High-profile Tibetan Writer & Blogger Woeser Under Attack

Woeser, the well-known Tibetan writer/blogger and political dissident, is under intense cyber-attack.

On the evening of May 27th (Beijing time), Woeser discovered that her Skype account and email address were both apparently accessed and her Skype ID hijacked. Contacts of Woeser in China and Tibet have reported that people are impersonating her and contacting them. Woeser said in a statement that “this places me and my contacts in an extremely dangerous situation.” Shortly thereafter, her website was also hacked.

[UPDATE May 29th: Woeser has managed to get her blog back up online. Currently, all the archives are gone and readers can only see posts starting yesterday. Hopefully, she'll soon be able to get everything back up that was there when the site was hacked.]

While it is currently impossible to connect the attacks directly to Chinese officials, a recent profile in The Washington Post notes that Woeser’s books are banned in China and over the past two years, three different blogs she maintained on Chinese servers have been shut down. She was reportedly told by a friend at an internet company that the blogs were shut down on government orders. She has also reported being warned by Chinese police to stop writing about Tibet.

The attack on her website was claimed by the Honker Union of China (it sounds way more badass in Mandarin), a well-known network of nationalistic Chinese hackers. According to Wikipedia, the name Honker (Chinese: 紅客; pinyin: hóngkè) means “Red Guest”, as compared to the usual Chinese transliteration of the term “hacker” (黑客, hēikè, literally “Black Guest”).

The hackers removed the content of Woeser’s website and replaced it with a gif animation of the Chinese flag with the headline “LONG LIVE THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA! “DOWN WITH TIBET INDEPENDENCE!” Below the animation is a photo of Woeser with the words “Please remember this Tibetan separatist Woeser’s ugly face. Whoever sees this ugly face, please beat her hard like one beats a dog.” Further text was added and has apparently been changed several times in the hours since the site was hacked. The website is currently hosted on a server in the United States.

More recently, her husband, Chinese writer and intellectual Wang Lixiong, reported that she was placed under house arrest this past March 10th – the 49th anniversary of the 1959 Tibetan uprising in Lhasa. Protests commemorating the 1959 uprising triggered another Tibetan uprising of national proportions, with widespread demonstrations taking place throughout Tibet and continuing to this day. It seems that the confinement has been eased but that she remains under constant surveillance.

Woeser, 41, goes by one name in the Tibetan tradition. She was born in Lhasa and lives in Beijing with her husband. She writes in Chinese and has been a lone voice among Tibetans reporting on recent Tibetan protests across the country and the ensuing crackdown, including details about the situation in Tibetan areas in the wake of the May 12th earthquake.

Below is the English translation of an urgent statement she sent out in an attempt to warn her contacts.

[Subject:] Woeser warning her correspondents on Skype!

Dear friends, in order to spy on me and others on my Skype contact list, someone has for a while on Skype claimed that he or she is an overseas Tibetan, an officer from the Tibetan government-in-exile, or having secrets to pass on etc. It looks that he or she has stolen the list of my Skype contacts. Yet, after I posted a warning to inform my contacts of such a development, someone hijacked my account around 10 pm on May 27th. My password has been changed and I can no longer log in. As far as I can tell, the hijacker has begun to make contact with people in my account. This places me and my contacts in an extremely dangerous situation. Therefore, I am sending the strongest warning. Please stop any communication with “Degewa” on Skype, delete or lock out this user’s name from your Skype account, warn anyone you know who might try to contact me through Skype, tell them to cease contact with “Degewa.”

From now on, if you receive any Skype message from “me” in any other users’ name, please speak first (Tibetan friends, please speak in Tibetan) to verify “my identity.” If the other side of the contact refuses to talk, it means you are not in touch with me.

Also, I suggest you and other friends to avoid this kind of trap by talking, rather than writing, via Skype.

Woeser
Early morning in Beijing
May 28th 2008

Woeser is probably considered a nuisance by the Chinese government for the simple reason that she engages in courageous truth-telling. Her ‘Tibet Updates’ have chronicled the protests and ensuing crackdown throughout Tibet over the last couple months. Her May 9-15 Tibet Update reported the alarming news that the regional government in the epicenter zone issued an urgent document on the day the earthquake struck entitled “Combining work on anti-separatism and safeguarding stability with disaster relief work.” She wrote that Chinese officials also sent letters encouraging local authorities in earthquake-affected Tibetan areas to “be responsible for both anti-separatism and the disaster relief work.”

