China Allows Some Tibetans to Venerate Dalai Lama, RFA Says

[WisdomBeing]

What interesting news! This is certainly a significant change in China's stance towards the Dalai Lama, who has been persona non grata in China ever since the 1950s. The Dalai Lama had resigned from being the political head of Tibet since 2011 but only now, he is being accepted as just the spiritual head? I remember not so long ago that even having a photo of the Dalai Lama would earn Tibetans harsh penalties so now the Chinese are saying that it would be permitted. I wonder what changed. Perhaps the Dalai Lama is getting on in age and becoming less of a threat to China? Perhaps the recent announcement by the CTA that they are not going to ask for democracy and are willing to work under Chinese rule has softened the Chinese authorities' stance. We shall see. Time shall untie this knot, not i.

China Allows Some Tibetans to Venerate Dalai Lama, RFA Says
By Bloomberg News - Jun 27, 2013 3:42 PM GMT+0800

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-27/china-allows-tibetans-to-openly-venerate-dalai-lama-rfa-reports.html

The Chinese government loosened restrictions that kept Tibetan monks in two provinces from openly revering the Dalai Lama, the exiled Buddhist spiritual leader, Radio Free Asia reported.

Authorities in Sichuan province announced people can display pictures of the Dalai Lama and ordered officials not to criticize him, the U.S.-funded RFA reported, citing a resident in Sichuan’s Ganzi prefecture it didn’t identify. In the past, monks had to keep pictures of the Dalai Lama hidden.

China took control of Tibet in 1951 and has vilified the Dalai Lama, 77, as a separatist since he fled to India in 1959, where he leads a government in exile. Chinese officials regularly levy diplomatic sanctions on countries that host him for visits, including the U.K., and today Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said the Dalai Lama has undermined “social stability and national unity.”

RFA cited a resident of Qinghai province as saying officials now aren’t under orders to criticize the Dalai Lama. Monks may venerate the Dalai Lama as a spiritual leader, not as a political leader, RFA reported.

Tibet policy has only become more aggressive since former President Hu Jintao was party secretary of Tibet in the late 1980s, said Robbie Barnett, director of the Modern Tibet Studies Program at Columbia University in New York City. While banning photographs of the Dalai Lama was never a national-level policy outside of Tibet, any hint of reversing a policy of attacking him would be significant, he said.

‘Very Volatile’

“Denigrating the Dalai Lama, insulting him, attacking him, basing policy on accusations against him, that’s a national-level propaganda theme,” he said. “So reversing that is much more significant than the question of photographs.”
The RFA report may not reflect conditions “in all the regions in Tibet or all the regions in Qinghai or Sichuan,” Tashi Phuntsok, secretary for information and international relations of the Tibetan exiled administration, said by phone from the Indian town of Dharamshala where it’s based.

Self-immolation protests by Tibetans mean the “situation in Qinghai or the Tibet Autonomous Region is very severe and very volatile,” Phuntsok said. “It may be possible that in certain areas the Chinese leadership is trying to please people by giving certain small concessions. But the basic situation in Tibet remains very repressive, very suppressive and without human rights.”

Tibetan Nun

A Tibetan nun died this month after setting herself on fire near a monastery in eastern Tibet, the Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet said June 20. There have been 120 self-immolations by Tibetans in China since February 27, 2009, the group said in a statement.

“The Chinese government’s position on the Dalai Lama is very clear,” Hua said at a briefing today. “The Dalai Lama is not a purely religious person but he has long been engaged in anti-China separatist activities under the pretext of religion.”

Tibetans’ reverence for the Dalai Lama hasn’t diminished even as their living standards under Chinese control have improved, an indication that the government should reassess its approach toward the issue, Jin Wei, professor at the Central Party School in Beijing, said in an interview with Hong Kong magazine Asia Weekly published June 9.
She said talks between the Dalai Lama’s representatives and the government are the best way to solve the Tibet problem.

