I n t e r n a t i o n a l
Tibetan schoolboy self-immolates, calling for Tibet’s independence Vol. 03, Issue 149, Print Issue 73, February 29, 2016 Tortured outspoken Tibetan monk Jigme Guri hospitalised
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B o d - K y i - Cha-Trin
A Voice For Tibet
China arrests a Tibetan mother for peaceful protest in Tibet Bi-monthly
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China should use common sense: His Holiness By Yeshe Choesang: March 14, 2016
Undated photo of Jigme Guri, also known as Lama Jigme Gyatso. Photo: TPI By Yeshe Choesang: March 15, 2016
Dharamshala — A well-known Tibetan political prisoner and outspoken Buddhist monk currently serving five-year imprisonment, was recently admitted to a prison hospital in anzhou, the capital city of northwest China’s Gansu province, sparking fears he may have been severely tortured while in jail. Jigme Gyatso Guri, 50, also known as Labrang Jigme, was admitted to a prison hospital in the provincial capital Lanzhou sometime early this month or at the end of February, sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “In early March, a judge from a Chinese court informed his family about his admission in the prison medical facility through a phone call,” the sources said, adding that this has caused fear among locals he has been severely tortured or worse. “He is scheduled to be released from the Chinese jail in about six months,” the source added. When asked about the reason for his admission, the Chinese authorities informed them that Jigme had no grave illness and asked them not to worry. Following his release from detention in 2008, Jigme recorded a 20-minute video statement about his ill-treatment and the Chinese government’s crackdown in Tibet. In the video, Jigme says, “I, as a witness to truth, am telling through the media the story of Tibetans killed, who have suffered torture in prisons, and about the countless people who have been forced to flee to the mountains and who are too afraid to return to their own homes, so that the media can truthfully report on these situations.” Born in Lhutang Village, Juicha Township, Sangchu County County, Kanlho of Amdho Province, north-eastern Tibet, Jigme worked as former head of the Labrang Monastery’s vocational training centre and vice-chairman of the Democratic Management Committee of the monastery.
Geneva — Reiterating that people of Tibet are not seeking independence from China but “genuine autonomy” for Tibet, His Holiness the Dalai Lama said China’s new leadership should use “common sense” and seek truth from fact. His Holiness took part in a panel of Nobel Peace Prize laureates in Geneva on Friday (March 12), addressing a full auditorium about Chinese repression in his native Tibet despite Beijing having urged people to shun the event. “One part of the human brain usually develops common sense. Some of these (Chinese) hardliners, that part of brain is missing,” the spiritual leader of Tibetan people, told the audience of students and diplomats. Earlier he told reporters: “Wherever my name is there they usually criticise and protest. That’s quite now routine, normal, nothing special.” China’s Foreign Ministry said in statement it had lodged a protest with the United States, which along with Canada had sponsored the event, and that it had expressed its “strong dissatisfaction” with Washington. China’s UN mission in Geneva circulated a letter to other missions asking them to avoid the Tibetan spiritual leader’s appearance at a conference built around Nobel peace prize winners and co-sponsored by the United States and Canada. Hundreds of supporters of the Tibetan spiritual leader, some waving Tibetan flags, rallied at the giant three-legged chair landmark outside the UN complex as he attended the packedhouse conference nearby at Geneva’s Graduate Institute. The number of diplomats in the throng was unclear. The Chinese mission’s letter dated Tuesday, the same day that press invitations for the conference were made, said the event
A view of the auditorium during the panel discussion on ‘Nobel Laureates on Human Rights - A view from civil society’ in Geneva, Switzerland on March 11, 2016. Photo/ Olivier Adam
was “of grave concern to China.” It called the Dalai Lama “a political exile who has long been engaged in activities to split China under the pretext of religion,”
Monk burns himself to death, calls out for Tibet’s independence
Reporters Without Borders unblocks six more censored sites By Yeshe Choesang: March 14, 2016
20th Anniversary of “Raise your Flag for Tibet” Campaign in Germany
Protesters raising the national flag of Tibet during a demonstration to mark Tibetan Uprising Day in Berlin, the capital of Germany, on March 10, 2016. Photo: TPI By Yeshe Choesang, March 10, 2016
Berlin, March 10, 2016 — Today protests in support of human rights in Tibet are taking place in more than 20 German cities. The demonstrations and vigils are part of the campaign “Raise your Flag for Tibet” organized by Tibet Initiative Deutschland (TID). Moreover, hundreds of cities, municipalities and administrative districts throughout Germany are raising the Tibetan flag on public buildings in solidarity with the Tibetans in Tibet. In Berlin, TID and the Association of Tibetans in Germany (VTD) are organizing a demonstration in front of the Chinese Embassy. Worldwide thousands of Tibetans and Tibet supporters will show their solidarity with Tibet. “The flag campaign started in 1996 with 21 participants and since then more than 1000 cities participated. This year the Tibetan flag will fly in more than 400 cities. They are sending a strong signal of solidarity to the Tibetan people, emphasizing the urgent need for political support to end the violence and oppression”, said Nadine Baumann, Executive Director of TID. “Especially in times of many violent conflicts all over the world and after more than 60 years of brutal suppression, Tibetans are still peaceful in their resistance and are thus giving an example to the world.” The campaign is run under the patronage of the mayor of Bamberg, Mr. Andreas Starke (SPD/Social Democrats), and supported by topranking German politicians such as Ms. Claudia Roth (Alliance 90/ The Greens), Vice president of the German Bundestag. In 1996, TID established the campaign “Raise your flag for Tibet„. This campaign calls on German towns and cities on the occasion of March 10th, in commemoration of the Tibetan National uprising of 1959, to fly the Tibetan flag at their town halls and public buildings. By doing so, the participating mayors strongly affirm the Tibetan people’s right to self-determination, and the need to protect human rights as well as the Tibetan culture, religion and identity in Tibet. They do so on behalf of thousands of German citizens.
