Posted on 10/16/2007 7:08:31 AM PDT by george76
Aren't you saying then that Tibet is part of China if they did control that much of it at one time? There was a time when the Manchus controlled all of China for 300 years. Because the Manchus controlled China for so long, Manchuria is now part of China.
China is not the Dalai Lama's government. They are only the government of Tibet as an occupying force.
There are nearly as many Tibetians living outside of Tibetian plateau in China as there are Tibetians living on the plateau. And Tibetian citizens can go anywhere in China and travel freely. Hardly sounds like an occupying force to me. In fact, some Chinese complain of preferential treatment given to minorities, which include the Tibetians, that are not unlike America's affirmative action.....once again, hardly sounds like an occupying force to me.
No. Tibet and China had always been two separate countries until China invaded and completely subsumed it in the 1950s and overthrew its leadership.
There are nearly as many Tibetians living outside of Tibetian plateau in China as there are Tibetians living on the plateau. And Tibetian citizens can go anywhere in China and travel freely.
Complete BS. Why then has the Panchen Lama been under house arrest in Beijing since 1995?
You said you were interested only in arguing the similarities between the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela but you still haven't come up with one. Obviously that isn't true. You are here only to spread misinformation IMO.
You post exclusively on the subject of China and you always seem to be an apologist for them or are underplaying the danger they represent to the U.S. or are building up their importance economically.
You are not the first agent of the PRC to post here on FR but you are certainly more subtle than the others have been. How much are they paying you?
More accurately, China had a weakened central control during the first half of the 20th century. After 1949, China re-affirmed it's hold on Tibet.
Complete BS. Why then has the Panchen Lama been under house arrest in Beijing since 1995?
Are you saying that there aren't millions of Tibetians living outside the plateau in China because of claims that the Panchen Lama is under house arrest?
You said you were interested only in arguing the similarities between the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela but you still haven't come up with one. Obviously that isn't true. You are here only to spread misinformation IMO.
No. It only pertained to the argument to those (and maybe you're one of them), who didn't support Nelson Mandela but puts their full weight behind the Dalai Lama. Nelson Mandela was speaking on behalf of Black S. Africa. The Dalai Lama, on behalf of Tibetians.
But if you want to talk differences, okay. Blacks in S. Africa were segrated from Whites. A Tibetians can go anywhere in China. And there is no official policy of segrating Tibetians from other Chinese. He or she maybe subject to work permits if they went to Shanghai or Beijing, but that would have applied to other migrant Chinese as well. So, there should have been (and correctly so), more global support for Nelson Mandela.
Tibetian independence is not supported by the average Chinese. Just as the average Chinese believe that Taiwan is part of China, so does the average Chinese believe Tibet is part of China. As well as Inner Mongolia and Manchuria and the Xighur region. And I'm sure, someday, when the time is right, the Russian Far East and Outer Mongolia.
China is no empire. All these people, including Tibetians, are Chinese citizens. They have the right to travel anywhere in China and to leave China if they want to. They actually get preferrential treatment.
Where am I misinforming anyone?
China had no hold on Tibet. That is a lie.
But if you want to talk differences, okay...
Nice attempt at a redirect. YOU are the one who touted the similarities between them. YOU are the one who complained that we should be arguing their similarities not their differences. Nowhere did I say that differences between them was worthy of discussion. YOU have failed to show any similarity between the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela and it was your challenge to stay on that track.
China is no empire. All these people, including Tibetians, are Chinese citizens. They have the right to travel anywhere in China and to leave China if they want to. They actually get preferrential treatment.
Garbage. The PRC is an iron fisted communist tyranny.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama meets with US President George W. Bush in the White House in Washington, DC on November 9, 2005. (AP Photo/The White House, Paul Morse)
Waiting for a pic from today's meeting.
Well, sure. We know what happens when the male hormones run amok! ;o)
Are you asserting that Tibet was never part of China before 1950? You said yourself that Tibet controlled most of China at one time.
YOU have failed to show any similarity between the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela and it was your challenge to stay on that track.
I don't see how I failed. I mentioned several times that both NM and the DL sought the help of the international community for the rights of their own people, NM for Black S. Africans and DL for Tibetians. Isn't that enough?
Garbage.
Are you disagreeing with the fact that Tibetians can travel anywhere in China?
The PRC is an iron fisted communist tyranny.
