Last week, relatives of a Tibetan monk called Xiangba Qupei from Rebgong (Ch. Tongren) received confirmation that he had been sentenced to 18 months of jail last August. The family had not been  previously informed of the trial, nor of the decision. Rebgong is part of historical Tibet, although the Chinese made it  the capital of the so-called Huangnan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Qinghai province.

The monk’s “crime” was sharing the Dalai Lama’s teachings on WeChat Moment. He is currently detained in Xining City, Qinghai’s capital.

Xiangba Qupei was arrested at his monastery in mid-March for allegedly “sharing sensitive information” on March 10, Tibet’s uprising anniversary. The “sensitibe infirmation” was in fact teachings by His Holiness.

Detained in a Rebgong prison since March 22, he was sentenced to 18 months in August and moved to Xining on September 22 to serve his term. Not only did Chinese authorities not inform his family about the arrest and prosecution, they threatened them against inquiring about his situation. Voice of Tibet had reported on the sentence against him, which has now been confirmed.

Xiangba Qupei was monitored by Chinese Communist Party authorities for years, especially around Tibetan Uprising Day. He went to India in 1986, studied at Dharamsala Debate College, and returned to Tibet in 1996. Since then, he has practiced Buddhism in Rebgong monasteries, gone on pilgrimages, and taught English and Tibetan calligraphy to other monks. (Bitter Winter)

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India is to repopulate a village in its Himalayan state of Uttarakhand lying nearest to Tibet’s border after having evacuated its residents during the late 1962 war with China, reported indiatimes.com Jan 27. The decision follows India’s recently initiated drive to develop its border villages and infrastructure to match China’s massive efforts undertaken over the past decades across the border in occupied Tibet.

China has long been accused of nibbling at or salami-slicing India’s territory by taking advantage of the lack of development and inhabitants in the latter’s thousands of kilometre-long, practically abandoned border areas.

Jadung village in Uttarkashi district of Uttarakhand had around 56 families living there before it was abandoned in 1962, with the evacuated residents rehabilitated in Harshil Valley, located about 50 km further away from Tibet’s border.

The scenic village, located at an altitude of 3,800 metres above sea level has since remained a ghost hamlet, except for the Indian Army and the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) camps there.

Jadung is now all set to welcome its original residents back, as well as tourists, after the state government cleared a proposal to redevelop it under the country’s Vibrant Village Programme, the report said.

Following an Apr 2023 announcement by the Uttarakhand Tourism Development Board, Jadung, also known as “Leh and Ladakh” of Uttarakhand, will also be developed as a tourist destination. Currently, there are just six dilapidated houses left in Jadung and these will be redeveloped as homestays, the report added.

They will be developed by the state’s Tourism Department and operated by the original inhabitants who still own the land in the village, the report said. (Tibetian Review)

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Shouting “Free Tibet” and “Free the Uyghurs” a group of Mexican legislators interrupted a congressional session last week at which China’s new ambassador was being introduced to the assembly.

The lawmakers stood and shouted soon after Ambassador Zhang Run was welcomed by Santiago Creel, president of the lower house, on April 26 in Mexico City.

Deputies Salvador Caro Cabrera and Inés Parra Juárez of the “Friends of Tibet” group rose from their seats and displayed the Tibetan national flag while shouting “Free Tibet” for about 20 minutes.

Video footage also showed Caro yelling, “Free the Uyghurs! Cancel the concentration camps!” – referring to the detainment of the mostly Muslim Uyghurs in “re-education” camps where they have been subjected to severe rights abuses.

The lawmakers were protesting China’s tight grip on Tibet and Xinjiang, where authorities have restricted the movement of residents and tried to suppress their cultural and religious identities.

Beijing has said that the Uyghur re-education camps were vocational training centers whose purpose was to prevent religious extremism and terrorism in China’s restive Xinjiang region. 

Belt and Road

After attending the parliamentary session, Zhang met members of the Mexico-China Friendship Group of the Chamber of Deputies and stressed the importance of the ‘One China’ principle as the political foundation for bilateral relations, according to a Chinese Embassy statement. 