and said the mission “kindly requests the permanent missions of all member states, UN agencies and relevant international organizations not to attend the above-mentioned event.” Referring to Tibet, His Holiness the Dalai Lama told the conference: “We are not seeking separation” from China. However, he referred to a “totalitarian system” and “hardliners” in China. He said he had heard from some in China that change “may happen” at the 19th Communist Party meeting next year, though he did not elaborate. P- 2...
Kalsang Wangdu, a 18-year old Tibetan monk called out for Tibet’s independence, burned himself on fire in Kham Province, eastern Tibet to protest Chinese repressive rule, on February 29, 2016. Photo: TPI By Yeshe Choesang: March 02, 2016
Dharamshala — In sources coming out of Tibet, a Tibetan monk set himself on fire and died in a protest against Chinese occupation of Tibet, in eastern Tibet and reported called out for independence for Tibet. Kalsang Wangdu, a 18-year old monk from the Retsokha Aryaling monastery, reportedly self-immolated at around 4:00 p.m. on February 29, near his monastery in Nyakrong County of Kham Province, eastern Tibet (Ch: Nyagrong in Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, source said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The self-immolation could not be immediately confirmed and China’s state-controlled media is silent on the latest self-immolation protest as they did in the past. Details such as his age also could not be confirmed. Wangdu called out for Tibet’s independence, while protesting against China’s occupation of Tibet,” the source said, adding that locals witnesses tried to save him by extinguishing the flames but he died on the way to a hospital in Chengdu, Sichuan province. “However, he died on the way before reaching Chengdu,” he said, adding, “His father’s name is Sotra, and his mother’s name is Ugyen Dolma.” This latest incident brought the total verified number of self-
immolations in Tibet to 143 since February, 2009 and and of them 123 were reportedly passed-away while the status of the rest remains unknown or critically injured. An anonymous source further said that while Wangdu was on fire he shouted slogans calling for “Tibet’s complete independence”. Locals tried to save him but he died on the way to hospital. Wangdu’s protest will mark the first of its kind inside Tibet this year, where more than 140 Tibetans have carried out protests through self-immolation. The last confirmed case was in August 2015 when 55-year-old Tashi Kyi from Sangchu County selfimmolated in her house and died the following day. Most of the Tibetan self-immolators have called for freedom of Tibetan people and the return of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to Tibet. Most parts of Tibet have suffered severe crackdowns and been under heightened restrictions and controls in the past six decades, that China calls it a “peaceful liberation”. But Tibetans describe a systematic repression, excluded from positions of power and imprisoned. China’s invasion of Tibet and its continuous implementation of harsh policies to crackdown the freedom of Tibetans living inside Tibet have triggered Tibetans to resort to more extreme forms of resistance.
Paris — To mark World Day Against Cyber-Censorship, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is today launching Operation Collateral Freedom #2, in which it is unblocking access to websites that are censored in five countries and is unveiling the RSF Censorship Detector app. The aim of this operation – the continuation of Operation Collateral Freedom #1, launched a year ago – is to make online information accessible in countries where it is banned and to dissuade “Enemies of the Internet” from targeting news websites, said a RSF statement issued on Friday. After unblocking 11 news websites in 2015, RSF is now providing access to six other sites that are blocked in their respective countries – Radio Free Asia and Defend the Defenders (Vietnam), Sarawak Report (Malaysia), Boxun (China), Sendika.org (Turkey) and the European Saudi Organization for Human Rights (Saudi Arabia). The operation is based on the technique of mirroring. RSF creates a “mirror” copy of the blocked site on a cloud hosting service provided by a major Internet company such as Fastly, Amazon, Microsoft or Google. To block access to the mirror, a government would at the same time deprive thousands of its country’s companies of the essential technological services provided by these Internet giants. This “collateral” economic and political damage would be hard to justify. This year, RSF is breaking new ground by providing the public with an exclusive application developed specially for this operation. The developers, Brendan Abolivier and Clément Salaün, have created an extension to the Google Chrome browser that facilitates access to the mirror version of the targeted sites. Whoever goes to one of these blocked sites will see the icon of the RSF Censorship Detector app turn red. By clicking on it, they will be automatically redirected to RSF’s unblocked mirror. In the past year, the servers dedicated to Operation Collateral Freedom have handled more than 64 million requests and provided more than 587GB of data. During the first few days, the operation’s success forced RSF to expand the capacity of the servers in order to handle the massive volume of traffic. The Tibet Post International, which is blocked in Tibet and China since its establishment, is one of the sites due to be restored by the media watchdog. Since then, RSF has created other mirrors and is using additional hosting services. As a result, it is able to create an alternative mirror if a country decides to block all the services of one of the companies used. The list of mirrors and services employed is regularly updated on github.com. Malaysia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam and China are ranked 147th, 149th, 164th, 175th and 176th respectively (out of a total of 180 countries) in RSF’s 2015 World Press Freedom Index. RSF said it will keep Operation Collateral Freedom going for as long as the resources available allow. For more information : 12mars.rsf.org