(disproven story) Brit spies confirm Dalai Lama's re****t of staged
violence?
E-Mail I received on GHCQ, etc.
I have removed the name of the sender.
Dear Sangha,
I received many emails in response to my clarification email regarding the
date/source of the photo pur****tedly showing Chinese soldiers preparing to
disguise themselves as Tibetan monks prior to the recent riots in Lhasa.
So
this email to is further clarify my statement that the photo is not from
the
recent unrest. My investigation also led to some other dubious items
regarding the article itself, which I will also
relate.
To begin, if you follow the link at the end of the email to
http://buddhism.kalachakranet.org/chinese-orchestrating-riots-tibet.htm
you will see that underneath the photo it says: "This is not an uncommon
'tactical move' from the Chinese government as could be seen from the 2003
annual TCHRD Re****t". This statement does not refer to the image, as the
image does not appear within the 2003 Annual TCHRD (Tibetan
Centre for Human Rights and Democracy) Re****t. However, making that
statement appear underneath the photo at the very least insinuates that
the
photo may have been from 2003... which is more than can be said for the
email we were all sent -- as the email that was sent to us omitted that
statement.
Regarding the article:
1) The article states it is by Gordon Thomas of the Canada Free Press. I
have sent an email to Mr. Thomas to verify that he wrote it. In the
meantime, a search of the Canada Free Press website does not reveal this
article.
2) The information re****ted in the email could not be found anywhere on
TCHRD website.
3) The 2003 TCHRD Annual Re****t makes no mention of any incidents of this
nature.
4) This article is now widely circulating the blogosphere, however it
does not appear in any 'legitimate' news outlet.
5) The article appears to have originated on "G2 Bulletin", which is an
extreme right-wing conservative rumor mill subscription website.
6) The article appears to have been then disseminated by "The Epoch
Times",
a privately owned, general-interest newspaper, originally published in
Chinese with close ties to Falun Gong.
7) An email to the GCHQ questioning the validity of the article yielded
this
response:
Thank you for your email. It is GCHQ's long-standing policy to respond
that
we are able to neither confirm nor deny in respect to enquiries on
intelligence matters. I would simply add that I am not aware of Gordon
Thomas making any approach to GCHQ prior to publi****ng on this subject;
such
an approach would invariably be directed through the Press Office.
I hope that is of some help.
Regards
Alan Thompson
Press Officer, GCHQ
----------------------------
After alot of research, what I discovered was that the photo is from the
set
of a 2003 movie. And the reliability of the truthfulness of the article is
highly questionable, at best.
DHARMA or DECEPTION?: Chinese Soldiers Dressed as Tibetan Monks
Posted on Mar 31st, 2008 by thinkpossible
There is an image and a story travelling around the internet in emails and
plastered all over the blogosphere right now that needs to be addressed.
I received the following email thru a large Buddhist community?s email
list.
The article claims British intelligence has taken images, via satellite,
of
Chinese soldiers dressed as Tibetans starting the recent violence in
Lhasa,
Tibet. The image that accompanied the article seemed somewhat familar to
me... that and the fact that the image?s angle tells me that it could not
have been taken from a satellite raised my curiosity level and prompted me
to look into the truth of these claims and image.
After alot of research, what I discovered was that the photo is from the
set
of a 2003 movie. And the reliability of the truthfulness of the article is
highly questionable, at best.
http://thinkpossible.gaia.com/blog
Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth
(updated and expanded version, January 2007)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
I. For Lords and Lamas
Along with the blood drenched landscape of religious conflict there
is
the experience of inner peace and solace that every religion promises,
none
more so than Buddhism. Standing in marked contrast to the intolerant
savagery of other religions, Buddhism is neither fanatical nor
dogmatic--so
say its adherents. For many of them Buddhism is less a theology and more a
meditative and investigative discipline intended to promote an inner
harmony
and enlightenment while directing us to a path of right living. Generally,
the spiritual focus is not only on oneself but on the welfare of others.
One
tries to put aside egoistic pursuits and gain a deeper understanding of
one'
s connection to all people and things. "Socially engaged Buddhism" tries
to
blend individual liberation with responsible social action in order to
build
an enlightened society.
A glance at history, however, reveals that not all the many and
widely
varying forms of Buddhism have been free of doctrinal fanaticism, nor free
of the violent and exploitative pursuits so characteristic of other
religions. In Sri Lanka there is a legendary and almost sacred recorded
history about the triumphant battles waged by Buddhist kings of yore.
During
the twentieth century, Buddhists clashed violently with each other and
with
non-Buddhists in Thailand, Burma, Korea, Japan, India, and elsewhere. In
Sri
Lanka, armed battles between Buddhist Sinhalese and Hindu Tamils have
taken
many lives on both sides. In 1998 the U.S. State Department listed thirty
of
the world's most violent and dangerous extremist groups. Over half of them
were religious, specifically Muslim, Jewish, and Buddhist. 1
In South Korea, in 1998, thousands of monks of the Chogye Buddhist
order fought each other with fists, rocks, fire-bombs, and clubs, in
pitched
battles that went on for weeks. They were vying for control of the order,
the largest in South Korea, with its annual budget of $9.2 million, its
millions of dollars worth of property, and the privilege of appointing
1,700
monks to various offices. The brawls damaged the main Buddhist sanctuaries
and left dozens of monks injured, some seriously. The Korean public
appeared
to disdain both factions, feeling that no matter what side took control,
"it
would use wor****ppers' donations for luxurious houses and expensive cars."
2
As with any religion, squabbles between or within Buddhist sects are
often fueled by the material corruption and personal deficiencies of the
leader****p. For example, in Nagano, Japan, at Zenkoji, the prestigious
complex of temples that has hosted Buddhist sects for more than 1,400
years,
"a nasty battle" arose between Komatsu the chief priest and the Tacchu, a
group of temples nominally under the chief priest's sway. The Tacchu monks
accused Komatsu of selling writings and drawings under the temple's name
for
his own gain. They also were appalled by the frequency with which he was
seen in the company of women. Komatsu in turn sought to isolate and punish
monks who were critical of his leader****p. The conflict lasted some five
years and made it into the courts. 3
But what of Tibetan Buddhism? Is it not an exception to this sort of
strife? And what of the society it helped to create? Many Buddhists
maintain
that, before the Chinese crackdown in 1959, old Tibet was a spiritually
oriented kingdom free from the egotistical lifestyles, empty materialism,
and corrupting vices that beset modern industrialized society. Western
news
media, travel books, novels, and Hollywood films have ****trayed the
Tibetan
theocracy as a veritable Shangri-La. The Dalai Lama himself stated that
"the
pervasive influence of Buddhism" in Tibet, "amid the wide open spaces of
an
unspoiled environment resulted in a society dedicated to peace and
harmony.
