Tibet Information Office Australia

In this file photo His Holiness the Dalai Lama (L) welcomes US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi (R) as she arrives at his Palace Temple in Dharamsala on 21 March 2008/AFP

Dharamshala: US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a bipartisan congressional delegation took up the issue of human rights situation in Tibet during their meetings with three top leaders of the Chinese government: President Hu Jintao, Premier Wen Jiabao, and Wu Bangguo, the Chairman of the National People’s Congress.

“Our delegation also emphasized the bipartisan concern in Congress on China’s poor record on human rights in China and Tibet,” Pelosi said after meeting with the Chinese leadership in Beijing on Thursday.

“Republicans and Democrats are united in our concern about human rights abuses in China and Tibet,” said Congressman James Sensenbrenner, Republican of Wisconsin.

Earlier in the day, the congressional delegation participated in a two-hour working session with the Chinese National People’s Congress’ Environmental Protection and Resources Conservation Committee. Read the rest »

Thuten Kesang of New Zealand received “Unsung Heroes of Compassion Award” on 26 April 2009 in California, USA, the award which has been presented to 49 individuals from 13 countries by His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

Unsung Heroes of Compassion - Thuten Kesang

Mr. Thuten Kesang is the first Tibetan to arrive and settled in New Zealand in 1967. Since then he is passionate about helping his fellow Tibetan refugees. For him, in fact, it is a moral imperative. Equally important, however, is that aiding others is his way of returning a stranger’s long-ago kindness.

Eager to see him well educated, Thuten’s parents sent him at age of eleven from his home in Lhasa Tibet, to board at Dr Graham’s Homes, a school in Kalimpong, India. One of India’s finest schools, Dr. Graham’s Homes was established in 1900 to educate, Anglo-Indian children, and Thuten was one of the few Tibetan children enrolled. Four years later, however, he learned that his parents had been arrested in the 1959 Chinese occupation of Tibet and that he had become a refugee. With no money to pay tuition and no family to return home to, Thuten’s prospect looked dire. Then, one day, he met Robert Crow, a Scottish board member of Dr. Graham’s Homes who lived in India and offered to pay Thuten’s tuition and boarding fees. “That precise moment,” Thuten says, “I decided that I would do my best to repay his kindness by helping others in need when I was in a position to do so.” Read the rest »

Unsung Hero of Compassion - Dorjee Dadul

On 26 April in California His Holiness the Dalai Lama presented 49 individuals from 13 countries with an “Unsung Hero of Compassion” award. Dorjee Dadul, a long-term resident of Sydney’s Northern Beaches, was among the recipients.

Dorjee has been recognised twice by the Australian Government for his contribution to the Sydney’s Tibetan community and to the broader Australian community: In 2007 he was named Warringah Council’s Citizen of the Year. Also that year he received the Most Commended Volunteer Award from the New South Wales Community Relations Commission.

“These individuals have been selected as representatives of the tens of thousands of people worldwide who quietly serve the disenfranchised and work to improve our communities through their personal efforts,” said Dick Grace, Chair of Wisdom in Action, who hosted the celebration. “We don’t see them or hear about them in the daily news, but they exemplify a humanism and heroism to which we must each aspire.”

Among other things, Dorjee has worked tirelessly both to preserve Tibetan culture within Australia’s exiled Tibetan community and to promote Tibetan culture to the wider Australian community. Dorjee teaches Tibetan language, culture and customs to young Tibetans as well as running Tibetan language classes for Australians.

The Unsung Hero of Compassion award was also presented to Thuten Kesang, President of the New Zealand Tibetan community. Thuten recently spent his Easter break in Dee Why on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, at the fourth annual gathering of Tibetans from Australia and New Zealand.

The other recipients, 25 women and 24 men, ranged in age from 12 to 77 and came from a variety of ethnicities, cultures and religious backgrounds.

Open Forum

Open Forum is a platform for those interested in the issue of Tibet to air their views. It is a discussion forum that we hope will make our readers come to a more informed understanding of Tibet and the Tibetan people. Views expressed in Open Forum do not reflect those of the Central Tibetan Administration.

[The Boston Globe]

5 May 2009

IN A MEETING at the Charles Hotel in Cambridge last week, the Dalai Lama and more than 100 scholars from China showed how direct discussion can overcome irrational prejudices and official cant. Chinese academics needed a chance to encounter Tibet’s spiritual leader without government interference.

The organizer of the event, Lobsang Sangay, a senior fellow at Harvard Law School, set out the simplest of ground rules: civil discourse and no photographs taken until after the discussion. Moderator Tu Weiming, professor of Chinese history and philosophy and Confucian studies at Harvard, urged all sides to allow a genuine exchange of ideas, celebrate their differences, and refrain from trying to convert others.

But the participants hardly needed coaching. The Chinese scholars were respectful and open-minded, often acknowledging false impressions they had originally held about Tibetans, the history of Tibetan-Chinese relations, and the role of the Dalai Lama. For his part, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists seemed to surprise many of the younger Chinese academics as he described the three- and four-hour audiences he had with Chairman Mao Zedong in Beijing more than a half century ago.

Some in the audience were amused when the Dalai Lama said he had once been attracted to the moral principles of socialism, particularly its ideal of equal distribution, and had even asked to join the Chinese Communist Party. There were no challenges and no raised eyebrows, however, when he said that today there is a ruling Communist Party in China without communist ideology.

Free from official mediation, the academics heard the Dalai Lama say that he welcomes the material progress China had brought Tibet – but also that his people were suffering nonetheless because they lacked freedom of expression, religious freedom, and freedom from fear.

Drawing a distinction between autonomy for Tibet and political independence, he explained the request his envoys made to Chinese officials last summer, shortly after the violent clashes on the Tibetan plateau in March 2008. He said they had asked only for forms of autonomy consistent with those promised to national minorities in China’s constitution – especially the right to preserve Tibetan language, culture, and religion. Yet Chinese officials falsely accused him of demanding independence for Tibet, calling him a liar and a demon.

The Chinese scholars who crowded around him afterward, snapping photos of themselves with the Dalai Lama, now know he is nothing like the figure depicted in Beijing’s propaganda.

–The above piece is reproduced from the online edition of The Boston Globe on 5 May 2009.

Open Forum

Open Forum is a platform for those interested in the issue of Tibet to air their views. It is a discussion forum that we hope will make our readers come to a more informed understanding of Tibet and the Tibetan people. Views expressed in Open Forum do not reflect those of the Central Tibetan Administration.

By Li Datong*

Beijing’s official doctrine and the political system built around it conspire to freeze progress on the Tibet issue, says Li Datong.

[openDemocracy.net]

(This article was first published on 16 April 2009)

China’s Tibet has been given a new holiday to mark the passing of a half-century since the events it commemorates: Serfs’ Emancipation Day. Several groups of senior politicians, including Hu Jintao – general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party’s central committee – have attended an exhibition marking these fifty years of democratic reform in Tibet. The official media have decried the evils of”serfdom” in historical Tibet, while trumpeting the accomplishments of today. China’s foreign minister and prime minister have presented criticisms of the Dalai Lama’s “independence stance” (one he has long since renounced) to reporters both foreign and domestic. Read the rest…