SFT India Lobbies MPs to Take Action for Ngaba

SFT India’s Tenchoe and Jigdal are in New Delhi to lobby Members of the Indian Parliament to increase the pressure on China to end the military siege in Ngaba, eastern Tibet, and to release all those detained in recent weeks, including 300 monks from Kirti Monastery whose whereabouts remain unknown.

Video: Meeting with Indian MPs to highlight the situation in Ngaba

Meeting with Indian MPs to highlight the situation in Ngaba: Day 2

Chinese troops descended on Kiri Monastery in the days following the self-immolation of a 20-year-old monk, Phuntsok Jarutsang on March 16th, 2011 and continue to beat, detain and intimidate the monks and any Tibetan who dares to protest their repressive actions. Two elderly Tibetans died after being beaten by police for trying to stop the arrest of 300 monks at the monastery on the evening of April 21st.

Tibetans and their supporters worldwide are demanding world government’s immediately condemn China’s actions and call for a withdrawal of troops from the region and for international observers to be allowed into Ngaba.

TAKE ACTION: 10 Ways You Can Help Stop the Crackdown in Ngaba

Update on the Indian Parliament Lobby Effort:

In light of the recent crackdown in Ngaba, eastern Tibet, Students for a Free Tibet (SFT) – India has spearheaded an Indian Parliamentarian Lobby Effort. Yesterday and today we delivered appeal letters to Members of both houses of Parliament urging the Indian Government to press Beijing to immediately:

1. End the violent crackdown and repressive “patriotic re-education” campaign in Ngaba and withdraw troops from Kirti monastery and surrounding areas.

2. Unconditionally release all Tibetans arrested or imprisoned in Ngaba.

3. Allow an international and independent fact-finding mission to visit Kirti monastery in Ngaba, along with members of the foreign media.

4. Respect the right of Kirti monks to freely practice their religion and respect their right to movement.

“The situation in Ngaba is deteriorating as Chinese authorities continue their blatant violation of Tibetans’ human rights,” said Tenzin Choedon, National Director of Students for a Free Tibet – India. “Everyone we have met in the Indian Government is concerned about the dire situation in Ngaba and has expressed their solidarity with the Tibetan people.”

Over the course of 2 days, SFT – India’s delegation has met with senior parliamentarians from both Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha including:

Shri Mohan Singh:
National Spokesperson of Samajwadi party
Hon’ Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha.
Mr. C.M. Chang: IAS (Rtd.)
Nagaland People’s Front
Hon’ Member of Parliament, Lok Sabha.

Chaudhary Ajit Singh:
President of Rashtriya Lok Dal
Hon’ Member of Parliament, Lok Sabya
former Union Minister of India

Shri Satyavrat Chaturvedi:
Hon’ Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha
Former  minister in Madhya Pradesh Government
Former General Secretary and National Spokesperson of Congress

Shri Raghuvansh Prasad Singh:
Rashtriya Janata Dal
Hon’ Member of Parliament
Lok Sabha and former Union Minister of India.
Shri Raghuvansh raised Tibet’s independence during the last Parliament session in March, 2011.

“In the coming days, we will continue to visit people of influence here in New Delhi and appeal for their help in demanding the Chinese government end the military siege in Ngaba and release all those unjustly arrested,” said Tenzin Jigdal, Project Director of Students for a Free Tibet – India. “We also call on governments’ around the world to intervene before more innocent Tibetan lives are lost.”

SFT – India’s delegation will meet with Indian Parliamentarians in the coming days with the support of the Tibetan Parliamentary and Policy Research Center. We will also be delivering appeal letters to various foreign missions in New Delhi.

"Only This Useless Poem, Dedicated to Lobsang Tsepak" By Woeser

High Peaks Pure Earth has translated a poem by Woeser that was posted on her blog on April 17, 2011. Woeser's poem is dedicated to Lobsang Tsepak, a monk of Kirti Monastery, Ngaba, who was studying at Beijing's Central University for Nationalities and was arrested on March 25, 2011 for unclear reasons.

