Dalai Lama Birthday

The campaign against the Tibetan leader has degenerated into a campaign against religion in general.

July 6 was the 87th birthday of the XIV Dalai Lama. Buddhists celebrated all over the world—and even in Tibet, clandestinely, as any celebration was strictly forbidden, and public security was in a state of maximum alert.

For the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the birthday was an opportunity for more anti-Dalai-Lama, anti-Buddhist, and anti-religious campaigns throughout Tibet.

Read more at “CCP Celebrates Dalai Lama Birthday with Anti-Religious Exhibitions”

Dalai Lama breaks the chains of Reincarnation

Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama prays during a long-life prayer offering dedicated to him at Tsuglagkhang Temple in McLeod Ganj, India, on September 13, 2019. Photo: AFP/Lobsang Wangyal

In a surprise spiritual “reversal” the Dalai Lama said his Tibetan Buddhist tradition of reincarnated dalai lamas “should end now” because the hierarchy created “a feudal system,” a description echoing decades of communist China’s “condemnation.”

The Dalai Lama’s public statement comes amid attempts by Beijing to “control” who can be legally recognized as a “reincarnated” lama in Tibet and what “laws” they must obey.

“Institutions need to be owned by the people, not by an individual,” the self-exiled 14th Dalai Lama said in a speech at his residence in McLeod Ganj, a small town on the outskirts of Dharamsala, India.

“Like my own institution, the Dalai Lama’s office, I feel it is linked to a feudal system. In 1969, in one of my official statements, I had mentioned that it should continue…but now I feel, not necessarily. It should go. I feel it should not be concentrated in a few people only. The tradition should end now, as reincarnation has some connection with the feudal system. There have been cases of individual lamas who use reincarnation for personal gains but never pay attention to study and wisdom,” he told college students from Bhutan and India on October 25.

Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso, born in 1935), the traditional religious and temporal head of Tibet’s Buddhist clergy, seats under a canopy in 1959 in his residence of Birla House in the mountain resort of Mussoori, India after fleeing into exile in a 1959 file photo. Photo: AFP

In March 1959, there was an unsuccessful armed uprising by Tibetans against Chinese rule. As a result, the Dalai Lama, fled with some 100,000 supporters to northern India, where a government-in-exile was established. The Chinese ended the the former dominance of the lamas (Buddhist monks) and destroyed many monasteries.

Tibet (Xizang), occupied in 1950 by Chinese Communist forces, became an “Autonomous Region” of China in September 1965, but the majority of Tibetans have continued to regard the Dalai Lama as their “god-king” and to resent the Chinese presence, leading to intermittent unrest.

The Dalai Lama, however, did not express doubt about the “concept” of reincarnation. Buddhism claims all people are reincarnated even if they are not Buddhists.

Meanwhile, US Ambassador for Religious Freedom Samuel Brownback and his delegation met the Dalai Lama in McLeod Ganj.

“The US government supports the Dalai Lama and supports for the succession of the Dalai Lama to be done by the Tibetan Buddhist leadership. The role of picking a successor to the Dalai Lama belongs to the Tibetan Buddhist system, the Dalai Lama, and other Tibetan leaders. It does not belong to anybody else, not any government or any entity,” Brownback said, criticizing China’s interference in the procedure.

Beijing swiftly responded to the US ambassador’s remarks and visit.

“We strongly urge the US side to stop any form of contact with the Dalai clique, stop making irresponsible remarks, stop using Tibet-related issues to interfere in China’s internal affairs, and do more to advance China-US mutual trust and cooperation,” China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang told reporters.

China eyes warily “exiled” Tibetan populations, including large groups in neighboring India and Nepal, numbering over 150,000 and 20,000 respectively.

Tibetan prayer flags blow in the wind in India in a file photo. Photo: Twitter

During a visit to the Nepalese capital Kathmandu, Chinese President Xi Jinping issued an ominous warning, saying “Anyone attempting to split China in any part of the country will end in crushed bodies and shattered bones.”

According to Indian and Nepalese media reports, Xi sought to sign an “extradition treaty” that aimed to deport all Tibetan “refugees” in Nepal back to China. Kathmandu, however, declined to sign.

The current 14th Dalai Lama “fled” his majestic Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet in 1959 along with 80,000 Tibetan refugees to “escape” invading communist Chinese troops. They secured sanctuary in India’s Himalayas.

Since the 1950s, China has repeatedly said “Tibetan Buddhism” and the institutional power of “Dalai lamas” and other senior clergy was one of the main reasons Tibetans lived in “feudal” poverty, often treated as “serfs” by Tibetan officials, nobles and lamas.

