Malcolm wrote:
No, they don't at all. First of all, we were not in the TAR, we were in Xining. We were allowed to go to Lhasa, but only as a tour group where we were chaperoned around the Barkor like all the other western tourists.
Nevertheless, they let study Tibetan medicine of some sort presumably amongst at least a number of Tibetans and then visit Lhasa. If the Chinese state was bloodthirsty and severely oppressive they simply would not allow such things to happen. Period.
But you realize all you are doing is just defending the oppression of Tibetans in their own lands, you are defending extrajudicial killings, imprisonment, torture and everything else that goes along with racist oppression.
I'm not so convinced it is as severe as you and others paint it on this forum. I agree there's evidently heavy policing and even secret jails (Melissa Chan exposed one even in Beijing as I noted above), but I have to wonder what sort of activities you have to get into to get on their radar at this point. You can evidently practice Buddhism and be left alone in China provided you remain out of politics. Whether that's fair or not is another issue, but nevertheless it doesn't appear to me that China is stamping out Tibetan culture and Buddhism. It isn't even an occupation by international consensus: President Obama in fact said Tibet is a part of the PRC.
If anything, Chinese money is helping to revive TB. Monasteries have and are being rebuilt in Tibet.
That is not Tibetan Buddhism for Tibetans, that is "Tibetan" Buddhism for Chinese consumption. The two are not the same in any respect at all.
I imagine the Tibetan lamas who get massive financial support for their monasteries don't object too much to Chinese consumption of their religion.
There are many more documented incidents like this one. Just open your eyes.
If you wanted to intelligently address issues in Tibet or China, Akong's Rinpoche approach was arguably optimal. He tried to have good working relations with the PRC bureaucracy. Nobody lost face. Things proceeded.
This western approach of raising a shit storm just ends up with people getting hurt. That's a cultural different between China and the west.