Born in sin: Chinese occupation of Tibet
“Born in sin” was the phrase used by the late J.B. Kripalani criticizing the Panchsheel agreement between Nehru and Chou En Lai. Born in sin was the Chinese occupation of Tibet. Free Tibet, NOW. This should be the war-cry of the free world.
Kalyanaraman 1 April 2008
Panchseel, "An Agreement Born in Sin"
Office of Tibet, New York[Saturday, July 03, 2004 19:08]
NEW YORK, July 2 - Panchsheel, an agreement for mutual co-existence between India and China, was Nehru's brain child. It encapsulated the Indian Prime Minister's vision of a united and properous future for the newly-colonized nations of the Third World. Nehru had no inkling that the Chinese vision was something else. Indeed, before a year passed after the signing of this document, described at that time by another Indian leader as an "agreement born in sin", China attacked India and dealt the peace-loving nation a humiliating defeat.
Four decades later, the growing global reach of the US is sleepless nights to the ambitious China. Beijing now needs India more than ever before to counter the US influence. So, with great fanfare, the Pancheel is exhumed from graveyard of the 1962-war.
In this, history seems to be on the side of China. Its communist allies are important partners in the new government of India. With the help of them, the Chinese have been able to build a formidable lobby for themselves in the new government of India.
Bringing India under the umbrella of the Middle Kingdom's Third World advocacy will represent a strategic triumph for China as it will then be able to orchestrate anti-US campaigns more effectively than ever before. But for India, the implications "may not be that wholesome", writes Swapan Dasgupta in "The Telegaph" (July 2), a daily published from Kolkota.
The following is excerpted from Swapan Dasgupta's article:
It is...more than just mystifying that this week witnessed the golden jubilee celebrations in New Delhi and Beijing of the Agreement on Trade and Intercourse between the Tibet region of China and India, a document better known as Panchsheel. For the newly-elected United Progressive Alliance government, which produced a special stamp to mark the event, it was an occasion to proclaim the rehabilitation of the Nehruvian order in foreign policy. For China, the re-discovery of Panch- sheel became a euphemism for some free publicity to the new mantra of heping jueqi or "good neighbourliness and global responsibility".
Yet, no anniversary celebration could be more inappropriate. For a start, June 28 was not the 50th anniversary of Panchsheel. As the India-based China-watcher, Claude Arpi, has pointed out, the agreement was signed by Chang Han-Fu, China's vice-minister of foreign affairs, and the Indian ambassador, N. Raghavan, in Beijing on April 29, 1954, and came into effect on June 3 that year. On April 29, however, the National Democratic Alliance government was still in place, and despite the improvement in Sino-Indian relations, no one really thought it necessary to commemorate an agreement that resulted in India abjuring the Shimla Convention of 1914 and surrendering its special diplomatic status in Tibet.
It is instructive to recall that Panchsheel was not universally welcomed in India. Speaking in the Lok Sabha in 1958, J.B. Kripalani was carping about India's abdication of its role in Tibet: "This great doctrine was born in sin because it was enunciated to put the seal of our approval upon the destruction of an ancient nation which was associated with us spiritually and culturally. It was a nation which wanted to live its own life and it ought to have been allowed to live it." Jawaharlal Nehru answered with a weak pun, "Born in Sindh?"
Unfortunately, Panchsheel proved to be no laughing matter. Regardless of the hype associated with democratic India, embrace of a totalitarian neighbour, Panchsheel was an ephemeral agreement. Initially valid for eight years, until April 1962, the "Hindi-Chini bhai bhai" euphoria was woefully one-sided and ended in tears for both Nehru and India. Within 26 days of Panchsheel coming into effect, the People's Liberation Army began its incursions into India, at Barahoti, north of Badrinath, in Uttaranchal. And by the time the agreement died a natural death, India had suffered a humiliating military debacle, with Nehru's heart going out to the people of Assam.
It speaks volumes for the self-esteem of the UPA government that it re-jigged the calendar of history and glossed over independent India's greatest moment of humiliation to celebrate a Congress prime minister's act of romantic folly. In sheer perversity, the grand tamasha in New Delhi last Monday was akin to the great and the good assembling in London's Guildhall to promote Anglo-German friendship by celebrating Chamberlain's gentlemanly capitulation in Munich in 1938.
It is tempting to dismiss the sudden re-discovery of Panchsheel as an unfortunate example of fawning and diplomatic buffoonery by India's influential band of Sinophiles. Tragically, the blunder is more serious and is symptomatic of the foreign policy regression that is taking place in Delhi.
It is not anyone's case that Sino-Indian relations must be held hostage to human rights in Tibet and the resolution of the border conflict. Since RajivGandhi's landmark visit in 1987, both sides have shown considerable maturity in putting normalization of relations above conflict resolution. It is an approach that Natwar Singh was absolutely right in commending to the Pakistan government last month.
However, there are strong suggestions that the UPA government's desire to establish a special relationship with China goes well beyond the purview of bilateral relations. Implicit in the rekindling of the flawed Panchsheel agreement is a move towards a more profound strategic partnership with Beijing. This includes imbibing China's perceptions of the restructuring of the post-Cold War world order.
The roots of this Sinophilia can be located in a mixture of misplaced nostalgia and plain expediency. Since the Pokhran-II blasts of May 1998, China has combined its traditional relationship with India's communists with a special relationship with the Congress. Never shy of getting involved in domestic policy when necessary, Beijing has crafted a formidable lobby for itself in the present UPA, centred on a wariness of the Curzonian assumptions of the Bharatiya Janata Party. Grafted on to the traditional Third World-ism of those who see themselves as Nehru's disciples, this has involved the direct encouragement to anti-US tendencies within the Indian foreign policy establishment.
Beijing has never underestimated the potential danger of India positioning itself as a rival Asian power. With its open society, vibrant democracy, cultural links and hostility to Islamism, India has always held out an attraction to a West that is deeply suspicious of China's hegemonic designs in Asia. For China, neutralizing India or bringing it under its strategic umbrella would constitute a monumental foreign-policy triumph. In simple terms, it would deny the West the natural alternative in Asia.
For India, however, the implications may not be all that wholesome. Apart from the economic implications of subordinating itself to the main competitor, excessive cosying up to China carries the danger of living with a permanent military handicap and being subjected to the threats of political blackmail, particularly in the North-east. It means abandoning all regional ambitions in favour of a spurious solidarity built on angst.
China and India have been geographical neighbours. This has, however, not been accompanied by either neighbourliness or an understanding of each other. In terms of both cultural assumptions and civil-society links, both countries remain separated by the formidable Himalayas. Regardless of the temporary irritation with the unilateralism of the Bush administration, India's natural gaze is Westwards. We are naturally at ease with the Anglo-Saxon world. The Middle Kingdom is both distant and incomprehensible. Panchsheel was just an early warning.
http://www.phayul.com/news/article.aspx?id=7198&t=1&c=1
BORN IN SIN: THE PANCHSHEEL AGREEMENT
THE SACRIFICE OF TIBET
By Claude Arpi
Mittal Publications
In India, one often hears of ‘Panchsheel’, but few know that it only was an "Agreement on Trade and Intercourse between the Tibet region of China and India” signed by China and India on April 29, 1954.
Since the preamble of this Agreement contained the famous Five Principles, it was dubbed the ‘Panchsheel Agreement’. Though it lapsed in 1962 and was never renewed, it has kept its aura as the ideal solution to conduct foreign relations. But its first result was that Tibet, a 2000-old nation was erased from the map of Asia.
During a debate in the Parliament in 1958, the Socialist leader Acharya Kripalani stated: “This great doctrine was born in sin, because it was enunciated to put the seal of our approval upon the destruction of an ancient nation which was associated with us spiritually and culturally… It was a nation which wanted to live its own life and it sought to have been allowed to live its own life.”
The 1962 Sino-Indian conflict was another consequence of the ‘Panchsheel’ policy.
A hundred years ago a young British Colonel, Francis Younghusband entered the holy city of Lhasa and forced upon the Tibetans their first Agreement with the mighty British Empire. In signing this treaty with the Crown, Tibet was ‘acknowledged’ as a separate nation by the British.
Ten years later, London called for a tripartite Conference in Simla to settle the issue: British India, Tibet and China sat together at a negotiation table for the first time.
The Simla Convention, born out of the Conference was still in force when India became independent in August 1947.
However, an event changed the destiny of the Land of Snows. In October 1950, Mao Zedong’s troops invaded Tibet.
With this background, the present research looks at the genesis of the Panchsheel Agreement between India and China which converted the Land of Snows into merely ‘Tibet’s Region of China’. A natural and cultural buffer zone between India and China disappeared.
The preamble of the Agreement contained the Five Principles which formed the main pillar of India’s foreign policy for the next fifty years. This was the beginning of the Hindi-Chini Bhai-Bhai slogan and India’s ‘non-aligned’ position.
This policy still haunts an India unable to sort out her border tangle with China. This study concludes with some tentative but constructive proposals to come out of the current impasse.
ISBN: 91-7099-974-X
Year of Publication: August 2004
Price: Rs 495
Mittal Publications
A-110 Mohan Garden
New Delhi 110 059
Tel: 011- 25351493, 25351976 Fax: 25351521
Email: mittalp@ndf.net.in
Website: www.mittalpublications.com
Showroom: 4594/9 Daryaganj
New Delhi 110002
Tel: 23250398
http://www.jaia-bharati.org/livres/ca-panchsheel.htm
Excerpts from the book:
“ENVIRONMENTAL CONSEQUENCE OF THE PANCHSHEEL POLICY”
“THE BRAHMAPUTRA DAM AND DIVERSION”
“STRATEGIC LOCATION”.
1. “ Ginsburg, in a study of Communist China and Tibet in the sixties wrote: ‘HE WHO HOLDS TIBET DOMINATES THE HIMALAYAN PIEDMONT; HE WHO DOMINATES THE HIMALAYAN PIEDMONT THREATENS THE INDIAN SUB-CONTINENT; AND HE WHO THREATENS THE INDIAN SUB-CONTINENT MAY WELL HAVE ALL THE SOUTH-EAST ASIA WITHIN HIS REACH, AND ALL OF ASIA.” (1)
2. “Mao, the strategist, knew this well, as did the British who had always succeeded in their maneuvers to keep Tibet an ‘AUTONOMOUS’ buffer zone between their Indian colony and the Chinese and Russian Empires. The Government of India, upon inheriting the past treaties and obligations of British India, should have donned British mantle recognizing its advantages for Indian security and its sense of responsibility vis-à-vis Tibet; unfortunately for fear of looking like a neo-colonist state, without giving any thought to the consequences which would follow, they failed.” (2)
“AN ENVIRONMENTAL CONSEQUENCE.”
3. “For India, one of the indirect, THOUGH SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES OF LOSING THIS BUFFER ZONE BETWEEN HER AND CHINA IS THE ENVIRONMENTAL DESTRUCTION WHICH HAS OCCURRED IN TIBET DURING THE LAST FOUR DECADES. The responsibility for this lies mainly with Deng Xiaoping and his mantra: ‘TO BECOME RICH IS GLORIOUS’. The frantic race for wealth which ensued became known as ‘SOCIALISM WITH CHINESE CHARACTERISTIC’. In fact it was ‘wild capitalism’; THE CHINESE STATE ITSELF BECAME A VORACIOUS DEVELOPER WITH SCANT RESPECT FOR THE ENVIRONMENT.”
4. “The fact that India did not keep the responsibility ‘legally bestowed
on her by the SIMLA CONVENTION’ hastened the end result of the immense damage inflicted by the new occupiers upon the high plateau’s environment. Our case study highlights a ‘PROJECT FOR THE DIVERSION AND THE DAMMING OF THE TSANGPO (BRAHMAPUTRA)’. We shall study the consequences caused by Tibet’s occupation, NOT ONLY ON THE ENVIRONMENT, BUT ALSO ITS SNOWBALLING IMPACT ON THE SUB-CONTINENT’S SECURITY.”
“TIBET: ASIA’S WATER TANK”.
5. “The Tibetan plateau is the ‘PRINCIPAL ASIAN WATERSHED’ and the ‘SOURCE OF TEN MAJOR RIVERS’. TIBET’S WATERS FLOW DOWN TO ELEVEN COUNTRIES AND ARE SAID TO BRING FRESH WATER TO OVER 85% OF ASIA’S POPULATION, APPROXIMATELY 50% OF THE WORLD’S POPULATION.”
6. “THREE OF THE WORLD’S TEN MAJOR RIVERS, THE BRAHMAPUTRA, THE YANGTZE AND THE MEKONG HAVE THEIR HEADWATERS ON THE TIBETAN PLATEAU. THE OTHER MAJOR RIVERS WHICH ORIGINATE FROM TIBET ARE THE HUANG HO (OR YELLOW RIVER), THE SALWEEN, THE ARUN, THE KARNALI, THE SUTLEJ AND THE INDUS.”
7. “SOUTH ASIA IS MAINLY CONCERNED WITH THE
BRAHMAPUTRA, THE INDUS, THE SUTLEJ, THE ARUN AND THE KARNALI WHOSE WATERS GIVE LIFE TO MORE THAN ONE BILLION PEOPLE LIVING DOWNSTREAM.”
8. “IT IS ROUGHLY ESTIMATED THAT 10-20% OF THE HIMALAYAN REGION IS COVERED BY GLACIAL ICE WHILE AN ADDITIONAL AREA RANGING FROM 30-40% HAS SEASONAL SNOW COVER. HIMALAYAN GLACIERS COVER AROUND 100,000 SQ. KMS. AND STORE ABOUT 12,000 CUBIC KMS OF FRESH WATER: ‘THE MOST INCREDIBLE WATER TANK ONE CAN IMAGINE’.”
9. “ The perennial run of the rivers, originating from these glaciers, also result in a stable flow of water to regions which are dominated by monsoon rainfalls.”
“SOUTH-NORTH WATER DIVERSION”.
10. “China is facing a VERY SERIOUS WATER SHORTAGE. This problem is sought to be solved by DIVERTING LARGE QUANTITIES OF WATER FROM THE WET SOUTH TO THE DRY NORTH. The engineers in Beijing have conceived a SOUTH-NORTH WATER DIVERSION.”
11. “In September 2001 (3), Associated Press commented about the Western segment of the SOUTH-NORTH water diversion: ‘THE SHEER SCALE HARKENS BACK TO THE MEGAPROJECTS OF IMPERIAL CHINA AND THE HEYDAY OF COMMUNIST CENTRAL PLANNING. BUT EVEN IN THE HOME OF THE 1,500-MILE GREAT WALL, THE SCHEME IS RAISING EYEBROWS. SOME QUESTION IF SUCH A GARGANTUAN PROJECT IS NEEDED-OR EVEN WISE.”
12. “BUT THIS IS NOT ENOUGH TO SAVE NORTHERN CHINA. THE PLANNERS IN BEIJING HAVE LOGICALLY TURNED THEIR SIGHTS TOWARDS THE TIBETAN HIGH PLATEAU.”
REFERENCES:
(1) GINSBURG&MATHOS, ‘COMMUNIST CHINA AND TIBET’ (THE HAGUE:MARTINUF NIJHOFF, 1964)
(2) THE STRATEGIC POSITION OF TIBET BECAME EVEN MORE VISIBLE WHEN CHINA JOINED THE RESTRICTED CIRCLE OF NUCLEAR NATIONS. IS THERE A MORE IDEAL PLACE THAN THE TIBETAN HIGH PLATEAU TO POSITION ICBMs WITH NUCLEAR WARHEADS POINTED TOWARDS INDIA AND RUSSIA?
(3) ASSOCIATED PRESS (10 SEPTEMBER 2001), ‘CHINA PLANS TO REROUTE PART OF RIVER.
“THE CASE OF THE YARLUNG TSANGPO”
13. “The Yarlung Tsangpo (or Brahmaputra as it is known in India), has an immense bearing on the lives of hundreds of millions in the sub-continent.”
14. “It is the largest river on the Tibetan plateau, originating from a glacier near Mt. Kailash. It is considered to be the highest river on earth with an average altitude of 4,000 meters. It runs 2,057 kilometers in Tibet before flowing into India, where it becomes the Brahmaputra. One of its interesting characteristics is the ‘SHARP U-TURN’ it takes at the proximity of Mt. Namcha Barwa (7,782 meters) near the Indian border.”
15. “Like the Nile in Egypt, the Yarlung Tsangpo has nurtured the Tibetan civilization which flourished along its valleys, particularly in Central Tibet.”
16. “Near Shigatse region, the Yarlung valley is 20-30 kms wide. This area with its sand dunes and lakes is the cradle of the two thousand year-old civilization.”
17. “The Yarlung Tsangpo enters India in Siang district of Arunachal Pradesh. The Brahmaputra has always been considered the very soul of the State by Assamese poets and ordinary people alike. Entering Bangladesh, the river unites with the Ganga and is known as the Padma, before becoming the Meghna-Brahmaputra after merging with the river Meghna. Finally it divides into hundreds of channels to form a vast delta which flows into the Bay of Bengal.”