Riots between ethnic Tibetans and Chinese security forces in 2008 killed more than 200 protesters, according to the exiled government. The U.S. and U.K. recognize China’s rule over the area, though the U.S. State Department has called on Chinese leaders to relax controls on Tibetan Buddhist religious practices.

To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Michael Forsythe in Beijing at [email protected]; Henry Sanderson in Beijing at [email protected]
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Rosalind Mathieson at [email protected]

[Ensapa]

What happens here will depend entirely on how the CTA acts and reacts, and how can and will they restrain TYC from sabotaging the Tibetan cause again. The main idea should not be independence in the first place because that is not viable as the Dalai Lama has made it very clear, and secondly, independence is not necessary in order to take care of the welfare of the Tibetans if they were really serious in looking after the Tibetans. To attain independence only benefits the ministers and nothing more. After all they have failed to prove that they are capable of administering a government effectively with Dharamsala.

[Ensapa]

Opps. Looks like China is denying it.

China strongly denies lifting ban on the Dalai Lama’s portrait in Tibet
Phayul[Friday, June 28, 2013 23:49]

DHARAMSHALA, June 28: The Chinese government has strongly denied reports of any relaxation in their decades old policy in Tibet of a blanket ban on the display of portraits of exiled Tibetan spiritual leader His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

In a statement to the BBC on Friday, the Chinese state bureau for religious affairs said there had been “no policy change.”

The government maintained that China's policy towards the Dalai Lama, considered by Beijing a “splittist,” was "consistent and clear".

"If the Dalai Lama wants to improve his relationship with the Central Government, he must really give up his stance in favour of 'Tibetan Independence' or independence in any disguised forms," the BBC cited the state bureau as saying.

China’s abject denial comes after reports of isolated cases of relaxation in the portrait-ban, as “experimental” measures, came out of Tibet over the past few days.

The London based Free Tibet on Thursday reported that monks at the Gaden monastery, one of Tibet’s oldest and largest institutions of learning, in Tibet’s capital Lhasa have been informed that they can now display picture of the Tibetan spiritual leader, who was forced to flee into exile in 1959.

Reports on similar “experimental” changes in the policy have also come out of two isolated regions in eastern Tibet.

However, Free Tibet added that it would be unwise to speculate on the implications regarding China’s policies in the restive region as the group hasn’t been able to confirm reports on whether the lift on the ban is an isolated case and extends beyond the Gaden monastery.

The BBC noted that they have been unable to confirm this news, despite repeated phone calls to monasteries in Lhasa and in other regions of eastern Tibet.

“Several monks admitted they had heard of possible changes to the government's long-standing policy, but said they had not witnessed any relaxation in policy themselves,” BBC’s China correspondent Celia Hatton reported.

“Portraits of the Tibetan spiritual leader are still banned, the monks explained. Only officially sanctioned images of the Buddha are permitted to be displayed,” Hatton cited an unnamed monk in Lhasa as saying.

Since 2009, as many as 119 Tibetans living under China’s rule have set themselves on fire demanding freedom and the return of the Dalai Lama from exile.

Scores of Tibetans have been arrested and disappeared for keeping portraits of the Dalai Lama in their phones or at homes, and singing songs or writing about the Tibetan spiritual leader who relinquished all his political authorities to the elected Tibetan leadership in 2011.
For more than three decades now, the Dalai Lama has been calling for autonomy for his people as guaranteed by the constitution of the People’s Republic of China.

Just last month, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Tibet is “an inalienable part of China” and called the Tibetan Nobel peace laureate “a political exile who has long been engaged in anti-China separatist activities in the name of religion.”

[vajratruth]

Opps. Looks like China is denying it.

China strongly denies lifting ban on the Dalai Lama’s portrait in Tibet
Phayul[Friday, June 28, 2013 23:49]

DHARAMSHALA, June 28: The Chinese government has strongly denied reports of any relaxation in their decades old policy in Tibet of a blanket ban on the display of portraits of exiled Tibetan spiritual leader His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

In a statement to the BBC on Friday, the Chinese state bureau for religious affairs said there had been “no policy change.”

