BUDDHIST WATCH Latest buddhist News

Arson Attack on London Kingsbury Buddhist Temple

2009-01-05T10:35:00.000-08:00

A suspected gang of Tamil Tiger supporters has attacked and set fire to the Sri Saddhatissa International Buddhist Centre (SSIBC) popularly known as "Kingsbury Buddhist Temple", Kingsbury, London in the early hours of Saturday 3rd January 2009. The arson attack caused damages to the main shrine chambers of the temple, which is one of the most respected Sri Lankan Buddhist places of worship in the UK.

All the resident monks were inside at the time flames broke out and emergency services including fire fighters and Police were called to the Temple premises around 3.10am, but no one was injured. The suspected attack by unidentified persons caused damage only to the building.

The suspicion has fallen on Tamil Tiger terrorist supporters in London. This is the sixth time SSIBC has come under attack, and on numerous occasions, suspects have stolen the Sri Lankan flag which is always proudly displayed on the post in front of the temple, along with the Buddhist and British flags.

A previous attack caused severe damages to the building, glass windows and the vehicles parked outside. That particular assault in September 2008 came as retaliation against a visit to the temple by the Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who was on transit in London, on his way to address the UN General Assembly and special summit of Commonwealth leaders in New York.

Meanwhile, the Sri Lanka High Commissioner in London, Justice Nihal Jayasinghe has rigorously condemned the Saturday morning attack on the SSIBC. At the same time, he praised the Temple for its valuable services provided to various communities in the UK despite their different ethnicities. High Commissioner also called this continuous vandalism, a denial of pluralism. He further expressed his displeasure on previous lacklustre investigations carried out by the authorities and their inability to take any action in bringing the culprits to justice.

There have been many attacks on the temple and London community leaders, local politicians, multi-faith religious leaders, organisations and other related bodies are aware of the situation and are providing their fullest support.

A devotee said that “the community is devastated by this incident on a peaceful religious place and enough is enough, this is the sixth time, at least this time we expect firm action from the authorities". Another member of the Sri Lankan community said that the “liberation campaign victories achieved by brave Sri Lankan soldiers, especially the fall of Killinochchi has made many LTTE sympathisers angry and this is how they retaliate”.

Despite the attack on the temple, Chief Incumbent of the Temple, Venerable Galayaye Piyadassi Nayaka Thero (MBE), Chief Sanga Nayaka of Great Britain said that the previously planned "Ranaviru Commemoration Bodhi Puja" celebrations for liberating the North and East of Sri Lanka and prayers for peace in Sri Lanka in the New Year 2009 will go ahead as planned on the same day (3rd January 2009) at 6.30pm.

Kingsbury temple also had a special religious programme on the New Year’s Day for the same cause. It also had its annual Inter Faith religious programme recently with the participation of representatives of all the major faiths in Brent and Harrow Boroughs in London. Representatives from Baha'i, Brahma Kumari, Buddhism, Catholicism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism and many other Interfaith organisations participated in that programme.

Scotland Yard Police immediately came to the Temple and took finger prints and available video footage of the incident and however Metropolitan Police investigations are still underway.

news.onlanka.com

The Buddha and Dr Anton Führer: an Archaeological Scandal by Charles Allen

2009-01-05T10:33:00.000-08:00

Sara Wheeler on the man who claimed to have found the Buddha's birthplace

In 1898, on an estate between the foothills of the Himalayas and the Gangetic Plains, a third-generation British planter called William Claxton Peppé excavated an intriguing brick stupa. At 24 feet, he unearthed a hefty stone coffer containing five reliquary vases. Besides a glittering heap of jewels and gold, one of the vases held ashes. An inscription around the rim recorded that the ashes were the remains of the Buddha, and that they had been deposited by members of his Sakya clan.

In this dense and quirky volume, Charles Allen unravels the saga of the discovery, a twisted tale of truth and lies that has divided Buddhist scholars for a century. He begins, quite properly, by reconstructing the forested Tarai landscape of the fifth century BC in which the Buddha grew up, material he touched on in his 2002 volume The Buddha and the Sahibs. The account of Peppé’s dig that follows includes a cast list ranging from civil servants to Sanskrit scholars and a maverick Bengali babu, as well as extensive and informative background material. One gripping passage reveals how the various prakrit or vulgar languages the Aryans introduced were formalised into Sanskrit, which went on to become the dominant literary language of northern India and Mahayana Buddhism.

Unfortunately, shortly after Peppé’s discovery, a German archaeologist called Dr Anton Führer, a former Catholic priest digging 15 miles away, was involved in an archaeological scandal. Führer had claimed to have discovered the Buddha’s birthplace at Lumbini, just over the border in Nepal, as well as the city where the young Buddha lived as Prince Siddhartha. The trouble was that Führer had been tangentially involved in the Peppé dig – an association that cast doubt on the authenticity of the vase and its ashes. Allen suggests, plausibly enough, that the German “willingly suspended disbelief” in his desperation to find answers. “Führer wanted,” writes Allen, “to believe that the sacred landscape explored … in the fifth and seventh centuries still existed in that same idealised form in the last decade of the 19th century. So strongly did he believe this that he sought to make it so.” I would have liked more on Führer, as one ends up with little sense of the man.

Overall, though, as in his previous work, Allen displays a strong sense of narrative, conjuring shikaris bent over trenches in their enormous solar topees while a naked sadhu from the local temple looks on from the shade of a banyan tree, no doubt thinking all foreigners insane.

A comprehensive final chapter assesses the validity of the Peppé dig using carbon dating. In dealing with recent discoveries in the region, and with modern interpretations of the evidence, Allen covers the grim, yet hilarious battle, between India and Nepal over the true location of the Buddha’s birthplace. Unlike the respective tourist boards, he concludes that we don’t yet know where exactly the Buddha was born and raised, though Allen favours the Nepalese claim that the ruins of Tilaurakot by the river Banganga are the site of Kapilavastu. And he vouches for the authenticity of Peppé’s discoveries.

Allen is a distinguished author in the field; his previous books include Plain Tales from the Raj and Kipling Sahib. He is a scrupulous researcher who respects his sources. In these pages he pieces the story together like the shards of a broken vase while avoiding the Führer tendency to reach hasty conclusions. The Buddha and Dr Führer represents a personal mission to remove the stain of impropriety from an important set of archaeological findings, and Allen has achieved his goal with admirable rigour. The book is well illustrated with integrated maps, photographs and artistic images. None the less, this latest offering has a much narrower appeal than the author’s previous work, and its detailed analysis of archaeological history will discourage all but the most committed Buddhist scholars.

telegraph.co.uk

Cambodian monks force nation's first rock opera off air

2009-01-05T10:32:00.000-08:00

Cambodian monks have persuaded authorities to ban the country's first rock opera, which features actors dressed as clergy who break into song and dance, saying it insults Buddhism.

In a letter sent to the ministry of cults and religion, as well as to the media, the Supreme Sangha Council of Buddhist Monks also demanded an apology from the show's director, writer and actors.

"Where Elephants Weep," a modern take on a traditional Cambodian love story that merges pop and rock music with more traditional and historical Cambodian tunes, played in Phnom Penh from late November through early December.

It tells the story a Cambodian-American man who returns after the demise of the 1970s Khmer Rouge regime to reconnect with his roots. While he is a monk, he falls into a doomed love affair with a pop singer.

The last straw came when the show was aired by a local television station last week, prompting the monks' council to write to complain.

Cambodia is predominantly Buddhist and monks are expected to be austere and eschew worldly pleasures such as entertainment.

"Some scenes in the story insult Buddhism," the letter said in asking the ministry to "ban the performance and airing of the opera."

The council objected to many scenes, including one in which the actor "left the monkhood and slept with a woman, but a moment later (he) put the robe back on to be a monk again..." said the letter, dated December 30.

The show "oppresses Cambodian Buddhist monks, causes more than 50,000 monks to loss their honour, value and to express frustration," it added.

Religions minister Min Khin duly stepped in and the television station was ordered not to go ahead with a second broadcast planned for New Year's Day.
The show had a successful US preview last year and, after its run ends in Cambodia, it is expected to tour South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan before returning to the United States.

Organisers behind the opera were not immediately available for comment.

macaudailytimesnews

Led Buddhist precepts guide us through 2009

2009-01-05T10:29:00.000-08:00

Following the path shown by Lord Buddha will enable us to deal with discontent and suffering

The fire tragedy at the Santika Club, in which more than 60 people were killed during the New Year holiday, marks only the beginning of a difficult year that we are going to face. There will be more uncertainties, from the war in the Middle East, the impending collapse of global financial capitalism to the political turmoil in Thailand.

Most Thais are feeling uncertain about their jobs and their security. So do people from all over the world, who are feeling unsure of what lies ahead. They used to have assets, but now they feel they are poorer.

While nobody can predict the future, let us go back to some of the Buddhist principles to guide us through 2009. In good and in bad times, Buddhism has always given us the strength to be aware of what we are and the best course of action for our lives. If all of us practice Buddhism, we'll find refuge in enlightenment and reduce the cause of suffering.

First, we should all seek refuge in the Three Jewels. These are the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. While we can't escape our karma or effects caused by previous thoughts, words and deeds, the Buddha has shown us the way to escape from further suffering by becoming enlightened.

The Dharma represents the Buddha's teaching, which is the body of knowledge to help us avoid suffering and to achieve enlightenment. The Sangha is the community of monks, who carry the torch of wisdom and pass on the Buddhist practices and its tradition from one generation to another.

To take refuge in the Three Jewels does not mean that we try to run away or escape from this world. Rather, it means that we should find the Three Jewels in our heart.

The lay people generally try to follow the five precepts.

These are: I shall refrain from harming living creatures; I shall refrain from taking that which is not freely given; I shall refrain from sexual misconduct; I shall refrain from incorrect speech; and I shall refrain from intoxicants, which lead to loss of mindfulness.

The five precepts are the easiest way for the layman to practice Buddhism. They are fundamental to the conduct of a sufficiently happy life. Now, Thais are in conflict as never before. The root of the conflict lies in their ignorance of the actual political and social environment, their pursuit of self-interest, their use of foul language against each other and intoxication with what is wrong.

The next stage is to gain more insight about the Four Noble Truths. The fundamental of life is suffering or dissatisfaction because of our cravings. The Buddha pinpointed the cause of suffering or dissatisfaction and summarised it in the Fourth Noble Truths - Dukkha, Samudaya, Nirodha and Marga.

