Tibet

By Tenzin Chokyi
DHARAMSALA, 10 Feb: Tibetan environmental rights defender and anti-corruption whistleblower A-Nya Sengdra has been released from a Chinese prison after serving seven years and five months of unjust imprisonment on Saturday. Exiled Tibetans caution that his freedom remains fragile, given the Chinese government’s well-documented record of surveillance, intimidation, and re-imprisonment of human rights defenders even after their release.

DHARAMSALA, 14 Jan: A Tibetan exile who recently reunited with family members from Lhasa in Nepal has learned of increasingly “harsh restrictions and surveillance measures” imposed in Tibet’s capital, Lhasa and the so-called Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR). Ironically, the reunion itself carried significant risk as Kathmandu recently made it to the headlines with thousands of Chinese-supplied CCTV cameras monitoring streets and public spaces throughout the capital.

By Tenzin Chokyi

DHARAMSALA, 16 Dec: Chinese authorities reportedly detained around 80 Tibetans in Kashi Nomadic Village, located in the Zachuka in the traditional Tibetan province of Kham in occupied Tibet, on 6 November, following a protest by the local Tibetans against a gold mining project. The project, led by a Chinese business group, had reportedly begun operations without the knowledge or consent of the local Tibetan community.

By Tenzin Chokyi

DHARAMSALA 16 Oct: China has released a new think tank report portraying its rural development policies in occupied Tibet as “a harmonious blend of tradition and modernity,”  a model it contrasts with Western modernisation, which it claims erodes culture and heritage at the expense of development. But for Tibetans, beneath this new packaging lies the old mechanism of  assimilation, control, and the systematic remaking of a civilisation and its culture under the twin project of modernity and colonialism.

By Tenzin Chokyi

DHARAMSALA, 17 Sept: Beijing is advancing its settler-colonial agenda in occupied Tibet through militarised education by placing army veterans as “on-campus instructors” in schools, including kindergartens, to instil loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party over Tibetan identity, according to the latest report published by Tibet Watch, the research wing of the London-based advocacy group Free Tibet.

By Tenzin Chokyi

DHARAMSALA,  4 Sept: Tulku Palden Wangyal, the Head Lama of Choegyal Monasteries in Gonjo in the traditional Tibetan province of Kham, has died in Chinese custody after prolonged torture.

By Tenzin Chokyi

DHARAMsALA 27 Aug:  A monk from the Tsang Monastery in Amdo region of occupied Tibet has been arbitrarily arrested by Chinese authorities allegedly for “sending money abroad” during the period surrounding the 90th birthday of the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet.

By Tenzin Chokyi

DHARAMSALA 25 Aug: In a land where all avenues of dissent are sealed off, Geshe Shersang Gyatso, a 52-year-old leader of Tsang Monastery in the Amdo region of occupied Tibet, took his own life on 18 August as a final act of resistance against China’s escalating repression at the monastery.

By Tenzin Chokyi 

DHARAMSALA, 21 August: Chinese President Xi Jinping is in Tibet to take part in the celebration marking the 60th anniversary of the founding of the so-called Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), a colonial administrative entity created by Beijing in 1965 to fragment the historical Tibetan Region and streamline its rule over the occupied territory.