China Watch: SUPPRESSION OF MONKS IN SICHUAN

by B.RAMAN

Reports received from the Sichuan province of China speak of the arrest of about 300 Buddhist monks belonging to the Kirti monastery in the Ngaba Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of the province for protesting against forcible re-education classes organized by the Chinese Ministry of Public Security, China ’s internal intelligence agency, for the monks in the monastery.

2. The re-education classes were organized by the Ministry of Public Security following the self-immolation of a monk on March 17,2001, to protest against the Chinese colonization of the Tibetan areas. Before committing self-immolation, the monk reportedly shouted slogans in praise of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and called for the return of His Holiness to Tibet .

3. Thereafter, Chinese police and para-military forces occupied the monastery, seized and destroyed any literature praising His Holiness and pictures of His Holiness. They also forced the inmates of the monastery to attend re-education classes during which they were asked to shout slogans condemning His Holiness and praising the Communist Party of China.

4. On April 21,2011, the Ministry of Public Security officials arrested about 300 protesting monks and forcibly removed them in police vehicles to camps set up in the nearby counties of Wenchuan,Mao and LI which the Tibetans call Lunggu, Maowun and Tashiling respectively. When the local residents heard of the arrest and removal of the monks to detention camps, some of them protested and tried to prevent their forcible removal. Two elderly local residents were reportedly killed when the police and para-military forces used force to disperse them.

5. The Chinese also arrested 200 local residents for trying to prevent the arrest and removal of the monks and shifted them to a military camp. Many of them have since been released, but the younger elements have been detained. The Chinese seem to be worried about the likely reaction of the Tibetan youth to the developments and they are being kept under close watch.

6. Meanwhile, in a letter dated April 14,2001, addressed to the UN Secretary-General, Mr.Ban Ki-Moon, Tibet ’s exile parliament has drawn the attention of the UN to “the deteriorating human rights situation in Tibet .” The letter said: “The security, dignity and human rights of over 2,500 monks of Kirti monastery, one of Tibet ’s most important monasteries, stand critically threatened.” The U.S. State Department has said that it had raised the issue of the Kirti developments with Chinese officials. Mark Toner, a spokesman of the Department, said: “ China ’s actions are inconsistent with internationally recognized principles of religious freedom and human rights We continue to monitor the situation closely and are obviously concerned by it.”

7.The monastery normally has about 2500 monks. About 300 of them, who are looked upon by the Chinese as the ringleaders of the protest movement, have been forcibly removed by the Chinese to detention camps. About 200 are reported to have escaped from the monastery and taken shelter in the adjoining villages of Tibetan herdsmen. About 2000 monks are reported to be still in the monastery. Reliable source reports say that they are facing acute food shortage since the Chinese have curtailed the supply of food articles to the monastery in an attempt to force the monks still in the monastery to attend re-education classes and condemn His Holiness.

8. Following the attempt of some local residents to prevent the arrest and removal of 300 monks, the Chinese have also started re-education classes for the local residents, most of whom are herdsmen. (25-4-11)

(Bahukutumbi Raman is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi , and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com)
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My comment: We, here in America, too are running re-education camps under the guise of ‘education’ (our schools and universities). Only Marxist ideology is approved of and validated by academe. As reprehensible as all this is, there is one key difference between what we and the PLA are doing. In the case of China, they are doing it to shore up their defenses against the upheavals that can be expected in the wake of America's ultimate undoing - which to many now seems certain - while we are effectively applauding our own demise.

Inappropriate

I, for one, am getting pretty sick of this story. We just keep going round and round like perpetual motion machines. The Left thinks it has something here when it doesn’t. It keeps trying to punch the square peg into the round hole. It’s really quite pathetic to watch.

What strikes me about Jared’s video is how nice the campus looks. It must have cost taxpayers quite a bundle to build. A virtual palace of learning.

Reminds of American colleges and universities building campuses in India for whatever reason - exporting liberalism, I suppose.

Reminds also of India’s project to re-build Nalanda University, a Buddhist center of learning from 427 to 1197 CE and one of the first great universities in recorded history. Nalanda was sacked by Turkic Muslims invaders in 1193, a milestone in the decline of Buddhism in India. The great library of Nalanda was so vast, it is reported to have burned three months after the Moguls set fire to it. The restoration of Nalanda was approved by the Indian government in 2010. It was meant to be a project in which all Asia was to participate. China balked at the proposed involvement of the Dalai Lama in the planning. Singapore supported China’s stance. India capitulated and thus another noble experiment in education fell victim to politics and was thereby diminished.