Elevating her from a nuisance to a threat in the eyes of Chinese officials is the fact that in addition to telling untellable truths, she writes her essays and poetry in a voice that conveys a specific contemporary Tibetan combination of despair, pride, and resistance. Which is to say that her voice alone bears many untellable truths about Tibet, and the spirit of her generation. That her voice inspires younger generations of Tibetans is in itself another untellable truth.

As enemies of truth, it is obvious and expected that the current hard-line Chinese leadership should try to stop a compulsive truth-teller. But they can’t.

Repressing Woeser only amplifies her truth, and many others, about Tibet.

[excerpt from Woeser's poem, "Secrets of Tibet"]

Once in a while, the masked demon reveals its true face,
frightening even the ancient deities.
Yet, the challenges have emboldened the ordinary birth;
who turn prayers in the deep nights into cries under the sun,
who convert whines behind the high walls into songs spread wide.

They are arrested! Punishments increased! Life sentences!
Executions postponed! Shot dead!

I usually keep quiet because I barely know anything.
Having been born and raised under the bugles of the PLA,
I am a suitable inheritor of Communism.

Egg under the red flag, suddenly cracked and broken.
Nearing middle age, belated anger is about to blurt from my throat.
I cannot stop my tears for the suffering Tibetans younger than me.

Finding the good in the horrible

If there is anything good to be found in the Chinese government’s murderous crackdown on the pro-independence demonstrations spreading like wildfire across Tibet, it is that the Tibetan people are now more unified than ever in their common identity and common demand for freedom and independence. 

Throughout history, foreign occupation or colonialism has strengthened a subjugated nation’s unity, and this has always been an ominous sign for the oppressor.

Reports the Washington Post:

The groundswell of activity suggests that anger over the Chinese government’s role in Tibet extends far beyond the remote mountainous region, particularly to outlying provinces that are home to an estimated 3 million ethnic Tibetans. Many resent Beijing’s criticism of their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, and the economic development that has mainly benefited the region’s Han Chinese, China’s dominant ethnic group.

“What we’ve seen is a revitalization of a sense of shared Tibetan identity and cultural and religious pride in the last few days,” said Kate Saunders, a spokeswoman for the Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet.

Historically, Tibet has grappled with regionalism between Tibetans living in the three traditional provinces of U-Tsang (itself two distinct regions, U and Tsang), Kham, and Amdo.  With the threat of Chinese invasion in the late 1940s, we saw Tibetans band together, but then after the invasion China chopped Tibet up among the “Tibetan Autonomous Region” and areas incorporated into the provinces of Qinghai, Sichuan, Yunnan and Gansu.  China has purposely been trying to “divide and conquer” Tibetans ever since.

What we are seeing now, though, is a beautiful, inspiring, powerful sense of unity and togetherness among Tibetans across the Tibetan plateau (and even those studying in Beijing!).  As a Tibetan, it is enough to bring tears to my eyes. 

So to my people in Tibet (forget you, China), I say: Tibetans are united, and Tibet will be free.

From SFGate “Message in the Ice”

Ethnic Tibetans write a Tibetan prayer for good fortune on the surface of a frozen river in Yushu, China. A human rights group accused China of actively trying to undermine the Tibetan language in an effort to assimilate the region’s unique culture.

Original post here

Turning Point for Tibet?

This is an exciting time for Tibet. As the Beijing Olympics approach, it’s good to assess now and then where the Tibet movement is. More and more, the Tibet movement has been winning important victories — even as repression worsens inside Tibet.

Internationally, HH the Dalai Lama is receiving more honors than at any time since he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989. This includes the US Congressional Gold Medal (America’s highest civilian award), honorary Canadian citizenship (an honor only shared with Nelson Mandela and Raoul Wallenberg), and unprecedented official meetings with the German chancellor and Canadian prime minister.

As Canada’s Globe and Mail says,

The Dalai Lama and supporters of a free Tibet have been winning a number of battles on the international stage in recent years, hoping to force the Chinese government to loosen its grip on the region ahead of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

In similar news, over two-thirds of Canadians, according to a recent poll, now believe their government should raise the issue of Tibetan human rights and freedoms with the Chinese government, regardless of its potential impact on trade with China.

