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(Reuters) – Myanmar’s junta extended the house arrest of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Tuesday, a move likely to dismay Western nations who promised millions of dollars in aid after Cyclone Nargis.
Officials drove to the Nobel laureate’s lakeside Yangon home to read out a six-month extension order in person, said a government official, who asked not to be named.
However, a Yangon-based diplomat said it was for a year.
The 62-year-old Suu Kyi, whose National League for Democracy (NLD) party won a 1990 election landslide only to be denied power by the army, has now spent nearly 13 of the last 18 years under some form of arrest.
Her latest period of detention started on May 30, 2003 “for her own protection” after clashes between her supporters and pro-junta thugs in the northern town of Depayin. The last of a series of year-long extensions expired on Tuesday.
Although few expected Suu Kyi to be released, the extension is a timely reminder of the ruling military’s refusal to make any concessions on the domestic political front despite its grudging acceptance of foreign help after the May 2 cyclone.
Hours before the extension, police arrested 20 NLD members trying to march to Suu Kyi’s home.
State-controlled media on Tuesday praised the United Nations for the help it has given to the 2.4 million people left destitute in the Irrawaddy delta, suggesting a thaw in the junta’s frosty relationship with the outside world.
The English-language New Light of Myanmar, the generals’ main mouthpiece, said U.N. agencies took “prompt action” to provide relief supplies after the cyclone, which left 134,000 people dead or missing.
Activists criticized U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for not speaking out about Suu Kyi’s detention during his recent visit to Myanmar, which the U.N. chief said was purely a humanitarian mission.
“It is shameful that Ban Ki-Moon went to Burma and failed even to utter her name,” Mark Farmaner, Director of the Burma Campaign UK, said.
“He is playing into the regime’s hands. The U.N. is crawling on its knees before the regime, afraid to speak the truth in case it affects aid access deals, which the regime is already breaking in any case,” he said.
Three weeks after the cyclone’s 120 mph (190 kph) winds and sea surge devastated the delta, the U.N. says fewer than one in three of those most in need have received any aid.
Thousands of beggars line the roads, with droves of children shouting “Just throw something” at passing vehicles.
A quiet, middle-class café in Westminster, in the political heart of London, is the last place you would expect to hear someone badmouthing the Dalai Lama. When that someone is a Buddhist nun, dressed in trademark maroon robes and with shorn hair, it seems even more peculiar. ‘The Dalai Lama is a hypocrite and an oppressor’, says Kelsang Pema over a glass of water with ice (what else?), as she fishes from her rucksack ‘stacks of evidence’ to show me why the Dalai Lama ‘cannot be trusted’. A well-to-do blonde-haired woman in a power suit shoots us strange looks from the adjacent table. Slating the Dalai Lama, especially on a crisp, sunny Monday morning as he is due to arrive in Britain for an official visit, is not the done thing in polite circles in London.
Kelsang Pema – birth name: Helen Gradwell, born and brought up in Carlisle, England – is a leading member of the Western Shugden Society, a group of Buddhists who worship the ‘wisdom deity’ Dorje Shugden. Buddhists, especially in Tibet, have been saying the Dorje Shugden prayer for more than 350 years. Pema tells me ‘the prayer becomes your life, your breath’. Buddhists call on Dorje Shugden to ‘help us develop pure qualities’, she says, ‘including love, compassion and patience’. There’s only one problem: the Dalai Lama, head of the Tibetan government-in-exile in northern India and considered by many Buddhists to be a figurehead of their faith, effectively outlawed the worship of Dorje Shugden in 1996 and overnight transformed Shugden-following Buddhists into heretics and untouchables.
