Published by: The Canada Tibet Committee
Editorial Board: Brian Given, Conrad Richter, Nima Dorjee,
Tseten Samdup, Thubten (Sam) Samdup
WTN Editors: wtn-editors@tibet.ca
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ISSUE ID: 00/01/19 Compiled by Tseten Samdup
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Wednesday, January 19, 2000
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Contents:
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1. Foreign minister welcomes Dalai Lama to visit Slovenia (RS)
2. Control of Tibet a question of faith (SCMP)
3. Guangzhou-Lhasa Air Route Opens (AP)
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1. Foreign minister welcomes Dalai Lama to visit Slovenia (RS)
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Radio Slovenia, Ljubljana, in Slovene 18 Jan 00
The Society for Support to Tibet has informed Slovene Foreign Minister
Boris Frlec at his meeting with the representatives of the non-government
organizations concerning themselves with the protection of human rights
today that it had invited Tibetan leader Dalai Lama to visit Slovenia in
April.
Minister Frlec reiterated that the Dalai Lama was always welcome in
Slovenia as well as that Slovenia supported the preservation of the
valuable Tibetan culture...
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2. Control of Tibet a question of faith (SCMP)
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South China Morning Post
January 19
CHRIS TAYLOR
Founded nearly 1,000 years ago, Reting Monastery was once a sprawling
temple complex on a hillside in the Rong Chu valley, an isolated place
around 70 km north of Lhasa. It was destroyed during the cultural
revolution like some 6,000 other Tibetan temples. But unlike restoration
efforts at other more famous temple complexes - generally carried out by
local inhabitants with meagre resources - reconstruction at Reting has
proceeded slowly, and today the temple is but a shadow of its former self.
It gets few tourist visitors.
Small surprise then that its head abbot, the Reting Rinpoche - "rinpoche"
means "high in esteem" and is a term bestowed on lamas, reincarnate or
otherwise - is also a shadowy figure in the Tibetan hierarchy. When
Beijing, just two days after one of its own appointed and politically
groomed reincarnations, the Karmapa, had fled to India, announced that it
had anointed the latest, seventh, Reting Lama, the announcement had many
scratching their heads and wondering just who the boy - born Soinam Runcog
- was a reincarnation of.
Anyone who saw Martin Scorsese's film Kundun - the ravishing epic about the
Dalai Lama's childhood and flight into exile - will have seen a cinematic
depiction of the fifth Reting Lama. He is the one who discovered the boy
Dalai Lama and acted as his regent, and who later, in 1941, departed from
the boy's side (he was unable to maintain his vow of celibacy). Later
still, in 1947, the Dalai Lama discovered the fifth Reting Lama had been
imprisoned for organising an uprising against the regent who had replaced
him. In real life, the Reting died in 1947, thought to have been poisoned
in the prisons of Lhasa's Potala Palace.
The appointment of the fifth Reting Lama as regent - a role of supreme
authority during the interregnum between the death of a Dalai Lama and the
adulthood of his reincarnation - after the death of the 13th Dalai Lama in
1934, allowed him the primary role in the search for the 14th Dalai Lama,
the current holder of the title.
Not that the Reting was an automatic candidate for the role of regent: the
job traditionally went to the abbot of Ganden Monastery, a stunning
eyrie-like temple complex perched high to the east of Lhasa, that is the
seat of the Dalai Lama's Gelug order. But Reting Monastery is also a
historically significant Gelug site, and twice the Reting Lama has been
selected as the regent in the absence of a suitable Ganden candidate.
Since the fifth there has been a sixth who lived in relative obscurity in
Reting Monastery and died in 1997.
And herein lies the significance of Beijing's latest anointed lama. Despite
having officially abolished the regency when it took over Tibet in 1950,
Beijing always has a keen eye for historical precedent, and conceivably a
Beijing-groomed Reting Lama could be an asset when the inevitable happens
and the quest begins for an heir to the current Dalai Lama, particularly
given that the mainland's reserves of "politically correct" senior Tibetan
lamas are running low.
Battle-lines were drawn on the issue of Beijing-approved lama
reincarnations versus the choices of the Tibetan Government in exile in May
1995, when the Dalai Lama recognised six-year-old Gendun Choekyi Nyima as
the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama. That was after the previous Panchen
Lama died a Tibetan hero, a conversion he underwent after a 17-year prison
sentence in Beijing, having started as a mainland puppet during the
takeover of Tibet.
From his office in Beijing he quietly advocated the preservation of Tibetan
culture. His death ironically both robbed the mainland of what it saw as a
controllable figurehead in their efforts to promote the illusion of a new
era of spiritual freedom in Tibet and robbed Tibetans of a spiritual leader
who had worked assiduously in the later years of his life to defend Tibetan
interests, albeit without challenging the legitimacy of mainland rule in
Tibet. For both parties the search, then, for his reincarnation was of
paramount concern.
