Residents concerned about monk who smuggled information
Phayul[Thursday, April 30, 2009 17:07]

Dharamsala, April 30 – Tibetans in Ngaba are concerned about a monk who allegedly sent information to the outside world about an incident that involved another monk who set himself ablaze on February 27, 2009, according to a press release issued by Kirti monastery here. Tibetans in Ngaba tried to locate Jamyang Phuntsok, 35, through various government offices but his whereabouts remain unknown. Some fear he might be dead already. The Chinese police arrested Jamyang Phuntsok, 35, from his room at Kirti monastery days after the incident of a Tibetan monk named Tabey setting himself ablaze. Chinese state media Xinhua reported on March 5 that Jamyang Phuntsok had accepted the allegations against him that he sent information about Tabey to the outside world to garner international attention to Tibet. A source in exile told phayul earlier in March that Jamyang’s arrest might be linked to Tabey’s self immolation. Meanwhile, China still does not allow anyone to visit Tabey who is said to be kept in an undisclosed hospital in Sichuan, the press release said, adding that the attempts by Chinese authorities to amputate Tabey’s legs were to destroy all evidence of gunshots from his body. His (Tabey’s) condition has improved and is in a position to leave the hospital but the authorities are not letting him leave, the press release said. According to the Tibetan Centre for Human rights and Democracy based here, Chinese authorities told Tabey’s mother last month that her son would require amputation of his legs for his life to be saved. However, Tabey refused to undergo the surgery.

Tabey lies on the ground as Chinese forces look on, photo:Tibet Times, Feb 27, 2009

China starts building fifth airport in Tibet
Reuters[Thursday, April 30, 2009 15:13]

BEIJING - China has started building a fifth civil airport in restless and mountainous Tibet, hoping to boost the number of visitors to the remote region, state media said on Thursday.

The government will spend 480 million yuan ($70.34 million) on the “Peace Airport” in Tibet’s second largest city, Shigatse, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Construction would take two years and the airport would be able to handle 230,000 passengers a year, it added.

“The civil airport will be an air corridor linking Shigatse with the outside world and inject new vigour into local social and economic development,” Xinhua quoted government official Xu Xueguang as saying.

Shigatse, the traditional seat of the Buddhist Panchen Lama, is also being linked by rail to Lhasa, from where trains head out to the rest of China.

Beijing says that the new airports, roads and railway to Tibet will promote development and help raise living standards, while Tibet activists say it will speed up the pace of Chinese migration there and dilute Tibetan Buddhist culture.

Tibet was rocked last year year by anti-Chinese protests, driving down tourist numbers as the violence kept people away and the government tightened controls on who could enter the region.

Dalai Lama: Obama could ease positive change
AP[Thursday, April 30, 2009 12:39]
By Jay Lindsay

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - Hands reached for him, and the Dalai Lama reached back. With a broad smile, he exited a news conference Wednesday clasping the fingers of anyone in reach, offering his blessing, a laugh, and a bit of hope from a leader five decades in exile. Hope was a theme of the Dalai Lama’s remarks: about the Obama administration, about the prospects for change within the Chinese government and about his own eventual return to his native Tibet, 50 years after his harrowing flight over the Himalayas into India. When the leader of the Tibet’s government in exile was asked if he thought he would ever go home, he quickly answered, ”Oh, yes.” The Dalai Lama took questions Wednesday at the start of a four-day visit to Massachusetts as part of a U.S. tour. Stops at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are scheduled before a public appearance Saturday at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro to help fund construction of the Tibetan Heritage Center, a Boston-area project to preserve Tibetan culture.

His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama speaks during a media availability in Cambridge today. (Photo by AP)

The timing of the tour, and the Dalai Lama’s message of finding happiness outside material things, was right amid global recession, said Dhondup Phunkhang, a spokesman for the Tibetan Association of Boston, which is building the heritage center.

”It’s good, I think, for someone to have a message that is beyond financial matters and materialistic things,” he said.

The Dalai Lama, a Buddhist monk, is seen as a figure of moral authority in much of the world but deplored by China as a ”wolf in monk’s robes” who seeks Tibet’s independence from China. The Dalai Lama has said repeatedly that he wants only ”real autonomy” for Tibet.

