Tag: tibet

An old Chinese Communist Party propaganda poster.
An old Chinese Communist Party propaganda poster.

Mar Jang-nyug (pseudonym) is a Tibetan writer born and brought up in Marong village of Ngaba in the Tibetan province of Amdo. TCHRD presents another translated and edited essay from the author’s forthcoming book, Ancestors’ Tomb. This essay was written on 25 March 2012, a few months after the death of the author’s mother.

Ancestors’ Tomb is replete with accounts of unaddressed grievances and unfulfilled aspirations, at once personal and yet political, as is demonstrated by the tortured body of the author’s mother and her legacy to her son of a wounded heart, both bearing witness to brutalities bygone and present.

The invoking of memories about Ngaba during the nascent stages of Chinese rule is telling in that it gives a historical context – resonant with the underlying Buddhist theme of cause and effect – to the spate of self-immolation protests in Tibet in recent years.

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Apple_in_ChinaRecent reports that Apple’s suppliers have discriminated against Tibetans and other ethnic minorities in the People’s Republic of China demonstrate that the systematic and brutal discrimination by the Chinese government also exists in the private sector.  Chinese policies in Tibet subject Tibetans to religious persecution, forced displacement, arbitrary detention, torture, and murder.  Apple attempted to invest in China while still protecting and promoting human rights.

Apple is not the first corporation to invest in a discriminatory country while still trying to protect and promote human rights.  In 1977, Reverend Leon Sullivan, a General Motors board member, created the Sullivan Principles.  The Sullivan Principles originally consisted of six voluntary principles for multinational corporations in South Africa to follow.  The principles called on corporations to adopt equal employment practices, desegregate the workplace, promote trade unions, and provide training and social services for black workers.  In 1984, Sullivan also called upon corporations to use their influence to encourage South African corporations to adopt similar principles, to

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Tenzin Dawa (name changed), 36, is a Tibetan monk from Barmi Monastery in Tsongru (Ch: Chonger) Township of Dzoege (Ch: Ru’ergai) County, Ngaba (Ch: Aba) Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province, in the Tibetan province of Amdo. Dzoege County has witnessed at least seven confirmed self-immolation protests so far.

Tenzin Dawa reached India early this month. He is also a former disciple of Gyen Kunchok Nyima, a Buddhist scholar and teacher at Drepung Monastery who went missing since April 2008 after his detention and subsequent sentencing to 20 years in prison. Tenzin Dawa says there are many disciples of Gyen Kunchok Nyima looking for information about the whereabouts of their teacher. No one knows where the Buddhist scholar is imprisoned or whether he is alive.

In his testimony to TCHRD, Tenzin Dawa recounts the current situation inside Tibet in particular his hometown in Dzoege where local Chinese authorities have planted spies in every village to monitor conversations and keep a strict watch over Tibetan activities, in an ongoing effort to prevent self-immolation and other protests.

The testimony also contains details on how Chinese authorities attempted to pressure local Tibetans to sign an official order that forbids any kind of activities to support or sympathise with self-immolation protests.

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The Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) today released a new report, Universal Periodic Review and China’s Human Rights Record in Tibet.  The report is available to the public and will be submitted to the United Nations Special Rapporteurs for Civil and Political rights.   Universal Periodic Review and China’s Human Rights Record in Tibet is part of TCHRD’s lobbying effort leading up to China’s Universal Periodic Review at the United Nations Human Rights Council on 22 October 2013.  TCHRD is calling for China to ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), one of the most important human rights treaties.

The release of Universal Periodic Review and China’s Human Rights Record in Tibet coincides with China’s submission of its national report on its human rights situation on 22 July.  In its report China will undoubtedly highlight economic development and other economic, social, cultural rights while ignoring civil and political rights as it did in its White Paper on Human Rights.  In the past China has treated human rights as divisible and focused on economic, social, and cultural rights to the exclusion of civil and political rights. 

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fall_grazing

A major land grab by Chinese authorities is being reported by local sources in Muge area in Sungchu (Ch: Songpan) County in Ngaba (Ch: Aba) Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province, in the Tibetan province of Amdo.

According to local accounts along with some photographs received by TCHRD, the Chinese authorities have appropriated all farmlands in Achu nomadic camp (Tib: dewa) in lower Muge area in the name of hydropower projects to generate electricity. (A dewa or rural nomadic camp at its smallest generally consists of about 30 to 40 families and over 100 to 200 families in bigger ones.)

In Achu camp, traditional grasslands used by local herds for grazing in autumn have been appropriated.

More farmlands have also been confiscated in neighbouring A-ngag and Agon camps for ‘development’ projects.

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New measures to control Buddhist monastic teachers was approved at during the second session of the eighth council of Buddhist Association of China held on 25 November 2012.
New measures to control Buddhist monastic teachers were approved during the second session of the eighth council of Buddhist Association of China on 25 November 2012.

In the past weeks, there has been persistent speculation on ‘experimental’ moves by the Chinese authorities to overturn some of its decades-old vilification campaign against the Tibetan spiritual leader, His Holiness the Dalai Lama. A handful of Tibetan monasteries in the Tibetan provinces of Amdo and Kham, located respectively in present-day Qinghai and Sichuan provinces, were given verbal permission to display portraits of the Dalai Lama and worship him as a religious, and not as a political figure. According to these verbal orders, monks and nuns are no longer required to denounce the Dalai Lama, which is an essential component in political education classes in Tibet’s monastic institutions.  Major international media outlets heralded this as a change in China’s Tibet policy.

