What Is a Uighur "Refuge"?

To understand the context of this tweet from Human Rights Watch's Ken Roth:

'Kenneth Roth ‏@KenRoth 17h

Growing number of #Uighurs trying to flee to Southeast Asia speaks to severe repression in #China. Refuge needed. http://trib.al/RhN3crS

it might be useful to understand that the United States maintains a refugee channel through Nepal for Tibetans from inside the PRC's Tibetan Autonomous Region to make their way to Dharmsala.

The PRC is not happy with this arrangement, since most of the adults return to Tibet after their visit (the children stay in school in India).  

The benign explanation is the parents got a shot of religious exhaltation by obtaining an audience with the Dalai Lama and go home to go on with their quotidian occupations.  The explanation that the PRC government probably leans toward is that these Tibetans are receiving training and resources in Dharmsala to make the PRC occupation of Tibetan regions more difficult.

A similar arrangement for Uighurs is pretty unlikely since no neighboring countries seem inclined to attract the PRC's anger by granting refugee Uighurs an official haven.  There are unofficial havens across the Karakorum Pass, but they produce Uighur terrorists (or, if you prefer, Uighur freedom fighters;  the Uighurs at Guantanamo were considered combatants, but "non-enemy combatants", therefore worthy of release since their intention was to target the PRC, not the US) as well as Uighur activists.  As far as I know, the PRC has not yet exercised its regional power prerogative to raid these camps; but the existence of camps and militants inside Pakistan and Afghanistan are the subject of frequent representations to Islamabad and Kabul by the Chinese government and its security services.

In the incident referenced by Mr. Roth, a group of PRC Uighurs (men, women, & children) were being returned to the PRC from Vietnam after entering illegally (the term of art here is "refoulement", something that the Nepalese government is not supposed to do with Tibetan refugees); the men apparently seized some weapons from the Vietnamese border guard.  Two guards and five Uighur refugees were killed in the ensuing fracas.

This is unlikely to increase the enthusiasm of Vietnam for providing the refuge Roth is proposing.  Nor is the fact that the perpetrators of the knife attack that killed 27 in Kunming were apparently trying to exit the country thataway before they returned to Kunming for their rampage (the local PSB said they were trying to leave the country through Guangdong Province, which appears unlikely; they may have been trying to double back through Guangxi to Vietnam).

Given this context, and the continued acquiescence of the Obama administration to the "terrorist" designation for Uighur separatists (granted, apparently with some good reason, by President George W. Bush), it seems unlikely that any government will throw itself behind Mr. Roth's proposal.

Below is an excerpt from a piece I wrote on the Tibetan refugee arrangement for Asia Times in 2011 (the full piece, with links, can be read here):

China tests Nepal's loyalty over Tibet
By Peter Lee

Nepal is caught in a tug-of-war between India and China that threatens to tear it apart.

The big picture is dominated by the rivalry of Asia's two great rising powers; but how and why that rivalry plays out in Nepal has a lot to do with the Tibetan issue and China's anxiety over the potential for increasingly militant Tibetan emigres in Nepal and India to cause problems for Beijing.

A potentially exacerbating factor is the so-called "gentleman's agreement" that has informally governed the treatment of Tibetan refugees within Nepal for over a decade. 

...

Nepal is home to 20,000 Tibetan refugees, the second largest Tibetan exile community; it is also a key link between the Tibetan diaspora and the Chinese-controlled homeland.

Treatment of Tibetan refugees residing in and transiting through Nepal is the subject of a long-standing "gentleman's agreement" between the West, India, the UN, and Nepal.

The "gentleman's agreement" allowed for the de facto refugee status for Tibetans fleeing the TAR. Per the agreement, Tibetans who make it across the border are supposed to be escorted by Nepalese police to Kathmandu, turned over to the Department of Immigration, passed on to the Tibetan Refugee Reception Center in Kathmandu, processed by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR), and dispatched to India on a one-way transit visa.

Nepalese policemen were paid a modest stipend funded by the UNHCR office (largely through the financial support of the United States State Department) for this time-consuming and - when the Maoist insurgency was at its height - dangerous duty through the Nepalese Department of Immigration, the DofI.

As of 2008, after the embarrassment of mass Tibetan demonstrations in Nepal against its hosting of the Olympics, China significantly tightened its control of the border. It also became more demanding of Kathmandu, the Nepalese government became more compliant, and the Department of Immigration became less tolerant of refugees. Police interpreted the "border" more loosely, as a zone rather than a line, and began chivvying Tibetan refugees back to the TAR even if they were several days walk inside the borderline. This process, known as "refoulement" or forcible repatriation, is illegal treatment of acknowledged refugees; however, in the murky world of Nepalese immigration, the issue was not that clear-cut.

In addition to tightened controls on the China side of the border and concerted Chinese pressure on the Nepalese government, the Chinese government allegedly deployed financial incentives: it was rumored to pay bounties to Nepalese policemen to take refugees back to the border instead of to Kathmandu. [2]

The number of refugees appearing at the Kathmandu reception center has decreased significantly, from a peak of almost 3,000 per year in 2006 to 2008 (when the Maoist insurgency plunged border enforcement in disarray) to 770 in 2010. [3]

In this fraught situation, friction has arisen between the Nepalese government and the UNHCR. By 2010, the majority of Tibetan refugees reaching the reception center were coming in directly, not through the Department of Immigration. According to an article in Republica, a leading local English-language paper, the UNHCR had taken to paying bounties of around $350 to policemen bringing Tibetan refugees to them directly, instead of through the DofI, perhaps to counter an unstated government tilt toward refoulement and to compete with Chinese bounty payments. [4]

Presumably this did not sit well with the Nepalese government. From the perspective of the Department of Immigration, the UNHCR bounty was dividing the loyalties of the police and incentivizing a flow of Tibetan refugees that was diplomatically onerous to the Nepalese government, while depriving the DofI of a revenue stream.

In April 2010, the Department of Immigration in Kathmandu detained nine Tibetan refugees and gave each a fine of 2,600 Nepal rupees for illegal entry - less than $40 per head. If the fine could not be paid, the nine would be detained for 107 days. However, it does not appear that the Nepalese government was prepared to deport the refugees back to China after the fine was paid or the period of incarceration ended.

According to TibetInfoNet, a European advocacy and news site, the Chinese embassy took a close interest in the nine, indicating that China is engaged in enhanced, systematic intelligence gathering as part of its investment in intensifying and modernizing TAR border enforcement ... but found that cooperation from the Nepalese government still had its limits:

A representative of the Chinese embassy, who presented himself as a security officer but wore plain clothes, visited the immigration office three times. On his first visit, he spoke with the Tibetans in Chinese, trying to convince them to go back to Tibet and promising them immunity if they did so. However, the Tibetans refused to speak to him or simply ignored him. On his second visit, the Chinese officer asked the Nepali immigration officers to copy photos and the files on the detained Tibetans onto a USB memory stick that he had brought especially for this purpose. This was refused to him. The Tibetans had, in any case, provided fake names to the Nepali immigration, as is common practice. On the third visit, the Chinese officer appeared with a camera and the intention of taking photos of the detained Tibetans. Also in this case, permission was refused to him. [5]

As the story made it into the key issue appears to have been resentment of the Department of Immigration towards the UNHCR.

The UNHCR declined to pay the fine to spring the nine; instead of $360 for the DofI, an embarrassing wave of diplomatic pressure hit the Nepalese embassy in Washington:

The detention evoked so much diplomatic pressure from Western countries, mainly the US, that the Tibetans were released after five days in jail.

The pressure was so intense that officials at the Nepali embassy in Washington DC had to call up the Immigration Office in Nepal, asking it to release the arrested.

Following the release, Nepali immigration authorities have not detained any more Tibetans though there is a sustained flow of Tibetans to Kathmandu. The DofI these days quietly hands over Tibetans illegally coming to Nepal to UNHCR-Nepal without taking legal action as it used to in recent years. [6]

There is a barely suppressed note of indignation in the reporting that the Tibetans couldn't pay the $40 fine, even though they had reportedly each paid the equivalent of US$2,000 to get smuggled into Nepal for "the promise of a comfortable life".

This intense US commitment toward maintaining a channel to Dharamsala for less than 1,000 Tibetan transit refugees per year invites scrutiny of another alleged element of the "gentleman's agreement": the West's apparent acquiescence to the Nepalese government's suppression of "anti-China" political activity by members of the 20,000 or so "resident refugee" Tibetan exile community.

Tibetans who made it to Nepal before 1989 are given formal refugee status, distinguishing them from later arrivals, who fall under the "gentleman's agreement" as transit refugees.

Formal refugee status has yield resident Tibetans in Nepal little more than the opportunity to reside on land in the outskirts of Kathmandu, Pokhara and other towns in the Kathmandu Valley arranged through the Swiss Red Cross - land that they cannot own - and to occupy a socially marginalized position as non-citizens in Nepalese society.

Many Tibetans residing in Nepal fled Tibet as China took over in the 1950s. Some of the residents belong to families relocated from Mustang when the Central Intelligence Agency and the Dalai Lama shut down the secret war against the Chinese in Tibet in the 1970s. The community is organized by activist emigre groups like the Tibetan Youth Congress and Tibetan Women's Association; and it reliably turns out to condemn historical and current crimes of the Chinese government against the Tibetan people.

An in-depth analysis of the plight of Tibetan refugees in Nepal, prepared in 2002 by the Tibet Justice Center, contained this admission by the US Embassy in Kathmandu:

In the Embassy's view, the paramount objective of its policies in Nepal is to ensure that Tibetans can continue to escape persecution in China through Nepal, even if this sometimes means restricting the rights of Tibetan refugees who reside more permanently in Nepal. "... [I]t is more important morally to have the open border than to have every form of cultural freedom of expression." The tradeoff, in other words, is that Nepal will continue to permit the gentleman's agreement to operate provided the political expression of Tibetans within Nepal does not jeopardize Nepal's relationship with China. The gentleman's agreement therefore must remain low-profile. "Protesting in Nepal,"... is "counterproductive." [7]

In sum, the price of the "gentleman's agreement" appears to be a hands-off attitude toward Nepal's vigorous and frequently violent police action against this none-too-popular minority.

This policy has not been publicly reaffirmed in recent years; however, the low-key Western response to highly visible clashes between resident refugee Tibetans and the Nepalese authorities in anti-Chinese protests implies it is still in effect.

In the last month, Nepal has witnessed two incidents of forceful government suppression of resident Tibetan political activity in Nepal.

