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The State of Religious Freedom in Tibet

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The State of Religious Freedom in Tibet The State of Religious Freedom in Tibet I am deeply grateful to the Parliament of Australia for providing me this opportunity to make a submission on the state of religious freedom in Tibet to the Human Rights Sub-committee of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade. All Tibetans deeply value this important forum provided to us. Unfortunately, in Tibet the Chinese authorities are gearing up for increased control over Tibetan Buddhism. This was explained in no uncertain terms by Wu Yingjie, the new chief of the Chinese communist party in Tibet. In a 28 December 2016 dispatch, Reuters quoted Wu Yingjie as saying the Chinese Communist Party's control of religion would only increase. In excerpts of a speech on religious policy carried by Tibet Daily, the official newspaper, Tibet's communist party chief said, "The party's leadership work over religion can only strengthen and not weaken." Wu Yingie said the party would "continue deepen its exposure and criticism of the Dalai clique's reactionaryness on politics, its falseness on religion, its deceptive methods." Tibet's party chief warned the Tibetan people to draw a clear line between them and the Dalai Lama. China's decision to bring Tibetan Buddhism under tighter party control began in the spring and summer of 2008 when the Tibetan Plateau erupted in sustained peaceful protests in the run-up to the Beijing Olympic Games. Till then there was some hope in Tibet that the situation would improve because the envoys of the Dalai Lama and their Chinese counterparts were in intense discussion from 2002 to 2010 over meaningful autonomy for Tibet. When the Tibetan people realized that the talks were going nowhere and they would never be able to welcome the Dalai Lama back in his homeland, their pent-up frustration split into the streets of Tibet. Most of the peaceful protestors were monks and nuns. The Chinese authorities answered with massive repression, killing, imprisonment and torture. But this has not cowed the Tibetan people. Rather than being tortured and killed by the Chinese authorities, Tibetans have resorted to self-immolation. Since February 2009, 146 Tibetans have set themselves on fire, calling for the return of the Dalai Lama to Tibet, freedom for the Tibetan people, right to the use of the Tibetan language and ban on open pit mining. But China's biggest crackdown on Tibetan Buddhism is happening at Larung Gar Buddhist Institute, the largest congregation of Buddhist practitioners anywhere in the world, in eastern Tibet. In its 20 October 2016 report on the expulsion and demolition that is taking place at Larung Gar Buddhist Institute, the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, an NGO based in Dharamsala in north India, writes "religious freedom remain a distant reality for religious believers in Tibet." Larung Gar Buddhist Institute has a student population of 10,000. The majority is Tibetan and come from all over Tibet. But there are large number of students from Thailand, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and Korea. There are over 1000 Chinese students from mainland China at the institute. Since it was founded by the late Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok in 1980, the Larung Gar Buddhist Institute has become the largest centre for the study and practice of Tibetan Buddhism in Tibet, out-numbering and out-performing long-established monasteries like Sera, Ganden and Drepung in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital. Larung Gar Buddhist Institute is located in Kham in eastern Tibet long incorporated into China's most populous province, Sichuan. The provincial authorities of Sichuan, long fearful of such mass concentration of students outside of party control, decided that 10,000 students in one place was too many. They decided the ceiling for the number of monks and nuns should be 5,000. The rest who have no residential permits to stay in the area would be expelled and their dwellings demolished. The authorities planned to complete the expulsion and demolition by the end of 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQq6QNntXW4 In 20 July 2016, demolition squads started to tear down targeted dwellings of students and to drive the expelled students out of the area. In late December 2016 the demolition and expulsion continued. On 27 December 2016, Radio Free Asia reported that a further 500 monks and nuns were expelled, "leaving many of them left behind fainting and in tears over the forced separation from friends." The brunt of the hardship was borne by the monks and nuns who came from the Tibet Autonomous Region. Before they were driven to the respective places, they were subjected to a month of re-education and forced to swear their loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party. A local source told Radio Free Asia, according to its report of 29 December 2016, that "Several hundred Han Chinese , many of them living in Larung Gar as lay practitioners but also some monastically ordained , have been evicted from the center." The same Radio Free Asia report said, "There were also many students from Western countries, including the United States and countries in Europe, who were studying at the center, and they too were forced to leave without any publicity." This is not the first demolition and mass eviction Larung Gar Buddhist Institute faced. In 2001, Zhou Yongkang, a former Politburo member and minister of internal security, now disgraced and in prison for corruption, was the party chief of Sichuan. Under his watch, the Sichuan provincial government put pressure on the abbot of Larung Gar Budddhist Institute to remove photos of the Dalai Lama and reduce the number of monks and nuns. According to Pin Ho and Wenguang Huang, joint authors of A Death in the Lucky Holiday Hotel: Murder, Money and an Epic Power Struggle in China, "When the abbot refused, the government expelled more than 1,000 monks and nuns who had come from other parts of mainland China, Hong Kong and Singapore to worship and study there, forcing them to sign a document denouncing the Dalai Lama and demolishing their apartments." According to the same authors,"At the same time Zhou (Yongkang) implemented policies to force Tibetans to give up their religion and accept Communism." The book quotes Zhou Yongkang as saying, "The Dalai Lama attempts to split China. Most of his anti-China activities are underwritten with donations from Tibetan people. We need to stop there. We need to propagate atheism and advocate science so that they can give up their religion." Chinese authorities are pursuing two policies in regard to Tibetan Buddhism. Their long-term policy is to wean the Tibetan people away from their faith in Tibetan Buddhism and submerge their identity in the larger "melting-pot" of China. While this process goes on, meanwhile China wants to control Tibetan Buddhism. In 2007, the Chinese authorities issued a directive on the process of recognizing reincarnating lamas. The directive said that the central government alone had the right to recognize and appoint Tibet's reincarnating lamas. This directive paved the way for Beijing to pursue its ultimate prize: recognizing and installing the 15th Dalai Lama. Beijing thinks if it is successful in this it would have under its control one of the greatest soft powers in the world. In this way, China is not only asserting its sovereignty in the East China and South China Seas. It is asserting its sovereignty on Tibet's spiritual space. The Tibetan people's reaction to attempts made by the Chinese Communist Party to intrude into Tibetan spiritual space and life is made clear by their attitude to the Chinese-appointed Panchen Lama. Gayltsen Norbu, the Party-appointed Panchen Lama, is forced to live in Beijing and not at Tashi Lhunpo, the traditional monastery of the Panchen Lamas of Tibet in Shigatse. This is because the monks of Tashi Lhunpo are too hostile for his comfort and the comfort of the Chinese Communist Party. As for the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader issued a detailed statement on 24 September 2011. He said whether the institution of the Dalai Lama should continue or not would be decided by the Tibetan people themselves. If the Tibetan people decide that the institution should continue, then he alone has the right to decide where, when and how he would reincarnate and no one else. In conclusion, I would like the Australian government in its bilateral discussion with China to raise the issue of the whereabouts and the wellbeing of Gendun Chokyi Nyima, the Dalai Lama-appointed Panchen Lama. Since the boy was recognized by the Dalai Lama as the authentic reincarnation of the 10th Panchen Lama in 1995, he and his family disappeared and he has not been seen or heard since then. Once again, I thank the Australian Parliament for affording me this opportunity to share the concerns of the Tibetan people on the state of religious freedom in Tibet. Lhakpa Tshoko Representative of His Holiness the Dalai Lama Canberra, 7 February 2017 .
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