FW: [WTNN] World Tibet Network News -- January 6, 2011
Alex Bunjes
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Issue ID: 2011/01/06Compiled by Nima Dorjee
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Contents
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1. Coutering Stress and Depression
2. His Holiness the Dalai Lama Urged Not to Retire from Leader of Tibet
3. The second coming
4. SEEKING THE POWEROF THE POWERLESS Jamyang Norbu
5. Nepal Authorities ArrestedSix Refugees After Escaping Tibet
6. Tibetan sentenced to 2 years prison for India visit : source
7. Yarsgumba: Curse of Himalayan Annapurna region
8. Dalai Lama wants to go geen
9. Is Global Warming Making Tibet Dustier?
10. Tibetan Buddhism cn solve global conflicts: Karmapa
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1. Countering Stress and Depression
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Originally ublished in the Hindustan Times, India, on January 3rd, 2011
At a fundmental level, as human beings, we are all the same; each one
of us aspires to happiness and each one of us does not wish to suffer.
This is why, henever I have the opportunity, I try to draw people's
attention to whatas members of the human family we have in common and
the deeply interconncted nature of our existence and welfare.
Today, there is increaing recognition, as well as a growing body of
scientific evidence,that confirms the close connection between our own
states of mind and our happiness. n the one hand, many of us live in
societies that are very developed matrially, yet among us are many
people who are not very happy. Just undernath the beautiful surface of
affluence there is a kind of mental unrest,leading to frustration,
unnecessary quarrels, reliance on drugs or alchol, and in the worst
case, suicide. There is no guarantee that wealth alone can give you the
joy or fulfilment that you seek. The samecan be said of your friends
too. When you are in an intense state of aner or hatred, even a very
close friend appears to you as somehow frosy, or cold, distant, and
annoying.
However, as human beings we are giftd with this wonderful human
intelligence. Besides that, all human beings ave the capacity to be
very determined and to direct that strong senseof determination in
whatever direction they like. So long as we remember that we have this
marvellousgift of human intelligence and a capacity to develop
determination and se it in positive ways, we will preserve our
underlying mental health. Relizing we have this great human potential
gives us a fundamental srength. This recognition can act as a mechanism
that enables us to deal with any difficulty, o matter what situation we
are facing, without losing hope or sinking int feelings of low
self-esteem.
I write this as someone who lost his feedom at the age of 16, then lost
his country at the age of 24. Conseqently, I have lived in exile for
more than 50 years during which we Tibeans have dedicated ourselves to
keeping the Tibetan identity alive and prserving our culture and
values. On most days the news from Tibet is heatbreaking, and yet none
of these challenges gives grounds for giving up. One ofthe approaches
that I personally find useful is to cultivate the thought: If the
situation or problem is such that it can be remedied, then there is no
need to worry about it. In other words, if there is a solution or a way
out of the difficulty, you do not need to be overwhelmed by it. The
appropriate action is to seek its solution. Then it is clearly more
sensile to spend your energy focussing on the solution rather than
worryig about the problem. Alternatively, if there is no solution, no
ossibility of resolution, then there is also no point in being worried
bout it, because you cannot do anything about it anyway. In that case,
the sooner you accept this fact, the asier it will be for you. This
formula, of course, implies directly conronting the problem and taking
a realistic view. Otherwise you will b unable to find out whether or
not there is a resolution to the problem
aking a realistic view and cultivating a proper motivation can also
shild you against feelings of fear and anxiety. If you develop a pure
and sncere motivation, if you are motivated by a wish to help on the
basis ofkindness, compassion, and respect, then you can carry on any
kind of wrk, in any field, and function more effectively with less fear
or worry, not being afraid of what others think or whether you
ultimately willbe successful in reaching your goal. Even if you fail to
achieve our goal, you can feel good about having made the effort. But
with a ba motivation, people can praise you or you can achieve goals,
but you till will not be happy.
Again, we may sometimes feel that our whole ives are unsatisfactory, we
feel on the point of being overwhelmed by th difficulties that confront
us. This happens to us all in varying degrees from time to time. When
this occurs, it is vital that we make evey effort to find a way of
lifting our spirits. We can do this by recolecting our good fortune. We
may, for example, be loved by someone; we ma have certain talents; we
may have received a good educaton; we may have our basic needs provided
for - food to eat, clothes t wear, somewhere to live - we may have
performed certain altruistic dees in the past. We must take into
consideration even the slightest positiv aspect of our lives. For if we
fail to find some way of upliftin ourselves, there is every danger of
sinking further into our sense of pwerlessness. This can lead us to
believe that we have no capacty for doing good whatsoever. Thus we
create the conditions of despair itself.
As a Buddhist monk I have learned that what principaly upsets our inner
peace is what we call disturbing emotions.? All thos thoughts,
emotions, and mental events which reflect a negative or ucompassionate
state of mind inevitably undermine our experience of iner peace. All
our negative thoughts and emotions - such as hatred, anger pride, lust,
greed, envy, and so on - are considered to be sources o difficulty, to
be disturbing. Negative thoughts and emotion are what obstruct our most
basic aspiration - to be happy and to void suffering. When we act under
their influence, we become oblivios to the impact our actions have on
others: they are thus the cause of our destructive behaviour both toward
others and to ourselves. Murder, scandal, and deceit all have their
origin in disturbing emotions.
This inevitably gives rise to the question - can we train the mind?
There are many methods by which to do this. Among these, in theBuddhist
tradition, is a special instruction called mind training, which ocuses
on cultivating concern for others and turning adversity to advatage. It
is this pattern of thought, transforming problems into happinss that
has enabled the Tibetan people to maintain their dignity and spirit in
the face of greatdifficulties. Indeed I have found this advice of great
practical benefitin my own life.?
A great Tibetan teacher of mind training once remarke that one of the
mind¹s most marvellous qualities is that it can be transformed. I have
no doubt that those who attempt to transform theirminds, overcome their
disturbing emotions and achieve a sense of inner peace, will, over a
period of time, notic a change in their mental attitudes and responses
to people and evnts. Their minds will become more disciplined and
positive. And I am sure they will find their own sense of happiness grow
as they contibute to the greater happiness of others. I offer my
prayers that evryone who makes this their goal will be blessed with
success.
TheDalai Lama
December 31, 2010
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2. His Holiness the Dalai Lama Urged ot to Retire from Leader of Tibet
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Wednesday, 05 January2011 20:53 YC. Dhardhowa, The Tibet Post
International
Dharamsala: Tibtan parliament in exile here Dharamshala Wednesday urged
the Tibet's spiritual and political leaer His Holiness the Dalai Lama
not to consider retirement or even semi-retirement from his position as
the leader of Tibet and the Tibetan peole. "Tibetans, both in Tibet and
in exile, have been greatly concerned about your intention toretire
completely from governmental roles," a memorandum submitted to Hi
Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama said.
The following is a memorandm issued on Wednesday by the members of the
Standing Committee of the Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile. "During the
conclusion ceremony of the irst Tibetan National General Meeting held
in 2010 at the Bylakuppe Tibtan settlements, South India; in your
response to questions asked during meeting with the Chinese public in
Toronto; at the founding annivrsary of the Tibetan Children's Village
at Upper Dharamshala; and in your answer to qestions asked at a press
conference in New Delhi, Your Holiness expresse an intention to retire
completely from governmental roles. Tibetans boh in Tibet and in exile
have been greatly concerned and grieved by this and have been continuing
to petition Your Holiness, beseeching that you never enterain any
thought about carrying out a plan for such a decision.We, the members
of the Standing Committee of the Tibetan Parliament-inExile, too have,
likewise, been holding successive meetings with extremly grave concern
over Your Holiness's wish to take complete retirement from governmental
roes.
