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Cultural Genocide in Tibet on Rise

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China has marked the 70th anniversary of the Chinese invasion of Tibet with a call to adopt the rule of the Communist Party of China (CCP) by learning the Chinese language and culture. Chinese leader Xi Jinping asked Tibetans to learn Mandarin, the official Chinese language and demanded a “new modern socialist” Tibet, as well as the “sinicization” of the Tibetan people

The CCP is committing cultural genocide in the Himalayan region with iron hands. To ensure mass compliance, the CCP has implemented a string of new policies in the supposedly autonomous region. In Tibet, banned activities and practices now include visiting temples and the use of rosary beads, any other religious objects.

According to the Policy Research Group (POREG), Beijing “has appointed special agents in each office and community to report on Tibetan cadres and officials who break these laws.” Any person found to have engaged in any of the banned activities or practices faces “sacking from their government jobs, denial of all special entitlements, and even arrest.”

To eradicate the country’s cultural DNA, the Tibetan language is no longer being taught in schools. Instead, Mandarin is now the new language of instruction. Buddhist monks are also being persecuted and punished for fabricated crimes. According to Human Rights Watch, two monks recently received 17- and 15-year sentences, respectively, simply for arguing with the cadres during the education session.

On 10 December Go Sherab Gyatso, a Tibetan writer and educator, was sentenced to a decade behind bars. His crime? He refused to denounce the Dalai Lama. It should be noted that 10 December was Human Rights Day, a fact that added an extra layer of cruelty to the prison sentence.

China has ruled the Himalayan region since 1951 after its People’s Liberation Army (PLA) invaded and took control of Tibet which it calls a “peaceful liberation”. Human rights activists and analysts believe such moves towards cultural assimilation spell the demise of Tibet’s traditional Buddhist culture.

“Judging by developments in Tibet over the past 70 years, the Tibetans people have no cause for jubilation, as Chinese policies have turned Tibet into an open-air prison with restrictions on all aspects of Tibetan life,” says International Campaign for Tibet, the US-based organisation in a statement. “After 70 years of oppression, the only thing the Tibetan people need peaceful liberation from today is China’s brutality,” the group further added.

Beijing brands the current Dalai Lama as a dangerous separatist and instead recognizes the current Panchen Lama, put in place by the Communist Party, as the highest religious figure in Tibet. The Dalai Lama has been a symbol of the struggle of the Tibetan people for freedom, challenging the communist rule of China.

For the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), controlling the selection of the next Dalai Lama is critical for the sinicisation of Tibetan Buddhism. The project to sinicise Tibetan Buddhismhas consistently received attention from the top echelons of the party, including President Xi. “Tibetan Buddhism should be guided in adapting to China’s socialist society and should be developed in the Chinese context,” Xi has said last year.

In May this year, China had also issued an official white paper that any successor of the Dalai Lama has to be approved by Beijing. As per White Paper, it would choose the successor to the Dalai Lama through “drawing lots from the golden urn” with the candidate subject to the approval of the Communist Party China (CPC)-ruled central government.

China’s biggest fear is that the Dalai Lama may choose his successor outside Tibet within the Tibetan community in India. If the Dalai Lama finds a successor outside Tibet, the successor that China may appoint will not enjoy legitimacy and the spiritual authority required to exercise effective influence in Tibet.

Tibetans allege Beijing’s climate action plan hurts their livelihoods, traditions, rights

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Tibetans have alleged that the Beijing government is trying to strip them off their lands under the garb of climate mitigation efforts. They said they were forced to give up ownership of their land as well as stopped from using grazing fields. All this is expected to jeopardize the basic rights and hurt the livelihoods of the Tibetans living in Tibet. The Chinese government has started revoking land permits and confiscating farmlands and grazing grounds under the Grassland Preservation Policy. Water resources from Tibet take care of China’s water needs, which has caused Beijing to declare grasslands as national parks. All this has disrupted the lives and the livelihoods of Tibetan people. Tibet is a part of the Third Pole– Earths’ largest store of glaciers, ice and permafrost. Thus urbanization and disrupting the traditional likelihoods in Tibet are going to have huge negative COP26 Summit in Glasgow.

Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) said China was punishing Tibetans in the name of climate action and reducing carbon emissions. China is relocating and resettling nomadic pastoralists from highlands to urban areas, which can lead to loss of land tenure security, food security and a host of other collective rights, it said. TCHRD said the climate action component, eco-compensation, had contradictory meaning in China’s way of doing it since it leads to the expulsion of Tibetan from their homelands. “Instead of compensating Tibetans for the loss of permafrost and wetlands, due to climate change driven by China’s emissions; and for the costs of increasing flooding, lake overtopping and extreme weather, China uses its adoption of Natural Ecological Capital Accounting to relocate Tibetans away from their lands,” the TCHRD said in its report named Unsustainable Futures.

