By Loretta Tofani

INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

The Philadelphia Inquirer, Monday, December 9, 1996

How China replaced the Tibetan school system with one that teaches Chinese propaganda

Never saw a judge

Reality of the law

`No freedom ... none'

Burned repeatedly

`Reeducation' digs at roots of a people's heritage

In a language not their own, schoolchildren study a history not of their elders. It's all part, Tibetans say, of China's attempt to erase their culture.

When Thubten Tsering, a Tibetan teacher, read the textbook approved for his middle-school classroom, he saw that it contained a lie.

``In 1949,'' read one passage approved by Chinese authorities, ``Tibet was peacefully united into the motherland of China. . . . Tibetans were freed from sadness as wide as an ocean.''

Tsering, 27, lingered over the word peacefully. He knew older Tibetans who had fought Chinese soldiers and tanks as they invaded and occupied Tibet over a 10-year period, beginning in 1949. They had been imprisoned and tortured for many years. Many others were killed. But Tsering dared not impart his knowledge to the class.

Now, with the responsibility of teaching a new generation of Tibetan children, Tsering was forced to watch them grow up with little knowledge of their true history. It seemed to him that the Chinese, after occupying his country for 47 years, were erasing Tibetan culture.

The class Tsering taught the Tibetan language was the only subject his students took in their native language. Everything else in school was taught in Chinese. And Tsering was forced to teach his class by using Chinese Communist Party propaganda.

When teaching conjunctions, for example, Tsering was expected to use this sentence as a model: ``Tibet is a part of China and it cannot be separated from the motherland.''

In 1994, Tsering wrote a mild letter of complaint to the local Chinese authorities, urging improvements in the way Tibetan was taught as a second language. When there was no response, Tsering organized a protest rally.

The authorities responded. First, Tsering was thrown in jail. Then, he said, he was tortured.

In fact, he said, virtually every other day of his six-month prison term, he was beaten or tortured. Police shocked his hands, face, arms, legs, chest and stomach with an electric cattle prod.

Sometimes he fainted. ``Then they'd pour a bucket of cold water on my body, I'd regain consciousness, and they'd use the electric cattle prod on me again,'' Tsering said in an interview in India.

Throughout Tibet, hundreds of Tibetan teachers and students have been arrested, jailed and tortured by the Chinese because their views are considered ``counterrevolutionary.''

The Inquirer reported yesterday that it is common for the Chinese authorities who rule Tibet to arrest and torture Tibetans who take such nonviolent actions as singing freedom songs or putting up posters urging independence for Tibet.

In their attempts to eradicate Tibetan culture and religion, Tibetans say, Chinese authorities have relied on a system of arbitrary arrest and torture. But they have also used another, more subtle, tactic: ``reeducation.''

Part of this reeducation is aimed at wiping out the Tibetan language and replacing it with Chinese. The campaign intensified Nov. 18, when the top Chinese official in Tibet ordered Communist cadres to ``push socialist teachings and focus on political and ideological education.''

In interviews over the last two years, hundreds of Tibetans in India, Tibet and Nepal have said that China has targeted Tibet's education system as a way of cementing Chinese dominance. Not only in classrooms, but in monasteries, nunneries, jails and public meetings, Chinese officials preach that Tibet was never an independent country and that Tibetans are better off under Chinese rule.

While both the United Nations and the U.S. government consider Tibet a part of China, the U.S. Congress passed a resolution in 1991 saying Tibet had been an independent nation before China began occupying Tibet in 1949. Both the United Nations and the United States have repeatedly asked China to stop eroding the culture, language, religion and identity of the Tibetan people. But no one outside Tibet has taken direct steps to stop the Chinese from arresting and torturing Tibetans.

Lu Wen Xiang, press secretary at the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said last week that it was not government policy to torture prisoners. Lu said that reports of human-rights abuses in Tibet came from biased sources.

Tibet for centuries was a remote country known primarily for its towering mountains and devout Buddhists. Since the Chinese occupation, China has effectively outlawed freedom of speech and assembly in Tibet, and has cracked down on Tibetans who question Chinese policy or demand Tibetan independence.

The Chinese government through official publications and the writings of former Chairman Mao Tse-tung said as early as the 1950s that it intended to overhaul Tibet's educational system because it was based largely on Buddhist philosophy. Mao decried Buddhism, and all religions, as ``poison.''

