For the fifth year running, Freedom House has ranked Tibet the second least-free region in the world. And it’s no surprise at all!
The Paranoia
What is the common thread running through: one, two high profile trips to Tibet, and two, the 7th Tibet Work Forum held in Beijing? The answer – The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) increasing paranoia over maintaining “social stability” and viewing religion as a prime source of insecurity and threat to the “Motherland”. Towards that purpose, the CCP has augmented its control over the occupied territories of Tibet and sought to increase its intrusive surveillance network over Tibetans.
The two ‘high profile’ trips in question are the rare visits of China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi on August 16th and of Wang Yang, a member of the Politburo Standing Committee, from August 24th to August 26th. During the two-day Tibet Work Forum held in Beijing, Xi Jinping propagated building a “new modern socialist Tibet”. He also advocated that “national and ethnic unity” be developed, for Tibetan Buddhism should be guided in adapting to the socialist reality of Chinese society.
Under the cover of Covid-19
During this Covid–19 pandemic, Xi Jinping’s regime has come under intense scrutiny, especially over its handling of this worldwide pandemic and their curtailing of information over the spread of the virus and the international antagonism it has displayed over this issue. What received less attention are the alarming upgrades that the CCP conducted for its existing surveillance network, particularly in areas it deems as being “ethnic minority regions” such as Tibet and East Turkistan (Xinjiang). Be it the Alipay Health Code that has been deployed in multiple cities, which tracks people according to their health status, or the facial recognition technology developed by companies such as Megvii and Sense Time or the alarming number of CCTV cameras installed (numbering almost 350 million), all these technological advances serve the State’s purposes, beyond the professed goal of curbing the spread of the virus.
Attempt to bring Tibetan Buddhism under Government power
Tibet has borne the brunt of such measures ever since its forceful occupation, more than six decades ago. This event saw the emergence of experiences that significantly worsened since it saw the dawning of large scale anti-CCP protests, in the region, which extended to the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the subsequent self-immolations by Tibetans (156 and counting) from 2009 onwards. The recent statements, as mentioned earlier by China’s top brass, indicate that the Tibetans’ Buddhist faith continues to be viewed as a major threat, one that needs to be Sinicised & institutionalized under government control. The most significant affront to the sentiments of Tibetans, all over the world, remains the passing of the State Religious Office Bureau Order No. 5, in 2007, that mandates that all reincarnations be subjected to state approval. It is an Act bound to have immense consequences on the future of Tibetan Buddhism and the spiritual leadership of the Dalai Lama. It’s an issue that China seeks to usurp just as it attempted to do with the State kidnapping of the 6-year-old Panchen Lama, in1995, one of the highest religious figures in Tibetan Buddhism.
According to official statistics, as of 2014, there were 3,600 active Tibetan Buddhist monasteries or temples and 1,48,000 Tibetan Buddhist monks and nuns throughout Tibet and China, illustrating the particularly important position that religious institutions hold in Tibetan communities. Of these, 1,787 religious sites and over 46,000 monks and nuns are reportedly located within the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR). It is this demographic and set of institutions that the CCP seeks to place under its control. The year 2020 has seen increasing surveillance of religious sites in Tibet as well as ‘education camps’ for monks and nuns. Experts and observers have noted that religious centres are seen as potential sources of dissent against the CCP and efforts have been made to preemptively deter them from happening.
Surveillance and control
The surveillance, and thereby control, over religion extends beyond the confines of monasteries. Tibetans observing the holy Buddhist month of Saga Dawa, in May, have been notified of tight restrictions on their religious activities. Saga Dawa occurs on the full moon, the 15th day of the fourth Tibetan lunar month, which is called “Saga Dawa” in Tibetan. The Saga Dawa Festival celebrates the birth, parinirvana (death) and enlightenment of Buddha. The residents of Lhasa have been placed under tight surveillance by both, the police as well as military personnel who regularly stop them and check their phones.
In fact, since 2012, there has been an increase in the number of religious festivals that are restricted by the authorities, including the celebration of the Dalai Lama’s birthday. Along with strict restrictions, there has been a tightening of information control, with local internet and network blackouts being reported in the Tibetan regions. A 2016 Human Rights Watch report, analyzing 479 cases of politically motivated detentions of Tibetans from 2013 to 2015, identified 71 individuals arrested for distributing images or information, a large number of which were related to protests against CCP’s intrusion into the Tibetans’ Buddhist faith.
The objective behind such oppressive measures, which has a long precedence in the CCP’s presence on the Tibetan plateau, since the early 1950s, has remained the Party’s control over a region that it deems as vital to the nation state project of the People’s Republic of China and also a volatile source of insecurity. For the fifth year running Freedom House has ranked Tibet, the second least-free region in the world. And it’s no surprise at all! Since 2013, the government has been harvesting the DNA of people in Tibet and East Turkistan, a massive State-led project that continues to gain momentum in its efforts to trace the movements of every one of its citizenries.
Such intrusive actions of regimes reveal their dilemma of attempting to control and incorporate regions in its nation state narrative of a “United Chinese Motherland” and also its inability to deal with the reality that the people of these regions see – the CCP as a foreign colonial power. As a result, the faith of the Tibetans and Uighurs continues to be controlled, marginalized and assimilated by the CCP and General Secretary Xi Jinping.∎
Tenzing Wangdak is a former Research Fellow at the Tibet Policy Institute (TPI), a think tank of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) Dharamshala. He recently graduated with a Master’s degree in International Affairs, from New York University.