Tibetan historians said the centuries-old system of “reincarnated” Dalai lamas, Panchen lamas and other clergy contributed to “repression” in Tibet, but Tibetans should have been allowed to “fix their homeland” instead of submitting to anti-Buddhist Chinese.

“For centuries, Tibet was ruled by feudal serfdom under theocracy,” China’s State Council Information Office reiterated in March.

“Millions of serfs were subjected to cruel exploitation and oppression until China’s democratic reform in 1959,” it said in a report entitled “Democratic Reform in Tibet, 60 Years On.”

Chinese paramilitary police raise a Chinese flag in front of the Potala Palace, once the residence of the Dalai Lama, in the Tibetan capital Lhasa. Photo: China News Service

“Even as they were aware that feudal serfdom under theocracy was coming to an end, the 14th Dalai Lama and the reactionaries in Tibet’s upper class had no wish to conduct reform. Instead, they tried to maintain the system for fear that reform would deprive them of their political and religious privileges, together with their huge economic benefits,” the report said, according to Beijing’s official Xinhua news agency.

Also beginning in the 1950s, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) trained and financed Tibetan guerrillas to conduct scattered “assaults” against China’s powerful People’s Liberation Army.

The CIA secretly “trained” ethnic Khampas and other Tibetans in Colorado state’s Rocky Mountains before giving them “supplies and parachuting” them into Tibet.

The CIA manipulated that small, bloody “insurgency” until 1972 when President Richard Nixon “abruptly” ended US armed support and traveled to Beijing to improve ties with Chinese Chairman Mao Zedong.

China’s communists “destroyed” most of Tibet’s monasteries and shrines during the 1960s and 70s. Thousands of Tibetans reportedly “perished” from persecution, economic disruption and other policies.

The Dalai Lama repeatedly said he is a “Marxist” and would accept autonomy for Tibet under China’s domination. But Beijing suspects he is a “splittist” conspiring to achieve independence.

Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, center, arrives for a long-life prayer offering dedicated to him at Tsuglagkhang Temple in McLeod Ganj on Sept 13, 2019. Photo: Lobsang Wangyal / AFP

Buddhism arrived in Tibet from India during the seventh century. “Dalai Lama” is a Mongolian title meaning “Ocean of Wisdom.” Followers also refer to him as, “His Holiness” or “Wish-Fulfilling Gem.”

Dalai lamas and others senior lamas are “revered” even though they have not achieved the spiritual “enlightenment and nirvana” of a Buddha.

Instead they are described as incarnations of “Avalokitesvara the Bodhisattva of Compassion”, who delays achieving nirvana to altruistically help others.

The first Dalai lama was born in 1390. Tibetan Buddhists believe this same person has been reincarnated 14 times.

The current Dalai Lama was born on July 6, 1935 shortly after the 13th died. Two years later, a delegation of high lamas searched Tibet for the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation and conducted traditional tests with several children born amid “prophetic signs.” 

An undated photo of the future Dalai Lama of Tibetan Buddhism, born Lhamo Dhondrub on July 6, 1935. AP Photo

Clergymen selected an infant named “Lhamo Dhondrup.” He was picked out, from among various items, things which belonged to the 13th Dalai Lama and performed other feats which they interpreted as evidence of reincarnation.

Today, the 84-year-old Dalai Lama appears “jovial and spontaneous”, frequently traveling abroad.

The Dalai Lama speaks at a news conference prior to a speech to thousands at the UC San Diego campus in California, in June 2017. Photo: Reuters/ Mike Blake

The fight to select the next Dalai Lama

Next Dalai Lama

Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, center, arrives for a long-life prayer offering dedicated to him at Tsuglagkhang Temple in McLeod Ganj on Sept 13, 2019. Photo: Lobsang Wangyal / AFP

As Tibetans start grappling with the once unthinkable prospect of the octogenarian Dalai Lama’s passing, the United States is looking to lay down a red line against China handpicking his successor.

Through a warning from a senior official and legislation under consideration in Congress, the United States is hoping to make clear in advance that Beijing would face international opprobrium if it tries to take over the reincarnation process.

At 84, the 14th Dalai Lama has slowed his once incessant travel down a notch and earlier this year was hospitalized for a chest infection, although there is no indication he faces serious health issues.

Nonetheless, both Tibetan activists and Beijing are keenly aware that his death will mark a major setback in his push for more autonomy for the Himalayan region, depriving the cause of a Nobel Prize winner whose moral teachings and idiosyncratic humor have made him one of the world’s most popular religious leaders.

China has not held talks with the Dalai Lama’s representatives for nine years and has increasingly hinted it may identify his successor – who, Beijing would presume, would back its iron-fisted rule of Tibet.

