FW: [WTNN] World Tibet Network News - December 12, 2010

[Alex Bunjes]

 
Saturday, December 12, 2010
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Issue ID: 2010/12/112
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Contents
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
1. "MAY THE DEITIES PROTECT THE SNOWLAND" BY WOESER (High Peaks Pure Earth)
2. China’s war against Nobel Peace Prize (Herald Scotland)
3. Next Dalai Lama most likely to born in India, Russia also not excluded
   - Tibet Buddhist leader (Interfax)
4. Science can provide solutions for better future (PTI)
5. Nobel cause: Gere duels dragon over Liu Xiaobo (Times of India)
6. A UN Exhibit With Chinese Characteristics (Epoch Times)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
"MAY THE DEITIES PROTECT THE SNOWLAND" BY WOESER
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
From High Peaks Pure Earth blog
Beijing, December 8, 2010

A few days ago, the Norwegian magazine "Ny Tid" asked me if I would write an article about Liu Xiaobo. As is widely-known, on December 10, the Nobel Peace Prize Committee will bestow the Nobel Peace Prize on Chinese independent scholar Liu Xiaobo, this day is also International Human Rights Day. The media's assessment is that this year's award has definitely been bestowed by international civil society on an individual Liu Xiaobo to recognise, encourage and support all of those who have struggled for all these years for freedom, democracy and human rights in China and to defend universal values. This makes me think of all the Tibetans who share in the same pursuit at great cost and after thinking about this, I'd like to write an article about these Tibetans who, although not known, are equally worthy the world's honour and attention, for example, Dolma Kyab.

This is a Tibetan from Amdo who taught history in a middle school in Lhasa and was imprisoned because he wrote an unpublished book "The Restless Himalayas" as well as essays on environmental protection, women's rights and so on. In the winter of 2005, on grounds of "inciting state subversion", the Lhasa court sentenced Dolma Kyab to ten and a half years in prison, just half a year less than Liu Xiaobo. At that time it was said that Dolma Kyab was transferred to a labour camp in Xining but recently it has been said that he is detained in Lhasa's Chushur Prison, notorious as the place for imprisoning heavyweight political prisoners, a source said that the 34 year old Dolma Kyab was in poor physical health.

His book "The Restless Himalayas" discusses various topics such as the concepts of Tibet's history and geography, the unity of Tibet's three provinces, sovereignty, the birth of democracy, China's political system, Tibet's right to autonomy, colonialists, nationalism, Tibetans under Communism, rescued memories, the evil of politics, defeating the enemy to regain freedom, the responsibilities of Tibetan lamas, Tibet's crisis and the way forward, the new generation of Tibetans and so on. Three years ago, after I read a digital version of his book, I sincerely recognised that Dolma Kyab was the true voice of Tibet. Writing like a Greek philosopher and with his unyielding national spirit, as well as now having to spend ten and half years in a harsh prison environment, he shows that he is able to enlighten the Tibetans, especially the Tibetans who were educated about Chinese culture. This will be engraved on the history book of Tibet, he is invigorated by the glory of the autonomy enjoyed by the Tibetan nation in the past, even though he is heavily hit with the pain of the loss of his own country at present, and to be saved in the future, to save his hopes and spirit, this is the most valuable thing!

After I read his book I felt moved to write: "He is truly a Boddhisattva as written about in ancient texts, compassionate and wrathful, these come in turns in his writings, there is self-redemption but he is also helping to save others! I can't help but wonder why he wrote such things, he wrote alone, he was taken away alone, he sits alone in prison ... I want to bow to Dolma Kyab, because I have never before seen a Tibetan inside Tibet using the language of the coloniser, using history and reality, especially all aspects of today's reality, to tell us the facts about being colonised and the way out of being colonised. Also, there are so many of us writers, if in times like these we don't write anything, don't say anything, if in these extraordinary circumstances we don't act to document in order not to forget, then what use are writers at all?"