China’s programme to address climate change involved restructuring Tibetan’s way of life even as allowing an intensive, industrial, market-based economy in other parts of the country, TCHRD said. This can affect long-term livelihood resilience among the affected communities. “Nomadic pastoralists are already vulnerable to climate induced disasters and calamities, the frequency of which has only accelerated in recent years. As if this is not enough, official policies aimed at environmental conservation prevent Tibetan nomads from pursuing a sustainable 33 livelihood and exercising autonomous agency, which is the foundation of human rights and personal dignity,” reads the TCHRD report. Also, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Chinese authorities were found to be relocating Tibetan nomadic herders forcefully– physical as well as by creating unfavourable conditions.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) had in 2019 warned that the rate of warming in Tibet was at triple the speed of the rest of the world was experiencing warming. Yet China continued with extensive infrastructure building across the Tibetan Plateau. “Despite the fragility of the high-altitude ecosystem and the stark threats spelled out by the IPCC, China has intensified infrastructure construction across Tibet to further open up the landscape and extract Tibet’s natural resources. Such projects include a network of strategic rail routes and major damming and hydropower projects, the effects of which are likely to be irreversible,” said International Campaign for Tibet.

China is the biggest polluter as it releases more greenhouse gases Tibet than the combined share of other countries. And China contribution is set to increase significantly as it has boosted coal-based power generation in the wake of the unprecedented power crisis. Naturally, China finds itself at the centre stage as different countries begin negotiations for a comprehensive and balanced outcome for a coordinated climate action plan. Thus, China is using Tibet to show that it is taking mitigation measures to repair reputation damage. This however has in turn affected poor and naive Tibetan’s livelihoods, their traditions, and their basic rights, said CHRD researcher Tenzin leadership role in global climate management.

Biden was annoyed on Pakistan because of its role in last US elections

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ISLAMABAD: Former Interior Minister Abdul Rehman Malik said the US President Joe Biden was not showing his cold behaviour because of Afghanistan, but because of Pakistan and its Partian role in favour of former President Donald Trump.

Talking to The News, Malik revealed, “During the US presidential election, a Pakistani businessman used the Pakistani Embassy in Washington as Trump’s election office and when President Joe Biden found out about it, he got annoyed.”

He advised the prime minister and the foreign minister to write a letter to the US president and clarify the country’s position in addition to inquiring from the Pakistan’s ambassador to the US as to who had allowed him to use the Embassy for Trump’s election campaign.

He claimed that the ice had not melted yet between the US and Pakistan, otherwise President Biden would have talked to PM Khan. The former Interior Minister asserted that an allegation on Pakistan prompting the Afghan Taliban to take over Kabul before an agreed date was false and Indian propaganda.

He questioned as to how could one stop Taliban from entering Kabul once they were near their destination and Afghan forces welcomed them instead of resisting them, adding that President Ashraf Ghani fled away with many of his cabinet ministers, including his vice President Amrullah Saleh who had made tall claims of resistance and staying in Kabul till the last breath.

“The withdrawal of the American forces was in haste, giving a clear way to Afghan Taliban to enter Kabul and make an interim government of their own will,” Malik said, adding that there was no fault of Pakistan in the given scenario as the US never consulted Pakistan either before invading to Afghanistan or withdrawing its forces.

He said since day one, Pakistan had been playing a very sincere role for restoring peace in Afghanistan and it helped bring many Afghan Taliban factions to the negotiation table, adding, “It is Pakistan that has always come forward to rescue the US in crisis like situations despite the fact that the latter had a history of back stabbing the former.” He said that US had best chance to work with Pakistan to bring peace in Afghanistan instead of indulging in blame game as Pakistan could play a pivotal role, adding, “I hope President Joe Biden takes this advice and takes the initiative to stop Afghanistan from becoming a hub of international terrorists. The solution of Afghanistan crisis lies in the joint strategy and efforts between Pakistan and the USA.”

He said that just like post-Afghan war, US was targeting Pakistan unreasonably and alleging it of harbouring terrorism. He blamed the USA, in collusion to India, for being instrumental in placing Pakistan on FATF grey list for the reason that Pakistan and China were enjoying close ties and collaborating in CPEC project as “China is potentially the next super economic power.”

Abdul Rehman Malik also proposed formation of an International Reconciliation Commission with its key members from USA, Pakistan, UK, China, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan to give a reconciliation plan for resolving the ongoing row between the stakeholders.

To a question regarding PPP’s inclusion in PDM, Rehman Malik said that if the show cause notice was withdrawn, the PPP could return to the PDM. He added that Pakistan was facing many challenges and the people needed relief from inflation and unemployment.