Before the Chinese occupation which China calls a ``liberation'' of Tibet from a feudal theocracy more than 6,000 monasteries and nunneries served as schools and universities. The Tibetan government also ran lay schools.

The Chinese said they considered these schools nurturing grounds for ``feudal oppression.'' The traditional schools had taught the Tibetan language, which dates to the year 700, as well as ancient Tibetan culture and history.

The Chinese replaced the Tibetan school system with ``People's Schools,'' where teachers taught Communist Party ideology in Chinese.

Lama Kyap, a Tibetan who was a teacher until he was arrested in front of his class in 1993, said schools in Tibet are now primarily a vehicle for Chinese propaganda.

``In schools, children are taught about Chinese history, about the superiority of Chinese culture,'' Kyap said. ``But they are told nothing about Tibet's own grand culture and history. What they teach in school is all lies.''

Kyap was arrested without charge or explanation. While in jail, he said, he was beaten and tortured. When he was released in 1994, he and his family fled to India.

Today, Tibetan is the language of instruction only in village primary schools. In almost all middle schools and high schools, Chinese is the language of instruction.

China says it is necessary to teach math and sciences in Chinese because Tibetan does not have terms for many mathematical and scientific concepts.

Under one controversial Chinese government program, begun in the mid-1980s, each year thousands of the brightest Tibetan students go to high school in China. They get a better education, but they also become steeped in Communist Party ideology.

Tibet University in Lhasa is Tibet's only college. More than one-third of the students there are Chinese. Courses at the university are taught in Chinese except for those in the Tibetan language department.

Between 1959 and 1966, the Chinese government launched numerous ``thought control'' efforts, which resulted in hundreds of qualified teachers being sent to jail. In 1966, Tibetan was labeled the language of religion and its teaching was forbidden until 1979, when schools were permitted to give one class a day in the Tibetan language.

The Chinese government called Tibetan language and grammar texts ``books of blind faith.'' They were replaced by books citing Mao's thoughts.

The Chinese-approved books make no reference to the 1949 occupation and the killing of 1.2 million Tibetans by the Chinese between 1949 and 1979 -- an estimate provided by the Tibetan government in exile and generally accepted by international human-rights groups. Nor do they mention the thousands of Tibetans who have sought independence and, as a result, have been arrested, jailed and tortured by the Chinese.

``Children were taught that Tibetan religion was blind faith, Tibetan customs and habits `old green thinking,' Tibetan was a `useless, backward language,' old Tibetan society was `extremely backward, savage, oppressive,' '' said Tempa Tsering, an official of the Tibetan government in exile.

To this day, Tibetan teachers, students, monks, nuns and laypeople worry that their entire history and culture will be forgotten by the next generation.

``The Chinese are trying to destroy Tibetan culture and put their own culture and language in the schools,'' said Sonam Dolkar, a Tibetan seamstress now living in India. ``In Tibet, many children have been born after the invasion. I worry that they will think of themselves as Chinese.''

In September, the top Chinese official in Tibet, Chen Kuiyuan, gave a speech in Lhasa in which he talked about the ``final battle'' against the Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual and political leader. He also criticized Tibetan culture.

``Certain habits in the way they dress, eat, live, travel, as well as in their production methods, culture and marriage system, are quite outmoded and unhealthy,'' Chen said.

Those habits must be rejected, Chen concluded.

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Never saw a judge

One day in March 1994, Thubten Tsering decided to present Chinese officials with a letter of protest. was concerned about the quality of Tibetan language instruction because students spoke and wrote Chinese all day. They had only 45 minutes a day to study Tibetan.

At the main government building in Meldrogongkar, Tsering handed an official the letter. It complained that the quality of students' Tibetan was poor, not only in his school but also in other schools.

Tsering did not receive a reply.

Frustrated, he led students and fellow teachers in a demonstration outside the government building.

Police came. So did hundreds of local farmers and other Tibetans, who joined in the demonstration, circling the government building.

``Improve Tibetan!'' Tsering and the other demonstrators shouted. Some threw stones at the building. ``Free Tibet!'' some people shouted. Tsering and one of his students carried the Tibetan flag, an act the Chinese regard as a crime.

Tsering and about 60 other demonstrators, many of them students, were arrested. A police officer threw stones at him, causing his upper lip to bleed, Tsering said. Tsering and his students were then taken to the jail in Meldrogongkar.