The government maintained that China's policy towards the Dalai Lama, considered by Beijing a “splittist,” was "consistent and clear".

I would be extremely surprised if indeed China did lift the ban on the Dalai Lama's portrait. It's quite simple - although the Dalai Lama seem to have divested himself of all secular and political involvement, at least on the face of it, His Holiness still wields tremendous power as the spiritual head of the Tibetans. And for a nation of people with spirituality at their core, the spiritual leader becomes all powerful and can easily move the people by manipulating their belief system. To the Chinese, the Dalai Lama still can create serious problems for Communist Government by engineering political activities and outcomes via the use of the people's religion. And it should come as no surprise that the China developed this view from witnessing how the Tibetan people were steered in a particular way, their voice subdued if you like, via a religious ban - the ban on Dorje Shugden. It was not by the use of his political power that the Dalai Lama affected the ban, but by his influence on the people's spirituality and yet, that was sufficient to turn a community against itself.

Enough time has elapsed for China as well as the general public to realize that the ban on Shugden was politically motivated all along, and was in fact a move by the Tibetan leaders to stymie what may have been growing dissension against the wishes of the Tibetan authorities. However, the ban still persists today/ And even though the Dalai Lama has already stepped down as absolute head of the Tibetan people, a supposed democratic CTA has yet to remove the ban. And there can only be one reason for this i.e. there is still a fear in going against the Dalai Lama. Translated, the Dalai Lama still holds significant power. Therefore, why would His Holiness's resignation as political head be of any bearing to the opinion of the Chinese people, so long as the ban is in force and not removed by the supposedly democratic CTA? In addition, and for all intents and purposes, His Holiness is still going about as if there has not been any change to the leadership.

Recently we saw another example of how much influence the Dalai Lama still holds over the people and indeed the Kashag when His Holiness was questioned by a student about Chithue Karma Choepel's decision not to continue his support of the Dalai Lama's preferred political strategy, to which the Dalai Lama's response indicated clearly that non-compliance with the Dalai Lama is not welcomed. http://www.dorjeshugden.com/all-articles/features/no-democracy-when-snow-lions-become-lambs/

Seeing all these, of course there is no change in the Chinese policy and view of the Dalai Lama as a splittist. The ban inflicted considerable harm on the Tibetan cause and on the CTA's credibility, not to mention the Dalai Lama's own. And it still does and this is what the Tibetan people must realize and work towards removing.

[Ensapa]

I would be extremely surprised if indeed China did lift the ban on the Dalai Lama's portrait. It's quite simple - although the Dalai Lama seem to have divested himself of all secular and political involvement, at least on the face of it, His Holiness still wields tremendous power as the spiritual head of the Tibetans. And for a nation of people with spirituality at their core, the spiritual leader becomes all powerful and can easily move the people by manipulating their belief system. To the Chinese, the Dalai Lama still can create serious problems for Communist Government by engineering political activities and outcomes via the use of the people's religion. And it should come as no surprise that the China developed this view from witnessing how the Tibetan people were steered in a particular way, their voice subdued if you like, via a religious ban - the ban on Dorje Shugden. It was not by the use of his political power that the Dalai Lama affected the ban, but by his influence on the people's spirituality and yet, that was sufficient to turn a community against itself.

Enough time has elapsed for China as well as the general public to realize that the ban on Shugden was politically motivated all along, and was in fact a move by the Tibetan leaders to stymie what may have been growing dissension against the wishes of the Tibetan authorities. However, the ban still persists today/ And even though the Dalai Lama has already stepped down as absolute head of the Tibetan people, a supposed democratic CTA has yet to remove the ban. And there can only be one reason for this i.e. there is still a fear in going against the Dalai Lama. Translated, the Dalai Lama still holds significant power. Therefore, why would His Holiness's resignation as political head be of any bearing to the opinion of the Chinese people, so long as the ban is in force and not removed by the supposedly democratic CTA? In addition, and for all intents and purposes, His Holiness is still going about as if there has not been any change to the leadership.

