H.H. the Dalai Lama

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Tibetans just want autonomy, Dalai Lama says

'Not seeking independence, nor separation,' from China, he insists_

The Dalai Lama addresses a news conference Sunday in Seattle, where he is headlining a five-day conference on compassion.

April 11: NBC's Ann Curry interviews the Dalai Lama during his first visit to the U.S. since the recent outbreaks of violence in Tibet.

updated 3:40 p.m. PT, Sun., April. 13, 2008

SEATTLE - The Dalai Lama said Sunday that Tibet cannot make any more concessions to China and renewed his calls for the government to cease suppression in his former homeland and withdraw troops.

The exiled Tibetan spiritual leader denied Chinese claims that he has called for Tibet to be split from China and that he is behind recent turmoil, saying instead that he is committed to pursuing Tibet’s right to autonomy.

“The whole world knows that the Dalai Lama is not seeking independence, nor separation,” he said at a news conference.

Recent protests in Tibet against five decades of Chinese rule have been the largest and most sustained in almost two decades and have fueled protests that have disrupted the global torch relay for this summer’s Olympic Games in Beijing.

“Our struggle is with a few in the leadership of the People’s Republic of China and not with the Chinese people,” the Dalai Lama said in a statement released after the news conference. “If the present situation in Tibet continues, I am very much concerned that the Chinese government will unleash more force and increase the suppression of Tibetan people.”

He said that if the Chinese stop such suppression and withdraw armed police and troops, he would advise all Tibetans to stop their protests.

Monks detained

A Chinese official said Sunday that the government had detained nine Buddhist monks and accused them of planting a homemade bomb that reportedly detonated March 23 in a government office building in eastern Tibet, according to China’s official Xinhua News Agency.

There were no known deaths or damage from the first reported bombing since anti-government demonstrations by monks began March 10 in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa.

Xinhua reported that the monks from the Tongxia monastery fled after a bomb exploded March 23. They later confessed to planting the explosive, Xinhua said. The agency did not explain why the incident was nothttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif reported earlier.

The Dalai Lama, visiting Seattle for the five-day Seeds of Compassion conference, told journalists Sunday that there have been some talks between representatives of his government-in-exile and Chinese officials.

The talks date to 2002 and some progress was made, but by July 2007 the discussions had deteriorated, he said. He did not elaborate.

The Dalai Lama repeated his promise to resign should the violence in Tibet continue. But he criticized China’s attempt to suppress demonstrations and encouraged any Tibetan protesters to conduct nonviolent demonstrations.

The Olympic torch is scheduled to pass through Tibet and India in a few weeks, and he said that if demonstrations are carried out, more hardship might come to the Tibetan people.

Superpower status and trust

The Dalai Lama said he supports China’s ambitions to become a world superpower, saying that the country has achieved the economic and military might to do so but lacks transparency. If China wants to be a superpower, he said, it needs the world’s trust.

The economic rise of China has widened the gap between the rich and poor, he said. Along with issues coming from a “totalitarian regime,” China is seeing problems not only in Tibet, but also throughout the country.

“Particularly in China, everything is state secret; I think these practices are outdated,” he said.

The Dalai Lama fled to India after a failed uprising in 1959 in Tibet, but he remains the religious and cultural leader of many Tibetans. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989.

In Beijing, Xinhua on Sunday denounced the Dalai Lama and his supporters as "anti-human rights," and slammed top U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., as "the least popular person in China" for her stance on Tibet.

A Tibetan source with strong contacts in Lhasa said the city was also swirling with rumors of fresh clashes between monks and security forces at the important Drepung monastery. No one at the monastery or the local police station could be reached for comment.

Clampdown on Tibet Squeezes Tourist Destinations

Tibet Unrest Puts Tourism on Hold

In the wake of recent uprisings by Tibetans, the Chinese government has effectively shut down most tourism in Tibet.
By James Areddy, The Wall Street Journal


The prefecture of (Aba) Ngawa, located in China's Sichuan province, beckons visitors with the slogan "the hometown of panda." But these days, instead of the famously elusive black-and-white bears, the region's most hidden population may be its Tibetan community.

To visit (Aba) Ngawa is to come face-to-face with Beijing's tight grip on its Tibetan citizens, wherever they are. Beijing forbids outsiders to get near (Aba) Ngawa's hot spots, such as Kirti Monastery, Tibetan Buddhism's largest, with 3,000 monks. But pockets of the region remain accessible — including other touristy areas, back-country horse trails and Tibetan villages — and offer a glimpse of how Beijing's policies in the region are raising tensions with some ethnic Tibetans and generating support from others.

