Tibetan Student Wins International Poetry Prize In Italy

Tibetan Student Wins International Poetry Prize In Italy

Phayul[Wednesday, March 24, 2010 11:11]

By Chime Tenzing Dharamsala, March, 24th - Palden Gyal, a Tibetan student who is currently pursuing his International Baccalaureate programme at the Norway United World College, recently bagged third prize in the sixth edition of the International Poetry Competition held in Duino in Italy. His poem ‘RANGZEN’ was chosen among 1000 entries from participants from over 90 different countries. The first prize was bagged by a participant from Cameroon and second by an Italian. The Festival and award ceremony was held from 19 to 21 March in the Italian town of Duino and was attended by guests and participants from 15 different countries. The best poems and the poetry sessions would be compiled into books and DVDs by September and the winning team will reunite in Italy during the launch. Prof. Gabriella Valera Gruber, President of the Association Poesia e Solidarietà (Poetry and Solidarity) Trieste www.poesiaesolidarieta.it, says, “This poetry Competition is the most important international competition in the world for young people. We received poems from 90 countries and evaluated them in their original languages. The Palden's poem has been selected among 1000 poems.” Poetry and Solidarity Association which organized the Poetry Festival was established on July 5, 2006. Every year they organize international poetry festivals to select the best budding poets from among different nations around the globe. The past winning poems are published on its website www.castellodiduinopoesia.it Palden Gyal was born in Tibet and later studied at the Tibetan Children’s Village school at Dharamsala. After completing his matriculation he had received a full scholarship to pursue International Baccalaureate Diploma (IB) at Red Cross Nordic United World College in Norway which is jointly financed by the governments of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finaland and Iceland. Palden blogs at www.paldengyal.co.nr

Beijing trying to demonize Dalai Lama'

TNN[Monday, March 22, 2010 15:29] Gautam Siddharth NEW DELHI: As the Dalai Lama rose to speak at the IIC's fountain lawn on the occasion of 'Fifty Years of Tibetans in Exile' on Sunday afternoon, Maura Moynihan, the daughter of former US ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan, turned aside to say, ''India is trying to distance itself from the Dalai Lama. This is not how Communist China — and I don't mean the Chinese people — can be countered.'' His Holiness the Dalai Lama delivers a talk on "India's Spiritual and Cultural Contribution to World Peace and Harmony" to the members of the Association of Indian Diplomats at the Vivekananda Foundation in New Delhi on March 20th, 2010. (Photo: OHHDL) Maura is a Buddhist and her affair with India began during 1973-75 when ambassador Moynihan — four-time Democrat senator from New York between 1976-94 — was posted here. Maura runs the Rubin Museum of Art in New York and, over the years, has become a passionate advocate of 'Free Tibet'. Rangzen, or 'Free tibet', was a sentiment nearly everybody else among the 1,000-odd people gathered under the white shamiana flagged with red, blue and yellow 'chortens' shared, including the stand-in compere for the inter-faith service, Rajiv Mehrotra. He concluded his moderation with, ''Wish the Dalai Lama a quick farewell to Tibet.'' But farewell was not on his mind when the spiritual leader of six million Tibetans spoke. For, what seemed to animate him was the future of Tibetans in exile — nearly 145,000 of them who completed 50 years of living out of their homeland. With a rare glint of urgency in his eyes, he said, ''Many of young Tibetans here have only heard about Tibet. You must remain Tibetan in spirit. Keep the Tibetan values intact along with modern education and skills.'' In a tribute to his followers back home, he said, ''Tourists visiting Tibet find that Tibetans live there as victims, but they are still smiling. And the Han people, who are the rulers there, are less smiling.'' India's tolerance was underlined by Rabi Ezekiel, who said, ''The Jews have lived in India for 2,000 years and never faced persecution.'' Is Maura hopeful of the Dalai Lama's return to Lhasa? ''The Chinese fear somone like him. Beijing clings to an obsolete worldview that demonises Dalai Lama instead of engaging the statesman in dialogue on Tibet and China's future,'' she says.