“THE GRAND CANYON”
18. “But let us return to the Tibetan plateau. When the Tsangpo reaches its Easternmost point in Tibet, it takes a sharp ‘U-TURN’ known as the ‘GREAT BEND’. Only recently it has been found that the Yarlung Tsangpo gorge ‘FORMS THE LONGEST AND DEEPEST CANYON IN THE WORLD’. In May 1994, XINHUA NEWS AGENCY reported: ‘CHINESE GEOLOGISTS CLAIM THAT A REMOTE TIBETAN CANYON IS THE WORLD’S LARGEST, BIGGER AND DEEPER THAN THE GRAND CANYON. THE YARLUNG ZANGBO CANYON, IN THE VAST HIMALAYAN RANGE THAT ENCIRCLES CHINA, AVERAGES 3.1 MILES (5 KMS) IN DEPTH AND EXTENDS 198 MILES (317 KMS) IN LENGTH. THE GRAND CANYON IN THE SOUTHWESTERN U.S. STATE OF ARIZONA IS, BY COMPARISON, A MERE 1 MILE (1.6 KMS) DEEP BUT 217 MILES (347 KMS) LONG WITH A WIDTH OF BETWEEN 4 AND 12 MILES. SCIENTISTS FOUND THAT THE CANYON, LOCATED IN THE HIMALAYAN RANGE, AVERAGES 5,000 METERS IN DEPTH, WITH THE DEEPEST SECTION REACHING 5,382 METERS.” (4)
19. “IT IS IN THE ‘GREAT BEND’ THAT CHINA IS PLANNING ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANR COMPONENTS OF THE ‘WESTERN ROUTE DIVERSION SCHEME’. THIS PHARONIC PROJECT IS PERHAPS THE MOST MIND-BOGGLING PART OF ‘THE NATIONAL STRATEGY TO DIVERT WATER FROM RIVERS IN THE SOUTH AND WEST TO ROUGHT-STRICKEN NORTHERN AREAS.”
“THE PROJECT”.
20. “The Tsangpo Project will have two components: ‘ONE WILL BE THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE WORLD’S LARGEST HYDRO-ELECTRIC PLANT THAT WOULD GENERATE TWICE THE ELECTRICITY PRODUCED BY THE THREE GORGES DAM. TODAY, THE BIGGEST POWER STATION IN THE WORLD IS LOCATED IN ITAIPU IN BRAZIL: IT HAS A TOTAL INSTALLED CAPACITY OF 12,600 MEGAWATTS. THE THREE GORGES DAM ON THE YANGTZE RIVER(STILL INCOMPLETED) WILL HAVE A 18,200 MEGAWATTS CAPACITY. THE HYDROELECTRIC PLANT ON THE ‘GREAT BEND OF THE YARLUNG TSANGPO’ WILL DWARF ALL THESE PROJECTS WITH A PLANNED CAPACITY OF 40,000 MEGAWATTS.”
21. “The second component of the Project will be the diversion of the waters of the Tsangpo which will be pumped Northward across hundreds of kilometers of mountainous regions to China’s Northwestern provinces of Xinjiang and Gansu.”
22. “For the Chinese leaders, it is enough to know that the Tsangpo river tumbles down over 3,000 meters in less than 200 kms. This gives the gorge one of the greatest hydropower potentials available in the world. This is the stuff which makes Beijing leaders dream.”
23. “For the Tibetans, it is one of the most pristine regions of their country. They consider the area around the ‘BEND’ as the home of the GODDESS DORJEE PAGMO, (5), Tibet’s ‘PROTECTING DEITY’. Many believe that this place, locally known as Pemako is the sacred realm often referred to in their scriptures: THE LAST HIDDEN SHANGRILA.”
24. “FOR SOUTH ASIA AND MORE PARTICULARLY FOR INDIA, THE ENORMITY OF THE SCHEME WITH ITS PROXIMITY TO THE INDIAN BORDER CANNOT BE IGNORED. IT IS NOT ONLY THE SHEER SIZE OF THE PROJECT WHICH HAS TO BE CONSIDERED, BUT THE FACT THAT IF ACCOMPLISHED, IT WILL HAVE OMINOUS CONSEQUENCES FOR MILLIONS OF PEOPLE DOWNSTREAM. THEIR BASIC NEED FOR WATER AND THEIR VERY SURVIVAL WOULD BE ENDANGERED.”
REFERENCES
(4) TIBET WORLD NEWS (4 MAY 1994), CHINA CLAIMS TIBETAN CANYON IS LARGEST.
(4) IN ENGLISH: THE DIAMOND SOW.
“HISTORY OF THE PROJECT”
25. “The Project was reported in the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN in June 1996. This Article gave credence to the Chinese plans. The journal wrote: ‘RECENTLY SOME CHINESE ENGINEERS PROPOSED DIVERTING WATERS INTO THIS ARID AREA (GOBI) DESERT FROM THE MIGHTY BRAHMAPUTRA RIVER, WHICH SKIRTS CHINA’S SOUTHERN BORDER BEFORE DIPPING INTO INDIA AND BANGLADESH. SUCH A FEAT WOULD BE ‘IMPOSSIBLE’ WITH ‘CONVENTIONAL METHODS’, ENGINEERS STATED AT A MEETING HELD LAST DECEMBER AT THE CHINESE ACADEMY OF ENGINEERING PHYSICS IN BEIJING’. But they added that ‘WE CAN CERTAINLY ACCOMPLISH THIS PROJECT WITH NUCLEAR EXPLOSIVES’.”
26. “ The journal continued: ‘THIS STATEMENT IS JUST ONE OF THE MANY LATELY IN WHICH CHINESE TECHNOLOGISTS AND OFFICIALS HAVE TOUTED THE POTENTIAL OF NUCLEAR BLASTS FOR CARRYING OUT NON-MILITARY GOALS’.”
27. “It is said that one of the reasons for China’s refusal to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) was because of their desire to keep the possibility of experimenting with what is called PNE (PEACEFUL NUCLEAR EXPLOSION). The Chinese argument was: ‘WHY SHOULD PROMISING AND POTENTIALLY USEFUL TECHNOLOGY BE ABANDONED’.”(6)
28. “In the following months, more publicity was given to the dam as well as the diversion proposals. In September 1997, AGENCE FRANCE PRESS in Beijing (7) reported: ‘THREE EXPERTS PROPOSE CONSTRUCTION OF GIANT DAM IN TIBET.’ It stated: ‘AFTER A LONG EXPERIENCE OF EXPLORATION ON THE SITE, WE BELIEVE THAT THE PROJECT COULD BEGIN TO BE INCLUDED IN THE AGENDA OF THE CONCERNED DEPARTMENT’.”
29. “The Project was also mentioned in news briefs in the CHINA DAILY BUSINESS WEEKLY- 21 SEPTEMBER 1997- and the INTERNATIONAL WATER POWER & DAM CONSTRUCTION MONTHLY – NOVEMBER 1997.”
30. “In January 1998, the German T.V. Channel ZDF presented a feature on the Yarlung Tsangpo Project, in a programme entitled ‘DIE WELT’ (THE WORLD). The Chief Planner, Professor Chen Chuanyu was interviewed. HE DESCRIBED THE PLAN TO DRILL A 15 KMS (9.3 MILES) TUNNEL THROUGH THE HIMALAYAS TO DIVERT THE WATER BEFORE THE ‘U-TURN’ AND DIRECT IT TO THE OTHER END OF THE BEND. THIS WOULD SHORTEN THE DISTANCE OF APPROXIMATELY 3,000 METERS ALTITUDE DROP FROM 200 KMS TO JUST 15 KMS. HE EXPLAINED THAT THE HYDROPOWER POTENTIAL OF 40,000 MEGAWATTS COULD BE USED TO PUMP WATER TO NORTHWEST CHINA OVER 800 KMS AWAY.”
31. “In recent years, the Chinese have been more discreet about the Project, although a few reports have continued to come in. The correspondent of THE TELEGRAPH in Beijing wrote in October 2000: ‘CHINESE LEADERS ARE DRAWING UP PLANS TO USE NUCLEAR EXPLOSIONS, IN BREACH OF THE INTERNATIONAL TEST-BAN TREATY, TO BLAST A TUNNEL THROUGH THE HIMALAYAS FOR THE WORLD’S BIGGEST HYDROELECTRIC PLANT’.”
32. “According to the London paper, THE COST OF DRILLING THE TUNNEL THROUGH MT. NAMCHA BARWA APPEARS LIKELY TO SURPASS (POUND STERLING) 10 BILLION. The Article gives further details: ‘AT THE BOTTOM OF THE TUNNEL, THE WATER WILL FLOW INTO A NEW RESERVOIR AND THEN BE DIVERTED ALONG MORE THAN 500 MILES OF THE TIBETAN PLATEAU TO THE VAST, ARID AREAS OF XINJIANG REGION AND THE GANSU PROVINCE. BEIJING WANTS TO USE LARGE QUANTITIES OF THE PLENTIFUL WATERS OF THE SOUTH-WEST TO TOP UP THE YELLOW RIVER BASIN AND ASSUAGE MOUNTING DISCONTENT OVER WATER SHORTAGES IN 600 CITIES IN NORTHERN CHINA’.”(8)
33. “However, it seems that the proposal has drawn flak from several Chinese scientists. Yang Yong, a geologist who had explored the river, stated that the dam could become an embarrassing white elephant amid growing signs that the volume of water flowing in the Yarlung Tsangpo could shrink over the years.”
34. “But in 2000, before becoming Premier Wen Jiabao had declared: ‘IN THE 21ST CENTURY, THE CONSTRUCTION OF LARGE DAMS WILL PLAY A KEY ROLE IN EXPLOITING CHINA’S WATER RESOURCES, CONTROLLING FLOODS AND DROUGHTS, AND PUSHING THE NATIONAL ECONOMY AND THE COUNTRY’S MODERNIZING FORWARD.”(9)
“THE SECOND COMPONENT”
35. “The second component of the plan is a massive diversion of the river to China’s North West. THIS WOULD HAVE EVEN MORE DEVASTATING CONSEQUENCES. NORTH INDIA AND BANGLADESH WOULD BE STARVED OF THEIR LIFE-LINE. NUTRIENT-RICH SEDIMENTS THAT ENRICH THE SOILS OF THESE REGIONS WOULD BE HELD BACK IN THE RESERVOIR. WITH NO MORE WATER REACHING THE RIVER’S DELTA, MILLIONS OF PEOPLE WOULD BE AFFECTED. ‘A WATER WAR COULD ENSUE’.”
36. “Last and perhaps most serious: ‘THE GREAT BEND IS LOCATED IN A HIGHLY EARTHQUAKE PRONE AREA. A HUGE RESERVOIR AND A FEW NEPs COULD PROVOKE NEW EARTHQUAKES EVEN MORE SERIOUS THAN THE ONE IN AUGUST 1950. ‘WILL MEN BE WISE TO LEARN FROM THE PAST AND STUDY NATURE’S LIMITS AND REACTIONS BEFORE WANTING TO ALTER HER’?”
REFERENCES
(6) CHINA FINALLY SIGNED THE CTBT IN SEPTEMBER 1996 BUT NEVER RATIFIED THE TREATY WHICH MEANS THAT BEIJING IS STILL KEEPING A DOOR OPEN FOR USING PNEs.
(7) TIBET 2000- ‘ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT ISSUES. (DHARAMSALA, DIIR, 2000)
(8) ‘THE TELEGRAPH’, LONDON (22 OCTOBER 2000). ‘CHINA PLANNING NUCLEAR BLASTS TO BUILD GIANT HYDRO PROJECT, by DAMIEN McELROY in BEIJING.
(9) ibid.
“THE ARUNACHAL FLOODS”.
37. An event which occurred in June 2000 could be an illustration at a ‘VERY REDUCED SCALE’ OF WHAT COULD HAPPEN IF THE TSANGPO PROJECT IS ONE DAY COMPLETED. ‘AT THAT TIME, THE BREACH OF A NATURAL DAM IN TIBET LED TO SEVERE FLOODS AND LEFT OVER A HUNDRED PEOPLE DEAD OR MISSING IN ARUNACHAL PRADESH. IT IS NOT DIFFICULT TO UNDERSTAND THAT AREAS DOWNSTREAM IN ARUNACHAL OR ASSAM ARE EXTREMELY VULNERABLE TO WHAT TAKES PLACE UPSTREAM IN TIBET. At the time of the incident Rediff.com reported: ‘ALTHOUGH NEWS OF FLOODS IN DISTANT NORTH-EAST MAY NOT BE HOT FOR DELHI, THE FLASH FLOODS THAT HIT THE BORDER STATE OF ARUNACHAL PRADESH IN JUNE HAS MADE OFFICIALS AT THE CENTRAL WATER COMMISSION AND THE MWR (10) SIT UP AND TAKE NOTICE. AS OFFICIALS POUR OVER THE TECHNICAL DATA, A NEW DIMENSION THAT THE CHINESE ARMY IN TIBET, AS PART OF AN EXPERIMENT, MAY HAVE DELIBERATELY BLASTED THE DAM HAS BEEN ADDED TO THE ALREADY HAZY PICTURE’.”
38. “According to Nabam Rebia, Member of Parliament from Arunachal Pradesh, puzzled by the nature of the floods and the equally mysterious response of China, the Government of India’s remote sensing agency hired a Canadian satellite to take a close look at the scene of the breach. Top officials who confirmed this said: ‘ALL THE TECHNICAL DETAILS AND PICTURES FROM THE AREA ARE WITH US NOW AND CONFIRM THAT A BREACH HAD TAKEN PLACE ON A DAM ON THE RIVER TSANGPO LEADING TO FLASH FLOODS IN THE NORTH-EASTERN REGION. ACCORDING TO THE OFFICIAL, WHO HAD SEEN THE TECHNICAL DATA, THE FLASH FLOOD OCCURRED BECAUSE OF A BREACH IN A DAM LOCATED IN AN AREA PINPOINTED AS LATITUDE 30.15 DEGREES NORTH BY 94.50 DEGREES EAST, WHICH FALLS IN CHINA CONTROLLED TIBET’.”
39. “A few weeks later, a similar mishap took place on the other end of the Himalayas. ‘THE TRIBUNE’ in Chandigarh reported this strange event (11): ‘EVEN THREE DAYS AFTER THE DISASTER, THE MYSTERY FLASH FLOODS IN THE SUTLEJ, WHICH WRECKED HAVOC ALONG IYS 200 KMS LENGTH IN THE STATE, REMAINS UNRESOLVED’. It added: ‘EXPERTS ARE AT A LOSS TO UNDERSTAND WHERE THE HUGE MASS OF WATER CAME FROM’.”
40. “A detailed study carried out a few months later by ISRO scientists confirmed that the release of excess water accumulated in the Sutlej and the Siang river (THE TSANGPO) basins in Tibet had led to flooding. Nearly a year later, the weekly INDIA TODAY commented (12): ‘WHILE THE SATELLITE IMAGES REMAIN CLASSIFIED, OFFICIALS OF THE MINISTRY OF WATER RESOURCES INDICATE THAT THESE PICTURES SHOW THE PRESENCE OF HUGE WATER BODIES OR LAKES UPSTREAM IN SUTLEJ AND SIANG RIVER BASINS BEFORE THE FLASH FLOODS TOOK PLACE. HOWEVER, THESE LAKES DISAPPEARED SOON AFTER THE DISASTER STRUCK INDIAN TERRITORY. THIS PROBABLY MEANS THAT THE CHINESE HAD BREACHED THESE WATER BODIES AS A RESULT OF WHICH LAKHS OF CUSECS OF WATER WERE RELEASED INTO THE SUTLEJ AND SIANG RIVER BASINS’.”
REFERENCES
(10) MINISTRY OF WATER RESOURCES.
(11) ‘THE TRIBUNE’- ‘FLOOD STARTED IN TIBET?’, 04 AUGUST 2000.
(12) ‘INDIA TODAY’, ‘MADE IN CHINA’, 25 JUNE 2001
“THE IMPLICATIONS”.
41. “The construction of the multi-billion dollar project is tentatively scheduled to begin in 2009, the year the THREE GORGES DAM is supposed to be completed.”
“FOR TIBET AND THE SURROUNDING AREAS”
42. “A reservoir of a 40,000 MEGAWATTS capacity dam would create a ‘HUGE ARTIFICIAL LAKE’ inundating vast areas of virgin forest within the canyon and beyond. The reservoir would stretch hundreds of kilometers upstream from the Yarlung Tsangpo into the Kongpo region. Rare species of flora and fauna will be lost for scientific study. The Chinese authorities themselves admit that the canyon is home to more than 60% of the biological resources on the Tibatan plateau.”
43. “Although the population in the canyon is rather small, the indigenous people would suffer great hardship and be forced to leave their ancestral lands. It may not be a problem for Beijing which has ‘resettled’ more than one million Chinese Hans since the beginning of the construction of the THREE GORGES DAM, but for the Tibetans, it would mean the loss of a last sacred place and the home of their PROTECTING DEITY. Furthermore, Tibetans would not benefit in any way from the power produced by the hydroelectric plant, as it would be sold to China’s southern neighbours or used to send the water upstream to Northwestern China.”
44. “Additionally, the water diversion scheme is likely to be a highly inefficient and wasteful exercise with billions of cubic meters of water being lost to evaporation, leakage, percolation etc., through the 800 KMS-long canala and aqueducts.”
45. “If the project comes to fruition, Tibet and the world would have lost this virgin region and its canyon, A GREAT BOTANICAL TREASURE HERITAGE.”
46. “The potential use of nuclear devices to create tunnels for the project raises further serious concerns about the environmental impacts of such a project for the region and those living downstream. There will also be a great danger of ‘SENDING CONTAMINATED WATERS’ to Northwestern China. THIS IS PERHAPS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT SIDE-EFFECTS, NOT YET ADDRESSED BY THE CHINESE SCIENTISTS.”