The Dalai Lama on Wednesday described U.S. policy toward Tibet under Obama as ”more or less the same” as under President George W. Bush but added he was hopeful Obama’s open and ”more straightforward” style would spur positive change.

The Dalai Lama said he would like to meet Obama when he visits Washington in October, as he has every president since George H.W. Bush. George W. Bush was the first to officially meet the Dalai Lama, awarding him the U.S. Congress’s highest civilian honor in 2007, a move that outraged China. Bush’s predecessors had ”dropped in” while the Dalai Lama met with advisers.

The Dalai Lama said Wednesday he wasn’t concerned how Obama chose to meet him, a decision with implications for Chinese-U.S. relations.

”It doesn’t matter,” he said, with a wave of his hand and a laugh.

He also said he held out hope that Chinese policy toward Tibet could ease because China must take steps to increase its moral authority if it truly aspires to be a greater power.

”China needs the rest of the world’s trust, respect,” he said.

The 73-year-old Dalai Lama was unequivocal about his belief that one day he would return to Tibet, after fleeing in March 1959 during a Chinese crackdown of a Tibetan uprising. But he said his refugee status had allowed him to meet many people of various places and traditions. He said he’d also learned to find a home all over the world.

”Wherever you find happiness, that’s your home,” he said.

Dalai Lama, in Cambridge, speaks of hope
Boston Globe[Thursday, April 30, 2009 10:53]

The Dalai Lama, kicking off a four-day visit to the Boston area, today acknowledged China’s extraordinary economic and political might, but said the world’s largest nation’s quest to be considered a superpower will be stymied as long as China continues to dodge human rights concerns. The 73-year-old spiritual and political leader of Tibetan Buddhism, who has led a government in exile in India for 50 years, beamed and laughed as he fielded questions from the Boston news media at the Charles Hotel, sitting in a conference room decorated with images of doodles and notes by former President John F. Kennedy. As he began the session, he was noticeably fatigued, but he became increasingly animated, and as he rose to leave, a reporter’s shouted question about whether he ever expected to set foot in Tibet again prompted a lengthy finger-pointing response about the meanings of home and of hope, and he then plunged into the media scrum to bow, shake hands, and pose for pictures.

photo:Pat Greenhouse of the Globe staff, April 29, 2009

Perhaps the most pointed moment of the news conference came when the Dalai Lama appeared to compare the U.S. to China, criticizing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq alongside his criticism of China’s repression of Tibetan demonstrators last year. Despite the fact that some have criticized the Obama administration, and particularly Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, for allegedly soft-pedalling human rights concerns when talking with China, the Dalai Lama said he saw no change in American policy toward Tibet with the arrival of the new administration, and he praised Obama as “straightforward” and for trying to improve some of America’s testier foreign relationships. But the Dalai Lama also acknowledged that he is not meeting with Obama during his current trip the US, and said that he hopes, but is not certain, that he will meet the president during another trip to the U.S. in October. And the Dalai Lama said, referring to former President George W. Bush, “I love President Bush,” acknowledging serious policy disagreements, but citing Bush’s warm personality.

Photo: Pat Greenhouse of the Globe staff, April 29, 2009

The Dalai Lama offered warm remarks about Harvard University, which he first visited in 1979, and will visit again tomorrow with a speech at The Memorial Church and a tree-planting ceremony in Harvard Yard. The Dalai Lama has cultivated a relationship with Harvard because of a perception that many the nation’s future leaders study there.

During this visit to Boston — the Dalai Lama’s sixth trip to the region — he will also dedicate a new ethics center, named after him, at MIT; will discuss the relationship between meditation and psychotherapy at a Harvard Medical School sponsored panel discussion, and will host two large public events, including an introductory course in Buddhism, that are expected to be attended by as many as 13,000 people on Saturday at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro.

While in Cambridge, the Dalai Lama was scheduled to meet privately with a handful of elderly and disabled Tibetan-Americans, but most of the area’s tiny Tibetan community — estimated at about 600 people — is expected to arrive en masse in Foxboro on Saturday.