Woeser has previously written poems dedicated to Tibetans who are missing or imprisoned, see these "Two Poems for the Panchen Lama" and also "Secret Tibet".

Lobsang Tsepak, from Amdo, Kirti Monastery monk, 26 years old.

1.
Today is already the twenty third day.
Yet on a certain day, I read a poem called "Disappeared",
At once what I thought about was you.

You were disappeared on the afternoon of the 25th of last month,
I only have teardrops, write poems, have no other choices.

2.
Like a film needs empty frames,
My feelings, sometimes when they are disorderly and numerous,
Flash some illusory picture frames:
Flowers inundating the horseshoes, the black tent on the grassland,
Prayer flags blown by the gentle wind, bird and beast being released,
All this beautiful scenery I have seen in my homeland,
In fact, now in this most difficult time,
Such as you, it seems you have evaporated from the world.

3.
The absurd is the reality,
I have become my own helpless poison,
But you, have actually turned into a sacrificial offering by drinking poison.

When closing my eyes, all I see is you,
That year in March, flames spread across the Land of Snows,
Compatriots carried the protesters whose blood was shed back to the monastery,
Worshipping them in the sacred temple of one’s heart.

4.
"March is the cruellest month."
A refined foreign journalist said that to me,
He went to Tibet during two Marches, it seems he saw something.
It again seems he didn't see anything at all.
But he clearly fell into one of the traps of the thirty six stratagems.
"Did you say, 'Tibetans emit wolf-like sounds when they cry out'?"
Embarrassed, he revealed a look which showed his pride was injured.

5.
Akhu [1] Tsepak, where are you?
Have you been brutally detained and escorted with force to your home of Ngaba?
Or been held in a dark room, suffering the torment of others which makes one’s blood boil?

I have heard one Akhu's experience of torture and being extorted a confession,
He was hung upside-down and beaten, with three ribs broken,
Changes in weather led him to huddle up in pain,
Ah, I forgot to ask him, it recently snowed in eastern Tibet, is he safe and sound?
But who can I ask, to know the whereabouts of Akhu Tsepak?

6.
"We live, deaf to the land beneath us,
Ten steps away no one hears our speeches"
This sentence, is by a poet of conscience who died under Stalin [2],
It is also a portrayal of China at its heyday.

Late at night, I incoherently reveal:
"I don't know if it's of any use but I will still say it.
I know for a fact, that it's useless to say it..."

Those friends from "rangwang lungba" [3], say sonorously:
"They always want to make people think that speaking out is useless.
But we must not stop speaking out!"

7.
Both my hands are empty
But my right hand grasps a pen, my left hand holds memories.
At the moment, although the memories wish to be expressed through the pen,
But between the lines, endless flow of tears is for
the trampled dignity.

8.
The gaze of hell is too long,
Very possible we’ll be eaten up by hell little by little.

Are you open to compromise?
If so, tell us your conditions and we will listen,
If they might lead to his safe return.

But I suddenly remembered a gloomy afternoon,
A gloomy hired thug, started to speak ferociously:

"You, could you, not write about Tibet?"

9.
If I don't write about Tibet, there are no poems.

Just like if it weren't for Tibet, Akhu Tsepak,
would not be disappeared.
If it weren't for Tibet, Akhu Tapey [4] and Akhu Phuntsog [5],
wouldn't have self-immolated.

And moreover, this list of names, could be very long, very long ......

And this "Xizang" - -
Of course, the complete name is "Tibet".


[1] "Akhu" is an honorific term for a monk used in Amdo

[2] These lines are by the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam. He was a Silver Age poet (late 19th to early 20th Century), a talented and outstanding poet. He was charged with counter-revolutionary crimes, arrested twice, exiled for many years, attempted suicide several times, on December 27, 1938, he died in a correction camp.