In March 1996, the Dalai Lama decreed that the worship of Dorje Shugden was ‘evil’. In what is believed to have been part of an internal power struggle in his fiefdom-in-exile in Dharamsala, northern India, the Dalai Lama ordered all worshippers of Dorje Shugden to leave his temple on 21 March 1996. A week later, on 30 March 1996, the Assembly of Tibetan People’s Deputies (the parliament in exile) passed a resolution banning the worship of Dorje Shugden by Tibetan government employees, and the Private Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama issued a formal decree for everyone to stop practising the Dorje Shugden prayer. The New Internationalist reported that the Lama’s office wrote to every monastery in northern India and Tibet demanding that they ‘ensure total implementation of this decree by each and everyone… If there is anyone who continues to worship [Dorje Shugden], make a list of their names, house name, birth place… Keep the original and send us a copy of the list.’ (1)
{This post is long, but I did not want to hide it away behind a “read the rest of this…” link. It’s important that information like this is disseminated as far and wide as possible…}
A rare testimony in detail of a Tibetan youth who was arrested in the aftermath of Lhasa unrest in March 2008 is obtained by the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD). The interviewee describes the use of extreme torture in prison, cries of pain in the corridors of the prison, harrowing stories that he constantly hears, unwavering hope of support from the outside world, and perception of life post imprisonment. The interview which is reproduced below has been dictated to a third party and edited by TCHRD in order to protect the identity of the youth. While (*) denotes information withheld, further details, comments or explanations are provided in square brackets.
“On (*) March, around one hundred soldiers entered my house, broke down five doors, checked everything and threw it all on the floor and hit everyone present there. It was like a robbery or burglary. There were a lot of firearms and they were very rough with us. I was arrested. They took me with them, with my thumbs tied behind my back, very tightly, resulting in the whole area being numb for the last two or three months [all of his left thumb]. They treated us very harshly. Talking to each other, they said, “This is our chance”, and they beat us. At first I thought that they were going to kill me, they hit my head a lot, and skull can be broken easily. It is not like the rest of the body. They took me to prison. For four days they didn’t ask me anything, they just threw me in. They gave us half a steamed bun a day. That’s very small. Everyone were very thirsty and a lot of people drank their urine [the detainees were not provided with water]. We had no clothes, no blankets, nothing to lie down on, nothing [just cement floors] and it was very cold. For four days nobody spoke to us, they just left us there.”
“During the day it’s quiet, there’s nothing in Lhasa during the day. Between 11:00 at night and 5-6:00 [in the morning] they arrest thousands of people. In that room, after four or five days, they gave us two steamed buns with hot water. We were (*) people in that room. Very bad. We heard a lot of things. Many people had their arms or legs broken or gunshot wounds but they weren’t taken to hospital. They were there with us. It was really terrible. I can’t believe that we are in the 21st century. For instance, one boy who was shot four times, one from here to there [the bullet entered from the left side of his back and exited from the left side of his chest, near his heart], one from here to here [from inner left elbow to inner left wrist], and one here [a horizontal wound on his upper right arm]. Some people had their ribs broken. One man was punched in his [right] eye, and it was all swollen and black and blue, very bad. People had their teeth broken, these are just examples. A lot of terrible things were done.”
“One of the problems is that people have no food, they are very hungry, they are just falling over. One boy fell into the toilet, all in the same room, and he was cut right across his face [under his chin along the jaw]. For instance, a lot of people have psychological problems, and they’re the first to collapse. A boy from Tse-Tang , he has a problem of the “heart”, a psychological problem, and he was very thin. At first he fell two or three times every day but they didn’t care.”
“The worst thing – this is Gondzhe [the name of the prison], in Lhasa there are nineteen prisons, the biggest is Drapchi and there is one in Chushul [Ch: Qushu County], they are empty, they showed the visitors that nobody is in prison, it’s just for show. Usually there is no prison at the train station, but they rented a very big building and they put people there and in Du-Long [Toelung Dechen County] and at the train station, and in Gondzhe; they put people in these three places. At night they bring a big bus, and many soldiers come, and one hundred to one hundred and fifteen go to Du-Long. They say it’s time to go home, “You haven’t done anything wrong, you’re going home,” but they put them in a huge bus to Du-Long or to the train station. They’ve mixed up the people and transferred people from here to there [from prison to prison]. I didn’t see this myself, but friends told me what they saw at Du-Long. Some monks had sacks put over their heads and they were taken away and didn’t come back, so maybe they were killed.”
“I met an old man, 65 years old, who had two ribs broken and he was all bent over [demonstrates a bent man], and he couldn’t stand up straight, he was dying, so the police took him to People’s Hospital, where one or two people die every day [due to police violence]. The people who are taken to hospital are usually people who have been shot or beaten, and they usually die there. A brother and sister from (*), the brother was younger, were sleeping in the same room and all of a sudden soldiers came and threw them out of the window from a high floor to the ground, the brother was killed on the spot. Yes, right outside the building. The sister didn’t die, but she can’t lie down, she has to remain in a sitting position all the time. They took the body away and told her that she is forbidden to tell anyone. (*).These are just a few examples. There are many problems like this.”