Occupied Tibet should be a reminder to Taiwan

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The securitization of Tibet by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is a warning
to all of China’s ethnic minorities that all of them eventually face the
possibility of being made Hanised and extinct. The same message also applies
to the Taiwanese people who have lived under the shadow of the PRC all these
years, and the increasing belligerence of Beijing has important lessons for
Taiwan from the experience of Tibet under Chinese occupation. The Tibetan
people who have been under the occupation of China, have considerable
experience of this Hanization. Despite the deep sinews of Chinese state power
penetrating the region, Beijing is still wary of attempts that questions its hold
over the region.
That is why when the elections to the post of Sikyong were held in India, China
released its White Paper on Tibet, for no reason but to show its control. While
the White Paper spoke in glowing terms of the progress made by Tibet under
PRC rule, the world should be aware of China’s oppression of Tibetans and
this should serve as a warning to the people of Taiwan, an independent nation
who China claims to be its own and constantly threatens to take over. This
was recently stated by Kelsang Bawa, the Tibetan government-in-exile
representative to Taiwan, who added that Tibet’s experience should serve as
a warning to Taiwanese that their country’s freedom and democracy was in
their hands.
During a book launch (2 September), Kelsang Gyaltsen Bawa, representative
of the Dalai Lama to Taiwan, noted that over the years, intellectuals from Tibet
had either been forced into exile or faced brutal crackdowns in their homeland
by the Communist Party of China (CPC), and their suffering continues to the
present day. He recalled that after the signing of a peace treaty between the
Dalai Lama’s government and CPC in Beijing in 1951, Tibet witnessed “seven
decades of blood and tears shed by Tibetans”. Kelsang Bawa was referring to
the 17-Point Agreement that had affirmed China’s sovereignty over Tibet, but
which also promised Tibetans a high degree of autonomy. None of the
promised autonomy was ever given. Even as Chinese forces invaded Tibet,
they let loose a campaign of repression and loot. Several thousand
monasteries were destroyed, and many monks and their families lost their
lives. Subsequently, following the uprising by Tibetans in Lhasa, the capital
of Tibet, in 1959, the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama escaped to India,
where he formed a Tibetan government-in-exile.
It is significant that the Tibetan representative who had assumed his post in
January 2021, spoke at a book launch about the 1951 peace treaty
commemorating the 61st anniversary of Tibetan Democracy Day. Several
Taiwanese lawmakers joined the event and spoke in support of Tibet. For
instance, Freddy Lim an independent Legislator, who also heads the Taiwan
Parliament Group for Tibet, said the people of Taiwan should cherish their
freedom of expression and fight for democracy, while supporting the Tibetans
who faced oppression at the hands of the Chinese.
Similarly, warning the Taiwanese to be wary of the uptick in Chinese military
exercises off the coast of Taiwan, a legislator from the ruling Democratic
Progressive Party (DPP), Fan Yun, noted that China’s military belligerence
towards Taiwan had increased over the years. He added that people in Taiwan
should also keep faith in important values that the country shares with the
international community, including freedom, democracy, and human rights.
Another DPP Legislator, Hung Sun-han said China had shown what it would
do after a peace treaty is signed and noted that what happened in Tibet should
be a wake-up call for the Taiwanese when they think about the future of the
island.
The relevance of these comments comparing the situation in Tibet and the
possible Chinese takeover of Taiwan lies in the fact that China’s position on
the peaceful reunification of Taiwan has witnessed a gradual shift in the last
several years. On 2 January 2019, President Xi Jinping said, “We do not
forsake the use of force,” talking of the process of reunification. He added:
“China must be and will be reunified”. While President Xi Jinping had then
spoken mainly of “peaceful reunification”, the tone and context of his remarks
suggested he was firing a final warning shot to Taiwan. The basic message is
“give in or else.” China had earlier positioned itself as the one advocating
peace, and seeking integration without an invasion, while the Taiwanese
President Tsai Ing-wen was cast as the villain. In other words, if conflict and
invasion of Taiwan does take place, it would be blamed on the Taiwanese.
Four decades ago, when China entered the era of “Reform and Opening”,
“peaceful reunification” became the mantra of official CPC policy toward Hong
Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. With Hong Kong and Macau having been
“peacefully reunified” (1997 and 1999 respectively), Chinese expectations that
Taiwan would follow suit have been building up for two decades now. These
expectations redoubled a decade ago, as the Beijing Olympics and the Global
Financial Crisis (both in 2008) increased China’s self-confidence and
assertiveness internationally.
But in recent years, China has been losing its patience with the notion of
“peaceful re-unification.” President Tsai Ing-wen’s election in 2016, and her
re-election in January 2020, “forceful re-unification” has become ascendant.
Beijing views Tsai’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) as being radically proindependence and has been tightening the noose around Taiwan, both
diplomatically and militarily. For instance, China has limited Taiwan’s
“international space” by forcing it out of international organizations. After Tsai
was sworn into office, China prevented Taiwan from participating in
international organizations such as the World Health Organization even
under the name “Chinese Taipei.” International airlines have likewise been
pressured to replace “Taiwan” with descriptions such as “Taiwan, Province of
China.” More importantly, military exercises off Taiwan have intensified both
in scale and intensity. All these measures are evidence of the hardening of
China’s line.
The government and people of Taiwan should, therefore, keep in mind the
negative results of the occupation of Tibet by China. The political and socioeconomic disaster that has befallen Tibet since 1959 is a matter of historical
record. Additionally, the environmental impact of Chinese rule over Tibet is
something whose consequences will be felt for many years to come. Taiwan is
a free country today. It should retain its freedom and democracy and not
become an extension of the CPC. Tibet is today an outpost of the Han Chinese
and has had its religious and cultural identity irreversibly changed. In every
single way, Tibet is today, not the Tibet of the past, but with more negatives
thrown in by the Chinese, than the positives of progress and modernization.

U.S. Institutions Must Get Smarter About Chinese Communist Party Money

Desk Team

Amid the intensifying strategic rivalry between the United States and China, the CCP is increasingly using cash to infiltrate influential U.S. institutions using tactics broadly known as foreign-focused propaganda and United Front influence campaigns . These activities trace back to the party’s creation in 1921, when it began “educating the masses” and “mobilizing friends to strike at enemies.” At the National Meeting on Propaganda and Thought Work in 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping emphasized cadres should “use innovative outreach methods … to tell a good Chinese story and promote China’s views internationally.”