The boy recognised by the Dalai Lama as the Panchen Lama's reincarnation
was promptly taken into custody - he has been called the world's youngest
political prisoner - and has never been seen since. Meanwhile, central
authorities enthroned another child, Gyaltsen Norbu, as Panchen Lama.
The importance of reincarnate lamas and whose side they are on is not to be
underestimated in Tibet. Prior to the Chinese invasion of 1950, Tibet was a
theocracy. Spiritual and economic power lay in the hands of reincarnate
lamas, the most powerful of whom was the Dalai Lama, who resided in the
soaring Potala Palace, the administrative seat of the U. Second in power,
and historically often a rival, was the Panchen Lama, who resided in
Tashilhunpo Monastery in Shigatse, administrative seat of Tsang. But there
were many more - around 3,000 - reincarnate lamas, or trulku as they are
known in Tibetan, most of them presiding over tiny village monasteries with
no more than a handful of monks in attendance.
The authority of such lamas can be traced through a lineage of rebirths
back to the founder of the monastery they preside over, an authority that
is guaranteed because the founder is believed to be a manifestation of a
Buddhist deity. The Dalai Lama, for example, is a reincarnation of
Avalokiteshvara, the boddhisattva of compassion; the Panchen Lama is a
manifestation of Manjushri, the boddhisattva of insight.
All of these reincarnate lamas were allied in one way or another with the
various orders of Tibetan Buddhism. The oldest of these is the Kagyu, the
head of which, the 17th Karmapa, fled to India last week. From the late
16th century until the early 17th century, the Karmapa was Tibet's highest
spiritual authority, until he was ousted by the youngest of the Tibetan
orders, the Gelug, with Mongol backing and the 5th Dalai Lama at its head.
So the Karmapa and the Dalai Lama belong to historically opposed orders of
Tibetan Buddhism. The Panchen Lama and the Dalai Lama belong to the same
Gelug order, but historically were often pitted against each other over
turf conflicts involving the regional power of Shigatse versus Lhasa.
But if Chinese rule since 1950 has achieved nothing else, it has forced
Tibetan religious leaders to unite to ensure the continued existence of
Tibetan culture, and one of the keys to that is maintaining the integrity
of reincarnation lineages.
As the Dalai Lama put it in a letter to President Jiang Zemin, dated
October 11, 1995, and defending his involvement in the selection process
for the 11th Panchen Lama: "I have taken this decision on purely religious
grounds in fulfilment of my traditional responsibility. I also took into
consideration the need to ensure the religious credibility of the Panchen
Lama in the long run in the eyes of the Tibetan people."
When the mainland first invaded Tibet, it set about dismantling a system it
saw as feudalistic and superstitious: a "socialist paradise on the roof of
the world" was envisioned. The result, by the early 1960s, was the flight
of Tibet's spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, the imprisonment of the
Panchen Lama, widespread starvation, a result of the forced
collectivisation of Tibetan peasantry and the abandonment of traditional
crops, and the disbanding and razing of monasteries. That policy, which
some have described as "cultural genocide", has been abandoned in favour of
one that recognises and seeks to control the deep currents of Tibetan
faith. But it is very likely that mainland attempts to gain control of the
Tibetan clergy will fail.
After all, two Tibetan monasteries in particular have received praise in
recent years from the mainland press as "patriotic monasteries". One is
Reting, seat of the newly anointed Reting Lama; the other is Tsurphu, from
which the Beijing-groomed Karmapa has recently fled.
It is unlikely anyone in the mainland press is calling Tsurphu "patriotic"
now, and the challenge for Beijing, even if the Tibetan Government in exile
does not produce a rival Reting Lama, will be keeping the allegiance of the
lama it has appointed.
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3. Guangzhou-Lhasa Air Route Opens (AP)
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GUANGZHOU, January 18, AsiaPort -- China Southwest Airlines inaugurated on
December 25, 1999, the Guangzhou-Lhasa air route following the opening of
the Qamdo-Lhasa air route two days before. The air route, which links
economically developed south China with the landlocked Tibet Autonomous
Region in southwest China, brings the number of domestic air routes flown
by the airlines to eight. The Gonggar Airport in Lhasa, 3,600 meters above
sea level, is one with the highest elevation in the world. Available
statistics show that the airport on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, known as
the "Roof of the World", has handled more than 3.5 million passengers and
120,000 tons of cargo since it began operation in the early 1990s. The
airport with a cost of 270 million RMB yuan plays an important role in
promoting the economic development in Tibet. China Southwest Airlines also
has domestic air routes from Lhasa to Chongqing, Beijing, Xi'an, Xining
and Chengdu, and from Qamdo to Chengdu. It also has an international air
route from Lhasa to Katmandu, capital of Nepal.
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