“Many questions were asked of people who were not guilty of anything. They are just [guilty of being] Tibetans. There are many counties in Tibet, they call the police from each county, and the people from the counties aren’t in Lhasa so they show them that the prisons are empty, but they were taken to all kinds of places, because in Lhasa there are so many people watching so they keep everyone away. Now the monks from (*)monastery, friends and relatives, we don’t know where they are.”
“You know that they say that there are no soldiers in Lhasa, but they’re in civilian dress and they check identity papers.”
“I want to talk and that people should know what’s happening in Tibet. If they beat me that’s okay [he means that his family may be hurt as well], I didn’t do anything bad in Lhasa. “
“Many young people in Lhasa, for example, if we were together on the 14th [of March], I was beaten, so I was “sold” and then you’re with me [with the prison warden doing the beating]. But I have friends in (*) monastery, I would rather die than give them away. I saw a lot of things that they did in prison. A guy from Dhadezhe [possibly Dartsedo County] had a new jacket, so they beat him and he died, because of the jacket, because it was very new, so they said he stole it, so because of his new coat he was killed.”
“There are a lot of high school students from Sauko . A seventeen-year-old who had not participated in the events of the 14th [of March], all his clothes were taken away, they tied his hands and they pushed a wagon at him until he fell, there are all kinds of torture methods. This kid was very young and he didn’t even do anything. Afterwards he said that he’d done all kinds of things, that happens to a lot of people, they pressure people to admit things they never did. I didn’t see the dead people, but in prison people called out to the police or soldiers, “Someone’s dead!”, every day people shout that. At Gondzhe there are nine buildings, and each building has eleven rooms and in each room there are twenty or thirty people. And one day, a Chinese man was asked some questions, someone called and asked how many people had been arrested and he said less than ten thousand, and that doesn’t include Drepung, Sera, Ramoche, Jokhang. After they let us out they arrested the monks. When I got out [of prison] I heard that many were arrested at Drepung Monastery. I was released on (*) April .”
“I met a monk from Ramoche before I was released. I am very worried about the monks. The soldiers regard the monks as something very different, because a monk from Dezhe [possibly Derge County], his finger was bent over [shows a completely bent finger] and he’d been blinded in one eye, he couldn’t see out of it at all, he was beaten more than us but luckily … Really I can’t understand why they do terrible things to monks, very, very painful.”
“I met a boy from (*) [County] in the same prison, and he had two friends in Lhasa who lived near Ramoche and they were shot, and his two friends, one, there’s a hospital near Anichenko , he was taken to a nunnery and he died there, 21 years old, I’ve forgotten his name; the other was 20 years old, he was shot and he’s in hospital, maybe he’ll die too. He was shot on Gangsu Street.”
“A boy named (*), aged (*), from Anishim near Lhasa, is in prison, and two of his friends were shot to death. He and his 18 year-old brother were from Phenpo. In the prison at Gondzhe there are a lot of people from Phenpo.”
“During the day it’s very quiet, everything happens at night, everything’s very secret. There is no telephone contact with Drepung, Sera or the train station. Sometimes we can get in touch with the train station, but not most of the time, so they can’t be reached.”
“I have a relative in India, I wrote just what I heard and saw to send over the internet. I wrote a little and I saved it on Word, and all of a sudden it disappeared, so I was very frightened. So I haven’t checked my e-mail, I have a lot of friends abroad and they send many e-mails but I haven’t opened them.(*).”
