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Who will identify the next incarnation of the Dalai Lama?
During Tibet’s history, it has existed as a region of separate sovereign areas, a single independent entity and as a vassal under Chinese suzerainty or sovereignty. Tibet was first unified under King Songtsän Gampo in the 7th century. At various times from the 1640s until the 1950s, a government nominally headed by the Dalai Lamas, a line of spiritual political leaders, ruled a large portion of the Tibetan region. During some of this period, the Tibetan administration was subordinate to the Qing Dynasty.
In the chaos in China following the Xinhai Revolution in 1913, the 13th Dalai Lama expelled Qing’s representatives and troops from what is now the Tibet Autonomous Region and governed it autonomously. Neither the new Republic of China, nor any other foreign state or the United Nations recognized this as legal Tibetan independence. In 1950, the People’s Republic of China, emerging victoriously from the Chinese Civil War, quelled the 14th Dalai Lama’s army and successfully negotiated for an acknowledgment of Chinese sovereignty.
With the invasion of Tibet and the subsequent Seventeen Point Agreement, the PRC Central People’s Government asserted control over Tibet. In 1959, some ethnic Tibetans throughout much of the region attempted to revolt against CPG rule, but this attempt was promptly defeated by the PLA, and in the ensuing violence, the Dalai Lama and the rest of his government fled to Dharamsala.
In 1965, the area that had been under the control of the Dalai Lama’s government from the 1910s to 1959 (Ü-Tsang and western Kham) was renamed the Tibet Autonomous Region or TAR. Autonomy provided that the head of government would be an ethnic Tibetan; however, actual power in the TAR is held by the First Secretary of the Tibet Autonomous Regional Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, who has never been a Tibetan. The role of ethnic Tibetans in the higher levels of the TAR Communist Party remains very limited.
The destruction of most of Tibet’s more than 6,000 monasteries occurred between 1959 and 1961. During the mid-1960s, the monastic estates were broken up and secular education introduced. During the Cultural Revolution, Red Guards inflicted a campaign of organized vandalism against cultural sites in the entire PRC, including Tibet’s Buddhist heritage. According to at least one Chinese source, only a handful of the religiously or culturally most important monasteries remained without major damage, and thousands of Buddhist monks and nuns were killed, tortured or imprisoned.
Widespread protests against Chinese rule flared up again in 2008. The Chinese government reacted strongly, imposing curfews and strictly limiting access to Tibetan areas. The international response was likewise immediate and robust, with a number of leaders condemning the crackdown and large protests (including some in support of China’s actions) in many major cities.
The PRC continues to portray its rule over Tibet as an unalloyed improvement, but foreign governments continue to make protests about aspects of PRC rule in Tibet as groups such as Human Rights Watch report alleged human rights violations. Most governments, however, recognize the PRC’s sovereignty over Tibet today, and none have recognized the Government of Tibet in Exile in India.
Since 1950 human rights have become a contentious issue. According to the website of the non-governmental organization “Save Tibet”, the Tibetan people are denied most rights guaranteed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including the rights to self-determination, freedom of speech, assembly, movement and expression. Elliot Sperling, an Associate Professor of Tibetan Studies at Indiana University, has said that human rights violations contributed to the migrations of Tibetans out of Tibet. Some have gone as far as accusing that Chinese rule has amounted to cultural genocide.
The Tibetan government-in-exile claims that China does not allow independent human rights organisations into Tibet, and foreign delegations invited to Tibet are denied independent access to meet with Tibetans. The Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy claims that more than 11,000 monks and nuns have been expelled from Tibet since 1996 for opposing “patriotic re-education” sessions conducted at monasteries and nunneries under the “Strike Hard” campaign.
Warren Smith, an independent scholar and a broadcaster with the Tibetan Service of Radio Free Asia, whose work began to focus on Tibetan history and politics after spending five months in Tibet in 1982, portrays the Chinese as “chauvinists” who believe they are superior to Tibetans, and claims that the Chinese Communist Party uses torture, coercion and starvation to control the Tibetan population.
According to the Communist Party, progress towards a prosperous and free society in Tibet (which is in turn part of human rights), the pillars being economic development, legal advancement, and emancipation of serfs, has been substantial.
Source:
Testament of the 13th Dalai Lama
When 13th Dalai Lama died in 1933, he left a testament, eerily accurate in its predictions regarding the status of modern Tibet, pointing to the establishment of a Communist system in Mongolia.
‘Monastic properties and endowments were confiscated, the lamas and monks were forced into the army; the Buddhist religion destroyed, leaving no trace of identity.’
He predicted a similar fate for Tibet should it not defend itself.
‘In the future, this system will certainly be forced either from within or without on this land that cherishes the joint spiritual and temporal system. If in such event we fail to defend our land, the holy lamas, including their triumphant father and son (the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama), will be eliminated without a trace of their names remaining; the properties of the incarnate lamas and of the monasteries along with the endowments for religious services will all be seized. Moreover, our political system, originated by the three ancient kings, will be reduced to an empty name; my officials, deprived of their patrimony and property, will be subjugated like slaves by the enemy; and my people, subjected to fear and misery, will be unable to endure day or night.’ – Testament of the 13th Dalai Lama
Source: Literature: The Search For The Panchen Lama by Isabel Hilton
Tibet: China’s little treasure
China has intensified its long-term quest to integrate the remote land and people of Tibet by building new infrastructure and drawing up plans to tap the Himalayan region’s virgin water sources and its rich reserves of copper, gold and hydrocarbons.
Chinese communist leaders insist their intentions are to make Tibet part of the country’s economic miracle by expanding trade and tourism, and creating wealth in the backward region that many Westerners see as the last refuge of spiritualism.
But detractors say Beijing sees Tibet as the new “El Dorado” for energy-starved and resources-limited China. Some 40% of China’s natural resources are located in Tibet, whose Chinese name, Xizang translates as “Western Depository”.
International activists and Tibetans-in-exile have warned that the new wave of Chinese investment in the region would be detrimental to Tibetan culture and autonomy. They say the new infrastructure would lead to further militarization of the Tibetan plateau as China, which occupied the region in 1951, would be able to move troops and supplies more rapidly and maintain a more effective garrison there.
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For a more full understanding of the true situation on the ground in Tibet one has to look at the history of the two countries and make sense of the conflicting claims of independence or dependence.
This article here will help elucidate much of the murk cast over this subject by incessant propaganda.
http://one-just-world.blogspot.com/2010/07/han-chinese-racism-in-tibet.html