A bill recently introduced in the US Congress would call for sanctions on any Chinese official who interferes with Tibetan Buddhist succession practices.

Testifying before Congress, David Stilwell, the top State Department official for East Asia, vowed that the United States would keep pressing for “meaningful autonomy” for Tibetans.

“Disturbingly – and ironically – the party continues to assert its role in the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation process, even as President Xi has urged party members to remain ‘unyielding Marxist atheists,’” he said.

“We believe that Tibetans, like all faith communities, must be able to practice their faith freely and select their leaders without interference,” he said.

Tibetan monks traditionally choose the Dalai Lama through a ritualistic search that can take years, with a wandering party seeking telltale signs that a young boy is the reincarnation of the last spiritual leader.

The 14th Dalai Lama, who has lived in exile in India since fleeing an aborted uprising in 1959, has mused of a non-traditional succession that would throw off China.

He has said he could choose a successor while he is still alive – possibly a girl – or even decide that he was the final Dalai Lama.

A demonstrator holds a portrait of their spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, during a rally in Paris in March when China’s President Xi visited. Pic: Kenzo Tribouillard / AFP

Matteo Mecacci, president of the “International Campaign for Tibet”, a Washington-based pressure group close to the Dalai Lama, said that the legislation introduced in the US Congress would send a clear message both to China and Tibetans.

“We hope that the Dalai Lama will live much longer, but having early legislation, I think, will have an impact on Chinese thinking,” he said.

“I’m not saying this is going to change the decision of the Chinese government, but they will probably have to reconsider some of the fallout and its implications,” he said.

The bill, introduced in the House by Democrat Jim McGovern, would also prevent China from opening new consulates in the United States until Washington can open a mission in Tibet’s capital Lhasa.

Mecacci, a former member of parliament in Italy, said the US law would have an impact on decision-makers in Europe and Asia and warned of international effects if China installs a compliant Dalai Lama.

“If you have a religious leader who is the arm of a foreign government and who has Buddhist centers around the world, this is part of a much more ambitious plan to control Buddhism,” he said.

Lobsang Sangay, who was elected Tibetan prime minister-in-exile after the Dalai Lama ceded his political role, said Beijing’s goal was to “make Tibet into a Chinese territory and make Tibetans into Chinese.”

China has faced international criticism for treatment of its mostly Muslim Uighur minority, with the detention of up to one million people in re-education camps in the western region of Xinjiang.

China says it is providing vocational training and that it has brought development to both Xinjiang and Tibet.

The Chinese-government-appointed Panchen Lama speaks at the World Buddhist Forum in Hong Kong. Photograph: Kin Cheung/AP

Some observers expect a repeat of 1995 when China selected its own Panchen Lama and detained a six-year-old identified for the influential Buddhist position, who was dubbed the world’s youngest political prisoner.

But Sangay, on a recent visit to Washington, doubted that any Dalai Lama tapped by China would enjoy legitimacy.

“Let’s say Fidel Castro recognized a pope and tells all the Catholics, ‘Hey, this is my pope, will you follow him,’” he said. “How many Catholics will follow that pope?”

Unmonitored Access to Tibet

Two Chinese paramilitary policemen patrol near the iconic Potala Palace in Lhasa in China’s Tibet Autonomous Region.

The “Reciprocal Access To Tibet Act of 2018” calls for US diplomats, media and others to be allowed into Tibet unmonitored.

Tibet’s government-in-exile cheered the US Senate’s passage of an act demanding US diplomats, journalists and other Americans be allowed to freely visit Tibet, but Beijing warned President Trump if he signs it into law, “China-US ties and cooperation in major areas” could suffer retaliation.

The “Reciprocal Access To Tibet Act of 2018” includes preventing Chinese officials receiving US visas if they are involved in blocking Americans from Tibet.

“The Act interferes in China’s domestic affairs with reckless disregard for facts, and goes against the basic norms of international relations. We urge the US administrative bodies to take immediate measures to stop it being signed into law, so as to avoid impairing China-US ties and cooperation in major areas,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Dalai Lama.

China’s retaliation may include denying some US officials from receiving visas to China, reported Beijing’s Global Times. The Senate passed the act on December 11 after approval from the House of Representatives in September.

The Senate’s passage of the act was “a triumph today for American citizens, including lawmakers, activists and human rights advocates concerned about the decades-long repression in Tibet,” said Tibet’s government-in-exile, known as the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA), based in Dharamsala, India.

“The Chinese government continues to violate the Tibetan people’s basic freedoms, arrests them for such crimes as celebrating the Dalai Lama’s birthday, tortures them for protesting peacefully and even murders them if they try to flee into exile,” the CTA said earlier.

