China recently issued a White Paper titled “Tibet Since 1951: Liberation, Development and Prosperity”, on Tibet accordance to 70 years of signing the 17-Point Agreement on 23rd May 1951. The Chinese State-owned media the Global Times [1] and the China Global Television Network (CGTN) [2] published the crux of the distorted information on their websites.
The paper claims that China successes great height of social, economic and political development in the past seven decades since the so-called “Peaceful Liberation of Tibet”, and exhilarates Tibetans to a great extent including religious freedom.
That is nothing new! China purposely exhibits so to disseminate misleading information for political propaganda.
The White Paper deliberately intends to revenge the western countries who voice for justice and human rights crackdown under the CCP hardliner’s policies. It implicitly pretends to prove the international criticism against China’s human rights violations are baseless accusation and a liar, whereas, what China says is true, justice, real and final.
It further added, “Since the 1980s, Western forces have played an active role in all the outbreaks of unrest that have taken place in Tibet”.
As stated in my earlier article, 17-Point Agreement: The last historical symbolic of Tibet’s Independence (Tibetan Journal dated 24th May 2021) [3] briefly overviews the historical background of the Agreement and its gap. The article substantiates the historical de-jure status of Tibet, and the Agreement signed under duress disguisedly designed for illegal occupation of Tibet on the pretext of helping Tibet rather than invading.
As seen above parenthetical verbatim that China plays the blame game, pointing to western countries triggering ‘all outbreaks of unrest in Tibet. The same case to the Dalai Lama and Tibetans in exile; China brands “separatist”, “Dalai clique” and has been blaming all turmoil and never accept the reality resulting from the failure of hard-line policies.
What a laughter that the Global Times, the mouthpiece of the CCP, wrote that “Tibet enjoys one of its best periods in history: official White paper details political, economic, religious progress“! [4] Tibetans are peace-loving people and live happily and peacefully even though financially weak, but never had a history of starvation, a large number of people execution and desperate self-immolators before the Chinese invasion. China’s show off economic development in Tibet based on Tibet before the 1950s is no different from the theory of “Comparing Apples with Oranges” because whole world societies arguably had been revolving at the same pace with lack of facilities and weak infrastructures then.
China destroyed more than six thousand Tibetan Buddhist monasteries and transported all centuries-old invaluable statues and other valuable antiques, exploiting all Tibet’s huge reserves of natural resources, great destruction on Tibetan ecosystem and millions of Tibetans lost their lives so forth. The White Paper is a series of political drama on Tibet and void of realities.
According to TPPRC [5] (1998), it estimates: 173,221Tibetans died in prisons & labour camps, 156,758 by execution, 342,970 by starvation, 432,705 died in battles and uprisings, 92,731 by torture and 9002 by suicide. These estimation figures reckoned based on a committee visiting Tibetan settlements from 1959 to 1984 and review of the reports of the Fact-Finding Delegations sent to Tibet from 1979 to 1984, apparently did not include life lost prominently during 1987-1989 Tibet unrest, 2008 uprising and tolls of 155 known desperate self-immolators since 2009 and the like. And how many more Tibetans died/dying silently under China’s secrecy and censorship even in this digital world. For instance, Shurmo protested against China’s oppressive policies in Tibet and desperately blazing himself in 2015, but the news came out to the world was in 2021 after five years later. Similarly, 11th the Panchen Lama, the second-highest spiritual leader of Tibet, abducted at the age of six years old then in 1995 by the Chinese government, and he is still unknown to the world. These representations portray if Tibetans enjoy social development, religious freedom or live happily or not as per what China tells the world. For more update’s situation in Tibet, read the CTA official website (https://tibet.net/situation-in-tibet-updates/).
