China s Panchen Lama Ignored by Tibetans Told to Show Devotion — Radio Free Asia rfa.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from rfa.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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Chinese Communist Party officials in Tibet this month reaffirmed Beijing’s hardline policies pushing for Tibet’s complete assimilation into China’s dominant Han culture, calling for “political education” to further weaken Tibetans’ loyalty to exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, according to state media reports.
Meeting in Tibet’s regional capital Lhasa on July 16, executive committee members of the Chinese Communist Party in the Tibet Autonomous Region reiterated declarations made by China’s president Xi Jinping in special high-level meetings on Tibet in August 2020.
Among these were that China had “liberated and reformed” Tibet and set the region on the path of economic progress during the last 70 years, and that Tibet’s traditional Buddhist religion should be made to adapt to socialist society and be “developed in a Chinese context.”
Photo from Tibet
A Tibetan father of six died under unclear circumstances after his release from a course of political reeducation in detention Tibet’s Nagchu prefecture two years ago, RFA has learned.
Norsang, aged around 35 and a resident of Geso village in Nagchu’s (Chinese, Naqu) Tsalhi town, had been ordered by Chinese authorities to attend the course, A Tibetan living in India said, citing local sources.
“Norsang and a few other Tibetans from the same town were sent to the political reeducation class in September 2019,” RFA’s source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“The rest of them were released, but Norsang’s whereabouts remained unknown for a long time,” the source said. “But we recently learned that he died in 2019 after being severely tortured by authorities.”
Photo: RFA
The arrest in recent months of at least seven Tibetans apparently on charges of anti-state activity underscores Beijing’s continuing drive to destroy the influence of men and women whose views of life in Tibetan regions of China go against official narratives, a Tibetan rights group in India says.
“If these intellectuals can no longer influence the Tibetan public, that public can be more easily manipulated and fooled,” says Pema Gyal, a researcher at the Dharamsala, India-based Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy.
Beginning in 2008 when widespread protests against Chinese rule swept Tibetan regions and until 2010, nearly 60 influential Tibetan poets, writers, and other literary figures and academics were arrested by Chinese police, with the whereabouts of many still unknown, Gyal said.
Chinese investments in Tibet have integrated the region more closely with China, but Tibetans themselves are being economically marginalized, an India-based advocacy and research group says.