Tibet is China’s Gaza Strip – a short overview and summary

To understand the problems in Tibet, you should watch the movie below …

I know it is long

I will also repost the article which quotes Peter Firstbrook, producer of BBC Four series “A Year in Tibet”…

“The recent protests mark the 49th anniversary of the Tibetan uprising of 1959 when anti-Chinese and anti-communist demonstrations erupted on the streets of Lhasa, and were put down by force.

Tibet is China’s Gaza Strip in some way… so China’s crackdown on monk-led rallies in Lhasa is part of a long history of state control of monasteries…

Buddhist monasteries are among the few institutions in China which have the potential to organise resistance and opposition to the government – so the Chinese Communist Party constantly worries about them.

Are some monks secret supporters of the Dalai Lama? Could they be working towards Tibetan independence? Beijing’s fear is so great that being found with just a photograph of the Dalai Lama in your possession could land you in jail.

Government regulation of the monasteries started almost as soon as the People’s Liberation Army marched into Tibet in 1950.

Lhasa’s three major monasteries – the Sera, Drepung and Ganden, were seriously damaged by shelling. The Dalai Lama was forced to flee into exile and the Tibetan government-in-exile estimates that 86,000 Tibetans died.

Less than a decade later, Mao’s Cultural Revolution wrought havoc in the region and the Red Guards destroyed more than 6,000 monasteries and convents – just a handful survived.

Along with the buildings, hundreds and thousands of priceless and irreplaceable statues, tapestries and manuscripts were destroyed.

“At that time all the monasteries were destroyed. The whole country was changing during the revolution. The wave of change was unstoppable,” says Dondrup, a 77-year-old monk at the Pel Kor Monastery in Gyantse.

Since the 1980s the Chinese government has begun to rebuild some of the monasteries and they has also granted greater religious freedom – although it is still limited.

But almost every aspect of the lives of Buddhist monks and nuns is monitored and controlled by the government.

Every monastery and nunnery in Tibet is visited at least once every few weeks by a Communist Party official, who checks that the government rules and regulation are being correctly applied.

Butri, a Tibetan Communist Party cadre, explains: “I visit these temples once or twice a month. I tell them what to do and what not to do. They all listen and say nothing.”

The government is also very careful whom it allows to become a monk. All novices have to go through a detailed vetting procedure which takes years to complete. Even their families are checked for any subversive background.

The Chinese government also restricts the number of monks and nuns. In fact, monasteries can no longer perform many of their rituals correctly because of a shortage of monks.

Tsultrim, the deputy head lama of the Pel Kor monastery in Gyantse, said at its peak the monastery was home to 1,500 monks. Today the Chinese government restricts numbers to no more than 80.

“Although we can’t have that many lamas now, we can still absorb new lamas under the current regulations and policies,” he said.

“Of course, we need to check up on them, to see if they’re the right people for us.”

The recent conflict on the streets of Lhasa mirrors events almost 20 years ago – the last time there were major protests – when frustration among the monks and ordinary Tibetans finally reached boiling point in 1989.

But today, there is one important difference: technology. Practically every Tibetan monk I have met has a mobile phone. They even have special pockets sewn inside their robes to carry them.

In the past it has been notoriously difficult to communicate across the vast expanse of Tibet. Today, everybody is just a text away.”

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Another confusion about Tibet is it’s “definition” – and there is a difference what the Chinese government and the Tibetans consider as Tibet…

BBC wrote an article about that

The areas of historic Tibet that are outside the so-called “Tibetan Autonomous Region” are incorporated into the provinces of Qinghai, Sichuan, Yunnan, and Gansu. That’s why some news reports are describing Tibetan protests far outside of “Tibet.” They’re not outside of Tibet at all, just what the Chinese government considers Tibet!

The borders of the Tibetan Autonomous Region are defined by the Chinese government, with Lhasa as its provincial capital and only this region is considered as “Tibet” by Beejing.
But currently about half of Tibetans are estimated to live outside the TAR – many of them in nearby Chinese provinces or surrounding countries like Nepal and India.
A term often used is Greater Tibet, which covers the TAR, the whole of Qinghai province, western parts of Sichuan, areas of Yunnan and a corner of Gansu.

When the Chinese invaded Tibet in 1951, they set up the “Tibetan Autonomous Region” in 1965 so that the majority of Tibetans have to live outside of this region

This graphic may explain it a little bit better…

The reason…China was worried that Tibet could break free, Tibet had a fully functioning government and army and a surrender treaty and to prevent such a “break-out” the Chinese broke apart Tibet into 5 parts…

That’s the real tragedy for the most Tibetans…

A chronology of Tibet’s history you can find here on PBS