“I doubt there is a single Tibetan in Boston who won’t be there — this is a huge deal for Tibetans to see His Holiness,” said Dhondup Phunkhang, a spokesman for the Tibetan Association of Boston. “Tibetans in Tibet risk their lives to see him, so of course we who live in a free country should go. It’s a huge honor to be able to see him and to associate with His Holiness.”

The Dalai Lama, asked whether, after 50 years with no success in his quest to win greater autonomy for Tibet, there is any reason for hope for the Tibetan cause, acknowledged that rationally there is little cause for optimism. However, he offered a brief history of post-revolutionary China, suggesting that the nation has repeatedly changed course in serious ways, and so it is possible it will change again. He said China has essentially abandoned socialism — he called it a “capitalist autocratic communist” nation. And he said the Chinese people have been more sympathetic to the Tibetan cause than has the Chinese government — he cited as evidence what he said were articles sympathetic to Tibet that have been written by Chinese authors over the last year.

For more information about the Dalai Lama’s visit, and for tickets to the Gillette Stadium event, visit bostontibet.org

Tibetans commemorate Martyr’s Day
Phayul[Wednesday, April 29, 2009 19:23]
By Phurbu Thinley

Dharamsala, April 29: Tibetan exiles on Wednesday commemorated the 11th anniversary of the Tibetan Martyr’s Day to pay homage to fellow Tibetans who selflessly sacrificed their lives for the cause of Tibet and its people.

Members of the pro-independence Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC) organized a religious ceremonial function early this morning at Dharamsala’s Lhagyal-ri to pay tribute to Tibetan martyrs . Former leaders of the TYC and a large number of Tibetans took part in the function, which included incense burning and prayer offering. Khata and butter lamps were placed before a memorial statue of Pawo Thupten Ngodup, a Tibetan activist who immolated himself during a Tibetan independence campaign in 1998. “As we observe Martyr’s Day to commemorate the 11th anniversary of Martyr Thupten Ngodup’s demise, we salute all those brave Tibetan men and women who have made selfless and supreme sacrifices for the freedom and Independence of Tibet,” the chief guest of the function and former president of TYC Mr Karma Chophel said. “As we remember Pawo Thupten Ngodup and all the Martyrs of Tibet, it is a solemn moment for every Tibetan to uphold their spirit and dignity by rededicating oneself to the true aspiration of our suffering brethrens in Tibet,” he added.

File Photo of Pawo Thupten Ngodup. Tibetan Youth Congress commemorated Tibetan Martyr’s Day on Wednesday, April 29, 2009, in Dharamsala, India.

“The struggle for Rangzen (independence) has remained the true aspiration and genuine will of those Tibetan who have laid down their lives for the cause of Tibet, and we must not fail to uphold the purpose and essence of their supreme sacrifices,” Chophel, a former speaker of the Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile, said.

The youth organization has also planned a candle light vigil here this evening to offer prayers for the Tibetan martyrs. A TYC activist said, similar events were also simultaneously being organized by its regional chapters elsewhere around the world.

On April 29, 1998, Thupten Ngodup, until then a silent activist, set himself on fire and died in Delhi while waiting for his turn to take part in a hunger strike unto death organized by the Tibetan Youth Congress to draw international attention towards the plight of Tibetan people.

In memory of the late Pawo Thupten Ngodup and thousands of other Tibetan martyrs, the day has since been marked by the Tibetan Youth Congress as “Tibetan Martyr’s Day”.

Tibetan Youth Congress, headquartered in Dharamsala, the seat of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile in northern India, is a worldwide Organisation of Tibetans united in the common struggle for the restoration of Tibet’s independence as opposed to the Dalai Lama’s policy of seeking autonomy. It is the largest non-governmental organization in the exile Tibetan community.