“Outwardly they show people that everything is very nice but inside it’s really terrible. People did really bad things and forced us to make this problem. At Ramoche they didn’t do anything, but thousands of soldiers surrounded the monastery and all the temples, and many vehicles closed off the gates like a prison. We can’t be tolerant anymore, we should be tolerant but we can’t be tolerant anymore. There are no human rights and cultural genocide is the reality, that’s the big part, but the small part we see, for instance in Lhasa, on a main street like Beijing Lu [Lu means street in Chinese], or Gengshu Lu, how many Tibetans have businesses on streets like those? This is Lhasa, Tibet, not China. Don’t the Tibetans have to live? The Chinese are more talented because they study in big cities. They have experience or enough money to do business, but Tibetans come from villages, they are farmers or nomads, they don’t have money, so how can they do business in Lhasa? What is more necessary? That the local people do business in Lhasa or the Chinese? Why don’t the Chinese police allow Tibetans to do business on one side of the street and the Chinese on the other side – so things will be more balanced? There are many Tibetans who are very talented and intelligent, but they don’t have enough money to make it. They have money because they live in Beijing or Shanghai. That’s the small part. “
“I see a lot of things, I’m okay, I can do many things. But I see many Tibetans, the way they live, and the way the Chinese live, and this is Tibet. The local people shouldn’t be superior to the Chinese, but there should be balance. There are some very old Tibetans who have pensions from the government, you can see them on TV. They said bad things to the Tibetans. I watch them and I just laugh. There are many westerners who are fighting for Tibetan civil rights. I’m very happy that these people are doing this. I want to study more at home every day but I can’t. When I watch TV, everything is lies, so it pains my heart [points to his heart] and it’s very bad. So I walk in the streets and I see the soldiers asking me for my identity papers, they look at my card and ask me, “When were you born?” and if there’s the smallest mistake you’re finished. They check the picture and your face, but a Chinese person can pass right by [without identity papers], that’s okay.”
(*). “Before this was the best place, but now it’s like a prison, it’s not like Lhasa. When I was in prison, a Tibetan policeman told me “Kneel down here!”, I had my thumbs tied behind my back. He sat down [on a chair in front of me], put his foot on my head and kicked my forehead with his foot, pushed my head back and slapped my face over and over again, and I saw this man and I was very sad. He’s Tibetan and now I see him every day, I’ve seen him many times [since then]. A lot of Chinese and Tibetans jumped on my back and kicked me and beat me over the head, they twisted my head back so I couldn’t see their faces, but to show me your face and to do those bad things – that’s the worst thing.”
“This is just an experience, I could learn a lot from it. In prison sometimes I dreamed about food and I remembered the food we cook at home, my mother and my sister’s cooking and I could smell it, and then I really appreciated how tasty the food is at home. I usually eat everything and then I say “That wasn’t so good,” and now I’ve learnt that it’s very, very good. These are the worst things that I’ve ever seen in my life, but you learn how to be a good person. Sometimes, when my (*)’s children are here, and they don’t do their schoolwork, I yell at them and hit them. But now if I yell at them it pains me sometimes. I’ve learned a lot.”
“I’m worried about the small Tibetan population. Many people are dying today or being crippled with broken arms and legs, and that’s very bad. And people are in prison, like me, and I think about the people in prison all the time. I think about the terrible state they are in. Young people, 16 or 17 years old, crying all the time – it makes me really sad. I saw people with broken limbs and people who’d been shot – seeing their pale faces is very, very sad.”
China arrests 16 monks and 2 lay Tibetans in Markham County according to confirmed information received by the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD).
For over a month the Chinese authorities have been conducting “Patriotic re-education” campaign in Woeser Monastery and Khenpa Lungpa Monastery in Garthog Township, Markham ( Ch: Mangkang) County, Chamdo Prefecture, (Ch: Qamdo) “Tibet Autonomous Region” (“TAR”).
The Chinese authorities have been conducting intense “Patriotic re-education” campaign in Woeser and Khenpa Lungpa Monasteries since the beginning of April 2008. Sources told TCHRD that on 10 May 2008, the Chinese “work team” entered the monasteries to conduct intense and rigorous “Patriotic re-education” campaign which resulted in a bitter and heated arguments between the annoyed monks and the Chinese authorities. However, none of the monks signed off the official documents and nor did they write essays denouncing the Dalai Lama.
In response to the monks’ adamant refusal, the Chinese authorities arrested them. On 12 May 2008, 10 monks of Khenpa Lungpa Monastery were arrested. Similarly on 13 May 2008, 6 monks of Woeser Monastery were also arrested. Two lay Tibetans were later arrested on 14 May 2008.
The “Patriotic re-education” campaign was introduced in 1996 in Tibet to undermine Tibetan people’s loyalty to the Dalai Lama. It was also intended to win over the “hearts and minds of Tibetan people on the side of the Chinese government. But on contrary it has earned notoriety for its brazen attacks on the religious and cultural sentiments of the Tibetan people.
The Woeser and Khenpa Monasteries each housed fewer than a hundred monks on regular basis. In backdrop of the arrests of monks of Woeser Monastery, the remaining monks left the monastery which brought much sadness to the local Tibetan devotees who were unable to come to terms with a sudden closure of sacred monasteries.
