GUEST COLUMN
“The Dalai Clique”, says Chinese Vocabulary

By: Tenzin Sangmo Pontsang

Amid sensitive negotiations on establishing a more permanent dialogue between the Tibetan Government in Exile and the People’s Republic of China, the latter’s verbal attacks on the Dalai Lama has continued unabatedly. The purpose of The Dalai Clique according to Beijing is to arouse divisive conflict between the different sects of Tibetan Buddhism thus sabotaging the unity of Tibet. China claims that Dalai Lama’s position as a vice-chairman of the NPC Standing Committee was preserved until 1964 after he fled abroad, but once surrounded by foreign anti-Chinese sources and Tibetan separatists he renounced patriotism and engaged in numerous activities to split the Motherland.

A report by the Xinhua news agency cited officials in Tibet as saying that Dalai Lama inspired an attack at a monastery in April earlier this year where a group of Buddhist monks smashed a pair statue of a protective deities and brawled with worshippers. The monks tore down two statues, including one of Dorje Shugden, a deity that the Dalai Lama considers a divisive figure in Tibetan Buddhism. The dispute between the Dalai Lama and the much smaller Shugden stream of the Gelugpa school of Tibetan Buddhism is part of a complex doctrine whose fundamental history dated back to 300. Xinhua said the Dalai Lama who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 inspired the attack by ordering his followers to threaten monks worshipping Dorje Shugden at Gaden and another major monastery, Sera .The Mayor of Lhasa, Norbu Dunzhub, told the news conference that the Dalai Lama, who is revered by most Tibetans, was using the dispute to stir conflict in the China’s tightly controlled Tibet.

“The Dalai clique supported by hostile Western forces is introducing into China the overseas conflict between followers and opponents of the Shugden deity to provoke conflict between monks and followers of different faiths,” he said.

“What the Dalai Lama has done violates religious freedom of believers” said Zhang Qingli Tibet’s Communist Party Secretary and who is also the highest Chinese official in “Tibet Autonomous region” (“TAR”).

The Patriotic Re-education Campaign

It was during the Third Tibet Work Forum, convened in 1994, that Chinese leaders explicitly began to focus on the Dalai Lama and the so-called ‘hostile separatist forces’ based abroad. The campaign has been spearheaded by the Democratic Management Committee (DMC) that outlined many requirements in religious institutions to toe Mao’s line in their religious curriculum and also stressed allegiance to the State and the denunciation of the Dalai Lama. The patriotic re-education campaign was also meant to target and suppress any sign of political unrest in religious institutions, which the Chinese authorities seem to consider as a source of political dissidence.
Under the directive of Religious Affairs Bureau (RAB) and its smaller committee of DMC, work teams were sent to carry out and conduct the patriotic re-education classes for monks and nuns in religious institutions forcing them to write essays denouncing the Dalai Lama. The campaign also entailed a five point requirements, including the acceptance of Tibet as an inalienable part of China, as well as attempts to cultivate the love of one mother country under the slogan “Love your Country Love your religion”, recognizing the Chinese appointed Panchen Lama and finally, denouncing the Dalai Lama as a traitor/splittist.

The Government claims the right to disapprove any individual’s application to take up religious orders. Although by regulation monks are prohibited from joining a monastery prior to the age of 18, many younger boys in fact continue the tradition of entering monastic life. However in some large monasteries young novices, who traditionally served as attendants to older monks while receiving a basic monastic education and awaiting formal ordination, have been expelled in recent years for being underage.

From a reference taken from an International Campaign for Tibet report, When the Sky Fell to Earth, Party members officially involved in the Patriotic Re-education Campaign in the TAR in 1997 summed up their view of the Dalai Lama as this, “(W)hat kind of person is the Dalai? The Dalai is the main leader of the splittists who conspire for Tibet Independence, a tool used by international anti-China forces to promote hostility, the chief inspiration for those causing unrest within Tibetan society, and all those who obstruct the re-establishment of discipline in the regulations of Buddhist [monasteries] in Tibet”

In May 2004 the Information Office of the State Council, China issued a White Paper titled Regional Ethnic Autonomy in Tibet which stated that Tibet was still a feudal land under a theocracy as late as the first half of the 20th century. This, plus the ethnic oppression by domestic reactionary ruling classes over many years as well as invasion and instigation by modern imperialist forces, reduced Tibetan society as a whole to constant unrest. The White Paper also reiterated that the Central Government’s consistent stance towards the Dalai Lama, which scholars agreed was a clear warning to the Dalai Clique, whose separatist conspiracy had violated the fundamental interests of Tibetans and was unacceptable to the entire Chinese people. On May 23, 1951, the Central Government signed with Tibet’s local government a “17-Article Agreement” for the peaceful liberation of Tibet, which helped the region cast off imperialist fetters and laid a foundation for regional ethnic autonomy in Tibet.

