UN experts call upon China to explain Larung Gar demolitions
February 27, 2017
Canada Tibet Committee, February 24, 2017 – In a joint inquiry to the Government of China, released this week during the 34th session of the UN Human Rights Council, a group of six UN Special Rapporteurs have requested a formal response from China about “severe restrictions” on religious freedom in the Tibet Autonomous Region. The inquiry had been sent to Chinese authorities in November 2016.
The rapporteurs, who are independent experts appointed by the Human Rights Council, represent mandates in the fields of cultural rights; the right to enjoy a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment; the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association; the right to adequate housing; the rights of minorities; and the right to freedom of religion or belief.
In their report, the UN Special Rapporteurs highlight the mass expulsion of religious practitioners from Larung Gar and Yachen Gar Buddhist centres. They also bring attention to the “cultural and environmental” impacts of mining activities at Gong-ngon Lari mountain in Amchok township, including the arbitrary arrest and detention of peaceful protesters.
As is standard UN procedure in such matters, the rapporteurs have requested additional information from China’s delegation in Geneva to clarify the legal grounds for the Larung Gar demolitions and evictions, and what efforts have been made by authorities to avoid negative environmental impacts of mining in Amchok township.
The full text of the rapporteurs’ letter of inquiry can be viewed here: https://spcommreports.ohchr.org/TMResultsBase/DownLoadPublicCommunicationFile?gId=22816

Chinese security forces swarm religious festival at Tibetan monastery
February 20, 2017
Radio Free Asia, February 14, 2017 – For the second year in a row, large numbers of Chinese security forces have been deployed during a major religious festival at a Tibetan monastery in Qinghai province in an apparent bid to intimidate worshippers, sources in the region say.
The prayer gathering, called Chotrul Monlam, is held each year at Kumbum monastery in Qinghai’s Tsoshar (in Chinese, Haidong) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, and features the display of large and colorful sculptures made of butter, sources said.
“But on Feb. 11, the Chinese government sent a large number of uniformed paramilitary police to Kumbum in a show of intimidation,” one source told RFA’s Tibetan Service.
“It is really inappropriate for such a show of force to be made during a religious gathering,” the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“This has made the Tibetan pilgrims very uncomfortable, and has provoked anxiety and fear in the daily lives of ordinary Tibetans,” he added.
Also speaking to RFA, a second local source said that many Tibetans attending the event are now blocked by surging crowds from seeing the display of butter sculptures, with children and the elderly especially pushed aside.
“The security presence here is pervasive,” the source said.
Chinese visitors paying 100 yuan (U.S.$14.54) for tickets are meanwhile being allowed to view the display without waiting, “while Tibetan pilgrims are being held further down the road and have to wait in long lines,” one source said.
Similar scenes last year
Similar scenes took place at Kumbum last year after Chinese authorities deployed large numbers of armed police and conducted exercises “to intimidate the monks and other Tibetans in the area,” sources said in earlier reports.
“And on the last day of the Chotrul Monlam festival on Feb. 22, police carrying weapons merged with the crowd,” one source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“This caused great inconvenience to the devotees who had gathered at the monastery,” he said.
Buddhist monasteries in Tibetan-populated regions of China have frequently become the focus of efforts to promote not just religion but Tibetan cultural values, and Chinese security forces often monitor and sometimes close down events involving large crowds.
Annual public assemblies at the monasteries have greatly increased in size in recent years, as thousands of Tibetans gather to assert their national identity in the face of Beijing’s cultural and political domination.
Reported by Kunsang Tenzin and Lhuboom for RFA’s Tibetan Service. Translated by Dorjee Damdul. Written in English by Richard Finney.

Freed Tibetan singer barred from travel, public performance
February 20, 2017
Radio Free Asia, February 17, 2017 – A popular Tibetan singer freed after serving a four-year term for writing songs describing the hardships of Tibetans’ lives under Chinese rule has been barred by authorities from singing in public or from leaving his home town, sources say.
Amchok Phuljung, whose musical recordings before his arrest were widely popular in Tibetan areas of China, was released from Sichuan’s Mianyang prison on Feb. 2 after serving his full sentence.
Authorities have now forbidden him for one year from performing songs in public, a local source told RFA’s Tibetan Service.