On the other hand, the Chinese authorities and “work team” were conducting major “Patriotic re-education” campaign in Khenpa Lungpa Monastery.
In April last year, I was lucky enough to be granted an audience with H.H. the 17th Karmapa, Ugyen Trinley Dorje. I remember his pure radiance and his calm, assertive energy. He seemed so different from anyone I’d ever met before. I asked him a question based around forgiveness–and even though my memory of his actual words has faded, the message has not.
I was surprised when I found out he is visiting the U.S. Part of me wishes that I was able to fly up to NY, WA or somewhere and see him. Yet, another part is glad I cannot. I have a special memory of the meeting that was held near Dharamsala, in Himachal Pradesh at his “home”. I’ll never forget that meeting and I still have the red cord with the blessing knot tied around my wrist.
For some reading regarding his U.S. visit so far:
The 22-year-old living Buddha seemed joyfully aware to feel no jet lag whatsoever. So far. “Maybe tonight,” he said in English on Thursday. “But not yet.” He had just arrived at a Midtown hotel with his security detail after a 14-hour flight from New Delhi to Newark.
“It is the first time I’ve ever visited the United States, and it’s a bit like a dream,” said His Holiness, the 17th Gyalwang Karmapa Ugyen Trinley Dorje, one of the most important leaders in Tibetan Buddhism.
Despite his youth, he is revered by followers as a master teacher, and on Thursday he began his whirlwind tour of the United States, an 18-day visit to New York, New Jersey, Boulder, Colo., and Seattle.
Yes, he is that Karmapa: the young master who made headlines across the world at age 14 with his daring escape from China to India across the Himalayas in 1999.
His followers regard him not only as the reincarnation of his predecessor, the 16th Karmapa, Rangjung Rigpe Dorje, who died in 1981, but also as the 17th incarnation of the first Karmapa in the 12th century, in an unbroken lineage going back 900 years. They revere him as leader of the Kagyu sect — called the black hat or black crown sect — one of the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism.
YI BUI KHAW, Myanmar – The saffron-robed monks who spearheaded a bloody uprising last fall against Myanmar’s military rulers are back on the front lines, this time providing food, shelter and spiritual solace to cyclone victims.
The military regime has moved to curb the Buddhist clerics’ efforts, even as it fails to deliver adequate aid itself. Authorities have given some monasteries deadlines to clear out refugees, many of whom have no homes to return to, monks and survivors say.
“There is no aid. We haven’t seen anyone from the government,” said U Pinyatale, the 45-year-old abbot of the Kyi Bui Kha monastery sharing almost depleted rice stocks and precious rainwater with some 100 homeless villagers huddled within its battered compound.
Similar scenes are being repeated in other areas of the Irrawaddy delta and Yangon, the country’s largest city, where monasteries became safe havens after Cyclone Nargis struck May 3 — and the regime did little.
“In the past I used to give donations to the monks. But now it’s the other way around. It’s the monks helping us,” said Aung Khaw, a 38-year-old construction worker who took his wife and young daughter to a monastery in the Yangon suburb of Hlaingtharyar after the roof of his flimsy house was blown away and its bamboo walls collapsed.
One of the monastery’s senior monks said he tried to argue with military officials who ordered the more than 100 refugees to leave.
“I don’t know where they will go. But that was the order,” he said, asking for anonymity for fear of reprisals.
The government has not announced such an order, which appeared to be applied selectively. Other monasteries in Yangon have been told to clear out cyclone victims in coming days, the monk said, but in the delta, refugees were being allowed to remain or told they could come to monasteries for supplies but not shelter.
“They don’t want too many people gathering in small towns,” said Hla Khay, a delta boat operator. The regime “is concerned about security. With lots of frustrated people together, there may be another uprising.”
Larger monasteries were being closely watched by troops and plainclothes security men — “invisible spies” as one monk called them.
Such diversion of manpower at a time when some 1.5 million people are at risk from disease and starvation reflects the regime’s fear of a replay of last September, when monks led pro-democracy demonstrations that were brutally suppressed.
Monks were shot, beaten and imprisoned, igniting anger among ordinary citizens in this devoutly Buddhist country. An unknown number remain behind bars, and others have yet to return to their monasteries after fleeing for fear of arrest.