We enjoyed freedom and contentment." 4
A reading of Tibet's history suggests a somewhat different picture.
"Religious conflict was commonplace in old Tibet," writes one western
Buddhist practitioner. "History belies the Shangri-La image of Tibetan
lamas
and their followers living together in mutual tolerance and nonviolent
goodwill. Indeed, the situation was quite different. Old Tibet was much
more
like Europe during the religious wars of the Counterreformation." 5 In the
thirteenth century, Emperor Kublai Khan created the first Grand Lama, who
was to preside over all the other lamas as might a pope over his bishops.
Several centuries later, the Emperor of China sent an army into Tibet to
sup****t the Grand Lama, an ambitious 25-year-old man, who then gave
himself
the title of Dalai (Ocean) Lama, ruler of all Tibet. Here is a historical
irony: the first Dalai Lama was installed by a Chinese army.
His two previous lama "incarnations" were then retroactively
recognized as his predecessors, thereby transforming the 1st Dalai Lama
into
the 3rd Dalai Lama. This 1st (or 3rd) Dalai Lama seized monasteries that
did
not belong to his sect, and is believed to have destroyed Buddhist
writings
that conflicted with his claim to divinity. The Dalai Lama who succeeded
him
pursued a sybaritic life, enjoying many mistresses, partying with friends,
and acting in other ways deemed unfitting for an incarnate deity. For
these
transgressions he was murdered by his priests. Within 170 years, despite
their recognized divine status, five Dalai Lamas were killed by their high
priests or other courtiers. 6
For hundreds of years competing Tibetan Buddhist sects engaged in
bitterly violent clashes and summary executions. In 1660, the 5th Dalai
Lama
was faced with a rebellion in Tsang province, the stronghold of the rival
Kagyu sect with its high lama known as the Karmapa. The 5th Dalai Lama
called for harsh retribution against the rebels, directing the Mongol army
to obliterate the male and female lines, and the offspring too "like eggs
smashed against rocks.. In short, annihilate any traces of them, even
their
names." 7
In 1792, many Kagyu monasteries were confiscated and their monks
were
forcibly converted to the Gelug sect (the Dalai Lama's denomination). The
Gelug school, known also as the "Yellow Hats," showed little tolerance or
willingness to mix their teachings with other Buddhist sects. In the words
of one of their traditional prayers: "Praise to you, violent god of the
Yellow Hat teachings/who reduces to particles of dust/ great beings, high
officials and ordinary people/ who pollute and corrupt the Gelug
doctrine."
8 An eighteenth-century memoir of a Tibetan general depicts sectarian
strife
among Buddhists that is as brutal and bloody as any religious conflict
might
be. 9 This grim history remains largely unvisited by present-day followers
of Tibetan Buddhism in the West.
Religions have had a close relation****p not only with violence but
with economic exploitation. Indeed, it is often the economic exploitation
that necessitates the violence. Such was the case with the Tibetan
theocracy. Until 1959, when the Dalai Lama last presided over Tibet, most
of
the arable land was still organized into manorial estates worked by serfs.
These estates were owned by two social groups: the rich secular landlords
and the rich theocratic lamas. Even a writer sympathetic to the old order
allows that "a great deal of real estate belonged to the monasteries, and
most of them amassed great riches." Much of the wealth was ac***ulated
"through active participation in trade, commerce, and money lending." 10
Drepung monastery was one of the biggest landowners in the world,
with
its 185 manors, 25,000 serfs, 300 great pastures, and 16,000 herdsmen. The
wealth of the monasteries rested in the hands of small numbers of
high-ranking lamas. Most ordinary monks lived modestly and had no direct
access to great wealth. The Dalai Lama himself "lived richly in the
1000-room, 14-story Potala Palace." 11
Secular leaders also did well. A notable example was the
commander-in-chief of the Tibetan army, a member of the Dalai Lama's lay
Cabinet, who owned 4,000 square kilometers of land and 3,500 serfs. 12 Old
Tibet has been misrepresented by some Western admirers as "a nation that
required no police force because its people voluntarily observed the laws
of
karma." 13 In fact. it had a professional army, albeit a small one, that
served mainly as a gendarmerie for the landlords to keep order, protect
their property, and hunt down runaway serfs.
Young Tibetan boys were regularly taken from their peasant families
and brought into the monasteries to be trained as monks. Once there, they
were bonded for life. Tashì-Tsering, a monk, re****ts that it was common
for
peasant children to be ***ually mistreated in the monasteries. He himself
was a victim of repeated rape, beginning at age nine. 14 The monastic
estates also conscripted children for lifelong servitude as domestics,
dance
performers, and soldiers.
In old Tibet there were small numbers of farmers who subsisted as a
kind of free peasantry, and perhaps an additional 10,000 people who
composed
the "middle-class" families of merchants, shopkeepers, and small traders.
Thousands of others were beggars. There also were slaves, usually domestic
servants, who owned nothing. Their offspring were born into slavery. 15
The
majority of the rural population were serfs. Treated little better than
slaves, the serfs went without schooling or medical care, They were under
a
lifetime bond to work the lord's land--or the monastery's land--without
pay,
to repair the lord's houses, trans****t his crops, and collect his
firewood.
They were also expected to provide carrying animals and trans****tation on
demand.16 Their masters told them what crops to grow and what animals to
raise. They could not get married without the consent of their lord or
lama.
And they might easily be separated from their families should their owners
lease them out to work in a distant location. 17
As in a free labor system and unlike slavery, the overlords had no
responsibility for the serf's maintenance and no direct interest in his or
her survival as an expensive piece of property. The serfs had to sup****t
themselves. Yet as in a slave system, they were bound to their masters,
guaranteeing a fixed and permanent workforce that could neither organize
nor
strike nor freely depart as might laborers in a market context. The
overlords had the best of both worlds.