It’s not difficult to imagine what was being taught at his community college. It’s the same liberal claptrap that’s being taught throughout America. Witness the raucous - and some say, ‘inappropriate’ - reaction to Obama’s ’memorial’ appearance at the McKale Memorial Center on the campus of the University of Arizona in Tucson.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

The Next Big Thing

Who won the Second World War? He who has the last laugh, of course! And I don't see too many people laughing.

I think humanity in general has pretty much given up on the idea of saving itself. In response, it has embarked on the quest of finding a savior from within the realm of the divine. Many divinities have been approached. Some have refused; some have been ignored; many others have been crucified before they could prove anything.

Krishnamurti did not believe he was the Second Coming of Christ; or if he believed it, he felt himself unprepared. I forget why Valentin Arnoldevitch Tomberg never became universally recognized as the implacable incarnation of the present Bodhisattva as some, including Dr. Robert A. Powell of the Sophia Foundation, believed he was. And then there is the ongoing scramble within China itself about who would replace the current Dali Lama after His Holiness joyously accepts his final release.

Some stand upright in their boots, shivering with fright. Some believe chaos is the ultimate sacrifice that the Redeemer demands; that unrestrained bloodletting will flush the 12th Mahdi out of his well.

All have found religion. All are seeking redemption, each in his or her own way; hastened, perhaps by the earth’s own spit, shake, and bluster as she opens her thighs in preparation for the next big thing.

Flowers: Back Street Girl

Reflections on the Dalai Lama's visit to the White House (entering and leaving by the backdoor):

There are those who wonder whether or not there will be repercussions from this little courtesy call. China is losing face. China does not like losing face. In Asia, losing face is everything. China will retaliate.

It does not matter that the Dalai Lama was asked to enter and leave by the back door where the garbage is put out. China will retaliate. China can retaliate. With a mere whisper they can send our economy into a tailspin from which it can never recover.

That’s playing pretty fast and loose for this POTUS person; pretty bold move on his part. Why? We know, given his history and associations, that he cares nothing about ‘freedom of thought’ going anywhere. Just today it has become clear that Barack Hussein Obama does not give a tinker’s cuss about what Americans think. He plans on ramming his health care package down our throats anyway. We know that he never loses even a wink of sleep thinking about the long-suffering inmates of the gulag known as ‘Iran’. We can well imagine that one such as he cannot even find Tibet on a political map.

Why, then, this gesture, half-hearted as it is? Perhaps it is to provoke China into responding. Perhaps America’s economic collapse is his goal after all. Perhaps he envisions himself as the man who cleansed the world of its most despicable evil: the dollar, America’s single most powerful tool of oppression. Perhaps he wonders why it hasn’t happened already. God knows he’s tried harder than any man to send it over the edge. Maybe he thinks with a little spiritual help from the Dalai Lama he’ll be able to get it done.

It’s odd to think that the Dalai Lama is consenting to being used in this way; odd to think that he’s unaware of his potential role in a saga in which so many will be hurt.

Curtain of Deceit

Only persons with no stake in this earthly existence can in clear conscience fail to appreciate the difference between a (mental patient) suicide bomber and a Dalai Lama or Pope who are more than willing to offer their good offices in an effort to ease religious tensions around the world.

Whether one wants to believe it or not, there really are those in whose interest it is to actively promote strife. In religious terms they could be classified as demonic or evil. Some sell arms; some direct armies; others are in the throes of some version of a death wish. Many, if not most, carry U.S passports.

They all profit hugely from war (or the threat of it), funded by Marxist sycophants whose manifesto clearly advocates and glorifies constant revolution and bloodletting with the same zeal with which some of us are asked to advocate and glorify the sacrament of abortion.

The end of armed struggle would put them all out of business. While politicians sit on their fences, counting their campaign donations, the hate merchants’ influence, regrettably, grows stronger every day. Already, it has acquired sufficient clout to overrule any chance for peace that a clear majority, living in any one of the various global trouble spots, might dare to hope for.

The day will come when Obama’s name will be synonymous with Mao, Pot, Stalin, Castro or anyone else on the left side of the ledger you care to mention, for the pendulum is bound to swing back. On that day Tibet will be free, as will the good people of N. Korea and Iran… for tyranny can never be more than transient.

Marxism and religion are diametrically opposed as religion consistently and paradoxically imbues the weakest link – children and the aged – with (divine) power, while shunning coercion that benefits only the few who manage to hide the stain of corruption behind a curtain of deceit.