Out of a feeling of great kindness for us, Your Holiness led the Tietan
people to the fine path of democracy, beginning with the introduction of
reforms in the functioning o the Tibetan government the moment you
assumed spiritual and temporal owers in Tibet. And as soon as you
stepped foot on Indian soil after escaing into exile, Your Holiness
introduced election to allow the Tibean people to vote for their own
representatives, and in 1963, Your Holiness also promulgted a Tibetan
constitution. In 1991, Your Holiness approved to us th Charter of the
Tibetans in Exile, under which you expanded the Tibetan
Parliament-in-Exile and made it into a lawmaking body which as in full
conformity with the definition of a modern national legislature. In
particular, Your Holiness, in 2001, introduced the system of direct
election of the Kalon Tripa,thereby ensuring that the Tibetan people
themselves vote for the head oftheir government.
To state it simply, no amount of offerings of precious materials can
make up for evn a fraction of the gratitude the Tibetan people owe for
what they have received solely as a result of Your Holiness's enormosly
great wishes and deeds. Besides, it does not bear mention that Your
oliness's successive speeches of the recent times were, no doubt,
motivated by your very kind desire to ensurethe well being of the
entire Tibetan people both for the present andin the longer term
future. Nevertheless, it remains a fact that all of us of the Snowland
of Tibet have been sustaind thus far by Your Holiness's kindness and
generosity. On the basis of th Buddha's sacred prediction, Your
Holiness has been firm in abiding by the oath you had been moved to take
over your chosen realm of religious teaching or temporal rule especially
in these apposite times for fulfilling it.
Thus, it is inconceivable that for as long as this aeon endures, there
can ever be a moment at which the people of Tibet can at all be
separated from your excellent religious and temporal leadership. The
very first point in each of the reports and resolutions adopted in a
series of recent relevant meetings have made this point clear. They
included the report adopted at the end of the First Special General
Meeting of Tibetans held in 2008 in accordance with the provisions of
Article 59 of the Charter of the Tibetans in Exile; during successive
sessions of the Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile; and, in particular,
Document Number of 63 of 2010, which was a unanimous resolution adopted
during the ninth session of the fourteenth Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile.
Also, at the conclusion of the First Tibetan National General Meeting,
which was held at the Tibetan settlements at Bylakuppe, in south India,
a report was compiled which brought together the opinions and
suggestions of all the delegates who attended it. The very first point
of the political section of the report stated: "His Holiness the Dalai
Lama has thus far assumed responsibility as the leader of the great
Tibetan nation and as the head of the Tibetan government. On behalf of
the Tibetan people both in Tibet and in exile, we offer immense
gratitude to His Holiness. At the same time, His Holiness the Dalai Lama
remarked in his speech that he was already in semi-retirement. This has
plunged the entire people of Tibet, both those in the county and outside
it, to such depth of despair that they are no longer able to digest
their food or to go to sleep in peace. In view of this development, this
general meeting appeals to His Holiness the Dalai Lama never to carry
out any plan for such a decision." This was unanimously adopted by the
entire meeting.
Giving due consideration to the above series of pleas, we beseech and
pray with heartfelt devotion that Your Holiness never ever contemplate
going into either semi-retirement or full retirement."
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3. The second coming
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DNA / Lhendup Gyatso Bhutia / Sunday, January 2, 2011 3:55 IST
Three weeks ago, when Wen Jiabao arrived in New Delhi amidst much
fanfare, 46-year-old Tseten Yang, a primary school teacher, was climbing
a hill in a little town called Kalimpong.She was running a temperature
that day. But she was not going to miss an opportunity to set her eyes
on the one person every Tibetan wishes to see before dying ‹ Tenzing
Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama.
While Jiabo brokered big trade deals in New Delhi, the 75-year-old Dalai
Lama had an equally important mission at hand. He was visiting the
little-known regions of Kalimpong, Salugara and Sikkim, conducting
spiritual discourses, meeting the local Tibetan population, and helping
strengthen and protect the Tibetan identity of these areas. His entire
trip lasted 13 days. ³It is such a blessing that he has come here. I
might otherwise have never seen him,² Yang says. ³I not only got to see
him, he also looked at me and smiled.² She even took photographs of the
Dalai Lama, to which she now prays every morning.
And sometime later this year, the Dalai Lama will Œretire.¹
³He is born a Dalai Lama. There is no post of Dalai Lama from which he
retires. He will only be relinquishing his political and administrative
duties. He will continue to remain the spiritual head of Tibetans,²
clarifies Tenzin Taklha, spokesperson at the Dalai Lama¹s office. But
the Dalai Lama was quite clear in his statement issued in late November
that he plans to retire in six months.
Who¹ll be the next leader?
But will his retirement create a leadership vacuum in the exiled Tibetan
community? Isn¹t that what the Chinese government has been waiting for ‹
a time when the Dalai Lama won¹t be around to prick the world¹s
conscience on the issue of Tibet¹s freedom?
Although the Dalai Lama has said that he will always be there to guide
the new leadership, given his advancing age, there might soon come a
time when he is not around. He has also said that the lineage of the
Dalai Lama might stop after him, if the Tibetan community so wishes.
Even if this does not happen, given the usual time taken for a new Dalai
Lama to be anointed (at least two decades, from the death of one Dalai
Lama to another being ready to take up the position), the Tibetan
community might indeed be in a state of crisis.
The international media has speculated that the mantle of Tibetan
leadership will now pass on to the 17th Karmapa Lama, Ogyen Trinley
Dorje. The Karmapa Lama, the third highest ranked in the hierarchy of
Tibetan Buddhism after the Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama, had jumped from
the balcony of his monastery in Tibet into a waiting Land Cruiser to
take a dangerous 900 mile journey to reach India in 2000. He was only 14
years old then. But today he is a revered figure, one who attracts
thousands of Tibetans wherever he goes. The Dalai Lama himself was 25
when he reached India and took charge of the exiled Tibetan community.
The second biggest figure in Tibetan Buddhism ‹ the Panchen Lama ‹ is
mired in controversy, and, when the time comes, he may play an
instrumental role in choosing the 15th Dalai Lama. In fact, there are
not one but two Panchen Lamas. The one approved by the Dalai Lama and
the Tibetan community, Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, languishes somewhere in
Tibet, hidden from the public eye. Considered the world¹s youngest
political prisoner, he disappeared immediately after he was recognised
in 1995 as the new Panchen Lama. He was only six years old then. There
is little to guess about those behind this. The Chinese government has
propped up its own Panchen Lama, and given the fact that in Tibetan
tradition the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama usually anoint each other,
many fear that the ŒChinese¹ Panchen Lama will declare a ŒChinese¹ 15th
Dalai Lama.
However, the Karmapa Lama taking up the political leadership of the
exiled community seems unlikely. The community, in fact, stands at a
critical juncture in their 50-year-old history. What path they take will
very much change the course of their struggle. Not only does the Dalai
Lama plan to completely relinquish his temporal role, the next leader is
likely to be a democratically-elected head. The election for the next
kalon tripa (prime minister) of the Tibetan government-in-exile is
currently underway.
Takhla clarifies that it will be an elected leader and not the Karmapa
Lama who will politically lead the exiled community. ³This has been the
Dalai Lama¹s wish for a very long time ‹ that the Tibetan community is
democratically mature enough to find its own leader. And he thinks the
time has come, seeing the impressive leaders that are now emerging,²
says Takhla.
Since 2001, the kalon tripa has been directly elected and the current
kalon tripa, Samdhong Rinpoche, is completing his second and final term
in August. According to the Dalai Lama, who is already in a state of
³semi-retirement,² when he does retire completely, the entire weight of
the leadership will fall on the next kalon tripa. A total of 15
candidates contested the first round of elections in October, 2010 (held
in India, Nepal, Bhutan, Australia, the US, Europe and elsewhere). The
second and final round with the top three contestants will take place on
March 20. Among them, and widely tipped to be the next kalon tripa, is
Lobsang Sangay, 43, who is currently a senior fellow at Harvard Law School.
Is a new sun rising?
In the first round of elections, Sangay secured 22,489 votes out of the
total 47,000 votes cast. The next leading candidate, Tenzin Namgyal
Tethong, received only 12,319 votes.
