The story China wants to kill

First they killed Kelsang Namtso, then they tried to kill the story.

In September 2006, Chinese border patrol fired at a group of Tibetan refugees escaping over the Himalayas into the uncertain exile of Nepal. One of the bullets hit 17-year-old nun Kelsang Namtso, who bled to death in the snow. The story would have died, like many other stories of Tibetans who never make it to freedom, in the Himalayan darkness had it not been for a Romanian climber with a camera who caught everything on tape.

Dolma Paklyi, survivor of the Nangpa la atrocity and Kelsang Namtso’s best friend, eventually made it to Nepal and then to India. She carried the story with her, and in a way, gave life to the memory of Kelsang Namtso.

“Murder in the High Himalaya” by Jonathan Green is the story of Dolma and Kelsang’s friendship, their journey to freedom, their sacrifice and solidarity, and their hopes and dreams. Here is a trailer about the book: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5EBDZU8uuo&feature=share.

This book is finally coming out in paperback. I highly encourage everyone to buy the paperback at Amazon, or in Barnes & Nobles or any other major book stores. Let’s help bring the Nangpa la story to life. This is the only way to bring justice, if it’s ever possible, to Kelsang Namtso.

Do Tibetans Benefit from “Comfortable Housing”? By Woeser

Photo taken in July 2007 in Yushu, Qinghai Province. Under construction is the village for "ecological migrants" but should be called a "new urban slum".

High Peaks Pure Earth has translated a blogpost by Woeser written on May 4, 2011 for the Tibetan service of Radio Free Asia and posted on her blog on May 9, 2011.

This blogpost follows on from the recent blogpost "Is Migration to Tibet Unrelated to Government Policies?" that critiqued a report based on the visit of a delegation of representatives of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee to Central Tibet and Amdo in September 2010.

The full text of the report is available on the official website of the Central Tibetan Administration: http://www.tibet.net/en/index.php?id=2213&articletype=flash&rmenuid=morenews&tab=1 

For more information on the policy of "Comfortable Housing", see this 2007 report by Human Rights Watch titled “No One Has the Liberty to Refuse”.

Photo taken in August 2008 in Rebkong, Amdo. Photo shows "Comfortable Housing".

Photo taken in August 2007, in a village for "ecological migrants" in Gormo, Qinghai. Photo shows their simple temple.

In the report based on the visit of a delegation of representatives of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, there is one more conclusion which is worth discussing; the report claims that Tibetans benefit from “Comfortable Housing”. “Members of the delegation were able to confirm both the extent of this massive housing initiative, and the generally appreciative Tibetan attitude about it”.

This so-called “Comfortable Housing”, together with “Ecological Migration” and the “Settlement of Nomadic People” in Amdo and Kham areas, belongs to what the government calls “guiding farmers and herdsmen towards a more modern and civilised lifestyle”. The Autonomous Region’s top-level official, Zhang Qingli, said that “this is our struggle with the Dalai clique over taking the initiative to provide basic living conditions” and praised “the Communist Party as the real Living Buddha of the common people”.

Perhaps neither the Chinese nor the American sides have been aware of the fact that the U-Tsang farmers who moved from their old huts built from debris into “Comfortable Housing” came up with a name for their new homes: “Palkhar Lodroe Khangsar” - “Palkhar” means white forehead, which is a metaphor for bad luck; if, for example, both one’s parents die at a very young age, one can say one has “Palko kharpo charsha”, meaning that one’s forehead has gone white. “Lodroe” refers to cow lungs and intestines, which in the past would only be eaten by the lowest class of people; it is a metaphor for a vulgar and poverty-stricken lifestyle. Finally, “Khangsar” means new house - from these names created on the basis of traditional customs, we can see that farmers by no means approve of “Comfortable Housing”. Yet, what can disapproval really do? These are all integration measures taken by the government, one has no choice but to accept it.

People from Kham call “Comfortable Housing”, “Lagyag Khangba”, which means “hand-raising housing”. There is a whole series of “Lagyag” sayings; for instance “hand-raising solar stove”, “hand-raising tent” etc. “Hand Raising” simply means “to agree”. Only if one agrees, one will be given certain things; but the question is, what does one have to agree to? In line with the Party’s political principles of the “politics on command” and “maintaining stability is the top priority”, the first thing someone from the Autonomous Region when going through the civil servant examination has to attest is that one is “against separatism” and that one “criticises the Dalai”. When herdsmen move into “Comfortable Housing”, they have to raise their hands in approval and express that they are “against the Dalai clique” and that they “thank the Party”.