Recently we saw another example of how much influence the Dalai Lama still holds over the people and indeed the Kashag when His Holiness was questioned by a student about Chithue Karma Choepel's decision not to continue his support of the Dalai Lama's preferred political strategy, to which the Dalai Lama's response indicated clearly that non-compliance with the Dalai Lama is not welcomed. http://www.dorjeshugden.com/all-articles/features/no-democracy-when-snow-lions-become-lambs/

Seeing all these, of course there is no change in the Chinese policy and view of the Dalai Lama as a splittist. The ban inflicted considerable harm on the Tibetan cause and on the CTA's credibility, not to mention the Dalai Lama's own. And it still does and this is what the Tibetan people must realize and work towards removing.

But, there is a million dollar question here that might change things: If the Dalai Lama insists on autonomy instead of independence, will the Chinese soften their stance on him and stop labelling him as a splittist, and realize that it is not the Dalai Lama who is hypocritical, but his subjects instead. China allowing Gaden to have Dalai Lama's picture in the monastery came after the link that you have posted, so one could hypo ethically deduce that China is relaxing their stance on the Dalai Lama after they realize that he is insisting on autonomy and not independence. Karma Choepel is merely reiterating the stance and belief of what China thinks of the middle way policy: that it is a hidden call for independence and the Dalai Lama denies it.

[kris]

Tibet is already an autonomous region. Whether HH Dalai Lama "agrees" to autonomous or not, it has no special meaning. China has gone into such a power house that they can almost do anything they like. If they don't like what HH Dalai Lama did, they can "make" another HH Dalai Lama, just like the Panchen Lama issue.

I don't think China will "back down" as Tibet has no bargaining power.

What HH Dalai Lama worries now, is that when He pass into clear light, and China will "make" another HH Dalai Lama. This can be indeed a very sticky situation...

[Ensapa]

Tibet is already an autonomous region. Whether HH Dalai Lama "agrees" to autonomous or not, it has no special meaning. China has gone into such a power house that they can almost do anything they like. If they don't like what HH Dalai Lama did, they can "make" another HH Dalai Lama, just like the Panchen Lama issue.

I don't think China will "back down" as Tibet has no bargaining power.

What HH Dalai Lama worries now, is that when He pass into clear light, and China will "make" another HH Dalai Lama. This can be indeed a very sticky situation...

With all the dud tulkus they are installing to counter the tulkus that support Dorje Shugden, as we have seen with the Karmapa, Kundeling Rinpoche and the most recent Domo Geshe Rinpoche, the CTA is just setting the stage for China to install their own Dalai Lama. They created the causes karmically for that to happen! Or perhaps, it is part of the Dalai Lama's plan to force the Tibetans to be more independent instead of depending on him for everything, in the wrong way. If I was the CTA, i would have opposed the installation of the dud tulkus because it would only mean disaster in the near future.

[Tenzin Gyatso]

It's not true unfortunately for the millions of Tibetans inside Tibet who take HHDL as a true refuge. It was just a rumor. In Dharamsala, everyone has been saying it's just a false rumor. Let's hope insecure and red China will come to some realization soon and stop all their crimes against Tibet.

 

[Ensapa]

It's not true unfortunately for the millions of Tibetans inside Tibet who take HHDL as a true refuge. It was just a rumor. In Dharamsala, everyone has been saying it's just a false rumor. Let's hope insecure and red China will come to some realization soon and stop all their crimes against Tibet.

 

Sadly, that will only happen if the CTA becomes matured and can really do what they are supposed to do as opposed to just sipping butter tea and eating their momos. There has to be development projects, reports of improvement and more positive reports from Dharamsala and them acting like actual ministers and making actual responsible statements and being responsible for a change, then perhaps, China will trust them a little more. But first, get rid of all the anti China propaganda that CTA is spreading to Dharamsala and their supporters. That would really help them gain a gold star with China