama Jampa Ngodup Wangchuk Rinpoche, the first Tibetan lama sent abroad by the government to teach, according to the website dorjeshugden.com, one of the websites that publish news and commentary about the sect.

“By officially nominating him to travel abroad to teach, this would mean that the Chinese government is openly encouraging the proliferation of Buddhism, China’s ancient heritage and Dorje Shudgen’s practice,” an article on the website said.

PROTECTIVE CUSTODY

Another clear signal of Beijing’s preference: Senior Shugden monks are central to China’s effort to educate the Panchen Lama, second only to the Dalai Lama in religious stature.

In 1995, the Dalai Lama recognized a six-year-old Tibetan boy, Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, as the reincarnation of the 10th Panchen Lama. The boy and his family soon disappeared; Chinese authorities have said he is in protective custody. To sideline the Dalai Lama’s choice, Beijing then recognized another Tibetan boy, Gyaltsen Norbu, as Panchen Lama. This maneuver was crucial to Beijing’s plans to control Tibetan Buddhism, as the Panchen Lama plays a major role in recognizing reincarnations of the Dalai Lama, according to supporters of the Dalai Lama and experts on Tibetan Buddhism.

Many of the senior teachers responsible for educating Beijing’s hand-picked Panchen Lama are Shugden practitioners, according to experts on Tibetan Buddhism. Lama Gangchen, the most influential Shugden monk living abroad, has been photographed with this Panchen Lama as well.

President Xi Jinping in June met the party-approved Panchen Lama in Beijing. The monk told Xi he would “resolutely uphold the unity of the motherland and its people,” state television reported.

Chinese authorities have put aside their atheist convictions to insist they will vet the selection of the next Dalai Lama, according to official statements and reports in the state-run media.

This is part of an effort to ensure that the future spiritual leader of the more than six million ethnic Tibetans in Tibet and bordering provinces are loyal to the Communist Party. In response, the Dalai Lama has suggested he may reincarnate outside China or, perhaps, not at all.

That idea drew an outraged response from Zhu Weiqun, the point man in Beijing’s efforts to neutralize the Dalai Lama. “The reincarnation of the Dalai Lama has to be endorsed by the central government, not by any other sides, including the Dalai Lama himself,” Zhu said, according to a March 11 report in the state-run Xinhua news agency.

NOTE-- For readers' interest, this article is republished from REUTERS.