Tibet’s Rivers Strangled by Dams

Tibet’s Rivers Strangled by Dams

Epoch Times[Monday, March 22, 2010 13:43]

By James Burke "If you want to kill a river, building dams is the best way to do it," says Canadian documentary maker Michael Buckley. (Liu Jin/AFP/Getty Images) BANGKOK: Canadian documentary maker Michael Buckley’s undercover bid to investigate the Tibet-China railway line was sidetracked when he discovered Tibet’s river systems were being strangled by large scale dam construction. “I have been back and forth to Tibet a number of times and I never noticed the dams were there—but they are hidden, they are down gorges that you cannot see from the road,” Buckley told press after the screening his documentary film “Meltdown in Tibet,” in Bangkok. Having teamed up with a group of tourists kayaking through Tibetan rivers in 2005, Buckley came across newly constructed dams built to divert water and hydro energy to China. “So the only people [Westerners] who know about them are kayakers because they have come across them—they go down the river and all of a sudden there is a huge dam,” he said. “If you want to kill a river, building dams is the best way to do it,” said Buckley. Among the rivers originating from Tibet that he investigated for his 40 minute documentary was the Salween River, which also flows through China, Burma, and Thailand and empties into the Andaman Sea. “The river is known as Gyalmo Ngulchu in Tibetan— roughly translating as “The Queen of Silver Water,” explained the film’s narration. “Despite widespread protest from within China and from neighboring countries in Asia, Chinese engineers are forging ahead with plans for a cascade of 13 large dams on the Salween. Several dams are already under construction—one the height of a 60-story building.” Buckley also investigated a river known to the Tibetans as the Dri Chu, or Yak River, which becomes the Yangtze—one of China’s most famous rivers—a river which, along with the Yellow River, now fails to reach the sea. “In the upper reaches of the Yangtse River—at the edges of the Tibetan plateau—there are three more large dams under construction, and five more in the planning stages,” said his film. Altogether his research found that 31 large dams are scheduled to be built in the Three Parallel Rivers region, which includes the Upper Yangtze, Upper Mekong, and Salween rivers. Mao’s Dictum Buckley made the point that 60 percent of the Chinese communist leadership (including current head Hu Jintao) have an engineering background and many have vested interests in damming companies and the financing of international damming projects. A 2006 photo of a Tibetan working with her yaks to plough a field. The Tibetan nomads would cultivate their autumn field area which sits at an altitude of 3,800 meters. However the Chinese communist authorities ruling Tibet have decreed that all Tibetan nomads be moved off the grasslands and permanently resettled in relocation centers. Beijing has set a deadline of 2011 to have this done by. (China Photos/Getty Images) While China is the world’s most prolific dam builder, he said, the communist authorities do very little in the way of environmental impact assessments in their planning. “In the 1950s, Mao’s dictum was that humans can conquer nature and he did some very bizarre projects, which tried to prove that you could take on nature and win and in a lot of cases they lost,” Buckley said. “The Mao dictum is still around today—that the Chinese can take on nature and win. That has been permeating the Chinese mentality for the last 50 years.” China’s own river system, he said, has been so devastated by uncontrolled industrialization that it has resulted in 70 percent of the nation’s water supply being undrinkable and unable to support aquatic life. “The rivers are dead. … They are not trying to fix their rivers. Their solutions are ‘Let’s take the water from Tibet’,” he said. The diversion of water from the Tibetan highlands to parts of northern China, Buckley discovered, is done via a vast network of concrete conduits and there are plans to do more. “China’s grand pipe-dream is to divert abundant water from the Tibetan highlands to reach water-starved cities of the north and west of China, which have around 300 million people,” stated his film. “A diversion project of this scale enters a realm beyond anything ever attempted in water engineering.” The electricity produced via the hydro dams in Tibet he added is not for Tibetans but for Chinese industry. Downstream The Dza Chu, or Mekong River, begins its life in the mountains of Tibet and it becomes, as his film describes, “a roaring torrent as it swirls through deep gorges, dropping an astonishing 4,500 meters [14,800 feet] in elevation through Tibet and China, over a distance of 1,800 km [1,118 miles]—before turning tamer in Laos.” Chinese damming efforts on the Upper Mekong, Buckley said have dramatically altered the flow of the river affecting those nations further downstream—Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam. Environmental groups outside of China have been vocal in blaming four Chinese mega dams in the Upper Mekong for being the main reason why the famous river’s level has dropped to a 50-year low. The most recent of these dams to come into operation—the Xiaowan Dam—is the second largest of China’s hydroelectric power station after the Three Gorges Dam. Beijing has soundly rejected the claims and blames drought for the water level drop, and has denied outside parties from accessing its records on how much water the damn holds. Tibetan Nomads While much of Buckley’s documentary focuses on the affects of Chinese dam-building, it was also concerned about the plight of the Tibetan nomads. “I am doing this to counter the propaganda view that ‘they [the Chinese Communist Party[ are into conservation’, which is ludicrous. They say they are moving the nomads off the grasslands because they want to conserve the grasslands and they are getting away with it,” Buckley said. A lot these areas, which were inhabited by Tibetan nomads and their herds of yaks, have been declared national parks by Chinese authorities, he stated. “It is just a cover. They don’t want people living there. The nomads are being taken off their land so as to make way for hydro projects and mining ventures,” he said. Rivers, like other natural features such as lakes and mountains, are considered sacred by the Tibetan people his documentary explained. “Socialist paradise TV programs harp on how ‘life of the nomads has been greatly improved’ and how the rail link will greatly benefit the lives of Tibetans. [On TV] there were singing nomads coming out right, left, and centre but the nomads are not singing, they are not happy, they are in concrete [relocation] camps,” he said. “The nomads are the forgotten people of Tibet. No one is standing up for them, they are being wiped out and they will just disappear and no one is doing anything to stop that so it is a tragic situation.” Since filming in 2005, he said the situation inside Tibet has gotten worse. He said that most of those involved in the film did want not their identities revealed for fear of repercussions from Chinese authorities. More information about the documentary is available at: www.meltdownintibet.com