In June, the George H.W. Bush Foundation for U.S.-China Relations honored California Sen. Dianne Feinstein and former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger with lifetime achievement awards for their contributions to U.S.-China relations. “I’m grateful to accept this award from the Bush China Foundation,” Feinstein said. But what she did not seem to know was more than 85 percent of the foundation’s operating budget —a total donation of $5 million —came from the China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF), an organization controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

In June, the George H.W. Bush Foundation for U.S.-China Relations honored California Sen. Dianne Feinstein and former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger with lifetime achievement awards for their contributions to U.S.-China relations. “I’m grateful to accept this award from the Bush China Foundation,” Feinstein said. But what she did not seem to know was more than 85 percent of the foundation’s operating budget—a total donation of $5 million—came from the China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF), an organization controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Amid the intensifying strategic rivalry between the United States and China, the CCP is increasingly using cash to infiltrate influential U.S. institutions using tactics broadly known as foreign-focused propaganda and United Front influence campaigns. These activities trace back to the party’s creation in 1921, when it began “educating the masses” and “mobilizing friends to strike at enemies.” At the National Meeting on Propaganda and Thought Work in 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping emphasized cadres should “use innovative outreach methods … to tell a good Chinese story and promote China’s views internationally.”

But when these tactics, which the CCP calls “soft power” or “people-to-people” relations, target the United States and other liberal democracies, they have a corrosive influence on objective China studies research. By forging close partnerships with prominent foreign “opinion-setters,” Beijing aims to shape perceptions so they adopt and share views consistent with those of the CCP.

As leaders in research and innovation as well as incubators for future U.S. leaders, universities have become prime targets for Beijing’s penetration. In 2015, the FBI began formally warning these institutions about the risks, and five years later, it publicly sounded the alarm. “Of the nearly 5,000 active FBI counterintelligence cases currently underway across the country,” FBI director Christopher Wray said in a 2020 speech, “almost half are related to China.”

But although some like Feinstein and Kissinger have been taken in, many people in Washington are now seeking ways to thwart Beijing’s political influence campaigns. In 2018, members of Congress intervened to stop CUSEF from providing $2 million for a new China center at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. Then, the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act included a provision pressuring colleges with Defense Department-funded foreign language programs to shutter their Confucius Institutes.

These language and cultural centers—which former Chinese Propaganda Minister Liu Yunshan described as overseas outposts of “international propaganda battles against issuers such as Tibet, Xinjiang, Taiwan, human rights and Falun Gong”—have restricted the examination and even discussion of topics Beijing deems unacceptable. And last year, an Education Department investigation into U.S. universities found many are several decades delinquent in disclosing Chinese-sourced donations. The probe uncovered a staggering $6.5 billion in unreported foreign donations and more than $1 billion in anonymous foreign financial assistance over the past decade.

Still, many academic institutions have simply refused to disclose their CCP funding while others have closed their Confucius Institutes or renamed them to work around governmental pressure and keep the cash flowing. Tufts University and the University of Michigan shuttered their Confucius Institutes but continue to receive funds from China’s Ministry of Education. Because federal laws single out Confucius Institutes, the Asia Society simply changed the name of its K-12 version of the Confucius classroom to “Chinese Language Partner Network” and kept the money.

Meanwhile, Beijing is also responding in ways U.S. policymakers have yet to fully understand and address. China has rebranded it Confucius Institutes and created groups like the aforementioned Bush Foundation for U.S.-China Relations, which emerged in the aftermath of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs scandal. David Firestein, a retired State Department official who pushed CUSEF funding at the University of Texas, left in 2019 to lead the new organization. Moreover, the Carter Center at Emory University, which also takes money from CUSEF, has provided a platform for CCP diplomats. Without breaking any laws, Beijing is buying the legitimacy of both Republican and Democratic U.S. presidents to launder its propaganda and expand its influence over senior congressional leaders and U.S. statesmen.

To be sure, China is hardly the only government playing the foreign influence game in Washington, but its tactics set it apart from other players. “China has a politically weaponized system of censorship,” said Xiao Qiang, director of the Counter Power Lab at the University of California, Berkeley. “It is refined, organized, coordinated, and supported by the state’s resources. They also have a powerful apparatus to construct a narrative and aim it at any target with huge scale. No other country has that.”

The onus is now on Congress to respond by protecting the integrity of U.S. research and education on China. House members sent a formal inquiry on the matter to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona in mid-June, but so far, it is unclear whether the department has opened any new investigations into noncompliant universities. But the Biden administration and Congress must also take urgent steps. Annual disclosure requirements for universities and a ban on all congressional engagement with such groups are essential first measures—but alone, they are insufficient to stop the flow of CCP-linked funding into U.S. educational institutions.

To do that, Congress could require reciprocity so if Beijing wants to fund U.S. educational institutions, then Washington must also be able to sponsor its own programs at Chinese universities. Short of real reciprocity, however, Congress should restrict the types of gifts and donations U.S. universities can accept from CCP-backed sources. It is time U.S. policymakers acted to blunt the CCP’s influence campaign; the integrity and reputations of its educational institutions depend on it.

Mini marathon in Mumbai to commemorate 50 year of 1971 war

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Mumbai, India: A mini marathon was organised on Sunday to commemorate the 50 years of 1971 war from Pakistan.

 On the 50th anniversary of the 1971 India-Pakistan war, also known as ‘Swarnim Vijay Varsh’, a mini-marathon was organized in Mumbai on Sunday.

The run was held from Nariman point to RC Church in Colaba in the city.