One 22-year old woman, herself a runaway serf, re****ts: "Pretty serf
girls were usually taken by the owner as house servants and used as he
wished"; they "were just slaves without rights."18 Serfs needed permission
to go anywhere. Landowners had legal authority to capture those who tried
to
flee. One 24-year old runaway welcomed the Chinese intervention as a
"liberation." He testified that under serfdom he was subjected to
incessant
toil, hunger, and cold. After his third failed escape, he was merciless
beaten by the landlord's men until blood poured from his nose and mouth.
They then poured alcohol and caustic soda on his wounds to increase the
pain, he claimed.19
The serfs were taxed upon getting married, taxed for the birth of
each
child and for every death in the family. They were taxed for planting a
tree
in their yard and for keeping animals. They were taxed for religious
festivals and for public dancing and drumming, for being sent to prison
and
upon being released. Those who could not find work were taxed for being
unemployed, and if they traveled to another village in search of work,
they
paid a passage tax. When people could not pay, the monasteries lent them
money at 20 to 50 percent interest. Some debts were handed down from
father
to son to grandson. Debtors who could not meet their obligations risked
being cast into slavery.20
The theocracy's religious teachings buttressed its class order. The
poor and afflicted were taught that they had brought their troubles upon
themselves because of their wicked ways in previous lives. Hence they had
to
accept the misery of their present existence as a karmic atonement and in
anticipation that their lot would improve in their next lifetime. The rich
and powerful treated their good fortune as a reward for, and tangible
evidence of, virtue in past and present lives.
The Tibetan serfs were something more than superstitious victims,
blind to their own oppression. As we have seen, some ran away; others
openly
resisted, sometimes suffering dire consequences. In feudal Tibet, torture
and mutilation--including eye gouging, the pulling out of tongues,
hamstringing, and amputation--were favored punishments inflicted upon
thieves, and runaway or resistant serfs. Journeying through Tibet in the
1960s, Stuart and Roma Gelder interviewed a former serf, Tsereh Wang Tuei,
who had stolen two sheep belonging to a monastery. For this he had both
his
eyes gouged out and his hand mutilated beyond use. He explains that he no
longer is a Buddhist: "When a holy lama told them to blind me I thought
there was no good in religion."21 Since it was against Buddhist teachings
to
take human life, some offenders were severely lashed and then "left to
God"
in the freezing night to die. "The parallels between Tibet and medieval
Europe are striking," concludes Tom Grunfeld in his book on Tibet. 22
In 1959, Anna Louise Strong visited an exhibition of torture
equipment
that had been used by the Tibetan overlords. There were handcuffs of all
sizes, including small ones for children, and instruments for cutting off
noses and ears, gouging out eyes, breaking off hands, and hamstringing
legs.
There were hot brands, whips, and special implements for disemboweling.
The
exhibition presented photographs and testimonies of victims who had been
blinded or crippled or suffered amputations for thievery. There was the
shepherd whose master owed him a reimbursement in yuan and wheat but
refused
to pay. So he took one of the master's cows; for this he had his hands
severed. Another herdsman, who opposed having his wife taken from him by
his
lord, had his hands broken off. There were pictures of Communist activists
with noses and upper lips cut off, and a woman who was raped and then had
her nose sliced away.23
Earlier visitors to Tibet commented on the theocratic despotism. In
1895, an Englishman, Dr. A. L. Waddell, wrote that the populace was under
the "intolerable tyranny of monks" and the devil superstitions they had
fa****oned to terrorize the people. In 1904 Perceval Landon described the
Dalai Lama's rule as "an engine of oppression." At about that time,
another
English traveler, Captain W.F.T. O'Connor, observed that "the great
landowners and the priests. exercise each in their own dominion a despotic
power from which there is no appeal," while the people are "oppressed by
the
most monstrous growth of monasticism and priest-craft." Tibetan rulers
"invented degrading legends and stimulated a spirit of superstition" among
the common people. In 1937, another visitor, Spencer Chapman, wrote, "The
Lamaist monk does not spend his time in ministering to the people or
educating them. . . . The beggar beside the road is nothing to the monk.
Knowledge is the jealously guarded prerogative of the monasteries and is
used to increase their influence and wealth."24 As much as we might wish
otherwise, feudal theocratic Tibet was a far cry from the romanticized
Shangri La so enthusiastically nurtured by Buddhism's western proselytes.
II. Secularization vs. Spirituality
What happened to Tibet after the Chinese Communists moved into the
country in 1951? The treaty of that year provided for ostensible
self-governance under the Dalai Lama's rule but gave China military
control
and exclusive right to conduct foreign relations. The Chinese were also
granted a direct role in internal administration "to promote social
reforms." Among the earliest changes they wrought was to reduce usurious
interest rates, and build a few hospitals and roads. At first, they moved
slowly, relying mostly on persuasion in an attempt to effect
reconstruction.
No aristocratic or monastic property was confiscated, and feudal lords
continued to reign over their hereditarily bound peasants. "Contrary to
popular belief in the West," claims one observer, the Chinese "took care
to
show respect for Tibetan culture and religion."25
Over the centuries the Tibetan lords and lamas had seen Chinese come
and go, and had enjoyed good relations with Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek
and
his reactionary Kuomintang rule in China.26 The approval of the Kuomintang
government was needed to validate the choice of the Dalai Lama and Panchen
Lama. When the current 14th Dalai Lama was first installed in Lhasa, it
was
with an armed escort of Chinese troops and an attending Chinese minister,
in
accordance with centuries-old tradition. What upset the Tibetan lords and
lamas in the early 1950s was that these latest Chinese were Communists. It
would be only a matter of time, they feared, before the Communists started
imposing their collectivist egalitarian schemes upon Tibet.