[3]"Rangwang Lungba", Tibetan, meaning a "free country"

[4] On March 16, 2008, in Ngaba, monks and lay people took to the streets in protest but were harshly cracked down upon by armed forces. Therefore, March 16 is the anniversary of this repression. On February 27, 2010, 24 year old monk from Kirti monastery, Tapey, self-immolated in protest on the street in Ngaba, he was shot by police, maiming his legs and right arm, to this day he is still confined in the military hospital.

[5] On March 16, 2011, 20 year old monk Phuntsog from Kirti Monastery self-immolated on the street in Ngaba, he shouted slogans "Let His Holiness Return!" "Freedom for Tibet", "May His Holiness Live for 10,000 Years!", he was beaten by special police, armed police and undercover police. On March 17, 2011, at 3 am, Phuntsog passed away. Monks and lay people staged a protest march and military placed the monastery under siege, there were many arbitrary arrests and more than 2500 Kirti Monastery monks faced disaster.

New York sends birthday messages to Panchen Lama

Open Letter to Panchen Lama

April 22, 2011

Dear Gendun Choekyi Nyima,

I don’t think you will receive this letter. I know that you’re being watched, monitored and controlled 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. But deep down I have this stubborn hope that maybe you will hear us. Maybe you’ll see us typing these words in New York, as you turn 22.

I am writing on behalf of Students for a Free Tibet, an organization with more than 50,000 members in over 100 countries. Every one of us are thinking of you at this moment. Ever since you were abducted by the Chinese government at age 6, we lost touch with you. We don’t know where you are, or how you are. But after all these years, we’re still thinking of you and fighting for your freedom. We’re not giving up.

22 is a great age to be, at least for the average boy. When I was 22, I was in my final year of college, excited but nervous at the prospect of entering the real world. I wonder how you’re feeling as you turn 22, another year in captivity, for committing no crime except that of being the Panchen Lama. The Chinese government has robbed you of your childhood, your adolescence, your identity, your rights, your friendships, and your country.

No matter what you’ve been told by your minders and tutors appointed by Beijing, there is a world out here where people are searching for you. Tibetans and supporters hang your photo in their homes or carry it in their wallets. Mothers hold your image to their chest, your photograph wet from tears and crumpled from years of separation. We have not forgotten you. In fact, with each passing year of your absence, your presence is burnt ever deeper into our memory.

Your previous incarnation, the 10th Panchen Lama, is remembered for his monumental contribution to the Tibetan nation. What is less known about him is that he was also a great Buddhist scholar. In this time of suffering and oppression, he would have enlightened us to the reality that nothing is permanent, not even China’s oppression in Tibet. Only freedom and truth will endure the test of time.

The Chinese empire stands on a foundation of lies, and these lies are falling apart. We know that the forces that keep you imprisoned are running out of time. As the world moves from darkness to light, from oppression to freedom, from dictatorship to democracy, we can see the fog clearing up on the horizon. The day is not far when you will join the real world, to live a free life, to take your rightful seat at Tashi Lhunpo Monastery.

Sending you wishes and prayers on your 22nd birthday. May you celebrate your next birthday in freedom.

Tibet will be free.

Most sincerely yours,

Tendor
Students for a Free Tibet

"Remembering The Young Monk, Phuntsog, Who Died from Self-Immolation" By Woeser

High Peaks Pure Earth has translated a blogpost by Woeser written on March 22, 2011 for the Tibetan service of Radio Free Asia and posted on her blog on April 19, 2011. 

Woeser writes about the tragic self-immolation of young monk Phuntsog from Ngaba, Eastern Tibet, who self-immolated on March 16, 2011. As Woeser points, it is an incident reminiscent of the self-immolation of Tapey in February 2009.

Meanwhile the situation in Ngaba remains tense, see recent media reports such as this one from the BBC.






On March 16 2008, when monks and lay people took to the streets in Amdo Ngaba and raised their voices in protest, among the many people that were killed by the state machinery were a pregnant women, a 5-year-old child and also a 16-year-old female middle school student, Lhundup Tso. Thus three years later on this day, many Tibetans commemorate the victims by lighting butter lamps in temples and at home. Phuntsog, a monk from Kirti monastery, commemorated by setting himself on fire.