Sangay, incidentally, is more than just an academic bright spark. He
spent about a week in Tihar jail for protesting in front of the Chinese
embassy in Delhi. He was also the general secretary and president of the
Regional Tibetan Youth Congress in Delhi during 1988-91.
His origins, however, are humble. His late father was a monk who
participated in the 1959 uprising against the Chinese in Tibet,
controlling the arms and ammunitions department of the guerilla group.
His mother broke her leg when fleeing from China into India. To this
day, she limps. The family grew up in a Tibetan refugee settlement in
Darjeeling where, apart from studying in the local Tibetan-medium
school, he cut firewood and grass during holidays. During the winter
break, he travelled to the nearby city of Siliguri to help his parents
sell sweaters.
³Like most other Tibetans at that time, we were poor. To get me
educated, my father had to sell one of the three cows that he owned,²
says Sangay, who now lives in Boston. The Tibetan government awarded him
a scholarship to study in Delhi University and Sangay later went to
Harvard as a Fulbright scholar and earned a doctorate in law.
³I owe all my success to the Tibetan government, the Dalai Lama and my
parents. And now I want to help serve the government,² Sangay says. ³The
Dalai Lama has stressed that the kalon tripa must assume political
leadership. If I get the privilege to become the next kalon tripa, my
primary responsibility will be to resolve the Chinese occupation of
Tibet by gaining international support for the Tibetan movement. I will
also have to ensure the welfare of the exiled community, apart from
encouraging the Tibetan youth to participate in the Tibetan movement.²
A community in transition
When the Dalai Lama escaped to India in 1959, a huge population of
Tibetans followed him. But now they are again moving ‹ this time to the
West.
Some 80,000 or more refugees followed the Dalai Lama to India in the
year of 1959. Over the years, the steady flow of Tibetans seeking
political asylum in India continued and the community¹s population grew
steadily by about 2.8% every year. But a recent census report by the
Tibetan government-in-exile found that in the decade 1998-2008, the
growth rate had dipped to 1.96%.
Two reasons being cited for this are the increasing literacy levels
(88.7% for Tibetan men and 74.4% for the women), where women are
delaying marriage and focusing on their careers, and the usage of
contraceptives among married women (from 10% in 1980 to 95% in 2001).
But one of the other key reasons is mass-migration within the exiled
community. The census found that some 9,309 Tibetans moved to the West
from India during 1998-2009. There are currently 94,203 Tibetans in
India, 13,514 in Nepal, 1,298 in Bhutan and 18,920 elsewhere.
In the US, Section 134 of the Immigration Act that was passed in 1990
has given a major fillip to this exodus, as it sets aside 1,000
immigrant visas specifically for Tibetans living in India and Nepal. A
chain migration ensued, whereby those granted citizenship pulled in
their relatives, and by 1998, the Tibetan-American population had grown
to around 5,500 (according to a survey conducted by Tibetan
government-in-exile in 1998). Many more Tibetans also reside illegally
in the US.
The ŒTibetan¹ areas of places like Kalimpong now resemble ghost towns,
where only elderly Tibetans can be seen. All the youngsters have either
moved to the US or are in the process of immigrating. Yang, who once
lived in Kalimpong with five sisters and a brother, now lives alone with
her husband. Three of her sisters, along with the lone brother, live in
the US, while another sister lives in London. The last sister is in
Nepal, trying to move to the US. ³We were once such a big family, but
like most other Tibetan families in our town, everyone is moving to the
West,² Yang says.
The kids love American Idol
In such a scenario, where a new generation of Tibetans is growing up not
in Tibetan settlements in India and Nepal, but in New York or London,
with no Tibetan friends and just a cursory awareness of China¹s
occupation of Tibet, what happens to the identity of Tibetans?
Tshering Tsomo, Yang¹s sister in New York, works as a babysitter and has
two sons and a daughter. All her kids are crazy about American Idol and
love baseball and basketball. ³It is very difficult to get my children
to even speak in Tibetan,² she says. ³When they lived in India as kids,
they spoke fluent Tibetan, and visited the Tibetan monastery every day.
But where is the scope for that here? I¹m afraid a day might come when
the youth might forget all about their Tibetan identity and culture.²
Tsomo, however, does send her three children to a Sunday school run by a
local Tibetan group, where they are taught the language. And she forces
them to speak Tibetan at home.
Taklha says, ³Yes, it is a worry that with the mass migration from India
and Nepal, Tibetans may forget their origins. But the Tibetan community
under the Dalai Lama has, despite living in exile, been able to
successfully replicate the Tibetan way of life.²
A welfare state
Not just that. In 2001, the Economist magazine, after surveying two
dozen governments-in-exile, reported that the Tibetan one is ³the most
serious². The Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) under the Dalai Lama
has successfully managed to preserve Tibetan culture by running 46
agricultural or handicraft-based settlements across India, Nepal, and
Bhutan. It also runs welfare offices, schools, hospitals and clinics,
co-operatives, courts to settle civil disputes, old-people¹s homes, and
monasteries that service Tibetan refugees. Not only is there a
parliament and a democratically elected prime minister, the Dalai Lama
has also put in place that bulwark of a modern democracy ‹ a written
constitution. The constitution, among other things, also has a clause by
which the Dalai Lama can be impeached and removed from office.
So if and when the Dalai Lama does step down this year, not only will
there be well-settled establishments that take care of the exiled
community, there will also be a mature political leader who is
democratically elected and ready to take the Tibetan movement forward
One can now perhaps understand Mao Ze Dong¹s statement in 1959. Despite
having successfully occupied Lhasa, when he learnt that the Dalai Lama
had escaped into India, Mao reportedly told a comrade, ³In that case, we
have lost the battle.²
URL of the article:
http://www.dnaindia.com/lifestyle/report_the-second-coming_1489058-all
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4. SEEKING THE POWER OF THE POWERLESS Jamyang Norbu
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Wednesday, January 05, 2011
It¹s almost the end of the year now, and nearly two months since Aung
San Suu Kyi was released, but I haven¹t quite gotten over the dopamine
rush of that event. I¹ve been waiting a long time to see her a free
woman. Not as single-mindedly and passionately, to be sure, as her loyal
Burmese followers, but waiting, nonetheless, with some anxiety but also
with a conviction of sorts, that she would be able to tough it out. That
she would never ever give in to the junta, and one day they would have
to let her go. Just like that.
So when I saw the video of her first appearance before her followers, I
expected to feel lofty and profound emotions. But all I found myself
doing was worrying that she might injure herself, or at least cut her
fingers on the wicked looking spikes on top of the closed gate of the
compound where she had been confined. She was behind the gate but
someone had put a table or something for her to stand on, so you could
see her quite clearly. She was smiling but those damned spikes were
getting in her way. At one point she even rested her forearms on them.
Then someone from the crowd handed up a bouquet of flowers. She tied a
spray to her hair, it might have been her trademark jasmine. Whatever it
was, it did the trick for me. All was right with the world.
When the first signs appeared that Suu Kyi would be released, but before
the experts could hold forth on the possible reasons behind the junta¹s
motives for freeing her, quite a few reports (The New York Times, the
BBC, The Inquirer.com, etc) pressed into service the convenient phrase
³the power of the powerless² to provide at least a broad, partial
explanation of why Suu Kyi had prevailed over her captors. Ambiguous as
the explanation was it was certainly not incorrect. When she was awarded
the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 (accepted by her son, Alexander) the
Chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, Francis Sejested, had
described Suu Kyi as ³an outstanding example of the power of the
powerless².
This clever oxymoron had been thought up by the Czech playwright,
dissident and political leader, Vaclav Havel, as the title for an essay,
³Moc bezmocn?ch², in its original Czech, which appeared sometime in
October 1978. It soon became one of those rare pieces of political
reflection that outlive their time of birth and come to be regarded as a
classic. The piece was written in a hurry, as Havel later mentioned, and
was intended not as an academic or literary exercise, but as a call to
action for all dissidents in Eastern Europe and the Soviet bloc. In fact
after its publication in a volume of essays on freedom and power, Havel
and some of the other contributors to the volume were arrested.