The issue was joined in 1956-57, when armed Tibetan bands ambushed
convoys of the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army. The uprising received
extensive assistance from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA),
including military training, sup****t camps in Nepal, and numerous
airlifts.27 Meanwhile in the United States, the American Society for a
Free
Asia, a CIA-financed front, energetically publicized the cause of Tibetan
resistance, with the Dalai Lama's eldest brother, Thubtan Norbu, playing
an
active role in that organization. The Dalai Lama's second-eldest brother,
Gyalo Thondup, established an intelligence operation with the CIA as early
as 1951. He later upgraded it into a CIA-trained guerrilla unit whose
recruits parachuted back into Tibet.28
Many Tibetan commandos and agents whom the CIA dropped into the
country were chiefs of aristocratic clans or the sons of chiefs. Ninety
percent of them were never heard from again, according to a re****t from
the
CIA itself, meaning they were most likely captured and killed.29 "Many
lamas
and lay members of the elite and much of the Tibetan army joined the
uprising, but in the main the populace did not, assuring its failure,"
writes Hugh Deane.30 In their book on Tibet, Ginsburg and Mathos reach a
similar conclusion: "As far as can be ascertained, the great bulk of the
common people of Lhasa and of the adjoining countryside failed to join in
the fighting against the Chinese both when it first began and as it
progressed."31 Eventually the resistance crumbled.
Whatever wrongs and new oppressions introduced by the Chinese after
1959, they did abolish slavery and the Tibetan serfdom system of unpaid
labor. They eliminated the many cru****ng taxes, started work projects, and
greatly reduced unemployment and beggary. They established secular
schools,
thereby breaking the educational monopoly of the monasteries. And they
constructed running water and electrical systems in Lhasa.32
Heinrich Harrer (later revealed to have been a sergeant in Hitler's
SS) wrote a bestseller about his experiences in Tibet that was made into a
popular Hollywood movie. He re****ted that the Tibetans who resisted the
Chinese "were predominantly nobles, semi-nobles and lamas; they were
punished by being made to perform the lowliest tasks, such as laboring on
roads and bridges. They were further humiliated by being made to clean up
the city before the tourists arrived." They also had to live in a camp
originally reserved for beggars and vagrants--all of which Harrer treats
as
sure evidence of the dreadful nature of the Chinese occupation.33
By 1961, Chinese occupation authorities expropriated the landed
estates owned by lords and lamas. They distributed many thousands of acres
to tenant farmers and landless peasants, reorganizing them into hundreds
of
communes.. Herds once owned by nobility were turned over to collectives of
poor shepherds. Improvements were made in the breeding of livestock, and
new
varieties of vegetables and new strains of wheat and barley were
introduced,
along with irrigation improvements, all of which re****tedly led to an
increase in agrarian production.34
Many peasants remained as religious as ever, giving alms to the
clergy. But monks who had been conscripted as children into the religious
orders were now free to renounce the monastic life, and thousands did,
especially the younger ones. The remaining clergy lived on modest
government
stipends and extra income earned by officiating at prayer services,
weddings, and funerals.35
Both the Dalai Lama and his advisor and youngest brother, Tendzin
Choegyal, claimed that "more than 1.2 million Tibetans are dead as a
result
of the Chinese occupation."36 The official 1953 census--six years before
the
Chinese crackdown--recorded the entire population residing in Tibet at
1,274,000.37 Other census counts put the population within Tibet at about
two million. If the Chinese killed 1.2 million in the early 1960s then
almost all of Tibet, would have been depopulated, transformed into a
killing
field dotted with death camps and mass graves--of which we have no
evidence.
The thinly distributed Chinese force in Tibet could not have rounded up,
hunted down, and exterminated that many people even if it had spent all
its
time doing nothing else.
Chinese authorities claim to have put an end to floggings,
mutilations, and amputations as a form of criminal punishment. They
themselves, however, have been charged with acts of brutality by exile
Tibetans. The authorities do admit to "mistakes," particularly during the
1966-76 Cultural Revolution when the persecution of religious beliefs
reached a high tide in both China and Tibet. After the uprising in the
late
1950s, thousands of Tibetans were incarcerated. During the Great Leap
Forward, forced collectivization and grain farming were imposed on the
Tibetan peasantry, sometimes with disastrous effect on production. In the
late 1970s, China began relaxing controls "and tried to undo some of the
damage wrought during the previous two decades."38
In 1980, the Chinese government initiated reforms re****tedly
designed
to grant Tibet a greater degree of self-rule and self-administration.
Tibetans would now be allowed to cultivate private plots, sell their
harvest
surpluses, decide for themselves what crops to grow, and keep yaks and
sheep. Communication with the outside world was again permitted, and
frontier controls were eased to permit some Tibetans to visit exiled
relatives in India and Nepal.39 By the 1980s many of the principal lamas
had
begun to shuttle back and forth between China and the exile communities
abroad, "restoring their monasteries in Tibet and helping to revitalize
Buddhism there."40
As of 2007 Tibetan Buddhism was still practiced widely and tolerated
by officialdom. Religious pilgrimages and other standard forms of wor****p
were allowed but within limits. All monks and nuns had to sign a loyalty
pledge that they would not use their religious position to foment
secession
or dissent. And displaying photos of the Dalai Lama was declared
illegal.41
In the 1990s, the Han, the ethnic group comprising over 95 percent
of
China's immense population, began moving in substantial numbers into
Tibet.
On the streets of Lhasa and ****gatse, signs of Han colonization are
readily
visible. Chinese run the factories and many of the shops and vending
stalls.
Tall office buildings and large shopping centers have been built with
funds
that might have been better spent on water treatment plants and housing.
Chinese cadres in Tibet too often view their Tibetan neighbors as backward
and lazy, in need of economic development and "patriotic education."
During
the 1990s Tibetan government employees suspected of harboring nationalist
sympathies were purged from office, and campaigns were once again launched
to discredit the Dalai Lama. Individual Tibetans re****tedly were subjected
to arrest, imprisonment, and forced labor for carrying out separatist
activities and engaging in "political subversion." Some were held in
administrative detention without adequate food, water, and blankets,
subjected to threats, beatings, and other mistreatment.42
Tibetan history, culture, and certainly religion are slighted in
schools. Teaching materials, though translated into Tibetan, focus mainly
on
Chinese history and culture. Chinese family planning regulations allow a
three-child limit for Tibetan families. (There is only a one-child limit
for
Han families throughout China, and a two-child limit for rural Han
families
whose first child is a girl.) If a Tibetan couple goes over the
three-child
limit, the excess children can be denied subsidized daycare, health care,
housing, and education. These penalties have been enforced irregularly and
vary by district.43 None of these child services, it should be noted, were
available to Tibetans before the Chinese takeover.
