As the international community steps up its efforts to condemn the Chinese Communist Party‘s human rights abuses in Xinjiang, representatives of the Tibetan government-in-exile said in New York on Wednesday (March 31) that Xi Jinping‘s radical measures to eradicate Tibetan cultural traditions and assimilate Tibetans are somehow a policy of genocide.
Ngodup Tsering, a representative of the Dalai Lama’s Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) office in North America, said the CTA is very sincere in trying to work with Chinese leaders to resolve the Tibetan issue. But Xi and his leaders in Tibet threatened Tibetan traditions last May when they introduced the Regulations on the Creation of Model Ethnic Unity and Progress Areas in the Tibet Autonomous Region, which sought to promote Sino-Tibetan intermarriage.
“To say ‘promote,’ that’s not the usual sense, you know how the CCP works and how they use words like ‘promote.’ They can use all means in order to accomplish their tasks and implement their policies. So by doing that, they want to completely erase Tibetan traditions and Tibetan ethnicity.” Ozhu Tsering said.
Last September, Beijing again implemented its policy of purging Tibetan Buddhism. “Now they want all the Tibetan lamas, they want them to write about communism, about how great Xi Jinping is, how great Mao Zedong is. They even go to temples and say you shouldn’t worship Buddha and other things, you should worship Mao Zedong and Xi Jinping. So this is a cleansing of Buddhism. By doing this, they are trying to completely destroy Tibetan Buddhism.”
At the end of August last year, Xi presided over a meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Tibetan work and put forward ten “musts” for good work in Tibet, including the need to adhere to the leadership of the Communist Party of China, maintain national unity and adhere to the direction of Chineseization of religion.
Ozhu Tsering said the Chinese Communist Party is now accelerating the implementation of its bilingual Education policy, “even at the kindergarten and elementary school levels, Tibetan is not only not the main subject, but also not the medium. What is happening is that the Tibetan people are unable to learn their own language properly. This is the biggest concern for the vast majority of Tibetan elders, as they feel they are now unable to communicate properly with their children.”
Xi Jinping’s three radical policies amount to genocide
“The goal of these three policies is the total elimination and complete assimilation of the Tibetan people.” Ozhu Tsering said. ” Therefore, the radical measures and policies that Xi Jinping has adopted are somehow genocide, and that is what they are doing.”
“The historical task of the Chinese Communist Party to transform the Tibetan nation into a socialist nation is still in full swing, and this is a disguised policy of genocide.” Han Lianchao, vice president of the human rights group Citizen Power, said. “This policy is very deceptive and has made the CCP’s colonization of Tibet largely complete through both economic buyout and repression.”
Han Lianchao said the CCP’s next step is to transform Tibetan Buddhism and make it Chinese, “that is, Communist-ized, fundamentally changing the teachings and spirit of Tibetan Buddhism to achieve the goal of eliminating the Dalai Lama’s influence and eliminating the religion in disguise.”
The Tibetan government-in-exile held a Tibetan-Chinese exchange video conference Wednesday to commemorate the 62nd anniversary of the Dalai Lama’s exile. Most of the more than a dozen invited Han Chinese exiles have met the Dalai Lama or visited Dharamsala, the seat of the exile government.
Tsutrim Gyatso, Chinese liaison to the Dalai Lama’s Central Tibetan Administration Office in the United States, said March 31, 1959, was the first day the Dalai Lama set foot in India in exile.
“Sixty-two years have passed and the Tibetan language and Culture has not disappeared from the face of the earth because for 62 years, Tibetans in exile, under the guidance of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, have preserved their culture while showing the world the knowledge of compassion and wisdom in Tibetan Buddhist culture.” Tsering Gyatso said.
“We are refugees and must support ourselves.”
“There is a self-help center in the Darjeeling Tibetan Refugee Settlement where there are several old men in their 70s who are tailors, and they were still there stepping on sewing machines and doing their work when I was there.” Writer Ding Yifu recalls visiting a Tibetan community in exile more than 10 years ago.
“The person who introduced them said that these old people were the Dalai Lama’s guards back in 1959 when the Dalai Lama was on the run.” Ding Yifu said. “When they entered India, the Indian government asked them to hand over their weapons, and the Dalai Lama told them that from now on we are refugees and we have to support ourselves. So they put down their weapons, took up needle and thread, and worked to support themselves.”
Ding Yifu said, “The Tibetan exile community is the most well-organized and peaceful of all the political exile groups in the world after the Second World War in the last century, but it is also the one that has received the highest rating in the world and has lasted the longest.”
Exile made the Dalai Lama a world leader
Hu Ping, editor-in-chief emeritus of Beijing Spring magazine, said, “Sixty-two years in exile made the Dalai Lama the world figure of the century, brought Tibetan Buddhism to the world, and made the Tibetan issue an international issue.”
Yang Jianli, president of Citizen Power, said that the history of Tibetan exile led by the Dalai Lama has created a world miracle. He summarized three major contributions. First, the Dalai Lama has proposed a set of principles for resolving ethnic conflicts, known as the “middle way.
Second, he maintained Tibetan culture and religion, spread Tibetan Buddhism throughout the world, and made the places where the government in exile resides a new center of Buddhism in the world.
Third, it established a democratic system for the exile community. In the words of Hu Ping, “The Dalai Lama accomplished what only the Dalai Lama could accomplish, and then left behind a cause that can continue to exist and grow without the Dalai Lama.”
I hope Chinese leaders will wake up early
Ozhu Tsering, representative of the Dalai Lama’s Central Tibetan Administration in North America, said, “I hope the Chinese leaders will wake up before it’s too late and realize that what they are doing is not a solution for freedom, for the well-being of all people, but a problem.”
Han Lianchao said that last year Xi presided over a meeting on Tibetan work and proposed 10 “musts” for the Tibetan strategy, up from six, but he noted the deletion of “adhering to the policy of fighting against the Dalai Lama clique”. The government has also deleted the item of “not wavering in the policy of struggle against the Dalai Lama group”.
“Whether this is a new signal or a new conspiracy remains to be seen.” Han Lianchao added.
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