Dukkha is the suffering nature of life, governed by a state of change. Samudaya is the cause of suffering, caused by our attachment to or desire for something.

This is rooted in our ignorance.

Nirodha is an end to the suffering, which is what we should strive for. The ultimate road of Nirodha is Nirvana. Marga represents the path that leads us out of suffering.

Marga is further explained in the Noble Eightfold Path - right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration.

All of these eight paths should be practised all at once as if they are the singular element, although each element complements or reinforces each other towards helping us to become a better human being.

The Eightfold Path essentially consists of meditation, following the precepts, and cultivating the positive converse of the precepts.

The path may also be thought of as the way of developing our mental and moral discipline.

If most of us take time to study some of the fundamental precepts of Buddhism and practice them with a pure heart, one will have a better understanding of the world, will refrain from creating more problems for the world, will live sufficiently happily with the world.

nationmultimedia

Buddhists Seek Enlightenment

2009-01-05T10:28:00.000-08:00

Fredericksburg, FL (USA) -- THE WAPTA Tesarangsee Buddhist Temple has served Fredericksburg-area Buddhists from a modest but appropriately decorated and nicely appointed structure since 2000.

The area has had a Buddhist community for a long time. Local adherents are fortunate that a search of Virginia found a location that was quiet, not too expensive and provided convenient access for a significant number of Northern Virginia Buddhists.

They are also fortunate that the temple is staffed by several of the most experienced and enlightened monks that Thailand--a longtime Buddhist nation--has to offer.

Dhammarak Butsahip XX leads visitors into the richly carpeted temple after asking them to remove their shoes. There, one faces several large, gilded statues of The Buddha sitting on elevated platforms. Butsahip's placid demeanor and the absence of chairs imbue the place with an atmosphere of welcoming informality.

"Here," say Butsahip, "we help people to correct their problems and practice how to spend their life in peace. The building is open to all religions, for anyone who wishes to try meditation; we welcome everyone to learn."

Butsahip will be in the United States for two years. He was sent here by the Grand Master in Thailand to be a leader at the local temple.Of the eight monks at the temple, six will be departing soon when their visas expire. Butsahip says they all came here to learn about the differences between Eastern and Western cultures.

Asked about what he likes most about the United States, Butsahip replies, "Freedom under the law."

Butsahip explains Buddhism as a "way of life, a system. The law of karma is a natural law; it controls every life, every soul. Whatever we do will come back to us. Whatever you do becomes an energy to your soul that will control happiness or suffering. Whatever you are depends upon what you did before.

"The [law of the land] regulates how people live together, but it does not stop the suffering of the soul. People do not know how to live, how to correct their lives.

"Buddha is not a god, but a teacher of the law of karma. He was an 'Isaac Newton of the soul' and knew how to reveal the law. When the circle of life is broken then we are free. There is no 'real' image of Buddha, the images are not worshiped, and vary in appearance from place to place. The way to make the world a better place is to start with yourself first to achieve happiness, and then lead by example."

Monks cannot marry. They work their way up through the hierarchy by starting out with mundane tasks, practicing for enlightenment and evolving their souls. The only significance of the traditional saffron robes worn by monks, according to Butsahip, is that they are easy to make, easy to care for and comfortable. They are not a fashion statement and have no religious significance. Monks are never to wear "fancy clothes," and they have little or no money, he says.

Asked about his opinion of Thai food as served by Thai restaurants in the United States, Butsahip says it is pretty authentic, but cautions against ordering it the way it is served in Thailand. The Thais begin eating very spicy food at an early age; Americans are not used to the fiery blast they will encounter, he says.

Butsahip summed up the visit with the following Buddhist observation on life: "Wrong thinking makes wrong actions; wrong actions equal wrong power; wrong power makes the wrong karma. The wrong karma will control you and you suffer."

buddhistchannel

Burmese Buddhist monastery opens in Finland

2009-01-05T06:09:00.001-08:00

Jan 5, 2009 (DVB)–The first Burmese Buddhist monastery in Finland was officially consecrated in Kuopio on 3 January.by five monks led by Penang abbot U Pannya Wuntha and abbot U Uttara of London’s Sasana Ramsi Vihara.

The Buddha Dhamma Ramsi monastery was set up by Burmese Buddhists living in Finland with the help of the abbots, according to monastery secretary Kyaw Htay.

"A monk who is currently serving in London will come to reside here and we are expecting another from the foreign missionary board,” he said.

“We have agreed to see to their material needs."

Kyaw Htay said around 300 people took part in the ceremony, which marked the culmination of more than three years’ work.

"The effort to set up a monastery in Finland started in 2005 when U Pannya Wuntha visited the country,” Kyaw Htay said.

“He provided us with the basic capital and we saved our hard-earned money to make it happen."

Finland is one of several countries to which Burmese refugees have been resettled since 2005.

Finnish law requires refugees to study or work, which has made it difficult for Burmese Buddhist monks to continue in their vocation.
Reporting by Yee May Aung

Peace Pagoda at Dhauli

2008-12-21T12:30:00.000-08:00

By Mona Lisa Jena
Eight kilometers south of Bhubaneswar stands a rocky outcrop that overlooks an ancient battle site. It was here that Emperor Ashoka, the third century BC ruler of the Eastern India fought a bloody war that turned out to be his last as the carnage he witnesses led him to embrace Buddhism. This event is commemorated by a modern stupa called Dhauli, built on the summit of the hill.

Dhauli hill is surrounded by lush green paddy fields stretching up to the horizon. The Daya River meanders by almost touching the foothills the hill. A narrow tar road runs from the bridge across the river up to the hilltop.

The rock at the hill is hewn and polished in an area of 15 feet by 10 feet where Ashokan inscriptions are deeply cut out of the rock columns. There is also a huge elephant cut out of the rock and carved in indigenous style.

The Mauryan King, Ashoka was known for his irrepressible cravings for power. He set his eyes on the kingdom of Kalinga , which was the land of Paikas , the brave foot-soldiers. The Kalingan army reigned supreme for a period of nearly 2000 years when the empire spread from the Ganga in the north to the Kaveri in the south...

In the war with Kalinga, almost one lakh soldiers were killed and about 1.5 lakh were taken prisoners. And yet the rest refused to bow and confronted Ashoka's army in hordes only to be mercilessly massacred. The result was a devastating sight and it is said that the waters of the River Daya turned crimson with their blood.

By day's end, Ashoka was in a brooding mood. The resistance from his opponents that led to the bloodshed and the wails of the survivors and wondered shook his conscience there was no joy in the conquests. Just then a soft voice chanting some prayers flowed around him. It had a very soothing effect on his soul. Ashoka followed the voice and up to the hill where a Buddhist monk told him about Buddhism. Ashoka accepted the philosophy and decided on the spot to atone for his doings. This has been inscribed in the Ashokan Edicts, along with the scriptures of Buddhism. Ashoka now came to be known as Dharmashoka.

There is a gigantic dome shaped edifice atop the Dhauli hills, called Shanti Stupa or Dharma Vijay Stupa. Erected in the 1970s by Japanese Buddhists, this stupa commands an extensive view of the surrounding contours to symbolise the Buddhist percepts of peace and non-violence. Nichidatru Fuji Guruji's preaching's dedicated here to the memory of Dharmashoka. On the four sides, four large images of Lord Buddha, meditating (east), preaching (south) and attaining Mokshya (west) are sculpted in the Gupta age style.

There are five huge disc -shaped umbrellas on top of the stupa, sheltering a fragment of the tooth of the Buddha. It is said that the wisdom tooth was divided into small pieces, which were distributed all over the world; monumental edifices were built to house the relics.

The dome, which is also called the ‘peace pagoda' is set against a picturesque landscape. From here, beautiful sunsets and sunrise can be seen.

There is an ancient Shiva temple and another for Lord Bahirangaeswara Shiva at the foothills. There are five caves in a row called the Panch Pandavs.

The setting of the stupa is scenic and amid peace prevails giving visitors a sense of calm and quietude. Indeed, the appellate Peace Pagoda is appropriately given.

kalingatimes.com

Negotiations continue over Buddhist temple plan

2008-12-21T12:28:00.000-08:00

Shoalhaven, Australia -- Shoalhaven council is continuing negotiations over a proposed Buddhist temple and tourism complex in South Nowra, despite the developers missing the deadline for settlement.

Payment was due on Wednesday after the deadline for settlement was extended earlier this year.

Council bought the 1,200 site at Comberton Grange in 1985 and has negotiated with the Shaolin Order since 2006.

Council's deputy Mayor Gareth Ward says at this stage the Shaolin Order has expressed its intention to continue with the purchase.

"We will continue to pursue the recommendation given from the property steering committee which was that if payment wasn't received on the 17th [of December] that we would write to the Shaolin Order and ask whether they were still interested," he said.

"My understanding is that they are continuing to pursue payment and that we will have an outcome in January."

Councillor Ward says the Department of Planning is yet to hand down its final determination on the temple, which is a condition of the contract.

buddhistchannel

Buddha statues seized

2008-12-21T12:27:00.000-08:00

KARACHI, Pakistan -- Two antique Buddha statues were seized by Pakistan Customs at a mail office on Thursday.

The Customs staff, acting on a tip-off that some elements were using the mail to smuggle Buddha statues to China, started monitoring the movement of parcels sent to the office handling international mail.

On Thursday, the surveillance team intercepted a parcel booked by Aijaz Ahmed (Islamabad) and addressed to Zou Jialhui (Beijing). Upon examination, the parcel was found to contain the two antique Buddha statues.

Officials said the relics probably dated to the Gandhara period, but added that an authentication report from the National Museum is awaited.

buddhistchannel

This Is Your Brain on Bliss

2008-12-19T13:03:00.000-08:00

Happiness doesn't have conditions; it can't be reduced to a few agreeable sensations. Rather, it is a way of being.

What is happiness, and how can we achieve it?

Happiness can’t be reduced to a few agreeable sensations. Rather, it is a way of being and of experiencing the world -- a profound fulfillment that suffuses every moment and endures despite inevitable setbacks.