“FOR SOUTH ASIA.”
47. “India and Bangladesh WOULD BE AT THE MERCY OF CHINA BOTH FOR ADEQUATE RELEASE OF WATER DURING THE DRY SEASON, AS WELL AS FOR PROTECTION FROM FLOODS DURING THE RAINY SEASON. INDIA KNOWS FROM ITS OWN INTERNAL PROBLEMS HOW DIFFICULT IT IS TO SOLVE A WATER DISPUTE. WHEN IT COMES TO A TRANS-BOUNDARY QUESTION (WHERE THE FRONTIER IS NOT EVEN AGREED UPON), IT SEEMS PRACTICALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND A WORKABLE UNDERSTANDING.”
48. “Precipitation in North India (particularly Assam) and Bangladesh is very high (80%) during the four monsoon months (between June to September), and low (20%) during the remaining eight months. China seeing her own interests, could withhold water for power generation and irrigation during the dry season and release water during the flood season with catastrophic consequences for Eastern South Asia.”
“THE SITUATION TODAY”.
49. “In June 2003, the Indian Prime Minister spent 6 days in China. On his return, everyone clapped. It would seem that at last the past could be left behind and a new era begun for the two Asian giants. Analysts thought that the old dream of Nehru, ‘A TRUE HINDI-CHINI BHAI BHAI’, could finally manifest. The ancient ideologues of the ‘LONG MARCH’ were dead and gone; a Fourth Generation of young, pragmatic and dynamic leaders had taken over. One could finally speak business.”
50. “The Prime Minister was only just back, WHEN THE NEWS OF CHINESE INTRUSIONS ON INDIAN SOIL WAS FLASHED BY THE INDIAN PRESS. Such an embarrassment for the MEA’s officers who had worked for months to draft a ‘PANCHSHEEL’ type of declaration! Once again, LIKE 45 YEARS AGO, THE FIVE PRINCIPLES HAD BEEN VIOLATED.”
51. “Everything couls still have passed off without too much fuss. The MEA could have handled the situation ‘diplomatically’. But the unfortunate happened: the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman declared: ‘CHINA DOES NOT RECOGNIZE THE SO-CALLED ARUNACHAL PRADESH MENTIONED BY THE INDIAN NEWSPAPER REPORT’.”
52. “A weak Indian External Affairs Ministry could only feebly respond that the GOI was aware of the ‘transgression’ of the LAC by a Chinese patrol.”
53. “Perhaps the ‘Arunachal’ annoncement was a diplomatic diversion to hide a far more serious matter for India: THE TSANGPO PROJECT. On 17 JULY 2003, the ‘PEOPLE’S DAILY’ had published a small item, ‘CHINA TO CONDUCT FEASIBILITY STUDY ON HYDROPOWER PROJECT IN TIBET’. It ran thus: ‘CHINA PLANS TO CONDUCT A FEASIBILITY STUDY IN OCTOBER ON THE CONSTRUCTION OF A MAJOR HYDROPOWER PROJECT ON THE YARLUNG TSANGPO RIVER, IN THE TIBET AUTONOMOUS REGION- - -, AN EXPERT TEAM WAS SENT TO THE AREA FOR PRELIMENARY WORK BETWEEN LATE JUNE AND EARLY JULY. THE CHINESE SECTION OF THE RIVER, 2,057 KMS LONG, BOASTS A WATER ENERGY RESERVE OF ABOUT 100 MILLION KILOWATTS, OR ONE SIXTH OF THE COUNTRY’S TOTAL, RANKING SECOND BEHIND THE YANGTZE RIVER. THE LOCATION FOR THE POSSIBLE HYDROPOWER PLANT IS THE ‘U-SHAPED TURN’ OF THE RIVER IN THE SOUTHEASTERN PART OF TIBET. THE RIVER DROPS BY 2,755 METERS IN THE 500 KILOMETER-LONG ‘U-SECTION’.”
54. “THE CAT IS OUT OF THE BAG, THOUGH VERY FEW PEOPLE HAVE NOTICED IT.”
“CONCLUSIONS.”
55. “Today, it is clear that these questions do not pertain to environment alone, but also to international security. If BEIJING WAS TO GO AHEAD WITH THE TSANGPO PROJECT, IT WOULD MEAN PRACTICALLY A DECLARATION OF WAR AGAINST SOUTH ASIA.”
56. “The only solution seems to lie in bringing the matter to the negotiating table. If a river-water Treaty could be signed between India and Pakistan in the early sixties, can a similar agreement not be made between China, India and Bangladesh, in order to assure a decent life for all in the region?”
57. “BUT DO BUREAUCRATS AND POLITICIANS WHO HAVE NO LONG-TERM VIEW EVEN WANT TO KNOW ABOUT THE PROBLEM? THAT IS THE BILLION DOLLAR QUESTION.”
(CONCLUDED)
POSTSCRIPT by Capt. Balakrishnan (1 April 2008).
With respect to Para 51 above, one would do well to bear in mind what the famous historian, Dr. R.C.Majumdar had to write about the Chinese: “THERE IS, HOWEVER ONE ASPECT OF CHINESE CULTURE THAT IS LITTLE KNOWN OUTSIDE THE CIRCLE OF PROFESSIONAL HISTORIANS. IT IS THE AGGRESSIVE IMPERIALISM THAT CHARACTERISED THE POLITICS OF CHINA THROUGOUT THE COURSE OF HER HISTORY, AT LEAST DURING THE PART OF WHICH IS WELL KNOWN TO US. THANKS TO THE SYSTEMATIC RECORDING OF HISTORICAL FACTS BY CHINESE THEMSELVES, AN ALMOST UNIQUE ACHEIVEMENT IN ORIENTAL COUNTRIES- - - WE (HISTORIANS) ARE IN POSITION TO FOLLOW THE IMPERIAL AND AGGRESSIVE POLICY OF CHINA FROM THE THIRD CENTURY B.C. TO THE PRESENT DAY, A PERIOD OF MORE THAN TWENTY-TWO HUNDRED YEARS- - -. IT IS CHARACTERISTIC OF CHINA THAT IF A REGION ONCE ACKNOWLEDGED HER NOMINAL SUZERAINTY EVEN FOR A SHORT PERIOD, SHE SHOULD REGARD IT AS A PART OF HER EMPIRE FOR EVER AND WOULD AUTOMATICALLY REVIVE HER CLAIM OVER IT EVEN AFTER A THOUSAND YEARS WHENEVER THERE WAS A CHANCE OF ENFORCING IT.”
AND OF COURSE, THE STUDENTS WING OF OUR ‘RED COMRADES’- THE STUDENTS FEDERATION OF INDIA (SFI)- AT THE J.N.U. VOTED FOR THE CHINESE STATEMENT AT PARA 51 ABOVE IN DECEMBER 2004!!!
Monday, March 31, 2008
One reason why China should be forced out of Tibet: evil designs on Brahmaputra
Brahmaputra jitters from China project
OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT (Kolkata, Telegraph, 31 March 2008)
New Delhi, March 30: Hints have emerged from China that it may be gearing for a project on the Brahmaputra that threatens drought in India’s Northeast, environment experts and Indian officials claim.
Delhi, however, has decided to ignore the developments and instead volunteered to pay Beijing for help in avoiding floods in the region, government sources here said.
China, despite official disclaimers, has long been suspected of planning to divert the waters of the Brahmaputra — which originates in southwest Tibet as the Yarlung Zangbo or Tsangpo —to its thirsty northwest.
Experts have warned that such a project could trigger an ecological disaster in India’s Northeast and Bangladesh.
In recent weeks, a flood of technical articles has appeared in China backing the diversion plan, indicating Beijing is setting the stage for the project, Indian officials said. They said the Chinese government had also built an airstrip on the river’s banks close to a potential diversion point where a dam could come up.
Himanshu Thakkar of South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers & People, an NGO, said the Chinese project could divert 200 billion cubic metres of water annually to the Yellow River, leaving Assam dry during the lean season.
However, the Union water resources ministry secretary, Umesh Narayan Panjiar, said: “There are no concrete developments. We are watching.”
Other government sources said from all indications, Delhi had no plans to respond till detailed project reports came out in China. “Then it could be too late,” an official said.
The Centre has not carried out any study on the possible magnitude of the impact of a Chinese diversion project, or worked out a contingency plan for Arunachal Pradesh and Assam, the states that would be hit the worst.
Delhi, however, is happy that Beijing has agreed to add two more monitoring stations to its array of three on the Tsangpo/Brahmaputra to forewarn against floods. India has decided to fund the maintenance of the two new stations. China shares weather forecast data from its three existing stations with India.
“They have not asked for money, but at least one of the stations is in a very remote area, so we don’t mind paying for maintenance. It’s a goodwill gesture,” an official said.
Some like the Asom Gana Parishad MP from Assam’s Lakhimpur, Arun Sarma, feel that the government knows something about the Chinese plans but has been “covering it up”. He had asked water resources minister Saifuddin Soz for a clarification but the answer did not satisfy him.
In his reply on December 17, 2007, Soz had quoted a Chinese spokesperson telling a PTI correspondent that Beijing had no plans to divert the Brahmaputra’s waters.
http://telegraphindia.com/1080331/jsp/frontpage/story_9076974.jsp
OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT (Kolkata, Telegraph, 31 March 2008)
New Delhi, March 30: Hints have emerged from China that it may be gearing for a project on the Brahmaputra that threatens drought in India’s Northeast, environment experts and Indian officials claim.
Delhi, however, has decided to ignore the developments and instead volunteered to pay Beijing for help in avoiding floods in the region, government sources here said.
China, despite official disclaimers, has long been suspected of planning to divert the waters of the Brahmaputra — which originates in southwest Tibet as the Yarlung Zangbo or Tsangpo —to its thirsty northwest.
Experts have warned that such a project could trigger an ecological disaster in India’s Northeast and Bangladesh.
In recent weeks, a flood of technical articles has appeared in China backing the diversion plan, indicating Beijing is setting the stage for the project, Indian officials said. They said the Chinese government had also built an airstrip on the river’s banks close to a potential diversion point where a dam could come up.
Himanshu Thakkar of South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers & People, an NGO, said the Chinese project could divert 200 billion cubic metres of water annually to the Yellow River, leaving Assam dry during the lean season.
However, the Union water resources ministry secretary, Umesh Narayan Panjiar, said: “There are no concrete developments. We are watching.”
Other government sources said from all indications, Delhi had no plans to respond till detailed project reports came out in China. “Then it could be too late,” an official said.
The Centre has not carried out any study on the possible magnitude of the impact of a Chinese diversion project, or worked out a contingency plan for Arunachal Pradesh and Assam, the states that would be hit the worst.
Delhi, however, is happy that Beijing has agreed to add two more monitoring stations to its array of three on the Tsangpo/Brahmaputra to forewarn against floods. India has decided to fund the maintenance of the two new stations. China shares weather forecast data from its three existing stations with India.
“They have not asked for money, but at least one of the stations is in a very remote area, so we don’t mind paying for maintenance. It’s a goodwill gesture,” an official said.
Some like the Asom Gana Parishad MP from Assam’s Lakhimpur, Arun Sarma, feel that the government knows something about the Chinese plans but has been “covering it up”. He had asked water resources minister Saifuddin Soz for a clarification but the answer did not satisfy him.
In his reply on December 17, 2007, Soz had quoted a Chinese spokesperson telling a PTI correspondent that Beijing had no plans to divert the Brahmaputra’s waters.
http://telegraphindia.com/1080331/jsp/frontpage/story_9076974.jsp
Hu's war in Tibet, it ain't no People's War
A Tibetan wails during a protest rally outside the Chinese Embassy's visa office in Kathmandu -- AP
http://epaper.newindpress.com/ArticleText.aspx?article=30_03_2008_008_001&mode=1
A deadly rehearsal
BY CLAUDE ARPI
The New Indian Express
March 30, 2008
What does 'people's war' mean in Tibet?
A S Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao were reelected to their posts of President
and Premier of the People's Republic of China at the end of the 11th
Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), bad news was
in store for them.
As in March 1989 in Lhasa (and three months later on the Tiananmen
Square), 'people' demonstrated against the Beijing regime. Today, there
is only a minor difference: Premier Wen Jiabao, who was seen with his
mentor Zhao Ziyang on the side of the students in June 1989, is now with
the apparatchiks.
After riots erupted last week in Lhasa and spread to different parts of
Tibet during the following days, the immediate reaction of the Chinese
authorities was the customary Party line: "We must wage a people's war
to expose and condemn the malicious acts of these hostile forces and
expose the hideous face of the Dalai Lama group to the light of day."
What is this 'people's war'? For many China's watchers, this has been
one of the unanswered questions since the Communists came to power in
1949.
It was in the name of the 'people' that Mao started the Great Leap
Forward during which more than 30 million perished of starvation; it was
'for the people' that the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution left
millions of 'people' dead and devastated an entire generation; it is
again in the name of the 'people' that war is being today waged against
pacifist Tibetan monks.
The People's Liberation Army entered Tibet in October 1950 to 'liberate'
the Roof of the World. In March 1959, the entire population of Lhasa
rose against the colonisers by assembling around the Summer Palace to
protect their leader. Sensing bloodshed, the Dalai Lama escaped at
night, heading towards India. A couple of weeks later, he was given
refuge by the Indian government.
In the repression which followed his departure, thousands were massacred
by the People's Army in Lhasa.
A first rapprochement between Beijing and Dharamsala happened in 1979
when Deng Xiaoping met Gyalo Dhondup, the Dalai Lama's brother. He told
him that he was ready to discuss everything except Tibet's independence.
This meeting was followed by the setting up of four fact-finding
delegations.
After twenty years, the Chinese Communist government was under the
impression that the 'backward Tibetan people' had finally been
liberated. The local Communist authorities briefed the Tibetan
population in Lhasa about the forthcoming visit of the Dalai Lama's
delegates: "You should not resent this visit. You should not insult the
delegates; you should not spit on them, just receive them as your own
countrymen," were the strict Party instructions.
They had, however, misread completely the people's feelings, their deep
resentment, as well as their will to resist colonisation. The three
first delegations visited Tibet between 1979 and 1982; wherever the
Dalai Lama's envoys went, they were mobbed by crowds of Tibetans. One
delegation member remembers: "The Tibetans tried even to tear our chubas
(Tibetan dress) to have them as relics." The entire Lhasa population was
in the streets; everybody wanting a darshan of the Dalai Lama's envoys.
By the time the fourth and last delegation journeyed to Tibet in 1984,
the Communist authorities had learned their lesson. Spies were
everywhere, infiltrating crowds: "At first Tibetans came forward to
speak to us. But one discovered that some of the Chinese dressed in a
Tibetan chuba, were spying (on us) with a small walkman in the chuba
sleeves. People became nervous, they knew they were taped and would be
interrogated later. People became more cautious."
Twenty four years later, the surveillance is more sophisticated with
video cameras strategically located all over Lhasa and other big cities.
All the mobile phone calls are monitored and it is today rumoured that
people who have sent files (pictures or videos) to their relatives in
India are being arrested.
During the visit of the 1984 delegation, the 'liberated people' of Tibet
had their own way to show their unyielding respect for the Dalai Lama:
"Because we were sent by His Holiness (the Dalai Lama), to get something
touched by us was (for them) a blessing. when our cars would leave, the
Tibetans would collect the soil out of the prints of the tyres of our
cars and keep this dust as prasad to eat or preserve it."
During the last few days, tens of thousands have taken to the streets
knowing fully well that they are being videoed and that they will
eventually have to pay for their act of bravery. It shows the state of
despair and desperation of the people of Tibet. And Beijing has now
decided to wage a 'people's war' against them.
While doing so, the Communist leadership is taking a risk. During the
next few months, they were supposed to uphold the spirit of Olympism and
respect the traditional truce, not to wage a war against people, whether
they are 'minorities' or not. How will the international community
react?
Interestingly, the Communist leaders have not always responded with such
brutality. In May 1980, the politburo decided to send a high level
fact-finding delegation to the so-called 'Tibet Autonomous Region'
(TAR). The delegation was headed by the top Party functionary, Hu
Yaobang, who was then the General Secretary of the Communist Party of
China. Reaching Lhasa, Hu Yaobang was shocked to see the level of
poverty in Tibet. During a meeting with the Party cadres, he asked
"whether all the money Beijing had poured into Tibet over the previous
years had been thrown into the Yarlung Tsangpo (Brahmaputra) river." He
said the situation reminded him of colonialism. Hundreds of Chinese Han
cadres were transferred back to China.
Unfortunately, this sensible policy did not last long. In 1988, Hu
Jintao took over as Tibet Party Chief. In January 1989, the new Tibet
boss visited the Tashilhunpo monastery in Shigatse. He was accompanied
by the Panchen Lama, the second highest ranking Tibetan Lama after the
Dalai Lama. To everyone's surprise, during the function, the Panchen
Lama denounced the Communist Party's role in Tibet.
"Although there had been developments in Tibet since its liberation,
this development had cost more dearly than its achievements.
This mistake must never be repeated," he said. Four days later, he
passed away in the most mysterious circumstances.
On March 5, when some demonstrations erupted, the People's Armed Police
quickly 'took control of the situation.' A Chinese journalist Tang
Daxian witnessed some of the events. He later wrote in The Observer that
on March 6 alone, 387 Tibetans were massacred around the Central
Cathedral in Lhasa.