On a sunny afternoon, he left the monastery that was under close surveillance by military police and walked on his own to the end of the sun-drenched road; here he suddenly went up in flames. From within the fireball he shouted: “Let His Holiness Return!” “Tibet must be free!” “Long live the Dalai Lama!” People gathered around watching in a state of shock, the entire street filled up with heavily armed special, ordinary, armed and plain-clothed police forces using clubs ferociously striking at Phuntsog; was this to extinguish the fire or to beat him?

On March 17 at 3 am, Phuntsog passed away. He was only 20 years old, born in 1991. His parents were from the second village in Me’urama Township, Ngaba County. Two Buddhist monks from Kirti Monastery, one lived somewhere inside Tibet and the other had crossed the snow mountains to escape to Dharamsala last year. Myself and some other friends interviewed them. They said that when they saw the military police beating Phuntsog, some monks and ordinary people rushed over and lifted Phuntsog up to take him to the hospital next to the temple, but it was already passed the hours. So they once more took him up and carried him to the monks’ residence, where his parents burst into tears of shock. They took him to the county hospital, but people there refused to take him in. To save his life, the people finally decided to pass Phuntsog over to the authorities begging them to save his life. That was at around 5 pm.

Very late that evening, the hospital was finally granted permission to take Phuntsog in and save his life but, by then, there was no hope left; early in the morning, at around 3 am, he passed away. Yet, the hospital refused to give his remains back to his relatives until 4 pm. It is said that government officials came to inspect his dead body. The monastery was told to complete any funeral activities before 8 am on March 18; they were not authorized to keep the body.

Phuntsog’s tragic death was reported by various foreign media. Even the Chinese government news agency Xinhua had to admit that this event had occurred. But initial reports referred to the victim as 24-year-old Phuntsog; later on, it was said that he was a 16-year-old teenager suffering from epilepsy. According to Xinhua, the police patrolling in the area promptly extinguished the fire and quickly took Phuntsog to the hospital for immediate medical treatment, yet “despite his heavy wounds, a gang of monks from Kirti Monastery who entertained ulterior motives, forcibly took Phuntsog out of hospital and hid him inside the monastery” and only after continuous negotiations by the local authorities and the victim’s mother did the monastery release Phuntsog so that he could be taken to the county hospital at 3 am. “Because Kirti Monastery kept Phuntsog for such a long time, precious time was lost that could have been used for the treatment of his wounds and he died on March 17 at 3:44 am.”

Xinhua News Agency tried to portray Phuntsog as someone suffering from physical or mental illness, it tried to frame the monastery and monks as murderers. These phrases were also used on February 27 last year when Tapey, a monk from Kirti monastery set himself on fire on the street and was afterwards shot by the police. After many foreign media reported on this issue, Xinhua had to admit that “a man wearing robes” had indeed set himself on fire, but they did not admit that military police had shot at him. The doctor also denied that he had any bullet wounds, and instead claimed that his body only showed combustions. However, in reality the hospital wanted to amputate his leg and right arm after removing bullets from them to crush all evidence, but only because Tapey's mother tried everything possible to prevent this from happening, they eventually could not carry out the amputation.

Xinhua also reported that Phuntsog’s father said that his son “set himself on fire, there are only combustions and no other wounds”. This was just like Tapey's case last year, Xinhua "quoted a Tibetan monk to argue that the talk about shooting was just an invention by him”. In fact, Jiangkou, the monk from Kirti Monastery who had taken and disseminated photos of the military police shooting last year, was later sentenced to 6 years and is still in prison at this very moment.

Phuntsog did not die because he set himself on fire; apart from the combustions, he had wounds from the beatings; he was beaten to death, he was killed. So March 16, the day commemorating the oppression of the Tibetan people will always be remembered for the 20-year-old monk Phuntsog who died from self-immolation.

Beijing, March 22, 2011