Firings Over School Protests

RFA[Saturday, March 20, 2010 11:57]

Teachers lose their jobs following Tibetan student demonstrations against Chinese rule. The gates of the Tibetan Middle School in Machu county, shown in an undated photo. Photo courtesy - Dolkar Kyab KATHMANDU — The Tibetan headmaster of a middle school in China’s Gansu province has been fired, together with his assistants and the head of the county Public Security Bureau, following student protests at the school, according to Tibetan sources. Students at the school remain confined to school grounds, sources said. “The school is surrounded by armed security forces, and all the students are locked inside the campus,” a Tibetan resident of the area said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “They are not allowed to move in and out. Tension is extremely high in the Machu county area,” the man said. The man’s account could not be independently confirmed, and a Machu [in Chinese, Maqu] county government official, reached for comment, denied knowledge of the events before hanging up. Dozens of students at the Tibetan Middle School in Machu staged a protest March 14 on the second anniversary of a region-wide uprising against Chinese rule in Tibetan-populated areas of western China. “[They] were joined by 500 to 600 other Tibetans,” a local resident said. “They were shouting against their lack of freedom, and were calling for Tibetan independence,” the source said. Teachers fired Following the protest, the school’s headmaster, Kyabchen Dedrol, and two assistants—Do Re and another man, unnamed—were dismissed from their jobs, a source said. “[The Chinese authorities] also relieved Sonam Tse, head of the Machu Public Security Office, of his title. It is feared that another seven or eight teachers from the Machu Tibetan Middle School will also lose their jobs,” the man said. The head of the Machu Education Department, with direct responsibility for the middle school, has been allowed to keep his job, though, a source in Machu said. “Local Tibetans suspect that he was spared because of his Han ethnicity,” the source said. Academic instruction at the Machu Tibetan Middle School will be suspended for a month so that the students detained there can be “given political re-education,” Dolkar Kyab, a former Machu resident now living in Dharamsala, India, said, citing sources in the area. Other protests On March 16, students at a second school, Kanlho Tibetan Middle School No. 3, also protested, but were stopped from leaving school grounds by school security officials and teachers. Students at another school, the Kanlho Prefecture Middle School, managed to leave school grounds, though, and gathered in the street, a resident of Sangchu [in Chinese, Xiahe] county in Gansu province said, also on condition of anonymity. “Police and armed PAP [People’s Armed Police] surrounded the students and forced them back into the school compound. About 20 students were detained and were later released after being interrogated,” the source said. Students and teachers at the school are still being questioned, he said, adding, “The increased presence of Chinese forces is causing tension and fear in the area.” Meanwhile, at Ditsa monastery in Malho [in Chinese, Huangnan] prefecture in Qinghai province, posters were put up on March 14 calling for freedom for Tibet and for the long life of Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama. “Soon after the posters appeared, local police and the PAP arrived in the area, tightened security, and took away two monks—Jamyang, 19, and Yeshe, 20,” a local resident said, confirming an account from another source with contacts in the region. The monks’ teacher, Tulku Woeser, and three of his attendants were also detained, he said. “Tulku Woeser was released after three days of detention and interrogation,” the source added. “He was released because of his bad health.”