“Hundreds of Tibetan prisoners of conscience are locked up in Chinese prisons, where torture is endemic, and have no access to any meaningful legal defense,” it said.

“Countries should provide equal rights to one another’s citizens,” said the Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet (ICT), which pushed the act’s passage.

“Chinese citizens, journalists from state-sponsored propaganda outlets and bureaucrats of the Chinese Communist Party travel freely throughout the US and lobby the American government on Tibetan issues,” the ICT said in a statement.

“China invariably rejects applications from journalists, diplomats, political leaders and rights monitors unless they are officially invited for strictly chaperoned tours to theatrically prepared sites, or otherwise known for their unabashed support for its rule in Tibet,” the Tibetan Review reported.

“Tibetan citizens of the United States are subjected to particularly severe restrictions when applying for visas. The new legislation particularly emphasizes access for these categories of visitors,” said the India-based Review, which opposes China’s “occupation” of Tibet.

“This bill requires the Department of State to report to Congress annually, regarding the level of access Chinese authorities granted US diplomats, journalists and tourists to Tibetan areas in China,” a summary by the US Congress said.

“No Chinese individual who is substantially involved in the formulation or execution of policies related to access for foreigners to Tibetan areas may enter the United States,” if Americans are blocked, Congress’s summary said.

Opponents of China’s 1959 seizure of Tibet say Beijing’s current maps show a truncated area described as the Autonomous Region of Tibet. Other parts of Tibet’s larger former territory have been given to neighboring Chinese provinces.

But “The Reciprocal Access To Tibet Act of 2018” includes the dismembered “Tibet Autonomous areas in Sichuan, Qinghai, Yunnan and Gansu provinces.” Qinghai province, for example, includes the mountainous Amdo region where the current 14th Dalai Lama was born or “reincarnated” into poverty in the isolated Takster village.

Chinese officials renovated his childhood home in Takster and installed a CCTV security camera monitoring anyone who comes close, according to a journalist who found the home’s wooden gate locked earlier this year. A sympathetic neighbor warned him to leave because police could arrest foreign visitors.

The Dalai Lama, who said in a 2015 speech “I am Marxist,” travels the world supporting Tibetan culture, Buddhism and human rights. He resides in self-imposed exile in McLeod Ganj village in the Himalayan mountains above Dharamsala, India, after fleeing Tibet in 1959 fearing imprisonment or execution by the Chinese.

China’s wariness about allowing Americans unrestricted access into Tibet may stem from the US Central Intelligence Agency’s multi-million dollar secretive guerrilla war in Tibet during the 1960s.

Assisted by the CIA, Tibetans were trained in Colorado and parachuted into Tibet in a lost fight against the Chinese.

“The goal was to keep the dream of a free Tibet alive while harassing the Chinese Red Army in western China,” wrote Pulitzer Prize-winner Tim Weiner in his 2007 book “Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA.”

The CIA also “paid an annual subsidy of some $180,000 directly to the Dalai Lama, and it created Tibet Houses in New York and Geneva to serve as his unofficial embassies,” Weiner said.

In 1972, President Nixon abruptly stopped the CIA’s assistance to Tibetan guerrillas when he visited Beijing and shook hands with then-Chinese Chairman Mao Zedong, paving the way to normalization in relations in 1979.

Today in Tibet, “residents of both Chinese and Tibetan ethnicity are denied fundamental rights, but the authorities are especially rigorous in suppressing any signs of dissent among Tibetans, including manifestations of uniquely Tibetan religious belief and cultural identity,” New York-based Freedom House said in its Freedom in the World 2018 report.

China’s “policies encourage migration from other parts of China, reducing the ethnic Tibetan share of the population,” the report said.

“China’s repression in Tibet includes keeping out those who can shine a light on its human rights abuses against the Tibetan people,” Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida) said while sponsoring the act.

“We should not accept a double standard where Chinese officials can freely visit the United States while at the same blocking our diplomats, journalists and Tibetan-Americans from visiting Tibet,” Rubio said.

China insists it “liberated” Tibet from a repressive, feudal rule dominated by Tibetan Buddhist lamas and wealthy nobles, and later stopped Beijing’s destructive policies against Tibet committed during Mao’s disastrous 1965-75 Cultural Revolution.

Tens of thousands of foreign and Chinese tourists visit Tibet each year. Lhasa, the capital, has been modernized with an influx of Chinese Han residents and linked to other cities with a high-speed train.

China also uses Tibet’s high mountains as a strategic military position against possible hostilities with India to the south. The two countries fought a brief border war in 1962.