Three Tibetan monks secretly detained in Nagchu County
Phayul[Wednesday, April 29, 2009 17:37]
By Phurbu Thinley

Dharamsala, April 29: Chinese authorities in Nagchu (Ch: Nagqu) County, Nagchu Prefecture, Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) have secretly detained three Tibetan Buddhist monks, according to Dharamsala-based Tibetan centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD). The three detained monks, all belonging to Shapten Monastery, have been identified as Khensur Thupten Thapkhey,47, Geshe Tsultrim Gyaltsen, 34, and Tsundue, 30. The centre said, to secretly detain the three monks, the Chinese official gave misleading information to other monks of the monastery. Khensur Thapkhey, a former abbot of the Shapten Monastery, and Geshe Tsultrim Gyaltsen, a scripture master, were detained by Nagchu Public Security Bureau (PSB) officials on April 11, 2009, for unknown reasons, TCHRD said. TCHRD said the Nagchu security personnel misled the monks of Shapten Monastery by explaining that the two monks had gone to Lhasa City to receive Geshe (Doctorate of philosophy) Degree Certificate from religious bureau. “However, it proved to be a ruse,” the centre said, quoting sources as saying. It said that the Nagchu authorities actually straight away took them to a detention centre, where they were currently being detained. Similarly, another monk Tsundue, 30, a head of the Shapten Monastery’s Democratic Management Committee (DMC) was also misled by Chinese authorities that he had to attend a meeting, but was escorted to Nagchu PSB detention centre, TCHRD said. The centre said it is yet to ascertain the precise reason for which the three monks were detained. The parents and relatives of the detainees were trying to make contact with them in Nagchu PSB detention centre, the centre said, while expressing “serious concern” about their safety and well being.

Khensur Thupten Thabkey/TCHRD photo Scripture master Geshe Tsultrim Gyaltsen/TCHRD photo Ven Tsundue, 30, a head of Shapten Monastery’s DMC/TCHRD photo

Dalai Lama to join Melbourne Parliament of the World’s Religions
melbourne.anglican.com.au[Wednesday, April 29, 2009 13:53]

Tibetan Buddhist leader, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, will visit Melbourne late this year for the Parliament of the World’s Religions 2009, the world’s largest interfaith gathering.

The Dalai Lama will be part of the Parliament’s closing ceremony on Wednesday 9 December and is one of many international religious, civic, academic, scientific and political leaders who will participate in the event. Reverend Dirk Ficca, Executive Director of the Council for the Parliament of the World’s Religions, said the visit of the Dalai Lama highlighted the significance of the event and emphasises the importance placed upon creating social and religious harmony by civic and spiritual leaders around the world and upon the role religious groups play in addressing global issues. “The Parliament of the World’s Religions is honoured to welcome an individual who has devoted his life to fostering peace and sharing his spiritual knowledge with others,” Reverend Ficca said.

The Dalai Lama greets a guest at a San Francisco soup kitchen on Sunday, April 26, 2009, after serving food and eating lunch. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

“We hope that the visit of the Dalai Lama encourages others to join us in December and become part of a global movement that believes in humanity, and to meet and engage in open-hearted dialogue with people from a diverse range of cultural and religious backgrounds.”

The seven-day event will aim to cultivate harmony among the world’s religious and spiritual communities by featuring over 500 programs including lectures, dialogues, workshops, performances and exhibitions on a series of key topics including: sharing wisdom in search of inner peace; creating social cohesion in pursuit of justice; reconciliation with Indigenous peoples; special emphasis on aboriginal spiritualities; and overcoming poverty in a patriarchal world.

Melbourne’s brand new Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre will host the Parliament, and provide an opportunity for the city to demonstrate its commitment to diversity, peace, sustainability and reconciliation, on a truly international stage.

The program for the Parliament of the World’s Religions will be continually updated with information about other major speakers from both Australia and abroad.

For further details, visit www.parliamentofreligions.org“, join our Facebook group or follow us on Twitter @PWR2009.

Leading Chinese dissident claims freedom of speech worse than before Olympics
Telegraph[Wednesday, April 29, 2009 13:53]
The Chinese government is allowing its people less freedom of speech than two years ago, dashing hopes that last year’s Olympic Games would lead to greater liberalisation, a leading Chinese dissident has claimed.