China tightens security ahead of Tibet anniversary

DPA[Tuesday, March 09, 2010 23:17]

Beijing - China has tightened security in its Tibet Autonomous Region ahead of Wednesday's anniversary of a Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule, reports said. "In recent days, there are police officers on the street 24 hours and the police will check everyone from outside Tibet," a receptionist at the Xueyu Hotel in the regional capital Lhasa told the German Press Agency dpa by telephone. "If you want to travel here, you'd better come after March," he said. March 10 marks the 51st anniversary of an unsuccessful Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule. It is also the second anniversary of a memorial protest that escalated into ethnic violence and rioting in Lhasa. The official Xinhua news agency quoted Ma Jun, Lhasa's deputy police chief, as saying on Tuesday that extra police patrols were deployed ahead of the anniversary to "prevent crime and maintain social stability." The Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet quoted sources in Nepal as saying the main border crossing between Tibet and Nepal was "effectively closed in the lead-up to the anniversary." Flights between Kathmandu and Lhasa were suspended from Friday. Nepalese travel agents said tourists may not be able to enter the Tibet Autonomous Region from Kathmandu until "several days after March 10," the group reported. A Chinese government website said police in Lhasa had questioned 435 criminal suspects during a "Strike Hard" campaign in the city in late February and early March. The report did not say if any of those questioned were suspected of involvement in political activities, but it said police detained seven people on suspicion of involvement apparently non-political criminal activities. As part of the crackdown, more than 1,500 police and security guards checked 4,115 rented rooms in the city and questioned 7,374 migrants on the evening of March 2, the regional government reported on its website www.tibet.gov.cn. Police and firemen also checked 178 hotels, 21 internet cafes, dozens of entertainment centres, several banks, petrol stations and other buildings in Lhasa, the report said. Authorities confiscated 348 firearms and 6,225 bullets in the operation, it said without giving details. The India-based Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy said authorities had restricted the movement of many monks at three of Lhasa's biggest monasteries. The city government set up a "Lhasa Neighbourhood Committee" of volunteers charged with helping to "maintain social order" during the anniversary, the centre reported. The 2008 protests in Lhasa grew into widespread demonstrations against Chinese rule in many Tibetan areas of China over the following weeks. The government said clashes in Lhasa left 18 people dead and hundreds injured, while Tibetan exile groups put the death toll as high as 200 and said many protestors were shot dead by police. Since the protests, the government has turned away journalists from Tibetan areas, limited access by foreign tourists and suspended communications in some places. In January, leaders of China's ruling Communist Party outlined a 10-year economic and social development plan for Tibetan areas, which critics say will only consolidate Chinese control.