For the rich lamas and secular lords, the Communist intervention was
an unmitigated calamity. Most of them fled abroad, as did the Dalai Lama
himself, who was assisted in his flight by the CIA. Some discovered to
their
horror that they would have to work for a living. Many, however, escaped
that fate. Throughout the 1960s, the Tibetan exile community was secretly
pocketing $1.7 million a year from the CIA, according to do***ents
released
by the State Department in 1998. Once this fact was publicized, the Dalai
Lama's organization itself issued a statement admitting that it had
received
millions of dollars from the CIA during the 1960s to send armed squads of
exiles into Tibet to undermine the Maoist revolution. The Dalai Lama's
annual payment from the CIA was $186,000. Indian intelligence also
financed
both him and other Tibetan exiles. He has refused to say whether he or his
brothers worked for the CIA. The agency has also declined to comment.44
In 1995, the News & Observer of Raleigh, North Carolina, carried a
frontpage color photograph of the Dalai Lama being embraced by the
reactionary Republican senator Jesse Helms, under the headline "Buddhist
Captivates Hero of Religious Right."45 In April 1999, along with Margaret
Thatcher, Pope John Paul II, and the first George Bush, the Dalai Lama
called upon the British government to release Augusto Pinochet, the former
fascist dictator of Chile and a longtime CIA client who was visiting
England. The Dalai Lama urged that Pinochet not be forced to go to Spain
where he was wanted to stand trial for crimes against humanity.
Into the twenty-first century, via the National Endowment for
Democracy and other conduits that are more respectable sounding than the
CIA, the U.S. Congress continued to allocate an annual $2 million to
Tibetans in India, with additional millions for "democracy activities"
within the Tibetan exile community. In addition to these funds, the Dalai
Lama received money from financier George Soros.46
Whatever the Dalai Lama's associations with the CIA and various
reactionaries, he did speak often of peace, love, and nonviolence. He
himself really cannot be blamed for the abuses of Tibet's ancien régime,
having been but 25 years old when he fled into exile. In a 1994 interview,
he went on record as favoring the building of schools and roads in his
country. He said the corvée (forced unpaid serf labor) and certain taxes
imposed on the peasants were "extremely bad." And he disliked the way
people
were saddled with old debts sometimes passed down from generation to
generation.47During the half century of living in the western world, he
had
embraced concepts such as human rights and religious freedom, ideas
largely
unknown in old Tibet. He even proposed democracy for Tibet, featuring a
written constitution and a representative assembly.48
In 1996, the Dalai Lama issued a statement that must have had an
unsettling effect on the exile community. It read in part: "Marxism is
founded on moral principles, while capitalism is concerned only with gain
and profitability." Marxism fosters "the equitable utilization of the
means
of production" and cares about "the fate of the working cl*****" and "the
victims of . . . exploitation. For those reasons the system appeals to me,
and . . . I think of myself as half-Marxist, half-Buddhist.49
But he also sent a reassuring message to "those who live in
abundance"
: "It is a good thing to be rich... Those are the fruits for deserving
actions, the proof that they have been generous in the past." And to the
poor he offers this admonition: "There is no good reason to become bitter
and rebel against those who have property and fortune... It is better to
develop a positive attitude."50
In 2005 the Dalai Lama signed a widely advertised statement along
with
ten other Nobel Laureates sup****ting the "inalienable and fundamental
human
right" of working people throughout the world to form labor unions to
protect their interests, in accordance with the United Nations' Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. In many countries "this fundamental right is
poorly protected and in some it is explicitly banned or brutally
suppressed," the statement read. Burma, China, Colombia, Bosnia, and a
few
other countries were singled out as among the worst offenders. Even the
United States "fails to adequately protect workers' rights to form unions
and bargain collectively. Millions of U.S. workers lack any legal
protection
to form unions.."51
The Dalai Lama also gave full sup****t to removing the ingrained
traditional obstacles that have kept Tibetan nuns from receiving an
education. Upon arriving in exile, few nuns could read or write. In Tibet
their activities had been devoted to daylong periods of prayer and chants.
But in northern India they now began reading Buddhist philosophy and
engaging in theological study and debate, activities that in old Tibet had
been open only to monks.52
In November 2005 the Dalai Lama spoke at Stanford University on "The
Heart of Nonviolence," but stopped short of a blanket condemnation of all
violence. Violent actions that are committed in order to reduce future
suffering are not to be condemned, he said, citing World War II as an
example of a worthy effort to protect democracy. What of the four years of
carnage and mass destruction in Iraq, a war condemned by most of the
world-even by a conservative pope--as a blatant violation of international
law and a crime against humanity? The Dalai Lama was undecided: "The Iraq
war-it's too early to say, right or wrong."53 Earlier he had voiced
sup****t
for the U.S. military intervention against Yugoslavia and, later on, the
U.S. military intervention into Afghanistan.54
III. Exit Feudal Theocracy
As the Shangri-La myth would have it, in old Tibet the people lived
in
contented and tranquil symbiosis with their monastic and secular lords.
Rich
lamas and poor monks, wealthy landlords and impoverished serfs were all
bonded together, mutually sustained by the comforting balm of a deeply
spiritual and pacific culture.
One is reminded of the idealized image of feudal Europe presented by
latter-day conservative Catholics such as G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire
Belloc. For them, medieval Christendom was a world of contented peasants
living in the secure embrace of their Church, under the more or less
benign
protection of their lords.55 Again we are invited to accept a particular
culture in its idealized form divorced from its murky material history.
This
means accepting it as presented by its favored class, by those who
profited
most from it. The Shangri-La image of Tibet bears no more resemblance to
historic actuality than does the pastoral image of medieval Europe.
Seen in all its grim realities, old Tibet confirms the view I
expressed in an earlier book, namely that culture is anything but neutral.
Culture can operate as a legitimating cover for a host of grave
injustices,
benefiting a privileged ****tion of society at great cost to the rest.56 In
theocratic feudal Tibet, ruling interests manipulated the traditional
culture to fortify their own wealth and power. The theocracy equated
rebellious thought and action with satanic influence. It propagated the
general presumption of landlord superiority and peasant unworthiness. The
rich were represented as deserving their good life, and the lowly poor as
deserving their mean existence, all codified in teachings about the karmic
residue of virtue and vice ac***ulated from past lives, presented as part
of
God's will.