Vijay Diwas is celebrated every year on December 16 to mark India’s triumph in liberating Bangladesh from Pakistan in the year 1971.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had lit the ‘Swarnim Vijay Mashaal’ at the National War Memorial on last year`s Vijay Diwas on December 16, 2020, to mark the year-long 50th-anniversary celebration of the 1971 India-Pakistan war.

In one of the fastest and shortest campaigns of military history, a new nation was born as a result of the swift campaign undertaken by the Indian Army. 

Tibetans gets ultimatum from CCP: Sinicise

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TIBETANS GET AN ULTIMATUM FROM THE CCP: SINICISE OR ELSE

The only choice Tibetans have today, 70 years after a failed uprising against Chinese rule, is to subject themselves to the Sinicisation process voluntarily or by force.

That is the near-ultimatum served on the Tibetan people by the Chinese leadership twice between July and August as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is expected to intensify in the near future the exercise to erase not just Tibetan culture or language or faith but the people’s basic belief in themselves.

Two top leaders of the CCP visited Tibet in the last fortnight to drive home the point that Tibetans without exception must “embrace” Communist Party rule along with the “cultural symbols and images of the Chinese nation”.

The first to visit the autonomous region controlled by the  CCP thanks to the sheer presence of the PLA was President Xi Jinping, the first head to visit Lhasa after Jiang Zemin in 1990. He went there ostensibly to review progress of railway projects. He did not make any major political statement there, limiting himself to words of approbation and congratulations at the happy rate of progress by the Tibetans.

His comments travelled much before he came there. In last August, he delivered what is now called his ultimatum to Tibet: “To govern a country, it is necessary to govern the border. To govern the border, it is required to stabilise Tibet first.”

If Tibetans still believed his words held out some hope of respecting their rights, here was the second salvo: “…actively guide Tibetan Buddhism to adapt to socialist society, and promote the Sinofication of Tibetan Buddhism.”

The second leader to visit Tibet, on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the PLA invading Tibet, was Wang Yang. member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee – China’s most powerful political body — and chairman of the CPPCC National Committee.

His message to the Tibetan people was terse:  Follow the leadership of the CPC, contribute to stability in the region and its border areas, advance ethnic unity, promote high-quality economic and social development and protect the ecological system of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. 

He then said something China has been officially saying for 70 years but which no Tibetan or none in the international community believe: “China ‘drove out all the imperialist forces and carried out sweeping democratic reform, separated religion from political powers and ended theocracy’, and ‘established the people’s democratic government’ in Tibet, as seven million serfs rose and held their future in their own hands”.  

Just to send the nail home, a message was also delivered to the Tibetans. It talked of the four priorities of the CP in Tibet: “Stability, development, ecology and border management.” It is left unsaid if the beneficiaries are Tibetans or the CCP. The signatories to the message are the most powerful in China: The Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, the National People’s Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, the State Council, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) National Committee and the Central Military Commission. 

The choicest description of China’s policy on Tibet came from its Governor, Qi Zhala, in October 2020 as the world, including China, was breathing again after the initial wave of the coronavirus epidemic. “Due to some outdated conventions and bad habits – particularly the negative influence of religion, people put more attention on the afterlife, and their desire to pursue better living this life is relative weaker. Therefore, in Tibet, we will need to not only feed the stomach, but also fix the mind.”

The exercise in Tibet appears to be part of the grand plan to hasten the assimilation of ethnic minority regions including Tibet, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia. The possibility of a fresh controversy over the selection of the next Dalai Lama and China’s intentional standoff with India in the Ladakh region appear to have made Tibet a priority issue.

The Sinicisation currently in motion in Xinjiang was originally tested in Tibet. Chinese Mandarin is taught in schools, with students encouraged to speak in the new language. It is being introduced in governance operations as well. Han Chinese have been coming into Tibet to settle down thanks to a bevy of incentives the CCP provides. Han cultures and social customs and religious practices are made popular and given legitimacy to. The Dalai Lama is vilified and Tibetan Buddhism officially ignored. The locals do not have a right to free speech and assembly, while official Communist Party jargon is seeking to replace all Tibetan cultural markings. Tightening screws, the Chinese government imposes severe controls for allowing Tibetans to pursue their religious practices.

The penultimate weapon – next only to use of brutal force – the government uses in Tibet is economic progress. In the last five years, China may have spent over $11 billion in developmental activities in the region. It has certainly brought prosperity in terms of better housing, clothing, education, leisure activities and jobs. The government claims fewer Tibetans are now poor than before. Far-flung villages now have roads, drinking water and health care facilities.

As part of the poverty alleviation campaign, that brings with it higher salaries and perks, Tibetans are encouraged to relocate elsewhere on the Chinese mainland for employment and comfortable lives. Uprooted from their cultural moorings by enticing them with jobs is how the Tibetans see it. It is a daily mental clash for them, between their links to their homeland and their personal development and prosperity.

Despite these policies that challenge human rights, the Tibetan spiritual leadership only reiterates its original demand of not freedom but autonomy for Tibet within the People’s Republic of China. Yet, China has to every now and then do something to confirm to itself that it controls Tibet. The latest round of messages is part of the series.