The paths we take in search of happiness often lead us to frustration and suffering instead. We try to create outer conditions that we believe will make us happy. But it is the mind itself that translates outer conditions into happiness or suffering. This is why we can be deeply unhappy even though we “have it all” -- wealth, power, health, a good family, etc. -- and, conversely, we can remain strong and serene in the face of hardship.

Authentic happiness is a way of being and a skill to be cultivated. When we first begin, the mind is vulnerable and untamed, like that of a monkey or a restless child. It takes practice to gain inner peace, inner strength, altruistic love, forbearance, and other qualities that lead to authentic happiness.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama often teaches that, while there are limitations to how much information one can learn and to our physical performance, compassion can be developed boundlessly.

Practicing Happiness

It is not difficult to begin. You just have to sit from time to time, turn your mind within, and let your thoughts calm down. Focus your attention on a chosen object. It can be an object in your room, your breath, or your own mind. Inevitably, your mind will wander as you do this. Each time it does, gently bring it back to the object of concentration, like a butterfly that returns again and again to a flower.

In the freshness of the present moment, past is gone, future is not yet born, and -- if one remains in pure mindfulness and freedom -- disturbing thoughts arise and go without leaving a trace. That is basic meditation.

Pure consciousness without content is something all those who meditate regularly and seriously have experienced -- it is not just some sort of Buddhist theory. And anyone who takes the trouble to stabilize and clarify his or her mind will be able to experience it, too. It is through this unconditioned aspect of consciousness that we can transform the content of mind through training.

But meditation also means to cultivate basic human qualities, such as attention and compassion, and new ways of experiencing the world. What really matters is that a person gradually changes. Over months and years, we become less impatient, less prone to anger, less torn between hopes and fears. It becomes inconceivable to willingly harm another person. We develop a propensity toward altruistic behavior and the cluster of qualities that give us the resources to deal with the ups and downs of life.

The point here is that you can look at your thoughts, including strong emotions, with a pure mindfulness that is not associated with the contents of the thoughts.

Take the example of malevolent anger. We usually identify with anger. Anger can fill our mental landscape and project its distorted reality on people and events. When we are overwhelmed by anger, we cannot dissociate from it. We perpetuate a vicious circle of affliction by rekindling anger each time we see or remember the person who makes us angry. We become addicted to the cause of suffering.

But if we dissociate from anger and look at it with mindfulness, that which is aware of anger is not angry, and we can see that anger is just a bunch of thoughts. Anger doesn’t cut like a knife, burn like a fire, or crush like a rock; it is nothing more than a product of our mind. Instead of “being” the anger, we understand that we are not the anger, in the same way that clouds are not the sky.

So, to deal with anger, we avoid letting our mind jump again and again to the trigger for our anger. Then we look at anger itself and keep our attention upon it. If we stop adding wood to a fire and just watch, the fire will die out. Likewise, anger will vanish away, without being forcibly repressed or allowed to explode.

There is no question of not experiencing emotions; it’s a question of not being enslaved by them. Let emotions arise, but let them be freed from their afflictive components: distortion of reality, mental confusion, clinging, and suffering for oneself and others.

There is great virtue in resting from time to time in pure awareness of the present moment, and being able to refer to this state when afflictive emotions arise so that we do not identify with them and are not swayed by them.

It is difficult in the beginning, but becomes quite natural as you become increasingly familiar with such an approach. Whenever anger arises, you learn to recognize it right away. If you know someone to be a pickpocket, even if he mingles in a crowd, you will spot him right away and keep a careful eye on him.

Interdependence

Just as you can learn to deal with afflictive thoughts, you can learn to cultivate and enhance wholesome ones. To be filled with love and kindness brings about an optimal way of being. It is a win-win situation: you will enjoy lasting well-being for yourself, you’ll act in altruistic ways towards others, and you’ll be perceived as a good human being.

If altruistic love is based on an understanding of the interdependence of all beings and of their natural aspiration to happiness, and if this love extends impartially to all beings, then it is a source of genuine happiness. Acts of overflowing love, of pure, disinterested generosity -- as when you make a child happy or help someone in need, even if nobody knows what you have done -- generate a deep and heartwarming fulfillment.

Human qualities often come in clusters. Altruism, inner peace, strength, freedom, and genuine happiness thrive together like the parts of a nourishing fruit. Likewise, selfishness, animosity, and fear grow together. So, while helping others may not always be “pleasant,” it leads the mind to a sense of inner peace, courage, and harmony with the interdependence of all things and beings.

Afflictive mental states, on the other hand, begin with self-centeredness, with an increase in the gap between self and others. These states are related to excessive self-importance and self-cherishing associated with fear or resentment towards others, and grasping for outer things as part of a hopeless pursuit of selfish happiness. A selfish pursuit of happiness is a lose-lose situation: you make yourself miserable and make others miserable as well.

Inner conflicts are often linked with excessive rumination on the past and anticipation of the future. You are not truly paying attention to the present moment, but are engrossed in your thoughts, going on and on in a vicious circle, feeding your ego and self-centeredness.

This is the opposite of bare attention. To turn your attention inside means to look at pure awareness itself and dwell without distraction, yet effortlessly, in the present moment.

If you cultivate these mental skills, after a while you won’t need to apply contrived efforts anymore. You can deal with mental perturbations like the eagles I see from the window of my hermitage in the Himalayas deal with crows. The crows often attack them, diving at the eagles from above. But, instead of doing all kinds of acrobatics, the eagle simply retracts one wing at the last moment, lets the diving crow pass, and then extends its wing again. The whole thing requires minimal effort and causes little disturbance.

Being experienced in dealing with the sudden arising of emotions in the mind works in a similar way.

I have been exposed to the world of humanitarian activities for a number of years since I decided to dedicate the entire royalties of my books to 30 projects on education and health in Tibet, Nepal, and India, with a group of dedicated volunteers and generous philanthropists. It is easy to see how corruption, clashes of ego, weak empathy, discouragement can plague the humanitarian world. All this stems from a lack of maturity. So the advantages of spending time to develop human altruism and compassionate courage are obvious.

The Fragrance of Peace

The most important time to meditate or do other types of spiritual practices is early in the morning. You set the tone for the day and the “fragrance” of the meditation will remain and give a particular perfume to the whole day. Another important time is before falling asleep. If you clearly generate a positive state of mind, filled with compassion or altruism, this will give a different quality to the whole night.

When people experience “moments of grace”, or “magical moments” in daily life, while walking in the snow under the stars or spending a beautiful moment with dear friends by the seaside, what is really happening? All of a sudden, they have left their burden of inner conflicts behind. They feel in harmony with others, with themselves, with the world. It is wonderful to fully enjoy such magical moments, but it is also revealing to understand why they feel so good: pacification of inner conflicts; a better sense of interdependence with everything rather than fragmenting reality; and a respite from the mental toxins of aggression and obsession. All these qualities can be cultivated through developing wisdom and inner freedom. This will lead not just to a few moments of grace but to a lasting state of well-being that we may call genuine happiness.

In this state, feelings of insecurity gradually give way to a deep confidence that you can deal with life’s ups and downs. Your equanimity will spare you from being swayed like mountain grass in the wind by every possible praise and blame, gain and loss, comfort and discomfort. You can always draw on deep inner peace, and the waves at the surface will not appear as threatening.

alternet.org/healthwellness

Buddhists caves facing neglect in Jahanabad

2008-12-19T13:02:00.000-08:00

Jahanabad, Dec.18 (ANI): The Buddhist Caves in Bihar's Jahanabad area hold a great potential to draw thousands of tourists from different parts of the country and world. But not many tourists feel motivated to visit this historically important place.

Following Maoist insurgency and administrative neglect, these historically significant Barabar Caves are lying unattended.

Located deep inside the Barabar Hills, 45 kilometres from Gaya and 38 kilometres from Jahanabad, the Barabar Caves are losing their attraction value.

Locals believe that the government's negligence discourages tourists from visiting this spot.

It is said that Mauryan Emperor Ashoka had these caves done up for the Buddhist monks in 200 B.C. Five caves were formed from one single granite-based hill and the caves measure around 120 metres.

Among these, the one named after Lomas Rishi is the most popular cave and it looks like the abode of some sage.

What fascinates the visitors here is the façade inside that is well polished, in contrast to the rough rocky looks from outside. The other two significant caves are named Sudama and Chaupar.

"This hill is of granite stone; there are five sorts of caves over here. This cave is a handmade cave; human beings did cutting of this cave. This cave has not lost its gleam and shine. And the best part is that the five caves have been made inside one single hill," said Sanjay Kumar, a tourist.

Declared part of the national heritage by Archaeological Survey of India, condition of the caves is very bad.

"The main thing about these caves is that King Ashoka got them done, but condition of these caves has deteriorated over the period of time. Tourism here is suffering because roads are not in proper shape. These caves are located at an isolated area and that's another reason why just a few visitors come here," said Nandu Paswan, caretaker of Barabar Caves.

Despite Bihar being a prime destination for Buddhist pilgrims from all over the world and also for others interested in knowing the saga of Lord Buddha such as the Bodhi tree at Bodh Gaya, the concerned authorities have not been able to maintain a proper upkeep here.

Historians contend that these caves date back to the era of the Emperor Ashoka and who was instrumental in spreading of Buddhism beyond the frontiers of India. But today it needs proper conservation and realization of its significance by authorities. By Ajay Kumar (ANI/newstrackindia.com)

Endangered Tibetan art form blossoms in Italy

2008-12-17T13:33:00.000-08:00

By Barbara Cornell

MILAN (Reuters Life!) - She left for Dharamsala, India, as an economic and community development volunteer and emerged nearly nine years later as master of a rare Tibetan art form, the fabric Thangka.

Leslie Rinchen-Wongmo painstakingly transforms horse hair, fine silk thread, colorful Indian silk fabrics and luscious brocades into traditional depictions of Tibetan Buddhas. A single work takes four months to a year-and-a-half to complete.

Four of her traditional Buddhas and two Tibetan-inspired modern textile pieces are on display in Milan until December 19 at the show "Silk Mosaics: Sacred Images and Techniques from Tibetan Tradition." Showings can be arranged through January 4.

Rinchen-Wongmo is also the subject of "Creating Buddhas," a documentary released this fall that will be shown January 18 at the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena, Calif., which hosted a large exhibition of her work in 2002.

"I never decided to do this," she said at the Centro Mindfulness Project in Milan, where her work is on display. "When I saw it, it just took me."