Were the more affluent lamas just hypocrites who preached one thing
and secretly believed another? More likely they were genuinely attached to
those beliefs that brought such good results for them. That their theology
so perfectly sup****ted their material privileges only strengthened the
sincerity with which it was embraced.
It might be said that we denizens of the modern secular world cannot
grasp the equations of happiness and pain, contentment and custom, that
characterize more traditionally spiritual societies. This is probably
true,
and it may explain why some of us idealize such societies. But still, a
gouged eye is a gouged eye; a flogging is a flogging; and the grinding
exploitation of serfs and slaves is a brutal class injustice whatever its
cultural wrapping. There is a difference between a spiritual bond and
human
bondage, even when both exist side by side
Many ordinary Tibetans want the Dalai Lama back in their country,
but
it appears that relatively few want a return to the social order he
represented. A 1999 story in the Wa****ngton Post notes that the Dalai Lama
continues to be revered in Tibet, but
. . . few Tibetans would welcome a return of the corrupt
aristocratic clans that fled with him in 1959 and that comprise the bulk
of
his advisers. Many Tibetan farmers, for example, have no interest in
surrendering the land they gained during China's land reform to the clans.
Tibet's former slaves say they, too, don't want their former masters to
return to power. "I've already lived that life once before," said
Wangchuk,
a 67-year-old former slave who was wearing his best clothes for his yearly
pilgrimage to ****gatse, one of the holiest sites of Tibetan Buddhism. He
said he wor****pped the Dalai Lama, but added, "I may not be free under
Chinese communism, but I am better off than when I was a slave."57
It should be noted that the Dalai Lama is not the only highly placed
lama chosen in childhood as a reincarnation. One or another reincarnate
lama
or tulku--a spiritual teacher of special purity elected to be reborn again
and again--can be found presiding over most major monasteries. The tulku
system is unique to Tibetan Buddhism. Scores of Tibetan lamas claim to be
reincarnate tulkus.
The very first tulku was a lama known as the Karmapa who appeared
nearly three centuries before the first Dalai Lama. The Karmapa is leader
of
a Tibetan Buddhist tradition known as the Karma Kagyu. The rise of the
Gelugpa sect headed by the Dalai Lama led to a politico-religious rivalry
with the Kagyu that has lasted five hundred years and continues to play
itself out within the Tibetan exile community today. That the Kagyu sect
has
grown famously, opening some six hundred new centers around the world in
the
last thirty-five years, has not helped the situation.
The search for a tulku, Erik Curren reminds us, has not always been
conducted in that purely spiritual mode ****trayed in certain Hollywood
films. "Sometimes monastic officials wanted a child from a powerful local
noble family to give the cloister more political clout. Other times they
wanted a child from a lower-class family who would have little leverage to
influence the child's upbringing." On other occasions "a local warlord,
the
Chinese emperor or even the Dalai Lama's government in Lhasa might [have
tried] to impose its choice of tulku on a monastery for political
reasons."
58
Such may have been the case in the selection of the 17th Karmapa,
whose monastery-in-exile is situated in Rumtek, in the Indian state of
Sikkim. In 1993 the monks of the Karma Kagyu tradition had a candidate of
their own choice. The Dalai Lama, along with several dissenting Karma
Kagyu
leaders (and with the sup****t of the Chinese government!) backed a
different
boy. The Kagyu monks charged that the Dalai Lama had overstepped his
authority in attempting to select a leader for their sect. "Neither his
political role nor his position as a lama in his own Gelugpa tradition
entitled him to choose the Karmapa, who is a leader of a different
tradition."59 As one of the Kagyu leaders insisted, "Dharma is about
thinking for yourself. It is not about automatically following a teacher
in
all things, no matter how respected that teacher may be. More than anyone
else, Buddhists should respect other people's rights-their human rights
and
their religious freedom."60
What followed was a dozen years of conflict in the Tibetan exile
community, punctuated by intermittent riots, intimidation, physical
attacks,
blacklisting, police harassment, litigation, official corruption, and the
looting and undermining of the Karmapa's monastery in Rumtek by sup****ters
of the Gelugpa faction. All this has caused at least one western devotee
to
wonder if the years of exile were not hastening the moral corrosion of
Tibetan Buddhism.61
What is clear is that not all Tibetan Buddhists accept the Dalai
Lama
as their theological and spiritual mentor. Though he is referred to as the
"spiritual leader of Tibet," many see this title as little more than a
formality. It does not give him authority over the four religious schools
of
Tibet other than his own, "just as calling the U.S. president the 'leader
of
the free world' gives him no role in governing France or Germany."62
Not all Tibetan exiles are enamoured of the old Shangri-La
theocracy.
Kim Lewis, who studied healing methods with a Buddhist monk in Berkeley,
California, had occasion to talk at length with more than a dozen Tibetan
women who lived in the monk's building. When she asked how they felt about
returning to their homeland, the sentiment was unanimously negative. At
first, Lewis assumed that their reluctance had to do with the Chinese
occupation, but they quickly informed her otherwise. They said they were
extremely grateful "not to have to marry 4 or 5 men, be pregnant almost
all
the time," or deal with ***ually transmitted diseases contacted from a
straying husband. The younger women "were delighted to be getting an
education, wanted absolutely nothing to do with any religion, and wondered
why Americans were so naïve [about Tibet]."63
The women interviewed by Lewis recounted stories of their
grandmothers
' ordeals with monks who used them as "wisdom consorts." By sleeping with
the monks, the grandmothers were told, they gained "the means to
enlightenment" -- after all, the Buddha himself had to be with a woman to
reach enlightenment.
The women also mentioned the "rampant" *** that the supposedly
spiritual and abstemious monks practiced with each other in the Gelugpa
sect. The women who were mothers spoke bitterly about the monastery's
confiscation of their young boys in Tibet. They claimed that when a boy
cried for his mother, he would be told "Why do you cry for her, she gave
you
up--she's just a woman."