Only a few days later on 28 June 2013, China’s State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA), the highest official body that regulates all recognised religions in the People’s Republic of China, denied any reversal of its long-standing policy on the Dalai Lama.

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Jigme Gyatso before his incarceration and torture in Chinese prison
Jigme Gyatso before his incarceration and torture in prison

On 3 April 2013, after 17 years Jigme Gyatso was released from prison. He entered prison a strong and healthy 35 year-old and left with weak eyesight, heart complications and kidney damage that kept him from walking upright.  Eight years before his release Jigme Gyatso met the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, who strongly recommended Jigme Gyatso be released because his conviction for “endangering state security” by creating an illegal organization was based on information extracted by torture. During his 17 years imprisonment, he was electrocuted with electric batons and brutally beaten.  Today, three months after Jigme Gyatso’s long-awaited release from prison, is the International Day in Support of Torture Victims as Jigme Gyatso struggles with his broken body to live again.

International Day in Support of Torture Victims commemorates the entry into force of the Convention Against Torture, Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment (or Convention Against Torture) on 26 June 1987 with the goal of eradicating torture.

No act, except for slavery, has been prohibited as unanimously and repeatedly as torture.  The international community recognizes that the prohibition of torture, like genocide and slavery, is a jus cogens norm, a preemptory norm of international law from which no derogation is permitted.  The universal rejection of torture forces torturers to deny its existence and hide their victims from the world by placing them in “black sites” and secret detention facilities or denying their existence.

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Front cover of the PAP handbook on mental health
Front cover of the PAP handbook on mental health

The Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) recently received and published a summary of a manual it published by the Sichuan Provincial Political Department of the People’s Armed Police Force.  The manual consists of 29 questions and answers on how the People’s Armed Police Force can cope with the psychological trauma caused by the violent nature of the People’s Armed Police Force in Tibetan areas of Sichuan.  TCHRD presents an analysis of the manual by Matthew Akester.

Matthew Akester is a translator of classical and modern literary Tibetan with 25 years of experience as an independent researcher throughout the Tibetan world.  He has worked as a consultant and contributor for the Tibet Information Network, Human Rights Watch, Tibet Heritage Fund, and Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center.  He is an advisor, editor, and translator for countless publications on Tibet in English, French, and Tibetan.

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Cover photographs of the album feature Chakdor (middle in gold-colored shirt wearing dark glasses), Pema Trinley (in maroon shirt on right) and musician Khenrap (left in black shirt)
Cover photo of the album shows Chakdor (standing in the middle in gold-colored shirt), Pema Trinley (in maroon shirt on right) and musician Khenrap (on left in black shirt)

TCHRD has translated some of the songs from the album, ‘Agony of Unhealed Wounds’, to highlight the secret imprisonment of Tibetan musicians Chakdor and Pema Trinley in Ngaba County in the Tibetan province of Amdo. The release and distribution of the album in July last year led to the detention and imprisonment of Chakdor and Pema Trinley, and the disappearance of musician Khenrap and songwriter Nyagdompo.

Chakdor and Pema Trinley each received four years’ prison sentence in February this year. After being informed officially about the sentencing, family members of both the musicians made at least two unsuccessful attempts to visit them in Mianyang Prison. The Mianyang prison officials apparently had no knowledge about the musicians’ whereabouts.

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Tibetan singer Chakdor sentenced to two years in prison. His whereabouts remain unknown.
Tibetan singer Chakdor sentenced to four years in prison. His whereabouts remain unknown.

Two Tibetan singers who were detained last year for releasing a music album titled “Agony of Unhealed Wounds” had been secretly sentenced to four years in prison in Ngaba (Ch: Aba) County in Ngaba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province.

According to reliable information received by TCHRD, singers Pema Trinley, 22, and Chakdor, 32, both hailing from Meuruma nomadic village, had recorded and distributed a music DVD containing songs about current situation in Tibet including self-immolation protests, as well as songs in praise of the Dalai Lama, Panchen Lama, Kirti Rinpoche (exiled head of the Kirti monastery) and Lobsang Sangay (exiled Tibetan political leader). In July 2012, days after the release of the music album, both singers were arrested in the neighbouring Machu (Ch: Maqu)  County in Kanlho (Ch: Gannan) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Gansu Province. For over six months, they were detained in Ngaba County, sources told TCHRD, before their secret sentencing in February this year.

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Tsondue and Gedun Tsultrim in their prison uniform meet family members and relatives after the court trial
Tsondue and Gedun Tsultrim in their prison uniform meet family members and relatives after the court trial

The relentless crackdown on self-immolation protests in Tibet continued when Chinese authorities sentenced two Tibetan monks to three years in prison for holding religious rituals and prayer services for a Tibetan man who died of self-immolation protest in November last year in Kangtsa Township in Yadzi (Ch: Xunhua) Salar Autonomous County in Tsoshar (Ch: Haidong) Prefecture, Qinghai Province.  The Chinese authorities deemed this exercise of the monks’ fundamental rights criminal pursuant to a 2012 guideline on handling self-immolations.

Wangchen Norbu, 25, died during a self-immolation protest on 19 November last year. As he burned, Wangchen Norbu called for an end to Chinese repression and demanded the return of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to Tibet, freedom in Tibet, and the release of the 11th Panchen Lama, and all the Tibetan political prisoners.

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