She first saw a crafts center producing fabric Thangkas while touring Dharamsala as part of an economic development team. The intricate, richly colored Buddha tapestries are used in ritual spaces like altars and temples but are so rare that even many Tibetans have never seen one.

Through persistence and luck, perhaps fate, she was allowed to train with a Tibetan master, perfecting delicate stitches amid swarming flies drawn by the raw meat juice smeared on the silk to stiffen it. She now uses a cellulose and acrylic mixture.

She spent a year just learning to embroider eyes.

Sixteen years after that first encounter, Rinchen-Wongmo, 48, is now one of a handful of women fabric Thangka masters and one of the few masters outside Asia. Married to an Italian, the California-born artist lives in Milan and Los Angeles.

She begins by making a drawing in traditional proportions to prepare a template for her bits of cloth. She gives contour to fabric shapes by appliqueing round threads made from three strands of horsehair wrapped in fine silken thread. She sews the shapes together and finishes with a brocade frame.

Rinchen-Wongmo, who uses a Tibetan name meaning "precious, empowered woman," works on commission so rarely assembles her far-flung Thangkas into a show. Eleven appear on her website, www.silkthangka.com. For exhibition details, visit "Exhibition in Milan" on her blog: stitchingbuddha.wordpress.com.

(Editing by Paul Casciato)

Great diffusion

2008-12-17T13:31:00.000-08:00

IT is fascinating how philosophic and cultural ideas spread freely in ancient times across formidable barriers such as mountains and oceans. Ideas can have a life of their own and it is often impossible to contain them within national or geographical boundaries. One of the greatest stories of the diffusion of ideas is that of Buddhism, which spread right across the Asian continent.

The ancient Indic vision of life is one that is filled with compassion. It sees a oneness in the whole of creation. The separated forms of the world are considered to be maya, or mithya, illusions perceived through our subjective and limited sensibilities. Our belief in our separate identity and ego is the greatest illusion. It keeps us bound to desires and attachments in the material world. It is a life of pain, as none of our illusory goals can bring us happiness. Peace and joy can only come through the shedding of desires.

All human beings are aware of the pain of life in this world. Thus, this philosophy was received with open arms wherever it travelled. It had a transforming influence in all the countries that embraced it. The culture of a continent was shaped by this deeply ethical vision.

This philosophy also took with it the marvellous concept of deities. In the Indic philosophy of aesthetics, it is believed that the moment of the aesthetic experience is akin to the final bliss of salvation itself. Our response to beauty is seen as our perception of the grace that underlies all that there is. The moment we experience beauty, we are transported. For that brief instance, we have lost our material desires: we have perceived that which is beyond our illusory concerns. Accordingly, early Indic philosophy and art constantly present the beauty of sublime deities before us.

Deities are personifications of ideas and qualities. The qualities, such as wisdom, compassion, kindness and courage, are within us. We look upon their representation in art: we focus our attention upon these, until they are awakened within us. These grow and fill us completely.

This philosophy, carried in Buddhist and Brahmanical faiths, spread through the whole of Asia in ancient times. Traditions of art sprang up everywhere in order to create sublime deities to aid us on the path of enlightenment. A vision of life was established, which looked always beyond the material world, to the peace that was eternal.

In ancient times, India traded considerably with countries in the Mediterranean region, West Asia and South and South-East Asia. This led to a great spread of ideas. There are inscriptions relating to Greeks who became Buddhists and Brahmanical devotees in the B.C. and early A.D. periods. There were large colonies of Roman settlements in India.

A landmark in the culture of Asia was Emperor Asoka’s daughter Sanghamitra’s journey to Sri Lanka with the message of Buddhism in the 3rd century B.C. The faith was accepted with great warmth in the island. In centuries to come, Sri Lanka became the centre of the early form of Buddhism, known as Theravada Buddhism.

The earliest paintings of Sri Lanka are found in a cave, high atop the massive Sigiriya rock. The 5th century Buddhist paintings of Sigiriya, in their graceful lines and deeply thoughtful expressions, carry forward the traditions of art seen at Ajanta. There is close similarity between the paintings of Sigiriya and those of the later period of Ajanta. They were contemporaneous. The figures have an inward look, which pervades the Indic art of this period. The painter’s gentle touch shows us that he is filled with sympathy and compassion for humankind. These paintings, through their lilting grace, remind us that there is an end to the sorrow of the world.

In the 12th century, the Chola kingdom covered South India and parts of Sri Lanka. The styles of the end-10th century paintings seen in the Brihadisvara temple in Thanjavur are closely reflected in Sri Lanka. The 12th century Buddhist murals at Polonnaruva portray the Jataka tales, the stories of the previous births of the Buddha. These tales embody the norms of ethical living and were the chief vehicle for conveying them in the early form of Buddhism. We see representations of the Jatakas in Buddhist art from the Bharut (Madhya Pradesh) stupa railings of the 2nd century B.C. onwards.

Buddhism has a long tradition of rock-cut caves. These were perhaps used for meditation and as residences of monks. Since ancient times, the walls of these caves were profusely painted and sculpted. Sri Lanka has preserved and nurtured the ancient tradition of cave paintings. The sanctity of the secluded interiors provides an atmosphere of peace, far from the clamour of the material world. The caves at Dambulla have sculptures and paintings from early times up to the 18th century.

Myanmar was a great crucible of Buddhist influences and art that came to it over the centuries. At the end of the first millennium, Myanmar had a deep relationship with the centre of the Buddhist faith at Bodh Gaya, in Bihar, where the Buddha attained enlightenment. In fact, the architectural form of the Mahabodhi temple at Bodh Gaya is followed in the 11th and 12th century temples that were built in Bagan.

By the 12th and 13th centuries, with the decline of Buddhist centres in the plains of India, scholars and artists from India took refuge in the deeply religious sanctuary of Myanmar. Bagan became a sanctified place with thousands of pagodas. The inspirations for this art came both from eastern India and from Sri Lanka.

The 12th century paintings on the inner walls of these pagodas are some of the finest and gentlest paintings of the entire Buddhist tradition. The themes are from the life of the Buddha and from the Jataka stories.

In ancient times, there were no barriers between Indic faiths. In fact, the kings of Myanmar were anointed with Hindu rites and ceremonies. A message from King Rama IX of Thailand, read out at an international conference, says that Thai kings were personifications of the Hindu deities – Siva, Vishnu and Brahma. In the words of the Thai scholar Thanphuying Putrie Viravaidya, “Brahmins officiated at the ceremony of coronation, whereby they opened the gates of heaven for the Hindu gods to descend and thus make the person of the king god-like and empowered with dignity and grace.”

From early times, Thailand was influenced by Indic philosophy from Sri Lanka and Myanmar. Contact with neighbouring Cambodia and overseas trade with India brought to it the traditions of the worship of Hindu deities. The culture of Thailand developed as a marvellous synthesis of the Brahmanical and Buddhist influences coming from many sources. The predominant faith of the Thai people is Buddhism and one of their strongest cultural traditions is that of the Hindu epic Ramayana, or Ramakien.

The temples of Bangkok and other places in Thailand present a marvellous blend of Buddhist and Hindu traditions. They are dedicated to the Buddha and their walls are elaborately painted with scenes from the Ramayana.

The division of Indic faiths into different religions, Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism, is a relatively recent phenomenon. European colonisers and scholars, whose understanding was based upon their knowledge of the sharply divided Semitic faiths, could not appreciate that belonging to any one of these faiths did not preclude puja (adoration) of the deities of others.

Since early times, the kings of the Tibetan plateau turned with a great eagerness and zeal to India, to imbibe the sacred faith of Buddhism. The Sanskrit script was taken to Tibet to prepare the basis of the Tibetan script.

In the 8th century, Santarakshita from the Nalanda university made the first Buddhist temple in Tibet (Samye, based upon the architectural model of the Odantpuri Mahavihara in Bihar) and laid the foundations of a monastic order there. He appealed to Guru Padmasambhava, also of Nalanda, to visit Tibet and help enlighten the people about the new faith. Padmasambhava, who was teaching in Kashmir, brought with him the Cham, the spiritual dance of Vajrayana Buddhists.

This dance is believed to purify the land and drive away all evil spirits. It also celebrates the victory of good over evil: man’s conquest over his ego, which binds him to negative and worldly desires. The period of Guru Padmasambhava is known as the First Great Diffusion of Buddhism in the Himalayas. To this day, the guru is the most revered teacher for all Buddhists in the region.

In the 10th century, Yeshe ’Od ascended the throne of Guge, which included Ladakh, Lahaul-Spiti, Kinnaur and western Tibet. By then, Buddhism had declined in Tibet. What troubled the king most was that even the little practice of the faith that continued was incorrect and full of local magical rites.

Yeshe ’Od sent Rinchen Zangpo and other scholars to Kashmir to bring back scriptures with the true knowledge of Buddhism. These were translated into Tibetan by Zangpo, who became famed for all time to come as Lohtsawa or the Great Translator. Rinchen Zangpo continues to be revered in the Himalayan region. In fact, in the minds of the people, he has been transformed from a historical figure into a divine being with magical powers.

Yeshe ’Od and his successors built a chain of 108 monasteries across Guge. These were painted and sculpted by artists who were brought from Kashmir. This period is known as the Second Great Diffusion of Buddhism in the Himalayas. These monasteries became the foundations of Buddhist culture and art.

The Himalayan country of Nepal has preserved both Buddhist and Hindu traditions over the centuries. It has some of the grandest early stupas, which are worshipped even today. Nepal is geographically close to the cultural centres of the Indian plains, and there is a great heritage of philosophy and art that Nepal has shared with India over the centuries. With the disruption of Buddhist centres in India by the 12th and 13th centuries, large numbers of monks and scholars took refuge in Nepal. They carried with them their greatest treasures, their valued manuscripts and paintings.

From across the Tibetan plateau, Nepal also received the concepts of Kashmiri Saivism. The valley of Kathmandu was like a crucible where the philosophical ideas from eastern India met those from Kashmir. Buddhism and Hinduism in Nepal appear similar and there are no definite lines to separate them. At the Swayambhunath Stupa in Kathmandu, we see many Siva-lingas with Buddhas carved on them. A massive vajra (thunderbolt) made here represents the Vajrayana form of Buddhism.

