By Tsering Dhundup
DHARAMSHALA, Feb 21: A new video has surfaced showing the Chinese government’s plan to forcefully relocate thousands of local Tibetans from their ancestral lands to build a hydroelectric dam in the Kham Dege region along the Yangtze River. The video, recorded on February 20, showed monks and laypeople from Derge, kneeling before local Chinese officials and requesting them to halt the relocation of villages and monasteries.
The Chinese government has recently ordered local Tibetans residing along the Yangtze River in China’s demarcated Dege County within Kardze prefecture, as well as in Jomda within the eastern Chamdo prefecture of the so-called Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR), to vacate their homes to make way for the construction of a hydroelectric dam project.
On February 14, 2024, hundreds of people from six monasteries and about 25 villages immediately staged a major protest, shouting slogans against the government’s eviction plan. The local Tibetans implored the authorities to halt the project immediately.
This is not the first time that such an incident has occurred. In 2016, a public notice was issued in Yenmon township of Dechen County, Yunnan province, instructing Tibetans to relocate. Around 200 households were asked to move to make way for a dam construction project on the Dzachu (Mekong/Lancang River) which is located near the township.
In another case in Dechen County, a village named Huafengping witnessed a similar situation. The Tibetan villagers received a public notice regarding their relocation, which they contested, asserting that local authorities hadn’t sought their consent before implementing the plan. In response, the villagers submitted a petition, demanding that local authorities arrange meetings to discuss compensation, housing, and livelihood concerns linked to the relocation plan.
One Response
The brutally of the CCP is well known. It has killed 80 million people including Tibetans under its illegal occupation. It’s a blood thirsty death squad that masquerades as a “Party”. It treats its subjects only as tools to prop up the CCP mafia and has no respect for the people, their well-being, aspirations or happiness. It came into being through mass murder in the name of revolution. It used deception and ruthless persecution to survive numerous attempts to destroy it right from 1959. It claimed the every stretch of land of China and other occupied territories like Tibet and gave itself unbridled power. It deceived people during the anti- rightest campaign in 1958, by soliciting criticism of the party. Many well meaning people especially educated people like students and teachers responded with enthusiasm but it was in fact a ruse to catch those who held different views or criticised the party. They were all purged by exiling them to remote countryside or killed. During the Great famine of 1959, it deceived the people by claiming record yield of crops which were outright falsifications to hoodwink the population who were starving to death in the millions. “Trees were stripped of barks and wild vegetables picked clean from fields”. People began to see cannibalism! All the grains that grew on the land were taken by the communist officials while the common people starved to death. A Tibetan prisoner of the era told me, many Tibetans died because of starvation. Out of 300 prisoners in the Kongpo region, only 20 survived! They admitted to cannibalism because they were given only subsistence ration. When their colleagues died, they were made to bury them but they had no strength to dig deep in the ground to bury the whole body. Often, the legs or feet would stand out half buried. The wolves would dig them in the night to help themselves. When the Tibetan prisoners arrived at the spot early morning, they helped themselves from the left over of the wild animals! They had to be discreet because the CCP officials riled at such acts as bringing shame on the CCP!!! During these terrible times in communist China and occupied Tibet, those who were exiled in the countryside in the anti-rightest campaign understood that the CCP was not for a socialist utopia as they claimed but a highly controlled totalitarian state! Young educated people who fell foul of the CCP hierarchy were disillusioned and planned to overthrow the regime. Apparently, it was not only the educated class who were baying for the blood of the CCP but one of China’s most decorated military leader, Peng Dehuai was also equally disillusioned and challenged Mao!!! Unfortunately, Peng was crushed by Mao! Those who rebelled against the CCP met with horrific consequences. One such unfortunate individual was a luminary on Chinese literature who wrote a letter to the Party’s journal Red Flag recounting the horrors of the Great Famine. “They hung buckets of faeces and urine from his neck until the bucket’s metal handles bit into his neck and he fainted”. He was handcuffed so tightly, blood circulation stopped and his hands rotted away! Tibet’s 10th Panchen Lama experienced the same horrific treatment for writing a 70 character letter to Mao about the conditions in Tibet and Chinese mistreatment of Tibetans! He was jailed for eight years and forced to eat human faeces!!! This is how the CCP terrorises its citizens and rules by fear and intimidation. During the three years of covid lockdown, every Chinese, Tibetan, East Turkic people and Mongolians were treated like animals. They were forcibly taken to places where there was no accomodation, no food, no medicine and the places were dirty and devoid of any hygiene. People were locked inside their homes for months with padlocks from outside!
Many Chinese leaving China today are in fact escaping the tyranny of the CCP and hoping for a country where there is freedom and a better life. In occupied Tibet the CCP tore down some 70 feet giant Buddha in Drago region of Kham even though they received permission to install the imposing Buddha! They pulled down Larung Gar Monastery and Yenchep Gar and drove away hundreds of innocent monks and nuns of which two of the nuns committed suicide! It is anti-Buddhist and is especially despise the monk and nun community who have been in the forefront of Tibetan resistance to Chinese cultural genocide and ethnic cleaning! It was so touching to see the people crying who were pleading for mercy to stop the demolition of the six monasteries in Kham Dege and the poor monk throwing himself in front of the demonic communist thugs! Normally, monks don’t do such things at all. The Buddha has given the edict that monks should not bow to a lay person. It’s because the monk and nuns are the torch bearers of the holy Dharma and inheritors of the Buddha’s spiritual treasure such as the three vows (བསླབ་པ་གསུམ་ནི་ ཚུལ་ཁྲིམས་ཀྱི་བསླབ་པ་ ཏིང་ངེ་འཛིན་གྱི་བསླབ་པ་ ཤེས་རབ་ཀྱི་བསླབ་པ་བཅས་སོ་) that he forbade them to bow to any lay person including the ruler (king) of the land! When the Dalai Lama visited Thailand way back in the mid-sixties, he had a conundrum. Should he shake hands with the Thai king or not because the Thai tradition is strict in observing such rules passed down from the Buddha and the Dalai Lama didn’t know the protocol of Thai monarch. In the end, he shook hands with the late king!
Despite the Tibetans pleading, crying and throwing themselves at the feet of the monstrous communist thugs, they walked over the monk as if he was nothing!!! This is what Tibetans are facing. The CCP has no respect whatsoever and has nothing but contempt for the Tibetan people. We are treated as subhumans and humiliated in our own country. Therefore, the need of the hour is to know our real enemy (དགྲ་གཉེན་མགོན་གསུམ་ངོ་ཤེས་པ་བགྱིས་) and stop the naivety of looking to the CCP as someone we can do business with. We will never get anything by cozying up with it. The Dalai Lama said during an annual TCV function at the Upper TCV playground round: “I have lost faith in the Chinese communist Party but have not lost faith in the people of China”. He then went on to ask the Kashag and relevant Tibetan organisations to hold a grand meeting to discuss the future way forward. He said, the delegates to the meeting must choose a new path to pursue the Tibetan struggle because he said that what he has proposed until then and pursued bore no fruit and he wanted the people to decide the future course of the Tibetan movement. Unfortunately, nothing changed during the gathering and it was the same thing which was even more condescending to the CCP by suppressing legitimate demands of independence for Tibet even in exile! The CCP doesn’t represent the Chinese people. It is on its way to dissolution despite its Herculean effort to survive. No dictatorship survives because freedom is too intoxicating! Today, the CCP has many enemies both within and without and on top it, its rotting from within itself through unmitigated corruption. It will implode from within itself one day!