(Aba) Ngawa illustrates how the nation's toughest clampdown on dissent in years pushes far beyond Lhasa, 1,400 kilometers westward, where anti-China rioting started on March 14. Now, chunks of five Chinese provinces are cordoned off to most visitors. A heavy paramilitary police presence has left parts of Sichuan province under virtual martial law, including the heart of the lush region known officially as the Aba Tibetan and Qiang Minority Autonomous Prefecture.

Much like Tibet itself, (Aba) Ngawa is a sparsely populated, high-altitude region of rich forests, wooly yaks and golden-tipped Buddhist monasteries. Year-round, millions of tourists are drawn to the emerald-colored lakes and snow-capped peaks at a Unesco World Heritage Site in the area called Jiuzhaigou, which boasts the possibility — however rare — of spotting a panda in the wild.

Airplanes bound for Aba descend dramatically onto one of the world's highest-altitude runways, a plateau located 3½ kilometers above sea level and ringed by craggy mountains sprouting colorful Tibetan prayer flags. The airport terminal has an oxygen bar to help travelers overcome dizziness.

Yet, once visitors adjust to the intense sun and stunning scenery, the Chinese government's view of (Aba) Ngawa as a volatile place comes into stark view. Riot police wearing green fatigues and carrying plastic shields march through the airport and hold drills on its perimeter. On some stretches of highway, authorities search nearly every vehicle, including the dwindling number of tour buses that once represented (Aba) Ngawa's economic backbone.

The anxiety can discomfort visitors.

"A lot of American tourists traveling to China for the first time might be a bit taken aback," says 24-year-old Atlantan Eli Sweet. During a visit last week, he says, his parents were particularly unnerved by passport checks and probes into the trunk of their hired car by armed police.

No doubt (Aba) Ngawa is a flashpoint in the current crisis. Police seized guns, bullets, swords and explosives from Kirti Monastery, China's official Xinhua news agency reported last month. And last week, police fired on a crowd of rioters near another monastery in the area, Xinhua reported. (Aba) Ngawa and elsewhere in Sichuan account for the largest number of the about 50 locations in China where pro-Tibet demonstrations have taken place, according to tallies by human-rights groups.

Among Beijing's responses has been to lock out visitors from minority areas that form around half of Sichuan, plus parts of Qinghai, Gansu and Yunnan provinces that are also Tibetan homelands.

"For safety concern, foreigners and foreign media need to follow relevant regulations of China. We neither want to restrict media coverage nor have we anything to cover up," the chairman of the Tibet Autonomous Region government, Qiangba Puncog, told a news conference Wednesday in Beijing.

Since the unrest began, various Tibetan regions have been off-limits to reporters except on government-organized tours, including one Wednesday where news organizations visited Labrang Monastery in Xiahe, Gansu province. The visit for Chinese and foreign reporters was briefly interrupted by protesting monks carrying a banned Tibetan flag and calling for the return of the Dalai Lama, similar to an episode last month in Lhasa, the Reuters news agency said.

That style of control was once unique to Tibet.

Until the recent unrest, Tibet itself had been opening up. Encouraged by a two-year-old train line into Lhasa, a record four million tourists visited Tibet last year, including 365,000 foreigners. "There was incredible demand for tourism to Tibet," says Jeanette Neudert, U.K.-based tourism giant TUI Travel PLC's marketing director in China, who has seen a wave of cancellations.

Now Tibet is closed.

But to keep tourism dollars flowing and to offer visitors an alternative Tibetan destination at least until Tibet reopens, which the region's Bureau of Tourism says is planned for May 1, China has continued to allow visitors into portions of eastern (Aba) Ngawa, including Jiuzhaigou. Still, empty hotels, frustrated taxi drivers and the extraordinary solitude at Jiuzhaigou's famous waterfalls testify to how widely the crackdown is being felt by a tourism industry that trades on the Tibetan mystique. One recent evening, an Air China Airbus-319 that can hold more than 120 passengers took off from Jiuzhaigou's airport with just 32 people aboard, including the crew.

Other key spots in (Aba) Ngawa, including China's famed panda-research center, Wolong National Nature Reserve, remain open, but tour operators say visitors should expect police roadblocks and passport checks along the way. Monasteries in (Aba) Ngawa can feel unnaturally lifeless, including Gami Temple, which has a police station at its entrance and where the only person eager to talk on a recent day was a 14-year-old monk who wanted money "to buy a pen."