The essay¹s impact on the frail political opposition in Eastern Europe
was profoundly transformational. A Solidarity activist, Zbygniew Bujak
who had for years had been trying to rally and organize workers in
Polish factories explains why: ³There came a moment when people thought
we were crazy. Why were we doing this? Why were we taking such risks?
Not seeing any immediate and tangible results we began to doubt the
purpose of what we were doingŠ Then came the essay by Havel. Reading it
gave us the theoretical underpinnings for our activity. It maintained
our spirits; we did not give upŠ²
Havel¹s plays are marvelously accessible. I saw a BBC (or ITV?)
performance of Audience, an absurdist drama of an hour of Havel¹s life
after he was banned from the Czech theatre and forced to take a job in a
brewery. It is the only thing on TV that¹s ever made me deeply depressed
and weak with laughter at the same time. On the other hand I have always
found the dense 76 odd pages of ³Power of the Powerless² heavy going. I
have tried to cobble together a simple précis of Havel¹s thesis, as I
consider it one of the few political documents from that period that is
still relevant to understanding the ³theoretical underpinnings² of
repressive regimes and systems in our day and age. Moreover, and more
crucially, the essay provides a genuinely doable, though painful and
high-sacrifice way, for the oppressed to successfully challenge their
oppressors.
The first and crucial thing that Havel does in his essay is define the
nature of the regime in the Eastern Europe. It was not a traditional
dictatorship or a classic totalitarian regime like Stalin¹s or Mao¹s.
Havel called this post-totalitarianism, but emphasizes that it was still
totalitarian in spite of the prefix ³post². Nonetheless, this system was
able to present a superficial appearance of normalcy by putting on a
bland faceless facade, and very cunningly doing away with the trademark
³great leader² or ³Führer figure². But Havel tells us that in spite of
its ordinariness this system was in was in fact the ³dictatorship of a
bureaucracy.²
Havel then opens people¹s eyes as to the nature of the power that held
them in subjugation. He maintained that this power should not be
mistaken for the instruments of that power: the military, the
secret-police, the bureaucracy, the propaganda, the censors, et al.
Though the regime still had its torturers and labor camps and was still
capable of tremendous and arbitrary cruelty, the true source of its
power lay in its ability to coerce people in a variety of ways (even
with consumerism) to ³live within the lie²; i.e. to accept the complex
web (or for sci-fi fans, the ³matrix²) of lies it had created to provide
a cover of justification for its perpetual hold on power.
Because post-totalitarianism was so fundamentally based on lies, Havel
maintained that truth ³in the widest sense of the word² was the most
dangerous enemy of the system. The primary breeding ground for what
might be understood as an opposition in the post-totalitarian system was
³living within the truth². This operated initially and primarily at the
existential level, but it could manifest itself in publicly visible
political actions as street demonstrations, citizens associations and so
on. Havel mentions the creation of Charter 77 by Czech writers and
intellectuals, who demanded that the government of Czechoslovakia
recognize some basic human rights. It was a far from radical document
but the Communist government cracked down hard on the authors and
signatories. But it inspired subsequent efforts.
Whether Havel intended it or not his essay has a very Gandhian feel to
it. Havel tells us that ³living within the truth² (which one might
accept as a form of satyagraha) ³Š is clearly a moral act, not only
because one must pay so dearly for it, but principally because it is not
self-serving. The risk may bring rewards in the form of a general
amelioration in the situation, or it may not². Havel emphasized that by
³living within the truth² he did not just mean ³products of conceptual
thought,² or major political action, but that it could be ³Š any means
by which a person or a group revolts against manipulation: anything from
a letter by intellectuals, to a workers strike, from a rock concert to a
student demonstration.²
My last post but one, was about the student demonstrations in Tibet in
October, which I think fits in nicely with Havel¹s ³living with the
truth² and as an expression of ³the power of the powerless². The Tibetan
plateau hasn¹t had a major rock concert yet but a young singer from
Amdo, Sherten, has released a Bollywood style music video extravaganza
³The Sound of Unity² calling on all Tibetans from the three provinces of
the ³Land of Snows² to unite (against you know who). Even such
counterrevolutionary characters from ³the bad old days² as an aristocrat
lord and lady from Lhasa (in full regalia) are conspicuously depicted in
one segment to press home the message of Tibetan unity. Two other
similar music videos (³The Telephone Rang³, and ³Mentally Return³) have
appeared, with similarly subversive messages calling on ³ruddy face²
Tibetans to unite and await the return of ³The Snow Lion². In spite of
the effort by the lyricists to hide their political meaning behind
euphemisms and double entendre, such compositions are not without risk.
A year ago, the singer Tashi Dondrup, was arrested for his bestselling
album, Torture Without Trace, and in 2008 the singer, Jamyang Kyi was
incarcerated and tortured for ³subversive activities².
Havel saw the significance of such singers and musicians in social and
political revolutions, and he supported the Czech rock group, The
Plastic People of the Universe, which the Communist government had
harassed and forced underground, and whose members were arrested and
prosecuted in 1976. The Plastic People and Havel were in turn great
admirers of the subversive music of the New York based Velvet
Underground. Havel once told Salman Rushdie that the final non-violent
revolution of 1989 that overthrew the Communist government was called
the ³Velvet Revolution² after the American band. Rushdie thought that
Havel was joking but later found out that Havel had said exactly that,
and quite seriously, to Lou Reed, the principal songwriter for the
Velvet Underground.
Tibetan scholars, writers and students have, since the late nineties,
effectively used the internet to communicate with each other and spread
their writings around the world. They write near exclusively in Tibetan
and Chinese, but the website High Peaks Pure Earth provides English
translations of a representative sampling of their works. One of the
most well known and outspoken bloggers has been the poet, Woeser, who
recently received the ³Courage in Journalism² award, but whose computer
was hacked last month by the ultra-nationalist China Honker Union, and
all her writing deleted. She lives in Beijing, under near constant
surveillance. Chinese censors have regularly shut down many Tibetan
language blogs and blog hosting services, both in Tibet and China, but
Tibetan bloggers have somehow managed to keep on writing, though with
ever increasing difficulty. One way many Tibetans have managed to
circumvent censorship and shutdowns has been by posting on Chinese
social networking sites, such as the popular renren.com.
All these activities reflect a broadening of the political and social
opposition to Chinese rule in Tibet, and a growing sophistication in the
way people have begun to exercise the ³power of the powerless², without
it become an absolutely perilous or terminal exercise, as it had been
before. Earlier, all public manifestations of opposition to Chinese rule
was direct and confrontational. If we look at the Tibetan Uprising of
2008, and also those from 1987 onwards, nearly all of them have been
direct clashes with Chinese central authority, with demonstrators waving
the forbidden national flag of Tibet and shouting slogans calling for
Tibetan independence and the return of the Dalai Lama. These
demonstrations, or rather uprisings, have, on every occasion, been met
with overwhelming force, shootings, beatings, imprisonment, labor camps,
executions and disappearances. But this new phase of the struggle
emerging in Tibet just might, because of its awkward (for Beijing)
nuances, have a better chance of getting off the ground, before the
authorities come up with a way to crush it.
For the first thirty years of exile the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan
community practiced ³living in the truth² with unwavering resolution,
holding on to the goal of Rangzen or ³independence², in spite of the
disheartening turn of events from the mid-seventies when Communist China
became an ally of the West against the Soviet Union, and when most
intellectuals and celebrities in the free world (even western visitors
to Dharmshala) then, appeared to be besotted with the thoughts of
Chairman Mao.