Bhutan, the small mountain kingdom, has maintained its seclusion and the privacy of its Tantric Buddhism. Guru Padmasambhava is believed to have descended here on the back of a flying tigress. He cleansed the land of the evil spirits that hindered the spread of Buddhism. Even today, he is the most beloved deity who is worshipped in his many manifestations and forms in Bhutan.

Bhutan has preserved the sanctity of the art of religious painting. It is the one land where paintings are made with deep reverence and meditative care. As in the ancient tradition, the aim of the painter is not to make a work of art; it is an act of faith to represent with devotion the aspects of eternal truth.

Buddhism travelled on the Silk Route from India along with caravans of goods. It went to China from Central Asia, through Pakistan, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan. Around the dreaded Taklamakan desert is a string of oases, the source of life in the arid lands. These have many Buddhist caves, which mark the early progress of Buddhism and Indic art to Central Asia and China.

The names of great scholars and translators illuminate the passages of the Buddhist history of China. The most outstanding of these was Kumarajiva of the 4th century. He was the son of a Kashmiri Pandit, Kumarayana, and Princess Jiva of Kucha. At the age of nine, his mother brought him to Kashmir where he studied Buddhism for many years.

On his return to Kucha, he translated more than 40 important Buddhist texts, including the Lotus Sutra, into Chinese. These remain the most important texts of Buddhism in China and Japan.

The well-known author Dr. Shu Suyun notes: “His [Kumarajiva’s] grasp of the Sanskrit language and Chinese are so perfect, and his translation is so erudite and beautiful. Even today, when there are so many translations available, if you ask Chinese monks which translation they prefer, they would tell you it is Kumarajiva’s. Even I find his translation very enchanting.”

Buddhism and its art were accepted wholeheartedly all over Central Asia and China. From here, the message of the Buddha travelled further to Korea and Japan. In the far-east, Japan is the most distant land that received the influences of Buddhism and Hinduism.

The philosophy of deities and aesthetics, which was developed in India, has been nurtured in Japan. More than any other in the world, the culture of Japan is sensitive to the beauty of everything that is around us. The effect of peace and harmonious feeling that this appreciation of beauty brings to people is best understood in Japan.

Buddhism is a great culture of peace and ethical living. This is a vision of life that takes us away from the noise and painful confusions of the material world: it teaches us to shed our desires for illusory attractions. Its message is to look within, to the great peace and joy that are to be found there. Like all Indic faiths, this is a message of universal love and does not preclude the adoration of deities of other faiths.

Thai proposal to redo Mahabodhi Mahavihara rejected

2008-12-17T13:29:00.000-08:00

PATNA: The Bodhgaya Temple Management Committee (BTMC), which looks after the Mahabodhi Mahavihara, the place of enlightenment of Lord Buddha, has turned down a proposal from a Thai organisation to redecorate the sanctum sanctorum of the main temple using gold and silver as this would not have been in keeping with the ancient architectural feature of this holy monument.
The Mahabodhi Mahavihara is an architectural tribute to the prince who abandoned his abode of Kapilavastu to lead a life of a hermit. It was under the Bodhi tree that he attained enlightenment and became Buddha.

The revered architectural genius of the Mahabodhi Mahavihara drew the attention of Unesco, which declared it as a World Heritage Site.

It was mainly due to this reason that BTMC refused to have any alteration done or to have any glittering superimposed structure in the background of the grand Buddha statue in the sanctum sanctorum, which is a typical feature in Thai temples. "The proposal by The Bangkok Entertainment Committee was put up before earlier management committees also, which almost gave a go-ahead to this proposal," said Mahasweta Maharathi, a member of BTMC.

The new BTMC, which was formed in June this year, rejected the proposal after discussions, holding that this would tamper with the sacrosanct, serene and revered existing architecture. The decision was taken with a view to maintaining the glorious ancient Indian architecture as well. BTMC stated that the proposal was not in consonance with the Indian architectural tradition.

According to sources, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), which normally raises a lot of objections in such sensitive matters, allegedly showed a very casual approach on this vital issue and even approved the proposal.

Over centuries, this temple has been seen as an architectural marvel and a place of worship and spirituality for people cutting across caste, colour, religion and nationalities. The astounding simplicity of the arches in the sanctum sanctorum is reflective of the early Indian architecture and symbolic of the Buddhist philosophy.

Junta bans popular Buddhist monk's sermon

2008-12-17T13:27:00.000-08:00

New Delhi (Mizzima) – The Burmese military junta authorities in Rangoon Division have banned a sermon by abbot U Thumingla, organizers and friends said.

The ban order becomes effective when the sermon is to be held on December 18. Abbot U Thumingla became popular among religiously conscious Buddhists recently. The abbot is from Migadarwon monastery, Mandalay.

The abbot is 40 years old and has been into 20 years of monk hood. The organizers of the sermon preaching ceremonies and the monk community in Rangoon said that the authorities banned his sermons which were to be held soon in Minglataungnyunt, Mayangon and North Okkalapa Townships in Rangoon Division.

The sermons of U Thumingla entitled 'Sasana will diminish when the sermon preaching ceremonies diminish', 'be swallowed by earth fissures shortly,' 'Khat Tine Khan' and 'Need to know how to choose a good leader' are popular among the people.

U Thumingla is currently away from Mandalay and is now into sojourns in Hmawbi, Rangoon Division. His sermons are also banned in Mandalay, an abbot said when Mizzima contacted the Masoyane monastery in Mandalay over telephone.

In his 'Need to know how to choose a good leader' preached in Hlaingtharyar Township in August 2008, he told the audience that they should choose a good and reliable leader like Lord Buddha.

During this sermon the abbot said that now there were many Saturn like in ancient times. In the 'Khat Tine Khan' sermon, he said that some people wished the deadly cyclone hit them (the rulers) instead of the people. The abbot told his audience it was only because of their doing meritorious deeds which has protected them from suffering. When these good deeds are exhausted they will certainly face this sort of fate.

A local resident from Sanchaung Township also said that in 'Be swallowed by the earth fissure shortly', the abbot said that not only the higher authorities, even the lower level authorities like judges will be swallowed by earth fissures if they committed evil deeds by insulting the religion and monks. Insulting a single monk means insulting the entire order of the Sangha (monk). So I'd like to urge the 'State Sanghanaryaka Committee not to be passive in silence, the abbot preached in his sermon, the local resident said.

An official from the State Sanghamahanayaka Committee declined to say anything regarding the ban on the sermon preaching ceremonies of U Thumingla when Mizzima contacted his office over telephone.

The organizers of the religious ceremonies have to submit their applications to different levels of religious authorities from Ward, Township, and District level Sanghamahanayaka Committees in advance for their permission. They also have to sign a pledge not to include political matters in the religious sermons.

Attack on HH Dalai Lama by Andy Dabilis (New europe): Tibet’s Enemy Number One: His name is the Dalai Lama

2008-12-15T10:37:00.000-08:00

The Dalai Lama wowed the European Parliament with his traveling road show preaching tolerance, patience, humility and free lunches, and, when asked if he would join adoring fans there in a one-day fast to protest ongoing Chinese repression in his homeland of Tibet, smiled and said, “Right after breakfast.” His joke was not so funny in the land he fled 50 years ago to live in India, his monk’s robe flapping behind, the Chinese in hot pursuit because they thought he was an enemy of the state. If only they realised his meekness is no threat and that his timorous timidity while he’s been busy getting honorary degrees in fake courage isn’t passive resistance, it’s no resistance.

He’s got the best job in the world, presiding over a government- in-exile while making a few speeches around the world professing how upset he is that his people aren’t free, even while going robe-in-hand to the Chinese to say he doesn’t want independence, bowing and kow-towing, begging for democratic autonomy instead, tantamount to continued slavery for Tibetans.
He didn’t support a boycott of the Beijing Olympics, provoking unlikely dissent from some Tibetans frustrated his prayerful approach hasn’t worked, and was noticeably quiet during the uprising in which many of his followers were killed or jailed. They were the real heroes, while he was cowering away, and two months after the Games ended, so did his when he said he had given up. There’s a difference between the non-violent approach the brilliant Gandhi used to break England’s colonial rule over India, and the Dalai Lama’s surrender.

Gandhi, a freedom activist, went to jail for his beliefs. The Dalai Lama won’t even go to a bad restaurant. The Chinese call him a wolf in monk’s clothes but should take a look under that robe because there isn’t even a lamb’s tail there. It’s time he put down the green tea and reach for a little Moxie. His Peaceful Way, in which he’s dispensed pearls of wisdom like “My religion is kindness,” proved Winston Churchill was right when he said, “An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.”

But the Dalai Lama is exempt from criticism, because politicians and publishers won’t allow it, even though he’s ridiculed behind his back. Only British journalist Christopher Hitchens has taken him on, proclaiming that he “makes absurd pronouncements about sex and diet and, when on his trips to Hollywood fund-raisers, anoints major donours like Steven Segal and Richard Gere as holy,“ even if their movies aren’t exactly sacred.

This isn’t about celebrity though, but freedom, and he’s never been up to the task and has had life-time immunity from being questioned about it, until now, when younger Tibetans expressed frustration at half a century of failure. He said he was powerless to stop Chinese violence, but if he had the guts to stand in front of the guns like his own people did, it’s pretty unlikely the Chinese would shoot because he could have waved his Nobel Peace Prize at them and even the United States and Europe, who roll over because they need Chinese business to end their recessions, might protest, if only a little louder than he. You make your stand where the fight is, not where it isn’t.

What can you expect from a religious leader who said that, “The economic system of Marxism is founded on moral principles, while capitalism is concerned only with gain and profitability,” and described himself as half-Buddhist and half- Marxist. His recent pronouncement to European Union leaders in Poland was prophetic though, because he said what’s needed now is “A century of dialogue.” He’s halfway there.

new europe

When Jesus met Buddha

2008-12-15T10:35:00.000-08:00

While few mainline Christians would put the matter in such confrontational terms, any religion claiming exclusive access to truth has real difficulties reconciling other great faiths into its cosmic scheme.

Most Christian churches hold that Jesus alone is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and many also feel an obligation to carry that message to the world's unbelievers. But this creates a fundamental conflict with the followers of famous spiritual figures like Mohammed or Buddha, who preached radically different messages. Drawing on a strict interpretation of the Bible, some Christians see these rival faiths as not merely false, but as deliberate traps set by the forces of evil.