Robert Barnett, director of the modern Tibetan studies center at Columbia University in New York, says Beijing has long been anxious about the (Aba) Ngawa region, which he says may be due to a deep devotion within the Kirti Monastery to the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, rather than the Communist Party in Beijing. Mr. Barnett says Aba, which is known as Ngawa in Tibetan, remained off limits to tourists long after they were permitted to first visit other parts of China, including Tibet, through the 1980s and 1990s. "It was the last holdout," he says.

The controls are back. It proves fruitless to drive toward Kirti and the rest of the Buddhist heartland of (Aba) Ngawa on Highway 213, a key north-south artery in Sichuan province. At a junction to the highway near the airport, a police officer checks the car's trunk before dismissing a request to drive through by uttering a single-word reason: "laowai," or foreigner.

On a more-touristy route 50 kilometers north, the car is waved to the side of the road by a portly policeman wearing a pistol on his hip and a red light on his bullet-proof vest. Telephone calls are made as an American reporter's passport, which includes a foreign journalist visa, is scrutinized for 10 minutes, prompting just one question from the officer before the car is permitted to proceed: "what is your name, your Chinese name?"

A newly built mountain pass further north offers a possible route toward Kirti. But traffic police manning a checkpoint refuse entry, as one explains in halting English "the road bad" and in Chinese that the sedan is ill-equipped to traverse the snowy conditions. Despite turning the car around, the officers insist on making note of the reporter's passport details but don't mention its journalist-visa stamp — perhaps because restricting movement of foreign reporters is out of sync with Beijing's Olympics-related pledge to allow them unfettered access this year.

In the ethnically diverse trading town of Songpan, police cars pass through the gates of its 600-year-old wall far more these days than busses shuttling tourists, a reminder of how Songpan was a garrison town during the Tang Dynasty. One ethnic-Chinese restaurant owner says the government's tight grip has cost her "90%, if not 98%" of her business and, "Our worst fear is it will last until after the Olympics."

A horseback ride into pastoral (Aba) Ngawa offers a peek at how China's fast modernization is reaching some remote Tibetan communities — places that haven't experienced unrest. In the valley town of Bao Zuo, workmen are standing in mud installing new telephone lines, while a resident in adjacent Mu Ni Xiang turns heads with his newly purchased moped. Still, the massive stacks of hand-cut wood for cooking and heat that encircle houses in the area, plus the yaks and sheep, are a reminder of how disparate rural China, where Tibetans and other ethnic minorities tend to live, is compared with urban areas that are dominated by the nation's dominant ethnic group, Hans.

Inside the 400-person Tibetan hamlet of Shi Ba Village, controls are tight. One minute after a visitor crosses a small bridge into Shi Ba, a village watchman scurries over with a pad of paper to register passport details. And within a half hour, the village chief, Ze Wang, arrives to outline rules for an overnight stay, including avoiding the local monasteries after dark, promising not to explore the town's single dirt path alone and pledging to depart early in the morning.

Shi Ba, which translates as Stone Dam, is an agrarian community that appears far wealthier than many places in Tibet proper: food, a mix of Chinese steamed buns and red Tibetan yak-butter tea, is plentiful, and satellite dishes stick out from many houses, even though water is still drawn from a well and the electricity fails just after dark.

Through the evening, Tibetan farmers gather in one resident's living room, which doubles as a tavern. They warm themselves in front of a wood-fired stove and buy clear liquor by the shot glass, sticking to light conversation with an outsider such as whether watching basketball during the Beijing Olympics will be better in person or on television. Questions about rioting in Lhasa are dismissed with puzzled looks.

But even in Shi Ba there is the hint of discord. At one of the town's two monasteries, a monk appears to take a gentle political jab at the Communist Party's involvement in monastic affairs. He nods toward the hard-to-miss Chinese flag at the monastery entrance and asks with a wink "see the red flag?"

One Tibetan employed in (Aba) Ngawa's now-sagging tourism business says Chinese authorities are wary of outsiders due to fears they may be helping the Dalai Lama fan dissent. "They think you are part of the Dalai clique," he says.

China jails outspoken activist over Tibet views

U.S. condemns 3 1/2-year sentence for dissident who criticized Communists

Greg Baker / AP

Protesters gathered outside a Beijing court on Thursday as activist Hu Jia was jailed on subversion charges.


updated 8:29 a.m. PT, Thurs., April. 3, 2008

BEIJING - An outspoken Chinese dissident was jailed for three-and-a-half years on Thursday over his remarks about Tibet and other sensitive topics.