The Dalai Lama was not welcome in the West as he is now. In fact he only
managed to visit the USA in 1979, although he had been in exile for
twenty years before that. He wasn¹t, of course, under house arrest in
India, but his movements were restricted. There were practically no
Tibet support groups in the West and no influential supporters or
lobbies in Washington DC or Brussels. But the Dalai Lama stuck to his
guns, metaphorically speaking. If you walked into a home, monastery,
office, classroom or restaurant in exile Tibetan society then, you would
probably have noticed a dull green poster with a quotation (in English
and Tibetan) by His Holiness, that eloquently expressed his moral
resolve. It had no photograph of him and design-wise was minimal, but it
was effective and genuinely inspirational. ³Our way may be a long and
hard one but I believe that truth and justice will ultimately prevail².
And quite unexpectedly Tibetans did prevail up to a point. With the
fall of Berlin Wall and with China¹s leaders openly confessing the
failure of their economic and social programs, and with the opening up
of Tibet to Western tourism, the world suddenly became aware of the
enormous tragedy that had befallen the roof of the world. Everywhere
around the world, political leaders, celebrities and the media, began to
pay attention to the issue of Tibet. There were Beastie Boys benefit
concerts, Richard Gere and Harrison Ford embraced the Dalai Lama and
Hollywood stepped in with two feature films on Tibet. The high-water
mark of this period was the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to His
Holiness. The Nobel committee recognized that the Dalai Lama ³in his
struggle for the liberation of Tibet has consistently opposed the use of
violence.²
But this period also saw the opening up of China and, more significantly
³the China trade². Slowly and very subtly, from every quarter
imaginable, pressure began to be put on the Tibetan leadership to give
up its goal of independence. China was going to become a democracy soon,
anyway the argument ran and everything could be worked out then.
Even the fairly successful Tibetan campaign in the US Congress to hold
trade with China conditional to improvement of human rights conditions
in Tibet, was effectively derailed by the Clinton administration. The
president wanted to de-link human-rights and trade and induct China into
the World Trade Organization. His administration essentially ³persuaded²
the Tibetan lobby (The International Campaign for Tibet or ICT) to go in
for ³constructive engagement² with Beijing. This term now became the new
mantra in Tibetan activism circles. One support group in Britain that
had campaigned successfully to get Holiday Inn to leave Lhasa had its
knuckles rapped publicly by the director of ICT and told, in so many
words, to engage China more constructively.
It was made attractively convenient and often profitable for exile
Tibetans to ³live within this lie². ICT moved into a posh office suite.
The exile government which had till then operated virtually on a
shoestring now began to receive funding from a number of Western
nations. Tibetan organizations, especially the Dalai Lama, began to
receive invitations to attend all sorts of international confabs. But
behind the gestures of sympathy, the invitations, the awards, the
grants, and the aid, there often appeared to be a kind of unspoken
condition that this might all go away if Tibetans raised the issue (or
the ³core issue² as the PRC menacingly calls it) of Tibetan independence.
The growing interest in Tibet¹s unique traditional culture, art and
spirituality also gave Tibet a more substantial presence on the
international scene than other comparable conflict areas as East
Turkestan (Xinjiang). But in a bizarre way this interest and enthusiasm
for Tibetan culture also seemed to provide some in the West a kind of
convenient rationalization to ignore the on-going destruction of that
ancient nation and the real suffering and even potential extermination
of its people. The late celebrity photographer, Galen Rowell, actually
justified this approach in the introduction to his book, My Tibet : ³To
dwell on the agony the Chinese have imposed upon his (the Dalai Lama¹s)
land is to lose most of the essence of his being and his message to the
world.² The Dalai Lama seemed to endorse this attitude by his statement
that the preservation of Tibetan spiritual culture was more important
than struggling for Tibetan political freedom.
It should be emphasized that much of this new attention and assistance,
especially from small nations, some organizations and even leaders as
Nancy Pelosi and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, was genuine, well-meant and
unquestionably welcome. No doubt, the influence and reach of the ³China
lobby² (very broadly speaking) was widespread and effective, but it was
not ubiquitous. There was a real possibility that the Tibetan leadership
could have stuck to its fundamental national goal, and though
encountering temporary setbacks and some cold-shoulders in Western
capitals for a time, have hung on to a significant (and more genuine)
segment of its support base, and eventually, as China dropped its ³soft
power² mask (as it is beginning to do right now) rebuilt its
international support in a more real and meaningful way.
But Dharamshala chose to see the new reality as inescapable and
unalterable, and used it as a part excuse, part self-fulfilling prophecy
to warn the exile public that if the issue of independence were raised
Tibetans would loose their support in the West, that the Dalai Lama
would not be welcome anywhere anymore, and that Tibetan refugees might
even be deported from the countries where they had found refuge.
As all exile Tibetans had till then considered themselves to be engaged
in a life-and-death freedom struggle, some kind of ³displacement
activity² (as Konrad Lorenz would have put it) had to provided for them
to deal with the new reality. Experts from various ³conflict
resolution², ³conflict management² and ³conflict mediation² groups and
institutions descended on Dharamshala to organize lectures, workshops
and symposiums, which even members of the Tibetan cabinet were sometimes
obliged to attended. The overriding thinking pushed at these gatherings
was that everything depended on finding a way to accommodate China.
Hence anything that might impede the process (i.e. talk of independence)
had to be summarily dropped. No one seemed to have caught on that these
groups were not there to deliver justice, or even begin a process to
seek justice for Tibet, but, as their organizational names made
abundantly clear, were there to make ³conflict² go away, even if that
conflict was a necessary one between survival and extermination even
between good and evil. The simplest way of doing that, especially when
one side was invincible, immovable, and a valued trading partner of the
West, was to make the other and weaker side give up its dispute.
Besides Tibetan officialdom, even some individual Tibetans living and
studying in the free world were seduced into this new way of thinking. A
Tibetan MBA made the far-reaching discovery that doing business with
China was the only way to save and modernize Tibet. One PhD deployed his
newly acquired academic skills to re-interpreting Havel¹s actual phrase
³the power of the powerless² to mean the conference hopping, resume
bolstering, grant seeking and other essentially self-serving activities,
that passes for ³activism² in a section of the Tibetan exile world. A
few previous independence activists now set up ³outreach² and ³bridge
building² projects inside Tibet (in collaboration with Chinese
authorities, of course) and on a a few occasions even spoke out publicly
against Tibetan independence and those still contending for it.
The Indian novelist (The God of Small Things) and social thinker,
Arundhati Roy, has commented on a similar phenomenon in India. In her
talk/essay ³Public Power in the Age of Empire² Roy mentions that one of
the most insidious threats facing social movements in the sub-continent
was, what she called, the ³NGO-ization of resistance². She points out
that the political resistance of the Indian public to globalization and
its terrible impact on the victims of economic liberalization,
especially farmers, coincided with the NGO boom in the late 1980s. She
does concede that some NGO¹s did valuable work, but insists that the NGO
phenomenon should be considered in a broader political context. That the
impression that NGO¹s gave of contributing to social alleviation, that
contribution was materially inconsequential and not the main part of
their actual agenda:
Their (the NGOs) real contribution is that they defuse political anger
and dole out as aid or benevolence what people ought to have by right
ŠThey alter the public psyche. They turn people into dependent victims
and blunt the edges of political resistance. NGOs form a sort of buffer
between Š Empire and its subjects. They have become the arbitrators, the
interpreters, the facilitators. In the long run, NGOs are accountable to
their funders not to the people they work among.
Aung San Suu Kyi¹s celebrated ³Freedom From Fear² speech begins: ³It is
not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those
who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are
subject to it.² The Tibetan exile government and certain Tibetan
individuals in the free world do not have to fear the Chinese military,
the PSB, slave labor camps, prisons, torture or execution, but they fear
loosing access to opportunities and privileges they enjoy at present in
the free world, which they have convinced themselves is conditional to
their silence on the most crucial issue of Tibetan freedom and
sovereignty. And that fear corrupts them and undermines the
revolutionary struggle that is being carried on inside Tibet, and even
outside still, in a small way, by a marginalized but committed number of
Tibetans and friends.