By Peter Foster in Shihezi

He Weifang, a celebrated law professor and lead signatory to last year’s Charter 08 petition calling for democratic reforms in China, said the ruling Communist Party was currently engaged in a fresh wave of repressive internet and media censorship. Even allowing for the Communist party’s highly conservative approach to any kind of reform - embodied in Deng Xiaoping’s famous phrase “Crossing the river by feeling for stones” – he said China was moving backwards on basic freedoms. “The situation at the moment is that the river has deepened and the Party has got scared, so it has pulled back, fearing that the waters will rise up and drown them. In the last two years this pulling back from the water has got worse,” he said in an interview with The Daily Telegraph.

He Weifang, 49, professor of law at Shihezi University was ‘exiled’ after signing the Charter 08 petition calling for democratic reform in China in December 2008 (Photo: PETER FOSTER)

Professor He, once a leading light at the Beijing University Law School, was speaking from the one-bedroom flat in the tiny provincial city of Shihezi in China’s arid northwest where he was ‘exiled’ last month in punishment, he believes, for signing Charter 08.

He cited last year’s anti-government riots in Tibet, protests over the Olympic torch relay, fears of a rising tide of nationalism and the forthcoming 20th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square killings on June 4 as the main reasons behind the crackdown.

“The signs of repression are very clear. Liu Xiaobo [the lead architect of Charter 08] is still under house arrest and my own internet discussion forum has also been shut down,” he added.

As a well-known proponent of legal reform, Prof He has published articles for almost 20 years calling for an independent judiciary in China, but his writings, tolerated until recently, are now seen as “problematic”.

“I think I was tolerated as an individual, but Charter 08 was a co-ordinated, collective action and it was that element of organisation that provoked such a hostile reaction from the Party. Newspapers that used to publish strong articles arguing for reform no longer dare,” he said.

Prof He, 49, is among a group of 303 Chinese academics and influential commentators who signed Charter 08 in a self-conscious effort to revive the democratic, reformist ideals espoused by students in demonstrations across China 20 years ago.

The Charter, which contains a blistering indictment of the failings of Communist rule in China, has left intellectuals divided, with many arguing that its criticisms were too direct and ultimately counter-productive.

However Prof He disagrees. “I favour direct criticism. Charter 08 is a list of the mistakes the Party has made and the crimes it has committed. It is important for people to learn about the truth, because the truth is the only basis for creating change.”

Prof He paid a personal price for refusing to withdraw his signature from the petition when his appointment to a post in Zhejiang University in southern China was blocked last year by what he describes as “an invisible hand”.

Instead he was “offered” a position at the little-known Shihezi University in Xinjiang where he teaches just six hours a week, living far away from his wife in Beijing and passing long hours listening to Strauss waltzes and reading books on Silk Road archaeology.

He is sanguine about his two years in exile in Xinjiang which he treats with grim humour, knowing that he follows in the footsteps of several renowned Chinese intellectuals such as the writer Wang Meng and poet Ai Qing, who were exiled to Xinjiang during the Mao era.

“When the head of Beijing University suggested Xinjiang, I said ‘ah yes, what a good idea. I don’t suppose I shall miss any dramatic legal or political reforms in the next two years,” he recalls with a roar of laughter.

The modern breed of Chinese students Prof He now teaches have a far more conservative outlook than in the days when he was a young faculty member out demonstrating on the streets of Beijing in 1989.

“We students of 20 years ago were more idealistic, we talked about politics and we worried about the future of the country. That’s how ‘6/4′ [the Tiananmen Square protests] could happen,” he said. “Students these days are under all kinds of different pressures. They worry about finding a job and purchasing an apartment. They do not like to speak out about politics now.”

However despite their far-from-revolutionary attitude to life, Prof He sees little sign that China’s rulers are prepared to trust ordinary people with a real say into how their country is run.

There has been progress in some areas, he admits, citing a growing responsiveness from the government to individual concerns – such as last year’s contaminated milk scandal and a recent scandal over prison brutality – but believes it is skin-deep.

“There has been change to some extent, but the response to last year’s Tibetan protests shows that the changes are cosmetic, not fundamental. The Party moves only when it is pushed,” he said.