Beijing Forcing Tibetans to Adopt Chinese Language and Culture

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China has marked the 70th anniversary of the Chinese invasion of Tibet with a call to accept the rule of the Communist Party by learning Chinese language and culture. In a recent dictate, Wang Yang, a powerful leader of ruling elite asked Tibetans to learn Mandarin, the official Chinese language and adopt cultural symbols and images of the Communist nation.

“Tibet can only develop and prosper under the party’s leadership and socialism. For that all-around efforts are needed to ensure Tibetans speak standard spoken and written Chinese and share the cultural symbols and images of the Chinese nation,” said Yang while speaking at the anniversary event in Lhasa on 19 August. Wang Yang is the Chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) National Committee and being a Member of the Politburo Standing Committee of the apex of party power body also heads a national organisation responsible for uniting all races and ethnic minorities.

China has ruled the Himalayan region since 1951, after its People’s Liberation Army (PLA) invaded and took control of Tibet which it calls a “peaceful liberation”. Human rights activists and analysts believe such moves towards cultural assimilation spell the demise of Tibet’s traditional Buddhist culture.

“Judging by developments in Tibet over the past 70 years, the Tibetans people have no cause for jubilation, as Chinese policies have turned Tibet into an open-air prison with restrictions on all aspects of Tibetan life,” says International Campaign for Tibet, the US-based organisation in a statement.

“After 70 years of oppression, the only thing the Tibetan people need peaceful liberation from today is China’s brutality,” the group further added.

Last month, Chinese President Xi Jinping embarked on a three-day visit to tighten its hold over Tibet and send a message to India and the US.

Questions are also arising over the future of its diaspora community. Beijing has refused any contact with the self-declared Tibetan government in exile and the Dalai Lama who fled to India in 1959 following an abortive uprising against Chinese rule and his supporters have documented human rights abuses in Tibet related to an ongoing security crackdown.

Beijing brands the current Dalai Lama as a dangerous separatist and instead recognises the current Panchen Lama, put in place by the Communist Party, as the highest religious figure in Tibet.

The Dalai Lama has been a symbol of the struggle of the Tibetan people for freedom, challenging the communist rule of China.

For the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), controlling the selection of the next Dalai Lama is critical for the sinicisation of Tibetan Buddhism. The project to sinicise Tibetan Buddhism has consistently received attention from the top echelons of the party, including President Xi.

“Tibetan Buddhism should be guided in adapting to China’s socialist society and should be developed in the Chinese context,” Xi has said last year.

In May this year, China had also issued an official white paper that any successor of the Dalai Lama has to be approved by Beijing. As per White Paper, it would choose the successor to the Dalai Lama through “drawing lots from the golden urn” with the candidate subject to the approval of the Communist Party China (CPC)- ruled central government.

It also called the demand for Tibetan independence a product of “imperialist aggression against China”.

China’s biggest fear is that the Dalai Lama may choose his successor outside Tibet within the Tibetan community in India. If the Dalai Lama finds a successor outside Tibet, the successor that China may appoint will not enjoy legitimacy and the spiritual authority required to exercise effective influence in Tibet.

Modi Is Trying to Engineer a Hindu Majority in Kashmir

Desk Team

In 2019, New Delhi hoped that ratcheting up federal control would make it easier to subdue Kashmir’s population and many groups’ calls for self-determination. It has since unleashed the wrath of federal agencies on local politicians, traders, publishing houses, and even government employees who have been or potentially could become sources of dissent.

SRINAGAR, Jammu and Kashmir—The Indian government has commenced preparations to redraw the electoral boundaries in Indian-administered Kashmir two years after New Delhi rescinded the disputed region’s semi-autonomous status and introduced tighter federal controls.

SRINAGAR, Jammu and Kashmir—The Indian government has commenced preparations to redraw the electoral boundaries in Indian-administered Kashmir two years after New Delhi rescinded the disputed region’s semi-autonomous status and introduced tighter federal controls.

In 2019, New Delhi hoped that ratcheting up federal control would make it easier to subdue Kashmir’s population and many groups’ calls for self-determination. It has since unleashed the wrath of federal agencies on local politicians, traders, publishing houses, and even government employees who have been or potentially could become sources of dissent.

The crackdowns have also targeted protesters, members of civil society, and journalists, who are charged under draconian anti-terrorism laws that guarantee lengthy pretrial detentions and make bail an exception.

Now, the delimitation program envisions breaking up the electoral constituencies of the erstwhile semi-autonomous state into several new voter units in a manner that’s likely to give numerical heft to the southern region of Jammu, where there is a larger concentration of Hindu voters.

Altered demographics and a reconfiguration of electoral constituencies, would allow Hindu-nationalist politicians to realize their long-standing goal of installing a Hindu chief minister in Kashmir.

Altered demographics, when combined with a clever reconfiguration of electoral constituencies, would allow Hindu-nationalist politicians to realize their long-standing goal of installing a Hindu chief minister in Kashmir.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu-nationalist government has also started to enforce hundreds of federal Indian laws and policies in Kashmir, echoing similar Chinese measures in Hong Kong.

New Delhi has dismantled structures of self-government in Kashmir with remarkable speed. The Indian government opened ownership of land in Indian-administered Kashmir to outsiders, made it easy to acquire domicile rights, and overturned historic land reforms.

This was followed by a move that reduced the share of Kashmiri candidates entering the Indian civil service from 50 percent to 33 percent, which in the future will increase the number of nonlocal officers in Kashmir’s administration.

