Cultural genocide behind
self-immolation By Emily-Anne
Owen
BEIJING - The Chinese government must
not "eliminate individualism" but instead
encourage diversity of religion, culture and
language, the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual
leader, stressed - after yet another Tibetan
self-immolated last week in China's Qinghai
province. Speaking at the University of
Westminster in London last week, the Dalai Lama
exhorted the Chinese government to learn from the
success' of pluralism in India, where he has lived
in exile since he fled his homeland in 1959.
While he admitted, "Complete independence
is ... out of the question", he bemoaned the
"outdated" system of the ruling Chinese Communist
Party (CCP), which Tibetan advocacy groups accuse
of crushing Tibetan culture.
The Dalai
Lama's speech follows the self-immolation of a Tibetan
herder, Tamdin Thar, who
died in Huangnan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture,
located in northwest China, last week. The herder
was at least the 38th Tibetan to have set himself
on fire since 2009 and the 29th to have died. Last
month, the immolations spread to the Tibetan
capital Lhasa for the first time as two men set
themselves alight outside a temple.
Last
year, the Dalai Lama accused Beijing of "cultural
genocide" in Tibet at a press conference in Tokyo
and attributed the unprecedented wave of
self-immolations to the government's increasingly
harsh crackdown on Tibetan culture and religion.
Culture under attack Since the
2008 Tibetan riots, China has unleashed an
increasingly harsh crackdown in Tibetan areas of
the country. Government policies in monasteries
have been felt most keenly: permanent police
surveillance, the severing of food and water
supplies, and compulsory patriotic education for
monks have fueled anger and despair.
This
year, Beijing distributed over one million
portraits of China's four most important Communist
leaders and Chinese flags to Tibetan monasteries,
houses, and schools. Images of the Dalai Lama -
Tibet's most important spiritual figure have been
banned. But government clampdowns have not only
taken place in monasteries. Authorities have shut
down a locally funded Tibetan school offering
classes in the Tibetan language and culture,
according to the Indian-based Tibetan Centre for
Human Rights and Democracy.
The Khadrok
Jamtse Rokten School, founded in 1989, was
forcibly closed on April 2, according to a report
by the Tibetan Centre. The school is situated in
Ganzi County, known as Kardze in Tibetan, in
China's southwestern Sichuan province, an area of
the country where self-immolations have become
increasingly frequent. Two teachers were arrested.
The Tibetan poet and author Tsering
Woeser, who has been instrumental in highlighting
self-immolations on an influential blog, believes
such actions are designed to wear down Tibetan
culture.
"Language is very important to
any race. But in Tibetan areas, the Chinese
government is generating education reforms to
diminish education in Tibetan language," Woeser
told IPS. "In Tibetan schools, where classes are
supposed to be taught in the Tibetan language,
classes are instead taught in Mandarin and even
textbooks are in Mandarin. Worse still,
civilian-run schools are being shut down
gradually."
"Meanwhile, modern
intellectuals, including writers, NGO workers and
singers have been arrested and detained," Woeser
said. "I am worried Tibetan culture will die out
one day."
Burning in
despair "That's why you see these sad
incidents have happened, due to this desperate
sort of situation," said the Dalai Lama at the
2011 press conference. "Even Chinese from mainland
China who visit Tibet have the impression things
are terrible. Some kind of cultural genocide is
taking place."
Beijing has accused the
Dalai Lama of whipping up unrest and has declared
that the immolations are "terrorism in disguise".
An op-ed published in the state-run China Daily on
Monday said there is no "Tibet issue" and it is a
fiction "invented by Britain". But the advocacy
group International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) has
also accused China of "cultural genocide".
In a report entitled "60 Years of Chinese
Misrule: Arguing Cultural Genocide in Tibet",
published in April, during Genocide Prevention
Month, ICT stated that the Chinese authorities
have made a systematic and concerted effort to
replace organic Tibetan culture with a
state-approved version that meets the objectives
of the CCP.
"The situation in Tibet is not
a case of episodic or discrete human rights
violations against Tibetans; Tibetan culture has
been targeted for destruction from the beginning
[of the CCP's takeover of Tibet]," ICT's president
Mary Beth Markey told IPS.
"Cultural
oppression has been institutionalized through the
implementation of various campaigns, regulations
and laws. Where cultural expression falls within
the parameters set by the Chinese state, it is
tolerated and even commodified. Where it is not,
culture is censored or marginalized through
forcible assimilation."
ICT released the
report on April 25, the birthday of Tibet's
Panchen Lama, Gedhun Choekyi Nyima. The religious
figure, the second-most important in Tibetan
Buddhism after the Dalai Lama, was taken into
custody by Chinese authorities in 1995 and has not
been heard of since.
Beijing has since
anointed its own Panchen Lama, 22-year-old
Gyaincain Norbu, who delivered his first public
speech outside mainland China this year. While the
appearance in Hong Kong was widely seen as an
effort from China to garner international
recognition for the state-approved Panchen Lama,
he is not recognized by the Dalai Lama or the
Tibetan government in exile.
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