Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Fear on the roof of the world: How China haunts Tibet (The Independent)

 Fear on the roof of the world: How China haunts Tibet
 China is showing a smiling face to the world while brutally crushing 
Tibet - a police state where supporters of the Dalai Lama can be beaten 
to death. Leonard Doyle reports from Lhasa
 Published: 08 August 2005
 "Look here, here is where they shot at His Holiness." The Tibetan monk, 
pointed to two bullet holes in the ornate brass hinges on the front door 
of the exiled Dalai Lama's summer palace.
 On Chairman Mao's orders, the Chinese People's Liberation Army stormed 
the place 46 years ago. With bombs and bullets flying, the youthful 
Dalai Lama disguised himself as a Tibetan soldier, slipped outside and 
headed over the Himalayas into a life of peripatetic exile. His path was 
cleared by Mao, who ordered his army "not to obstruct the way".
"The holes are a secret they don't know about," added the monk, pointing 
in the direction of a cluster of CCTV cameras behind which the Chinese 
State Security Bureau police were watching and listening.
Hidden from view by the heavy wooden door, the monk pulled out a pair of 
scapular medals. One contained the banned image of the Dalai Lama, the 
other the equally seditious photo of the Panchen Lama, the 16-year-old 
boy who most Tibetans see as second in line to the Dalai Lama. Today he 
is the world's youngest political prisoner.
"If you see His Holiness," he said, "tell him all Tibetans support him 
and the Panchen Lama. And tell the world how we hate the black hand of 
the Chinese."
Then he was gone. Despite carefully financed restoration, the bullet 
holes remain, silent witnesses to the harsh reality of China's rule over 
Tibet. Hopes that political freedom would blossom alongside China's new 
affluence have proven illusory. Dissidents are still clubbed to death, 
executed or given long prison sentences.
When a European Union delegation visited the notorious prison of Drabchi 
some years ago, they encountered a demonstration by inmates. A group of 
Buddhist nuns shouted "Free Tibet" and "Long live the Dalai Lama" 
instead of the required patriotic songs at a flag-raising ceremony 
convened by the prison. The police beat the prisoners so severely 
afterwards that in the words of a survivor, "it looked like an abattoir. 
They beat us with their belts until their belts broke. Then they used 
electric batons." After more torture including electric shocks, and 
sexual humiliation, four nuns died, reportedly after stuffing their 
mouths with their Buddhist katak scarves.
The four, Choekyi Wangmo and Tashi Lhamo, both aged 24, Dekyi Yangzom, 
21, and Khedron Yonten, all died on the same day, more than a month 
after the demonstrations. Another nun reportedly hanged herself.
Although many Chinese and Tibetans now own mobile phones, three months 
passed before information about the protests reached the outside world. 
Prison officers and released prisoners were threatened with severe 
reprisals if they spoke about it. Today, the Chinese authorities still 
deny that anything happened.
Despite the obvious need, the European Union cannot even agree to 
appoint a special rapporteur to investigate human rights abuses in 
Tibet. Tibet is a place where truth disappears. Recently some of the 
worst and most obvious aspects of Communist repression have fallen away 
as China shows a smiling face to the world and gears up to host the next 
Olympics.
It is starting to win the international respectability it craves. But 
during a five-day visit to the "Roof of the World" I found ample 
evidence that, if anything, China's iron grip on Tibet is tightening. 
China is becoming a consumer paradise, but as the Communist ideology 
falls away, the Tibetans find themselves confronted by equally blind and 
aggressive Chinese nationalism. It is a creed that views Tibet's dream 
of self-rule as a deadly threat to China's integrity.
In reality, with its tiny population of some 2.6 million native 
Tibetans, Tibet poses no threat to China's one billion people. But the 
vast Tibetan Plateau, an eighth of China's land mass, is seen by Beijing 
as a strategic buffer to the West and as a potential El Dorado in terms 
of unexploited mineral and energy resources.
The propaganda machine relentlessly pumps out the message that the 
Tibetan people are delighted to be part of the greater Chinese family. 
It is a sinister but successful policy, so much so that a series of 
man-in-the-street interviews produces nothing but platitudes in praise 
of China.
Take Lhobsang Chupel, the director of scripture at Lhasa's famed Sera 
monastery, a hotbed of pro-Dalai Lama feeling. In the course of a long 
interview with The Independent, observed by Chinese Communist Party 
officials, he could not remember anything about the day when 30 monks 
marched through central Lhasa shouting "Free Tibet" and similar slogans.
Witnesses say the police fired on the monks, and up to 70 monks of the 
Sera monastery were arrested. Another seven monks disappeared after the 
protest and it is feared Chinese security officials killed them.
Afterwards, the Chinese authorities instituted "reform through 
re-education classes" for the monks which included a handbook called 
What the Masses of Sera Monastery Must Know for the Education Session.
It went on: "To all the monks of Sera monastery: The time has arrived 
for patriotic education to take place by means of Comprehensive 
Propaganda Education. The purpose of this education session is to 
implement the party's policy on religion totally and correctly."
The monks were ordered to attend classes, lectures and tutorials on 
Tibetan history, opposing splittism, legal knowledge and religious 
policy. "No one must leave early or make any noise. No one must cause 
any disruption in the classroom," it warned.
Visibly uncomfortable at being questioned about these events in front of 
party officials, Monk Lhobsang said: "I never heard of these events, I 
am a loyal follower of Buddhism, I worship God, study scripture and 