“He is banned from singing at popular concerts, and he is also prohibited from releasing any recordings of his music for one year,” RFA’s source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“Chinese authorities have also told him that if he ever sings illegal or politically sensitive songs again, he will never be pardoned,” the source said.
Before Phuljung’s Aug. 3, 2012 detention after a short period spent in hiding, he had released an album of songs praising Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama and exile prime minister Lobsang Sangay, one source told RFA in an earlier report.
Chinese authorities regularly revile the Dalai Lama and Lobsang Sangay as dangerous separatists and harshly punish expressions of support for both men by Tibetans living under Beijing’s rule.
Forbidden to leave
Phuljung has also been forbidden from leaving Amchok township in Marthang (in Chinese, Hongyuan) county, RFA’s source said, adding, “If he has to leave for any reason, he must first obtain permission from the local authorities.”
Chinese police had escorted Phuljung to his home town following Feb. 2 release from Mianyang, preventing receptions and other displays of public welcome along the way, the source said.
“But when he arrived home that evening, he was greeted warmly with songs and offerings of traditional ceremonial scarves.”
“Over the next two days, at least a thousand local Tibetans and residents of nearby areas, including Tibetan writers and singers, came to welcome him and celebrate his release,” he said.
Singers, writers, and artists promoting Tibetan national identity and culture have frequently been detained by Chinese authorities, with many handed long jail terms, following region-wide protests against Chinese rule that swept Tibetan areas of China in 2008.
Reported by Lhuboom for RFA’s Tibetan Service. Translated by Dorjee Damdul. Written in English by Richard Finney.

We must all stand with Tibet
February 20, 2017
By Ty Cary, Max Honigmann and Khando Langry
McGill Daily, February 20, 2017 – The present North American political context is defined by the perpetuation of deep fear, factual inaccuracy, and the subordination of Otherness. It is one characterized by the struggles of neoliberalism and the politics of greed and fracture which accompany it. In the wake of the recent American election, radical right-wing political projects to limit migrant and refugee rights, and complete destructive pipeline projects such as the Dakota Access Pipeline have made this social reality unquestionably explicit. Even if today’s situation may seem unique in recent Canadian and American memories, the projects of the present are mere contributions to a much broader global trend towards unrestrained growth and private ownership. Tibet seems perhaps an unlikely place from which to understand the challenges afflicting today’s North American context, though the sustained struggle of its traditional inhabitants offers a model for resilience in the face of powerful oppressive institutions.
In 1950, The People’s Republic of China invaded Tibet and by the end of 1951 had annexed the entire Tibetan Plateau. The young Dalai Lama, who serves as the spiritual and temporal leader of the Tibetan nation, sought common ground with the occupying power to no avail. On March 10, 1959, tensions culminated in Lhasa, Tibet’s capital, leading to massive uprisings, during which more than 10,000 people are believed to have been killed. Following these uprisings, the Dalai Lama fled his ancestral homeland to exile in India, followed by around 80,000 Tibetans. The Indian city of Dharamsala is now home to both the Dalai Lama and the Central Tibetan Administration: the governing authority which Tibetans consider legitimate. Due to its significance in the collective Tibetan memory, March 10 now serves as an international day of resistance against China’s abusive colonialism.
Lhasa, the historical religious and political capital of Tibet, lies in an area designated by the Chinese as the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR). Despite what the name suggests, the region’s government largely advances Chinese Communist Party (CPC) directives through a local “people’s congress” designed by and answering to the CPC. In order to have any real influence in local politics, Tibetans must join their local Communist Party branch, where the atheism required for membership effectively prohibits representation for the Buddhist majority. International labor and human rights organizations are categorically banned from working in the region, while access for foreign journalists and diplomats is extremely limited and restricted only to government-approved areas.
Despite the façade of modernization propagated by the Chinese government, Tibet is one of the most severely repressed places in the world. The region ranks at the bottom of Freedom House’s 2016 ‘Freedom in the World index,’ second only to Syria. Acts as harmless as possessing a photo of the Dalai Lama are met with arrest and beatings, while political dissidents are routinely silenced with lengthy prison sentences and torture. This has led to a frustrating tension within Tibetan society: while the Dalai Lama’s pacifist message emphasizes nonviolent resistance, avenues for such resistance have been blocked off by the Chinese regime.