Hu Jia, 34, was found guilty of "inciting subversion of state power" for criticizing the ruling Communist Party.

His conviction is likely to become a focus of rights campaigns ahead of the Beijing Olympics and the verdict drew quick condemnation from the United States.


"In this Olympic year, we urge China to seize the opportunity to put its best face forward and take steps to improve its record on human rights and religious freedom," the U.S. Embassy said in a statement.

The official Xinhua news agency said Hu, who is a Buddhist, had made a "confession of crime and acceptance of punishment," leading the court to issue a relatively light sentence. Hu's lawyers said he had acknowledged "excesses."

"In the end, I think that he came to accept that some of his statements were contrary to the law as it stands," said defense lawyer Li Jinsong. Hu has 10 days starting on Friday to decide whether to appeal, but Li said he was unlikely to do so.

Sentence denounced

The "inciting subversion" charge can attract a jail term of five years or longer, and before the hearing Hu's other lawyer, Li Fangping, said a long sentence was likely.

After the sentencing he denounced it as nonetheless unjust.

"It's the defense position that citizens have the right to free speech," Li Fangping told reporters outside the court.

"The law on inciting subversion of state power doesn't have a clear boundary, but the Constitution guarantees citizens freedom of speech."

China's Foreign Ministry defended the verdict and said critics were meddling in the country's internal affairs.

Another Chinese dissident, Yang Chunlin, who called for human rights to take precedence over the Olympic Games, was sentenced to five years in jail in late March for the same crime.

The court heard that from August 2006 to October 2007, Hu published articles on overseas-run Web sites, made comments in interviews with foreign media and "repeatedly instigated other people to subvert the state's political power and socialist system," Xinhua said.

Called a 'Hero'

Dozens of well-wishers gathered outside the court to express support for Hu and rowdily air their own grievances, milling around with the foreign reporters and diplomats who were excluded from entering the court.

"Hu Jia is a hero to us because he stood up to speak out, so we should also speak out," said one of the supporters, Li Hai.

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour voiced concern at Hu's conviction.

"We continue to be concerned about a number of cases including Hu Jia, in which it seems national security issues are being used as grounds to curtail social activism by human rights defenders," said her spokesman Rupert Colville.

Mark Allison of Amnesty International added: "This verdict is a slap in the face for Hu Jia and a warning to any other activists in China who dare to raise human rights concerns publicly."

Vocal advocate

Starting with advocacy for rural AIDS sufferers, Hu emerged as one of the nation's most vocal advocates of democratic rights, religious freedom and self-determination for Tibet, recently shaken by protests and a security crackdown.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice raised Hu's case when in Beijing in February, and the European Union and other Western governments have also pressed China on the matter.

Hu's relatively rapid trial suggested authorities wanted to get it out of the way well before the Beijing Olympics in August, said Joshua Rosenzweig of the Duihua Foundation, a San Francisco-based group that works to free Chinese political prisoners.

Hu was detained by police in late December after spending more than 200 days under house arrest in a Beijing apartment complex.

His wife, Zeng Jinyan, who has also often criticized the Chinese government, and their infant daughter remain under house arrest and their telephone is cut off.

Zeng attended the hearing, emerging with her baby from the courthouse visibly upset before being whisked away in a police vehicle.

TEH ENG KOON / AFP/Getty Images

Zeng Jinyan (L), the wife of human rights activist Hu Jia weeps as she speaks to the media outside a courthouse in Beijing on April 3, 2008. Activist Hu Jia was on April 3 jailed for three years and six months for subversion, his lawyer said, amid what rights groups charge is a campaign by China to silence dissent before the Olympics.


State security criminal cases, such as Hu's, have been rising, with 742 last year, John Kamm of the Duihua Foundation told reporters in Beijing.

With mounting arrests in Tibet after protests and unrest there, Kamm said 2008 was likely to be "a bumper year" for such cases.

Tibetans divided over protest strategy

Stringer/India / Reuters

Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, addresses a news conference at Dharamsala in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh March 16, 2008. The Dalai Lama called on Sunday for an investigation into China's tough response to protests in Tibet, and whether it was deliberate "cultural genocide". The comments from Tibet's spiritual leader came as police and troops locked down Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, two days after street protests against Chinese rule that the region's government-in-exile said had killed 80 people. REUTERS/Stringer (INDIA)
5:53 a.m. ET, 3/18/08

Updated 3:19 p.m. PT, Tues., March. 18, 2008

DHARMSALA, India - Tibetan exiles saw a chance to put China on the spot ahead of the Beijing Olympics, but never expected their protests to spread to Tibet and turn violent. Now the Dalai Lama is threatening to quit if his people don’t return to peaceful resistance.