Being intolerant of other religions - consigning them to hell, in fact - may be bad enough in its own right, but it increasingly has real-world consequences. As trade and technology shrink the globe, so different religions come into ever-closer contact with one another, and the results can be bloody: witness the apocalyptic assaults in Mumbai. In such a world, teaching different faiths to acknowledge one another's claims, to live peaceably together side by side, stops being a matter of good manners and becomes a prerequisite for human survival.

Over the past 30 years, the Roman Catholic Church has faced repeated battles over this question of Christ's uniqueness, and has cracked down on thinkers who have made daring efforts to accommodate other world religions. While the Christian dialogue with Islam has attracted most of the headlines, it is the encounters with Hinduism and especially Buddhism that have stirred the most controversy within the church.

Sri Lankan theologians Aloysius Pieris and Tissa Balasuriya have had many run-ins with Vatican critics, and, more recently, the battle has come to American shores. Last year, the Vatican ordered an investigation of Georgetown University's Peter Phan, a Jesuit theologian whose main sin, in official eyes, has been to treat the Buddhism of his Vietnamese homeland as a parallel path to salvation.

Following the ideas of Pope Benedict XVI, though, the church refuses to give up its fundamental belief in the unique role of Christ. In a widely publicized open letter to Italian politician Marcello Pera, Pope Benedict declared that "an inter-religious dialogue in the strict sense of the term is not possible." By all means, he said, we should hold conversations with other cultures, but not in a way that acknowledges other religions as equally valid. While the Vatican does not of course see the Buddha as a demon, it does fear the prospect of syncretism, the dilution of Christian truth in an unholy mixture with other faiths.

Beyond doubt, this view places Benedict in a strong tradition of Christianity as it has developed in Europe since Roman times. But there is another, ancient tradition, which suggests a very different course. Europe's is not the only version of the Christian faith, nor is it necessarily the oldest heir of the ancient church. For more than 1,000 years, other quite separate branches of the church established thriving communities across Asia, and in their sheer numbers, these churches were comparable to anything Europe could muster at the time. These Christian bodies traced their ancestry back not through Rome, but directly to the original Jesus movement of ancient Palestine. They moved across India, Central Asia, and China, showing no hesitation to share - and learn from - the other great religions of the East.

Just how far these Christians were prepared to go is suggested by a startling symbol that appeared on memorials and stone carvings in both southern India and coastal China during the early Middle Ages. We can easily see that the image depicts a cross, but it takes a moment to realize that the base of the picture - the root from which the cross is growing - is a lotus flower, the symbol of Buddhist enlightenment.

In modern times, most mainstream churches would condemn such an amalgam as a betrayal of the Christian faith, an example of multiculturalism run wild. Yet concerns about syncretism did not bother these early Asian Christians, who called themselves Nasraye, Nazarenes, like Jesus's earliest followers. They were comfortable associating themselves with the other great monastic and mystical religion of the time, and moreover, they believed that both lotus and cross carried similar messages about the quest for light and salvation. If these Nazarenes could find meaning in the lotus-cross, then why can't modern Catholics, or other inheritors of the faith Jesus inspired?

Many Christians are coming to terms with just how thoroughly so many of their fundamental assumptions will have to be rethought as their faith today becomes a global religion. Even modern church leaders who know how rapidly the church is expanding in the global South tend to see European values and traditions as the indispensable norm, in matters of liturgy and theology as much as music and architecture.

Yet the reality is that Christianity has from its earliest days been an intercontinental faith, as firmly established in Asia and Africa as in Europe itself. When we broaden our scope to look at the faith that by 800 or so stretched from Ireland to Korea, we see the many different ways in which Christians interacted with other believers, in encounters that reshaped both sides. At their best, these meetings allowed the traditions not just to exchange ideas but to intertwine in productive and enriching ways, in an awe-inspiring chapter of Christian history that the Western churches have all but forgotten.

To understand this story, we need to reconfigure our mental maps. When we think of the growth of Christianity, we think above all of Europe. We visualize a movement growing west from Palestine and Syria and spreading into Greece and Italy, and gradually into northern regions. Europe is still the center of the Catholic Church, of course, but it was also the birthplace of the Protestant denominations that split from it. For most of us, even speaking of the "Eastern Church" refers to another group of Europeans, namely to the Orthodox believers who stem from the eastern parts of the continent. English Catholic thinker Hilaire Belloc once proclaimed that "Europe is the Faith; and the Faith is Europe."

But in the early centuries other Christians expanded east into Asia and south into Africa, and those other churches survived for the first 1,200 years or so of Christian history. Far from being fringe sects, these forgotten churches were firmly rooted in the oldest traditions of the apostolic church. Throughout their history, these Nazarenes used Syriac, which is close to Jesus' own language of Aramaic, and they followed Yeshua, not Jesus. No other church - not Roman Catholics, not Eastern Orthodox - has a stronger claim to a direct inheritance from the earliest Jesus movement.

The most stunningly successful of these eastern Christian bodies was the Church of the East, often called the Nestorian church. While the Western churches were expanding their influence within the framework of the Roman Empire, the Syriac-speaking churches colonized the vast Persian kingdom that ruled from Syria to Pakistan and the borders of China. From their bases in Mesopotamia - modern Iraq - Nestorian Christians carried out their vast missionary efforts along the Silk Route that crossed Central Asia. By the eighth century, the Church of the East had an extensive structure across most of central Asia and China, and in southern India. The church had senior clergy - metropolitans - in Samarkand and Bokhara, in Herat in Afghanistan. A bishop had his seat in Chang'an, the imperial capital of China, which was then the world's greatest superpower.

When Nestorian Christians were pressing across Central Asia during the sixth and seventh centuries, they met the missionaries and saints of an equally confident and expansionist religion: Mahayana Buddhism. Buddhists too wanted to take their saving message to the world, and launched great missions from India's monasteries and temples. In this diverse world, Buddhist and Christian monasteries were likely to stand side by side, as neighbors and even, sometimes, as collaborators. Some historians believe that Nestorian missionaries influenced the religious practices of the Buddhist religion then developing in Tibet. Monks spoke to monks.

In presenting their faith, Christians naturally used the cultural forms that would be familiar to Asians. They told their stories in the forms of sutras, verse patterns already made famous by Buddhist missionaries and teachers. A stunning collection of Jesus Sutras was found in caves at Dunhuang, in northwest China. Some Nestorian writings draw heavily on Buddhist ideas, as they translate prayers and Christian services in ways that would make sense to Asian readers. In some texts, the Christian phrase "angels and archangels and hosts of heaven" is translated into the language of buddhas and devas.

One story in particular suggests an almost shocking degree of collaboration between the faiths. In 782, the Indian Buddhist missionary Prajna arrived in Chang'an, bearing rich treasures of sutras and other scriptures. Unfortunately, these were written in Indian languages. He consulted the local Nestorian bishop, Adam, who had already translated parts of the Bible into Chinese. Together, Buddhist and Christian scholars worked amiably together for some years to translate seven copious volumes of Buddhist wisdom. Probably, Adam did this as much from intellectual curiosity as from ecumenical good will, and we can only guess about the conversations that would have ensued: Do you really care more about relieving suffering than atoning for sin? And your monks meditate like ours do?

These efforts bore fruit far beyond China. Other residents of Chang'an at this very time included Japanese monks, who took these very translations back with them to their homeland. In Japan, these works became the founding texts of the great Buddhist schools of the Middle Ages. All the famous movements of later Japanese history, including Zen, can be traced to one of those ancient schools and, ultimately - incredibly - to the work of a Christian bishop.

By the 12th century, flourishing churches in China and southern India were using the lotus-cross. The lotus is a superbly beautiful flower that grows out of muck and slime. No symbol could better represent the rise of the soul from the material, the victory of enlightenment over ignorance, desire, and attachment. For 2,000 years, Buddhist artists have used the lotus to convey these messages in countless paintings and sculptures. The Christian cross, meanwhile, teaches a comparable lesson, of divine victory over sin and injustice, of the defeat of the world. Somewhere in Asia, Yeshua's forgotten followers made the daring decision to integrate the two emblems, which still today forces us to think about the parallels between the kinds of liberation and redemption offered by each faith.

Christianity, for much of its history, was just as much an Asian religion as Buddhism. Asia's Christian churches survived for more than a millennium, and not until the 10th century, halfway through Christian history, did the number of Christians in Europe exceed that in Asia.

What ultimately obliterated the Asian Christians were the Mongol invasions, which spread across Central Asia and the Middle East from the 1220s onward. From the late 13th century, too, the world entered a terrifying era of climate change, of global cooling, which severely cut food supplies and contributed to mass famine. The collapse of trade and commerce crippled cities, leaving the world much poorer and more vulnerable. Intolerant nationalism wiped out Christian communities in China, while a surging militant Islam destroyed the churches of Central Asia.

But awareness of this deep Christian history contributes powerfully to understanding the future of the religion, as much as its past. For long centuries, Asian Christians kept up neighborly relations with other faiths, which they saw not as deadly rivals but as fellow travelers on the road to enlightenment. Their worldview differed enormously from the norms that developed in Europe.

To take one example, we are used to the idea of Christianity operating as the official religion of powerful states, which were only too willing to impose a particular orthodoxy upon their subjects. Yet when we look at the African and Asian experience, we find millions of Christians whose normal experience was as minorities or even majorities within nations dominated by some other religion. Struggling to win hearts and minds, leading churches had no option but to frame the Christian message in the context of non-European intellectual traditions. Christian thinkers did present their message in the categories of Buddhism - and Taoism, and Confucianism - and there is no reason why they could not do so again. When modern scholars like Peter Phan try to place Christianity in an Asian and Buddhist context, they are resuming a task begun at least 1,500 years ago.

Perhaps, in fact, we are looking at our history upside down. Some day, future historians might look at the last few hundred years of Euro-American dominance within Christianity and regard it as an unnatural interlude in a much longer story of fruitful interchange between the great religions.

Consider the story told by Timothy, a patriarch of the Nestorian church. Around 800, he engaged in a famous debate with the Muslim caliph in Baghdad, a discussion marked by reason and civility on both sides. Imagine, Timothy said, that we are all in a dark house, and someone throws a precious pearl in the midst of a pile of ordinary stones. Everyone scrabbles for the pearl, and some think they've found it, but nobody can be sure until day breaks.