In the global media, Tibet is being discussed more and more often. The issue is frequently linked with the Beijing Olympics, and also in the context of the Chinese government’s religious repression and economic colonization there. It seems that the Chinese government’s plan to use the media around the Olympics to spotlight its claim to Tibet has backfired. After China’s entire Olympic party was spoiled by a few Tibet activists with a banner, video cameras and laptop computers, you can bet that the Chinese government is worried about what it’s brought upon itself.

Even Taiwanese president Chen Shui-bian recently declared that Taiwan will support “the Tibetan people in safeguarding their fundamental human rights and fighting for their right to self-determination.”

Inside Tibet, of course, religious and political repression is getting worse (although it is sometimes hard to believe that is even possible). But brave Tibetans like Runggye Adak, and the hundreds who called for his release, continue to surprise the Chinese government by showing that Tibetans’ resistance lives on.

Tibetans should also be inspired by the dramatic protests against the military government in Burma, being led by Buddhist monks. In Tibet too, monks have been at the forefront of the freedom struggle, which is why the Chinese government has struggled so hard to control Tibetan Buddhism. But try as it might, China has failed. The Burmese protests are a reminder that repression only temporarily constrains a people’s dissatisfaction — it can never erase it. This is equally true in Tibet.

So those of us on the outside should take heart from a confluence of factors. Outside Tibet, the Tibet movement has recently been piling on victories against the Chinese government, which must be feeling its grip over Tibet is more and more assailed. Inside Tibet, the Tibetan people have shown remarkable bravery in the face of an upsurge in repression. And the inspiring example of the Burmese monks show us that even when it appears that a dictatorship has completely won, a people can shake the government to its very core. When all these factors come together, we can see real change.

Tibetan Students Used as Olympic Props

News flash: the Chinese government is using Tibetan school children as Olympic props. According to China’s official Xinhua News, 2,008 middle school students from Lhasa were made to act as “human dominos” in the shape of the Olympic rings to celebrate the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

We missed the article when it first came out, since it was overshadowed by worldwide media attention on SFT’s dramatic protests in Beijing and the Great Wall. But this is simply too outrageous to let go:

Tibet Welcomes Olympics With Domino Show (Xinhua, Aug. 9, 2007)

More than 4,000 people gathered on Wednesday at a ceremony marking the one-year countdown to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

The celebration started with a creative performance in which 2,008 middle school students from Lhasa imitated the domino effect by gently falling to the ground one after another in front of the Potala Palace, forming the pattern of the Olympic rings and the number “2008″.

[...] More than 2,000 local residents and tourists watched the performance.

[...] Song Haiyan, sales assistant at the only souvenir shop in Tibet [really the only?], said trial sales since the shop was opened a month ago has been satisfactory, and she is optimistic about future business.

The Chinese authorities exploited Tibetan middle school students as human props in their Olympic propaganda. This is a perfect example of how the Chinese government is shamelessly using the Olympics to try to legitimate its occupation of Tibet.

Tellingly, there was apparently a one-to-one ratio of performers to spectators. We can conclude that this was a carefully stage-managed event, with Tibetans only grudgingly attending. Hardly an outpouring of support. This sort of silly, melodramatic spectacle is totally alien to Tibetan culture, and is clearly dreamed up by some communist bureaucrat.

The other ironic thing is that the “sales assistant” at the souvenir shop clearly has a Chinese name. What are the chances that this shop is Chinese-owned, employs Chinese, and sells goods imported from China? Given how the Chinese government is actively encouraging ethnic Chinese to settle in Tibet for political reasons, the chances are pretty good.

Sometimes Xinhua News reveals more than it intends to.

Tibetan Government-in-exile Repudiates China’s Reincarnation Rules

The democratically-elected Tibetan government-in-exile (TGIE) has strongly rebuked the Chinese Communist Party’s attempt to seize control of Tibetan Buddhist reincarnations.

In a press statement issued jointly with the heads of all the schools of Tibetan Buddhism, the TGIE calls the Chinese government’s new regulations, which went into effect September 1, ”ludicrous and unwarranted.”