The federal government has also empowered the Indian armed forces to declare any area in the disputed region as “strategic” and ended the 131-year reign of Urdu as the sole official language of the region.

Unlike other Indian states, these laws and policies were not applicable in the region until August 2019 as Kashmir had its own constitution and its legislative assembly had exclusive power to make the laws.

Jammu and Kashmir is India’s only Muslim-majority region. Before 2019, Hindu-nationalist groups had long campaigned for the annulment of Kashmir’s special status enshrined in (now repealed) Article 370 of the Indian Constitution. Another feature of this extinguished legislation was Article 35A, which restricted the purchase of land to local residents alone.

In August 2019, Modi discarded both laws in a highly controversial move that has since soured India’s relations with Pakistan and China.

This year, New Delhi started rolling out residency permits for non-Kashmiri Indians, escalating fears that the Kashmir Valley, wedged between the snowy Himalayas, would be swamped with outsiders, turning the local Muslim-majority population into a political minority in their homeland, much as Han Chinese settlement has demographically transformed Tibet and Xinjiang. Last October, India’s Ministry of Home Affairs issued new land laws for Indian-administered Kashmir, making it possible for any Indian citizen to buy land in the region.

Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, has openly pursued a policy of electoral engineering in the region, the delimitation process provides a smokescreen and gives it constitutional validity.

While the federal government, led by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has openly pursued a policy of electoral engineering in the region, the delimitation process provides a smokescreen and gives it constitutional validity—while still achieving the goal of disempowering Kashmiri Muslims.

A delimitation commission overseeing the entire process draws on numbers supplied by the decennial national population census mandated by the Indian Constitution.

However, in 1976, when India was under a national state of emergency, its Parliament passed an amendment freezing all delimitation so that it remained based on the 1971 census. This freeze was put in place at a time when India was struggling to control its booming population. To effectively implement the state policy of population control, a freeze was put on the delimitation exercise, which would electorally penalize those states where the population grew faster, until the 2001 census.

This has divided the country on North-South lines. Most of the Southern states have achieved zero population growth, while the Northern states still have a very high fertility rate. If India carries out the delimitation exercise as per the recent census figures, the Northern states would gain many seats, while the Southern states would lose some.

Notwithstanding the Parliament-sanctioned freeze, Kashmir held the delimitation exercise in 1995, ahead of the state elections conducted in 1996, based on the 1981 census. (The 1991 census could not be held in Kashmir because of turbulence in the region at the time.) The delimitation process in Indian-administered Kashmir at that time was governed by its own state constitution, and the freeze was not applicable to the region.

In 2002, Parliament enacted yet another amendment extending the freeze until the first census after 2026. In line with the Indian Parliament, Kashmir’s then-ruling party and the region’s oldest, the Jammu & Kashmir National Conference (JKNC), also put a freeze on delimitation until 2026.

However, last March, the Modi-led government set up a delimitation commission under the aegis of a retired justice with an aim to redraw constituencies, based on 2011 census numbers, in Kashmir as well as in four northeastern states—Assam, Manipur, Nagaland, and Arunachal Pradesh.

This year, all four northeastern states were struck off the list, while Kashmir, curiously enough, stayed. A senior political analyst, Noor Mohammad Baba, told Foreign Policy that resuscitating the plan exclusively for Kashmir is simply an attempt to gerrymander the voter units in the region. ­

Pro-India politicians in the region, representing a clique of local leaders who aspire to remain within the Indian union but with the kinds of autonomous powers that Modi scrapped two years ago, fear that the exercise will effectively disenfranchise Kashmiri Muslims.

“The whole exercise becomes illegal after the unconstitutional abrogation of Article 370,” Mehbooba Mufti, who heads the Jammu & Kashmir Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), told Foreign Policy. “Every decision taken or order issued from the Indian government since the abrogation of the special status has been to fulfill their objective of diluting our position and identity. The hurried delimitation exercise is another step in that direction.”

Mufti argues that the redrawing of boundaries and division of seats are likely to take place along communal and sectarian lines. “This can be catastrophic for a state like J&K that has multiple religions and various ethnicities that have always co-existed peacefully,” she added.

After the abrogation of Article 370, the BJP-led Parliament passed the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act of 2019 (which the region’s mainstream political parties call unconstitutional and have challenged its validity in India’s Supreme Court), adding seven more seats for the region and making a delimitation exercise imperative.

Until August 2019, Jammu and Kashmir had 111 seats in its state legislative assembly. The Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley had a share of 46 seats, while Jammu had 37. Also, 24 seats were reserved for the people of Pakistani-administered Kashmir, which India claims.

The universally accepted rule for delimitation of electoral constituencies is population, followed by the Indian government since its inception as a parliamentary democracy. However, the BJP in Kashmir proposed to use geography as a criteria while demarcating boundaries of new assembly segments. Besides geography, the BJP and other Hindu-nationalist groups in Jammu demand other parameters like facilities of communication and topography of the constituencies to be considered while redrawing the seats, which would tilt the numerical strength of the seats in favor of Jammu.

In two years of federal rule in the region, domicile rights were given to thousands of nonlocals who had served or stayed in the region.

Constitutionally, population is meant to be the prime criterion while drawing electoral constituencies, and India has by and large followed this rule. However, there is a precedent when geography and topography of a few select districts in the mountainous state of Uttarakhand were considered over population.