The next day, Hu Jintao declared: "The PAP following the instructions of
the Central Committee had maintained the unity of the Motherland. the
majority of Tibetans who had joined the disturbance. must be made to
feel guilty and promise they would never do so again."
Nineteen years later, the population of Lhasa did it again.
Retrospectively, the tragic events of 1989 in Lhasa seem to have been a
rehearsal for an even more serious incident: the student rebellion on
Tiananmen Square in June.
A few days after the incident Hu Jintao told Xinhua news agency: "We
should maintain vigilance against possible activity by the handful of
separatists and strike them with relentless blows." His ruthless
implementation of his bosses' orders and the subsequent replay of Lhasa
events at Tiananmen Square proved he was a leader who could be relied
upon.
What is a 'people's war'? It is still not clear to me.Ti
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Tibetans protest in Lhasa during diplomats visit
Tibetans protest in Lhasa during diplomats visit
30 Mar 2008, 0854 hrs IST,AP
BEIJING: Fresh protests broke out in the Tibetan capital Lhasa as foreign diplomats wrapped up a tightly controlled visit organized by Beijing, a radio broadcaster and Tibetan activists reported.
A demonstration began on Saturday afternoon at the Ramoche monastery and grew to involve "many people," said Kate Saunders of the Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet. Citing unnamed witnesses in the city, she said the situation calmed down after a few hours.
People also protested at the Jokhang Temple, a major Buddhist site, the government-in-exile of the Tibetan Buddhist leader, the Dalai Lama, said on its website. The India-based government gave no other details.
Several hundred people took part in the protests, the US-funded broadcaster Radio Free Asia reported.
Ramoche was the original site of monk-led demonstrations that began peacefully on March 10, the anniversary of a failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule, but erupted in violence days later. The Chinese government says 22 people died, while Tibetans abroad put the toll at 140.
The reports of new protests came as a 15-member group of diplomats from the United States, Japan and Europe returned to Beijing after a two-day visit to Lhasa.
The descriptions of new protests could not be independently confirmed and China issued no immediate response. An American Embassy spokeswoman said she had no information on any protests. A Japanese diplomat, Mitsuhiro Wada, said, "No," when asked at the Beijing airport whether he saw any protests.
Beijing is trying to enforce calm in Tibet and buttress its claim that the most violent anti-Chinese protests since 1989 were incited by forces linked to the Dalai Lama.
During their Lhasa tour, diplomats met people selected by Chinese authorities, who accompanied them at all times, the American Embassy said in a brief statement.
"The delegation was not permitted to move about independently in Lhasa, and was unable to hold unsupervised conversations with local residents," the statement said. It gave no other details but repeated Washington's appeal to China to show restraint.
The British Embassy and the European Union mission in Beijing had no immediate comment.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Fresh_protests_in_Lhasa_during_diplomats_visit/articleshow/2911034.cms
30 Mar 2008, 0854 hrs IST,AP
BEIJING: Fresh protests broke out in the Tibetan capital Lhasa as foreign diplomats wrapped up a tightly controlled visit organized by Beijing, a radio broadcaster and Tibetan activists reported.
A demonstration began on Saturday afternoon at the Ramoche monastery and grew to involve "many people," said Kate Saunders of the Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet. Citing unnamed witnesses in the city, she said the situation calmed down after a few hours.
People also protested at the Jokhang Temple, a major Buddhist site, the government-in-exile of the Tibetan Buddhist leader, the Dalai Lama, said on its website. The India-based government gave no other details.
Several hundred people took part in the protests, the US-funded broadcaster Radio Free Asia reported.
Ramoche was the original site of monk-led demonstrations that began peacefully on March 10, the anniversary of a failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule, but erupted in violence days later. The Chinese government says 22 people died, while Tibetans abroad put the toll at 140.
The reports of new protests came as a 15-member group of diplomats from the United States, Japan and Europe returned to Beijing after a two-day visit to Lhasa.
The descriptions of new protests could not be independently confirmed and China issued no immediate response. An American Embassy spokeswoman said she had no information on any protests. A Japanese diplomat, Mitsuhiro Wada, said, "No," when asked at the Beijing airport whether he saw any protests.
Beijing is trying to enforce calm in Tibet and buttress its claim that the most violent anti-Chinese protests since 1989 were incited by forces linked to the Dalai Lama.
During their Lhasa tour, diplomats met people selected by Chinese authorities, who accompanied them at all times, the American Embassy said in a brief statement.
"The delegation was not permitted to move about independently in Lhasa, and was unable to hold unsupervised conversations with local residents," the statement said. It gave no other details but repeated Washington's appeal to China to show restraint.
The British Embassy and the European Union mission in Beijing had no immediate comment.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Fresh_protests_in_Lhasa_during_diplomats_visit/articleshow/2911034.cms
Chinese foxes want to talk? Who are they trying to fool?
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/29/world/asia/29china.html?_r=1&th=&oref=slogin&emc=th&pagewanted=all
Growing Gulf Divides China and Old Foe
Ashwini Bhatia/Associated Press
Exiled Tibetans held a vigil on Friday in Dharamsala, India. Many Tibetans have fled China to find sanctuary in India.
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
Published: March 29, 2008
SHANGHAI — Across much of the Western world, the Dalai Lama is known as the beatific spiritual leader of a humble community of Buddhists, beloved in Hollywood, Congress and the White House, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.
Chinese leaders cast him in a different light. They call him a separatist and a terrorist, bent on killing innocent Han Chinese and “splitting the motherland.” That gap in perception, which has grown immeasurably wider in the two weeks since violent unrest rocked Tibet, is breeding pessimism that Chinese leaders are willing — or perhaps even able — to embark on a new approach to Tibet even as it threatens to cast a long shadow over their role as hosts of the Olympic Games this summer.
President Hu Jintao, whose rise to leadership of China’s Communist Party was built partly on his record as party boss in Tibet during a period of unrest in 1989, has shown no signs of making a historic gambit for peace there.
Rather, he seems to be wagering that China can hunker down, keep a tight lid on Tibet through the Olympics and wait for the Dalai Lama, who is 72, to die, analysts say.
“I would obviously like for there to be a policy debate, but I see no suggestion of one,” said Wang Lixiong, a Chinese expert on Tibet and a signer of a recent petition by Chinese lawyers and scholars urging the government to resume discussions with the Dalai Lama. “There has been a big failure, but to see the government change its path or policy right before the Olympics isn’t likely.”
The inflexibility in Beijing’s position leaves Western countries with a problem. President Bush and a roster of European and Asian leaders have called for Mr. Hu to open a dialogue with the Dalai Lama as a first step toward reducing tensions in Tibet. If Mr. Hu declines to do so, those leaders seem likely to face pressure from their own constituencies to take stronger diplomatic or political steps against Beijing at the moment it had expected to bask in the international limelight.
Already, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France has suggested that he might consider using his presidency of the European Union this summer to organize a boycott of the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. An embarrassing protest at the lighting ceremony of the Olympic torch in Greece, and the cries of monks in Lhasa who disrupted a scripted tour of the Tibetan capital for foreign reporters on Thursday, portend a steady drum roll of criticism of China.
The call for some kind of Chinese-Tibetan talks continues to mount. On Friday, the Dalai Lama, speaking in India, made his most extended comments on the violence, accusing China’s state-run media of trying to “sow the seeds of racial tension” there but calling for “meaningful dialogue” with Beijing about how to defuse tensions.
President Bush, speaking of the possibility that Mr. Hu might pursue diplomatic talks with Tibetan exiles, said “it’s in his country’s interest.” Standing by Mr. Bush’s side, Kevin Rudd, Australia’s new, Chinese-speaking prime minister, who was visiting Washington, said, “It’s absolutely clear that there are human rights abuses in Tibet.”
Mr. Hu told Mr. Bush during a phone call on Wednesday that he was willing to talk to the Dalai Lama, according to China’s official Xinhua news agency. But what was most striking about the exchange was the consistency of Beijing’s language on Tibet, which analysts say provides little reason to expect new initiatives.
Mr. Hu’s formulation, which has been used almost word for word since the time of Deng Xiaoping, in the 1980s and ’90s, was that China would resume contact with the Dalai Lama as long as he abandoned advocating Tibetan independence, stopped activities aimed at “splitting the motherland” and accepted that Tibet and Taiwan were inalienable parts of China.
The problem with Beijing’s line is that even when the Dalai Lama insists that he does not seek independence, as he and his representatives have repeatedly done, the Chinese government has merely repeated this trope, leaving little room for progress.
As it is, the Tibetan protests of the last two weeks seem to have taken Beijing by surprise, spreading quickly outside of the province officially known as the Tibetan Autonomous Region and into areas of neighboring provinces where Tibetans live in large numbers. The unrest has been the broadest in scale since sustained riots and a bloody crackdown in 1989.
Yet inside China, the protests have been portrayed as little more than thuggish violence against Han Chinese orchestrated by the “Dalai clique” from its base of exile in Dharamsala, India. The ruling party’s relentless anti-Dalai propaganda, reminiscent in some ways of the Cultural Revolution-style vilification of its enemies, has left the leadership in a self-imposed straitjacket.
Even as he seemed to concede that China had made mistakes in handling the protests, Hu Yan, a professor of social sciences at the party’s Central Committee School, expressed confidence in its ability to prevent further trouble before the Olympics.
“I think we can control the situation before it spreads any further,” Mr. Hu said. “We were too soft at the beginning, allowing them to destroy fire engines and rob banks without doing anything. We should have fired more tear gas, at least.”
Robert Barnett, director of modern Tibetan studies at Columbia University, dismissed the Chinese contention that the protests amounted to little more than criminal riots, calling their spread through several provinces significant. “Nothing like this has happened for the last 40 years, and no Chinese leader is going to miss that,” Mr. Barnett said. “They have lost the countryside, and they are going to have to work very hard to win it back.”
But Mr. Hu, the professor at the Central Committee School, hinted at what many believe is China’s bottom-line thinking on Tibet.
“This issue can only be resolved in the long term,” he said. “It’s a long-term campaign, and we probably have to wait for the Dalai Lama to reincarnate.”
China’s long-term strategy, which the violence may have only reinforced, has been to wait for the Dalai Lama to die on the theory that it can control his successor as Tibet’s spiritual leader. A new Dalai Lama would likely have little of the same prestige, inside China or abroad.
In 1995, China arrested the Panchen Lama, the No. 2 in Tibetan Buddhism, a 6-year-old at the time. He has not been seen since. China then anointed another Tibetan youth as a replacement, and it has tightly controlled his education and public duties since. Under Tibetan Buddhism, traditionally the Panchen Lama names a new Dalai Lama, theoretically giving the Chinese government control over the present Dalai Lama’s succession.
To counter this approach, Tibetans have floated ideas about changing the rules of succession, allowing the Dalai Lama to anoint a Tibetan child who lives in exile, or an even more radical change, allowing Tibetans to select a new Dalai Lama by voting. Either measure would be certain to infuriate the Chinese government, which reserves the right to control all organized religion.
The current Dalai Lama has repeatedly promised that he has no desire to see Tibet break free of Chinese sovereignty. He has, though, pressed for what he calls “genuine autonomy” under Chinese rule. He refers to China’s Constitution, which invokes the right of autonomy and self-government “in areas where people of minority nationalities live in compact communities.”
“The task at hand is to develop a system that would grant the kind of autonomy required for the Tibetans to be able to survive as a distinct and prosperous people within the People’s Republic of China,” said Lodi Gyaltsen Gyari, a special envoy of the Dalai Lama, in a speech given in Washington in 2006.
Party leaders have resisted even that modest vision of enhanced self-government. Officials seem to fear that enhanced political autonomy could overload the circuits of the Chinese state, inciting demands from other ethnic or religious groups and unleashing centrifugal forces that could break up the country as surely as Tibetan demand for independence.
“If you look carefully at what the Dalai Lama says, the giving up independence part is really empty, while the demands for a greater Tibet and a high degree of autonomy are real,” said Zhang Yun, a scholar at the China Tibetology Research Center. “What kind of government could allow that? That’s impossible.
“A high degree of autonomy means giving up everything: our administrative system, our cadre system, and even party-led socialism.”
David Barboza contributed reporting.
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http://in.news.yahoo.com/indianexpress/20080329/r_t_ie_nl_general/tnl-chinese-dressed-as-monks-behind-tibe-aaaedd4_1.html?printer=1
'Chinese dressed as monks behind Tibet violence'
Agencies Sat, Mar 29 05:03 PM
As Beijing continues to batter him with charges of 'masterminding' the Lhasa unrest, the Dalai Lama suggested that China itself could be behind the violence and expressed readiness to work with the Chinese authorities to restore peace in Tibet.
The Dalai Lama, who has been seeking dialogue to resolve Tibet issue, voiced frustration at lack of response from China and declared that the future of his 'middle-path' approach would depend on Beijing's attitude in the next few weeks.
At a press conference, he sought the help of the international community to bring China to the dialogue table, saying the Tibetans had 'no power' to do so.
"Tibetans are non-violent people," the spiritual leader maintained rubbishing allegations by China that he and his supporters were behind the recent violence in Tibet.
He suggested that China itself could be behind the violence as he said, "we have heard about a few hundred Chinese soldiers received monks' dress."
"They (soldiers) dressed like monks. So, for a lay person, they will look like monks. But the swords they had, were not Tibetan, they were Chinese swords," he said, apparently responding to China's campaign that monks had indulged in violence.
Maintaining that he has 'no desire to seek Tibet's separation' nor 'any wish to drive a wedge between the Tibetan and Chinese peoples', the Dalai Lama expressed willingness to work with the Chinese authorities to 'bring about peace and stability in Tibet'.
The Dalai Lama, who earlier led an inter-faith prayer at Rajghat in the memory of those killed in Lhasa, said his primary concern was to ensure the survival of the Tibetan people's distinctive culture, language and identity.
"My side is open for dialogue. We are waiting to hear from the Chinese side," he said before heading back to Dharamshala, the seat of his 'government-in-exile'.
"We have no power to bring China to the dialogue table. We have only truth and sincerity. That is why we are appealing to the world community, please help," the Tibetan leader said.
He said the attitude of the Chinese government over the next few weeks would be crucial to decide the future of his 'middle-path' approach to resolve the Tibet issue.
Expressing his keenness to return to Tibet, the Dalai Lama said it would be of 'no use' if he had to return without a 'certain degree of freedom'.
Why does China care about Tibet?
India's relationship with Tibet dates back to millennia. Manasarovar is the most sacred tirthasthana for the Hindus because it is at the foothills of Mt. Kailas. Hindu tradition holds that Maheshwara (Shiva) sits in penance atop the summit of Mt. Kailas and out of his jat.aa (locks of hair) emanates the sacred Ganga river.
Tibet has always been recognized as an independent nation even during the British colonial regime. What China has done in 1950 is pure and simple: occupation, invasion of a peaceful nation in its Nazi-mentality of lebensraum.
Kalyanaraman
Why Does China Care About Tibet?
Plus, when are monks allowed to get violent?
By Nina Shen Rastogi
Posted Friday, March 28, 2008, at 7:04 PM ET
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Buddhist monks and other Tibetans began protesting in and around Lhasa on March 10, the anniversary of a major uprising against Chinese rule. Tensions have been flaring in the region ever since, with some protests turning violent. Tibet is a remote, impoverished mountain region with little arable land. Why does China care so much about keeping it?
Nationalism. China invaded Tibet in 1950, but Beijing asserts that its close relationship with the region stretches back to the 13th century, when first Tibet and then China were absorbed into the rapidly expanding Mongol empire. The Great Khanate, or the portion of the empire that contained China, Tibet, and most of East Asia, eventually became known as China's Yuan Dynasty. Throughout the Yuan and the subsequent Ming and Qing dynasties, Tibet remained a subordinate principality of China, though its degree of independence varied over the centuries. When British forces began making inroads into Tibet from India in the early 1900s, the Qing emperors forcefully reasserted their suzerainty over the region.
Soon after, revolutionaries overthrew the Qing emperor—who, being Manchu, was cast as a foreign presence in Han-majority China—and formed a republic. Tibet took the opportunity to assert its independence and, from 1912 to 1950, ruled itself autonomously. However, Tibetan sovereignty was never recognized by China, the United Nations, or any major Western power. Both Sun Yat-sen's Nationalists and their rivals, Mao Zedong's Communists, believed that Tibet remained fundamentally a part of China and felt a strong nationalistic drive to return the country to its Qing-era borders. The 1950 takeover of Tibet by Mao's army was billed as the liberation of the region from the old, semi-feudal system, as well as from imperialist (i.e., British and American) influences. Resentment of the Chinese grew among Tibetans over the following decade, and armed conflicts broke out in various parts of the region. In March 1959, the capital of Lhasa erupted in a full-blown but short-lived revolt, during which the current Dalai Lama fled to India. He has lived there in exile ever since.
There are also strategic and economic motives for China's attachment to Tibet. The region serves as a buffer zone between China on one side and India, Nepal, and Bangladesh on the other. The Himalayan mountain range provides an added level of security as well as a military advantage. Tibet also serves as a crucial water source for China and possesses a significant mining industry. And Beijing has invested billions in Tibet over the past 10 years as part of its wide-ranging economic development plan for Western China.