To build these housing compounds for herdsmen, during the first stage, the government provides ten thousand RMB and the people have to ask for a loan of ten thousand RMB, without any exceptions made to the single-storeyed Tibetan clay wall houses. In the second stage, the government provides ten thousand RMB and the herdsmen have to pay back an installment of ten thousand RMB, plus take out an additional loan of thirty thousand RMB, without any exceptions made to the red-tiled Han-style concrete blocks. And all houses have to be decorated with five-starred red flags, if not, they will be denounced. A local cadre said to me: “If one was really concerned about the needs of the herdsmen, instead of focusing on each village, the ‘settlements’ would be built somewhere near to where the nomads dwell during winter, this would actually help them. We know that the government is trying to use economic incentives as enticements. This is a grand idea but it does not really gain the approval of local herdsmen”.

In the vast Tibetan territory, “Comfortable Housing” in different areas has different emphases; the most terrible, however, is the method of “ecological migration”. Not long ago, the government “vigorously implemented a large-scale five year plan fostering the settlement of nomadic people from Qinghai Province, leading to fifty three thousand people leaving behind once and for all their nomadic lifestyles.” The main reason given was the degeneration of the grasslands caused by too much grazing. However, in reality, decades of continuous mining has been the main cause of destruction. I have seen some photos taken in the mid-1980s showing vast amounts of migrants from the outside who, like ants, crowded on the Matoe grasslands frantically digging for gold; today, this area has already become infertile. Another area of grasslands in Serthar, which is commonly referred to as the “swift golden horse”, has been exposed to mining for an entire ten years. Today, there is no gold left and people start to “return home”. But the area will never recover again.

Along with the disappearing of grassland areas and mineral resources such as gold, we also witness the erasure of traditional Tibetan culture and lifestyles. I will never forget the conversation I had with a few Khampa men in the new “ecological migrants” village, situated in the suburbs of Gormo in Qinghai Province, which is home to over 300 households. I asked them whether they liked it here or whether they preferred their home land? They said that of course they preferred their home land, since here there did not exist a single blade of grass and with any wisp of wind, there would be sandstorms. I also asked: when you moved here, did your Mountain Deity move with you? They lowered their heads and said: how is that possible? We had to abandon our Mountain Deity; and we also abandoned all our cattle and sheep...

Beijing, May 4, 2011

"Jampel! Jampel!" Memorial Show in Lhasa for Late Tibetan Artist Jampel

"Is Migration to Tibet Unrelated to Government Policies?" By Woeser

A report based on the visit of a delegation of representatives of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee to Central Tibet and the Amdo region of Tibet was recently made public and even translated into Chinese. As someone who has been in contact with this delegation, I am naturally interested in this report and have already discussed it with several fellow Tibetans. The general opinion is that after rushing through Tibet in 12 days, accompanied by Chinese officials, producing a report that touches upon such a vast variety of issues is quite an achievement.

However, first, it needs to be pointed out that the report states that “staff members enjoyed several hours of unaccompanied time each morning and evening”, during which they could “travel unescorted around Lhasa, observing city life and chatting with a variety of residents and visitors to the city”. To me, this just sounds like a wonderful thing.

Last year, I returned to Lhasa twice, and altogether spent four months there, witnessing with my own eyes the great show that is put on in the streets of Lhasa. For example, one day, the military police suddenly vacated the bustling streets of the city, the officers patrolling the old town changed their outfits into yellow sportswear or jeans and even the special police forces on the roofs of Tibetan houses covered up half of their bodies, making visible only a broad line of black hats appearing and disappearing on the roofs. The next day, it was reported on Tibetan TV that a group of domestic and foreign journalists had come to Lhasa to conduct interviews, and government officials asked them in all seriousness to report on the “real Tibet”. These kinds of big shows are often put on, Lhasa people have already grown accustomed to them. Hence, the report’s following sentence stating that “China’s willingness to open Tibet to foreign official visitors reflects growing confidence among Chinese authorities that conditions in Tibet have stabilised”, should be changed into “reflects the confidence among Chinese authorities in their presentation of the stable conditions in Tibet”.

In view of this, although the report touches upon many important problems, some of its conclusions are still worth questioning. For example, looking at the case of immigration, the report states that “indeed, a surprising finding is that Han migration appears to be occurring organically, and does not appear to be the result of a deliberate Chinese government policy to populate Tibet with non-Tibetans. The migration of ethnic Han settlers to Tibet is more the byproduct of Chinese economic development strategies than a goal of them”.