The BJP and other Hindu-nationalist parties have been called out for their hypocrisy on the issue; while they demand area be considered as the main criterion for delimitation in Jammu and Kashmir, they demand that population be the primary factor elsewhere, given that the northern Indian states where the BJP has a strong political presence are more populous.

In two years of federal rule in the region, domicile rights were given to thousands of nonlocals who had served or stayed in the region. Most of these new residents have settled in Jammu, which political experts believe will alter the electoral demography of Kashmir in the long run.

If the delimitation commission relies on the 2011 census to demarcate the new electoral boundaries, the Kashmir Valley would get more seats than Jammu, as that year’s official census figures revealed that the Kashmir Valley had a population of 6.8 million to Jammu’s population of 5.3 million.

However, the Hindu-dominated Jammu area is geographically larger in size (10,100 square miles) than the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley (6,100 square miles). That is why the BJP over the years has been demanding that area be considered as the main factor for carrying out the delimitation exercise in the region.

Also, the BJP has been demanding to reserve seats for socially disadvantaged groups from the Hindu community, known as scheduled castes or Dalits. (Their numbers in the region are disputed.) The party has also proposed to reserve seats for the tribal groups and Kashmiri Pandits (Hindus) who migrated to Jammu in the 1990s, when a popular insurgency erupted in the Kashmir Valley against Indian rule. It has proposed to exclusively reserve seats for Kashmiri Pandits in Kashmir, thereby reducing the overall number of general seats for the Kashmir Valley.

Other than these groups, the BJP is also likely to reserve seats for refugees who migrated from Pakistan and settled in Jammu during the India-Pakistan wars in 1947 and 1965. These moves are seen as attempts to increase the share of seats in Jammu, where the ruling BJP has a major foothold, leading to more political gains for the party at the cost of other regional parties.

Aug. 5 marked the completion of two years since Kashmir lost its special status. Now, people in Kashmir fear more assaults on their identity as the BJP is inching closer to achieving its civilizational project of changing the Muslim-majority region into one with a Hindu majority.

In the face of this attempted gerrymandering, Kashmir Valley-based political parties continue to demand that population should be the sole parameter to delineate constituencies.

These political parties fear that Muslim-majority assembly constituencies in Jammu would be declared as “reserved constituencies” for Dalits and Pandits, thereby denying Muslims political participation. There are also fears that Jammu’s Muslim-majority areas could be dispersed across seats due to politically motivated redistricting so that their numerical strength is diluted.

Before 2019, the regional political parties had vowed to resist any move from the union government that would revoke regional autonomy in what became known as the Gupkar Declaration.

Later, after Modi revoked autonomy, the political parties formed a coalition called the People’s Alliance for Gupkar Declaration, which they argue is a “movement for the restoration of the rights and dignity of the people of J&K.” However, soon after its formation, the coalition fell apart as political differences crept in and many political parties left the group.

This month, the coalition disregarded its pledge to provide a formidable opposition to the BJP in the region as most coalition partners—apart from Mufti’s PDP—participated in the inaugural meeting of the delimitation commission, a widely criticized move that was deemed to provide legitimacy to the Modi government’s policies in the region.

Ruhullah Mehdi, a senior political leader affiliated with JKNC, views the participation of local political parties in the delimitation meeting as futile. He believes that the maps for the new electoral constituencies have been already drawn in the BJP’s headquarters in New Delhi.

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological forerunner of the BJP, “has an ideological objective which they want to achieve in Kashmir. They are anti-Muslim and anti-secularism. And empowered Muslims do not fit in their ideology,” Mehdi told Foreign Policy.

“Kashmiri Muslims have a double crime in their understanding—that they are Muslims and Muslims with a state.”

Tibetan children to forcibly undergo military training

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Lahasa, Tibet: Military training is in the ideology of Chinese Communist party. Now the Chinese authorities are forcing the Tibetan children to undergo military training.


The move is a part of Beijing’s plan to weaken cultural ties, the students are being sent to Lhasa and several other areas to attend two training camps set up in southern Tibet’s Nyingtri.


“Tibetan children who usually attend Tibetan schools and monasteries during their summer and winter breaks are now left with no choice but to attend these military training programs,” Karma Tenzin, a researcher at Tibet Policy Institute based in India said.


This is China’s attempt to brainwash young Tibetans through a strategy of carrying out programs like this, this will become a threat to the Tibetan language,” Tenzin added.


Language rights have become a particular focus for Tibetan efforts to assert national identity in recent years, with informally organized language courses in the monasteries and towns typically deemed “illegal associations” and teachers subject to detention and arrest, Radio Free Asia reported citing sources.


Recently, Beijing forcibly shutting down a monastery in China’s Gansu province, evicting the monks and nuns while many of them have also been detained by Beijing during this eviction.


The Chinese authorities are also gearing up for increased control over Tibetan Buddhism, where monasteries are forbidden to give traditional monastic education which forms an integral part of Tibetan Buddhism.


Monks and nuns are, instead, subjected to regular “patriotic education” and other political campaigns that are fundamentally against the basic tenets of Tibetan Buddhism.


Due to China’s occupation, Tibet’s environment has been destroyed, the resources have been illegally mined and transported and the rivers have been polluted. Their occupation has led the Tibetans devoid of their basic rights and the human rights situation inside Tibet continues to deteriorate and worsen each passing year under the Chinese Communist Party’s oppressive and repressive hardliner policies.