practise my religious beliefs, that is all."
Most visitors to Tibet these days are newly affluent Chinese, with no 
independent knowledge of Tibet's unequal struggle with China. They see 
only the billions of dollars of investment being pumped into modernising 
the country. They read only official Chinese media - all independent 
websites and books about Tibet are censored - and they would be 
astonished to learn how much most Tibetans loathe their Chinese masters.
Out in the wilds of a Tibetan mountainside, I watched local Communist 
Party officials supervising preparations for an annual nomad horse 
festival. The nomads gathered under vast and colourful billowing tents 
as party officials talked of their miserable lives in the days of the 
Dalai Lama. The nomads sounded grateful and said that economic progress 
had helped them trade in their ponies for powerful motorbikes.
But away from the party officials, a young nomad said "hello" in perfect 
English. "This is all a charade for Chinese tourists," she whispered. 
"Why can we not have our leader the Dalai Lama back among us?"
As some officials wandered over, she clammed up. Then she was gone.
But such forthright voices are hard to come by. And in the West, the 
movement for a free Tibet, so active in the 1990s, is running out of 
steam. So are the hopes for Tibetan democracy, enjoying genuine autonomy 
within China. There is little prospect of the Dalai Lama returning to 
Tibet. Anyone found supporting the Dalai Lama can expect instant and 
harsh retribution in the shape of a lengthy spell in jail or worse.
While the world beats a path to China's door seeking profits in its 
booming economy, the hopes of Tibet's people are being lost in the rush. 
With all the predictable bad taste of a one-party state, China is 
rapidly modernising Tibet, building gleaming airports, highways and soon 
the highest railway in the world. On a tour of the country, Communist 
Party apparatchiks burst with pride that Tibetans - with all their 
ancient beliefs in reincarnation, sky burials and strange deities - are 
being offered the trappings of a modern state. Billions of dollars have 
been invested to raise the standard of living in Lhasa and elsewhere, 
and they believe the Tibetans are grateful.
Despite the money gushing into Lhasa and major infrastructure projects 
across Tibet, a land the same size as Western Europe, there is evidence 
that ordinary Tibetans are not benefiting. Some 85 per cent live in 
rural areas or in the Lhasa ghetto, where they are largely excluded from 
a Chinese-run economic boom.
Britain, perceived to have lost out in the first phase of economic 
expansion on the Chinese coast, is desperate not to alienate Beijing. As 
president of the European Union, Britain is showing little enthusiasm 
for the appointment of a special EU rapporteur on Tibet. And while 
Beijing spends billions of pounds in its "develop the West" programme, 
targeting the vast and inhospitable Tibetan plateau along with its 
untold reserves of unexploited minerals and energy, British businesses 
are lining up for a piece of the action.
Standing in the way of Beijing's ultimate quest for international 
respectability (and the West's desire to do business) is the uncertain 
fate of the missing teenage Panchen Lama and along with him the 
flickering hopes of millions of Tibetans for true autonomy.
Ten years ago, shortly after the Dalai Lama named the six-year-old 
Choekyi Nyima as the reincarnate 11th Panchen Lama, both the boy and his 
parents were locked up by the Chinese. Nothing has been heard from them 
since. The boy may be lying in a shallow grave or in a Chinese gulag. 
More likely, it is thought by Tibet watchers, he is being comfortably 
raised as an atheist by his Communist Party hosts and will emerge in due 
course as a puppet of the regime denouncing Tibetan Buddhism as so much 
hocus pocus.
On the rare occasions that British and European officials meet their 
Chinese counterparts to discuss human rights, bland assurances are given 
about the Panchen Lama's fate. The same assurances about the living 
boy-Buddha were given to The Independent during an interview with Jagre 
Danizen, a self-declared reincarnated Buddha himself and senior official 
of the local Tibetan autonomous government.
"As for the boy's whereabouts, I cannot give any information; the child 
is getting education and living a happy life," reassured the lapsed 
Tibetan Buddha. He denied that the boy's disappearance from the face of 
the earth was of any international significance or that it would cast a 
shadow over the forthcoming Olympics.
"The Chinese people have the right to decide what to do and the Olympics 
has nothing to do with this boy. The fate of one boy has little to do 
with the reputation of China."
China fervently hopes that Gyaltsen Norbu, its own hand-picked pretender 
for the title of Panchen Lama, currently living in Beijing, will be 
recognised by Tibetans as a spiritual leader when the Dalai Lama, now 
aged 70, passes away.
And that is where Beijing's well-made plans may fall apart.
Chinese officials are increasingly frustrated with the Tibetans' 
lacklustre reception of Norbu on his infrequent visits. Earlier this 
year senior army, police and intelligence officials summoned religious 
leaders and warned them of punishment if they did not persuade Tibetans 
to accept Norbu.
But Buddhist clergy continue to reject him as a fake or pay only lip 
service to Beijing's demands to recognise him. Significantly China now 
only produces him on ceremonial occasions such as a recent presentation 
of a Katak scarf to the Chinese leader Hu Jintau in the Great Hall of 
the People in Beijing. As propaganda gestures go, the presentation was 
never going to win over Tibetans who remember that Mr Hu imposed martial 
law in the 1990s when he was Communist Party chief of Tibet. It was Mr 
Hu who ordered the crackdown on monks, whom the Chinese officials are 
today trying to cajole into supporting the regime and the puppet Panchen 
Lama.

