By Phurbu Thinley
Dharamsala, May 21: China is executing a major propaganda ploy in Tibet that targets monastic community as a tool to win Tibetan people’s support in its rule over the restive region, according to the Tibetan Government-in-Exile (TGiE).
The latest crafty move comes after massive anti-China unrest, largely led by monks, broke out across the Tibetan region last year. The protests, the largest in decades, hugely deflated China’s one-sided rosy propaganda on Tibet in run up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
“The Chinese government is executing new plans to get Tibetan people’s support by targeting the Tibetan monastic community in Tibet Autonomous Region,” the exile government said Wednesday in a report on its website.
“Under the new plan, the authorities have announced a new government directive of improving infrastructures in the Tibetan monasteries and nunneries,” it said, claiming reports from Tibet as saying.
The relevant departments are providing two or three big television sets in each monastery. Moreover, individual monks and nuns are forced to get their rooms equipped with TV sets along with other electronic equipments, the report said.
“The authorities also facilitate monks and nuns with other basic necessities and are told that they are being taken care (of) by the government,” it added.
However, the exile Tibetan government based in northern India says the latest move is nothing more than a “new ploy” intended to win the support of the general Tibetan populace after exercising brutal crackdown for months.
“The plan aims to incorporate small monasteries and nunneries into tourist destinations and to use the monastic community to make propaganda on having religious freedom and good living conditions in monasteries,” the report said.
According to the report, the concerned departments in Tibet Autonomous Region are soon expected to convene large gathering of Tibetans, particularly monks and nuns in different counties and the proceedings of the gathering will then be filmed for broadcasting.
“It also aims to broadcast the proceedings of the indoctrination sessions to be held in each monasteries and nunneries in Tibet Autonomous Region,” it added.
The Tibetan government says such kind of patriotic education campaign in monasteries is a “euphemism for political indoctrination” of Tibetan people that involves denouncing the Dalai Lama, the exiled supreme leader of Tibetan people.
“The Tibetan people expressed their strong resentment against the Chinese government for making baseless accusations against His Holiness the Dalai Lama during the peaceful protests in Tibet last year,” it said.
The exile government says Chinese forces are accountable for killing more than 200 people, detaining nearly 7000 and injuring many in the subsequent violent crackdown on last year’s anti-China protests.