Xi’s regime becomes more censoring, aggressive and offensive political rights and civil liberties with intensive deploying digital surveillance and artificial intelligence. That tightens the border management and policy, which dramatically cut off newcomers from Tibet, earlier had been crossing around four thousand annually. The Chinese government imposes Tibetan retired officials and teachers abstaining from circumambulations, pilgrimages to monasteries. And village representatives have to submit in written forms mentioning that they will not believe in religion, not participate in any religious activities and not encourage others to practise religion. The border area village representatives have to take permission from the concerned authorities to travel to towns within even the same district for personal works. And they get three-four days which sometimes frustrate them as they cannot complete their work and bear extra expenses for another trip.
One man from Tibet chatted with me last year, and by the way, shared his suffocative feeling that all Nepali and Chinese citizens are freely allowed to cross each other border, whereas Tibetan even a child is not allowed—practicing social discrimination.
Dorjee Phuntsok, a Cyber Security Specialist based in Dharamsala, shared with RFA (Tibetan, dated 08.06.2021) about China’s spying on activities of Tibetans long before what Xijiang suffers now by intensive use of spyware in the WeChat groups and AI tools in facial recognition to filter the information.
China also uses both soft and hard power to pressurise Tibetans who have families outside Tibet by playing the “blame game”. In my close associate circle, some have witnessed few cases and experienced themselves that Chinese authorities arbitrarily arrest Tibetans and forced them to call the relative outside Tibet to return for his/her release, otherwise charging imprisonment for many years. One received calls from his family who insisted to come to meet parents and family in Tibet and ensured that a Chinese authority that the family knew assured to help his coming to Tibet. That is nothing rather than a conspiracy to arrest even Tibetans outside Tibet to make a Chinese narrative on the Tibet issue. This is clearly understood from the Global Times’s forgery news for political propaganda last year (Exiled Tibetans eye return to China for fear of virus). It is apparent that Tibetans wait to return but not now, unless and until the relentless authoritarian regime change to some extent of democratic reforms.
It is a common problem that Tibetans outside Tibet often hear that their families share not to contact and call them due to the repressive and panic situation. One shared that his brother cut his phone call immediately after telling” Today weather is not good”. Police often arbitrarily arrest Tibetans and even families who do not know about his/her whereabouts and sometimes tortures them to death. For example, Lhamo [6], a mother of three children and 36-year-old died due to police torture for “sending money to family members or other Tibetans in India”!
The Authorities often warn Tibetans not to contact families and relative outside Tibet. And claim that they can trace every contact detail as well as chat histories and accordingly get server persecution. Tibetans feel precarious and insecure life and have to spend days and nights full of fear and panic.
The Freedom House report has been placing Tibet the top least-free country in the whole world since 2015, and the 2021 report marked Tibet the worst countries in terms of freedom scoring one out of hundred in ranking.
Going through all these facts, is there any real space and opportunity for the Tibetans inside Tibet as per what China or White Paper claims of democratic reform of social and economic development and Tibetans enjoy the best periods of history? How can they be happy by tied all limbs of human rights and even occupying the spiritual space?
If the claims have the truth, sincere and fact-basis, then why China can’t open the closed Tibet to the international communities? Why is China suppressing and censoring Tibetans to contact outside relatives? That is because China suspects Tibetans may show the true face of Tibet to the world. If China has confidence, then welcome the international media reporters and researchers to investigate in Tibet. Then, it will come to know what the White Paper or official monologue is. Exiled Tibetans are the core competency of Tibet issue, commonly find Tibet as a “Big Prison” as dire and burning situation. China’s blaming game is no more validation. The International Communities know well how the CCP behaves. Xi’s adamant stance policy deteriorates not only Tibet but even its international diplomatic relations.
[1] https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202105/1224122.shtml.
[2] https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-05-21/China-issues-white-paper-on-Tibet-s-peaceful-liberation- achievements-10rd7iPryqk/index.html
[3] https://www.tibetanjournal.com/the-17-point-agreement-the-last-historical-symbolic-of-tibets-independence/
[4] https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/201903/1143587.shtml
[5] TPPRC (1998). The Political Philosophy of His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama. see in Introduction.
[6] https://tibet.net/tibetan-woman-tortured-to-death-in-chinese-custody-cousin-detained-for-sending-money-abroad/