“I think after the September protests, the government is afraid that if people live with the monks in the monasteries, the monks might persuade them to participate in demonstrations again,” said a dentist in Yangon, who also asked that his name not be used for fear of reprisals.
Newspapers have been ordered not to publish stories about monks aiding the people, and at least one monastery and one nunnery in Yangon were prohibited from accepting any supplies from relief organizations.
“The government is very controlling,” said U Pinyatale, the abbot at the Kyi Bui Kha monastery. “Those who want to give directly to the victims get into trouble. They have to give to the government or do it secretly. (The military) follows international aid trucks everywhere. They don’t want others to take credit.”
It appears unlikely that foreign aid organizations seeking to enter Myanmar will be allowed to use monks as conduits for relief supplies as many had hoped.
“One of the best networks already in place in the country are the monks,” said Gary Walker of PLAN, a British-based international children’s group, speaking from Bangkok. “So we’ll be exploring ways in which we can see whether the monks can start distributing supplies throughout the country.”
At the Kyi Bui Kha monastery, located on the banks of the Pyapon River deep in the delta, U Pinyatale glanced anxiously at the remaining 10 bags of rice.
“At most, we have enough for the week. We will have to find a way to get more food,” he said as monks and villagers worked together to try to dry the sodden rice, even as rain clouds gathered above the largely roofless monastery.
In Yangon, monks have been able to go out on their traditional morning rounds to accept food donations from the faithful and then share these with refugees at their monasteries. But in devastated areas of the delta that is not an option.
About 90 of the 120 houses in Kyi Bui Kha have been totally destroyed. Gaps in the monastery’s storm-riddled wooden walls revealed a 360-degree view of ravaged rice fields.
U Pinyatale said the sanctuary’s two dozen monks and nuns were also trying to offer spiritual comfort to the traumatized villagers.
“We pray with them. We pray for the dead to go to the peaceful land of the dead and for the living to rebuild their lives,” he said.
“When the cyclone came, all of us hid in the rice warehouse. I saw one person holding tightly onto a tree but he did not make it,” the abbot added. “After the storm, there were dead bodies floating everywhere. Some people get nightmares. Some hear voices at night that their dead children are calling for help. Some haven’t spoken since.”
Paris, May 10 – Two months after the revolt in Tibet, hundreds of Tibetans, French Tibet supporters, Vietnamese, Taiwanese, Burmese and others marched today in the streets of Paris in solidarity with Tibet. Tibetan Community of France and others called for a national day of protest here in France.
Thupten Gyatso, the president of Tibetan Community in France said that “since March 10, the Chinese government has continued a policy of military repression against Tibetan civilians with impunity. Today hundreds of Tibetans have been killed and several thousands of Tibetans are languishing in prison for expressing their political opinion.” He called on the Chinese authorities to release all the prisoners immediately.
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| Tibetan dressed as monks for dramatisation of situation in Tibet. (photo: Tenam) |
He also called for free access to media in Tibet, immediate cessation of repression in Tibet and direct negotiation between His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Hu Jintao on the future of Tibet.
A signature campaign asking French president Nicholas Sarkozy to meet with His Holiness was also signed by many people.
Tibetans and Tibet supporters are asking for the cancellation of the Tibet leg of the Beijing Olympics torch.
Mayors of hundreds of towns across France have decided to raise the Tibetan national flag in support of Tibet.
Tibetan community will be organising a national protest once every month and two-day vigil in Paris every weekend.
Nepalese police have arrested some 560 Tibetan women, including many Buddhist nuns, after breaking up demonstrations against China’s crackdown in Tibet.
In the first example of all-women protests, three rallies in Kathmandu were quickly stopped by police.
It was the biggest round-up since Tibetan exiles began near daily demonstrations in March.
Protestors wearing black armbands wept and shouted “We want free Tibet” as they were dragged to police vans.
Police said those detained were being held in detention centres around the capital, and would be freed later.
Kathmandu is home to thousands of Tibetan exiles who have mounted almost daily protests against Beijing since deadly riots broke out in the Tibetan capital Lhasa in March.
Rioting erupted after days of protests pivoting around the anniversary of the failed 1959 Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule.
More than 20,000 Tibetans have been living in Nepal since fleeing their Himalayan homeland after the failed uprising and China’s subsequent crack-down.
