Dharamsala, September 27 – The Radio Free Asia reported that the Chinese police are looking for a popular Tibetan singer named Pasang whose music CD containing songs in praise of the exile Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama was banned.
“The Chinese authorities are looking for Pasang, but so far he has not been detained. His parents are worried about his fate,” a Tibetan man from the Tibetan capital Lhasa was quoted by RFA as saying.
“The authorities blamed him for singing and recording politically sensitive themes in his songs. They ordered the confiscation of all copies of his CD two days after the CD was released,” he said.
Pasang, aged about 21, was born to Dawa Tsering and Dolkar, residents of Nechung in the Toelung Dechen county of Lhasa prefecture.
Pasang, the source said, was inspired by Tibetans in the eastern regions of Kham and Amdo who sang songs containing “Tibetan themes” and praising exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.
China routinely vilifies the exile Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama by calling him a “separatist” trying to seek independence for Tibet and “splitting” the motherland.
However, the Tibetan leader has made it clear on number of occasions that he was not seeking independence for Tibet but a genuine autonomy under the framework of the People’s Republic of China.
Pasang’s song “Ultimate Hope for Peace,” included in the banned CD, contains imagery linking the Dalai Lama to “a Kalsang flower” (Kalsang Metok) and praying for his long life, the RFA reported citing another source from Tibet. The source further told RFA that Pasang’s banned CD is his first ever recording.
He added that Pasang “was good at singing even when he was in middle school.”
“Although the Chinese have banned the CD, Tibetans are still trying to procure it,” he said.
Earlier in March this year, a Chinese court in Sogpo Mongol Autonomous County, Malho Tibet Autonomous Prefecture, sentenced Tashi Dhondup, a Tibetan singer to one year and seven months’ jail term for producing a music album with “subversive songs”.
Tashi was arrested on Dec 3 last year from a restaurant in Xining, where he had been in hiding after authorities banned his album titled “Torture without Trace”.
The music album contained 13 songs expressing nostalgia for the exiled Tibetan leader His Holiness the Dalai Lama and remembering the Chinese government’s crackdown on Tibetans across Tibet in March 2008.
Tashi was previously detained in September 2008, according to sources of the International Campaign for Tibet, and accused by authorities of including ‘counter-revolutionary content’ in a song entitled ‘The Year of 1959,’ the year of the Lhasa Uprising and the Dalai Lama’s flight into exile. He was detained and beaten for over seven days by police in Xining.
The 5,000 CDs sold out within a month of its release in Amdo region of eastern Tibet, where Tashi is a popular local star.
China has launched a massive crackdown on Tibetan artistes, writers and intellectuals, following the nationwide protests that started on March 10, 2008 in Lhasa and spread across the Tibetan plateau.