In the same way, he said, the pearl of true faith and wisdom had fallen into the darkness of this transitory world; each faith believed that it alone had found the pearl. Yet all he could claim - and all the caliph could say in response - was that some faiths thought they had enough evidence to prove that they were indeed holding the real pearl, but the final truth would not be known in this world.

Knowing other faiths firsthand grants believers an enviable sophistication, founded on humility. We could do a lot worse than to learn from what we sometimes call the Dark Ages.

-------------------
Philip Jenkins is Edwin Erle Sparks professor of the humanities at Penn State University. He is author of "The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia -- and How It Died," published last month.

buddhistchannel

Thailand presents precious relics of Buddha to Sikkim

2008-12-15T10:34:00.000-08:00

Gangtok, Sikkim (India) -- Shri Somdet Phra Nayanasaamvara, the 19th supreme patriarch of the Kingdom of Thailand presented 13 precious relics of Lord Buddha collected from 13 different countries of which 8 are Buddhist countries, to Sikkim (India) for its historic project known as the Sakyamuni Project at Ralong of Ravangla sub-division of south district of Sikkim.

The relics were handed over by a high level delegation consisting of 33 monks headed by Shri Jamnian Chonsakhom Seelasetthi, the chief of the Thai monastery amidst a grand ceremony organised at New Karma Thekcheling complex. The relics were received by the Urban Development Minister of Sikkim Shri D.D. Bhutia and Goshir Gyattshab Rimpoche, the second head of Kagya sect after Karmapa. Thousands of monks, priests and devotees were present on the occasion, held on November 25, 2008.

The Sakyamuni Project is one of the most historic and adventurous project, launched by the Government of Sikkim under the chief patronship of Dr. Pawan Chamling, the hon’ble Chief Minister of Sikkim. ‘Sakyamuni’ in Newari language of Sakya dynasty means Lord Buddha. In order to keep alive the eternity, prosperity sanctity and stability of Buddhism in Sikkim the government has planned to build 148 feet high statue of Lord Buddha.

The relics from eight Buddhist countries along with the prominent monasteries of the world including Bodh Gaya (Bihar) will contribute in the construction of the Sakyamuni Project. In order to attract a large number of tourists and pilgrims from across the world, a beautiful eco-garden will be constructed for the growth and well-being of the area, informed the minister.

Shri Seelasetthi expressed his happiness and joy on the occasion saying this will help not only in building good relations between India and Thailand but will also help to increase the bilateral relation of India with other Buddhist countries. This will also add a lot in bringing the name of Sikkim on the world map of tourism.

buddhistchannel

Dalai Lama's New Zealand visit risks China's ire

2008-12-15T10:33:00.000-08:00

Auckland, New Zealand -- Prime Minister John Key has said he will meet the Dalai Lama when he comes to New Zealand next year - one week after China retaliated against the French president for doing the same.

The Dalai Lama will be visiting Auckland on December 6 next year to speak at Vector Arena and lead a session on Buddhist teachings.

"The Prime Minister will treat the Dalai Lama in the same way as any other significant visitor, and will meet the Dalai Lama should his diary permit," said a spokesman for Mr Key.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy's meeting with the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader last week resulted in Beijing retaliating by scrapping a China-EU summit in France and warning that multibillion-dollar trade deals could suffer.

Beijing described the meeting, held in the Polish city of Gdansk, as unwise, opportunistic and a shortsighted approach to handling the Tibet issue.

Mr Key's decision could also threaten trade and ties with Beijing. China routinely objects to foreign leaders meeting the Dalai Lama, whom Beijing accuses of seeking independence for his Himalayan homeland.

The Buddhist spiritual leader fled Tibet for India in 1959 amid an abortive uprising against Chinese rule.

Businessman Steven Wong, chairman of the United Chinese Association of New Zealand, warned that ties could suffer should Mr Key decide to meet the Dalai Lama.

"It is not a good move, and Mr Key will find it hard to find any Chinese here who will support his decision to meet the Dalai Lama."

Mr Wong was part of the Government delegation to Beijing this year led by then Trade Minister Phil Goff to sign New Zealand's Free Trade Agreement with China.

But the Prime Minister's spokesman insisted the meeting with the Dalai Lama will have "no reflection on the importance of the relationship between New Zealand and China, which is now one of our most important".

The chairman of the Dalai Lama Visit Trust, Thuten Kesang, said he was delighted at Mr Key's decision.

"I hope the Chinese won't over-react and turn the simple meeting between the two leaders into another circus. It would just be embarrassing for everybody."

buddhistchannel

Why we monks don’t miss sex - Dalai Lama

2008-12-15T10:32:00.000-08:00

Lagos, Nigeria -- Spiritual leader of Tibet, the Dalai Lama, was in Nigeria a fortnight ago to deliver the 10th Anyiam-Osigwe Foundation lecture at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, NIIA, Victoria Island, Lagos.

The day after the lecture, Saturday Sun was in his hotel room for an interview, where he spoke on wide ranging issues – except politics. According to him, he was in the country to "promote human value and religious harmony," so political questions were ruled out.

The 14th Dalai Lama (real name, Tenzin Gyatso) is also a 1989 Nobel Peace Prize winner. He spoke about terrorism in the world, how the world can be a safer place, his role as a spiritual leader, healing powers, his opinion about Nigeria, among other issues.

The Dalai Lama is a Buddhist monk. That means no marriage, no sex. How does he cope? And does he ever get tempted by the opposite sex?

All the answers in the interview below:

At the Anyiam-Osigwe Foundation lecture which you came to deliver, you spoke about fear leading to a compromised immune system. Can you expatiate on it?

Actually, I’m not a scientist, but scientists have looked seriously into our emotions. They have found out that emotion and physical health are closely linked. Two patients with the same illness, but one patient is mentally happy, calm, more enthusiastic, and he recovers much faster. I think I belong to that category (laughs). The other patient with same situation, same illness, but too much worry, with a pessimistic attitude, does not recover, or takes a long time to recover.
And also for preventive measure, the person who is always fresh, confident, has better immune system. A scientist from an American university told me once that anger, very serious anger, is injurious to health. It leads to hatred, which eats up the immune system.

As a spiritual leader, do you have healing powers?
As a Buddhist monk, you study five different courses. Logic, craft, medicine, literature, Buddhist philosophy. But healing powers? No, no, no. If I had healing powers, then first I would heal myself of the gall bladder problem, for which I had surgery (laughs). But I had to go for modern technology. If I had healing power, I wouldn’t need that. It therefore means I have no healing powers. I’m very skeptical about such claims. Very, very skeptical. It does not mean people do not get healed miraculously. It happens. One of my French friends, who has been a Buddhist nun for about 30 years, told me that she got cured of some ailment in her hands. It may happen, but I’m very skeptical. By chance maybe, one or two. But you can’t say it’s definite.

Furthermore, Buddhists are more of scientists, rather than believers. Buddha himself made it clear that his followers should not accept his word, his teachings out of faith and devotion. Rather, they should investigate. So in 2,600 years of Buddhist history, many Buddhist masters have checked, investigated Buddha’s words. If we just accept Buddha’s own words, it will be contradictory to our own logical investigation. Even some people consider Buddha an ancient scientist. Since my childhood, I’ve had keen interest in science and technology. We must accept the reality, rather than what literature says. I have developed a keen interest in talking or meeting with scientists, and learning from them. I’m usually interested in learning four things: Cosmology, neurology, physics and psychology. Buddhism and science complement each other. An American lady friend once told me that science is a killer of religion, so be careful. I asked how. Buddhism itself emphasizes logic and reason. Experiment rather than faith. So there should not be any sort of contradiction.
I have keen interest in finding out reality. In my lecture, I mentioned that self, or ‘I’ is the center of the whole universe. But at the same time, it is good to investigate. What is self? No answer, we can’t find it.

It’s your first time in Nigeria. What’s your impression of the country?
Very nice, but very hot. The hotel is very good, but the first night, the air conditioning in the bedroom failed, and it was very hot (long laughter).
And of course, I know that because of the oil and gas that you have in Nigeria, the country is rich and has great potentials. The standard of education is better here compared to the neighbouring countries. You have achieved democracy, and it is working, it’s good. You had a civil war, but now, it’s all settled.
However, there is a wide gap between the rich and the poor. A small number are very rich, millionaires, while the vast number is poor. Unlike India, which also has a gap between the rich and the poor, but number of middle class is quite big. I think Nigeria should close the gap between the rich and the poor by increasing the middle class, in order to utilize the national wealth more equally.

Your Holiness, you are scheduled to meet President Nicholas Sarkozy of France, and China is not happy about it.
This looks like a political matter. My visit here is purely non-political. I’m here for promotion of human value, promotion of religious harmony. These are the two reasons I’m here. Soon after Sarkozy became president, he expressed wishes to see me. I was in France, but he could not see me, he sent his beautiful wife. So now, he’s free to see me, and has invited me and Lech Walesa, the former Polish president. I have known Walesa for many years.

Can you give an insight into what you will discuss with President Sarkozy?
Top secret (long laughter)

You spoke about the wife of the French president being beautiful. But Dalai Lamas don’t marry. So do you miss sex?
No, I don’t miss sex. Not only Buddhist monks don’t marry, Catholic monks don’t too. And many Indians.

How then do they satisfy their physical urges and feelings?
Sexual pressure, sexual desire is short period satisfaction. But often, it leaves more complications. One of my friends, a Canadian, was a Buddhist monk, but after some time, he disrobed. Now he complains about so much sexual pressure, that’s he’s virtually trapped (laughs). Obviously, due to sexual pressure, people marry,soon after, they divorce. Again, they marry, and may divorce again. Divorce in a marriage which has produced children is terrible. In marriage, there is short period of sexual satisfaction, but there are many ups and downs. Monks or nuns have been trained to master their desires, and there is much less ups and downs. Monks, nuns, naturally as human beings have desires for sex, it is biological. But then, those who marry always have trouble, and in some cases it leads to murder or suicide. So, that is the consolation. We miss something, but at the same time, we live better lives. More independence, more freedom.