Actually, our nationality does not only have one Dolma Kyab, we also have outstanding sons and daughters of the Snowland who are the same as him. According to our tradition, in our snow-mountain encircled land, there are protector deities who have the magical power to create miracles and defend our homeland. Although it may seem as though these recent decades of upheaval only protect the enemy, this is a way of thinking that lacks foresight.

Just as Dolma Kyab writes: "The last drops of the blood of our nationality are pulsating through our veins. Our flesh and bones are expanding with the rejuvenation of our nationality, our spirits are deeply guarding the homeland that we have lost. This is all about to ignite our land and illuminate our land. The heavens will bear witness, Buddha will bless us, we will struggle for ourselves and all of mankind."

Yes it's true, these kinds of talents are the real embodiments of the Snowland, in addition to Dolma Kyab, there is Tenzin Delek Rinpoche, Bangri Rinpoche, Lobsang Tenzin, Runggye Adak, Dhondup Wangchen, Wangdu, Yeshi Choedon, Norzin Wangmo, Paljor Norbu, Phurbu Tsering Rinpoche, Kunchok Tsephel, Kunga Tsayang, Tashi Rabten, Karma Samdrup, Rinchen Samdrup and so on, and even more Tibetans who are not known, may the deities honour and protect them!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
2. China’s war against Nobel Peace Prize
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Herald Scotland
12 Dec 2010

Six-year-old Zeng Yuhan became an unwitting pawn in a final strange effort by China to undermine the Nobel Peace Prize and discredit the jailed dissident writer Liu Xiaobo, who was awarded the accolade in absentia on Friday night.

The shy little girl, was carried onto a stage at a Beijing hotel on Thursday to grasp a glass trophy representing the Confucius Peace Prize, a largely obscure award that organisers said was decided on December 5 by a small group of Chinese scholars. To add to the surreal nature of the event, the girl’s presence on stage was not even explained.

The prizewinner, veteran Taiwanese politician Lien Chan, was absent from the low-key ceremony. His staff said they had never heard of the prize.

The ceremony was a last, lame attempt to draw the spotlight away from the next day’s events in Oslo, when a different kind of empty chair took centre stage as actress Liv Ullmann read a “final statement” written by Liu before he was sentenced to 11 years in prison for subversion last Christmas.

China and 15 diplomatic allies boycotted the Nobel Peace Prize award.

    "I think we have to say... that in some ways China is still a very immature diplomatic player, very immature indeed,"

    Kerry Brown, British-China analyst

The list of Beijing’s supporters included Russia, Iran, Pakistan, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Cuba. Most of the nations have vital economic ties to China and are less than well disposed to the Western view of global affairs.

The call to boycott the ceremony was “probably a happy event among those authoritarian regimes because the rich government of China now owes them for something they probably would have done without Chinese urgings”, said Edward Friedman, a specialist in Chinese politics at the University of Wisconsin.

China’s foreign ministry lobbied embassies in Norway not to attend the ceremony and issued statements about the “politicisation” of the prize and the Nobel Committee’s “interference in China’s internal affairs” by choosing a man who challenged the Communist Party to allow democratic reform.

Inside China, police have detained, placed under under house arrest or kept under surveillance many rights activists since the prize was announced on October 8, including Liu’s wife, Liu Xia.

Foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said China had “won the understanding and support of more than 100 countries and major international organisations” for its position on the Nobel prize, but at least 80 of its claimed supporters remained unidentified.

Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela are all important oil and gas exporters to China. China has supported Iran and Sudan at the United Nations, while Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez has tried to build an alliance with China to counter US world influence.

On the day of the Nobel ceremony, Jiang said China supported Russia’s entry into the World Trade Organisation “as soon as possible”.

In an implicit dig at the nations siding with China, Nobel Committee chairman Thorbjorn Jagland said in his speech at Friday’s ceremony that the event was held “while others at this time are counting their money, focusing exclusively on their short-term national interests, or remaining indifferent”.

Kerry Brown, a British-China analyst and former diplomat in Beijing, said China’s image had “suffered badly” through its crude efforts to rally support and intimidate other nations.