Bonus Explainer: When are Buddhist monks allowed to get violent? When it's for a compassionate cause. Monks and nuns in Tibet take at least two, and sometimes three, sets of vows that constrain their behavior. For most violations, the penalty is usually a confession that the act was committed. But if a monk were to kill another human being—one of the most serious violations of the Pratimoksha vows—he would be liable to expulsion from the monastery. That being said, there is a tradition in Tibetan mythology that could be used to justify taking violent action against an oppressor. The ninth-century king Langdarma, a follower of the Bön tradition, is popularly believed to have persecuted Buddhists during his reign. A monk assassinated him on the grounds that, by killing Langdarma, the monk was acting compassionately toward the tyrant—taking bad karma upon himself in order to spare the king from accumulating the same through his despotic actions.
It's important to note, however, that the actual extent to which monks were responsible for the violence in Tibet remains unclear. Monks instigated the initial demonstrations, but lay Tibetans may have ratcheted up those protests to riot status.
Got a question about today's news? Ask the Explainer.
Explainer thanks Robert Barnett of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University, Andrew Fischer of the London School of Economics, Melvyn Goldstein of the Center for Research on Tibet at Case Western Reserve University, and Jonathan Silk of Leiden University.
Nina Shen Rastogi is an intern at Slate.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2187567/
Tibet has always been recognized as an independent nation even during the British colonial regime. What China has done in 1950 is pure and simple: occupation, invasion of a peaceful nation in its Nazi-mentality of lebensraum.
Kalyanaraman
Why Does China Care About Tibet?
Plus, when are monks allowed to get violent?
By Nina Shen Rastogi
Posted Friday, March 28, 2008, at 7:04 PM ET
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Buddhist monks and other Tibetans began protesting in and around Lhasa on March 10, the anniversary of a major uprising against Chinese rule. Tensions have been flaring in the region ever since, with some protests turning violent. Tibet is a remote, impoverished mountain region with little arable land. Why does China care so much about keeping it?
Nationalism. China invaded Tibet in 1950, but Beijing asserts that its close relationship with the region stretches back to the 13th century, when first Tibet and then China were absorbed into the rapidly expanding Mongol empire. The Great Khanate, or the portion of the empire that contained China, Tibet, and most of East Asia, eventually became known as China's Yuan Dynasty. Throughout the Yuan and the subsequent Ming and Qing dynasties, Tibet remained a subordinate principality of China, though its degree of independence varied over the centuries. When British forces began making inroads into Tibet from India in the early 1900s, the Qing emperors forcefully reasserted their suzerainty over the region.
Soon after, revolutionaries overthrew the Qing emperor—who, being Manchu, was cast as a foreign presence in Han-majority China—and formed a republic. Tibet took the opportunity to assert its independence and, from 1912 to 1950, ruled itself autonomously. However, Tibetan sovereignty was never recognized by China, the United Nations, or any major Western power. Both Sun Yat-sen's Nationalists and their rivals, Mao Zedong's Communists, believed that Tibet remained fundamentally a part of China and felt a strong nationalistic drive to return the country to its Qing-era borders. The 1950 takeover of Tibet by Mao's army was billed as the liberation of the region from the old, semi-feudal system, as well as from imperialist (i.e., British and American) influences. Resentment of the Chinese grew among Tibetans over the following decade, and armed conflicts broke out in various parts of the region. In March 1959, the capital of Lhasa erupted in a full-blown but short-lived revolt, during which the current Dalai Lama fled to India. He has lived there in exile ever since.
There are also strategic and economic motives for China's attachment to Tibet. The region serves as a buffer zone between China on one side and India, Nepal, and Bangladesh on the other. The Himalayan mountain range provides an added level of security as well as a military advantage. Tibet also serves as a crucial water source for China and possesses a significant mining industry. And Beijing has invested billions in Tibet over the past 10 years as part of its wide-ranging economic development plan for Western China.
Bonus Explainer: When are Buddhist monks allowed to get violent? When it's for a compassionate cause. Monks and nuns in Tibet take at least two, and sometimes three, sets of vows that constrain their behavior. For most violations, the penalty is usually a confession that the act was committed. But if a monk were to kill another human being—one of the most serious violations of the Pratimoksha vows—he would be liable to expulsion from the monastery. That being said, there is a tradition in Tibetan mythology that could be used to justify taking violent action against an oppressor. The ninth-century king Langdarma, a follower of the Bön tradition, is popularly believed to have persecuted Buddhists during his reign. A monk assassinated him on the grounds that, by killing Langdarma, the monk was acting compassionately toward the tyrant—taking bad karma upon himself in order to spare the king from accumulating the same through his despotic actions.
It's important to note, however, that the actual extent to which monks were responsible for the violence in Tibet remains unclear. Monks instigated the initial demonstrations, but lay Tibetans may have ratcheted up those protests to riot status.
Got a question about today's news? Ask the Explainer.
Explainer thanks Robert Barnett of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University, Andrew Fischer of the London School of Economics, Melvyn Goldstein of the Center for Research on Tibet at Case Western Reserve University, and Jonathan Silk of Leiden University.
Nina Shen Rastogi is an intern at Slate.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2187567/
Demographic aggression threatening Tibet: Dalai Lama
Demographic aggression threatening Tibet: Dalai Lama
29 Mar 2008, 1145 hrs IST,AP
NEW DELHI: The Dalai Lama says "demographic aggression" is threatening Tibetan culture in his homeland, as increasing numbers of non-Tibetan Chinese move into the troubled region.
The Tibetan spiritual leader said in Lhasa alone, the region's ancient capital, there are now 100,000 Tibetans but twice as many outsiders. The vast majority of those are Han Chinese, the country's ethnic majority.
His comments come two weeks after deadly anti-government protests broke out in Tibet.
http://tinyurl.com/yntd6n
29 Mar 2008, 1145 hrs IST,AP
NEW DELHI: The Dalai Lama says "demographic aggression" is threatening Tibetan culture in his homeland, as increasing numbers of non-Tibetan Chinese move into the troubled region.
The Tibetan spiritual leader said in Lhasa alone, the region's ancient capital, there are now 100,000 Tibetans but twice as many outsiders. The vast majority of those are Han Chinese, the country's ethnic majority.
His comments come two weeks after deadly anti-government protests broke out in Tibet.
http://tinyurl.com/yntd6n
Friday, March 28, 2008
Tibetan monasteries 'closed'
Tibetan monasteries 'closed'
Friday, 28 March, 2008
All monasteries in Lhasa remained closed following riots that engulfed the Tibetan capital, a government official says, amid reports that monks had been locked inside for two weeks.
"None of the monasteries in Lhasa are open... it's hard to say when they will reopen. This issue is beyond our powers," an official with the Lhasa Tourism Administration, who declined to be named, told AFP by phone.
The monasteries were closed in the lead-up to, and following, violent unrest on March 14 that saw Tibetans take to the streets in protest against China's 57-year rule of their devoutly Buddhist Himalayan homeland.
Unrest spreads
Ahead of the riot, monks were involved in four days of peaceful protests in Lhasa that were initially held to mark the anniversary of a failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule.
The unrest in Lhasa spread to other areas of western China with Tibetan populations, prompting authorities to send in massive deployments of security forces to quell the unrest.
China says rioters killed 18 innocent civilians, including three ethnic Tibetans, and two police officers in the protests.
Exiled Tibetan leaders have put the death toll from the Chinese crackdown at between 135 and 140, with monks among those killed, and another 1,000 people injured.
China's atheist communist government has always regarded the monasteries as a potential source of opposition to its rule of Tibet, and has blamed exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama for fomenting the latest unrest.
Monks speak out
On Thursday, monks at one of Tibetan's holiest shrines, the Jokhang temple in the heart of old Lhasa, embarrassed Chinese authorities when they spoke out in front of foreign reporters against China's rule of Tibet.
"We want the Dalai Lama to return to Tibet, we want to be free," the monks yelled.
The 26 foreign reporters were brought in by the Chinese government for a three-day trip as part of efforts to show that the situation in Lhasa had returned to normal.
The Wall Street Journal, which was on the tour, reported a government official in Lhasa had confirmed that monks in the city's monasteries had been locked inside since March 14.
Monastery blocked off
The newspaper reported that armed police had surrounded the three main monasteries in Lhasa -- Drepung, Ganden and Sera -- and that the foreign media delegation had not been allowed into them.
It also cited the Tibetan government's deputy chairman, Pela Trilek, as confirming that 414 people, mostly Tibetan and including monks, had been detained.
The International Campaign for Tibet, citing sources in Lhasa, reported that monks who had tried to leave Sera monastery had guns pointed at their heads and were ordered to go back.
Monks who have expressed support for the Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet following the failed 1959 uprising, have previously suffered harsh punishment.
In one of the most well-known cases, 14 nuns in 1993 secretly recorded songs on a tape about the Dalai Lama while serving sentences in Tibet's Drapchi prison.
The tape was smuggled out of prison to the West. As a result the sentences of the women, who became known as "the singing nuns," were extended.
China has ruled Tibet since 1951, after sending in troops to "liberate" the region the previous year.
Source: AFP
See 2005 report from Radio Free Asia and CNN Report of Oct. 2007:
Tibetan Monks Arrested, Monastery Closed Amid Protests
2005.11.29
May 26, 2005: Tibetan monks gather at the main prayer hall of the Drepung monastery in Lhasa for their afternoon milk tea. Photo: AFP/Goh Chai Hin.
KATHMANDU—Chinese authorities in Tibet arrested five monks and closed off their monastery amid rare protests against an intensified campaign to crack down on followers of the Dalai Lama.
Public Security Bureau (PSB) officials took a senior monk, Khenpo Nawang Phelgyal, and four colleagues into custody Nov. 23 at Drepung monastery in Lhasa, capital of the Chinese-run Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR), sources inside China said.
The other monks arrested were Nawang Namdrol, who along with Khenpo Nawang Phelgyal is a native of Phenpo Lundup county (in Chinese, Linzhou Xian). The others were not named but were described as natives of Shigatse, Lhoka, and Lhasa.
During the course of the patriotic education campaigns in Drepung monastery, the Chinese officials insisted on the monks’ condemning the Dalai Lama and opposing separatists... But Khenpo Nawang Phelgyal and other monks in Drepung refused to comply, and Khenpo in particular told the Chinese officials that [even] if they were told to condemn Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin, they would refuse.
Source inside China
Drepung monastery, established in 1416 and located in Lhasa's western suburbs, is one of the most important monasteries in the Gelug tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. At one time it housed more than 7,700 monks.
Monastery closed off
Chinese security officials also secured the monastery, stopping all incoming and outgoing traffic, sources told RFA’s Tibetan service on condition of anonymity.
The move comes amid a renewed “patriotic education” campaign in recent months aimed at boosting support inside Tibetan Buddhist monasteries for the Chinese government—and at the expense of monks loyal to Tibet’s exiled leader, the Dalai Lama.
“During the course of the patriotic education campaigns in Drepung monastery, the Chinese officials insisted on the monks’ condemning the Dalai Lama and opposing separatists,” one source said.
“But Khenpo Nawang Phelgyal and other monks in Drepung refused to comply, and Khenpo in particular told the Chinese officials that [even] if they were told to condemn [China’s late supreme leader] Deng Xiaoping and [ex-president] Jiang Zemin, they would refuse.”
No further details about the detained monks were available.
I don't know anything about the arrest of monks but patriotic education is going on at Drepung. That’s all I know. I am just staff on duty.
Monastery official
Two days later, an unknown number of monks from Drepung monastery staged a rare protest in which they gathered at the monastery cathedral courtyard and sat in silence, sources said.
Official says monastery closed for inventory, fire drills
PSB officials threatened to remove them by force and sealed the monastery to prevent anyone entering or leaving, the sources said.
“No devotees are allowed to go inside and no monks were allowed to move out of the monastery. There were several Chinese soldiers inside and around Drepung monastery,” said one source.
An official at Drepung monastery confirmed its closure for two days. During that time, the official said, 10 security officials, along with armed and regular police, “conducted fire drills and completed the annual inspection of cultural items in Drepung. The forces came in two vehicles. Now Drepung is open to the public.”
“I don't know anything about the arrest of monks but patriotic education is going on at Drepung,” another official said. “That’s all I know. I am just staff on duty.”
Incident at Sera monastery
Earlier this month, public security officials expelled the disciplinarian at a key monastery and detained one of its monks as part of what sources there described as a broad crackdown on the Dalai Lama’s supporters.
PSB officials near Lhasa interrupted a prayer session at the well-known Sera monastery, according to sources who spoke to RFA’s Tibetan service on condition of anonymity.
“They snatched a ‘request for prayer’ letter from the monastic disciplinarian and fired him… right at the prayer session, and they ordered him under surveillance for one year,” one source said.
Tsering Dhondup, 30 and a native of Phenpo Lhundup county, disappeared from the monastery immediately afterward, several sources said. Tsering Dhondup is said to have been held in Gutsa prison, in northern Lhasa, since July.
Tsering Dhondup’s alleged offenses include writing a “request for prayer” mentioning the Tibetan exiled leader, the Dalai Lama, and possessing and distributing documents critical of China’s rule over traditionally Tibetan areas and supportive of Tibetan independence.
The disciplinarian who read the request for prayer aloud, Changchup Gyaltsen, was expelled from Sera monastery, one source said.
Patriotic re-education 'in full swing'
Other sources, including Chinese authorities, have previously reported a renewed Chinese campaign to blacklist key religious figures close to the Dalai Lama and to “re-educate” Buddhist monks.
The campaign began Oct. 26 in Tibet’s Chamdo prefecture and focused heavily on the banning of the prominent Oser Lama from returning to his homeland from India.
“The patriotic re-education campaign is in full swing,” one source inside China said. “We are divided into small committees of 20 monks. Sometimes we are ordered to fill out forms, and sometimes they give [us] questionnaires, and we have to fill in the blanks. We have to study six books on patriotic re-education…”
According to the India-based Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD), the six books are titled Handbook on Crushing the Separatists, Handbook of Contemporary Policies, Handbook of Policies on Religion, Handbook on Law, Handbook on Ethics for the Masses, and Handbook of History of Tibet.
The Dalai Lama fled Lhasa in 1959 after an unsuccessful revolt against Chinese rule. He leads the Tibetan government-in-exile in Dharamsala, India.
Pictures, writings, and video of the Dalai Lama, who is revered by Tibetans, are banned in Tibet, and those found in possession of them typically receive prison sentences.
Original reporting by RFA's Tibetan service. Service director: Jigme Ngapo. Translated and produced by Karma Dorjee. Produced in English by Sarah Jackson-Han.
http://news.sbs.com.au/worldnewsaustralia/tibetan_monasteries_39closed39_543743
Oct. 25, 2007 Report: Tibet monastery sealed
BEIJING, China (CNN) -- At least one monastery remained sealed off by armed troops in the Tibetan capital days after celebrations marking the awarding of the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal to the Dalai Lama, reported a human rights group.
In its report Tuesday, the International Campaign for Tibet, which opposes Chinese rule there, cited local sources and said that troops were surrounding Drepung monastery in Lhasa, with possibly hundreds of monks still inside.
The monastery was sealed off after "police stopped an attempt by monks to peacefully mark the honor to the Dalai Lama last week," ICT reported.
"Another significant monastery in the city, Nechung, is also apparently closed," the ICT added. The group described "a tense atmosphere in Lhasa (that) has been described as similar to 'martial law,' with increased numbers of troops on the streets."
"Tibetan sources report a buildup of armed police in the city, checkpoints on roads out of Lhasa, and an order to Lhasa citizens not to carry out any religious or celebratory activities," the ICT reported.
When asked about the report, a staff member at the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson's office told CNN he was unaware.
There has been no reaction from the Chinese government in its state-run Xinhua news agency.
Don't Miss
Dalai Lama brushes off China's ire
U.S. honor for Dalai Lama angers China
In a separate report, the Tibet Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, which also opposes Chinese rule in Tibet, said that Chinese authorities arrested eight Tibetans, including a Drepung monk, celebrating the Dalai Lama's honor.
U.S. President George W. Bush bestowed the award -- his nation's highest civilian honor -- on Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th and current Dalai Lama, on October 17 in the Capitol Rotunda.
After the award, China warned that the United States "gravely undermined" relations with China, and it demanded that Washington stop supporting the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader and take steps to repair ties.
Since its 1951 invasion, the People's Republic of China claims to be the rightful and legitimate government of Tibet. However, ongoing sovereignty disputes have called into question the legitimacy of that claim.
The White House has said it believes the Dalai Lama is calling for more autonomy from communist China, including more freedom for Tibetans to practice their religion.
China, however, sees the Dalai Lama's work as part of "separatist activities."
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/10/25/tibet/index.html
http://www.rfa.org/english/news/breaking_news/2005/11/29/tibet_arrest/
Video: Anxiety near Tibet's border; the police crackdown in Chengdu, China
Chinese police have been monitoring the Tibetan community in Chengdu, in Sichuan Province, which adjoins Tibet.
http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=66ff885ad1857c69d7a2e47250573719bbaea95a
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/world/index.html (March 29, 2008)
Friday, 28 March, 2008
All monasteries in Lhasa remained closed following riots that engulfed the Tibetan capital, a government official says, amid reports that monks had been locked inside for two weeks.
"None of the monasteries in Lhasa are open... it's hard to say when they will reopen. This issue is beyond our powers," an official with the Lhasa Tourism Administration, who declined to be named, told AFP by phone.
The monasteries were closed in the lead-up to, and following, violent unrest on March 14 that saw Tibetans take to the streets in protest against China's 57-year rule of their devoutly Buddhist Himalayan homeland.
Unrest spreads
Ahead of the riot, monks were involved in four days of peaceful protests in Lhasa that were initially held to mark the anniversary of a failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule.