On March 10, perhaps 1,000 Nepalese Tibetans gathered at a monastery in Kathmandu to hear the broadcast of a speech by the Dalai Lama on the 52nd anniversary of the anti-Chinese uprising in Lhasa. According to a photo-essay by Dharamsala-based journalist Rebecca Novick, the Nepalese government turned out 1,000 riot police (their high-tech equipment allegedly "a gift of the Chinese Embassy") to quash any political manifestations, including display of the Tibetan flag. [8]

The Tibetan flag was defiantly displayed and the police duly moved in, triggering a series of angry confrontations. The police responded with South Asia's signal contribution to public order, the lathi (baton or stick) charge.

Despite the presence of numerous international observers and some spectacular video footage, Western governments apparently were uninterested in making an issue out of the plight of Nepal's resident Tibetan refugees. [9]

The Nepal government followed up on this incident with another apparently high-handed action against the resident Tibetan community on March 20: stopping Nepalese Tibetans from voting in the epochal elections for the new Kalon Tripa - prime minister - who will serve as the Dalai Lama's successor as the political leader of the Tibetan diaspora.

There are 84,000 registered Tibetan voters worldwide; about 10% of these voters reside in Nepal, and have been successively disenfranchised to some extent in the national primary (October 3, 2010) and local (February 12) elections, as well as the national elections held on March 20 by Nepalese government interference in balloting. [10]

In contrast to the rapid and massive application of pressure upon the Nepalese government in the virtually invisible matter of $360 in squeeze to free nine transit refugees, the wholesale and highly publicized thrashing of dozens of Tibetan activists in the streets of Kathmandu and, subsequently, the seizing of ballot boxes in the most important election in the history of the Tibetan diaspora, apparently at the behest of the People's Republic of China, excited little conspicuous official interest or comment from Tibet's traditional government defenders in Europe or the United States.

...

A WikiLeaks 2010 cable from the US Embassy in New Delhi provides the basis for some intriguing speculation as to the higher (transit refugee) and lower (resident refugee) priorities of the West's Tibet policy. Over half of the Tibetans arriving in Dharamsala cannot, by any interpretation, be classified as genuine refugees. Why? Because after they escape from Tibet ... they go back to Tibet:

XXXXXXXXXXXX [source blanked out in the cable] told PolOff on February 4 that an average of 2,500 to 3,500 refugees from Tibet typically arrive in Dharamsala each year, with most returning to Tibet after receiving an audience with the Dalai Lama. XXXXXXXXXXXX confirmed that from 1980 to November 2009 87,096 refugees were processed by the Dharamsala Reception Center (RC) and that 46,620 returned to Tibet after a short pilgrimage in India. Most of those who do stay in India are children who then attend schools run by Tibetan Children's Villages. [11]

That this reverse flow exists passes through Nepal is documented by the exasperated attempt of the Nepalese government to extract fines and fees from the ostensibly impoverished transit refugees they detain while passing through Nepal on their way back to Tibet, as the Tibet Justice Center's 2002 report notes:

Finally, it should be noted that Nepalese officials emphasized that, today, the government's largest concern about Tibetan refugees is not necessarily those in transit to India; it is rather the growing number of Tibetans who return to Tibet through Nepal after visiting India and thus reenter Nepal from India. The government apparently fears that these Tibetans will remain in Nepal. Director-General Mainali said that Tibetans caught reentering Nepal from India, while eventually returned to UNHCR custody, at times will be arrested, fined, and jailed.
...
In late 2000, the government detained 19 Tibetans for this reason, charging them with high fines and imprisoning them for inability to pay. On the basis of this "precedent," in August 2001, the government detained several other Tibetans seeking to return to Tibet after visiting India and assessed fines - totaling several thousand dollars, comprised of visa fees, late visa fees, and fines for each day of alleged illegal residence - on the presumption that these Tibetans had been resident in Nepal illegally for the duration of their visit to India. Because none of the Tibetans could afford to pay, the Nepalese Department of Immigration imprisoned them.

UNHCR is reportedly negotiating with the Ministry of Home Affairs to ensure that this practice does not continue and to develop a means for "Tibetans coming from India [to] safely cross Nepal on their way to Tibet in [the] future." [12]

This amazing exercise in religious tourism is, one would expect, rather suspicious to the Chinese government.

Tens of thousands of Tibetans spend thousands of dollars apiece to smugglers, risk their lives crossing the Himalayas, endure the hostile ministrations of the Nepalese police, make it to Dharamsala, receive the Dalai Lama's blessing - and then run the same gauntlet of danger, abuse, and expense in reverse to return to the well-advertised living hell of the Tibetan Autonomous Region.

Only the children stay, to be educated in Dharamsala.

The intense Chinese interest in assembling detailed dossiers on the nine detainees in April 2010 was perhaps related to a desire to be able to identify them as anti-China activists inside Tibet for possible extradition requests.

However, it does not appear likely that Nepal will agree to extradite Tibetan refugees back to the TAR in the near future. It would also not appear to be a priority to document who was leaving Tibet permanently to join the emigre community railing, for now impotently, against the PRC.

It appears most likely that Chinese security wanted to know exactly who the nine detainees were because many of them were expected to return to Tibet after a visit to Dharamsala.

Plans to return via Nepal - and the need to prevent unfriendly security services from acquiring their true identities - probably also explains why the detainees engage in the "common practice" of providing false identities to the Department of Immigration.

A 2009 profile of refugees in Dharamsala in the Tibet Post International, while describing the mistreatment suffered with the TAR and the hardships endured along the route, also touched on the motivations of some refugees, and why the people leaving Tibet are assumed to be probable returnees and a threat to Chinese rule:

Topjor's cot is next to 32-year-old Tenpa Dhargye, who arrived from Tibet three days ago. This is his second time in India, in 2000 he came for the first time and upon his return to Tibet was caught carrying political [sic], documents for which he received a four year and 10-month prison sentence. [13]

The author also interviewed four 15-year old boys who made the arduous trek out of Tibet, reporting "They all plan to return to Tibet at some point in the future".

The director of the reception center roughly confirmed the situation described in the cable disclosed by WikiLeaks, telling the Tibet Post, "Every year 300-400 refugees return to Tibet from India, but this too is dangerous, and the number changes based on the political situation inside Tibet and the security on the border area."

The gentleman's agreement provides a humanitarian service by providing a path to freedom for Tibetans who find it impossible to continue to live under Chinese rule, and for young people seeking an education and environment more in keeping with their Tibetan identity than what they can get in the TAR.

But a majority of the so-called "refugees" use the facility to pay brief visits to Dharamsala to obtain the blessing of the Dalai Lama before returning to the TAR; of these returnees, an unknown number are activists whose motives and mission for making the round trip are no doubt the subject of the most unfavorable speculation by Chinese security services.

In the most generous interpretation, the United States supports the Nepalese facility so that every year a few hundred Tibetans from the TAR are able to achieve direct contact with their revered leader.

In the worst case, China could envisage the Nepal conduit as a conveyor belt for activists transporting information, advice, and money between Dharamsala and Tibet - and delivering Tibetan youth for indoctrination in Dharamsala - a mechanism knowingly enabled by the United States through its diplomatic and financial support of the UNHCR operation in Nepal, and through its direct and intense pressure on the Nepalese government to protect the anonymity of these peripatetic refugees from attempts by China's security apparatus to learn their identities.

The truth is perhaps somewhere in between, more towards the humanitarian end of the spectrum, since the Indian government is serious about discouraging anti-PRC activities by the Tibetan exile community within its borders.

Whose Core Interest Is It Anyway?

Hmmmmmmmmm…

From an April 2009 US Embassy Beijing cable in the Wikileaks dump as reported by the Guardian:

The United States had its core interests, VFM He asserted, such as U.S. naval vessels that had operated near the Chinese coast.

Now, as anybody with a memory more than a nanosecond recollects, in 2010 the world’s press was filled with reports like this one from the April 23, 2010 New York Times:

China is also pressing the United States to heed its claims in the region. In March, Chinese officials told two visiting senior Obama administration officials, Jeffrey A. Bader and James B. Steinberg, that China would not tolerate any interference in the South China Sea, now part of China’s “core interest” of sovereignty, said an American official involved in China policy. It was the first time the Chinese labeled the South China Sea a core interest, on par with Taiwan and Tibet, the official said.

I should comment that I had previously thought the core interest claim had first surfaced in a July Kyodo News Service dispatch; but there it is.

China never publicly declared a “South China Sea = core interest” policy, raising questions about what it had actually said and meant, but the story acquired unstoppable legs through US government backgrounders to Washington journalists and served as the subtext for the whole “US defends freedom of navigation in the South China Sea” story.

The Wikileaks cable provides some interesting nuance to the core interest angle.

The US Navy continually sails through China’s Economic Exclusion Zone to map the ocean floor and track movements out of China’s submarine base at Hainan, thereby degrading China’s fighting capabilities in the event of a Taiwan scrape and also undercutting the undersea leg of China’s strategic nuclear deterrent.

Was the context of China’s remark, “The South China Sea is a core interest for the US Navy, goshdarnit it’s a core interest for us, too”?  Or were the Chinese saying, “The South China Sea is our core interest, so butt out”?

Maybe an ensuing tranche of Wikileak documents will provide further data.

Since the Wikileak site is apparently hacked to pieces, I suppose we’ll have to rely on the good offices of the Guardian, NY Times, et al to extract further nuggets from the trove of Beijing Embassy cables (apparently some 8000).

The relevant passage from the April 2009 cable is reproduced at the end of this post. [I deleted the cable text; it's on the temporary site China Matters WL Special Edition].

Careful readers will note that the US declines to confirm Tibet as a Chinese “core interest” in other words an area in which it agrees to eschew activities (like providing an international platform for the Dalai Lama) that adversely affect China’s control of the region.

The US Charge d'Affaires, Dan Piccuta, acknowledges that “Tibet is part of China” but reserves the right to meet with the Dalai Lama and otherwise give aid and comfort to the increasingly militant Tibetan émigré community.

In March 2010 the U.S., after much nudging from the Chinese, Messrs. Steinberg and Bader visited Beijing and finally upgraded assurances on Tibet with a categorical statement (as reported by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs) that the US would not support Tibetan independence:

The US side reiterated that it considers Tibet to be a part of China and does not support independence for Tibet.

In return, China agreed to join the UN sanctions-writing process on Iran that the US was so keen about.

This, of course, was the same meeting that the Chinese purportedly made the South China Seas = core interest assertion.

I always was puzzled that the Chinese would screw up their hard-won reset in US-China relations—they even trotted out Henry Kissinger to emphasize they were simply looking for a reaffirmation of the traditional Tibet and Taiwan foundations of US-China relations—by introducing a new, ambiguous, and incendiary claim concerning the South China Sea.

It is also interesting that, in the Chinese Vice Foreign Minister’s formulation, a “core interest” is not a matter of right, but of necessity—a crucial bit of national interest that must be defended even if it isn’t particularly pleasant or logical.

Like US Navy vessels crisscrossing China’s EEZ.

But, if Wang’s report was accurate, by March 2010 the Chinese were contradicting their stance of 2009 by demanding that the US Navy sacrifice a US core interest by departing from the South China Sea.

I wonder.

Maybe Wikileaks will provide the answer.

Dalai Lama Challenges China! Chaos in Nepal! Tension at the Border!

Parsing Sino-Indian Tensions

I have an article up at Asia Times Online under the pen name Peter Lee entitled Dalai Lama at apex of Sino-Indian tensions.

It's keyed to a high profile news item--the Dalai Lama's provocative visit to a border town in territory held by India but disputed by China--and a significant but rather underreported development--the escalating political struggle between pro-Chinese and pro-Indian political forces now reaching its climax in Nepal.

The Chinese themselves have said that the biggest irritant to Sino-Indian relations is the unresolved border dispute. To them, it’s more of an issue than economic competition, India’s growing integration into the U.S. South Asian security regime, or Indian unease at Beijing’s cozying up to Pakistan, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and the Maldives at New Delhi’s expense and raising the specter of maritime encirclement.

This would seem counterintuitive, since the remote boondocks that have formed the basis of the border dispute—the desolate wasteland of Aksai Chin (China’s share of the Kashmir dispute) in the west and the multi-tribal mélange of Arunachal Pradesh in the east at the Burmese border—are already occupied by the parties that have the strongest claim. A simple swap—the Indians recognize Chinese jurisdiction over Aksai Chin and the Chinese acknowledge Indian control of Arunachal Pradal—has, indeed, been on the table for a half century.


I make the case that perpetual tensions at the border reflect the destabilizing potential of the “Tibet card”—the possibility that India will abandon its “One China” policy once the current Dalai Lama passes on and overtly or covertly support Tibetan independence activities along the border of the Tibetan Autonomous Region.

China wants to secure its borders and also increase its ability to project power into adjoining areas in order to deter potential shenanigans by the Tibetans with Indian connivance. India, on the other hand, wants border conditions favorable to a possible play of the “Tibet Card”.







The slow-motion collapse of Pakistan, China’s closest ally in the region and India’s major military antagonist, has deprived Beijing of its most important asset. The idea that, if India messed with Tibet, Pakistan would unleash hell in Kashmir with Chinese support, is a vain hope today.

With this geostrategic deterrent out of the picture, the focus has shifted to securing the physical space at the borders. Both China and India are pouring money and troops into the border region and arguing over the status of a little town in Arunachal Pradesh called Tawang.




The map to the right, provided by Andy Proehl, shows the disputed area of AP. In the political map of AP below, Tawang is the district to the west sticking out between Tibet and Bhutan.



Tawang is in the news because the Dalai Lama is visiting there on November 8 to visit old friends and figuratively stick his thumb in the dragon’s eye. The Dalai Lama already made some serious waves last year when he reportedly departed from his usual apolitical stance and said that Tawang—within the contested territory in Arunachal Pradesh—was part of India.

It might be noted that the Dalai Lama looks slightly out of line here.



In 1947, the Tibetan government (the Dalai Lama was at that time a youth of twelve who had been identified as the reincarnation and resided in Lhasa but had not yet been enthroned) tried to renegotiate its border deal with the British (the famous Simla Accord of 1914 between Great Britain and Tibet that generated the McMahon line but was never accepted by China) to get acknowledgment of its de facto control of the town.

In fact, according to an interesting Wikipedia entry, the status of Tawang has been the key factor in the contested Himalayan border for well over one hundred years:

Early British efforts to create a boundary in this sector were triggered by their discovery in the mid-19th century that Tawang, an important trading town, was Tibetan territory. In 1873, the British-run Government of India drew an "Outer Line," intended as an international boundary … [In 1912-13] the Outer Line was moved north, but Tawang was left as Tibetan territory…. When the British demanded that the Tawang monastery, located south of the McMahon Line, cease paying taxes to Lhasa, Tibet protested. …. In 1944, NEFT [North Eastern Frontier Territory] established direct administrative control for the entire area it was assigned, although Tibet soon regained authority in Tawang. In 1947, the Tibetan government wrote a note presented to the Indian Ministry of External Affairs laying claim to Tibetan districts south of the McMahon Line. In Beijing, the Communist Party came to power in 1949 and declared its intention to "liberate" Tibet. India, which had become independent in 1947, responded by declaring the McMahon Line to be its boundary and by decisively asserting control of the Tawang area (1950-51).

How 'bout that. This backstory makes the Indo-Tibetan posturing over Tawang appear pretty provocative.

However, in my piece I argue that the true focus of international attention should be Nepal, which is careening into a political crisis as pro-Indian and pro-Chinese factions slug it out for dominance (with the barely concealed political, diplomatic, and financial support of their respective patrons).

At the same time that the Dalai Lama is visiting Arunachal Pradesh, the pro-Chinese Nepalese Maoists are threatening to bring the current, pro-Indian government down through mass action. The Nepalese Maoists, who abandoned their insurgency to participate in the political process, emerged from the 2008 elections as the largest political party in parliament.

This clip of the Maoists' anti-government rally in Kathmandu on November 1, beyond some Triumph-of-the-Will type thrills, gives an idea of the intensity of the current political scene in Nepal.



If the Maoists succeed—which appears very likely—India will face the unwelcome prospect of Nepal edging into the Chinese camp.

Considering that, in the 1970s, India dealt with its other unruly satellite state—Sikkim—by orchestrating the overthrow of the monarchy, dispatching Indian troops to Sikkim at the request of local pro-Indian politicians, and arranging a plebiscite that voted for union with India and the extinction of Sikkimese independence by a vote of 97.5%--there is no guarantee that the Nepalese imbroglio will end quickly or amicably.

Nobody, not even the Nepalese Maoists, seem interested in having this thing boil over into a regional crisis, and perhaps that’s why the whole mess has been almost invisible from the standpoint of the international media.

But Asia Times Online has the story. Hey, go read the thing!

As a lagniappe for China Matters readers, some serious scholarship was done on the origins of the Sino-Indian War of 1962—the mother of all Chinese border conflicts—after the Chinese government declassified documents relating to the origins of the war.

Bottom line: misunderstandings on both sides.

The Chinese misinterpreted Nehru’s expressions of sympathy with the Tibetan people and their aspirations for autonomy as an active Indian policy to challenge the PRC’s control of its Tibetan regions.

Nehru, on the other hand, made a more fatal miscalculation, believing that China lacked the military heft and will to push back when he decided to expel the PLA from Aksai Chin.

Perhaps the key psychological element in the war was the fact that Nikita Khrushchev pissed off Mao Zedong.

In his study China’s Decision for War with India in 1962, John Garver (currently professor of international relations at the Georgia Institute of Technology) describes how Krushchev got into Mao’s face about screwing up Tibet:

The question of responsibility for the crisis in Tibet figured prominently in the
contentious talks between Mao Zedong and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in Beijing
on 2 October 1959. After a complete disagreement over Taiwan, Khrushchev turned to
India and Tibet, saying: "If you let me, I will tell you what a guest should not say --- the events in Tibet are your fault. You ruled in Tibet, you should have had your intelligence [agencies] there and should have know about the plans and intentions of the Dalai Lama" [to flee to India]. "Nehru also says that the events in Tibet occurred on our fault," Mao replied. After an exchange over the flight of the Dalai Lama, Khrushchev made the point: "If you allow him [the Dalai Lama] an opportunity to flee to India, then what has Nehru to do with it? We believe that the events in Tibet are the fault of the Communist Party of China, not Nehru's fault." "No, this is Nehru's fault," Mao replied. "Then the events in Hungary are not our fault," the Soviet leader responded, "but the fault of the United States of America, if I understand you correctly. Please, look here, we had an army in Hungary, we supported that fool Rakosi --- and this is our mistake, not the mistake of the United States." Mao rejected this: "The Hindus acted in Tibet as if it belonged to them." [emph. added]

Self-reflection and the willingness to admit a mistake were not Mao Zedong’s signature virtues under the best of circumstances.

Having Khrushchev—who had not only presided over de-Stalinization (a process that Mao detested) and the Sino-Soviet split; he was also pursuing a strategic alliance with India!-- rub his nose in the embarrassment of the Dalai Lama debacle and take India’s side undoubtedly infuriated the Chairman.

In this context, it isn’t surprising that Mao would welcome the opportunity to assert China’s position on the Sino-Indian border and humiliate Nehru, who was not only Mao’s rival as leader and role model for the Non-Aligned Movement; he was also Krushchev’s current darling.

When war came in 1962, the Indian Army, acclimated to service in the plains and lacking the logistical wherewithal to push men and supplies up through the Himalayan foothills to the front lines, was resoundingly thumped by the PLA.

China fielded units and commanders battle-hardened in the harsh conditions of the Korean War, and benefited from the more manageable logistics involved in resupply across the Tibetan plateau.

India’s defeat was a shock to its military planners, and the lessons of the war have guided the Indian Army’s order of battle and the militarized infrastructure development of the border regions to this day.

In this context, it’s interesting to note that the Indian government, as part of its strategy to entrench itself in Afghanistan and irritate and terrify Pakistan has the same outfits building strategic roads in Afghanistan (such as the Zaranj highway connecting Afghanistan to Iran and intended to bypass Pakistan and the Khyber Pass for trade and military resupply) that build them on the Sino-Indian border: the Border Roads Organization engineers guarded by the Indo-Tibetan Border Police.

China still holds the high ground on the Sino-Indian border, however. This year India announced it was moving a squadron of nuclear-capable Sukhoi 30 MKI fighters to within striking range of the border at Arunachal Pradesh, just to keep things even.

It looks like the Tibetan problem will keep the Sino-Indian border tense for the foreseeable future.



The maps of the contested Himalayan regions were prepared by Andy Proehl, proprietor of the blog Random Axis.

The map of Arunachal Pradesh is from Wikipedia.

Photo of Dalai Lama at Tawang November 8, 2009 flanked by Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Dorjee Khandu AP Photo/Manish Swarup

Ghost in the Machine

A report from the Front Line in the Cyberwar

The Information Warfare Monitor (a joint venture of Toronto University’s Citizen Lab at the Munke Centre for International Studies and a Canadian think-tank called SecDev) teamed up with the Tibetan Government in Exile for a nine-month multi-continent investigation to develop a remarkable report on cyberwarfare operations targeting areas of concern to the People’s Republic of China, including Taiwan and Tibet.

The report was solicited by the TGIE; the significant resources devoted to preparing the report leads me to suspect that an impetus for the investigation was the possibility that Chinese security had learned how to exploit a dangerous vulnerability inside the Internet censorship and monitoring circumvention software developed by Citizen Lab and, presumably, running on many computers in the Tibetan emigre community.

IWM dubbed the Chinese operation “GhostNet”.

The mechanism was remarkably simple, exploiting the remote monitoring utilities available to IT geeks and hackers to monitor and modify the contents of computers over the Internet.

Computers of interest were targeted with a Trojan program (either through malware in e-mail attachments or as applets downloaded from seeded webpages), Once installed, it secretly established communications with a server that downloaded a piece of open-source Chinese malware called gh0st RAT, which allowed the bad guys (or gals) not only to monitor the contents of the computer, but to secretly upload files, log keystrokes, and even activate audio and video acquisition from the web cams and microphones on the computers.

Yikes!

The clever folk at IWM set up a “honey pot” computer that acquired the Trojan; then they were able to go in through the out door and find out what was happening on the server.

Turns out there were apparently four servers monitoring almost 1300 computers, including a slew of computers in the offices of the Tibetan Government in Exile around the world, various Taiwanese organizations, and a raft of government foreign affairs ministries throughout Europe and Asia.

The IWM team observed documents uploading from the Tibetan computers to the server. Reportedly, the Dalai Lama’s secret negotiating strategy and e-mail lists were acquired through this nefarious channel as well as who knows what else.

The report rather charitably declines to openly accuse the Chinese government as the operators of this scheme, acknowledging that one of the servers were in the United States while pointedly stating the other three were apparently on Hainan Island, “where the Lingshui signals intelligence facility and the Third Technical Department of the People’s Liberation Army” are located.

According to Global Security, Lingshui is pretty much spook central for China, analogous to a major U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency facility:

“A large SIGINT facility at Hainan Island is principally concerned with monitoring U.S. naval activities in the South China Sea. One of the first major projects reflecting growing Chinese interest in activities in the South China Sea was the major upgrading of SIGINT collection capacity. The large SIGINT complex on Hainan Island was significantly expanded by 1995. Established in 1968 at the Lingshui military air base, the Lingshui intelligence facility is said to be home to more than 1,000 intelligence analysts of the Third Technical Department. The complex is used to monitor downlinks from commercial communications satellites.”

Of course, the broad attack on a large number of targets whose common denominator is the Chinese government (Tibet, Taiwan) leads one to believe that the PRC is behind all this.

However, a risky, extremely political, and counter-intelligency operation like “GhostNet” –and one that requires only a few computers, geeks, and a taste for malicious mischief—is perhaps not the kind of thing that one slots into a large, highly disciplined operation whose main job is to monitor with intense interest what the United States is up to in the South China Sea.

The casual, scattershot approach and disregard for countermeasures (like dealing exclusively through third-country servers that would provide deniability to the Chinese government in case of exposure) implies to me that “GhostNet” was an initiative of some computer-savvy group inside Chinese intelligence who were given a license to go phishing and see what they could catch.

Anyway, that’s a distinction without much of a difference.

The report included this anecdote about the Drewla group, an organization ostensibly promoting harmless web-based chat between émigrés and youth inside Tibet:

“A member of Drewla…decided to return to her family village in Tibet after working two years for Drewla. She was arrested at the Nepalese-Tibetan border and taken to a detention facility, where she was held incommunicado for a period of two months. She was interrogated by Chinese intelligence personnel about her employment in Dharmsala. She denied having been politically active and insisted that she had gone to Dharmsala for studies. In response to this, the intelligence officers pulled out a dossier on her activities and presented her with full transcripts of her Internet chats over the years. They indicated that they were fully aware of, and were monitoring, the Drewla outreach initiative and that her colleagues were not welcome to return to Tibet.”

Of course, chat is presumably monitored by the Great Firewall of China and it wouldn’t seem necessary to rummage through Drewla’s computers—which apparently are contaminated with the gh0st RAT malware--to obtain the transcripts.

Interestingly, the University of Toronto Citizen Lab is also in the hacking business, having spun off a corporation to promote a software called “Psiphon”, designed expressly to evade Internet censorship in countries like China.

Interested parties install the Psiphon software on computers outside the targeted countries, get an IP address from the Psiphon mothership (the Psiphon manual uses “https://84.202.55.330:443jane4freedom” as an example; my advice: ix-nay on the eedom-fray) and relies on “social networks of trust” to distribute the URL together with log-ins and passwords inside the censoring country so people can message to the Psiphon server using the encrypted https protocol and get unfettered access to the Internet.

The assumption is that, since a host of financial and webmail processes use https, the censoring government can never shut down https communications wholesale.

That would imply that a censoring government would have to go after the servers one by one—judging from Wikipedia there are myriad ways of compromising https communications—and Psiphon’s protection would be safety in numbers i.e. signing up a lot of nodes to overwhelm the censors.

Last year, Citizen Lab put the word out that it had 150,000 nodes and was “reaching out to locals” to blog and broadcast about Tibet during the Beijing Olympics, which undoubtedly endeared it to the Chinese government.

The Psiphon servers are not anonymizers, which means that a hack into a PC set up as a Psiphon server would presumably yield a treasure trove of information both on users and the web pages they are visiting.

As Psiphon’s entry on Wikipedia notes, with just a hint of anxiety:

“Through the psiphon control panel, psiphonode administrators have access to a log of sites that their psiphonites access, which makes the psiphon user subject to the consequences of any lack of good security practices, ill will, or possible censorship by the psiphonenode administrator. The authors of psiphon stress that these issues are "trust" issues, with exception of poor security practices, and should not present a problem because of the positive social relationship(s) between psiphon user(s) and psiphonode administrator(s). The theory being that if there is a good enough relationship to establish a psiphon user to psiphonode administrator tie, issues such as psiphonode censorship and ill will are not likely to arise, hence the term "social networks of trust" used in psiphon literature."

If the Chinese government discovers a “psiphonode”, hacks into it, collects the IP addresses of the visitors and a list of the sites they visited, I imagine that the “positive social relationship” between the psiphonode administrator and his or her hapless psiphonsite buddy will be little consolation.

So, maybe the “GhostNet” report was an attempt to identify dangerous vulnerabilities of the Psiphon system as well as a piece of pro-bono do-goodery on behalf of the Tibetan émigrés.

Fact is, given the close ties between Citizen Lab and the Tibetan emigre movement, I would speculate that Dharmsala is a hive of Psiphon servers; and I wonder one result of the "GhostNet" hack was to infect the psiphonodes and send a trove of information about users inside Tibet back to Chinese security forces.

Doh!

That might cause potential psiphonode operators to think twice about participating in the program.

Tibet has apparently become the world’s hottest cyber-warfare battlefield. The Tibetan émigré movement has struggled to get unfiltered information (and, perhaps, instructions) into the Tibetan areas of the PRC.

The Chinese government has played whack-a-mole in response, monitoring Internet traffic and chat, blocking sites, jamming webpages with DNS attacks, shutting down Youtube last year and text messaging this year, confiscating satellite dishes and apparently even taking down cellphone towers.

It looks like the Chinese have given up, perhaps for good, on the whole hearts and minds thing in the Tibetan occupation.

Instead, the PRC hopes that it can keep the lid on in the Tibetan areas until mortality catches up with the Dalai Lama, the émigré movement fractures permanently between disheartened moderates and disgruntled activists, and Han migration permanently dilutes the Tibetan character of China’s southwest.

However, I wonder if the iron law of unintended consequences may soon be at work here and the focus of Tibetan dissent will shift away from the impotent émigrés to the angry and disaffected residents of Tibet, who will be much more difficult for China to handle.

What China should be worried about is exactly what it is working to achieve: the rise of a Tibetan generation that is not inspired by occasional contact with the remote and esteemed figure of the Dalai Lama in India, but one that instead creates its lasting identity from its isolation inside the PRC—and draws its bitterness and resentment from the shared memory of the Chinese occupation.

And that’s a lot more powerful than the Internet.

Stigmata

The Passion of Tenzin Tsundue

On June 21, the Chinese government was able to claim a victory of sorts, at least in terms of the semiotics of state power, by orchestrating an incident-free, albeit truncated Olympic torch relay through Lhasa.

Almost contemporaneously, a 1300-kilometer, ninety day march through India to the Tibetan border organized by the Tibetan People's Uprising Movement (hereinafter TPUM) fizzled to a miserable conclusion as its last few dozen members were arrested as they tried to peacefully shoulder their way past a blockade of 200 Indian police in the remote border town of Dharchula. The marchers were released—and subsequently dispersed--amid international indifference.

These two processions, so different in intention and effect, are not unrelated.

There's been a certain resistance in the Western press to assessing the significance of—or even reporting the existence of—TPUM, its long march, or its possible role in the unrest that roiled ethnic Tibetan regions of the People's Republic of China in March 2008.

But an answer may be held in the burned hands of Tenzin Tsundue, the charismatic author and activist who is trying to remake the Tibetan exile movement, seemingly by force of his individual will.

In March of this year, as riots spread across the Tibetan areas, Tsundue languished in an Indian prison, burning his hands with cigarettes--in frustration? in expiation?--as the movement he had struggled to create careened out of control, and the grand gesture he had orchestrated was crushed by geopolitical realities.

Tsundue midwifed TPUM. His energy, ideas, and prestige were apparently indispensable in helping conceive TPUM, create its underlying coalition, and define its mission.

If bulletin board chatter is to be believed, he was also instrumental in securing his ally Tsewang Rigzin's election as president of the Tibetan Youth Congress late last year—mounting what one poster characterized as “a giant campaign”—thereby securing the commitment of that group's resources and prestige to TPUM:

TPUM is a coalition of five leading NGOs in the Tibetan exile movement: the Tibetan Youth Congress, a relatively militant Tibetan independence advocacy group; the National Democracy Party of Tibet, its political arm; the Tibetan Women's Association; Gu-Chu-Sam, an organization of monks who were ex-political prisoners inside the PRC; and Students for a Free Tibet (India). Tsundue was at one time the General Secretary of SFT (India).

TPUM was established in November of last year in an atmosphere of great urgency. The PRC was responding to the aging Dalai Lama's overtures with cynical temporizing. The 2008 Olympics looked to be a showcase for China's economic and political progress, and a chance to assert its leading role throughout Asia at the expense of Tibetan aspirations. The opening of the railroad to Lhasa presaged the further integration of Tibetan areas into the PRC and dilution of Tibetan identity and nationalist fervor.

TPUM, while professing to respect the Dalai Lama's stature as the embodiment of Tibetan culture, repudiated his political concessions (he had abandoned calls for Tibetan independence in favor of autonomy) and his conciliatory tactics (he supported the Beijing Olympics and discouraged confrontational anti-PRC positions and statements).

Early this year, TPUM issued a defiant manifesto and video appeal calling for Tibetan independence and the stripping of the Olympics away from Beijing. It announced a march of activists “to Tibet” from India.

And, most problematically—and ambiguously—TPUM seemed to call for corresponding direct action from sympathizers inside Tibet.

The manifesto called for a “global movement of Tibetans inside and outside of Tibet taking control of our political destiny by engaging in direct action”.

The video appeal included the statement “we must rise up and resist and bring about an even greater Uprising. An Uprising that will shake the Chinese government to its core.”

And somehow, on May 10, in Lhasa, on the 49th anniversary of Tibetan National Uprising Day, something happened.

A large group of monks emerged from their monasteries that evening and appeared in Lhasa's central square to engage in a silent protest.

Then, somebody on the monk side or the public security side lost their cool, arrests were made, and the situation deteriorated into a nasty car-burning, store-torching, people-beating riot conducted by Tibetan citizens of Lhasa against the detested Chinese interlopers.

Sympathetic demonstrations and actions spread to multiple locations inside the PRC Tibetan areas and triggered a crackdown, a disputed number of deaths, a slew of arrests and—in response to an avalanche of negative press, opinion, and demonstrations in the West that threw the Olympic torch relay into chaos—a stream of vociferously nationalistic and abusive articles in the Chinese press concerning the role of TPUM and the Tibetan Youth Congress in fomenting the disturbances.

Western media outlets—apparently loathe to abet China's crude play of the “outside agitator” card when widespread domestic discontent against PRC rule was patent in the Tibetan areas—didn't take the bait.

And on the one occasion I could find in which a Western outlet solicited a comment from TPUM, Tsewang Rigzin—the leader of the Tibetan Youth Congress and TPUM’s main organizational muscle—denied any role in the protests inside China.

However, I don't think it's necessarily that simple.

As a matter of self-preservation, TPUM has to be coy about organizing or encouraging any activities inside Tibet.

Currently, India is a lot more interested in managing relations with China than accommodating the dreams of the Tibetan exile community. If there's a whiff of suspicion that Tibetan groups inside India are working to destabilize PRC rule in ethnic Tibetan regions, arrest, prohibition, or even deportation are the likely fates awaiting TPUM and its members.

Even if TPUM had gone beyond hoping and wishing to actively planning or encouraging a manifestation in Lhasa on May 11, either directly or through cut-outs, plausible deniability would have to be maintained if the organization were to continue to enjoy its safe haven in India.

To gain a better understanding of the goals and activities of TPUM, it might be revealing to take a look at TPUM's guiding light.

That's apparently not Tsewang Rigzin of the relatively large (30,000 member) and high profile Tibetan Youth Congress, who is the public face of the Tibetan independence movement.

It's Tenzin Tsundue, who lives the life of an impoverished, itinerant Tibetan independence activist, currently holding no position as far as I can tell in TPUM or its constituent NGOs.

Tenzin Tsundue is a prolific author of poetry and prose who has earned his place as the spokesman for the younger generation of Tibetan exiles, born outside their homeland, frustrated and radicalized by their eroding identity and the political impotence of their elders.

He won an Indian literary prize for a piece of anguished non-fiction, My Kind of Exile, describing the profound alienation of young Tibetan exiles.

One passage provides an interesting perspective on his remarkably strong feelings about the Olympics:

In October 2000 the world was tuned in to the Sydney Olympics. In the hostel, on D-day we were all glued to the TV set eager for the opening ceremony to begin. Halfway into the event I realised that I couldn't see clearly anymore and my face felt wet. I was crying. No, it wasn't the fact that I dearly wished I was in Sydney or the splendour of the atmosphere or the spirit of the games, I tried hard to explain to those around me. But they couldn't understand, couldn't even begin to understand...how could they? They belong to a nation. They have never had to conceive of its loss, they have never had to cry for their country. They belonged and had a space of their own not only on the world map but also in the Olympic games. Their countrymen could march proudly, confident of their nationality, in their national dress and with their national flag flying high. I was so happy for them.

'Night comes down, but your stars are missing'

Neruda spoke for me when I was silent, drowned in tears. Quietly watching the rest of the show I was heavy and breathless. They talked about borderlessness and building brotherhood through the spirit of games. From the comfort of home they talked about coming together for one humanity and defying borders. What can I, a refugee, talk about except the wish to go back home?

Tsundue cemented his renown by two high-profile actions targeting high Chinese officials visiting India, which started with daring climbs up skyscrapers to unfurl pro-independence banners, and concluded with his arrest and triumphant release.

He credits the pusillanimous response of the Tibetan government in exile to his harassment by the Indian authorities for catalyzing the five NGOs to come together to form TPUM.

Tsundue cultivates the air of an ascetic—a restless wanderer, owning little more than the clothes on his back, supporting himself by selling books of his poetry from a rucksack--whose holy cause is Tibetan independence.

His signature affectation is a red headscarf bandana that he has vowed not to remove until Tibet is free. He's worn it for eight years now, raising interesting questions of hygiene, mechanics, and textile engineering. The smooth-pated and tidy Dalai Lama apparently greeted him by asking “Don't you feel hot and sweaty on your forehead?”

The picture is of a lone warrior. However, as a recent interview in the Indian magazine Tehelka reveals, Tsundue moved beyond individual action to organizing.

Tsundue was interviewed in the context of the March to Tibet, which sputtered along ignominiously until it ended at the Indian border on June 18, continuously harassed by the Indian authorities but not in a manner heavy-handed enough to attract international attention and sympathy.

Describing his central role in the formation of TPUM, Tsundue said:

His Holiness and the Tibetan government-in-exile don't want confrontation, so some of us began to work on creating internal unity. We worked on bringing the five key Tibetan NGOS together. There has never been a common programme between them. The Youth Congress, which is the largest outfit, is committed to total freedom, while the Women's Association, which is the second largest, is closer to His Holiness' 'middle way' position and wants only autonomy. It took months of discussion before we presented an idea which brought people together. The idea was to march back to Tibet. We were going back to our own country. ...So on January 4 this year, we announced the Tibetan People’s Uprising Movement and the march to Tibet. Right up to February, the government said it was disassociating itself from the NGOs. But there was such a swell in public mood they were forced to say they are willing to work with us. This is a major turn of events.

As noted above, Tsundue apparently took a pro-active role to ensure that Tsewang Rigzin, sympathetic to his strategy, was elected head of the Tibetan Youth Congress.

In the article, Tsundue repeatedly affirms his commitment to non-violence, stating that this is one point on which he and the Dalai Lama are in agreement.

However, in a 2005 New York Times Sunday Magazine profile, The Restless Children of the Dalai Lama, (which also notes in passing his already strong preoccupation with the Beijing Olympics) he indicated to a sympathetic interviewer that he did not consider nonviolence as a Buddhist imperative he was bound to honor under all circumstances. His commitment to non-violence is less than absolute and, in a certain light, looks rather situational:

One evening at the Peace Cafe, [Tsundue] told me that he could not rule out violence as a last resort. "Seeking Buddhahood," he said, "is one thing, and freedom for a country is another. We are fighting for freedom in the world and not freedom from the world."

...

Tsundue ...said that he could not identify Tibetan culture exclusively with Buddhism and that the preference for nonviolent politics could also become an excuse for passivity and inaction. "Our leaders quote Gandhi," Tsundue said. "But Gandhi saw British rule in India as an act of violence and said that resistance to it was a duty. I see the Chinese railway to Lhasa as a similar act of violence. What's wrong with blowing up a few bridges? How can such resistance be termed wrong and immoral?"

In the 2008 Tehelka article, he returns to the issue of non-violence, drawing a distinction between the Dalai Lama's commitment to non-violence and non-confrontation with Gandhi's willingness to confront the British.

And Tsundue went a step beyond Gandhi.

Asked to name his influences, he cited Gandhi...and Bhagat Singh.

A scramble to Wikipedia reveals that Bhagat Singh was a fire-eating advocate of Indian independence martyred by the British at the age of 24 in 1931, entitled to the title of Shaheed, and a posthumous hero to militant pro-independence Indian youth.

Singh, an atheist-anarchist-socialist, had rather shaky non-violent credentials. He threw a bomb into the Indian assembly, apparently to attract attention but not wanting to hurt anybody.

However, after arrest he was tried and executed by the British for a previously botched assassination he had committed, botched unfortunately not in the way of not succeeding, but in killing the wrong police administrator in trying to avenge the beating death of a leading activist during a non-violent protest.

The waters are further muddied by apparently unsubstantiated allegations by militants that Gandhi didn't employ his enormous influence with the British Raj to commute Singh's sentence, instead allowing him to go to his death.

Readers are welcome to unpack the parallels: Singh/Tsundue vs. Gandhi/Dalai Lama as they see fit. One author went the distance and spiked the metaphorical ball in the end zone, declaring Tsundue the Tibetan independence movement's “Che Guerva [sic]/Gandhi love child.”

An injudicious interview by the TYC's Tsewang Rigzin with Corriere della Serra in March reinforces a sense of TPUM's ambivalence about non-violence, describing pacifism as “a blind alley”, international sympathy as useless, and an alternate future in which Tibetan emigres turn to Palestinian-style violence.

It appears that Tsundue's doctrine does not involve simple non-violence. It involves non-violent confrontation with the option for righteous violence in self-defence if the opponent escalates the situation.

And that would fit in with a risky maneuver to encourage Buddhist monks in Lhasa to stage a courageous, non-violent, silent protest that would perhaps trigger a confrontation and widespread unrest throughout the Tibetan areas of the PRC—and provide an electrifying context, perhaps including a flood of refugees surging toward India, for the appearance of a brave band of Tibetan independence activists marching toward their homeland just as the eyes of the world are on China and its painstakingly choreographed Olympic torch photo-op in Lhasa.

I'm just speculating, of course. TPUM never set objectives for the March to Tibet, preferring to respond ad hoc to the facts on the ground.

In the event, the situation inside the PRC descended into violence so quickly—and with enough enthusiastic participation by anti-PRC Tibetans—to utterly obscure any potential narrative of a courageous, non-violent confrontation by the monks of Lhasa.

And the Chinese swept aside any political agenda for the confrontation, framing the unrest in terms of riot, sedition, and terrorism, and undoubtedly putting irresistible pressure on the Indian government to rein in Dharmsala and let TPUM and its march wither on the vine.

A question from Tehelka's reporter prompts an interesting revelation from Tsundue concerning his state of mind during the march:

How did you get these burns on both your hands?
Cigarettes. I did it to myself in jail a few weeks ago. I had a very troubling time. We had started on our march from Dharamsala, we were arrested on the fourth day. ... What was most frustrating was that while we were hearing that the whole of Tibet was rising up and the Chinese police was butchering them, I was supposed to be in a free country but I was in jail and couldn’t do anything. We were in jail for 14 days; all 14 days, people were being killed in Tibet. It was a most frustrating time. I urged our leaders to call a hunger strike so things would go out of hand and the police would have to release us. But they thought this would further aggravate the situation and create tension. I said, this is the time to create tension, but they said it would lead to more problems. So it was a very difficult time.

But why burn yourself? Was that to internalise the anger?
Yes, I think so (Long silence). It's not just anger but also how to maintain peace (Laughs).

The picture I get is not of peace. Or for that matter, anger.

I see despair.

The despair of a man who has tried to will a viable independence movement into existence by the force of his intellect, energy, and personality...but who now finds himself humiliatingly incarcerated in an Indian jail while a longed-for confrontation inside Lhasa, instead of yielding catharsis, unity, and triumph, quickly descended (no doubt with a helpful shove from the Chinese) into chaos and bloodshed.

I wonder how Tsundue felt on June 21, after the PRC government was able to conduct its Olympic torch run through Lhasa.

Three days earlier, the Long Marchers, shrunk to a core of 57 people, tried to enter the Indian border town of Darchula opposite Tibet. Surrounded by Indian police, the marchers broke into groups of four and tried to enter the town.

They were arrested by Indian police and subsequently released. The March to Tibet was over.

Tsundue was apparently not there. He was embroiled in legal proceedings in the city of Dehra pertaining to his arrest in the early stage of the march.

Despite brave talk of the value of the March to Tibet as a consciousness-raising exercise, it looks more like a demoralizing defeat, whose most dire consequences will be felt by the Tibetan exiles themselves, and not the PRC.

It turns out the Dalai Lama had asked the marchers to abandon their action and they rebuffed him, exacerbating the existing division between young militants and older moderates, no doubt to Beijing's delight.

One can probably add to that problem fresh fissures within the pro-independence coalition itself as the costs of the quixotic exercise are tallied up, and the strategy, tactics, and judgment of the movement's leaders are called into question, perhaps even by the leaders themselves.

The burns on his hands may not be the only scars Tenzin Tsundue carries away from this ordeal.

Tsewang Rigzin Gets Some Ink

Tsewang Rigzin, the head of the Tibetan Youth Congress, is getting some unwelcome attention from the Chinese press.

From the English People's Daily :

As the current president of the Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC), Tsewang Rigzin recently had an interview with the Milan-based Italian newspaper, Corriere Della Sera, and voiced stunning words that left people gasping with awe and bewilderment. For the cause of "Tibetan independence", he said, the use of human bomb for revenge is a direction of development.

I'm afraid I can't improve on that English.

All I can provide is the automatic Google translation of Tsewang Rigzin's interview with Corriere Della Serra on March 27, which gives us:

Not now. Maybe in a few years. But could the moment for the Tibetan resistance movement to adopt the way of suicide bombers already in vogue in the Muslim world. Suicide attacks in Lhasa: it seems to contradict everything from half a century featuring the figure of the Dalai Lama and the struggle of his people against the 'Chinese occupation.

But for Tsewang Rigzin, from four months president of the Tibetan Youth Congress, is "a development that possible. "Everything is open. It is a fact that non-violence preached by the Dalai Lama there leads nowhere. On the contrary, has enabled the Chinese espellerci [to expel us] from our homeland and to continue the genocide of our cultural and religious traditions. So could soon get the 'time to change strategies to combat ", argues in his office tree in the hills of Dharamsala, where the Tibetan government in exile. Born in India in 1971 by parents refugees, moved after 12 years in the United States, from one year Rigzin has left his wife and two children to devote himself to his mission of leading the Tibetan movement stronger among those not linked to the Dalai Lama.

Your goal? "Restoring the 'independence of our country, at every price. But we have to hurry. Each day that passes away our goal, species after the construction of the railway that since 2006 more easily connects Beijing to Tibet ".

The Dalai Lama threat to resign if the violence continued anti-Chinese. "He has already threatened other times. Please note that the initial events, March 10, were peaceful. Chinese police has infiltrated agents in the crowd to discredit the movement. Were they who foment violence ".

What is your response to those who say that the world sympathy for your cause is mainly due to non-violence? 'I answer that pacifism has led us on a blind alley. About us speaks only so incidental, limited. We are forgotten by the international community. Many fine words and then nothing. We look instead as they felt the Palestinians and activists in Iraq thanks to the suicide attacks. L 'attention of world media is all for them. "

Yes, but attention does not mean support. "We are in a desperate situation. If non-violence was winning would mean that our cause is. Instead we are losing. "

Worldwide growing voices of those who would boycott the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. "We hope that in so many to follow the 'example of President Sarkozy. But it would be better if the Games were boicottati tout court. [I’ll go out on a non-Italian speaking limb and guess this means “it would be better if the entire games were boycotted.”]

The China accusation of racism against its civilians in Lhasa. "I am sorry that civilians are involved in the clash. But the responsibility is the Chinese government, which encourages its people to occupy our lands. At the end will have to go, just so we can get our country and peace. "

Not good.

Not a good idea for Tsewang Rigzin to kick back in his “office tree in the hills”—apparently his office amid the tree-lined hills of Dharmsala, though the idea of an office tree is ridiculously charming—and talk about how his differences with the Dalai Lama go beyond independence vs. autonomy to violence vs. non-violence

And not a good idea for Tsewang Rigzin to use his press availability to complain that the international community isn't giving the Tibetan movement adequate attention—because it isn't violent enough.

In case there is some misunderstanding, when I report on the Tibetan People's Uprising Movement—a coalition of five Tibetan emigre NGOs including the Tibetan Youth Congress—I don't give credence to the Chinese accusations that TPUM or TYC are terrorist organizations with training camps, fighters, and the means or strategy to coordinate violent actions throughout the Tibetan regions of China.

There is plenty of local anger and courage to spark sympathetic demonstrations and violent confrontations against Chinese rule throughout Tibet without outside direction.

But I do see the Tibetan Youth Congress as media provocateurs—who might have been tempted to do some dangerous dabbling inside Tibet.

Specifically, I wonder if TPUM encouraged a non-violent protest in Lhasa in order to provide a compelling Tibetan backdrop for its campaign to embarrass and pressure China on the occasion of the Beijing Olympics--and then watched the situation spin out of control into rioting and violence thanks to some unknown and unknowable combination of anger, hooliganism, and police provocation.

Especially when I read Tsewang Rigzin's statement (the translation seems to be accurate but I've appended the original Italian at the end of this post for interested readers):

Please note that the initial events, March 10, were peaceful. Chinese police has infiltrated agents in the crowd to discredit the movement.

I think:

Discredit what movement? Is he claiming the March 10 demonstrations in Lhasa were related to the Tibetan People's Uprising Movement? And, given the the lack of advance notice of the protests in the Bokhar and the speed with which chaos subsequently enveloped Lhasa, what privileged perspective from Dharmsala enables him to characterize the “initial events as peaceful”. How does he know?

His remarks make it sound like the initial demonstrations were planned in Dharmsala.

Not good at all, especially since the Indian government has absolutely no interest in being accused by China of providing a safe haven on its soil for Tibet independence militants planning actions inside the PRC.

Tsewang Rigzin was also a featured presence in the Chinese edition of People's Daily, in the context of a vitriolic attack on the Tibetan Youth Congress.

His remark about suicide bombers was skewed to make it sound like the Tibetan Youth Congress's immediate action plan, instead of hypothetical musings from the office tree:

“西藏抵抗运动要采取自杀式暴力手段来进行”

“The Tibet resistance movement shall adopt violent suicide measures to proceed.”

The article takes it from there, with allegations that, needless to say, I haven't seen anywhere else:

On March 15, the Tibetan Youth Congress convened a meeting in Dharmasala and unanimously passed a decision “to immediate organize guerillas to secretly cross the border to initiate armed struggle” and set plans to dispatch people, money, and arms,and inflitrate across the China-Nepal border along secret ways scouted before the onset of the current disturbances. The chairman of the Tibetan Youth Congress, Tsewang Rigzin, acknowledged that that they wre prepared to sacrifice an additional 100 Tibetan lives in order to secure victory.
...

Specialists told reporters, on March 20 Tibetan Youth Congress Chairman Tsewang Rigzin convened a meeting in Dharmsala and announced “Violent activities have basically achieved the expected results in awakening the awareness of resistance within the Tibetan areas of the country, and eliciting a high level of attention in the international community toward the Tibetan question. However, resistance activities cannot cease. These activities are merely a prelude to this year's resistance activities.”

After these dubiously sourced allegations, the kitchen sink: accusations of operating terrorist training camps and contacts with the “terrorist, Xinjiang splittist” East Turkestan movement.

And the payoff:

“Experts say that, because of its long history of violent behavior, the Tibetan Youth Congress has already reached the point of return, and is inexorably sliding into the chasm of terrorist behavior.”


The article tiptoes up to the point of directly accusing the Dalai Lama ( Zhong Nan Hai-ologists, please take note that the phrase "Dalai Lama clique" explicitly excludes the Dalai Lama himself; when China wants to reference or criticize him personally, it's usually “the 14th Dalai Lama ” or “the Dalai") of having a secret understanding with the Tibetan Youth Congress by which he takes the high, non-violent road and TYC takes the low road to promote Tibetan independence.

Experts are quoted as asking :

The guiding directive of the Tibetan Youth Congress clearly states that it is to respect the correct leadership and guidance of the Dalai Lama. If that is the case, how can the Dalai Lama himself say he has lost control?

The inevitable conclusion—the demand that the Dalai Lama denounce the Tibetan Youth Congress and institutionalize and exacerbate the already deep and dangerous split between moderates and radicals in the Tibetan community—comes in the last paragraph:

"Of course, we want to discriminate between the majority of the 30,000 members of the Tibetan Youth Congress and a very small number of key cadres. Many members do not advocate violence”; the specialist said, if the Dalai Lama sincerely wishes to improve relations with China, he should truly discard the advocacy of Tibetan independence, stop splitting the country, stop planning and inciting violent actions, stop disrupting the Beijing Olympics, and truly put a stop to the violent activities of the Tibetan Youth Congress and condemn its terrorist intimidation.



One might think that the designation of TYC as a terrorist organization and a demand that the Indian government suppress it can't be far behind.

But the tenor of this paragraph indicates that the Chinese government is willing to let the Tibetan Youth Congress survive and satisfy itself with the condemnation of “a very small number of key cadres”.

Among that “very small number of key cadres” is undoubtedly a certain president of the Tibetan Youth Congress who made some injudicious comments while on Indian soil concerning the legitimacy of violent struggle,and whose political future is now in doubt.

È bene tenere conto che le manifestazioni iniziali, il 10 marzo, furono pacifiche. Please note that the initial events, March 10, were peaceful. La polizia cinese ha infiltrato agenti tra la folla per screditare il movimento. Chinese police has infiltrated agents in the crowd to discredit the movement. Sono stati loro a fomentare le violenze». Were they who foment violence ".

China Connects the Dots from Lhasa to Dharmsala...

...With Some Help From the TPUM

I'm not about to say that stories about the Tibet People's Uprising Movement (TPUM) are getting spiked in some kind of journalistic omerta dedicated to keeping the existence of this awkward group out of reporting on the Tibetan disturbances...

...but I was interested enough in the issue to send a query about the absence of TPUM from news reports to a distinguished Asian correspondent.

He responded! and advised that he considered that TPUM was not important enough to merit mention in dispatches.

Not important! I sputtered to myself.

I think TPUM's plenty important.

So do the Chinese, for that matter.

TPUM is a five-member coalition comprised of: the two biggest Tibetan NGOs: the Tibetan Youth Congress (30,000 members) and the Tibetan Women's Association (13,000 members); the TYC's political wing, the National Democracy Party of Tibet; Students for a Free Tibet, India; and Gu-Chu-Sum Association of Ex-Political Prisoners, which, if a critical post on a site called World Report is accurate, ranks second on the list of recipients of National Endowment for Democracy Tibet-related largesse, only behind Richard Gere's International Campaign for Tibet.

TPUM is noteworthy for its fire-eating declaration calling for direct action inside as well as outside Tibet:

The Tibetan People's Uprising Movement is a global movement of Tibetans inside and outside of Tibet taking control of our political destiny by engaging in direct action to end China's illegal and brutal occupation of our country. Through unified and strategic campaigns we will seize the Olympic spotlight and shine it on China's shameful repression inside Tibet, thereby denying China the international acceptance and approval it so fervently desires.[emph. added]

We call on Tibetans inside Tibet to continue to fight Chinese domination and we pledge our unwavering support for your continued courageous resistance. [emph. in original]

On one hand, TPUM has only associated itself publicly with one action, a protest March to Tibet from Dharmsala that, thanks to a hostile attitude by the Indian government, has sputtered along ineffectually.

The concrete goals of the march have never been clearly articulated but apparently range from a best-case destination of Lhasa (they are rather coy about how they hope to get there) and a minimum objective of heightened Tibetan consciousness and independence-related militancy.

On the other hand, there's the statement in the declaration that“we will bring about another uprising that will shake China's control in Tibet and mark the beginning of the end of China's occupation”, and a video message (undated, but apparently prepared prior to March 10) from the leaders of the five groups comprising TPUM.

Ngawang Woeber of Gu-Chu-Sam leads off with the longest message, concluding:

Our goal is to bring together all Tibetans inside and outside Tibet before the Beijing Olympics begin. We will join a unified campaign to restore Tibetan freedom. This is an historic opportunity we can't afford to miss. This opportunity won't come again. Secondly, China's policies in Tibet are getting more destructive day by day. Chinese population transfer to Tibet has made matters even more urgent for us. Now it is time for Tibetans everywhere to rise up. In the spirit of the 1959 Tibetan national Uprising we must rise up and resist and bring about an even greater Uprising. An Uprising that will shake the Chinese government to its core. Those who can walk shall join the March to Tibet. Those with money shall support the movement. In short, whatever resources you have—skills, experience, wealth, courage—this is the time to bring it to the table and make a real impact on our struggle. We need everyone. [emph. added]

To me, that sounds like a call to action. Inside Tibet as well as outside. And it's not coming from some slogan-spouting wannabe college revolutionary. Those are the words of somebody who did hard time in a Chinese prison and knows the terrible cost that anti-government words and actions can bring.

And it sounds to me like the kind of appeal that might bring several hundred monks out of their monasteries to protest fifty years' worth of Chinese affronts to Tibetan freedom, religion, and culture on March 10—the 49th anniversary of Tibetan National Uprising Day—and trigger the Chinese police response in Lhasa and the subsequent disturbances.

Two of the other spokespeople on the video, Tsewang Rigzin, president of the TYC, and B. Tsering, head of the TWA, have been all over the newspapers providing reports and commentary on events inside Tibet since March 11.

But nary a whisper about their affiliation with TPUM can I find, outside of a couple posts I wrote and a March 20 Wall Street Journal profile by Peter Wonacott , which reports Tsewang Rigzin's denial of TPUM involvement in the unrest in Tibet and describes the group's ambitions to act as a source for Western coverage:

Protests this month have unleashed a wave of violence inside Tibetan areas of China. Mr. Rigzin says the protests in Tibet were spontaneous, and had no backing from a group he helped establish in January, called the Tibetan People's Uprising Movement.

He says the group -- comprising five different nongovernmental exile organizations including the Youth Congress -- has swapped information since the protests began with those inside Tibet through phone calls and text messages. That information has often made its way into news releases emailed to journalists or has been posted on the group's Web site.

Let me hasten to point out that the existence of TPUM is no secret, either to the Tibetans, journalists...or to the Chinese.

Its manifesto and activities have been covered by the Students for a Free Tibet blog and, when I discovered the TPUM website on March 16, it was already being disrupted, presumably by a Chinese cyber attack of the disruption of service variety.

At the time, I speculated that China would seize upon TPUM to discredit the Tibetan emigre movement and attempt to place the Dalai Lama on a cleft stick by forcing him to disavow either non-violence or the demonstrators.

On March 18, I wrote:

Regardless of what the TPUM did ...and even if the TPUM just a collection of big-talk and little-action emigres, rest assured that the Chinese media will be happy to connect the TPUM dots as they see fit...

Sure as sunrise, the lead paragraph of an April 2 report on the official Chinese government website read:

China's Ministry of Public Security said on Tuesday that it had gathered sufficient evidence showing that March 14 riots in Lhasa was not isolated or accidental but was part of the "Tibetan People's Uprising Movement" plotted by the Dalai clique.

The report continued:

"The 'Tibetan People's Uprising Movement' plotted by the Dalai clique is intended to sabotage the peaceful, stable and unified social situation in China and use the Olympic Games to put pressure on the Chinese government, thus achieving their political aims," a spokesman with the Ministry of Public Security said.

"The word 'uprising' means to overthrow the present regime through armed force and violence. So I'm wondering, is there any country that allows such an 'uprising' against the central government? Is there any country that tolerates such activities wantonly instigating the subversion of a state regime?" he said.
...

Police officers have also found copies of a "Declaration of Tibetan People's Uprising Movement;" copies of the Dalai Lama's speech on March 10; pictures of the clique's members undertaking secessionist activities and computers used to contact officials of the clique's "government in exile" in the residence of a person who allegedly took place in the riots.

The suspect was arrested on March 15 of charges of accepting the clique's orders and undertaking secessionist activities, including beating, smashing, looting and arson, in Lhasa on March 14.

Xinhua reported additional allegations on April 2:

A large quantity of offensive weapons suspected to be used for riots were discovered in several Tibetan temples, China's Ministry of Public Security said here on Tuesday.

The public security authorities turned up 178 guns, 13,013 bullets, 359 swords, 3,504 kilograms of dynamite, 19,360 detonators and two hand grenades in the rooms of lamas in some temples in Tibet with the information from lamas and other people, said ministry spokesman Wu Heping.

He said that the Dalai Lama and his followers had recently planned and organized activities around the world to support "Tibet Independence", such as "Support Tibet" and "Global Action Day".

"Their next plan is to organize suicide squads to launch violent attacks, according to our investigation," Wu said, "They even claimed that they fear neither bloodshed nor sacrifice."
...
"We now have sufficient evidence to show the March 14 Lhasa violence was part of the 'Tibetan People's Uprising Movement', a scheme by the Dalai clique," he said. [emph. added]

China's play of the TPUM card did not provoke a flurry of reporting by Western journalists.

No mention of TPUM in the AP coverage of Wu Heping's press conference. Nothing in VOA. Nothing in CNN . Nothing in the IHT, which picked up the AP report. Zip in The Telegraph .

On the other hand, AFP mentioned TPUM, though it did present the existence of the group as an allegation by the Chinese Ministry of Public Security—not exactly a respected source.

There was an interesting glitch in the report by Reuters’ Chris Buckley, which did mention TPUM:

China's Ministry of Public Security said it had arrested "key members" of an underground network in Lhasa working in concert with overseas pro-Tibet independence groups to spark a "Tibet People's Uprising Movement."

The Chinese accusation is not that local and overseas groups are trying to “spark a 'Tibetan People's Uprising Movement'”. It's that the “Tibetan People's Uprising Movement”—of whose existence in Dharmsala there can be no doubt—is responsible for fomenting unrest inside the PRC—an extremely dangerous and somewhat plausible claim.

In the articles mentioning TPUM, there was plenty of aggrieved rebuttal from the Tibetan government-in-exile (and even Tom Casey of the State Department, who presumably knows zero about the issue) but, as far as I can tell, nobody said Hey, Tsewang Rigzin, he's that guy who's always sending tips to my Blackberry, he's with TPUM, let's get a quote from him!

Even though AP, Bloomberg, CNN, NPR, the Guardian, VOA, and Reuters and the London Times had all turned to Tsewang Rigzin for quotes on the Tibet unrest in his role as president of the Tibetan Youth Congress.

The difficulty of gaining traction in the Western press has not discouraged the Chinese on the TPUM issue.

The China Matters crystal ball was in good working order on March 18, when I wrote:

Don't be surprised if the Chinese invoke the Global War on Terror, that magic elixir of oppressive state power, to justify going after TPUM, Tibetan monks, and any other source of actual or potential resistance.

Sure enough, Chinese accusations subsequently extended to the Tibetan Youth Congress itself—the most logical dot to connect after TPUM.

To wrong-foot potential American and European sympathizers with Tibetan freedom fighters, the bogeyman du jour, international terrorism, was summoned:

From Xinhua on April 10.

The violent incident in Lhasa on March 14 -- including beating, smashing, looting and arson -- exposed the terrorist nature of "Tibetan Youth Congress" (TYC) as the direct planner of the riot. The crimes made the organization look like a kin member of Al-Qaida, Chechnyan armed terrorists and "East Turkistan" separatists.

Founded in 1970, the TYC advocates "complete independence of Tibet" and has fully integrated into the "Tibetan government-in-exile", entering the power core of the Dalai clique. It has long been involved in secessionist activities.

In February, the TYC held campaigns in Dharamsala to recruit participants for the "Tibetan People's Uprising Movement" and trained key members for the activity.