In a cell, Tsering said, police beat him all night, slapping him, kicking him, and striking him with a gun butt.

Tsering spent six months in the Meldrogongkar jail; he said he was beaten every other day. He still remembers the names of his attackers: The head police officer from Meldrogongkar County, Tu Qi Chang, and his Chinese underlings, Li Van and Li Ti Mi, along with Jampa and Lobsang Tsering, who were Tibetan collaborators.

He said the torture with electric prods lasted from 30 minutes to an hour. During most other times, Tsering said, his hands and feet were shackled. He said he was also locked in a ``Chinese coffin'' a concrete box the size of a coffin for several months.

Tsering said he never saw a judge, and didn't go to court. After six months, he said, police told him, ``Now you're free.'' They removed his handcuffs and allowed him to leave the jail.

Tsering returned to the school where he had taught. He was told by the head of the department of education that he could not resume teaching because he was a ``counterrevolutionary.''

So Tsering took a job as a laborer, at his brother's farm in Tsashol village.

Later, Tsering said, he moved to Lhasa to try to start a new life. Soon he received a letter from his father, saying that police had searched their house and had found a notebook in which Tsering had doodled, ``Free Tibet.''

``You should go to India,'' his father wrote, Tsering recalled. ``Otherwise you may spend much more time in prison.''

Tsering left Tibet in March, trekking through the Himalayan mountains for two weeks. He arrived in India in April.

James A. Litch, an American doctor who examined Tsering in India last month for The Inquirer, found that Tsering has a one-inch ``laceration scar'' above his lip that is consistent with his account of police throwing a rock at him during his arrest.

Litch has been treating torture victims for several years.

A polygrapher commissioned by The Inquirer, William Anderson a former FBI agent from Glenmoore, Chester County found that Tsering was telling the truth about all details of his arrest and torture.

Tsering now teaches Tibetan to other refugees from Tibet. The textbooks used by the refugees cite examples from everyday life in Tibet, rather than Chinese slogans. Tsering supplements the textbooks by discussing life in Tibet before Chinese rule, and his own life in Tibet including his arrest, imprisonment and torture by the Chinese.

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Reality of the law

In June 1993, Lama Kyap, 32, a teacher with 13 years' experience, helped to open a school in Siling, Tibet, called Tibetan Children's Village. The school stressed Tibetan language and culture.

The Chinese had granted written permission to open the school even though Kyap had been arrested previously for demonstrating for Tibetan independence.

A month after the school opened, a Chinese police officer arrested Kyap as he was teaching a class. He was never told why he was arrested, Kyap said in an interview in India.

Kyap said he was taken in handcuffs to Qinghai Hu Zhu District Prison and escorted to a small, dark cell with no windows or bars.

He said he stayed there for 32 days. During that time, Kyap said, he was taken out of his cell to another room for questioning about once every three days. He said the room was decorated with instruments of torture. Handcuffs, foot cuffs, thumb cuffs, electric prods and wooden sticks hung from the walls. Foot chains were on the floor.

Each time he was taken there, Kyap said, he was placed in a chair and secured with cuffs and a belt.

Kyap said three police officers in the room asked him: ``How did you get the money to start the school? Did it come from the Tibetan government in exile in India? Do you have any contact with the Tibetan government in exile? Does that government know about this school or tell you how to teach it? Do you have any contact with Tibetans who are in exile?''

Kyap said he told police that he did not have any contact with Tibetans in India, and that he and others had raised money for the school inside Tibet.

Later, Kyap said, two teenage guards beat and kicked him in his cell. They put him in handcuffs and pressed electric cattle prods on his neck, forehead and hands for about half an hour.

He said he fell down as the electricity surged through his body.

Later that night, Kyap said he noticed blood oozing from his legs the result of being kicked or beaten. He now has a four-inch-long scar below his right knee.

After a subsequent interrogation session, Kyap said, he was beaten by two teenage guards for about half an hour. He said the guards struck him heavily and repeatedly on the top right side of his head with rods about two feet long. Eventually, he said, he passed out. When he regained consciousness, he was lying on the floor. He said he got up and a guard hit him again, this time on the chest.