The unrest in Lhasa spread to other areas of western China with Tibetan populations, prompting authorities to send in massive deployments of security forces to quell the unrest.
China says rioters killed 18 innocent civilians, including three ethnic Tibetans, and two police officers in the protests.
Exiled Tibetan leaders have put the death toll from the Chinese crackdown at between 135 and 140, with monks among those killed, and another 1,000 people injured.
China's atheist communist government has always regarded the monasteries as a potential source of opposition to its rule of Tibet, and has blamed exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama for fomenting the latest unrest.
Monks speak out
On Thursday, monks at one of Tibetan's holiest shrines, the Jokhang temple in the heart of old Lhasa, embarrassed Chinese authorities when they spoke out in front of foreign reporters against China's rule of Tibet.
"We want the Dalai Lama to return to Tibet, we want to be free," the monks yelled.
The 26 foreign reporters were brought in by the Chinese government for a three-day trip as part of efforts to show that the situation in Lhasa had returned to normal.
The Wall Street Journal, which was on the tour, reported a government official in Lhasa had confirmed that monks in the city's monasteries had been locked inside since March 14.
Monastery blocked off
The newspaper reported that armed police had surrounded the three main monasteries in Lhasa -- Drepung, Ganden and Sera -- and that the foreign media delegation had not been allowed into them.
It also cited the Tibetan government's deputy chairman, Pela Trilek, as confirming that 414 people, mostly Tibetan and including monks, had been detained.
The International Campaign for Tibet, citing sources in Lhasa, reported that monks who had tried to leave Sera monastery had guns pointed at their heads and were ordered to go back.
Monks who have expressed support for the Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet following the failed 1959 uprising, have previously suffered harsh punishment.
In one of the most well-known cases, 14 nuns in 1993 secretly recorded songs on a tape about the Dalai Lama while serving sentences in Tibet's Drapchi prison.
The tape was smuggled out of prison to the West. As a result the sentences of the women, who became known as "the singing nuns," were extended.
China has ruled Tibet since 1951, after sending in troops to "liberate" the region the previous year.
Source: AFP
See 2005 report from Radio Free Asia and CNN Report of Oct. 2007:
Tibetan Monks Arrested, Monastery Closed Amid Protests
2005.11.29
May 26, 2005: Tibetan monks gather at the main prayer hall of the Drepung monastery in Lhasa for their afternoon milk tea. Photo: AFP/Goh Chai Hin.
KATHMANDU—Chinese authorities in Tibet arrested five monks and closed off their monastery amid rare protests against an intensified campaign to crack down on followers of the Dalai Lama.
Public Security Bureau (PSB) officials took a senior monk, Khenpo Nawang Phelgyal, and four colleagues into custody Nov. 23 at Drepung monastery in Lhasa, capital of the Chinese-run Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR), sources inside China said.
The other monks arrested were Nawang Namdrol, who along with Khenpo Nawang Phelgyal is a native of Phenpo Lundup county (in Chinese, Linzhou Xian). The others were not named but were described as natives of Shigatse, Lhoka, and Lhasa.
During the course of the patriotic education campaigns in Drepung monastery, the Chinese officials insisted on the monks’ condemning the Dalai Lama and opposing separatists... But Khenpo Nawang Phelgyal and other monks in Drepung refused to comply, and Khenpo in particular told the Chinese officials that [even] if they were told to condemn Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin, they would refuse.
Source inside China
Drepung monastery, established in 1416 and located in Lhasa's western suburbs, is one of the most important monasteries in the Gelug tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. At one time it housed more than 7,700 monks.
Monastery closed off
Chinese security officials also secured the monastery, stopping all incoming and outgoing traffic, sources told RFA’s Tibetan service on condition of anonymity.
The move comes amid a renewed “patriotic education” campaign in recent months aimed at boosting support inside Tibetan Buddhist monasteries for the Chinese government—and at the expense of monks loyal to Tibet’s exiled leader, the Dalai Lama.
“During the course of the patriotic education campaigns in Drepung monastery, the Chinese officials insisted on the monks’ condemning the Dalai Lama and opposing separatists,” one source said.
“But Khenpo Nawang Phelgyal and other monks in Drepung refused to comply, and Khenpo in particular told the Chinese officials that [even] if they were told to condemn [China’s late supreme leader] Deng Xiaoping and [ex-president] Jiang Zemin, they would refuse.”
No further details about the detained monks were available.
I don't know anything about the arrest of monks but patriotic education is going on at Drepung. That’s all I know. I am just staff on duty.
Monastery official
Two days later, an unknown number of monks from Drepung monastery staged a rare protest in which they gathered at the monastery cathedral courtyard and sat in silence, sources said.
Official says monastery closed for inventory, fire drills
PSB officials threatened to remove them by force and sealed the monastery to prevent anyone entering or leaving, the sources said.
“No devotees are allowed to go inside and no monks were allowed to move out of the monastery. There were several Chinese soldiers inside and around Drepung monastery,” said one source.
An official at Drepung monastery confirmed its closure for two days. During that time, the official said, 10 security officials, along with armed and regular police, “conducted fire drills and completed the annual inspection of cultural items in Drepung. The forces came in two vehicles. Now Drepung is open to the public.”
“I don't know anything about the arrest of monks but patriotic education is going on at Drepung,” another official said. “That’s all I know. I am just staff on duty.”
Incident at Sera monastery
Earlier this month, public security officials expelled the disciplinarian at a key monastery and detained one of its monks as part of what sources there described as a broad crackdown on the Dalai Lama’s supporters.
PSB officials near Lhasa interrupted a prayer session at the well-known Sera monastery, according to sources who spoke to RFA’s Tibetan service on condition of anonymity.
“They snatched a ‘request for prayer’ letter from the monastic disciplinarian and fired him… right at the prayer session, and they ordered him under surveillance for one year,” one source said.
Tsering Dhondup, 30 and a native of Phenpo Lhundup county, disappeared from the monastery immediately afterward, several sources said. Tsering Dhondup is said to have been held in Gutsa prison, in northern Lhasa, since July.
Tsering Dhondup’s alleged offenses include writing a “request for prayer” mentioning the Tibetan exiled leader, the Dalai Lama, and possessing and distributing documents critical of China’s rule over traditionally Tibetan areas and supportive of Tibetan independence.
The disciplinarian who read the request for prayer aloud, Changchup Gyaltsen, was expelled from Sera monastery, one source said.
Patriotic re-education 'in full swing'
Other sources, including Chinese authorities, have previously reported a renewed Chinese campaign to blacklist key religious figures close to the Dalai Lama and to “re-educate” Buddhist monks.
The campaign began Oct. 26 in Tibet’s Chamdo prefecture and focused heavily on the banning of the prominent Oser Lama from returning to his homeland from India.
“The patriotic re-education campaign is in full swing,” one source inside China said. “We are divided into small committees of 20 monks. Sometimes we are ordered to fill out forms, and sometimes they give [us] questionnaires, and we have to fill in the blanks. We have to study six books on patriotic re-education…”
According to the India-based Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD), the six books are titled Handbook on Crushing the Separatists, Handbook of Contemporary Policies, Handbook of Policies on Religion, Handbook on Law, Handbook on Ethics for the Masses, and Handbook of History of Tibet.
The Dalai Lama fled Lhasa in 1959 after an unsuccessful revolt against Chinese rule. He leads the Tibetan government-in-exile in Dharamsala, India.
Pictures, writings, and video of the Dalai Lama, who is revered by Tibetans, are banned in Tibet, and those found in possession of them typically receive prison sentences.
Original reporting by RFA's Tibetan service. Service director: Jigme Ngapo. Translated and produced by Karma Dorjee. Produced in English by Sarah Jackson-Han.
http://news.sbs.com.au/worldnewsaustralia/tibetan_monasteries_39closed39_543743
Oct. 25, 2007 Report: Tibet monastery sealed
BEIJING, China (CNN) -- At least one monastery remained sealed off by armed troops in the Tibetan capital days after celebrations marking the awarding of the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal to the Dalai Lama, reported a human rights group.
In its report Tuesday, the International Campaign for Tibet, which opposes Chinese rule there, cited local sources and said that troops were surrounding Drepung monastery in Lhasa, with possibly hundreds of monks still inside.
The monastery was sealed off after "police stopped an attempt by monks to peacefully mark the honor to the Dalai Lama last week," ICT reported.
"Another significant monastery in the city, Nechung, is also apparently closed," the ICT added. The group described "a tense atmosphere in Lhasa (that) has been described as similar to 'martial law,' with increased numbers of troops on the streets."
"Tibetan sources report a buildup of armed police in the city, checkpoints on roads out of Lhasa, and an order to Lhasa citizens not to carry out any religious or celebratory activities," the ICT reported.
When asked about the report, a staff member at the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson's office told CNN he was unaware.
There has been no reaction from the Chinese government in its state-run Xinhua news agency.
Don't Miss
Dalai Lama brushes off China's ire
U.S. honor for Dalai Lama angers China
In a separate report, the Tibet Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, which also opposes Chinese rule in Tibet, said that Chinese authorities arrested eight Tibetans, including a Drepung monk, celebrating the Dalai Lama's honor.
U.S. President George W. Bush bestowed the award -- his nation's highest civilian honor -- on Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th and current Dalai Lama, on October 17 in the Capitol Rotunda.
After the award, China warned that the United States "gravely undermined" relations with China, and it demanded that Washington stop supporting the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader and take steps to repair ties.
Since its 1951 invasion, the People's Republic of China claims to be the rightful and legitimate government of Tibet. However, ongoing sovereignty disputes have called into question the legitimacy of that claim.
The White House has said it believes the Dalai Lama is calling for more autonomy from communist China, including more freedom for Tibetans to practice their religion.
China, however, sees the Dalai Lama's work as part of "separatist activities."
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/10/25/tibet/index.html
http://www.rfa.org/english/news/breaking_news/2005/11/29/tibet_arrest/
Video: Anxiety near Tibet's border; the police crackdown in Chengdu, China
Chinese police have been monitoring the Tibetan community in Chengdu, in Sichuan Province, which adjoins Tibet.
http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=66ff885ad1857c69d7a2e47250573719bbaea95a
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/world/index.html (March 29, 2008)
China's distorted, dangerous coverage of Tibet unrest: Dalai Lama
Associated Press
New Delhi, March 28, 2008
First Published: 20:42 IST(28/3/2008)
Last Updated: 21:07 IST(28/3/2008)
Dalai Lama says China's 'distorted' coverage of Tibetan unrest is dangerous
The official Chinese media has used "deceit and distorted images" to portray the recent unrest in Tibet, the Dalai Lama said on Friday, warning such actions could deepen tension in the region and lead to further violence.
China's state media has repeatedly blamed the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader for orchestrating the violence that broke out two weeks ago after days of initially peaceful protests in Lhasa, Tibet's capital. Chinese officials have harshly criticized the Dalai Lama and accused him of attempting to sabotage this summer's Beijing Olympic Games.
The Dalai Lama has dismissed the accusations and maintained his support for the games.In a statement released Friday, he called on China's leaders "to exercise wisdom" and discussed the danger a widening rift between the two sides could cause.
"The state media's portrayal of the recent events in Tibet, using deceit and distorted images, could sow the seeds of racial tension with unpredictable long-term consequences," he said. "This is of grave concern to me."
Tibetan and Chinese leaders describe very different versions of the dramatic events of recent weeks.
Many Tibetans call the unrest spontaneous and unorganized protests directed at Chinese rule in the region, while the official Chinese stance maintains that the unrest was "separatist" and meant to embarrass China before the Olympics.
The two sides also have different death tolls, with China's government claiming at least 22 people have died in Lhasa and Tibetan rights groups claiming nearly 140 Tibetans were killed. China's state media, TV and Newspapers, have run only images and footage showing the Tibetan protesters attacking Han Chinese on the night the violence broke out. There have been no images of Chinese authorities' subsequent crackdown against Tibetans. The protests, which began March 10, were the most-sustained challenge to China's rule in the Himalayan region since 1989. The ensuing crackdown by Chinese authorities has focused international attention on China's human rights record in the run-up to the Olympics.
After sealing off the Tibetan capital in the wake of the violence, a small group of foreign journalists, including an Associated Press reporter, was taken to Lhasa earlier in the week on a three-day government-organized trip that ended Friday. The tightly scripted visit was disrupted when 30 red-robed monks pushed into a briefing being given by officials on Thursday, complaining of a lack of religious freedom and denouncing official claims that the Dalai Lama orchestrated the March 14 violence.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Print.aspx?Id=5f268093-eebd-4941-ae5e-e4d595d925d5
http://tinyurl.com/294ejf
New Delhi, March 28, 2008
First Published: 20:42 IST(28/3/2008)
Last Updated: 21:07 IST(28/3/2008)
Dalai Lama says China's 'distorted' coverage of Tibetan unrest is dangerous
The official Chinese media has used "deceit and distorted images" to portray the recent unrest in Tibet, the Dalai Lama said on Friday, warning such actions could deepen tension in the region and lead to further violence.
China's state media has repeatedly blamed the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader for orchestrating the violence that broke out two weeks ago after days of initially peaceful protests in Lhasa, Tibet's capital. Chinese officials have harshly criticized the Dalai Lama and accused him of attempting to sabotage this summer's Beijing Olympic Games.
The Dalai Lama has dismissed the accusations and maintained his support for the games.In a statement released Friday, he called on China's leaders "to exercise wisdom" and discussed the danger a widening rift between the two sides could cause.
"The state media's portrayal of the recent events in Tibet, using deceit and distorted images, could sow the seeds of racial tension with unpredictable long-term consequences," he said. "This is of grave concern to me."
Tibetan and Chinese leaders describe very different versions of the dramatic events of recent weeks.
Many Tibetans call the unrest spontaneous and unorganized protests directed at Chinese rule in the region, while the official Chinese stance maintains that the unrest was "separatist" and meant to embarrass China before the Olympics.
The two sides also have different death tolls, with China's government claiming at least 22 people have died in Lhasa and Tibetan rights groups claiming nearly 140 Tibetans were killed. China's state media, TV and Newspapers, have run only images and footage showing the Tibetan protesters attacking Han Chinese on the night the violence broke out. There have been no images of Chinese authorities' subsequent crackdown against Tibetans. The protests, which began March 10, were the most-sustained challenge to China's rule in the Himalayan region since 1989. The ensuing crackdown by Chinese authorities has focused international attention on China's human rights record in the run-up to the Olympics.
After sealing off the Tibetan capital in the wake of the violence, a small group of foreign journalists, including an Associated Press reporter, was taken to Lhasa earlier in the week on a three-day government-organized trip that ended Friday. The tightly scripted visit was disrupted when 30 red-robed monks pushed into a briefing being given by officials on Thursday, complaining of a lack of religious freedom and denouncing official claims that the Dalai Lama orchestrated the March 14 violence.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Print.aspx?Id=5f268093-eebd-4941-ae5e-e4d595d925d5
http://tinyurl.com/294ejf
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Sacrifice of Tibet: free world should weep in shame
http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/mar/25rajeev.htm
The sacrifice of Tibet: Extraordinary delusions and temporary insanity
Rajeev Srinivasan
March 25, 2008
On November 18 every year, I silently salute the brave souls of C Company, 13th Kumaon Regiment, who in 1962 died practically to the last man and the last bullet defending Ladakh against the invading Chinese Army. These brave 114 inflicted heavy casualties and prevented the Chinese from overrunning Leh, much like Spartans at Thermopylae held the line against the invading Persians many moons ago.
But have you ever wondered why these brave men had to sacrifice themselves? One answer seems to be that is because of the extraordinary delusions that affected a number of the dramatis personae on the Indian side: notably Jawaharlal Nehru, KM Panikkar and VK Krishna Menon.
A deadly combination of blind faith, gross megalomania, and groupthink led to the debacle in the war in1962; but its genesis lay in the unbelievable naivete that led these worthies to simply sacrifice a defenseless sister civilisation to brutal barbarians.
Furthermore, they were far more concerned about China's interests than about India's! Generations to come will scarcely believe that such criminal negligence was tolerated in the foreign policy of a major nation.
In a well-researched book, timed for the one hundredth anniversary of the opening of Tibet by the British, Claude Arpi, born in France but a long-term resident of India, and one of India's leading Tibet and China experts, argues that India's acquiescence to the enslavement of Tibet has had disastrous consequences. The book is Born in Sin: The Panchsheel Agreement subtitled The Sacrifice of Tibet, published by Mittal Publications, New Delhi, 2004, pp. 241, Rs. 495, ISBN 81-7099-974-X. Unless otherwise noted, all of the quotations here are from this book.
Arpi also touches upon the difficulty scholars face with piecing together what actually happened in those momentous years leading to the extinction of Tibet and the India-China war of 1962, because the majority of the source materials are held as classified documents in the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund or the Ministry of External Affairs.
The historian is forced to depend on the sanitised Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru and the restricted Official Report of the 1962 War. If the relevant documents were made public at the very least we might learn something from them. Where is Aruna Roy, crusading champion of the people's right to know who has now accepted a sinecure under the UPA? Why are the Nehru Papers controlled by Sonia Gandhi?
The story really begins exactly one hundred years ago, in September 1904, when the British Colonel Francis Younghusband entered Tibet and forced the hitherto insular kingdom open at the point of a gun. The Lhasa Convention of 1904, signed by the British and the Tibetans, put the seal of British overlordship over Tibet. The parallels with Commodore Perry of the US and his black ships opening up Japan are obvious. However, unlike Japan, which under the Meiji Restoration took vigorously to westernisation, Tibet continued to distance itself from the outside world, much to its later disadvantage.