After her release some media commentators suggested that Aung San Suu
Kyi, might be sidelined in the present Burmese political scene, since
she had been out of touch with the Burmese public and new leaders had
emerged from within the opposition groups. But the ecstatic and
universal public response to her release, even from young Burmese who
had probably never actually seen her in person, demonstrated that she
had lost none of her appeal. She was soft-spoken and levelheaded as
always. She spoke politely of the military dictatorship and even
respectfully of the army as a national institution. She made no calls
for ³regime change², but on the fundamental issue of her life-long
struggle for democracy there was no question that the power of the
powerless would ever be relinquished.
In a telephone interview with The New York Times she made it clear that
now she was free she intended to lead what she called a nonviolent
revolution, rather than an incremental evolution. She said her use of
the term ³revolution² was justified because, ³I think of evolution as
imperceptible change, very, very slowly, and I think revolution as
significant change. I say this because we are in need of significant
change.²
------------------------------------------------------------------------
5. Nepal Authorities Arrested Six Refugees After Escaping Tibet
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, 04 January 2011 12:57 YC. Dhardhowa, The Tibet Post International
Dharamshala: Nepalese authorities have arrested a group of six Tibetan
refugees who recently escaped into Nepal from Tibet. The four Tibetan
men and two women, who did not have any travel documents, were
apprehended at around midnight in Sindhupalchowk district Sunday.
Despite signing the UN Refugee Convention, Nepali authorities arrested
hundreds of Tibetan refugees, accusing them of attempting an illegal
entry to Nepal. The group was handed over to immigration authorities for
investigation and necessary action, said Nepal authorities.
Amid growing pressure from the communist regime of China, Nepal has been
sending back the Tibetan refugees "illegally entering into Nepal from
China." Over the last several years many news reports have confirmed
that authorities of Nepal has handed over several Tibetan refugees to
Chinese authorities living in Tibet.
The China's communist regime has used its financial muscle to pay off
the Nepal government to arrest Tibetan refugees who fleeing Tibet and
crackdown on Tibetan refugees living in Nepal, according to secret US
cables published by WikiLeaks.
Cables released by the whistle-blower website show an unnamed source of
the US Embassy in New Delhi repeatedly claiming that "Chinese government
rewards Nepali forces by providing financial incentives to officers who
hand over Tibetans attempting to exit China".
China claims there are no Tibetan refugees, only illegal migrants who
should be given harsh punishment to stop the exodus. This year, Nepal's
dependence on China has grown as it is regarding the communist republic
as the second largest source of tourists to make its 'Visit Nepal 2011'
year a resounding success.
Various international communities including human rights organizations
have alleged that Tibetan refugees thus sent back home are punished and
severely tortured by Chinese authorities in Tibet.
Nepal is home to around 20,000 exiled Tibetans. They began arriving in
large numbers after Tibetan spiritual leader, His Holiness the Dalai
Lama fled Tibet following a failed uprising in 1959. Following strong
pressure from the communist regime of China, Nepal has forced to tighten
up security along its border with Tibet.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
6. Tibetan sentenced to 2 years prison for India visit : source
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phayul[Monday, January 03, 2011 16:52]
By Kalsang Rinchen
Dharamsala, January 3 - A Tibetan man from Driru County in Nagchu has
been sentenced to two years in prison, a Tibetan with contact in the
area said. Chime Tashi, 29; was arrested from his home on October 3 this
year. Though the exact reason for his arrest and sentencing is unclear
at the moment, the source said his visit to India in 2008 on a religious
pilgrimage during which he took sermons from the Dalai Lama might have
led to his arrest.?
Chime was among 51 Tibetans -- 30 from his hometown Driru and 21 from
other Tibetan areas -- who were arrested in 2005 while trying to escape
to India through Nepal. All 51 Tibetans were arrested from a place near
Nepalese border-town of Solukhumbo (Sharkhumbu) and locked in a prison
in Dhingri and Shigatse for four months during which they were subjected
to hard labour. The 51 Tibetans were handed over to the Public Security
Bureau of their respective hometowns after four months of their arrest.?
The 30 Tibetans from Driru were forced to pay 4000 Yuan each to the
Driru County Public Security Bureau which promised to return the
"deposit" amount if they did not engage in 'illegal' activities in the
next five years.?
Chime, however, made his second and successful attempt of traveling to
India in 2008 during which he went to Bodhgaya and Varanasi where he
received teachings and initiations from the Dalai Lama, whom the Chinese
government reviles as a "separatist". It is also not clear if Chime made
the visit with the required Chinese government issued travel permit or
"illegally" without the permit.?
Chime returned to Tibet after the visit. He is currently imprisoned at a
detention centre in Toelung near the Tibetan capital Lhasa.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
7. Yarsagumba: Curse of Himalayan Annapurna region
------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Joanna Jolly BBC News, Kathmandu
4 January 2011 Last updated at 19:21 ET
The Himalayan mountain range that straddles the border between Nepal and
Tibet is known as one of the most beautiful and remote places in the world.
Every year, thousands of tourists come here to trek on the Annapurna
circuit which takes them high into the snowy mountains to climb passes
over 5,000m (16404ft).
This isolated and barren landscape is home to Buddhist communities who
have lived, farmed and traded here for centuries.
But in the last few years, this peaceful region has been rocked by
jealousy, crime and murder.
All this is down to Yarsagumba, the small, fragile, mummified body of
the Himalayan bat moth caterpillar that has been invaded by a fungus -
and which is famous throughout the Himalayas as a powerful medicine.
'A sin'
As the freezing night falls in the Himalayan village of Humde, Sangay
Gurung and his wife huddle around their fireside, preparing a supper of
rice and vegetables.
Sangay tells me he can sell me some Yarsagumba.
He has some of this precious substance because his son has collected it.
But he is not happy handling it.
"We believe it's a sin to trade in Yarsagumba," he says.
"In our Buddhist culture we're not supposed to pick it - that's our
tradition.
"My grandparents told me this and I obeyed them. I'm 53 now and I've
never picked it. But the young generation is different. They don't
believe in sin or religion so they're making money from it."
For the past 500 years, Yarsagumba (Cordyceps sinensis), has been prized
as an aphrodisiac by the Chinese.
It can be found in the high pastures of the Himalayas above 3,500m, and
is traditionally picked in early spring before the monsoon rains.
'Great aphrodisiac'
Each year, hundreds of Tibetan traders cross the border illegally into
Nepal to buy Yarsagumba from local villagers and sell it back to China.
One kilogram can fetch up to $10,000.
"The medical properties of Yarsagumba are numerous and many," says
Carroll Dunham, a medical anthropologist who has worked in Nepal for the
past 25 years.
"Yarsagumba is known as an immune booster. It's also known as a great
aphrodisiac.
"It works in a way similar to Viagra. It's considered to be helpful for
impotence in men and it's considered to be a great stimulant."
This has meant that Yarsagumba has become the most valuable commodity in
this remote region that has few economic opportunities.
It has become so lucrative that the district government now operates a
permit system for those who want to collect Yarsagumba.
In certain areas, the permits are more expensive for people from outside
the region. In others, outsiders are completely banned from searching
for the drug.
Turf war
For some mountain villagers, the chance to collect Yarsagumba has
brought great wealth. But for others, it has brought great misery.
In June 2009, seven men from the low-lying Gorkha region of Nepal who
came to the mountains to pick Yarsagumba were murdered by a local mob
protecting their turf.
The men were attacked with sticks and knives and their bodies thrown
into deep mountain ravines.
Nal Prasad Upadhay was the police officer in charge of the investigation.
"It was a very big operation. More than 80 police personnel were
mobilised in that case," he says.
"Two bodies were collected from a very difficult place - the police had
to use ropes to recover them. We couldn't find the other five bodies."
Thirty-six men from the remote village of Nar were arrested for the
crime and are still waiting for a verdict.
Barren
There isn't a prison big enough to hold them in the mountain region, so
they are being kept in a converted district education office in the
village of Chame.
