LOBSANG MONLAM - A letter from Tibet
FIRST of all, I would like to extend my greetings to the Tibetan leaders in exile, especially His Holiness the Dalai Lama and heads of Tibetan Buddhism, and also Sikyong Lobsang Sangay, the political head of the Tibetan people and Tibetan scholars. May they all live a long and healthy life and may their work for [our country] bear greater fruits. I also pray for the spontaneous fulfilment of the wishes of Tibetans inside Tibet. May Tibetan people inside and outside Tibet be reunited soon, and may His Holiness the Dalai Lama return to Tibet to be enthroned at the Potala Palace!
It is evident that the Tibetan people inside Tibet have no other choice than to comply with the machinations of the red Chinese Communist Party. Therefore, you Tibetans in exile, through unity and solidarity, must propagate, in clear and precise terms, the suffering of the Tibetan people in freedom and democracy-loving countries of the world. This is important.
Many Tibetans in Tibet, for the sake of our nation and people, in other words, for the sake of our religion, culture and politics, are setting themselves on fire. They are burning themselves alive because our people, who have been completely deprived of freedom and kept at the mercy of a foreign power, are searching for a measure of happiness. More than a hundred brave Tibetan patriots who sacrificed their bodies had to endure the height of suffering, having been deprived of all options, and out of desperation, have had to resort to such extreme measure. This is crystal clear.
There are some Tibetans who have directly opposed the acts of self-immolation and consequently expressed mild disagreement. However, those of us in Tibet, who love our nation and people, have never opposed and expressed words of disagreement about self-immolations; we remain solidly defiant and firm in this position.
The Tibetan Government-in-Exile, the voluntary organizations and individuals working for the welfare of Tibet and the Tibetan people should be aware that in some remote areas of Tibet, the Chinese, by resorting to various means of trickery, are forcefully changing the identity of Tibetan people through acts of Sinicisation, reducing them to the status of ‘neither-Tibetan-nor-Chinese.’ As you all know, we are not given a hair’s breadth of opportunity to intervene in these matters; only journalists from foreign countries will be able to visit directly and report on these issues, so it is my hope that Tibetan Government-in-Exile and individual Tibetans will take interest in these issues.
All the grasslands of the nomads and the farmlands in the valleys have been surrounded with fences, causing enormous disputes among the Tibetan people. For instance, these fences have become a source of new conflict even between father and son. Regarding these issues, I have to share a few tragic stories here. All these Chinese strategies, as I alluded to before, are specifically aimed at sowing discord and conflict among the Tibetan peo-ple. This year, a new programme has started in the nomadic areas: to sell nomadic lands owned by the nomads at a price of Chinese yuan 2000. We must seriously ponder over this issue from all perspectives, because many Tibetans see this as the Chinese government’s plot to grab all our lands. I don’t think our concerns are being expressed without any reasonable foundation.
As far as I am concerned, I consider this a subtle political stra-tegy on the part of the Chinese to lure the Tibetan people in their trap. It is not only the lands, but also that every nomadic family is being provided with enormous sums of Chinese money to construct new concrete dwellings. Moreover, unnecessary roads are being constructed, so that every monastery and village can be accessed directly. These are causing damage, for which we will have to bear enormous costs in future.
The Chinese first trap us with guile, then with money, and finally with violence. Therefore, the path the Chinese have laid for us to walk in the meantime is like an ‘invisible dagger’, against which we are presumed to not have many alternative strategies. This is because even if we refuse Chinese money, other pretexts are invented to make sure that we are arrested. These sufferings and hardships are the norm rather than an exception at present.
The Chinese are also exploiting natural resources by digging mines; government cadres are dispatched to various Tibetan towns and villages to oppress and grab our lands. This has become routine. Another serious issue is the plight of the Tibetan monasteries, schools and other institutions – centres of Tibetan learning. Officials responsible for the management of monasteries are being bribed to ensure their complicity, thereby putting severe restrictions on religious activities. The grievances of the monks against the Chinese government’s negative attitude toward the monasteries are real and justifiable and not merely an excuse to criticize them.
The same problem also besets our schools. Under Chinese compulsion, most teachers have now abandoned teaching Tibetan. Moreover, there are also cases where students attending schools in Tibetan autonomous areas are not allowed to speak in their native tongue. The medium of instruction in Tibetan schools is the Chinese language, and to graduate to higher classes, students are almost entirely dependent on how they perform in Chinese. For instance, a student securing five per cent in Tibetan, sixty per cent in Chinese, and 30 per cent in mathematics is eligible to graduate to the next class. In some schools, even if the student fails to secure a single star (form of grading in Tibetan schools), she would not encounter any serious obstacles in graduating to the next class. As a teacher I can attest to these problems from my own experience, having voluntarily served as a Tibetan teacher for one month at a school in Yulshul Tibetan Autonomous Area. Read more:
