Chinese Premier Li Keqiang speaks at the news conference following the closing session of the National People's Congress (NPC), at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, on 20 March 2018. File photo/Reuters/Jason Lee
By Ben Blanchard
BEIJING, China, 31 July 2018
Tibet is an inseparable part of China’s “sacred” territory, and religious figures should promote national unity and ethnic harmony, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said during a rare visit to a region that is a focus for international rights concerns.
Chinese troops marched into Tibet in 1950 in what China officially terms a peaceful liberation, and has ruled it with an iron fist even since.
It is one of Beijing’s most sensitive territorial issues, and has been hit by repeated anti-Chinese protests, although the region has fairly been quiet since the last large-scale demonstrations in 2008.
China routinely denies charges from rights groups and exiles of repression and says its rule ended serfdom and brought prosperity to what was a backward region, and that it fully respects the rights of the Tibetan people.
Li, who visited Tibet from 25 to 27 July, went to two major sites connected to Tibetan Buddhism, state news agency Xinhua said late on Saturday.
At the Jokhang Temple, which was damaged by a fire in February, Li inspected a monument dating back to the eighth century which marks an alliance between Tibet and the Tang Dynasty, Xinhua said.
“Since ancient times Tibet has been an inseparable part of the sacred territory of the motherland,” the report cited Li as saying in front of the monument.
Li said he hoped religious figures can protect national unity and make contributions to ethnic harmony, he added.
The report made no mention of the fire.
Li also went to the Potala Palace, like the Jokhang Temple a UNESCO World Heritage Site, once home to the Dalai Lama.
The current Dalai Lama, the highest figure in Tibetan Buddhism, fled into exile to India in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule.
China accuses him of being a dangerous separatist, though he says he only seeks genuine autonomy for Tibet. He remains widely revered in all Tibetan parts of China.
Li said he hoped Tibet can safeguard national unity and maintain lasting peace and stability, Xinhua added.
Senior state leaders only rarely visit Tibet, due to security and climatic considerations, as Tibet sits high above sea level and has thin air.
Rights groups says the situation for ethnic Tibetans inside what China calls the Tibet Autonomous Region remains extremely difficult.
Last week, US Vice President Mike Pence said Tibet’s people “have been brutally repressed by the Chinese government”.
In June, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said conditions were “fast deteriorating” in Tibet.
The Chinese communists treated religious figures as their Number One enemy. Their prime target during the invasion was to annahilate the religious leaders of Tibet. They carried out a wholesale destruction of the ancient monasteries of Tibet and plundered the wealth which was accumulated during many centuries. The Lama’s were called “yellow robbers” and the monks were called “red thieves”. Thousands were murdered mercilessly for alleged “crimes” against the proletarians. They were haunted out of the monasteries and forced to disrobe against their will. Monasteries were ransacked and the monks and nuns bludgeoned to death by the red guards in their anti-religious fanatism. Today, the evil CCP knows it has failed to win the hearts and minds of the Tibetan people even after six decades of brutal tyranny and unthinkable cruelty. They are now asking the Lamas to help them to toe the CCP line in order to rule Tibet. The brutality and the cruelty continues unabated but knowing that they are failing in their effort to subdue the Tibetan people by violent force, they are once again pealing the very forces they sort to wipe out for help. This demonstrates the utter failure of the evil CCP’s inhuman occupation of Tibet. Tibetans of all works, of all places where ever they are living that the CCP will never ever reconcile with the Tibetans and will continue to bulldoze the aspirations of the Tibetan people. No Tibetan worth his or her worth should ever collude, or conspire with the mortal enemy. They should be under know illusion that if they collude with the evil CCP, they will be paid in kind like their treatment of all those Tibetans who for good or worse sought to collaborate with the enemy and in the end saw themselves target in the most ruthless manner.
hello chewang,
everybody knows Tibet was sort of illegally captured by china.
But now it is about power. it is not about justice or truth. we know it is about power. i have been bullied at school even when i had truth because bigger boys had Power.
So, Tibetans are obcessed about showing how tibet was independent. but the issue is – how to get dalai lama back to tibet, and get a bit more right in tibet.
I thought the oft repeated CCP line was “Tibet is an inseparable(inalienable) part of China” I guess only now beginning to realize that Tibet is a sacred land. The nature of the occupiers connection to the land is economic and the connection that Tibetans have for their land is sacred. Tibetans would never subject their land to such environmental destruction. All nature is alive and living including the trees, rivers, hills and mountains etc. We are inevitable harming ourselves.
Tibet is:
1. Part of China since ancient times.
2. Making great socio-economic strides thanks to China freeing Tibet from hundreds of years of feudal serfdom.
If 1 were true, then wouldn’t Tibet have always enjoyed the wonderful freedoms of economic progress thanks to China’s help? If it was part of China, those centuries, too, would be China’s responsibility. But then clearly China failed according to China herself… Doesn’t anyone see the contradiction in these public positions on the Tibet issue that China makes day after day as if they meant anything?
“religious figures should promote national unity and ethnic harmony, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang”…
They are saying Dalai Lama needs to say Tibet is part of China if he wants to return to Tibet. That’s why Li is goofing around in Lhasa.
Just like the Chinese, we Tibetans are also proud of our land and heritage left to us by our ancestors. In the past Tibetan ancestry on the Tibet plateau could be traced to about 16,000 years.
Today that’s no longer the case, as evidenced by recent study of Scientific American that new genomic analyses by Chinese scientists that Tibetans had existed on the plateau in the middle of the last ice age, 64,000 years ago. As such, it’s reasonable to assume that Tibetan race had preceded the Chinese since human migration had headed from the west to east to China.
It’s also an irrefutable fact that throughout our history, China had always been our alien neighbor. Historically, there was no such thing as border conflict between India and China since sovereign Tibet was the buffer between the two most populous countries. Annexation of Tibet by China in the middle of the 20th century changed the equation.
If Mr. Li Keqiang is not cognizant of these revelations it’s fully understandable since he majored in law and has a PhD in economics, and genomic analysis can’t be his cup of tea.