The monks who were granted political asylum in California applied
for
public assistance. Lewis, herself a devotee for a time, assisted with the
paperwork. She observes that they continue to receive government checks
amounting to $550 to $700 per month along with Medicare. In addition, the
monks reside rent free in nicely furnished apartments. "They pay no
utilities, have free access to the Internet on computers provided for
them,
along with fax machines, free cell and home phones and cable TV."
They also receive a monthly payment from their order, along with
contributions and dues from their American followers. Some devotees
eagerly
carry out chores for the monks, including grocery shopping and cleaning
their apartments and toilets. These same holy men, Lewis remarks, "have no
problem criticizing Americans for their 'obsession with material
things.'"64
To welcome the end of the old feudal theocracy in Tibet is not to
applaud everything about Chinese rule in that country. This point is
seldom
understood by today's Shangri-La believers in the West. The converse is
also
true: To denounce the Chinese occupation does not mean we have to
romanticize the former feudal régime. Tibetans deserve to be perceived as
actual people, not perfected spiritualists or innocent political symbols.
"To idealize them," notes Ma Jian, a dissident Chinese traveler to Tibet
(now living in Britain), "is to deny them their humanity."65
One common complaint among Buddhist followers in the West is that
Tibet's religious culture is being undermined by the Chinese occupation.
To
some extent this seems to be the case. Many of the monasteries are closed,
and much of the theocracy seems to have passed into history. Whether
Chinese
rule has brought betterment or disaster is not the central issue here. The
question is what kind of country was old Tibet. What I am disputing is the
supposedly pristine spiritual nature of that pre-invasion culture. We can
advocate religious freedom and independence for a new Tibet without having
to embrace the mythology about old Tibet. Tibetan feudalism was cloaked in
Buddhism, but the two are not to be equated. In reality, old Tibet was not
a
Paradise Lost. It was a retrograde repressive theocracy of extreme
privilege
and poverty, a long way from Shangri-La.
Finally, let it be said that if Tibet's future is to be positioned
somewhere within China's emerging free-market paradise, then this does not
bode well for the Tibetans. China boasts a dazzling 8 percent economic
growth rate and is emerging as one of the world's greatest industrial
powers. But with economic growth has come an ever deepening gulf between
rich and poor. Most Chinese live close to the poverty level or well under
it, while a small group of newly brooded capitalists profit hugely in
collusion with shady officials. Regional bureaucrats milk the country dry,
extorting graft from the populace and looting local treasuries. Land
grabbing in cities and countryside by avaricious developers and corrupt
officials at the expense of the populace are almost everyday occurrences.
Tens of thousands of grassroot protests and disturbances have erupted
across
the country, usually to be met with unforgiving police force. Corruption
is
so prevalent, reaching into so many places, that even the normally
complacent national leader****p was forced to take notice and began moving
against it in late 2006.
Workers in China who try to organize labor unions in the cor****ate
dominated "business zones" risk losing their jobs or getting beaten and
imprisoned. Millions of business zone workers toil twelve-hour days at
subsistence wages. With the health care system now being privatized, free
or
affordable medical treatment is no longer available for millions. Men have
tramped into the cities in search of work, leaving an increasingly
impoverished countryside populated by women, children, and the elderly.
The
suicide rate has increased dramatically, especially among women.66
China's natural environment is sadly polluted. Most of its fabled
rivers and many lakes are dead, producing massive fish die-offs from the
billions of tons of industrial emissions and untreated human waste dumped
into them. Toxic effluents, including pesticides and herbicides, seep into
ground water or directly into irrigation canals. Cancer rates in villages
situated along waterways have skyrocketed a thousand-fold. Hundreds of
millions of urban residents breathe air rated as dangerously unhealthy,
contaminated by industrial growth and the recent addition of millions of
automobiles. An estimated 400,000 die prematurely every year from air
pollution. Government environmental agencies have no enforcement power to
stop polluters, and generally the government ignores or denies such
problems, concentrating instead on industrial growth.67
China's own scientific establishment re****ts that unless greenhouse
gases are curbed, the nation will face massive crop failures along with
catastrophic food and water shortages in the years ahead. In 2006-2007
severe drought was already afflicting southwest China.68
If China is the great success story of speedy free market
development,
and is to be the model and inspiration for Tibet's future, then old feudal
Tibet indeed may start looking a lot better than it actually was.
Notes:
1.. Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God, (University of
California Press, 2000), 6, 112-113, 157.
2.. Kyong-Hwa Seok, "Korean Monk Gangs Battle for Temple Turf,"
San
Francisco Examiner, 3 December 1998.
3.. Los Angeles Times, February 25, 2006.
4.. Dalai Lama quoted in Donald Lopez Jr., Prisoners of
Shangri-La:
Tibetan Buddhism and the West (Chicago and London: Chicago University
Press,
1998), 205.
5.. Erik D. Curren, Buddha's Not Smiling: Uncovering Corruption at
the Heart of Tibetan Buddhism Today (Alaya Press 2005), 41.
6.. Stuart Gelder and Roma Gelder, The Timely Rain: Travels in New
Tibet (Monthly Review Press, 1964), 119, 123; and Melvyn C. Goldstein, The
Snow Lion and the Dragon: China, Tibet, and the Dalai Lama (University of
California Press, 1995), 6-16.
7.. Curren, Buddha's Not Smiling, 50.
8.. Stephen Bachelor, "Letting Daylight into Magic: The Life and
Times of Dorje Shugden," Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, 7, Spring 1998.
Bachelor discusses the sectarian fanaticism and doctrinal clashes that ill
fit the Western ****trait of Buddhism as a non-dogmatic and tolerant
tradition.
9.. Dhoring Tenzin Paljor, Autobiography, cited in Curren,
Buddha's
Not Smiling, 8.
10.. Pradyumna P. Karan, The Changing Face of Tibet: The Impact of
Chinese Communist Ideology on the Landscape (Lexington, Kentucky:
University
Press of Kentucky, 1976), 64.
11.. See Gary Wilson's re****t in Worker's World, 6 February 1997.
12.. Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 62 and 174.
13.. As skeptically noted by Lopez, Prisoners of Shangri-La, 9.
14.. Melvyn Goldstein, William Siebenschuh, and Tashì-Tsering, The
Struggle for Modern Tibet: The Autobiography of Tashì-Tsering (Armonk,
N.Y.:
M.E. Sharpe, 1997).
15.. Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 110.