These regulations, the TGIE and religious heads write, are absurd from the perspective of religious freedom, the tenets of Tibetan Buddhism, the history of the institution of reincarnation, and the wishes of the Tibetan Buddhist community.

They also call on Tibetans in Tibet, including government cadres, to use the autonomy rights that Chinese law claims (at least on paper) to give to Tibet to oppose the implementation of these terrible regulations.

Here is the press statement:

Joint Statement to Repudiate the so-called Order no. 5 of China’s State Administration of Religious Affairs on Management Measures for the Reincarnation of ‘Living Buddhas’ in Tibetan Buddhism

Ludicrous and unwarranted as it is, China’s State Administration of Religious Affairs has come out with a document called the order no. 5, containing 14 articles on Management Measures for the Reincarnation of ‘Living Buddhas’ in Tibetan Buddhism which, it said, will take effect on 1 September. Replete with contradictory statements and wild claims, the document reflects the ulterior or true motives of the Chinese leadership. Since it will serve as a big tool for the Chinese government to brutally repress the innocent Tibetans under their tyrannical rule - and will also be recorded as a gross historical misrepresentation - we feel it is necessary to issue a statement, repudiating this document through a brief analysis of its contents.

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Sept. 1, 2007 — Anguish for Tibet, Shame for China

Today, September 1, 2007, is truly a black day. Today, China’s ridiculous new regulations come into effect, claiming for the Chinese Communist Party the right to approve Tibetan Buddhist reincarnations.

It is impossible to overstate the anguish these regulations are causing in Tibetans’ hearts.

One Tibetan we spoke with described it this way: an overwhelming and dizzying sense of despair, as if someone were ripping their heart out and leaving only a hollow, aching cavity… They said China does anything it wants to Tibetans, trampling them with no hesitation… And just when they thought there is nothing more China can do — after occupying their country, ravaging their civilization, and doing what it pleases on their land — then it attacks what is most precious to their faith and identity… Thy said the whole world is watching and tut tutting at how absurd this is, but no one is doing anything… And Tibetans are left to suffer whatever fate their overlords in Beijing decide.

To say the Chinese government is bringing shame on itself is an understatement. It is showing how vile, ridiculous, and simply wrong its control over Tibet is. How can a government capable of this depravity have any honor at all? And this is the government that will be hosting the world at the Olympic Games in 11 months?

The Chinese government should be careful — the more it pushes Tibetans, the more they will resist. The more it oppresses Tibetans, the more they will realize that independence is the only way they can reclaim their rights.

We at SFT share a sense of anguish today, and a renewed determination to work tirelessly for the independence of Tibet. To the Chinese government, we say: we have confronted you in your embassies, in Tibet, and in your capital. The Beijing Olympics are coming in 11 months… and so are we.

Tibet will be free. Bod rangzen topgyi re.

Channel 4 TV (UK) Reports From Tibet

SFT’s Everest and Beijing actions continue to impact news stories about the Olympics, China, and Tibet. 

In the latest example, the UK’s Channel 4 News ran a TV story on August 28 about how the Chinese government is exerting socio-economic control over Tibet.  The anchor started out the broadcast mentioning SFT’s “free Tibet” banners, and said that Tibet has “been under Chinese control for more than fifty years.”

Mentioning that journalists rarely get access to Tibet, the story then follows Channel 4 reporter Lindsey Hilsum as she visits Tibet, always accompanied by Chinese government minders.  Despite the tight control over her reporting, the story she filed is well worth watching. 

Highlights include:

• An interview with the Tibetan writer Woeser, describing how the Chinese government forces its development policies on Tibetans. (”We’re forced to take something, told it’s good, that we’re being treated kindly.  This is colonialist.”)
• A patronizing Chinese official claiming Tibetan culture is an “exotic flower among Chinese cultures.”
• The negative social impact of the forced settlement of nomads, including welfare-dependency and making it easier for the government to control Tibetans.

(Click here and click on “Watch the Report”).

Terrifying Implications of China’s New Reincarnation Rules

It is heart-rending, simply heart-rending, to consider the implications of the Chinese government’s new regulations claiming the right to control Tibetan Buddhist reincarnations.  While we wrote about this issue before (here, here and here), a new analysis by the Congressional-Executive Commission on China drives home how terrifying the implications of this regulation could be. 