In the last few months, 17 men were let out on bail. The rest spend
their time behind barbed wire, playing cards and basketball, and depend
on their relatives to bring them food.
"I think my brother will be freed very soon," says Samma Tsering, who
visits the prison daily.
"Whenever I meet him, he says that he hasn't done anything wrong."
Since her brother was arrested, Samma's life has become focused on
supporting him.
Because most of the men from her village are in this jail, there is no
one left behind to work.
"Our land is barren now," she says.
"There is no one to plough the fields so we haven't been able to grow
anything for two years. Women who know how to do the men's work are
somehow managing but most of them can't."
A verdict in the case of the Yarsagumba murders is expected in February.
From March, the Yarsagumba picking season will start again and hundreds
of locals will scour the mountainsides searching for the valuable drug
in the hope that they will make their fortune.
But for many who live here, Yarsagumba is not a blessing but a curse.
And they remember the old Buddhist saying that it will bring nothing but
bad luck.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
8. Dalai Lama wants to go green
------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Saransh Sehgal, Asia Times
January 6, 2011
DHARAMSALA, India - United States secret diplomatic documents disclosed
by WikiLeaks have shown that the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual
leader in exile, wants to shift the focus of the Free Tibet movement
from Tibet's political future onto climate change in the Himalayan region.
Frustrated by the stagnation of five decades of political wrestling with
Beijing over Tibet's future, analysts say, the Dalai Lama now hopes that
pressing Beijing over climate change in Tibet will attract more
attention and support inside and outside of China.
Near the end of 2010, WikiLeaks released a series of Washington's
diplomatic secrets related to the Dalai Lama, Tibet and India. The most
controversial revealed that the Dalai Lama told Timothy Roemer, the US
ambassador to India, that the political agenda should be sidelined in
favor of climate issues.
"The political agenda should be sidelined for five to 10 years and the
international community should shift its focus to climate change on the
Tibetan plateau. Melting glaciers, deforestation and increasingly
polluted water from mining projects were problems that 'cannot wait',
but the Tibetans could wait five to 10 years for a political solution,"
the leaked memo quoted the 75-year-old Nobel peace laureate as telling
ambassador Roemer during a 2009 meeting between the two, according to
the cable obtained by WikiLeaks and released by British newspaper the
Guardian.
The Dalai Lama also hoped for Washington's support for his new approach.
"The Dalai Lama requested the United States consider engaging China on
environmental issues in Tibet," the leaked US memo said, and Roemer
speculated that "the Dalai Lama's message may signal a broader shift in
strategy to reframe the Tibet issue as an environmental concern".
Interestingly, this tactical change was revealed at a time when many in
the exiled Tibetan community are becoming impatient with their
god-king's "middle way" approach and are eagerly awaiting the election
of a new exiled leadership in March 2011. The Dalai Lama himself has
pledged to give up his political role after the election.
The Dalai Lama's new tactic has become a hot subject among Tibetans in
exile. Many hope this will attract more attention and bring more support
not only from their compatriots inside Tibet, but also from foreign
countries and environmental organizations. Many exiled Tibetans here
also think it is a very wise move by the Dalai Lama. For, while he is
unlikely to see a political settlement on the Tibet issue in his
lifetime, he could keep the world's focus on Tibet by highlighting the
climate issue.
The Tibetan region, the world's largest and highest plateau, is well
known among environmental activists as the Earth's "third pole". It
contains the biggest ice fields outside the Arctic or Antarctic, and its
glacial melt has direct consequences even outside of the region. No
other area in the world has a water repository of such size as in Tibet,
where it serves as a lifeline for much of the continent and millions of
people in countries downstream.
In its efforts to integrate the Tibetan region under its full control,
the Chinese government has fully utilized the Himalayan plateau for its
industrial potential. Extensive mineral exploitation, hydropower
projects and the mining of uranium - of which Tibet contains the world's
largest known reserves - have been going on unchecked, leaving the
region irreparably marred.
The Dalai Lama blasted "China's energy policies, alleging that dam
construction in Kham and Amdo has displaced thousands of Tibetans and
left temples and monasteries underwater. He recommended that Beijing
compensate Tibetans for disrupting their nomadic lifestyle with
vocational training, such as weaving," noted the leaked memo.
The West has already shown its deep concern. Western scientists and
development specialists have been watching the environmental situation
in the Tibet region and reacting with alarm. At the United Nations
Climate Change Conference 2009 in Copenhagen, a joint Tibetan and
Western multi-disciplinary team called the International Network of
Parliamentarians on Tibet brought the environmental crisis in Tibet and
the fate of Tibet's nomads to the attention of negotiators, the media
and the general public. In an open letter to the conference it said:
We write to urge that the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen
give serious attention to the "Third Pole", as Tibet is known for being
the largest repository of glacially stored water outside of the Arctic
and Antarctic. We believe that multinational policies to mitigate the
causes of and adapt to the effects of climate change must consider the
challenges of climate change in Tibet, and include the direct
participation of Tibetan stakeholders, particularly nomads. This is now
a global issue and of huge importance.
The UN special rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier de Schutter,
recently asked the Chinese government to reassess its policies, which
are displacing people in Tibet and Inner Mongolia. In response to the UN
report, the Environment and Development Desk of the exiled Central
Tibetan Administration at Dharamsala, India, said the UN report showed
that Chinese government policies for Tibetan nomads were unsuccessful.
Particularly telling are data obtained by Chinese researchers. The
scientists found that the total surface area of glaciers has decreased
17% in the last 30 years; many have even disappeared. But of even
greater importance than area is ice volume. These measurement efforts ?
a challenging task at 5,000 meters or higher ? show that "the impact of
climate change on some Himalayan glaciers is much worse than previously
thought", advises Tian Lide, a glaciologist associated with the Third
Pole Environment Program.
On the other hand, Beijing takes no advice on Tibet from outside voices
and claims to be urbanizing the large nomadic population. Chinese
authorities recently said that Tibet maintained steady economic growth
in 2010, with the annual gross domestic product (GDP) estimated at 50.6
billion yuan (US$ 7.7 billion). The figures go up year after year, which
makes Tibet the fastest growing among China's provinces, autonomous
regions and municipalities.
And it is not that Chinese authorities do not recognize that climate
change is happening in Tibet. Beijing has already issued its "White
Paper" on ecological improvement and environmental protection in Tibet.
Zhang Yongze, director general of the region'senvironmental protection
bureau, said the scale of environmental problems facing Tibet called for
a concerted response, and he singled out climate change as a key worry.
Analysts believe that the Dalai Lama's new focus on climate concerns
will affect Tibet's political stature as well, and could be a
game-changer in the long term.
Samphel Thupten, the spokesman for the Tibetan government in exile, said
about the WikiLeaks memos: "Now the international pressure on Beijing
will increase, and the international community will convince Chinese
leaders that it is in China's own interest to develop a plan which would
enrich the Chinese people and ensure sustainability, but does not damage
China's environment."
Interestingly, radical young Tibetan exiles who push for full
independence of Tibet and protest every move by Beijing have mixed
reactions on the climate tactic. They support the Dalai Lama's climate
call, but do not want to wait for five to 10 years on the political front.
Among the most radical groups in exile is the Tibetan Youth Congress
(TYC). Its joint secretary, Tenzin Norsang, told Asia Times Online that
with the environmental issue "we can raise our political issue as well".
He explained that although the group and many Tibetan exiles had
different stances on political issues, on the environment "we are
together".
"Our concern is its political value. Climate change in Tibet affects all
of Asia. Then of course, the global climate campaigners will join us to
pressure China. Climate is a way to keep the issue of Tibet at a global
level and gain us more supporters," he said. He also said support would
come from many Westerners who are not as concerned with the political
future of Tibet as with environmental problems in the region.