16.. Melvyn C. Goldstein, A History of Modern Tibet 1913-1951
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 5 and passim.
17.. Anna Louise Strong, Tibetan Interviews (Peking: New World
Press, 1959), 15, 19-21, 24.
18.. Quoted in Strong, Tibetan Interviews, 25.
19.. Strong, Tibetan Interviews, 31.
20.. Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 175-176; and Strong,
Tibetan Interviews, 25-26.
21.. Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 113.
22.. A. Tom Grunfeld, The Making of Modern Tibet rev. ed. (Armonk,
N.Y. and London: 1996), 9 and 7-33 for a general discussion of feudal
Tibet;
see also Felix Greene, A Curtain of Ignorance (Garden City, N.Y.:
Doubleday,
1961), 241-249; Goldstein, A History of Modern Tibet, 3-5; and Lopez,
Prisoners of Shangri-La, passim.
23.. Strong, Tibetan Interviews, 91-96.
24.. Waddell, Landon, O'Connor, and Chapman are quoted in Gelder
and
Gelder, The Timely Rain, 123-125.
25.. Goldstein, The Snow Lion and the Dragon, 52.
26.. Heinrich Harrer, Return to Tibet (New York: Schocken, 1985),
29.
27.. See Kenneth Conboy and James Morrison, The CIA's Secret War
in
Tibet (Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas Press, 2002); and William
Leary, "Secret Mission to Tibet," Air & Space, December 1997/January 1998.
28.. On the CIA's links to the Dalai Lama and his family and
entourage, see Loren Coleman, Tom Slick and the Search for the Yeti
(London:
Faber and Faber, 1989).
29.. Leary, "Secret Mission to Tibet."
30.. Hugh Deane, "The Cold War in Tibet," CovertAction Quarterly
(Winter 1987).
31.. George Ginsburg and Michael Mathos Communist China and Tibet
(1964), quoted in Deane, "The Cold War in Tibet." Deane notes that author
Bina Roy reached a similar conclusion.
32.. See Greene, A Curtain of Ignorance, 248 and passim; and
Grunfeld, The Making of Modern Tibet, passim.
33.. Harrer, Return to Tibet, 54.
34.. Karan, The Changing Face of Tibet, 36-38, 41, 57-58; London
Times, 4 July 1966.
35.. Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 29 and 47-48.
36.. Tendzin Choegyal, "The Truth about Tibet," Imprimis
(publication of Hillsdale College, Michigan), April 1999.
37.. Karan, The Changing Face of Tibet, 52-53.
38.. Elaine Kurtenbach, Associate Press re****t, 12 February 1998.
39.. Goldstein, The Snow Lion and the Dragon, 47-48.
40.. Curren, Buddha's Not Smiling, 8.
41.. San Francisco Chonicle, 9 January 2007.
42.. Re****t by the International Committee of Lawyers for Tibet, A
Generation in Peril (Berkeley Calif.: 2001), passim.
43.. International Committee of Lawyers for Tibet, A Generation in
Peril, 66-68, 98.
44.. im Mann, "CIA Gave Aid to Tibetan Exiles in '60s, Files
Show,"
Los Angeles Times, 15 September 1998; and New York Times, 1 October, 1998.
45.. News & Observer, 6 September 1995, cited in Lopez, Prisoners
of
Shangri-La, 3.
46.. Heather Cottin, "George Soros, Imperial Wizard," CovertAction
Quarterly no. 74 (Fall 2002).
47.. Goldstein, The Snow Lion and the Dragon, 51.
48.. Tendzin Choegyal, "The Truth about Tibet."
49.. The Dalai Lama in Marianne Dresser (ed.), Beyond Dogma:
Dialogues and Discourses (Berkeley, Calif.: North Atlantic Books, 1996)
50.. These comments are from a book of the Dalai Lama's writings
quoted in Nikolai Thyssen, "Oceaner af onkel Tom," Dagbladet Information,
29
December 2003, (translated for me by Julius Wilm). Thyssen's review (in
Danish) can be found at
http://www.information.dk/Indgang/VisArkiv.dna?pArtNo=20031229154141.txt.
51.. "A Global Call for Human Rights in the Workplace," New York
Times, 6 December 2005.
52.. San Francisco Chronicle, 14 January 2007.
53.. San Francisco Chronicle, 5 November 2005.
54.. Times of India 13 October 2000; Samantha Conti's re****t,
Reuter, 17 June 1994; Amitabh Pal, "The Dalai Lama Interview,"
Progressive,
January 2006.
55.. The Gelders draw this comparison, The Timely Rain, 64.
56.. Michael Parenti, The Culture Struggle (Seven Stories, 2006).
57.. John Pomfret, "Tibet Caught in China's Web," Wa****ngton
Post,
23 July 1999.
58.. Curren, Buddha's Not Smiling, 3.
59.. Curren, Buddha's Not Smiling, 13 and 138.
60.. Curren, Buddha's Not Smiling, 21.
61.. Curren, Buddha's Not Smiling, passim. For books that are
favorable toward the Karmapa appointed by the Dalai Lama's faction, see
Lea
Terhune, Karmapa of Tibet: The Politics of Reincarnation (Wisdom
Publications, 2004); Gaby Naher, Wrestling the Dragon (Rider 2004); Mick
Brown, The Dance of 17 Lives (Bloomsbury 2004).
62.. Erik Curren, "Not So Easy to Say Who is Karmapa,"
correspondence, 22 August 2005,
www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id=22.1577,0,0,1,0.
63.. Kim Lewis, correspondence to me, 15 July 2004.
64.. Kim Lewis, correspondence to me, 16 July 2004.
65.. Ma Jian, Stick Out Your Tongue (Farrar, Straus & Giroux,
2006).
66.. See the PBS do***entary, China from the Inside, January 2007,
KQED.PBS.org/kqed/chinanside.
67.. San Francisco Chronicle, 9 January 2007.
68.. "China: Global Warming to Cause Food Shortages," People's
Weekly World, 13 January 2007
http://www.michaelparenti.org/Tibet.html
--
Pucker your lips for the Apocalypse!
Johnny Asia, Guitarist from the Future
http://music.download.com/johnnyasia
--
Pucker your lips for the Apocalypse!
Johnny Asia, Guitarist from the Future
http://music.download.com/johnnyasia
--
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