He also welcomed Mexico to participate in the Belt and Road Initiative and other development and security programs.

The Dalai Lama, Tibetan Buddhists’ spiritual leader, and the Tibetan government in exile in India do not seek separation from China but believe that the Tibet region can coexist with China under genuine autonomy.

Caro and Parra founded “Friends of Tibet,” now comprising 19 legislators from five political parties in the Chamber of Deputies, in November 2022. Its purpose is to support the cause of Tibet by defending Tibetans’ human rights, recognizing their autonomy, defending the environment in the Tibet Autonomous Region, and ensuring freedom of belief and religion.

A day after the group’s formation, diplomats from the Chinese Embassy in Mexico met with Creel to object to the pro-Tibet group and demanded that China’s national flag be waved in the chamber.

In March, several Mexican legislators, including Caro and Parra, traveled to Dharamsala in northern India, headquarters of the Central Tibetan Administration, the Tibetan government-in-exile.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the China-Mexico comprehensive strategic partnership. (RFA)

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China intensified its control and suppression of Tibetan Buddhism in 2022, but the United States took steps to increase support for the religion’s followers, a new report from a US Commission says.

The 2023 annual report of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, released May 1, says China’s authorities restricted Tibetans’ access to religious sites, banned religious gatherings, destroyed places and symbols of religious significance, and subjected monks and nuns to “political reeducation.”

China even persecuted Tibetan Buddhists living in the United States, according to the report.

At the same time, the report notes the US arrested and sanctioned Chinese officials charged with violating Tibetans’ rights, held hearings and events on China’s abuse of the Tibetan people and raised the issue of Tibetans’ religious freedom at the UN.

“Religion is the heart of life for many Tibetans, but under China’s brutal occupation of their homeland, their freedom to practice and preserve their beautiful faith has been trampled,” said the International Campaign for Tibet, an advocacy group that promotes human rights and democratic freedoms for the Tibetan people. “ICT thanks the US Commission on International Religious Freedom for spotlighting China’s violation of Tibetans’ right to religious freedom and the US government’s strong response.

“We look forward to working with US leaders to pass the Promoting a Resolution to the Tibet-China Conflict Act, which can help bring a peaceful end to China’s repression of the Tibetan people through negotiations between China’s officials and the Dalai Lama’s envoys.”

Religious freedom violations in Tibet

The commission’s report addresses several egregious examples of China’s religious freedom violations in Tibet, a historically independent country that China has illegally occupied for over 60 years.

Among these is China’s alleged torture of Tibetan monks, including Rinchen Tsultrim and Go Sherab Gyatso, both of who are reportedly in prison on false charges of separatism or secession because they peacefully expressed their views.

In total, there were 73 documented Tibetan Buddhist victims of religious repression by the end of last year, the report says.

The report adds that China allegedly conducted mass DNA collection in Tibet, “likely to strengthen surveillance and control there.”

Several Tibetans self-immolated in Tibet last year, the report says, lighting their own bodies on fire in a desperate act of protest against China’s oppression.

China also detained several Tibetans for honoring the Dalai Lama or simply possessing a photo of him, the report notes.

The report points out that China even has a heinous plan to appoint an eventual successor to the 87-year-old Dalai Lama, who has lived in exile since China forced him to flee Tibet in 1959.

“The Chinese government repeatedly stated its intent to interfere in the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation,” the report says, “claiming it has the ultimate authority to appoint his successor.”

US support for Tibetans

In 2020, the US passed a law, the Tibetan Policy and Support Act, that—along with expanding overall US support for Tibetans—makes it official US policy that only the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Buddhist community can decide on his succession. If any Chinese officials try to interfere in that process, the US will sanction them under the law.

The US already sanctioned several Chinese officials last year for violating Tibetans’ rights, the report notes.

On Human Rights Day on Dec. 10, 2022, the Treasury Department sanctioned Wu Yingjie and Zhang Hongbo for “serious human rights abuse” against the Tibetan people. Wu was Party Secretary of the Tibet Autonomous Region, which spans roughly half of Tibet, from 2016 to 2021. Zhang was director of the region’s Public Security Bureau from 2018 to last year.