Both culturally and naturally, Tibet is under profound threat. At three miles above sea level, Tibet is the source of several of Asia’s major rivers, which leads to its popular characterization as the ‘roof of the world.’ The detrimental effects of climate change are often first and most intensely experienced within the region through droughts, which devastate local agricultural practices, melting of permafrost grounds which form the foundations for countless communities, and the loss of a myriad of keystone species which provide a crucial source of food in the harsh environment. More directly, Chinese presence within the region has radically disrupted environmental autonomy through the development of invasive damming projects and by way of pollution via mining industries and nuclear waste disposal sites throughout remote portions of Tibet.
Such kinds of ecological domination must necessarily be conceived of as inseparable from social forms of oppression, wherein Tibetans are limited in their freedom to practice indigenous spirituality and Tibetan Buddhism. Since the Chinese Cultural Revolution from the mid-1960s to 70s, 99 per cent of Buddhist monasteries have been closed at the hands of the state. Most recently, China has begun the destruction of Larung Gar, one of the largest religious communities in the world populated by over 10,000 practicing Buddhists. Due to the nonviolent teachings of Tibetan Buddhism, a radical act of political protest has been popularized: self-immolation. In response to the desecration of their way of life, 146 Tibetans aged 16 to 64 have self-immolated since 2009.
Because of their lack of political rights and meaningful representation in formal governing structures. Tibetans have had to look to alternative forms of mobilization. Direct action such as disruptive protesting has become the norm, as the only practical way to seek change. Within Tibet, significant actions have been undertaken, not by political elites but rather by everyday Tibetans. Outside of Tibet, a transnational social movement has transpired thanks to the advances of social media. Tibetans in exile, despite being scattered across the globe, have set up various issue-oriented interest groups such as the Canada Tibet Committee and Students for a Free Tibet. Unfortunately, countries consistently disregard the situation within Tibet and continue to treat China with deference. In fact, due to Chinese pressure, South Africa has consistently refused the Dalai Lama entry, notably for fellow nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu’s 80th Birthday celebrations in 2011 as well as for the 14th World Summit of World Peace Laureates of 2014. Other countries to act as such include Mongolia and Norway.
Ultimately, globalization has acted as an empowering force for the Chinese state and has granted it considerable commercial, economic and diplomatic power on the international stage. Canada has contributed to Tibet’s contemporary challenges in the form of extractive mining developments. Companies previously financed by Canada, such as China Gold, aid the project of colonialism and environmental devastation through mining techniques involving the pollution of local water sources, resource extraction, and exploitive labor practices. Tibetans hired to work at these mines frequently face dire health consequences and become cyclically impoverished as they come to depend on the menial wages they receive from the industry.
In the early 1970s, Canada was one of only two Western nations (the other being Switzerland) to offer resettlement to Tibetan refugees. However, Canada has had a mixed record, choosing to adopt a foreign policy of “principled pragmatism” with respect to China. This has translated into a careful diplomatic balancing act aimed at appeasing the Chinese government on the one hand, while maintaining the carefully cultivated image of a country that recognizes human rights as a cornerstone of is international relations. In fact, having de-linked human rights and trade to the point of withdrawing support for a United Nations Commission on Human Rights resolution on China in 1997, Canada has effectively excused itself from putting meaningful pressure on China. The likely-impending free trade deal between our two nations will likely increase Canada’s involvement in the economic colonization of Tibet.
China’s far-reaching economic and political influence does not mean there is nothing we, as Canadian individuals, can do to sustain the resistance movement. The Chinese government is extremely sensitive about its reputation and sustained pro-Tibet movements here and elsewhere in the world have had a tremendous impact, leading to the release of numerous jailed dissidents. Showing solidarity with the struggle of Tibetans on March 10 sends an important signal to the government of China that the oppression with which they meet Tibet’s nonviolent resistance movement is not ignored by the world. Standing with Tibet means standing against injustice and colonialism everywhere. Bhod Gyalo!
All are welcome to attend this year’s March 10 rally on Parliament Hill. For more information or to find out how you can show solidarity in other ways, please contact the Canada Tibet Committee at ctcoffice AT tibet.ca.