Perhaps we need to look further in history, as Arpi did in his earlier book, The Fate of Tibet: When Big Insects Eat Small Insects. The Tibetans were a feared, martial and warlike race that had always, in its impregnable mountain fastnesses, held the expansionist Han Chinese at bay. However, in the 7th century CE, Buddhism came to Tibet, and they became a pacifist nation. Says Arpi: 'Tibet's conversion had another consequence on its political history: a nonviolent Tibet could no longer defend itself. It had to look outside for military support to safeguard its frontiers and for the protection of its Dharma. This help came first from the Mongol Khans and later the Manchu Emperors when they became themselves followers of the Buddha's doctrine.'
The sum and substance of China's alleged historical claim to Tibet is this: that the Mongol Khans had conquered both China and Tibet at the same time. This is patently absurd, because by the same token India should claim Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong as its own, because India and these territories were under British rule at the same time.
In fact, since the Mongol Khans and the Manchu Emperors accepted the Dalai Lama as their spiritual preceptor, it is clear that it was China that was giving tribute to Tibet, not vice versa: so Tibet could claim Han China as its vassal.
The Lhasa Convention was followed by the Simla Convention in 1914 that laid out the McMahon Line defining both the Indo-Tibetan border, and the division of Tibet into 'Outer Tibet' (which lies along the border with India) and 'Inner Tibet' which includes Amdo Province and part of Kham Province. It is worthwhile to note that the Chinese were not invited to discuss the McMahon line, nor was their acceptance of this line sought. Tibetans signed this treaty as an independent nation. The British government emphasised this in a note to the Chinese as late as 1943: 'Since the Chinese Revolution of 1911,... Tibet has enjoyed de facto independence.'
When India became independent, K M Panikkar wrote: 'A China [organised as a Communist regime annexing Mongol, Muslim and Tibetan areas] will be in an extremely powerful position to claim its historic role of authority over Tibet, Burma, Indo-China and Siam. The historic claims in regard to these are vague and hazy. Soon thereafter Panikkar became the principal spokesperson for China's interests, even though his job was Indian Ambassador to China!
As soon as the Communists came to power, in 1950, they started asserting their claims: 'The tasks for the People's Liberation Army for 1950 are to liberate [sic] Taiwan, Hainan and Tibet.' A Scottish missionary in Tibet said the PLA officers told him that once Tibet was in their hands, they would go to India.
On October 7, 1950, Mao Tse-Tung's storm troopers invaded Tibet. But under Panikkar's influence, Nehru felt that the loss of Tibet was worth the price of liberating Asia from 'western dominance'. Panikkar said: 'I do not think there is anything wrong in the troops of Red China moving about in their own country.'
Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was one of the few in the Indian government who recognised the menace from China. He wrote:
'We also have to take note of a thoroughly unscrupulous, unreliable and determined power practically at our doors. It is clear that we cannot be friendly with China and must think in terms of defense against a determined, calculating, unscrupulous, ruthless, unprincipled and prejudiced combination of powers, of which the Chinese will be the spearhead. It is obvious to me that any friendly or appeasing approaches from us would either be mistaken for weakness or would be exploited in furtherance of their ultimate aim.'
How prophetic Patel was! Unfortunately, he died soon after he wrote this. Interestingly, the very same words apply in their entirety to India's dithering over Pakistan today, 54 years later. The Pakistanis are also exploiting India's appeasement and friendliness.
But Nehru, it appears, had decided to sacrifice Tibet, partly in order to appease China, partly because of his distaste for what he considered 'imperialist treaties' (in this case the Lhasa Convention that gave enormous rights in Tibet to the British, and, as their successor, to the Indian government) and partly in order to act as mediator between China and the West over the Korean War.
Observers could see what was going to happen. The American ambassador Henderson noted: 'The UK High Commission would like to be able to argue with Indian officials that if GoI bows to Communist China's blackmail re Tibet, India will eventually be confronted with similar blackmail not only re Burma but re such areas as Assam, Bhutan, Sikkim, Kashmir, Nepal.' Absolutely correct, for this is exactly what is happening today.
Nehru and Panikkar simply did not see the threat from China, so enamoured were they of the great Communist Revolution there. Nehru said: 'The biggest event since the last War is the rise of Communist China'. Part of his admiration arose from his distaste for the Buddhist culture of Tibet: 'We cannot support feudal elements in Tibet, indeed we cannot interfere in Tibet'. Now doesn't that sound exactly like Xinhua propaganda, which Nehru seems to have internalised?
A Canadian high commissioner had a different theory: '[Panikkar] had no illusions about the policies of the Chinese government and he had not been misled by it. He considered, however, that the future, at least in his lifetime, lay with the communists, and he therefore did his best to get on well with them by misleading Nehru'. That might be considered treason in certain circles.
Whatever the reason, we can see why Zhou-en Lai is rumored to have referred to the Indians in general and Nehru in particular as 'useful idiots'. (There is no reference to this in the Arpi book). In every discussion with Panikkar, the Chinese hosts smilingly avoided the question of settling the border, but they made sure that India acknowledged Chinese hegemony over Tibet. The Indians were thoroughly outsmarted, partly because they were willing victims dazzled by the idea of Communism.
When confronted with the question of the undefined border, Nehru said, "All these are high mountains. Nobody lives there. It is not very necessary to define these things." And in the context of whether the Chinese might invade India, here's Nehru again: "What might happen is some petty trouble in the borders and unarmed infiltration. To some extent this can be stopped by checkposts, however, armies do not stop communist infiltration or communist ideas, large expenditure on the army will starve the development of the country and social progress."
The naivete leaves the neutral observer speechless. What might be even more alarming is that there are supposedly serious Old Left analysts today, in 2004, who mouth these same inanities about not spending money on the Indian Army. Why they do not take their cue from China, with its enormous Army, is mysterious, because in all other respects they expect India to emulate China. Except that is, no nukes, no military might for India.
By not asserting India's treaty rights in Tibet, which would have helped Tibet remain as a neutral buffer zone, Nehru has hurt India very badly. For, look at what is happening today. Nepal is under relentless attack by Maoists, almost certainly supported by Chinese money. Large parts of India are infested with violent Maoists. Much of West Bengal is under the iron grip of Marxists, who clearly take orders from Beijing.
It is in this context that the so-called Panchsheel Agreement was written. Given that the Indian side had a priori decided to surrender all its rights to the Chinese, in return for vague promises of brotherhood, it is perhaps the most vacuous treaty ever signed. However, Nehru opined: "in my opinion, we have done no better thing than this since we became independent. I have no doubt about this. It is right for our country, for Asia and for the world."
Famous last words.
Nehru believed that the five principles which are referred to as Panchsheel were his personal, and major, contribution to world peace. Based on his impression of his stature in the world, he thought that the Panchsheel model could be used for treaties all over the world, and that it would lead to a tremendous breaking out of peace everywhere.
Nehru was sadly mistaken. There was nothing particularly remarkable about the principles themselves: they were not his invention, but were merely common-sense provisions used widely. And he had a megalomaniac idea of his own influence around the world: he did not realise that he cut a slightly comical figure. In his own mind, and in the minds of his toadies, he was the Emperor Ashoka returned, to bring about World Peace.
Here are the Five Principles:
1. Mutual respect for each other's territorial integrity and sovereignty
2. Mutual non-aggression
3. Mutual non-interference in each other's internal affairs
4. Equality and mutual benefit
5. Peaceful co-existence
The Chinese immediately violated every one of these principles, and have continued to do so happily. For instance, even while the treaty was being negotiated, the Chinese were building a road through Aksai Chin in Jammu and Kashmir, and in perhaps the most unbelievable aspect of this whole sorry mess, India was actually supplying rice to the Chinese troops building the road through Indian territory! This is distinctly surreal!
The problem was that Nehru had no sense of history. He should have read RC Majumdar: "There is, however, one aspect of Chinese culture that is little known outside the circle of professional historians. Its the characteristic of China that if a region once acknowledged her nominal suzerainty even for a short period, she would regard it as a part of her empire for ever and would automatically revive her claim over it even after a thousand years whenever there was a chance of enforcing it."
And this was the 'ally' Nehru found against the 'imperialists' of the West! He went so far as to decline a seat at the UN Security Council because the China seat was held by Taiwan. He did not want India to be in the Security Council until China was there too!
Since many people are curious about this, here is chapter and verse: it is in the Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Series II, Vol. 29, Minutes of meeting with Soviet Leaders, Moscow, 22 June 1955, pp. 231. Here is the conversation between Nehru and Soviet Premier Marshal Bulganin:
"Bulganin: While we are discussing the general international situation and reducing tension, we propose suggesting at a later stage India's inclusion as the sixth member of the Security Council.
Nehru: Perhaps Bulganin knows that some people in USA have suggested that India should replace China in the Security Council. This is to create trouble between us and China. We are, of course, wholly opposed to it. Further, we are opposed to pushing ourselves forward to occupy certain positions because that may itself create difficulties and India might itself become a subject of controversy. If India is to be admitted to the Security Council it raises the question of the revision of the Charter of the UN. We feel that this should not be done till the question of China's admission and possibly of others is first solved. I feel that we should first concentrate on getting China admitted."
The casual observer might wonder whether Nehru was India's prime minister, or China's. Besides, the Chinese have now repaid all this support. India insisted that India should not be in the Security Council until China was in it, too. Now China insists that India should not be in the Security Council until Pakistan is in it, too. Seems fair, doesn't it?
What is the net result of all this for India? It is a strategic disaster. Forget the fact that the Tibetan civilisation has been decimated, and it is an Indic civilisation with practically no relationship to Han Chinese civilisation. Strictly from India's security perspective, it is an unmitigated catastrophe.
Analyst Ginsburg wrote in the fifties: 'He who holds Tibet dominates the Himalayan piedmont; he who dominates the Himalayan piedmont, threatens the Indian subcontinent; and he who threatens the Indian subcontinent may well have all of Southeast Asia within his reach, and all of Asia.'
Look at the situation in Tibet today.
The Chinese are planning the northward diversion of the Brahmaputra, also known as the Tsangpo. This would make North India a desert
The Chinese have on several occasions used 'lake bombs' to flood Indian territory: as the upper riparian state based on their occupation of Tibet, they are able to do this, for example on the Sutlej
Hu Jintao, who was the Butcher of Tibet, is now a top strongman in Beijing. Under his sponsorship, a railway line will be finished in 2007 linking Lhasa to eastern China. This would be an excellent mechanism for bringing in both large
numbers of Han immigrants to swamp the remaining Tibetan people, and also to deploy mobile nuclear missiles
The Chinese are deploying advanced nuclear missiles in Tibet, aimed at India, Russia and the US. With the railway line, they will be able to move these around and even conceal them quickly in tunnels and other locations
The Chinese dump large amounts of nuclear waste in Tibet, which will eventually make its way down to India via the rivers
The India-Tibet border is still not demarcated.
It is difficult to imagine a more disastrous foreign policy outcome than what happened between India and China. Claude Arpi is owed a debt of gratitude by all of us in India who care about the nation's progress and even its survival.
If the rather well-thought-of founding prime minister of the country was so uncaring about India's interests, one shudders to think what might be going on today with some of the ministers who are accused in criminal cases.
But even more than that, Arpi's detailed analysis and painstaking research on the process through which Tibet was enslaved is an instructive case study in how barbarians are always at the gates, and how, as Will Durant said, 'Civilisation is a precious good, whose delicate complex order and freedom can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without and multiplying from within'.
One of the profound lessons to be taken away is that it is the lack of respect for the spiritual that has led to this cataclysm. As Ministry of External Affairs observer, Apa Pant, pointed out about Tibet and the Han Chinese colonisation: 'With all its shortcomings and discomforts, its inefficiencies and unconquered physical dangers, here was a civilisation with at least the intention of maintaining a pattern of life in which the individual could achieve liberation. One so apparently inefficient, so human and even timid, yet kind and compassionate and aspiring to something more gloriously satisfying in human life; the other determined and effective, ruthless, power-hungry and finally intolerant... In the corridors of power [in official India], Tibet, Buddhism, the Dalai Lama, were all regarded as ridiculous, too funny for words; useless illusions that would logically cease to exist soon, thanks to the Chinese, and good riddance.'
In the final analysis, Tibet was lost because those in power in India were dismissive of matters spiritual. It is the Empire of the Spirit that has made India what she has been all these millennia, and once the rulers start dismissing that, it is clear that we are in the Kali Yuga, the Dark Ages. It is the end of living, and the beginning of survival.
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BOOK REVIEW:
http://www.tibet.net/flash/2004/0904/290904.html
The Silence Of The Lamb
Reviewed by Dhundup Gyalpo
" Born In Sin: The Panchsheel Agreement "
By Claude Arpi
Mittal Publications, New Delhi,
241 pages, Rs. 495
In each passing century there are a few defining moments of which it can truly be said: here history was made or here mankind's passage through the ages took a new direction or turned towards a new horizon.
Such a moment occurred on the 29th day of April 1954 when an Agreement on Trade and Intercourse between China and India was signed in Beijing. The agreement today is popularly dubbed as the Panchsheel Agreement because of the famous five principles the elixir for foreign relations incorporated in the preamble of the agreement.
The Panchsheel Agreement epitomises the fiasco of Hindi-Chini-Bhai-Bhai clamour. In this agreement India recognized Tibet as part of China in fact, as a mark of goodwill India also gave up all her extra-territorial rights in Tibet but failed to settle the Indo-Tibetan border. And by forfeiting Tibet, India thus forfeited 2,000 years of a buffer state that kept Chinese imperial aspirations on leash.
During a speech on the occasion of signing, the Indian Ambassador N. Raghavan declared: " We have gone fully through the questions that existed between our two countries in the Tibet region. Zhou Enlai responded reiterating that the questions which were ripe for settlement, have been resolved." But alas, neither Raghavan nor the Government of India were able to decipher the portents lurking beneath the ripe for settlement.
The high and lofty ideals of Panchsheel began to crumble just 10 days short of two months after the agreement was signed as the first of a series of Chinese incursions, numbering in hundreds, occurred in Bharhoti area of Uttar Pardesh. These incursions culminated in the Chinese invasion of India with an overwhelming force on two separate flanks in October 1962.
The Chinese aggression, and the defeat and humiliation it wreaked on India, caught offguard, remains deeply embedded in the Indian psyche to this day.
India has been living in the fools paradise of its own making, a beaten, crestfallen, humiliated Nehru admitted in 1962. So betrayed was Nehru by the Chinese aggression that he had this to say on the day the Chinese invaded: " Perhaps there are not many instances in history where one country has gone out of her way to be friendly and cooperative with the government and people of another country and to plead their cause in the council of the world, and then that country returns evil for good."
Claude Arpi's new book, Born in Sin: The Panchsheel Agreement, The sacrifice of Tibet, is an incisive post-mortem of the Agreement and the legacy it bequeathed the future generations of India. It unravels with great clarity the gushy expectations, self-deluding hype, and oozing zealousness that has become the hallmark of Nehru's China policy.
Born in Sin captures in minute detail a continuum of concessions Nehru conceded in his overzealous rush to befriend China. A measure of the height of euphoria over the Hindi-Chini-Bhai-Bhai festivity, obliterating strategic and other implications for India's security, was illustrated in a strange episode after the agreement was signed.
Claude Arpi writes: " India was supplying rice to Chinese troops, engaged in building a road on Indian territory! And not just an ordinary road, it was the Aksai-Chin road cutting through the Indian territory in Ladakh. It is indeed a first in military annals that the government of a country supplies food to enemy troops! But at that time, who saw China as an enemy?"
Claude Arpi's previous book, The Fate of Tibet: When Big Insects Eat Small Insects, was groundbreaking in terms of its revelation of the Pannikar factor in effecting a dramatic transformation in the India's China policy, and by corollary its Tibet policy.
As in The Fate of Tibet, the facts presented in Born in Sin, derive authority from its extensive use of a myriad of official Indian documents and personal memoirs of the then leading political figures. The book concludes by exploring some ambitious but not unrealistic ways to break this impasse of Indo-Tibetan border dispute.
The sacrifice of Tibet: Extraordinary delusions and temporary insanity
Rajeev Srinivasan
March 25, 2008
On November 18 every year, I silently salute the brave souls of C Company, 13th Kumaon Regiment, who in 1962 died practically to the last man and the last bullet defending Ladakh against the invading Chinese Army. These brave 114 inflicted heavy casualties and prevented the Chinese from overrunning Leh, much like Spartans at Thermopylae held the line against the invading Persians many moons ago.
But have you ever wondered why these brave men had to sacrifice themselves? One answer seems to be that is because of the extraordinary delusions that affected a number of the dramatis personae on the Indian side: notably Jawaharlal Nehru, KM Panikkar and VK Krishna Menon.
A deadly combination of blind faith, gross megalomania, and groupthink led to the debacle in the war in1962; but its genesis lay in the unbelievable naivete that led these worthies to simply sacrifice a defenseless sister civilisation to brutal barbarians.
Furthermore, they were far more concerned about China's interests than about India's! Generations to come will scarcely believe that such criminal negligence was tolerated in the foreign policy of a major nation.