The report lists other steps the US took last year to show support for Tibetans. The US joined a 47-country statement about human rights conditions in Xinjiang (which Uyghurs know as East Turkestan), Hong Kong and Tibet.

The Congressional-Executive Commission on China also held a hearing on human rights abuse in Tibet, and US Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues Uzra Zeya delivered remarks about protecting Tibetans’ religious freedom at a side event of the 51st session of the UN Human Rights Council.

The Justice Department also arrested and charged Wang Shujun with conducting transnational repression on behalf of China’s Ministry of State Security. According to the report, Wang’s victims included Uyghur and Tibetan activists in the US and abroad.

Recommendations for further US action

The report notes that China allegedly operated overseas “police service stations” in locations around the globe, including New York City. These stations, the report says, raised concerns about China attempting to “harass and intimidate ethnic minorities and dissidents abroad, including Uyghurs and Tibetans.”

The report recommends the State Department once again designate China as a “country of particular concern” for its religious freedom violations.

The report also encourages Congress to support legislation that will “counter the CCP’s malign influence in the United States, particularly its lobbying efforts that undermine religious freedom and related human rights.”

The International Campaign for Tibet adds that Congress should pass the Promoting a Resolution to the Tibet-China Conflict Act, a bipartisan bill that was reintroduced in the House and Senate this year to pressure China’s government to resume negotiations with the Dalai Lama’s envoys by recognizing that Tibet’s legal status has yet to be determined under international law.

Learn more about the Promoting a Resolution to the Tibet-China Conflict Act.

Read the US Commission on International Religious Freedom’s 2023 annual report. (ICFT)

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The Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC) has begun a month-long “Tibet Matters March” from Sikkim’s Gangtok to Assam’s Tezpur. The march started on April 29 and is seeing participation from over 80 volunteers from the regional chapters of TYC in India and Nepal, Tibet Rights Collective (TBR) reported.

TYC President Gonpo Dhundup, said that the the march was initiated to commemorate the forced signing of the “Seventeen-Point Agreement” by Tibetan delegates with China on May 23, 1959, which ultimately led to China’s occupation of Tibet. During the march, TYC activists demanded that world leaders and China take necessary actions to address the Sino-Tibet conflict. They requested the G20 leaders to raise the issue during their summit in September 2023, TBR reported.

They also demanded the Chinese government to immediately shut down colonial boarding schools that attack and eliminate Tibetan culture and identity, and address the deteriorating human rights situation under its repressive rule in Tibet. The TYC activists emphasized that Tibet matters in resolving growing tensions between China and several Southeast Asian countries as almost 2 billion people depend on freshwater resources originating from the Tibetan plateau. The continued exploitation of the Tibetan landscape, ecosystem, and natural resources by China will have long-lasting negative consequences for downstream countries, TBR reported.

The TYC activists also raised concerns about the Chinese colonial education system, which has separated over one million Tibetan children from their families and forced them into Chinese state-run boarding schools. This is a genocidal policy aimed at indoctrinating Tibetan children from their cultural roots. The activists also criticized the Chinese massive surveillance system, which collects Tibetan DNA samples, including children as young as five, to attack Tibetan identity and individual privacy. The TYC stated that after more than six decades of illegal and forceful occupation, Tibet has become the world’s least-free country, sharing the bottom spot with South Sudan and Syria in Freedom House’s global freedom scores. The current human rights situation in Tibet is one of the worst in recent years, and China’s repressive policies aim to eliminate the very identity of Tibetans, TBR reported.

In conclusion, the “Tibet Matters March” aimed to raise awareness about the Sino-Tibet conflict and urged world leaders to take necessary actions to address the issue. The TYC emphasized that Tibet matters in promoting permanent peace and security in Asia and demanded the Chinese government address the deteriorating human rights situation and shut down colonial boarding schools attacking Tibetan culture and identity. (ANI)

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