Activists oppose railway to Tibet

This article is published in Taiwan Journal July 14, 2006.


By June Tsai

Activists in Taiwan voiced their disapproval July 6 of China's opening of a rail link to Tibet, calling on every person in Taiwan to sign a letter of protest to the Chinese leadership to show the island's support for the Tibetan people.

"The railway is not built for the Tibetan people," said Jimmy Gyaltsen, a Tibetan living in Taiwan. "The rail line is built by the Chinese government for the Chinese people. We oppose the railway."

Gyaltsen made his appeal at a July 6 press conference called by an organization called Friends of Tibet in Taiwan, with support from the Taiwan Association for Human Rights and Green Party Taiwan. The date was also the 71st birthday of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

Khedroob Thondup, a member of the Tibetan parliament-in-exile, called the railway running from Golmud to Lhasa a "second invasion of Tibet," referring to China's first invasion of Tibet in 1959. He said at the press conference that Beijing never consulted the Tibetan people before building the railway and that the purpose of such a project is to further assimilate, and thus marginalize, the ethnic group. "Only Chinese people will come to Tibet by means of the railway, not the other way round."

Thondup, who divides his time between Taiwan and India, said the Chinese government spent over US$3 billion on the railway's construction. This far exceeds the amount that has been spent on Tibet's education and medical services for the past 47 years, he pointed out.

He remarked that almost none of the Tibetan farmers cared a bit about the opening of the railway, which Beijing has been trying to spin as a project that will benefit the Tibetan economy. This is a lie, according to political commentator Paul Lin.

Lin pointed out that half of the population of Lhasa today is Han Chinese, and the building of the railway is the continuation of China's attempt to destroy Tibet through its transmigration and Sinicization program. According to Lin, since China's occupation began, the euphemistically named "autonomous region" has never been under the rule of the Tibetans themselves. It is controlled directly by the secretary of Chinese Communist Party regional committee, a post held by China's current leader Hu Jintao from 1988 to 1992.

"They are going to make the Tibetans the minority on their own land," predicted Lin, a long-time critic of the CCP who recently moved from New York to Taipei.

Meili Chow, the director of Friends of Tibet in Taiwan, is an ardent advocate of human rights for Tibet. In her opinion, the new construction project will devastate Tibet's culture, religion, ecology, security, economy and identity.

Chow explained that Chinese people dominate Tibet's economy, and the highly touted economic benefits of the rail link will translate to more money for the Han Chinese. According to Chow, the "development" brought by this railway will sap Tibet's culture and religion even further, which is tantamount to the cultural extinction of the Tibetan people.

Chow added that the Tibetan Plateau is the origin of several major rivers that provide water for an estimated 47 percent of the world's population. The railway poses a threat to these water sources, as well as other aspects of the environment such as the natural habitat of animal species.

She claimed in addition that China has nuclear weapons in the Tibet area, and that the railway will only make it easier for the Chinese government to transport them, and thus threaten the security of countries in South Asia.

Chow is Han Chinese herself, although her husband is Tibetan. She complained that the Taiwanese media has been covering the railway story inappropriately, parroting Beijing's line about the strategic significance of the project and how it will boost tourism to the Tibet region.

She called on Taiwanese people who travel to Tibet, including quite a number of Buddhists, to show sympathy and respect for the Tibetan people, and not to bring in things that would do harm to the environment of the snow-covered plateau. Rather, they should carry with them the Dalai Lama's message of peace and freedom and the support from the people of Taiwan.

She pointed out that Beijing has decreed that it is illegal for Tibetan people to even own a photograph of the Dalai Lama, and that the government continues to run "patriotic re-education" sessions in temples in which monks are forced to criticize the leader of their religion.