PROCESO.COM.MX: “Tibet: Immolations in the face of despair”

MEXICO, D.F. (I open).- Chinese security forces fire on peaceful demonstration in Tibetan village of Shukpa, Kardze prefecture. The balance: a dead, several injured. Moments before, a hundred people demanded the release of community leader Wangdak, who had to receive Chinese government officials visiting the place with his people.

Wangdak filed a complaint against Chinese officials for harassing women members of the village's traditional dance troupe. After, called for a horse race and a traditional prayer, banned by the government. The leader was arrested at midnight on Monday 11 of August.

five days later –17 of August– a young man named Lo Phelsang committed suicide in protest against lack of medical care. Also, That same day another young man died 22 years from injuries. Three days later two more people died..

Two and a half hundred Chinese military personnel remained in the town. Communication was cut off. The events were only narrated through portals such as FreeTibet.

Almost a month later, in front of a police station in Tsoe City, northeast China, Lhamo Tashi, a young Tibetan from 22 years, He set himself on fire like the Tunisian Mohamed Bouazizi did in the run-up to the Arab uprisings of the 2011.

Tashi's body was cremated by Chinese police and then returned to his family without explanation.. The day of Tashi's sacrifice, the new president and general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping, made his first visit to India.

The immolation of Lhamo Tashi is the number 132 From the 2009, but the first in five months, during which, according to Tibetan sources, Demonstrations against various policies of the Chinese government have increased, who have received repression as a response.

The immolations “are such dramatic events that the Chinese cannot manipulate them in any way.”. They have to accept them. "They represent a call and cry from the Tibetan population.", Marco Antonio Karam says, president and founder of Casa Tibet in Mexico.

“It is a way in which Tibetans, respecting the spirit of non-violence of Buddhist culture, "They express their radical disagreement with what is happening today in Tibet and they do so by sacrificing their own lives.", dice.

The “final solution””

The policy that the Chinese government maintains towards Tibet and that the Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of the Tibetans, called for decades the “final solution” through “assimilation”, continues to the degree, Asevera Karam, that the Chinese government is relegating the teaching of Tibetan in official schools since 2010.

“One of the things that bothers Tibetans the most is the policy that China implements regarding the education of Tibetans in the educational system”, Karam points out..

He 22 of October of 2010 A series of student protests spread from Qinghai to Beijing over reforms that imposed Mandarin Chinese as an official school language and Tibetan only as a language to be used in class.. She further , Education in Chinese was imposed for primary schools in rural areas.

Tibetan teachers then advocated for “authentic bilingual education”, according to a news site SaveTibet of the 25 May 2011.

“It represents China's final strategy to erode Tibetan culture.”; “By eroding language, culture is eroded.”, denounces Karam. “English is even taught as a secondary language.”, not the Tibetan”, duck.

in 2011 The Human Rights Council of the United Nations issued an “urgent appeal” to the Chinese government about restrictions imposed on the use of Tibetan in schools in the Tibet Autonomous Prefecture.

Currently, news agencies like Xinhua publish stories with headlines like: China Focus: China strives to preserve Tibetan language (26 February 2014).

A translator named Genqub Tenzin says in the note: “We have to act faster to update the Tibetan lexicon. Hopefully, We will also promote ordinary Tibetan to replace dialects in different parts of Tibet and in other Tibetan communities in the western part of China.".

In addition to the sending of millions of Han Chinese to Tibetan territory, of which there are no official figures but the Dalai Lama has denounced since the eighties that it surpasses the native population, the Chinese government started in 2009 a policy that the media called “relocation”.

According to a Xinhua note from January of that year titled “Tibetans learn to live in their new homes”, The relocation of the population to a reserve called Sanjiangyuan was intended to “protect” the Source of Three Rivers Nature Reserve in Qinghai Province, source of the Yangtze rivers, Yellow and Lancang.

According to Karam, It is in these territories where the pre-communist culture of Tibet is preserved, based on goat and yak herding, with which milk and butter are produced. There is no agricultural way of life there due to the poverty of humus in the land., so life is transhumant.

“The nomads have achieved a thousand 800 years to live sustainably with this environment”, says the director of Casa Tibet. “Now they are forced to abandon that way of life and settle in urban centers, like Lhasa (capital of Tibet)”.

Tinley Namgyal, of 32 years, He was the Tibetan who immolated himself five months ago, before Lhamo Tashin. Namgyal was from a semi-nomadic family forced to migrate to the cities due to the construction of a hydroelectric plant in Dawu., also in Kardze prefecture. In July, security forces opened fire on the population of Dawu who had decided to celebrate the Dalai Lama's birthday., according to Namgyal's profile that exists on the portal FreeTibet.