“If [China’s critics] wanted to write a script for how to completely humiliate and show China in what they claim are its true colours, well, the Chinese government has responded magnificently,” said Brown, a senior fellow at the Chatham House think-tank and the author of Friends and enemies: The past, present and future of the Communist Party of China.

Salil Shetty, the secretary-general of Amnesty International, accused China of trying to “sabotage this year’s award with political pressure, arm-twisting and economic blackmail”.

The Philippines, Serbia and Ukraine apparently changed their minds after politicians and rights groups criticised reports that they planned to boycott the ceremony.

The division that was still on show in Oslo reflects loose regional and global alliances forming around China in opposition to US-led groupings.

Nepal’s government instructed its ambassador to Britain, Suresh Chandra Chalise, who also represents the nation in Norway, not to go to Oslo because of a request from China,

Sandwiched between the world’s two most populous nations, China and India, Nepal drew the condemnation of rights groups after it disrupted a ballot organised among the country’s 30,000 Tibetan exiles in October.

China’s growing influence has persuaded its poor Himalayan neighbour to be less sympathetic to Tibetan refugees. Nepal forcibly repatriated three Tibetans to China in June, prompting a rebuke in the US State Department’s annual report on religious freedom last month.

Friedman believes that China’s “bullying tactics” reflect the “imperatives of domestic politics in China”, adding: “This apparent need at the highest level of power in the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) regime not to compromise becomes very worrisome for those who hope for negotiated solutions to tensions in global hot-spots.”

No nation feels China’s diplomatic might more than Taiwan, which China regards as a breakaway province to be “reunified”, by force, as a last resort. Former Taiwanese vice-president Annette Lu once said her country faced a “diplomatic Berlin Wall” in building international relations.

Lien, the honorary chairman of Taiwan’s Kuomintang (KMT), or Nationalist Party, was recognised with the Confucius prize because he “built a bridge of peace between the mainland and Taiwan” by promoting links with the Chinese Communist Party.

The second-most sacred tenet of China’s diplomacy is its sovereignty over Tibet, a region that is largely closed to foreign observers and subject to tougher policing than the rest of China.

China was incensed when protestors disrupted the Paris torch relay for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, and by French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s meeting later that year with the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan Buddhist leader who fled to India after a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959.

Yet China rarely maintains a principled stand indefinitely, preferring a pragmatic balancing of its economic and political interests. When Chinese President Hu Jintao visited Paris last month, activists accused Sarkozy of ignoring human rights to win deals worth billions of pounds, including one for 102 Airbus passenger planes.

Indian media said China issued at least four diplomatic notices urging New Delhi not to attend the Nobel ceremony. India ignored the requests despite the risk that it could sour next week’s scheduled visit to India by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao.

China provides Pakistan with military, nuclear power and infrastructure but it has also tried to improve its diplomatic ties with India over the past decade and the two nations have held talks on their longstanding border disputes.

Former Indian diplomat MK Bhadrakumar said India’s presence in Oslo was a “loud assertion that India is prepared to stand up and be counted” in any US effort to counteract China’s influence. “The Indian establishment is convinced that Moscow and Beijing are closely co-ordinating on the Asia-Pacific region and [that their] leitmotif is to keep US influence under check.”

Japan and South Korea, which both sent envoys to the Nobel ceremony, are key US allies in Asia, while China is close to Russia and remains one of North Korea’s few diplomatic friends.

These six nations form two sides in the stalled negotiations over North Korea’s nuclear programmes, although both China and Russia have voiced strong opposition to Pyongyang’s development of nuclear weapons. After North Korea’s shelling of a South Korean island last month, the United States, South Korea and Japan all reacted coldly to China’s call for an emergency meeting of the six delegation heads.

Japan and South Korea also back the United States in its long-term commitment to arm Taiwan and help defend the island against an attack by China.