In reality, however, already before the protests in March 2008, Tibet went through a reform of the household registration system, so as to encourage people from inside China to settle in Tibet and provide them with a Tibetan hukou (household registration). Workers from Sichuan, Henan, Shaanxi, Gansu and other provinces who came to build houses, open restaurants, repair cars, grow vegetables etc all had a “double hukou” and quite a few even changed their ethnic status. Many migrants bring their entire families along, so special migrant workers schools have been set up to cater to these people and even in local experimental primary schools or in Lhasa middle school, the proportion of non-Tibetan pupils is high. As for “college entrance exam migration”, out of the over 60 Tibetan students admitted to Beijing’s main universities, almost half are non-Tibetans who have changed their ethnic status and are officially registered as Tibetans.

Simultaneously, in the name of development and the need for outstanding talents and investment opportunities, a series of preferential policies was passed; for example in the 2000 “provisional regulations to attract talent” in Lhasa it is declared that “special preferential policies should apply to talent with regards to job title, research funding, salary, bonuses, accommodation, and household registration”. After the opening of the Qinghai-Tibet railway, “Phoenix Weekly” reported in a special article titled “Gun Shots Startle Potala Palace”: “in 2006, the Tibet Autonomous Region formulated a series of policies and measures to encourage Chinese and foreign business people to participate in mining activities by providing them with special assistance regarding tax, land seizure, finance and other formalities”. In 2009, the “the summary of preferential policies for Lhasa Economic and Technological Development Zone” was launched, which placed emphasis on “combining the preferential policies regarding Tibet put forward by the Fourth Work Forum on Tibet with the actual situation of the Development Zone” and provide attractive preferential policies regarding land, tax, loans, foreign trade, industry and commerce, and administration. In terms of household registration, those who invest more than 100 thousand RMB will be promised to obtain a non-rural hukou for “themselves, their spouse and their children”. The rural hukou can solve the problem of the so-called special “blue-print hukou; after having worked or lived in the Tibet Autonomous Region for 3 years, people’s hukou will change into a non-rural, permanent one”.

Furthermore, the state examination to become a civil servant does not require a test in Tibetan language, which also represents an invisible encouragement to migrate. As for taxi drivers, which are even required to have a local hukou in the capital city Beijing, in Lhasa out of the over 1300 taxi-drivers, only a minority number are actually Tibetan. Also, after 2008, Tibet has started offering positions to former members of the PLA; for example, in the Tibet Autonomous Region Federation of Literary and Art Circles, which I used to work for, many non-professional former members of the PLA have been employed over recent years.

Beijing, April 27, 2011

It Was Not a Good Day to be a Chinese Official

In the early morning hours on Monday, May 9^th, a group of us drove from New York to Washington D.C., to raise our voices at the U.S. China Strategic and Economic Dialogue. When our van pulled up in D.C., Tibetans were already confronting four full buses of Chinese officials and military personal.

SFT board member, Tenzing Barshee, unveiled a Tibetan flag in the face of Deputy Chief of the People’s Liberation Army, General Ma Xiaotian. Tibetan palas and amalas placed flags over the windows of their buses as activists confronted the Chinese officials.

As Tibetans in Ngaba, Eastern Tibet continue to experience repression from Beijing, Tibetans in D.C., brought their voices straight to the Chinese leadership.

By 1:00 PM, we gathered in front of the State Department. As 20 of us began to raise our bull horns, voices, and flags, we were joined by the 8 Ngaba Peace Marchers. During the previous 7 days, the marchers had epically walked from New York to Washington D.C., and insisted on walking the distance from Capitol Hill, where they lobbied their congressional representatives, to the State Department.

For the next 3 hours, we had unprecedented access to limousines and buses full of Chinese officials. We hounded them.

It was reported,”…protesters chanted “Shame on China!” and held signs outside the building that read “China — Stop Military Crackdown in Ngaba, Tibet! (Huffington Post)” and “Tibetan protesters demanded that China ensure the freedom of monks at the Kirti monastery (AFP).”

Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton responded to the Dialogue by saying, the Chinese leadership “is trying to stop history, which is a fool’s errand” and called Beijing’s human rights record “deplorable.”

That night, back in New York, as I walked home, exhausted, my face burned by the sun, and my voice lost, I thought of the 8 marchers who tirelessly walked from New York to Washington D.C. I thought of the hundreds of monks, students, and lay Tibetans in Ngaba whose calls for human rights and freedom we delivered to the Chinese leadership.

It indeed was not a good day to be a Chinese official.

Click here to view photos from the protest.