The treasure house in the West

The Chinese call Tibet Xizang, which means “the treasure house in the West”. The Tibetan Plateau is the longest and highest region on earth source of 10 river systems that promote irrigation, energy and drinking water to a thousand 300 millions on the planet, according to the English-language news agency ChinaDialogue through its ThethirdPole project (the third pole, What is Tibet called because of its water reserves?).

The research article “The rise of dam construction in China: an attack on river systems” , published by Professor Charlton Lewis of Yale University on 14 November 2013, details the effects that the construction of dams has had on rivers that originate in Tibet such as the Yellow, El Yang Tse (the third largest river in the world that houses the Three Gorges Dam) and the possible effects of dam construction on the Nu and the Yarlung Tsangpo-Brahamaputra (the last two free-flowing rivers).

The text details that they have planned 130 reservoirs on rivers that start from Tibet with which for the 2020 China hopes to generate 120 thousand megawatts of renewable energy.

In May of that 2009, For example, six women were injured with a firearm by the police for opposing the construction of a hydroelectric plant in Tawu, Proviction of Sichuan.

In addition to hydroelectric projects, In March of 2010 the Chinese government announced that it would explode 3 thousand mineral reserves in Tibet. That year there were various protests in Huatailong (June) y Kham (August). During the latter, the Army's repression caused three deaths, according to the article “Mining, the new colonization of Tibet”, from the TibetOffice site.

That five months have passed in which there were no immolations does not mean that there have not been other forms of suicide as a way of protesting in Tibet.. Phakpa Gyaltsen, of 32 years, showed his opposition to a mining project in the Gewar town, in Zogang province, stabbing himself and throwing himself off a building. The events occurred on 7 of May. After his death, a demonstration was held to stop mining activity. According to the AsiaNews portal, The Chinese police chose one member from each family in the village (60 in total) and imprisoned them.

In these five months, the majority of protests, except Shukpa's, they went against mining projects. He 4 In August there were protests in three villages in the Nangchen region, Qinghai Prefecture, against coal mines proposed for the region.

He 1 In July, a protest was held in the village of Martag against a copper project that affects sacred spaces in the town.. Around 100 police beat protesters. one month before 30 Tibetans arrested for protesting marble mine in Chabcha region, according to the RadioFreeAsia portal.

“It is linked to their cultural values. The sense of the interdependence of the human being with nature is fundamental to Buddhism. They are destroying that too”, Asevera Karam.

He 10 March 2008 A Tibetan uprising began in the context of the Beijing Olympics and the 49 anniversary of the uprising 1959. The protests were led by monks who called for the release of their fellow prisoners in 2007 for celebrating the Dalai Lama being awarded the US Congressional Medal.

The news after the uprising was contradictory. On the one hand, the Chinese agencies alleged the murder of Chinese merchants; on the other hand, Tibetan agencies alleged repression and violation of human rights. The crisis set a precedent for envoys of the Dalai Lama to sit at the table with Chinese delegates. In October the Dalai Lama said he was “disappointed”” by the attitude of the Chinese government towards its proposals.

The following year the chain of immolations began: “The largest in the modern history of the world”, Asevera Karam. “¿Why do Tibetans come up with an idea like this?? To avoid harming others. "Do not physically attack the Chinese population or the occupation forces.", Explain.

And add: “It is dramatic but it illustrates the state of restlessness and dissatisfaction that they have, the state of hopelessness.

Tibetans, in exile or within their own territory, have taken walks, pilgrimages, marches, Detalla Karam: “Some have a portrait of the Dalai Lama in their home., even though it is prohibited. “Some refuse to be displaced and receive the death penalty.”, state.

However, Tibetans have also resorted to armed rebellion (1956-1962) and there were clashes during the uprising 2008, due to police repression of a peaceful demonstration at the Ramoche temple in the city of Lhasa.

Karam believes that in 2012 The immolations drew international attention. However, consider that this is no longer the case:

“It does not appear that China has any intention of abandoning Tibet.”. I see a problem that deteriorates almost minute by minute. At the same time, due to the demographic policy that Beijing calls the final solution, In a few years there won't be much to save.".

Karam clarifies that the government in exile and the Dalai Lama have not asked for separation from China, but respect for their autonomy, the main point outlined by the envoys of the Tibetan religious leader in 2008, during the dialogues that followed the protests.

The autonomy of Tibet is in the discourse of the Chinese themselves since the 17 Points of 1951. Eight years later, the Chinese government proclaimed the Autonomy of the Minority Nationality, but divided Tibet into 13 areas, starting with the so-called Tibet Autonomous Region and 12 areas in neighboring provinces.

Finally, the director of Casa Tibet gives his opinion: “Within the frame and on paper, autonomy would have to be respected because Tibet has that status. This to maintain identity, culture and religiosity; that is to say, primary guarantees to preserve the language, the culture and ecological integrity of Tibet.