It’s a warning he has used before — telling Tibetans to return to peaceful protests during 1989 unrest — but this time it comes amid deep divisions within the Tibetan community between those who back his pacifist approach and an angry young generation that demands action.

While the situation inside Tibet remains unclear, much of the violence last week appears to have been committed by Tibetans against Han Chinese — a fact that troubles the 72-year-old Dalai Lama, who has long called for Tibetans to have significant autonomy within China.

“Whether we like it or not, we have to live together side by side,” the Dalai Lama told reporters Tuesday in the northern Indian hill town of Dharmsala, seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile. “We must oppose Chinese policy but not the Chinese. Not on a racist basis.”

Though fearful of a Chinese crackdown — he compared the plight of Tibetans to that of “a young deer in a tiger’s hands” — the Dalai Lama insisted he could not abide violence by his own people. Peaceful protest is the only way, he said.

He said that if the situation gets out of control, his “only option is to completely resign.”

An aide later clarified that the Dalai Lama meant he would step down as the political leader of the exile government — not as the supreme religious leader of Tibetan Buddhists.


Regardless, his call for Tibetans to work with the Chinese stands in stark contrast to the “Free Tibet” chants of thousands of Tibetan youths, Buddhist monks and nuns who have marched the steep paths of Dharmsala in recent days, angry faces painted with Tibetan flags and chests smeared with blood-red paint.

They want action not diplomacy, independence not autonomy.

Youth activist cites frustration
“There is growing frustration among the younger generations. They have been talking for 20 years and nothing came out of it,” said Tsewang Rigzin, head of the Tibetan Youth Congress.

He urged “the protesters in Tibet to continue in their protests until China gets out of Tibet.”

While hesitant to directly criticize the Dalai Lama — who is deeply revered by Tibetans — and careful not to endorse violence, the younger activists warn that patience with his approach is running thin.

“I certainly hope the middle way approach will be reviewed. The Tibetan nation and Tibetan culture are on the verge of extinction,” Rigzin said.

Another activist, Tenzin Choedon, a 28-year-old student, said: “It is time for a change in Tibet and the Tibetan movement.”

The activists argue that the Dalai Lama is squandering a golden opportunity by not opposing China hosting the Olympics.

“We have to seize the opportunity of the Olympics,” said Rigzin. “We have to shift the spotlight while the whole world is watching to show the true color of China.”

The Youth Congress and other exile groups began a Dharmsala-to-Tibet walk on March 10 — just before Beijing was to kick off its Olympic celebrations with a torch run through Tibet. It was also the anniversary of a failed 1959 uprising in Tibet that forced the Dalai Lama to flee to India.

When Indian authorities stopped the first march just days after it began, the exiles embarked on a second attempt.

It’s a far more antagonistic approach than the Dalai Lama prefers. On Tuesday, he urged the marchers to abandon the project, saying it would only spark confrontation with Chinese troops at the border. “Will you get independence? What’s the use?” he asked.

Yet even the Dalai Lama understands the anger of the young.

“In recent years our approach has had no concrete improvement inside Tibet, so naturally (there are) more and more signs of restlessness, even inside Tibet,” he said.

The turmoil in Tibet also has laid bare the inability of Tibetans to capitalize on the intense exposure to their cause and extract concessions from China.

“We are helpless,” said Samdhong Rinpoche, prime minister of the Tibetan exile government, echoing comments by the Dalai Lama.

The government announced Monday that it was setting up a committee to coordinate the actions of Tibetan groups during the crisis. But word has not reached every group.

“So far we have not heard from them,” said B. Tsering, head of the Tibetan Women’s Association, which is taking part in the march to Tibet.

Despite China’s charge that the Dalai Lama and his supporters planned the uprising, the protests in Tibet and cities around the world were spontaneous — organized by local Tibetan groups and their sympathizers, B. Tsering said.

“If this continues I’m afraid the Tibetan people might lose control. It could get difficult,” she said. “Lots of demonstrations are decided on by the young people and we can’t control them.

The Dalai Lama insists pacifism is the only path to saving Tibet from the “cultural genocide” that he sees being inflicted by Han Chinese migration to Tibet and the communist regime’s religious restrictions.

“Our only strengths are justice and truth,” he said. “Force is immediate, but the effects of truth sometimes take longer.”