When the beatings stopped, Kyap said, the guards sprayed his airtight room with a chemical used to kill house lice. ``There was no air in that room, and for two days I inhaled those chemicals,'' he said. ``My lips were dry, and I developed sores in my throat.''

After 32 days in jail, Kyap was taken by police to the Qinghai Tibetan Hospital. As a result of the shocks from the electric cattle prods, Kyap's heart was beating faster than normal -- 140 beats per minute, compared to the usual 75 beats per minute for a man his age.

In addition, Kyap said, his blood pressure was very high, his hands shook, and they were hot and sweaty.

He said he was hospitalized for 2_1/2 months.

While in the hospital, Kyap said, he was again questioned by police. He said the police visited about 10 times.

At the end of Kyap's hospital stay, he was released and sent home.

The polygrapher, Anderson, found that Kyap was telling the truth about all details of his arrest and torture.

Litch found that three scars on Kyap's legs were consistent with his account of torture. Kyap suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of torture, Litch said.

Before helping to open the school in 1993, Kyap had taught law to Chinese government officials.

``The Chinese make laws,'' Kyap said, ``but they routinely go against them. For example, it is written in the law that the accused must meet the accuser. But in practice it is different.''

At home, he said, he was often followed by Chinese agents. A friend in the government confirmed that he was being carefully watched. ``I had no mental peace,'' Kyap said. ``My friends, my parents agreed that I had to go to India.''

Kyap and his wife, carrying their baby daughter, trekked out of Tibet and arrived in India in 1994.

``I left with a heavy heart,'' said his wife, Dorjee Tso. ``But we had no choice. My husband could no longer live in Tibet.''

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`No freedom ... none'

Tashi Dawa, then 17, a senior at the Dhanak Lomthen High School in Dranang, Tibet, took a history quiz in December 1992. Just as he expected, one of the questions sought the number of ``regions'' under Chinese rule. The answer, as provided by his history book, was 56. But Dawa and his classmate Nyima (his only name) had decided in advance that they would write 55.

Their history teacher, Liu Laoshi, collected the papers and looked over the responses. ``Why did you write only 55 regions?'' he asked.

Dawa and his friend explained that Tibet was an independent country, and not a region of China. They said that they were being taught history from a Chinese perspective, and that they wanted to learn Tibetan history. A third student, Kelsang Tsering, said that he, too, would like to learn Tibetan history.

Police arrived at the school and took Dawa and Nyima to the principal's office, where they were scolded, Dawa said.

Later, at lunchtime, Dawa and Nyima told other students about the incident. According to Dawa, students in the school yard began shouting: ``We agree with them! We want more Tibetan teachers, fewer Chinese teachers!''

After lunch, all students attended a meeting in the auditorium. On the stage was the principal, Tashi Gyantso, as well as Dawa, Nyima, Kelsang Tsering and 30 other students.

``These students are for the Dalai Lama and against the Chinese,'' Dawa recalled the principal saying. ``As of today they are expelled.''

The 33 students were taken by police to a storeroom. One of the policemen placed an iron rod on an electric heater, making it red-hot, Dawa said. The officer then branded three of the students pressing the iron on the bridges of their noses, according to Dawa.

``One branded us, one held our hands behind our back,'' Dawa recalled. ``The iron felt very hot, and it became even more painful after two days. It took seven days before the burning feeling went away.''

A dark scar formed at the bridge of each student's nose, Dawa said.

Afterward, police drove Dawa and Nyima to the Lokha Prison.

There, Dawa and Nyima shared a cell. Every day for three months, Dawa said, police beat him in an interrogation room. At other times, Nyima also was taken out of the cell and beaten, Dawa said. ``Nyima was hurt even worse than me,'' Dawa said. ``His leg was broken, and he couldn't bend it because it was so painful.''

The most severe beating Dawa received, he said, was at the end of his third month in prison.

On that day, he said, four police officers kicked him repeatedly with their boots, mainly in his back and stomach. With the butts of their rifles, Dawa said, police beat him on his head. The beating that day lasted more than an hour, Dawa said.

Dawa said that the pain was ``much worse after the beating than during the beating. I was very angry. I felt there is no freedom in Tibet, none at all.''

Four days later, he was released from prison.

Dawa said he tried to join a monastery after getting out of jail, but was rejected because of his arrest. He said he spent a brief time in a hospital in Lhasa because his injuries were causing so much pain. He also tried several other jobs in Tibet, but, he said, none worked out because of his arrest record.