Further tainting the image of Chinese diplomacy, one of the US embassy cables released this week by WikiLeaks quoted a South Korean official as saying the continuing responsibility of Chinese envoy Wu Dawei for the six-nation negotiations on North Korea was “a very bad thing”.

Another unidentified official quoted in the leaked cable, dated February 22 from the US embassy in Seoul, described Wu as a “hardline nationalist” and an “arrogant, Marx-spouting former Red Guard” who “knows nothing about North Korea, nothing about non-proliferation and is hard to communicate with because he doesn’t speak English”.

The Red Guards were young fanatics, manipulated by Communist Party factions, who were still spreading chaos when China and the US began the “ping-pong” diplomacy that culminated in a historic meeting between Mao Zedong and Richard Nixon in 1972.

Less than a decade after the Nixon-Mao summit, China introduced reforms that gradually moved it away from state planning and paved the way for 20 years of breakneck infrastructure creation and export-led growth.

Its once ideologically-based diplomacy has become largely pragmatic but its diplomats, most of whom are middle-aged Communist Party members, remain highly cautious even by the usually conservative standards of foreign affairs officials.

Since October, China has warned Norway that diplomatic relations will suffer. It has suspended discussions on a free-trade agreement with Norway, but it has continued talks on oil and gas co-operation.

But China appears to maintain a tougher stance with weak nations. “I think the consensus is that when China is dealing with African countries, or dealing with countries in the region (Asia), it can be pretty bullying,” Brown said.

In contrast to China’s approach, Iran sent its ambassador to the award ceremony in Oslo when Iranian rights lawyer Shrin Ebadi won the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize. The Iranian ambassador’s presence apparently helped to avoid the glare of publicity that Liu’s ceremony generated from Western governments and global media.

In a statement on Liu’s award ceremony, issued via Paris-based Reporters Without Borders, Ebadi said she was “sorry that my country, Iran, has decided not to take part in this universal tribute to a human rights activist ... I hope the Chinese government is going to understand that it was a mistake to jail him and to threaten countries to get them to stay away from the ceremony.”

Brown agreed that China’s jailing of Liu, who co-organised the Charter 08 for democratic reform, and its diplomatic response to him winning the Nobel prize had “backfired spectacularly”.

“I think we have to say, at the end of the day, that in some ways China is still a very immature diplomatic player, very immature indeed,” Brown said.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
3. Next Dalai Lama most likely to born in India, Russia also not excluded
   - Tibet Buddhist leader
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Dharamsala (India), December 10, 2010 Interfax - Dalai Lama XIV Tenzin Gyatso believes his next incarnation will take place in India.

"The next Dalai Lama's to reincarnate in a free country, most likely in India and may be in one of Russian republics," the spiritual leader of Tibet Buddhists told at his meeting with Russian journalists that took place in his residence in Dharamsala (India).

According to Dalai Lama, if the existing state of things persists and Tibet Buddhist remain "in exile" then "logically the aim of reincarnation is to complete tasks set in the previous incarnation, which haven't been fulfilled (restoration of Tibet government headed by Dalai Lama - IF).

He didn't exclude a possibility that future Dalai Lama can be a woman and reminded that there had already been such precedents. Dalai Lama said that in main religions including Buddhism, women make majority of believers and "it means that Dalai Lama woman can be more useful."

"Some people including Russians say that Dalai Lama institute is extremely important for development of Tibet Buddhism, but this view point is not correct," he added and reminded that Tibet Buddhism exists for 600 years and only 400 years Dalai Lama holds spiritual and secular power.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
4. Science can provide solutions for better future: Dalai Lama
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Lucknow, Saturday, Dec 11, 2010 (PTI) - Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama today stressed on use of science while looking for solutions to make the world a better place to live.

"While looking for solutions for improving the future, one should give more importance to reality and science rather than adopting anything on the basis of beliefs and prejudice," he said at a convention of legal luminaries from across 71 countries here.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
5. Nobel cause: Gere duels dragon over Liu Xiaobo
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
THE TIMES OF INDIA
Dec 12, 2010

KATHMANDU: Hollywood icon and a staunch supporter of the Dalai Lama, Richard Gere has taken up cudgels on behalf of Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese rights activist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace this year but whose government has slammed him with an 11-year prison sentence.