There is no way Tibetans will simply accept this attack on their very civilization, but the Chinese government can be expected to use its full array of violent and coercive means to implement its will.  In the meantime, this regulation shows that the Chinese government’s claim of religious freedom in Tibet is a cynical lie, and that Tibetans cannot be free until they rule themselves.

The CECC’s analysis is as follows:

New Legal Measures Assert Unprecedented Control Over Tibetan Buddhist Reincarnation

The Chinese government State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA) issued legal measures on July 18, 2007, that if fully implemented could transform Tibetan Buddhism as it exists in China into a less substantial, more completely state-managed institution, and further isolate Tibetan Buddhist communities from their counterparts outside China. The “Measures on the Management of the Reincarnation of Living Buddhas in Tibetan Buddhism” (MMR) (Web site of the SARA (in Chinese), 18 July 07) take effect on September 1. The MMR (ICT translation) would empower the Chinese Communist Party and government to gradually reshape Tibetan Buddhism by controlling one of the religion’s most unique and important features—lineages of teachers that Tibetan Buddhists believe are reincarnations and that can span centuries. As elderly reincarnations pass away, the measures authorize government officials to decide whether or not a reincarnation is eligible to reincarnate, and if one is permitted, the government will supervise the search for the subsequent reincarnation, as well as religious education and training.

An August 3 SARA statement (Xinhua, reprinted in People’s Daily) describes the government objective as “an important move to institutionalize management on reincarnation of living Buddhas.” A SARA official summarized political requirements of a reincarnation under Article 2 of the MMR: “The selection of reincarnates must preserve national unity and solidarity of all ethnic groups and the selection process cannot be influenced by any group or individual from outside the country.” The remark refers to the Dalai Lama and other high-ranking Tibetan Buddhist teachers living in exile in India and elsewhere. This provision underscores how the MMR will further subordinate traditional Tibetan Buddhism to Party policy, and heighten the barrier between Tibetan Buddhists in China and their teachers and co-religionists living abroad.

The MMR establishes or expands government procedural control of the principal stages of identifying and educating reincarnated Tibetan Buddhist teachers, including:

• Determining whether or not a reincarnated teacher who passes away may be reincarnated again, and whether a monastery is entitled to have a reincarnated teacher in residence (Arts. 3-4).
• Conducting a search for a reincarnation (Arts. 5-7).
• Recognizing a reincarnation and obtaining government approval of the recognition (Arts. 4, 7-9).
• Seating (installing) a reincarnation in a monastery (Art. 10).
• Providing education and religious training for a reincarnation (Art. 12).

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Newsweek: China’s “Absurd Act of Totalitarianism” in Tibet

The current issue of Newsweek has a great article about China’s ridiculous claim that it has the right to control Tibetan Buddhist reincarnation.  Newsweek calls it “one of history’s more absurd acts of totalitarianism.”  Well said.

We previously discussed this issue (here, here and here), so we’ll just quote this relatively short article in its entirety:

China Regulates Buddhist Reincarnation

By Matthew Philips

In one of history’s more absurd acts of totalitarianism, China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission. According to a statement issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, the law, which goes into effect next month and strictly stipulates the procedures by which one is to reincarnate, is “an important move to institutionalize management of reincarnation.” But beyond the irony lies China’s true motive: to cut off the influence of the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual and political leader, and to quell the region’s Buddhist religious establishment more than 50 years after China invaded the small Himalayan country. By barring any Buddhist monk living outside China from seeking reincarnation, the law effectively gives Chinese authorities the power to choose the next Dalai Lama, whose soul, by tradition, is reborn as a new human to continue the work of relieving suffering.

At 72, the Dalai Lama, who has lived in India since 1959, is beginning to plan his succession, saying that he refuses to be reborn in Tibet so long as it’s under Chinese control. Assuming he’s able to master the feat of controlling his rebirth, as Dalai Lamas supposedly have for the last 600 years, the situation is shaping up in which there could be two Dalai Lamas: one picked by the Chinese government, the other by Buddhist monks. “It will be a very hot issue,” says Paul Harrison, a Buddhism scholar at Stanford. “The Dalai Lama has been the prime symbol of unity and national identity in Tibet, and so it’s quite likely the battle for his incarnation will be a lot more important than the others.”

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