“What happened 20 years ago [in Tiananmen Square] caused unimaginable trauma in the Communist Party. It is a moment from which they have never recovered.”

Prof He believes that that “trauma” and the fact that the bloody repression of the demonstrators was endorsed by Deng Xiaoping, the hugely popular father-figure of China’s “opening up”, has made it impossible for the Party to embrace meaningful reform.

“The Party needs to admit its crimes, but it cannot. It fears that to admit it was wrong would undermine its entire claim to legitimacy. But if they do not adapt, then that process of transformation will not occur peacefully, and if the extreme violence comes, then there will be no Communist Party. It is a case of adapt or die.”

His Holiness the Dalai Lama to visit France in June
Phayul[Tuesday, April 28, 2009 15:41]
By Tenam

Paris 27 April: In a visit that is likely to raise the political temperature between Paris and Beijing, His Holiness the Dalai Lama will be arriving in France for a two-day, 6-7 June, visit to the French capital. It is expected that His Holiness the Dalai Lama will also be officially presented with the Citizen of Honour, a legislation that the Paris City had passed in April 2008. After the mass protest against the Beijing torch relay in Paris, France has been the target of government and nationalist scorn in China. French supermarket chain Carefour came under increasing calls for boycott. President Sarkozy sent a delegation of high level French officials led by former Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin to China. It has been widely reported that the Speaker of the French National Assembly was sent by President Sarkozy to China with an invitation for Chinese president Hu Jintao to visit France.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama and his French interpreter Mathieu Ricard at a press conference in Paris, August 2008. Photo: Tenam

Before the G 20 meeting in London, a joint communique by the French foreign ministry and China on 1 April, declared that France does not “support any form of Tibet’s independence,” which is credited with the eventual meeting between Sarkozy and Hu Jintao in London.

The Tibet Group in the French Senate said in response that the Tibet issue cannot be considered an internal issue of China and that the Tibetan cause is very important and sensitive to the French people and their elected officials.

China launches security campaign for anniversary
AP[Tuesday, April 28, 2009 15:02]
By TINI TRAN

BEIJING — China announced plans Tuesday to ramp up public security ahead of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Communist nation, after a similar campaign last year for the Olympic Games.

The security campaign, which starts in May, is aimed at ensuring “a steady and harmonious social environment” for celebrations slated for Oct. 1, said Vice Minister of Public Security Zhang Xinfeng, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

The anniversary marks a major milestone for China’s government, which is planning large celebrations including a grand military parade in the center of Beijing.

Police across the country will focus on maintaining social order, cracking down on criminal gangs, and tracking wanted criminals, Zhang said. Robberies and theft must be curbed, he said, as well as fraudulent “phone scams” widely reported by the public.

Local officials will also tackle criminal activities widespread in their respective regions, and step up security efforts, he said.

A similar security campaign was imposed ahead of the Olympics last summer. In the months leading up to the August games, China enacted a wide-ranging campaign that included exhaustive security checks at hotels and residential areas along with visa restrictions that severely limited the number of foreigners who could visit or work in the country.

This year also saw security clampdowns and travel bans in Tibet and the restive Western region of Xinjiang, which both have politically sensitive anniversaries. In March came the 50th anniversary of a failed Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule as well as the one-year anniversary of violent riots in the capital of Lhasa. In Xinjiang, a separatist movement has taken root among ethnic minority Uighurs who have long chafed under Beijing’s rule and restrictions on religion.

The Communist government has also urged local officials to “carry out in-depth patriotic educational activities” among the public centering around the anniversary.

A document drafted by the Central Committee’s publicity department said the activities are of “of vital importance in supporting morale and boosting confidence in overcoming difficulties,” Xinhua said.

Activities “should guide people to love the Party” and recognize the achievements made in the past six decades, Xinhua said. The public should be made “aware of the advantages of socialism with Chinese characteristics” and give them a correct understanding of China’s basic conditions at present, the document said.

China is facing a host of social and economic challenges this year, including a global downturn that has already resulted in the loss of jobs for more than 20 million migrant workers in the country.