Statement of the Kashag on the 67th Anniversary of the Tibetan National Uprising Day
Today marks the 67th anniversary of the 1959 Tibetan National Uprising, when Tibetans from all three provinces, monastics and laypeople alike, rose in unison with indomitable courage in Tibet’s capital, Lhasa, to protest the illegal invasion by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and to safeguard the person of His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama from imminent threat. On this solemn occasion, the Kashag pays its deepest tribute to all the martyrs who made the ultimate sacrifice for the sake of Tibet, its faith, and its people, and stands in unwavering solidarity with our brothers and sisters inside Tibet, whose resolve to preserve our distinct national identity remains as unyielding as Mount Meru, even in the face of relentless oppression by the government of the PRC. We also express our sincere gratitude to all our distinguished guests present here today for their powerful demonstration of solidarity with the Tibetan people, and to all nations, organizations, and individuals around the world who continue to support the cause of Tibet.
Last year, in conjunction with the auspicious celebration of the 90th birthday of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the Kashag launched the Year of Compassion. Through this continued observance, we seek to extend to the global family His Holiness’s profound treatises on compassion and foster its spirit, while cultivating the wisdom to attain happiness and alleviate the suffering of all sentient beings. This initiative seeks, to the fullest extent of our ability, to share His Holiness’s sacred counsel in fulfilling humanity’s shared aspiration for the physical world to abide in elemental balance and for sentient beings, its inner essence, to remain in tranquillity and peace.
One thing in which we can firmly anchor our trust and conviction is His Holiness’s profound treatises on compassion. As Jamgon Mipham explains in his commentary on The Words of Chandra, the power of compassion lies in never abandoning the endeavour to protect all sentient beings. Thus, His Holiness’s all-encompassing compassion and unyielding commitment to the welfare of all will, sooner or later, pacify the hostility and malice of the PRC government and its leaders, and guide them toward friendship.
At present, the government of the PRC is falsely asserting that Tibet and all non-Han nationalities are part of the constructed “Zhonghua Minzu.” It is mobilizing, under the proclaimed mandate of “forging a strong sense of community for the Chinese nation,” the full machinery of the state to carry out expansive and deeply entrenched policies within Tibet aimed at eradicating both Tibet’s physical environment and its people’s distinct national identity. Specifically:
A: Around a million Tibetan children have been forcibly placed in colonial boarding schools where the teaching of the Tibetan language and the transmission of Tibetan culture are severely restricted. Within these schools, Tibetan children are subjected to intensive political indoctrination under Communist Party ideology. The United Nations, the United States government, the European Parliament, and leading international research institutions have recognized this policy as forced assimilation and a systematic effort to erode Tibetan cultural identity.
B: The PRC government is executing large-scale forced relocation and labour transfer targeting Tibetan farmers and nomads through programs such as the “Training and Labour Transfer Action Plan.” A joint statement released by a group of UN experts on 22 January 2026 reveals that between 2000 and 2025, some 3.36 million Tibetans—nearly half of the total Tibetan population—have been affected by these programs. It further highlighted the severity of these state-led efforts, noting that in many cases the coercive elements are so severe that “they may amount to forcible transfer and/or enslavement as crimes against humanity.”
C: The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), in its 2025 report, stated that the PRC government’s implementation of the policy of “Sinicization of Tibetan Buddhism” represents a “systematic pattern of repression that fully meets the definition of cultural genocide.”
D: Currently, the PRC government is deliberately and increasingly misinterpreting its own constitution and through administrative orders and subordinate regulations, implementing sweeping measures that roll back and effectively nullify the rights of nationalities guaranteed under its Constitution and the Law of People’s Republic of China on Regional Ethnic Autonomy.
E: Against the backdrop of global warming, the Chinese government’s reckless infrastructure development and large-scale resource mining projects have caused temperatures on the Tibetan Plateau to rise at three times the global average. The Metog hydropower project launched last year, alongside hydropower projects on major and mid-sized rivers and the blanketing of vast landscapes with solar arrays, not only devastates the ecosystem of the Tibetan Plateau but continues to pose a direct threat to the water security of the Asian continent. Coupled with these projects, the settlement of millions of ethnic Chinese in Tibetan areas and the forcible relocation of Tibetans resulting from these projects will undeniably threaten the survival of their distinct identity and the sustainability of their livelihoods.
F: In brief, the United Nations and the international community have determined that the policies currently being implemented in Tibet by the PRC’s Communist government, as outlined above, meet the criteria defined in Article 2 of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which entered into force on 12 January 1951, and consequently. it is imperative that the prosecution be pursued in accordance with the provisions of Article 3 of the Convention. Meanwhile, it has become a routine practice for the Chinese government to arrest, detain, and imprison those who refuse to comply with or who protest against its genocidal policies.
Nevertheless, it can reasonably be foreseen that the policies pursued by the leaders of the government of the PRC, employing centuries-old colonialist tradition, to annihilate both the environment and people of Tibet will ultimately fail.
The reckless destruction of the Tibetan Plateau, a strategic geographical region also known as the ‘Water Tower of Asia,’ does not merely impact the two billion people who depend on Tibet’s rivers, but also threatens the interests of the entire world in our collective effort to confront the global climate crisis.
The Land of Snow, since countless eons past, has been held in the sacred embrace of Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of infinite compassion, who awakened the Bodhichitta aspiration to take Tibet as his field of disciples. Through the emanation of the Bodhisattva Progenitor Monkey, he first propagated the Tibetan people and thereafter, through immeasurable Bodhisattva emanations as kings and ministers, has held in protection the welfare of Tibet and its people and continues to do so. Having solemnly vowed, with his thousand arms and thousand eyes, never to forsake Tibet and its people for as long as eons endure, it is absolutely certain that the destructive designs of the PRC government, bound to a crumbling communist ideology, to utterly destroy Tibet and its people will never succeed.
Tibet has never been a part of China since ancient times and is rather a nation under the illegal occupation of the communist PRC. The fact that the question of Tibet is not an internal affair of China, but rather an unresolved international conflict, has been clearly established in the “Promoting a Resolution to the Tibet-China Dispute Act” enacted by the U.S. government. Regarding the reincarnation of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the international community, through around 134 formal pronouncements, including legislations, resolutions, and declarations, categorically rejects the PRC’s so-called three conditions put forth in complete disregard for religious tradition and with an abandonment of political morality, and asserts a unified stance of non-recognition whatsoever. Nevertheless, the PRC continues to push its malicious agenda inside China and Tibet. Alongside its intensifying propaganda campaigns, the PRC government is exploiting its state-appointed Panchen Gyaltsen Norbu and a handful of lamas and monks through staged meetings and scripted speeches. It is certain that such orchestrated attempts will never be accepted by anyone, neither now nor at any point in the future.
In conclusion, we earnestly pray for His Holiness the Great Fourteenth Dalai Lama of Tibet to live for eons and for the spontaneous fulfilment of all his sacred aspirations, including the four noble commitments. May the auspicious day soon dawn when His Holiness makes his rightful return to the Potala Palace and Tibetans inside and outside Tibet collectively dwell in spiritual bliss.
The Kashag
10 March 2026
Note: This is the translation of the Tibetan statement. Should any discrepancies arise, please treat the Tibetan version as final and authoritative.