It's not a democracy, but it will be someday. And when it does, the Tibetians will get 8 million out of the 1300 million votes. And they will then as now, be free to travel throughout China. And I'm sure the migrant work visas, that are required by everyone in China outside the cities, will be a thing of the pass. And a rural Chinese as well as a Tibetian can hop on a train and go to Shanghai or Beijing if he wishes without a work visa.
Tibetians, have the same level of free reign as a rural person in China.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
The thing that makes China more angry is the inability to control more people’s lives than they do. They behave like a dog that has their bone taken away. The need to control is genetic at this point in history.
TE, PL, I hope you’ll forgive my jumping in. This site explains in no uncertain terms that “the government of Tibet” is in exile. I don’t believe that can be construed to mean that Tibetans are Chinese citizens. Not in any way, shape or form.
I’m just saying...
Are Tibetians required to carry cards or papers signifying they are Tibetians? Are their rights less than that of rural Chinese? Are they forbidden to travel within China or even leave China if they wanted to?
Human Rights in Tibet at a glance
Political protest against the Chinese occupation of Tibet and detention of Tibetans is both increasing and spreading throughout Tibet.
In 1999, the Eleventh Panchen Lama entered a fourth year of incommunicado detention by the Chinese Government. China continues to refuse international observers the access necessary to confirm his well-being. China also refuses to respond adequately to the representations made on the whereabouts of the child by several thematic mechanisms of the UN Commission on Human Rights, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Committee on the Rights of the Child. The Panchen Lama will be 11 years old on 25 April, 2000.
Agya Rinpoche, former abbot of Kumbum monastery in Qinghai province (north-eastern Tibet), a senior Tibetan religious figure, and an official at the deputy minister level, left China in November 1998 due to differences with the Chinese authorities... including, a heightened role demanded of him by the Government in its campaign to legitimise Gyaltsen Norbu. (the Pretender Panchen Lama).
In December 1999, the 14-year old XVIIth Gyalwa Karmapa, Ugyen Trinley Dorjee, a prominent religious figure, fled Tibet secretly and reached Dharamsala, India on 5 January 2000. On 19 February he gave his strongest and most political speech since arriving in India at a ceremony to mark the 60th anniversary of the enthronement of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. He said: “In some regions and places, due to the lack of freedom to enjoy the right to individual freedoms and the lack of knowledge and understanding, conflicts occur. To take the case of our own country, Tibet, the Land of Snows, it used to be a land where the sacred [Buddhist] faith and all aspects of intellectual and literary culture flourished. Over the last 20 to 30 years, Tibet suffered a great loss whereby Tibetan religious traditions and culture are now facing the risk of total extinction.”
More than 11,000 monks and nuns were expelled since 1996 for opposing “patriotic re-education” sessions conducted at monasteries and nunneries under the “Strike Hard” campaign.
In 1999, there were 615 known political prisoners in Tibet, including 156 women according to the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy based in Dharamsala, India. 79% of the political prisoner were monks or nuns. In 1999, 130 Tibetans are known to have been arrested on the suspicious of political activities.
Without justification, the Chinese Government arrested and sentenced Ngawang Choephel, a Tibetan ethnomusicologist in 1996 to 18 years in prison on charges of espionage. The Chinese Government has admitted that Ngawang Choephel has developed symptoms of bronchitis, pulmonary infection, and hepatitis. In May 1999, the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention of the UN Commission on Human Rights, in a decision categorised his detention as “arbitrary” being in contravention with international human rights standards. Since 1996 China has refused the numerous request for a visa by his mother to visit him in prison.
Ngawang Sangdrol, a Tibetan nun first imprisoned at age 13, has been beaten badly on several occasion because of repeated participation in protests at Drapchi prison. Her sentence was extended for a third time in late 1998 to a total of 21 years for her involvement in demonstrations, most recently during May 1998.
Female political prisoners in Tibet - since 1987, have died at a rate of one in 22 while in prison-as a result of torture, beatings or other harsh treatment.
Since the 1988 ratification of the UN Convention Against Torture by China, a recorded 69 Tibetans have died as direct result of torture at Chinese prisons in Tibet. Six of these deaths occurred in 1999. At least 70 torture-survivors from Tibet are being cared under the Tibetan Torture Survivors Programme of the Tibetan Government in Exile in Dharamsala, India. (more) Despite claims made by the Chinese authorities of economic development and “earth-shaking progress” in Tibet, indications are that this ëdevelopmentí has been mainly for the benefit of the Chinese settlers. According to UN Development Programme data, Tibet places somewhere between 131 and 153 out of the 160 countries on the Human Development Index.