In a well-researched book, timed for the one hundredth anniversary of the opening of Tibet by the British, Claude Arpi, born in France but a long-term resident of India, and one of India's leading Tibet and China experts, argues that India's acquiescence to the enslavement of Tibet has had disastrous consequences. The book is Born in Sin: The Panchsheel Agreement subtitled The Sacrifice of Tibet, published by Mittal Publications, New Delhi, 2004, pp. 241, Rs. 495, ISBN 81-7099-974-X. Unless otherwise noted, all of the quotations here are from this book.
Arpi also touches upon the difficulty scholars face with piecing together what actually happened in those momentous years leading to the extinction of Tibet and the India-China war of 1962, because the majority of the source materials are held as classified documents in the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund or the Ministry of External Affairs.
The historian is forced to depend on the sanitised Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru and the restricted Official Report of the 1962 War. If the relevant documents were made public at the very least we might learn something from them. Where is Aruna Roy, crusading champion of the people's right to know who has now accepted a sinecure under the UPA? Why are the Nehru Papers controlled by Sonia Gandhi?
The story really begins exactly one hundred years ago, in September 1904, when the British Colonel Francis Younghusband entered Tibet and forced the hitherto insular kingdom open at the point of a gun. The Lhasa Convention of 1904, signed by the British and the Tibetans, put the seal of British overlordship over Tibet. The parallels with Commodore Perry of the US and his black ships opening up Japan are obvious. However, unlike Japan, which under the Meiji Restoration took vigorously to westernisation, Tibet continued to distance itself from the outside world, much to its later disadvantage.
Perhaps we need to look further in history, as Arpi did in his earlier book, The Fate of Tibet: When Big Insects Eat Small Insects. The Tibetans were a feared, martial and warlike race that had always, in its impregnable mountain fastnesses, held the expansionist Han Chinese at bay. However, in the 7th century CE, Buddhism came to Tibet, and they became a pacifist nation. Says Arpi: 'Tibet's conversion had another consequence on its political history: a nonviolent Tibet could no longer defend itself. It had to look outside for military support to safeguard its frontiers and for the protection of its Dharma. This help came first from the Mongol Khans and later the Manchu Emperors when they became themselves followers of the Buddha's doctrine.'
The sum and substance of China's alleged historical claim to Tibet is this: that the Mongol Khans had conquered both China and Tibet at the same time. This is patently absurd, because by the same token India should claim Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong as its own, because India and these territories were under British rule at the same time.
In fact, since the Mongol Khans and the Manchu Emperors accepted the Dalai Lama as their spiritual preceptor, it is clear that it was China that was giving tribute to Tibet, not vice versa: so Tibet could claim Han China as its vassal.
The Lhasa Convention was followed by the Simla Convention in 1914 that laid out the McMahon Line defining both the Indo-Tibetan border, and the division of Tibet into 'Outer Tibet' (which lies along the border with India) and 'Inner Tibet' which includes Amdo Province and part of Kham Province. It is worthwhile to note that the Chinese were not invited to discuss the McMahon line, nor was their acceptance of this line sought. Tibetans signed this treaty as an independent nation. The British government emphasised this in a note to the Chinese as late as 1943: 'Since the Chinese Revolution of 1911,... Tibet has enjoyed de facto independence.'
When India became independent, K M Panikkar wrote: 'A China [organised as a Communist regime annexing Mongol, Muslim and Tibetan areas] will be in an extremely powerful position to claim its historic role of authority over Tibet, Burma, Indo-China and Siam. The historic claims in regard to these are vague and hazy. Soon thereafter Panikkar became the principal spokesperson for China's interests, even though his job was Indian Ambassador to China!
As soon as the Communists came to power, in 1950, they started asserting their claims: 'The tasks for the People's Liberation Army for 1950 are to liberate [sic] Taiwan, Hainan and Tibet.' A Scottish missionary in Tibet said the PLA officers told him that once Tibet was in their hands, they would go to India.
On October 7, 1950, Mao Tse-Tung's storm troopers invaded Tibet. But under Panikkar's influence, Nehru felt that the loss of Tibet was worth the price of liberating Asia from 'western dominance'. Panikkar said: 'I do not think there is anything wrong in the troops of Red China moving about in their own country.'
Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was one of the few in the Indian government who recognised the menace from China. He wrote:
'We also have to take note of a thoroughly unscrupulous, unreliable and determined power practically at our doors. It is clear that we cannot be friendly with China and must think in terms of defense against a determined, calculating, unscrupulous, ruthless, unprincipled and prejudiced combination of powers, of which the Chinese will be the spearhead. It is obvious to me that any friendly or appeasing approaches from us would either be mistaken for weakness or would be exploited in furtherance of their ultimate aim.'
How prophetic Patel was! Unfortunately, he died soon after he wrote this. Interestingly, the very same words apply in their entirety to India's dithering over Pakistan today, 54 years later. The Pakistanis are also exploiting India's appeasement and friendliness.
But Nehru, it appears, had decided to sacrifice Tibet, partly in order to appease China, partly because of his distaste for what he considered 'imperialist treaties' (in this case the Lhasa Convention that gave enormous rights in Tibet to the British, and, as their successor, to the Indian government) and partly in order to act as mediator between China and the West over the Korean War.
Observers could see what was going to happen. The American ambassador Henderson noted: 'The UK High Commission would like to be able to argue with Indian officials that if GoI bows to Communist China's blackmail re Tibet, India will eventually be confronted with similar blackmail not only re Burma but re such areas as Assam, Bhutan, Sikkim, Kashmir, Nepal.' Absolutely correct, for this is exactly what is happening today.
Nehru and Panikkar simply did not see the threat from China, so enamoured were they of the great Communist Revolution there. Nehru said: 'The biggest event since the last War is the rise of Communist China'. Part of his admiration arose from his distaste for the Buddhist culture of Tibet: 'We cannot support feudal elements in Tibet, indeed we cannot interfere in Tibet'. Now doesn't that sound exactly like Xinhua propaganda, which Nehru seems to have internalised?
A Canadian high commissioner had a different theory: '[Panikkar] had no illusions about the policies of the Chinese government and he had not been misled by it. He considered, however, that the future, at least in his lifetime, lay with the communists, and he therefore did his best to get on well with them by misleading Nehru'. That might be considered treason in certain circles.
Whatever the reason, we can see why Zhou-en Lai is rumored to have referred to the Indians in general and Nehru in particular as 'useful idiots'. (There is no reference to this in the Arpi book). In every discussion with Panikkar, the Chinese hosts smilingly avoided the question of settling the border, but they made sure that India acknowledged Chinese hegemony over Tibet. The Indians were thoroughly outsmarted, partly because they were willing victims dazzled by the idea of Communism.
When confronted with the question of the undefined border, Nehru said, "All these are high mountains. Nobody lives there. It is not very necessary to define these things." And in the context of whether the Chinese might invade India, here's Nehru again: "What might happen is some petty trouble in the borders and unarmed infiltration. To some extent this can be stopped by checkposts, however, armies do not stop communist infiltration or communist ideas, large expenditure on the army will starve the development of the country and social progress."
The naivete leaves the neutral observer speechless. What might be even more alarming is that there are supposedly serious Old Left analysts today, in 2004, who mouth these same inanities about not spending money on the Indian Army. Why they do not take their cue from China, with its enormous Army, is mysterious, because in all other respects they expect India to emulate China. Except that is, no nukes, no military might for India.
By not asserting India's treaty rights in Tibet, which would have helped Tibet remain as a neutral buffer zone, Nehru has hurt India very badly. For, look at what is happening today. Nepal is under relentless attack by Maoists, almost certainly supported by Chinese money. Large parts of India are infested with violent Maoists. Much of West Bengal is under the iron grip of Marxists, who clearly take orders from Beijing.
It is in this context that the so-called Panchsheel Agreement was written. Given that the Indian side had a priori decided to surrender all its rights to the Chinese, in return for vague promises of brotherhood, it is perhaps the most vacuous treaty ever signed. However, Nehru opined: "in my opinion, we have done no better thing than this since we became independent. I have no doubt about this. It is right for our country, for Asia and for the world."
Famous last words.
Nehru believed that the five principles which are referred to as Panchsheel were his personal, and major, contribution to world peace. Based on his impression of his stature in the world, he thought that the Panchsheel model could be used for treaties all over the world, and that it would lead to a tremendous breaking out of peace everywhere.
Nehru was sadly mistaken. There was nothing particularly remarkable about the principles themselves: they were not his invention, but were merely common-sense provisions used widely. And he had a megalomaniac idea of his own influence around the world: he did not realise that he cut a slightly comical figure. In his own mind, and in the minds of his toadies, he was the Emperor Ashoka returned, to bring about World Peace.
Here are the Five Principles:
1. Mutual respect for each other's territorial integrity and sovereignty
2. Mutual non-aggression
3. Mutual non-interference in each other's internal affairs
4. Equality and mutual benefit
5. Peaceful co-existence
The Chinese immediately violated every one of these principles, and have continued to do so happily. For instance, even while the treaty was being negotiated, the Chinese were building a road through Aksai Chin in Jammu and Kashmir, and in perhaps the most unbelievable aspect of this whole sorry mess, India was actually supplying rice to the Chinese troops building the road through Indian territory! This is distinctly surreal!
The problem was that Nehru had no sense of history. He should have read RC Majumdar: "There is, however, one aspect of Chinese culture that is little known outside the circle of professional historians. Its the characteristic of China that if a region once acknowledged her nominal suzerainty even for a short period, she would regard it as a part of her empire for ever and would automatically revive her claim over it even after a thousand years whenever there was a chance of enforcing it."
And this was the 'ally' Nehru found against the 'imperialists' of the West! He went so far as to decline a seat at the UN Security Council because the China seat was held by Taiwan. He did not want India to be in the Security Council until China was there too!
Since many people are curious about this, here is chapter and verse: it is in the Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Series II, Vol. 29, Minutes of meeting with Soviet Leaders, Moscow, 22 June 1955, pp. 231. Here is the conversation between Nehru and Soviet Premier Marshal Bulganin:
"Bulganin: While we are discussing the general international situation and reducing tension, we propose suggesting at a later stage India's inclusion as the sixth member of the Security Council.
Nehru: Perhaps Bulganin knows that some people in USA have suggested that India should replace China in the Security Council. This is to create trouble between us and China. We are, of course, wholly opposed to it. Further, we are opposed to pushing ourselves forward to occupy certain positions because that may itself create difficulties and India might itself become a subject of controversy. If India is to be admitted to the Security Council it raises the question of the revision of the Charter of the UN. We feel that this should not be done till the question of China's admission and possibly of others is first solved. I feel that we should first concentrate on getting China admitted."
The casual observer might wonder whether Nehru was India's prime minister, or China's. Besides, the Chinese have now repaid all this support. India insisted that India should not be in the Security Council until China was in it, too. Now China insists that India should not be in the Security Council until Pakistan is in it, too. Seems fair, doesn't it?
What is the net result of all this for India? It is a strategic disaster. Forget the fact that the Tibetan civilisation has been decimated, and it is an Indic civilisation with practically no relationship to Han Chinese civilisation. Strictly from India's security perspective, it is an unmitigated catastrophe.
Analyst Ginsburg wrote in the fifties: 'He who holds Tibet dominates the Himalayan piedmont; he who dominates the Himalayan piedmont, threatens the Indian subcontinent; and he who threatens the Indian subcontinent may well have all of Southeast Asia within his reach, and all of Asia.'
Look at the situation in Tibet today.
The Chinese are planning the northward diversion of the Brahmaputra, also known as the Tsangpo. This would make North India a desert
The Chinese have on several occasions used 'lake bombs' to flood Indian territory: as the upper riparian state based on their occupation of Tibet, they are able to do this, for example on the Sutlej
Hu Jintao, who was the Butcher of Tibet, is now a top strongman in Beijing. Under his sponsorship, a railway line will be finished in 2007 linking Lhasa to eastern China. This would be an excellent mechanism for bringing in both large
numbers of Han immigrants to swamp the remaining Tibetan people, and also to deploy mobile nuclear missiles
The Chinese are deploying advanced nuclear missiles in Tibet, aimed at India, Russia and the US. With the railway line, they will be able to move these around and even conceal them quickly in tunnels and other locations
The Chinese dump large amounts of nuclear waste in Tibet, which will eventually make its way down to India via the rivers
The India-Tibet border is still not demarcated.
It is difficult to imagine a more disastrous foreign policy outcome than what happened between India and China. Claude Arpi is owed a debt of gratitude by all of us in India who care about the nation's progress and even its survival.
If the rather well-thought-of founding prime minister of the country was so uncaring about India's interests, one shudders to think what might be going on today with some of the ministers who are accused in criminal cases.
But even more than that, Arpi's detailed analysis and painstaking research on the process through which Tibet was enslaved is an instructive case study in how barbarians are always at the gates, and how, as Will Durant said, 'Civilisation is a precious good, whose delicate complex order and freedom can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without and multiplying from within'.
One of the profound lessons to be taken away is that it is the lack of respect for the spiritual that has led to this cataclysm. As Ministry of External Affairs observer, Apa Pant, pointed out about Tibet and the Han Chinese colonisation: 'With all its shortcomings and discomforts, its inefficiencies and unconquered physical dangers, here was a civilisation with at least the intention of maintaining a pattern of life in which the individual could achieve liberation. One so apparently inefficient, so human and even timid, yet kind and compassionate and aspiring to something more gloriously satisfying in human life; the other determined and effective, ruthless, power-hungry and finally intolerant... In the corridors of power [in official India], Tibet, Buddhism, the Dalai Lama, were all regarded as ridiculous, too funny for words; useless illusions that would logically cease to exist soon, thanks to the Chinese, and good riddance.'
In the final analysis, Tibet was lost because those in power in India were dismissive of matters spiritual. It is the Empire of the Spirit that has made India what she has been all these millennia, and once the rulers start dismissing that, it is clear that we are in the Kali Yuga, the Dark Ages. It is the end of living, and the beginning of survival.
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BOOK REVIEW:
http://www.tibet.net/flash/2004/0904/290904.html
The Silence Of The Lamb
Reviewed by Dhundup Gyalpo
" Born In Sin: The Panchsheel Agreement "
By Claude Arpi
Mittal Publications, New Delhi,
241 pages, Rs. 495
In each passing century there are a few defining moments of which it can truly be said: here history was made or here mankind's passage through the ages took a new direction or turned towards a new horizon.
Such a moment occurred on the 29th day of April 1954 when an Agreement on Trade and Intercourse between China and India was signed in Beijing. The agreement today is popularly dubbed as the Panchsheel Agreement because of the famous five principles the elixir for foreign relations incorporated in the preamble of the agreement.
The Panchsheel Agreement epitomises the fiasco of Hindi-Chini-Bhai-Bhai clamour. In this agreement India recognized Tibet as part of China in fact, as a mark of goodwill India also gave up all her extra-territorial rights in Tibet but failed to settle the Indo-Tibetan border. And by forfeiting Tibet, India thus forfeited 2,000 years of a buffer state that kept Chinese imperial aspirations on leash.
During a speech on the occasion of signing, the Indian Ambassador N. Raghavan declared: " We have gone fully through the questions that existed between our two countries in the Tibet region. Zhou Enlai responded reiterating that the questions which were ripe for settlement, have been resolved." But alas, neither Raghavan nor the Government of India were able to decipher the portents lurking beneath the ripe for settlement.
The high and lofty ideals of Panchsheel began to crumble just 10 days short of two months after the agreement was signed as the first of a series of Chinese incursions, numbering in hundreds, occurred in Bharhoti area of Uttar Pardesh. These incursions culminated in the Chinese invasion of India with an overwhelming force on two separate flanks in October 1962.
The Chinese aggression, and the defeat and humiliation it wreaked on India, caught offguard, remains deeply embedded in the Indian psyche to this day.
India has been living in the fools paradise of its own making, a beaten, crestfallen, humiliated Nehru admitted in 1962. So betrayed was Nehru by the Chinese aggression that he had this to say on the day the Chinese invaded: " Perhaps there are not many instances in history where one country has gone out of her way to be friendly and cooperative with the government and people of another country and to plead their cause in the council of the world, and then that country returns evil for good."
Claude Arpi's new book, Born in Sin: The Panchsheel Agreement, The sacrifice of Tibet, is an incisive post-mortem of the Agreement and the legacy it bequeathed the future generations of India. It unravels with great clarity the gushy expectations, self-deluding hype, and oozing zealousness that has become the hallmark of Nehru's China policy.
Born in Sin captures in minute detail a continuum of concessions Nehru conceded in his overzealous rush to befriend China. A measure of the height of euphoria over the Hindi-Chini-Bhai-Bhai festivity, obliterating strategic and other implications for India's security, was illustrated in a strange episode after the agreement was signed.
Claude Arpi writes: " India was supplying rice to Chinese troops, engaged in building a road on Indian territory! And not just an ordinary road, it was the Aksai-Chin road cutting through the Indian territory in Ladakh. It is indeed a first in military annals that the government of a country supplies food to enemy troops! But at that time, who saw China as an enemy?"
Claude Arpi's previous book, The Fate of Tibet: When Big Insects Eat Small Insects, was groundbreaking in terms of its revelation of the Pannikar factor in effecting a dramatic transformation in the India's China policy, and by corollary its Tibet policy.
As in The Fate of Tibet, the facts presented in Born in Sin, derive authority from its extensive use of a myriad of official Indian documents and personal memoirs of the then leading political figures. The book concludes by exploring some ambitious but not unrealistic ways to break this impasse of Indo-Tibetan border dispute.
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