Nepal says it cannot allow Tibetans to demonstrate because it recognises Tibet as an integral part of China.
But the UN says the mass arrests are against the spirit of a society governed by the rule of law.
TCHRD[Friday, May 09, 2008 18:58]
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| Labrang Monastery |
The situation at Labrang Monastery in Sangchu (Ch: Xiahe) County is extremely tense today. Thousands of People’s Armed Police (PAP) and Public Security Bureau (PSB) personnels have surrounded Labrang Monastery in the aftermath of arrest of hundreds of monks, according to confirmed information received by the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD).
On 7 May 2008, thousands of PAP and PSB officers (estimated around 5000) surrounded Labrang Monastery and carried a sudden raid in the monastery. During the raid, around 140 monks were arrested and taken away for detention. The next day a large number of monks of the monastery protested calling for the release of the monks arrested on the previous day. The authorities upon fearing the protest to escalate further, released all the detained monks except for 18 monks. However, the monks continued to call for the release of the remaining 18 monks and the authorities gave in by releasing another 11 out of the 18 monks today morning.
Despite additional contingents of armed police arriving at the monastery, monks in large number have again protested against the authorities to release the remaining seven monks but the authorities flatly refused to do so, challenging the monks to take any counter measure. TCHRD fears the protest might intensify and result in bloodshed as the monks are learned to be determined to secure the release of the remaining seven monks at all cost.
Defiant monks dissappear
In another confirmed information received from the area, two monks who defiantly spoke out in front of the government managed media tour in Sangchu County on 7 April 2008, are known to be have been disappeared. Shortly after the media visit to the area, Thabkhey and Tsundue, have disappeared. The local Tibetan residents fear that the police have secretly lifted them for their defiant action which caused major embarrassment to the government of the People’s Republic of China. The family members of the two monks have approached the local PSB headquarters regarding their whereabouts, however, the authorities feigned ignorance about the two. Till date, nobody knows about their whereabouts and the family members live in anxiety over fear of them being killed extrajudicially.
TCHRD believes that this is a case of enforced and involuntary disappearance enacted by the state law enforcement bodies. The Centre fears that the two monks might be extrajudicially killed if timely intervention is not effected by the UN Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearance (UNWGEID). The Centre appeals the UNWGEID to issue an express intervention on the whereabouts of the two monks.
Thousands of people have rallied in Tokyo as Chinese President Hu Jintao paid a rare visit, denouncing Beijing’s crackdown in Tibet and demanding Japan exert pressure on him.
Police were deployed in force to protect Mr Hu, who is paying his first foreign visit since major demonstrations against Chinese rule broke out in Tibet in March, casting a shadow over the Beijing Olympics.
Riot police formed a human chain to seal off central Tokyo’s sprawling Hibiya Park, where at least 300 demonstrators chanted, “Arrest the murderer Hu!” and “Hu, get out!”
Police shoved back some 10 demonstrators who tried to push through a barricade and threw paper Tibetan flags at an official-looking car entering the park, where Mr Hu and Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda were to have dinner.
Adding to the chaos, throngs of young people were also in the park to listen to a loud hard-rock concert being held on a sunny public holiday.
Elsewhere in Tokyo, about 4,200 people, including Tibetans and members of China’s Uighur minority, took to the streets, according to organisers.
They held signs that read, “Hu Jintao, respect the Olympic spirit” and “Don’t kill our friends.”
“I hope that the Japanese, who have a tradition of justice and share with us both physical similarities and Buddhist culture, would say to the Chinese ‘Don’t do what’s wrong,’” Tibetan refugee Kalden Obara told the rally.
China, under fire over its clampdown in Tibet, this week reopened talks with envoys of the Dalai Lama, the Himalayan region’s exiled spiritual leader.
“But I don’t want the Chinese Government to pretend to hold talks only for the sake of the Beijing Olympics’ success,” Obara said to a storm of applause.
Mr Hu’s visit, long in the planning, is the first by a Chinese president to Japan in 10 years as Asia’s two largest economies try to improve ties marred by wartime memories.
Opposition lawmaker Yukio Edano called on Mr Fukuda, known for his conciliatory views towards China, to raise the Tibet issue forcefully with Mr Hu.
“If Prime Minister Fukuda’s meeting with President Hu Jintao is a mere formality, that means that we are accomplices in China’s crimes in Tibet,” Mr Edano said.