service to Beijing's demands to recognise him.
Puttanata :)
E visto che il nostro *FESSO* si vergogna di fornire indicazioni delle
fonti dei suoi articoli, ecco indicata la fonte:
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article304415.ece
Si. The Independent :)   Il giornale smerdato dallo stesso articolo :)
*ROTFL*
-Stefano

 -Stefano
Quos vult Iuppiter perdere, dementat prius...
Am.

 Quos vult Iuppiter perdere, dementat prius...
...disse il povero *FESSO* mononeurone... :)
-Stefano

 -Stefano
..."maiorum sermo", ma non è per te che sei aduso a frequentare asini e
buoi. Non hai capito un cazzo di quel che ti si voleva far intendere, eh
testina di minkia ???? ....se ne prende atto. 
-- 
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 segnala gli abusi ad 
ab...@newsland.it

 Quos vult Iuppiter perdere, dementat prius...
Dimenticavo, caro *FESSO* mononeurone, di dirti di salutarci il tuo caro
amico "Iuppiter" :)
*LOL*
-Stefano

 "Iuppiter"
Beh?
Cos'hai da dire su "Iuppiter", analfabeta di ritorno?
-- 
Chaos A.D.		|	Raging crowd
Tanks on the streets	|	Burning cars
Confronting police	|	Bloodshed starts
Bleeding the Plebs	|	Who'll be alive?