What makes the TYC a terrorist organization is not only what it has said but what it has done. Police in Lhasa seized more than 100 guns, tens of thousands of bullets, several thousand kilograms of explosives and tens of thousands of detonators, acting on reports from lamas and ordinary people.

These figures, in addition to the deaths of more than a dozen ordinary people in the Lhasa riot, show that the TYC is no different from Al-Qaida, Chechnyan armed terrorists, "East Turkistan" separatists and any other terrorist organization.

Under Chinese law, terrorist organizations are those which use violence to threaten national security, sabotage social stability, harm people and damage their property, those which have leaders and assigned missions, and those which have organized, planned, instigated, implemented or participated in terrorist activities, or are carrying out such activities.

Such groups also include those having built bases for terrorist activities, systematically recruited and trained terrorists, collaborated with international terrorist organizations to sponsor, train and cultivate terrorists, and have participated in terrorist activities.
Judging by these criteria, the TYC is a terrorist organization in a pure sense.

In case somebody didn't get the point, other articles on the Xinhua site declared:

“Tibetan Youth Congress” is pure terrorist organization

TYC common enemy to all human

TYC. a terror group worse than Bin Laden's

TPUM probably breathed a sigh of relief when high-profile actions against the Olympic flame relay provoked a blizzard of anti-Chinese press in the Western media and any chance of coverage of the Chinese allegations evaporated.

Nevertheless, the official Chinese media has persisted, albeit with the usual absence of international traction, in its efforts to make the Tibetan People's Uprising Movement the face of the Tibetan emigre movement.

After connecting the riots to TPUM and TPUM to the Tibetan Youth Congress, the next dot to be connected by the Chinese has been the Tibetan government in exile itself.

Most recently, a lengthy analysis of the “Current Conditions and Essential Character of the Dalai Lama Clique's Tibetan Government in Exile”
on page 4 of the April 27 domestic dead tree edition of People's Daily began:

An abundance of facts demonstrates that the March 14 riots in Lhasa were a major component of the “Tibetan People's Uprising Movement” of the Dalai Lama clique, and were carefully organized and planned.

The article winds selectively through the history of the Tibetan emigres to paint a picture of a theocratic government controlled by the Dalai Lama's family and dominated by pro-independence radicals, promoting their objectives through control of NGOs like the Tibetan Youth Congress and Tibetan Women's Association, and advancing the “Tibetan People's Uprising Movement” for the purpose of achieving Tibetan independence.

Of course, the objective of this over-the-top Chinese bluster is not to get favorable Western ink for their accusations. With the non-stop Chinese attacks on the accuracy of foreign coverage of the Tibetan disturbances, the hostility of the Western press on this issue is a foregone conclusion.

The purpose, as always, is to split the Tibetan emigre movement by creating a rift between the militants and the engagement-minded moderates around the Dalai Lama, so that the credibility and effectiveness of the Dalai Lama as a spokeman for the Tibetan community is undermined.

People's Daily's lengthy bill of indictment against the Tibetan government in exile didn't gain any foreign coverage to speak of, but an editorial on the same page did.

Entitled “Attempts to Split the Motherland Will Certainly Suffer Defeat”
, the brief editorial heaped scorn on “the Dalai Lama clique” for allegedly pursuing Tibetan independence under the guise of the “Middle Way” policy of Tibetan autonomy.

The coverage in the Western media was exemplified by the headline provided for Tania Branigan's article in the Guardian: China Ridicules Dalai Lama, despite ‘talks’ .

The Chinese media must be slapping its forehead in frustration at the gormless inability of capitalist correspondents to understand calibrated socialist invective and goal-post setting.

The editorial didn't attack the Dalai Lama personally; it attacked the “Dalai Lama clique”, meaning the stubbornly radical members of his family who serve in the government or as his advisors.

The Chinese government has not yet decided to connect the next available dot in the political chain it has constructed from the March 14 disturbances in Lhasa...the Dalai Lama himself.

The Chinese are offering the Dalai Lama the opportunity to disassociate himself from the independence movement, or even avail himself of the dubious privilege of implying he was personally held captive by the malign forces of the pro-independence clique.

You know, like the Manchu Last Emperor.

By the way, the Dalai Lama isn't the last possible dot. The ultimate accusation available to demonize and marginalize the Tibetan emigre movement would be that the United States and the UK used the Tibetan government in exile as their cat's paw to subvert China.

You know, like the Japanese with Manchukuo.

But that's a maybe for the future. Right now, the focus is on the Dalai Lama.

And the Chinese are signaling that, if and when any further meetings are held between the Chinese government and the Dalai Lama's envoy, the Dalai Lama will have to come up with a new formulation to replace the Middle Way—one that precludes demands for withdrawal of Chinese troops or asserts Tibet's right to handle some of its foreign relations directly--if he wants to pursue engagement with China.

The Chinese strategy of driving a wedge between the Dalai Lama and the militants can be seen from an April 11 report in Xinhua Chinese entitled:

United Front Department: the Door will be Forever Open for the Dalai Lama

The United Front Department is, of course, the Chinese department in charge of negotiations with non-sovereign political organizations.

The vice director of the department listed the extensive contacts between the Dalai Lama and the Chinese government; contacts that, to the most militant of emigres, will always carry the whiff of appeasement:

According the UFD, 20 visits have occurred since 1979, by the Dalai Lama's older brother, his second (younger brother), his brother-in-law, his younger sister, and other close associates, including(?) six visits from the Dalai Lama's personal representatives since 2002, featuring tours of the Tibetan Autonomous Region, Guangdong (to see the results of economic reform); and Yunnan and Guangxi (to see multi-ethnic polities).

The UFD declared that the door to dialogue with the Dalai Lama will “forever remain open” as long as the Dalai Lama renounces Taiwan independence, ceases “splittist” activities, openly acknowledges that Tibet as an inseparable part of China, and acknowledges that Taiwan is an inseparable part of China.

It is unlikely that the Dalai Lama will renounce the advocates of Tibetan independence.

But it is likely that he will have to deal with an awkward, open split within the emigre Tibetan community as a result of this year's unrest that calls his leadership and tactics into question.

The Dalai Lama has consistently labored to square the political circle between the militants and moderates, not abandoning his policy of engagement while not capitulating to the Chinese government.

Most recently, he endorsed China's hosting of the Olympic Games, in direct contradiction of the TPUM declaration, which demands “Cancel the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and never again consider China as a potential host country of the Olympic Games until Tibet is free.”

The Dalai Lama even offered to attend the games—while Western leaders are talking boycott—“under one condition, that is there must be a relaxation of suppression in Tibet...China must release all prisoners in Tibet and treat the injured.”

I hope the Dalai Lama gets tickets for the opening ceremony, but I'm not optimistic.

From the Chinese perspective, the Dalai Lama is unable to control and unwilling to renounce militants within the Tibetan community, which means an olive branch like this is being offered from a position of weakness and can be safely spurned.

It remains to be seen whether the Chinese government takes the politically inflammatory and diplomatically costly step of calling on the Indian government to dissolve the TPUM NGOs as terrorist organizations.

It's cruel to say it, but China may decide it's unnecessary. The TPUM NGOs may be more useful to the PRC if they survive as impotent scapegoats for Tibetan unrest inside China, and as a focus for polarization and division within the emigre movement.

TPUM's absence from international reporting may be a function of its true unimportance, the result of careless journalism, or a conscious refusal by reporters and editors to enable cynical Chinese propaganda and be party to the persecution of some very nice, noble people who also happen to be their sources.

But it doesn't really matter.

By now it's irrelevant if TPUM directed or encouraged or dropped plausible-deniable hints to monks inside Tibet to emerge from their monasteries for the March 10 demonstrations, or did absolutely nothing except make big, empty talk on its website and its videos for overseas consumption.

The Chinese government has the footage of the riots and they have people in detention whose confessions they can extract, coerce, or fabricate. They also have the documented professions of TPUM militancy, and the will to broadcast their allegatiions and connect the dots as they see fit.


Below is the transcript of the video appeal by TPUM.


Rev. Ngawang Woeber, President, GuChuSum Association of ex-Political Prisoners
Representing the five leading NGOs in Dharmsala, we're hereby launching the Tibetan People's Uprising Movement. Our goal is to bring together all Tibetans inside and outside Tibet before the Beijing Olympics begin. We will join a unified campaign to restore Tibetan freedom. This is an historic opportunity we can't afford to miss. This opportunity won't come again. Secondly, China's policies in Tibet are getting more destructive day by day. Chinese population transfer to Tibet has made matters even more urgent for us. Now it is time for Tibetans everywhere to rise up. In the spirit of the 1959 Tibetan national Uprising we must rise up and resist and bring about an even greater Uprising. An Uprising that will shake the Chinese government to its core. Those who can walk shall join the March to Tibet. Those with money shall support the movement. In short, whatever resources you have—skills, experience, wealth, courage—this is the time to bring it to the table and make a real impact on our struggle. We need everyone.

Mr. Tsewang Rigzin, President, Tibetan Youth Congress
50 years have passed since China invaded Tibet. In a few months the Olympics will be held in China. In our struggle for independence, culture, and religion, there has never been a better opportunity. So I request each and every one of us to take action and fulfill our duty to the six million Tibetans.

Mr. Tenzin Choeying, President, Students for a Free Tibet, India (in English)
This is a message to all Tibetans and non-Tibetans, Tibetan supporters...This is a request from us, here, in India that this is a crucial period, a crucial year for us in our cause to struggle in a year-long campaign. For us from India, we will be organizing a march back to Tibet and we hope that every Tibetan and Tibetan supporter join us in our campaign and also with that, along with that, the Chinese are organizing the torch relay as well as doing the games also, we request every people [who] support us to do whatever they can.

Ms. B. Tsering, President, Tibetan Women's Association
The time has come for all Tibetans to unite and rise up and join the Tibetan People's Uprising Movement. Every Tibetan on the face of the earth, every Tibetan organization, and every Tibet Support Group must join forces. This initiative is being launched by the coalition of five organizations, but it is a people's movement, a people's uprising, so only the full involvement of the Tibetan people can make this movement successful.

Mr. Chemi Youngdrung, President, National Democratic Party of Tibet
In the history of nations, there are critical junctures and watershed moments. Those who siezed these moments have achieved victories and changed the course of history. Today, we Tibetans are at a crossroads. And we must seize this moment. In March 1959 Tibetans all over Tibet rose up against Chinese invasion. In the same spirit of resistance, let us rise up again and make this Uprising event a watershed event in our struggle. Let's be Tibetan. Let's be proud. Let's work together. Let's achieve victory. Let's change the course of Tibetan history. RISE UP!!!

Endtitle:

RISE UP. RESIST. RETURN.

Tibet will be free.