In January 1995, he decided he could no longer live a productive life in Tibet. He trekked out of Tibet to India.

For months afterward, Dawa said, he suffered from a burning sensation while urinating. Today, he still has pain in his stomach. Though he feels hungry, he often feels he cannot eat. He said he also suffers from severe headaches and pain in his eyes. He did not experience headaches prior to his beatings in prison, he said.

Litch the doctor, who is from the University of Washington School of Medicine examined Dawa in Dharmsala, India. Litch said a mark remains on the bridge of his nose from the iron. The doctor also said Dawa's stomach pain and headaches are evidence of mild depression.

The polygrapher, Anderson, found that Dawa told the truth in all details about his arrest and torture.

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Burned repeatedly

Tsering Youdon, a 16-year-old Tibetan girl, returned from vacation to her school in Lhasa on Feb. 25, 1994, to find it surrounded by police. Officers told students that the school's headmaster, Buddhist monk Zhabdung Lobsang Tsultrim, was in prison. They said the monk had taught students ``counterrevolutionary ideas'' that Tibet had been and should be an independent country. Police told the students to gather their belongings quickly and go home.

Four days later, in the evening, four uniformed police officers walked through the unlocked door of Youdon's home in Lhuntse, a three-hour drive from Lhasa.

Police told the family that they had to take Youdon to the police station, Youdon recalled in an interview in India. ``We just want to advise her and ask her some questions,'' one police officer said. ``Her school was closed because of bad ideas among the students, but it wasn't the fault of the students; they are too young.''

Youdon's mother began crying. ``If she is not to be blamed, don't take her,'' she said, according to Youdon. ``If you must take someone away, take me.''

Police said they needed her daughter.

``Don't cry, Mom,'' Youdon said. ``Nothing will happen to me, because I did nothing wrong.''

Youdon said that at a police station in Lhasa, she was led to a narrow, dark room, with only a mattress inside. ``Now you have all your freedom here,'' she recalled a police officer telling her sarcastically. ``Enjoy your freedom.''

Around 10 a.m. the next day, she said, she was led to a room where three policemen sat around a desk; atop the desk was an electric iron. She said one police officer handcuffed her right hand to his.

The officer behind the desk asked her, at first politely, what the monk had taught at school. Had he taught her to say she wanted freedom for Tibet? She said no, that he only taught the Tibetan language, math and music.

``Are you sure?'' the policeman asked. At that moment, Youdon said, another policeman grabbed her left arm. A third policeman placed the hot iron onto the lower portion of her leg, over her thin cotton pants, she recalled. When Youdon screamed and tried to move her leg away from the iron, the officer held her leg firmly and kept the iron on it, she said.

Today, there is a white scar at that spot on her leg, about four inches by three inches.

She said the police officer kept the iron on her leg for about five minutes. Could she try harder to recall what the monk had taught about seeking independence for Tibet?

Youdon said she insisted that he hadn't taught such things. The hot iron was placed on her leg for several more minutes on the same spot. She said she screamed and tried to move the iron away with her left hand, burning her hand. Today she has a round scar over one knuckle, and another scar near her thumb.

After a while, she said, police placed the iron on her left thigh, leaving it there for about five minutes. As the iron burned her skin, she said, the police officer behind the desk warned her: ``All the students there were talking about freedom. If you ask for freedom, you ask for trouble.''

The next day, police continued their interrogation. ``Why don't you speak up?'' one asked. ``Why do you choose to suffer?''

When Youdon didn't answer, she said, a police officer threw her against the desk and kicked her in the stomach with his boot. Youdon hit her head on the desk. Today she has scars above her forehead and on her left cheek that she said came from that beating.

Youdon said she was released later that day. Her aunt, who picked her up from the police station, took her to Lhasa Hospital. There, a doctor applied ointment to her left leg and hand and put a dressing on her wounds. He also cleaned up her bloody forehead and cheek, she recalled.

By the end of 1994, Youdon said, she had found she could not return to school or get a job because of her arrest. She decided to make the trek to India, where she is now in school.

Barry Kerzin, another American doctor commissioned by The Inquirer, examined Youdon in India last month. The doctor identified scars and burn marks that he said were consistent with the torture she described. Anderson, the polygrapher, found that Youdon was telling the truth in all details of her arrest and torture.