On Friday, when the Nobel awarding ceremony at Oslo went on without the presence of Liu, Gere, who chairs International Campaign for Tibet , the NGO advocating human rights in China-controlled Tibet, joined 10 other groups in New York to honour the jailed activist, Human Rights in China said.

At an event in the Ralph Bunche Park across from the UN, Gere, speaking about what Liu's writings and the man himself stands for, said, "It's clear that, in the end, brute force can never really stop that innate universal drive for happiness , for freedom, for expression , for community. And this Nobel Peace Prize for Liu Xiaobo demonstrates that we are part of that community."

The actor, who has visited Nepal several times to meet with Tibetan leaders and refugees, also read excerpts from Liu's trial statement, "I have no enemies: my final statement" that went on to say he looked forward "to the advent of a future free China for there is no force that can put an end to the human quest for freedom... "

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
6. A UN Exhibit With Chinese Characteristics
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Display conceals suppression of ethnic minorities, rights group says
By Matthew Robertson
Epoch Times Staff
Dec 12, 2010

On the same day that imprisoned Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in absentia, Chinese Communist Party propagandists organized a photo exhibition at the United Nations, extolling the progress of human rights in China.

Under the headline “Experience China” photographs at the exhibit, held at the U.N.’s European Headquarters in Geneva, on Dec. 10—coinciding with International Human Rights Day—depicted minority groups like Uyghurs and Tibetans smiling in traditional garb, while didactic photo captions explained their gratitude for religious and ethnic freedom under communist rule.

Rights groups were unimpressed, according to Geneva-based U.N. watchdog group U.N. Watch. “It is an outrage that the U.N. is hosting and cosponsoring—with China's Communist regime—a massive propaganda display designed to cover up the government's systematic abuses of universal human rights," said Hillel Neuer, executive director of the group, in a press release.

The organization identified with ease and alacrity the contradictions between representation and reality: “Contrary to Beijing's documented persecution of minorities and their cultures, the exhibit shows colorful photos of ethnic minorities in traditional costumes,” they wrote.

Captions accompanying such images invariably told viewers things like, “people of different ethnic groups unite fraternally in the common cause of building China while maintaining their own cultures.”

This was “despite the 2009 slaughter and ongoing persecution of Uyghurs,” the group said. The exhibit also covers up the “recent Chinese massacre and ongoing persecution” of Tibetans, with a photo of a Tibetan Buddhist monk.

The serene monk is depicted overlooking a valley where a Tibetan Buddhist religious ritual is taking place. It is widely known, however, that the Communist Party has been determined to wipe out allegiance to the Dalai Lama, and to take control of Tibetan Buddhism—including, for example, patriotic slogans amidst religious doctrine. Accompanying such soft tactics is violent repression for monks who publicly dissent, according to human rights groups. The caption for the image notes that "Tibetans believe in Tibetan Buddhism, also known as Tantrism or Lamaism, which is often thought to be of mysterious and primitive ethnic origins."
Related Articles

Organizers of the exhibit included the Chinese regime's State Council Information Office, their Permanent Mission to the U.N., and the United Nations Office itself.

The State Council Information Office is known as such only externally, under the technical separation between the Communist Party and the state, known as the “one office, two nameplates” system. Insiders know it by the Party title—“Office of Foreign Propaganda.”

The United Nations office in Geneva was closed and unable to give comment over the weekend.

_________________________________________________________

Send articles to:         wtn-e...@tibet.ca
Subscriptions to:         list...@lists.mcgill.ca (SUB WTNN-L [yourname])
Cancellations to:         list...@lists.mcgill.ca (SIGNOFF WTNN-L)
WTN Archived at:         http://www.tibet.ca
_________________________________________________________




------ Einde van doorgestuurd bericht