Page 1 of 2 Will Aba be the CCP's Waterloo?
By Peter Lee
The Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) setbacks in a remote corner of Sichuan
province, Aba prefecture (more accurately, the Aba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous
Prefecture), may in time be seen as the beginning of the end of its
authoritarian reign.
Today, Aba is in the news because of a string of self-immolations at a Tibetan
Buddhist monastery, Kirti, on the outskirts of a county town in Aba, in
response to a brutal government crackdown.
Aba was also in the news in 2008, when an earthquake in the southeastern corner
of the prefecture, Wenchuan, killed tens of thousands.
At first, China was hailed internationally for its massive and timely relief
effort in the aftermath of the quake. But the focus rapidly
shifted to the death of schoolchildren attributed to shoddy construction
practices abetted by corrupt local authorities, the ensuing cover-up, and
heavy-handed mismanagement of the compensation and reconstruction process.
The Wenchuan earthquake was a radicalizing experience for Chinese artists and
intellectuals like Ai Weiwei, who was beaten up while in Chengdu to offer
support to a local activist on trial for pursuing the substandard school
construction story in Wenchuan. The government reaction to their activism
validated - or at least self-validated - their critique of the Chinese
communist system and its methods, and created a hard kernel of resistance that
persists to this day. [1]
From a public relations standpoint, the CCP might as well shoveled one trillion
yuan (US$158 billion) down a hole. The abiding international memory of Wenchuan
is Ai Weiwei's mawkish installation of schoolchildren's backpacks in Berlin,
''She lived happily on this earth for seven years.'' [2]
Ai's recent incarceration - and his reincarnation as a martyr to China's
selective enforcement of its income tax laws - appears to show that the CCP has
not come up with any good new ideas on how to deal with critics of its rule.
2008 also saw China's $40 billion grab at the brass ring of international
legitimacy - the Beijing Summer Olympic Games.
The Olympics turned into something of an expensive disappointment, primarily
because the West was conspicuously unwilling to welcome China on the world
stage as an equal partner.
It was easy and more consoling for China to blame the messenger - the storm of
pro-Tibetan independence demonstrations and provocations that disrupted the
passage of the Olympic flame throughout the world and roiled towns and
monasteries in the Tibetan Autonomous Region and Tibetan areas of Gansu and
Sichuan around March 10 (the anniversary of the 1959 Lhasa uprising against
Chinese rule) in the Olympic year. [3]
Kirti Monastery in Aba county, Aba prefecture was the scene of violent
outbursts in 2008. Indeed the Chinese government publicized them as part of its
campaign to assert the non-peaceful/subversive nature of Tibetan
dissatisfaction.
According to credible reports, at least 10 and possibly as many as 28 ethnic
Tibetans in the small town, including monks, lay people, and one child, died in
confrontations with security forces in March 2008.
On March 16, 2011, on the third anniversary of the shootings, a monk at Kirti,
Phuntsok Jarutsang, self-immolated.
Chinese security forces put out the flames but then, according to reports of
Tibetan emigre groups, detained Phuntsok and subsequently beat him to death.
If the government's objective was to deny the Tibetan independence movement a
martyr by dousing the flames, and then discourage prospective imitators by
administering a fatal beating, the effort failed miserably.
Phuntsok's death provoked sizable demonstrations at the monastery that
reportedly resulted in beatings and the death of two lay people at the hands of
security forces, and five subsequent immolations in Kirti in September and
October 2011 - out of a total of 12 self-immolations in Tibetan regions this
year.
If, on the other hand, the intention was to escalate a confrontation to a point
at which monasteries and monks who refuse to knuckle under are completely
broken, the policy may be said to be working.
Aba prefecture was once advertised as a showcase for a moderate approach to the
PRC's relation with ethnic Tibetans. In the case of Aba, that promise has been
honored, as it were, in the breach.
In April 2011 a convoy of military vehicles ferried away 300 of Kirti's
estimated 2,500 monks off for Patriotic Re-education, whose salient feature
apparently is to demoralize the monks by compelling them under physical and
emotional duress to denounce the Dalai Lama.
The remaining monks were divided into groups of 20 for what Radio Free Asia
termed ''patriotic religion'' meetings. The outlet stated that two monks
received three-year jail terms in May 2011 for speaking out during a meeting.
[4]
The government also labored to place the blame for Phuntsok's death on his
fellow monks instead of the regime, sentencing three of them to 10-year-plus
terms for ''intentional homicide'' for helping Phuntsok plan the immolation and
- according to the court - spiriting him away after the incident, thereby
denying him life-saving medical treatment.
Per Xinhua:
Tsering Tenzin and Tenchum of the Kirti Monastery in Aba
Tibetan-Qiang Autonomous Prefecture were sentenced to 13 years and 10 years in
prison, respectively, according to the verdict from the Maerkang County
People's Court in Aba.
The two plotted, instigated and assisted in the self-immolation of fellow monk
Rigzin Phuntsog, causing his death, the court found.
Phuntsog set himself on fire on March 16 and was hidden by a third monk for 11
hours. He died the next morning after treatments failed at a local hospital.
Three days before the self-immolation, Tenchum and Dorje, another monk who
would be charged in another instance in Phuntsog's death, sent photos of
Phuntsog and Tsering Tenzin to a monk living overseas via the Internet, proving
that the self-immolation was premeditated.
Pro-government religious leaders put their shoulders to the wheel to support
the propaganda effort, and evangelize for the primacy of national law over
monastic rule. Xinhua continues:
Some living Buddhas and monks attended the trial.
"Monks can't kill. What they did was against the dharma and against the
law," said Yangdron Jamaseng, director of the management committee of the
Tsakhor Monastery. "Through the trial, I realized monks not only need to learn
scriptures, but they also need to learn the law and obey the law." [5]
In a further effort to discredit the monastery and its monks, the Chinese
government told the UN that "some monks of the monastery also frequented places
of entertainment, prostitution, alcohol and gambling, and spread pornographic
CD-Roms." [6]
The Chinese government has also inserted a ''Democratic Management Committee''
(DMC) answering to the government's Bureau of Religious Affairs (of the type
headed by Yangdron Jamaseng in the passage quoted above) into Kirti, in order
to assert government supremacy over the Tibetan Buddhist religious
establishment, disrupt the relationship between the monastery and its exiled
Rinpoche in Dharmsala, and control the once-influential monastery's links to
about 30 satellite monasteries the region.
Permission from the DMC is also required for monks who wish to leave the
monastery.
Monks inside Kirti try to communicate with Dharmsala by cell-phone; however,
the leadership in Dharmsala only learned of the most recent immolations through
the international news media.
The International Campaign for Tibet creditably alleged:
According to
exile sources, high numbers of troops are still stationed in the Ngaba [in the
Tibetan language; ''Aba'' in Mandarin] county town and Kirti monastery, with
security cameras now installed on buildings on both sides of the main road and
checkpoints on the main access roads. The Ngaba authorities have ordered the
management of Kirti monastery not to allow any help for families of monks who
have committed self-immolation, such as prayers for those who have died. Four
permanent security police offices have been built in the monastery compound.
Internet access has been virtually cut off completely. [7]
AFP
reporters who were able to get to Aba in October described a town under
lockdown by police and soldiers armed with guns, clubs … and fire
extinguishers:
Police, many carrying riot shields and armed with clubs
and iron, lined the streets of the town, which has a population of around
20,000 mainly ethnic Tibetans who say their culture is being eroded by China's
government.
Large groups of soldiers in camouflage carried automatic rifles, metal rods
with spiked tips and fire extinguishers, while police buses, trucks and
armoured personnel carriers blocked the streets. [8]
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