Opinions

By VIJAY KRANTI

On 23rd May, Beijing completes 70 years of colonial occupation and rigid communist rule of China. It was on 23rd May 1951 when the Dalai Lama, the ruler and supreme spiritual leader of Tibet, heard a dramatic broadcast on ‘Radio Peking’ which announced that Tibet had signed a “17-Point Agreement” with China under which Tibet had agreed to become a part of China. Amidst shouts of self-congratulation the Radio claimed that the ‘Agreement’ had been signed between the ‘Central People’s Government’ of China and the Tibetan delegates ‘with full powers of the Local Government of Tibet’.

By Ben Westcott | CNN | 27 January 2021

The United States’ determination that China is committing genocide in Xinjiang presents a rare moral predicament for athletes and countries preparing to compete in the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.

By Josh Rogin | The Washington Post |  25 December 2020.

The world is finally responding to the Chinese government’s mass atrocities against Uighurs and other ethnic minorities in China’s northwest province of Xinjiang. But now Beijing is replicating some of its worst practices — including rounding up hundreds of thousands of innocent people in military-style reeducation camps — in other parts of China. This year, Beijing built and filled massive camps in Tibet, which had been the original testing ground for cultural genocide, political indoctrination and forced labor. Tibetan leaders are pleading for the world to pay attention.

By Karchen Lhatoo | 31 August 2020. There is something beautiful about nonviolence. The idea that the presence of violence

Ghukha Chophy | Tetso college, Dimapur | 17 August.
“All tremble at violence; all fear death. Putting oneself in the place of another, one should not kill nor cause another to kill.” ~ Gautama Buddha, Dhammapada; Verse 129

By Karchen Lhatoo | 17 August 2020.
Richard Gere— renowned American actor and producer— turns his eyes away from the Academy Awards’ teleprompter; he is going to speak for himself. Instead of the planned commentary oriented around worshipping the Hollywood elite, he begins to talk about human rights, before asking that Deng Xiaoping “take his troops and take the Chinese away from Tibet and allow the people to live as free independent people again.” Even though Gere would be subsequently barred from the Oscars, it is a miraculous step forward for the recognition of the plights of Tibetans on the world stage. However, this is 1993. It is now 2020— almost 30 years later— and still, Tibetans are suffering.

By Dr Kazuko Tatsumura Hillyer | New York | 17 July 2020.
Ever since I met the Dalai Lama in 1972, I’ve come to love the Tibetan people. With great pains, I introduced the Tibetan “Folk Opera” to the world in 1975 (see 5th story). For the first time ever, Tibetans left their community to travel to the West. Twenty-four performers came to tour Europe and America for the very first time. With a great deal of difficulty, I created a wonderful plan for them to perform for two weeks in four countries: Vienna in Austria followed by the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland. 

By James D. Schultz and Sean Carter | CNN | 21 June 2020.
That the Chinese government has significant culpability for the global spread of Covid-19 and needs to be held accountable for its misconduct should not be a partisan issue. We already know that the Associated Press has reported the Chinese government concealed critical facts about the emergence of the virus; that local officials silenced voices of warning; and that as a result, actions of Chinese officials most likely deprived the world early on of critical information about the virus’ transmissibility and lethality.

A young girl orphaned when fleeing with her family after the 1959 uprising in Tibet who later went back to Tibet to establish orphanages for abandoned children has died this week of COVID-19 in Switzerland.

By Michael Sainsbury | UCA News | 4 May 2020.
Tibet has for decades been something of a testing ground for the CCP’s toughest repression. It is where it honed its programs of both cultural genocide and religious repression; Tibetan Buddhism is banned in the rest of China and the officially atheist CCP has, famously and without any realization of the irony, taken it upon itself to determine the reincarnations of senior lamas.