“Since the implementation of regional ethnic autonomy, the Tibetan people have enjoyed the exact same equal rights as other ethnic groups in political, economic, cultural and social fields. They also grow to be true masters of their own affairs,” Zhou Wei, Director of China Tibetology Research Center said.

However, the Dalai clique, disregarding all the facts, has constantly attacked Tibet’s regional ethnic autonomy as being “devoid of essential contents”, and proposed the institution of “one country, two systems” and “a high degree of autonomy” in Tibet, after the model of Hong Kong and Macao, reveals the white paper.

In the year 2001 China arrested two Dalai Clique spies sent to Tibet by the Dalai Lama to create a self-immolation act in the Tibet Autonomous Region of Lhasa. The People’s Daily of China reported that Tugyi and Cendan Gyaco crossed the Sino-Nepalese border and under the directive of the security minister of the Dalai Clique, Cendan Gyaco was to set himself on fire on the square of the Jokhang Monastery in Lhasa while Tugyi would record the self-immolation incident before sending the recorded material to the UN Human Rights Conference. The local security authority arrested Cendan Gyaco previously a monk. In custody he supposedly confessed to instigating by the Dalai Clique to flee to India in 1999 and participate in a hunger strike organized by the Tibetan Government in Exile. There an organizer repeatedly told the participants that a hunger strike would not be enough to accomplish their cause and that they should set themselves on fire in front of the Chinese Embassy in India. Upon his consent the Dalai Clique worked out a four-point agreement including the release of the Tenth Panchen designated by the Dalai Lama and let Cendan Gyaco read it before his self-immolation that was to be recorded. He was told that the exiled government would hand over the tape to the UN conference after he burned himself. He was further stated to have confessed that during the preparation of his immolation act the officials of the Dalai Clique convinced him of the bigger impact it would have if he were to set himself on fire within the TAR instead of staging it overseas which would draw a more powerful effect and help the United Nations to press China on the ‘Tibet Issue’.

The Daily further reports that the Security Ministry sent special people to train him into a spy and direct him to set himself ablaze on the square of the Jokhang Monastery in Lhasa. The reception office of the Dalai Clique in Nepal is said to have given him 400,000 Nepalese rupees and let him read the four-point agreement which was subsequently videotaped. During his trial the People’s Court of Lhasa City charged him with agitating separatism and espionage whereby he was sentenced to a 8 year imprisonment with the deprivation of political rights for three years. His co-associate Tugyi is also said to have confessed and expressed regret for their actions.

“The bloody, abortive self-immolation incident masterminded by the Dalai Clique ha s... made the public clearly see ...the 14th Dalai Lama is hiding his savage nature”, reports the Editorial by the Chinese Xinhua.
In another incident of the same nature Ngawang Choephel a Tibetan exile educated as a Fulbright scholar in the United States and a musician was said to have sent by the Dalai Clique in 1995 with equipments provided by a certain foreign country to carry his activities under the pretext of his research on the folk songs and dances in Tibet. During his stay in Tibet, he went to Lhasa, Shannan, Nyingchi and Xigaze to carry out his espionage activities, in an attempt to provide the information gathered to the Dalai clique’s government in exile and to an organization of a certain foreign country. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison for alleged charges of espionage.

The Tibetan Government in exile has strongly denied accusations by China of having sent anyone into Tibet to protest against Chinese rule. A spokesman at the office of the Dalai Lama, at Dharamsala in India, said it was a basic Buddhist principle that followers should not harm themselves or anyone else. The Exile government responded that the policy of the Tibet movement is based on non-violence as advocated by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. To send two people to Tibet to set them on fire is against the principles of Tibetan Buddhism, which considers taking a life, especially one’s life, as a grave negative act and that the credibility of the whole Tibet movement is based on these principles. The exiled government demanded the Chinese authorities prove the veracity of their accusations. It has reiterated that China’s spy story revelation is a crude smear campaign against His Holiness the Dalai Lama to distract international public attention from the core issues of the Tibet movement.

In end, apparently non-violent path of Tibetan struggle initiated by the Dalai Lama says is the most feasible and apt one given the present circumstances. Even then, we are restless about it. A big debate among us is to how far our non-violent struggle can go?