But many some Tibetans in exile are less optimistic. "It is already too
late for the Tibetan people and those richly forested mountains inside
Tibet, which have become bald like a monk's head. But now that these
environmental impacts are creating problems not only to the six million
Tibetans living on the Tibetan plateau but also to the other millions of
people living on the continent, pressure will mount on Beijing," said
Tsering, an elderly monk in exile.
Tibetans in exile have already launched initiatives with Western
organizations that aim to call attention to issues like climate change
and China's coercive resettlement of nomads. The Tibet Third Pole is one
such group that shows the world how climate change is threatening
Tibet's ecosystem.
Tibetans watched closely as the United States launched the Strategic and
Economic Dialogue with China, and they want the US to reach out to China
on climate issues in Tibet. Other WikiLeaks documents show the Dalai
Lama asking diplomats to "use all effective means to persuade the PRC
[People's Republic of China] to engage in dialogue with him" and urging
Washington to take action that would "make an impact" in Beijing. "Tibet
is a dying nation. We need America's help," the Dalai Lama said in one
cable.
Saransh Sehgal is a contributor based in Dharamsala, India, who can be
reached at in...@mcllo.com.
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9. Is Global Warming Making Tibet Dustier?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
by Eli Kintisch on 5 January 2011, 2:05 PM | http://news.sciencemag.org/
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - Sediments taken from the bottom of a lake on
the Tibetan Plateau suggest that changes in wind patterns caused by
global warming may be making the area dustier. That trend could
accelerate the melting of crucial glaciers in the Himalayas and affect
already imperiled water supplies.
Jessica Conroy, a graduate student in paleoclimatology at the University
of Arizona in Tucson, and colleagues collected sediment cores from the
bottom of Kiang Lake in southwestern Tibet using equipment suspended
from rafts. The cores track the history of climate in the region back to
1050 C.E. According to Conroy, who presented the data here at the fall
meeting of the American Geophysical Union on 15 December, the amount of
fine-grained dust in the lake sediment increased over the 20th century.
Finer dust arrives from distant desert regions hundreds of kilometers
away, suggesting stronger winds with the power to deliver the material.
Scientists have previously noted the rise of dust in the region but
attributed it to the increase in agriculture, grazing, and other
relatively local developments. Data Conroy presented showed that dusty
periods coincide with summers when a Northern Hemisphere atmospheric
phenomenon called the Arctic Oscillation is in a "positive phase." A
positive phase of this pattern in the summer leads to stronger winds in
desert areas to the north of the lake as well as south of the Himalayas.
Global warming seems to be keeping the Arctic Oscillation in its
positive phase more often, which Conroy says could mean that climate,
not just changes in the local landscape caused by human activity, could
be making southwestern Tibet dustier. Lonnie Thompson, a
paleoclimatologist at Ohio State University in Columbus, who did the
earlier work noting the rise of dust, says he was "impressed" with the
data and called the work "thoughtful." The findings mirrored patterns he
had documented within ice in a Himalayan glacier called Dasuopu,
"particularly the increase in the past century or so of dust," he says.
Conroy's hypothesized link between dust levels and the Arctic
Oscillation "probably warrants more investigation," Thompson says.
"It's going to continue to be dusty in this region, and dust can
accelerate the melting of the glaciers in the Himalayas," says Conroy.
That's because the dust lands on the white ice and makes it darker,
absorbing radiation and accelerating melting in the Himalayas. These
glaciers, which provide water for hundreds of millions of people across
Asia, are in serious danger - although a well-documented typographic
error in the 2007 IPCC report exaggerated the rate of their
disappearance. Dust also warms the air above the Tibetan Plateau,
enhancing monsoon circulation patterns, which could affect rain and
alter rainfall patterns across the southern Asia.
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10. Tibetan Buddhism can solve global conflicts: Karmapa
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2011-01-03Sify News
Bodh Gaya (Bihar), Jan 3 (IANS) The four main schools of Tibetan
Buddhism are trying to find common ground to carry forward Lord Buddha's
teachings in way they can be used to resolve geo-political conflicts,
says Thrinley Thaye Dorje, the 17th spiritual head of the Karma Kagyu
school of Tibetan Buddhism.
'The awareness that the four schools have to find common ground is
getting stronger. It will happen because unity among the Buddhist sects
is crucial to world peace,' 27-year-old Thrinley Dorje told IANS in an
interview in Bodh Gaya, the seat of Gautama Buddha's enlightenment.
'It can solve conflicts because the teachings of Buddha are based on
bringing inner and outer peace,' he added.
The four schools are the ancient Nyingma tradition, the Karma Kagyu
school, the Sakya school and the Gelug school. The last three are
relatively new when compared to the eighth century Nyingma tradition.
The Karmapa (the high monk) was in the town to preside over the
commemoration of the 900th anniversary of the Karma Kagyu school of
Vajrayana Buddhism in Tibet. The order traces its lineage to north
Indian monk Tilopa and was formally founded by Dusum Kyenpa (1110-1193)
- known as the high monk with the black crown. The Karma Kagyu sect
manages the affairs of the Rumtek monastery in Sikkim.
Thrinley Dorje believes that although traces of Buddhism have existed in
the Himalayas for a long time, globalisation and modernism have helped
it spread on a larger scale.
'Globalisation has brought the world together. Even 45 years ago,
Buddhism was not heard of outside East and Southeast Asia,' he said.
He said, 'In general, all the four (Tibetan) Buddhist schools are built
on the same foundations'.
'They believe in carrying the teachings of the Buddha forward. The
difference is in the way of interpreting and teaching the tenets of the
Buddha. Our way of teaching is transmission which emphasises on
meditation. Our lineage is one of meditation,' the Karmapa said.
The seat of the 17th Karmapa of the Karma Kagyu sect has been a subject
of controversy. After the death of the 16th Karmapa in 1981, two young
masters, 27-year-old Thrinley Dorje and 25-year-old Ogyen Trinley Dorje,
have been contenders to the post. Both have been enthroned as the
spiritual heads.
The Chinese government and the Dalai Lama however approve of Ogyen
Trinley Dorje. Born in Tibet, both the lamas fled to India in the 1990s
and have been identified as reincarnations of great Buddhist spiritual
masters.
Thrinley Dorje does not miss his homeland or feel distanced from Tibet.
'There is not much of a distance because globalisation has strengthened
bonds between Tibet and India. My bonds are stronger from the
perspective that when I meditate, the physical gap becomes a relative
thing - it's nothing more than an idea,' said the Buddhist master, who
was born in Tibet.
'In our state of meditation, we (Tibet and I) are very much connected.
It is like the way I connect to my students at the opposite side of the
globe through meditation,' he added.
Thrinley Dorje has meditated in isolation for 12 years before being
deemed fit for the post. He was identified as a holy reincarnation at
the age of two and a half by a monk of the Sakya Pa school in Tibet, who
informed the Karma Kagyu monastery in Nepal about the 'boy and his
previous life'.
He was led through the rites of passage after an early initiation by a
Kagyu red hat lama, Shamarpa Mipham Chokyi Lodro, who traditionally
instructs the Karmapa on the complex doctrines of the sect.
'Tibet has four major schools of Vajrayana Buddhism (that incorporates
tantrik Buddhism),' he said.
Thrinley Dorje said he was 'trying to make Buddhism relevant to youth'.
'The awareness about the faith is rising worldwide and it is one of the
ways to reach out to the people. The world finds it easy to emotionally
connect to Buddhism,' he said.
One way that could help youth harness the power of the Buddha in them
was to 'remain close to the family', the master said.
'Youth must respect their parents and remain devoted to them. Respect
and devotion to parents are vital to Gautama's teachings, especially in
modern times,' Thrinley Dorje said.
'The modern times are very exciting and interesting. And if one does not
engage in the right way, it can be quite harmful. The transition to
modern times must be peaceful,' he added.
He advocated 'compassion, tolerance and patience for the monks in Tibet,
who were being persecuted.' 'If we have compassion, tolerance and peace,
situations change because you will not repeat history,' he said.
(Madhusree Chatterjee can be contacted at mad...@ians.in)
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