Repressive and unequal taxation system are further exacerbating the conditions of poverty for Tibetans in rural areas. Most of the basic rights associated with a ëwelfare stateí like the right to housing, education, health remain unfulfilled.
An orphanage with more than 60 Tibetan children in Lhasa was closed by the Chinese authorities in August 1999. The children, ranging in age from 1 to 14 years, reportedly either were returned to their home, turned out into the streets, or placed in a local orphanage where conditions were reportedly extremely poor. The whereabouts of Bangri Tsamtrul Rinpoche, the director of the school after detention is not known. Police reportedly found some documents and items deemed political by the Chinese authorities when they searched Bangri Tsamtrul Rinpocheís house.
According to official Chinese Government statistics, the 1998 illiteracy rate for Tibetans age 15 and over was approximately 60 percent, and in some areas was considerably higher. Chinese authorities over the past few years have downgraded the use of Tibetan in education and in 1997 announced that they would begin teaching Chinese to Tibetan children starting in the first grade.
China intensified its birth-control programmes in Tibet. For example, the authorities in Kandze (Ganzi in Chinese) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture (TAP), Sichuan, have proposed changes to their existing family planning policies to “reduce the number of children allowed to Tibetans”. The proposal call for a reduction in the numbers of children that Tibetan workers and urban residents in the prefecture can have from two to one and from three to two for farmers and herders. There are also reports that “reduced child quotas” are also being imposed on Tibetans in some areas of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) and Gansu and Qinghai provinces, which comprise part of the Tibetan area of Amdo. Reductions in the number of children permitted would enable the local authorities to collect extra revenue from Tibetans in the form of penalties and fines for “excess” children.
China continues to encourage population transfer of Chinese settlers into Tibet. Tibetans are already an insignificant numerical minority in their own homeland. The demographic manipulation of Tibet is the greatest threat to the survival of the religious, cultural and national identity of Tibetans.
Unemployment is high amongst Tibetans while prostitution is flourishing in Tibetan towns and cities without official scrutiny. In Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, at least 658 brothels were identified by one study released in 1999.
According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, 2,903 Tibetans, including more than 1,000 children fled to exile in 1999. An estimated 300 arrived in January, 2000 at the Tibetan Refugee Reception Centre in Kathmandu, Nepal.
Foreign human rights delegations invited by China to Tibet are denied independent access to meet with Tibetans. China refuses allow independent human rights organisations to investigate the human rights situation in Tibet.
___________________________________________________________
Nothing vaguely like equality, unless you liken it to our own country having illegals forced upon us.
Cavaliers of Kham: The Secret War in Tibet is an excellent book that includes an accurate accounting of the history of Tibet's borders and their uncompromised sovereignty up until China's invasion in 1951. Unfortunately it is becoming hard to find and is getting rather expensive.
I have been honored to have seen a group of Tibetan monks in San Antonio on several occasions and have provided donations in the past and sponsorships to the monkhood.
It is my understanding that this is really the only way the Tibetan children can be educated. They are very gracious people. Their religious artifacts have been massively destroyed and are, therefore [sadly] increasing in value.
The Tibetan resistance movement began in 1957. Protests and rebellion, clashes between civilians and Chinese troops took place, as well as attacks on Chinese cadres, officials, garrisons, work places, and Tibetan officials believed to be pro-Chinese. The authorities responded by besieging and bombing monasteries holding rebels and refugees. In 1959 the Chinese established a military government to intensify the "democratic reforms." More monasteries were destroyed, while hundreds of thousands of Tibetans were imprisoned, executed, or sent to labor camps. When the Chinese started to shell his residence in Lhasa, the Dalai Lama and more than 50,000 supporters fled to India and set up a government-in-exile in Dharamsala.
That is some equality there.
Mandarin is the official language in China. And it is taught to many Chinese who do not speak Mandarin as well. Many Chinese dialects simply no longer taught. Not only is Mandarin taught throughout China, but the Beijing dialect is the official Chinese language of China. Most Chinese do not oppose using Beijing Mandarin as the official language in schools.
And what is the story behind the people you described above? As long as Tibetians don't promote a separatist movement, there shouldn't be any problems.
Once again, Tibetians have the right to travel freely throughout China.
You have done them a great honor. I have met a few lamas myself, who escaped Tibet in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, and they are kind and gracious and never complaining about the tragedy in Tibet. But if pressed for an account of events there their stories confirm that the Chinese are brutal barbarians. For the most part they are not interested in discussing the past.
Ah, yes. The same choice that Hitler offered the Jews. What a deal!
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