In marriage, if you live together, happy, and get old, there is the issue of who goes first, who dies first. Human attachment to your children and partner. And it becomes an obstacle to peace of mind. Whether right or wrong, we monks think that way. What do you think? You should join the monkhood (long laughter).
The attachments bring trap. Whether it is to a person, to substances or whatever, it is a trap. Monks are detached. One of the practices in all major religions is detachment. Don’t have too much attachment, and you’ll be contented. You have it in Catholicism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, all major religions. You should be contented. Wealth, money, friend, family, contentment is best. It’s the key to peace of mind. Some of my friends are billionaires, but their minds is on more, more money. Contentment means some kind of personal check, but it doesn’t mean we no longer have desire. But attachment and desire should be separate. Without desire, then life is meaningless. Desire for good, for more service to others, desire for more benefit to others. That makes your life more meaningful. Without desire, then you’re a robot. No further progress. Genuine desire, with reasons, with logic, that’s proper desire.
Anger also can be two types. One anger comes spontaneously. That’s okay. But the anger that says this person is my enemy, I have to hit back, that is bad and is based on ignorance, lack of holistic view. If you behave well to your enemy, practice forgiveness, and reach out in all sincerity, one day the enemy and you may become best of friends. We should not close that possibility.

Your Holiness, what’s your position on terrorism, considering what happened in Mumbai, India, recently?
Very sad, very, very sad. I’m a follower of Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King, and also Nelson Mandela. In the early days, Mandela believed in violence, but in the latter part, he subscribed to non-violence. I consider myself a follower of these great leaders who preach non-violence. I’m fully committed to non-violence. When the September 11 terrorist attacks happened in 2001, the next day, I wrote a letter to President George Bush. I know him, very nice person, straightforward, very nice, not like some politicians who are always reserved and distant. He’s not like that. We even became close friends. I’ll give one instance. Our first meeting, he offered some tea and cookies. I then asked, which cookie is better? He immediately showed me the better one. We developed some close feelings for each other. But that does not mean I agree with every policy he carried out (laughs).
So, I wrote a letter to him on September 12, 2001, showing my sadness, and giving my condolence to all Americans. I expressed condemnation for the terrible event. No matter what is your goal, violent method is condemnable. One violent act leads to more violence, no end. I’m totally committed to non-violence.

You are an environmentalist. Do you worry about the future of this planet?
Oh yes. First, global warming. Terrible. Of course, my knowledge is limited, but I discuss with experts. Recently, I met an Irish scientist who told me that the rate of global warming is terrible. He said within the next 15 to 20 years, some major rivers in Tibet will dry up. The lives of some human beings depend on these rivers. So it’s very serious.
With violence, the reaction comes immediately. But with the environment, the reaction is invisible. So, we take things for granted. My own contribution to keeping the environment is that in my own house, I don’t use the bath, only shower, to conserve water. It’s my small contribution to save water (long laugh).

What roles should religious leaders play in national development?
Basically, religious leaders should promote human values and harmony. They should be active in the preservation of ecology. It’s our duty to protect our world. We have the responsibility to take care of the planet created by God.
Then in politics, I think religious leaders should better stay clear of partisan politics.

As a Nobel Peace Prize winner, how do we curb terror in the world?
Dialogue. I usually say the 20th century is a century of violence and bloodshed. How many millions of people were killed in that century? Too many. Violence is not a proper way to solve problems. Most of the problems are essentially man-made, so dialogue is crucial. We must promote dialogue. This 21st century should be century of dialogue. And for that, we need two kinds of disarmament – external and internal.
External disarmament has begun, there is limitation of nuclear weapon, and it should continue. But in order to effectively carry out external disarmament, we need internal disarmament. If we are full of hatred, full of anger, external disarmament will be very difficult. The genuine world peace we want will come only through inner peace.

You are 73 years old. Do you have any fear about what happens to the office of the Dalai Lama after you?
No, no, no. I have made it clear that whether the office of the Dalai Lama should continue or not is left to the people of Tibet. I’m not authoritarian. If I were, then I would be thinking seriously about my successor. It is left to the people of Tibet.

In Tibet, since 2001, we already have elected political leadership. Every five years, elections will take place. About the spiritual leader, the people will decide.

buddhistchannel

Buddhist Sites to be conserved in Andhra Pradesh

2008-12-15T10:31:00.001-08:00

VISAKHAPATNAM, India -- Andhra Pradesh Archaeology and Museums Department Director P Chenna Reddy said Rs 44.5 lakh was allocated for conservation works, such as, fencing boundaries in the Buddhist Sites and preservation of Chaityas, Stupas and Viharas at Thotlakonda and Pavurallakonda in the region.

Talking to newspersons here last night, Reddy said Rs one crore would be sanctioned in the second phase for protection, preservation, conservation of archaeology, arechaeological sites and historical monuments in the region.

The Driector said a regional museum for 'Buddhist Heritage' would be set up here. Efforts were on to attract buddhist tourists from south-east Asian countries, including Japan to the sites. The
Department had chalked programmes for three years from next year to promote tourism, he added.

buddhistchannel

French President Nicolas Sarkozy angers Chinese media

2008-12-15T10:30:00.000-08:00

The Chinese press have been highly critical of French President Nicolas Sarkozy because he met with the Dalai Lama, and one paper went as far as to accuse the leader of France of duplicity.

English-language China Daily newspaper claimed: "The French president knowingly offended the people he now says he wants to befriend, without showing repentance."

Some French Internet sites are reported to have been hacked and anti-France material has been conspicuous on Chinese forums online.

But President Sarkozy has responded saying he has no intention of compromising the values of Europe.

The French president met with the 73-year-old Tibetan spiritual leader at a gathering of Nobel Peace Prize winners in Poland last Saturday.

China has accused the Dalai Lama being behind a campaign for Tibet to become fully independent of China.

The Dalai Lama also called upon the European Union to stand up to China with regard to human rights issues.

President Sarkozy has said he regrets the bad-feeling China is expressing towards him and his country over this matter, but he pointed out that France is not a "vassal" of China.

enjoyfrance.com

SIR PAUL MCCARTNEY - MCCARTNEY'S MEAT ROW WITH DALAI LAMA

2008-12-15T10:18:00.000-08:00

SIR PAUL MCCARTNEY tried to turn the DALAI LAMA vegetarian, insisting the famed Buddhist was "wrong" to eat meat.
The Beatles legend wrote to the spiritual leader to point out that meat-eaters contribute to the suffering of animals, contradicting his statement that Buddhists "believe in not causing suffering to any sentient beings".
And the Hey Jude hitmaker even disagreed when the Dalai Lama insisted he ate meat for health reasons.
In an interview with Prospect magazine, MCCartney says, "I found out he was not a vegetarian, so I wrote to him saying 'Forgive me for pointing this out, but if you eat animals then there is some suffering somewhere along the line'.
"He replied saying that his doctors had told him he needed it, so I wrote back saying they were wrong."

contactmusic.com

Torture widespread, routine in Tibet

2008-12-12T10:45:00.000-08:00

BEIJING, China -- The use of torture in the restless Chinese region of Tibet is widespread and routine and officials regularly ignore legal safeguards supposed to be in place to prevent it, a new report said on Wednesday.

Even when detainees are released, they may die of their injuries, be scarred for life mentally or physically and not be able to afford medical treatment or be denied it completely, the Free Tibet group said.

"Despite claims by the Chinese government that there are 'extremely few cases of torture', the evidence tells a different story," Free Tibet director Stephanie Brigden said. "There is no doubt that the Chinese government is permitting the use of torture as a weapon to suppress the Tibetan people."

China's Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for
comment and calls to the spokesman's office of the Chinese-run Tibetan government in Lhasa went unanswered.

Chinese troops marched into Tibet in 1950 and the region's spiritual leader the Dalai Lama fled into exile in 1959 after a failed uprising against Beijing's rule.

Mountainous and remote Tibet was rocked by anti-Chinese protests earlier this year, which China blamed on the Dalai Lama, whom it brands a separatist. He has repeatedly denied the claims.

Free Tibet said it had profiled numerous cases of torture carried out against people detained following the demonstrations, which spilled over into other ethnically Tibetan parts of China such as Gansu, Qinghai and Sichuan provinces.

It said that one monk at the Labrang monastery in Gansu, Jigme Gyatso, had to be hospitalised for almost a month after his injuries received in detention.

"They would hang me up for several hours with my hands tied to a rope ... hanging from the ceiling and my feet above the ground. Then they would beat me on my face, chest, and back, with the full force of their fists," he said in the report.

"Finally, on one occasion, I lost consciousness and was taken to hospital. After I regained consciousness at the hospital, I was once again taken back to prison where they continued the practice of hanging me from the ceiling and beating me."

LITTLE PROGRESS

China has vowed to stamp out torture in its judicial system, described as widespread by some critics, in the face of international and domestic pressure.

Last month, the U.N. Committee Against Torture, in a rare public review of China's record, expressed dissatisfaction with a "very serious information gap" about abuses in the country where criminal justice information is often considered a state secret. Free Tibet, in the report issued to coincide with International Human Rights Day, said Chinese laws aimed at protecting detainees were regularly ignored in Tibet.

"The international community can no longer hide behind sound bites condemning China's human rights track record in Tibet and must now take specific actions to reverse the worsening crisis in Tibet," Brigden added.

China and envoys of the Dalai Lama have been meeting on and off for the past few years, but with little to show for their talks.

Beijing has rejected the Dalai Lama's calls for greater autonomy as being part of a plot for covert independence.

On Wednesday, the semi-official China News Service quoted Si Ta, a deputy head of the United Front Work Department which handles relations with non-Communists and ethnic and religious minorities, as repeating that the door to talks was always open.

"The Party still has expectations of the Dalai Lama and plenty of patience, but 'Tibet independence', 'half independence' or 'covert independence' are unacceptable," it paraphrased him as saying in Washington.

buddhistchannel.tv

Tibetan robes in great demand in Varanasi

2008-12-12T10:44:00.000-08:00

By Girish Debey

Varanasi, Dec 11 (ANI) Varanasi, famous for silk, is fast emerging as a market for the traditional Tibetan robes.

Tibetan robes made of brocket cloth and peacock feather has been given a special place in Buddhist religion. The Buddhist monks consider it as a holy cloth and use it in every religious activity and ceremony.

According to the exporters, the demand of robes made of peacock feathers is high in foreign countries and fetch a good deal of foreign clients.

“Peacock feather is in great demand in foreign countries and the Tibetan use it in their religious works also,” said Badruddin Ansari, an exporter.

The main source of income for the weavers involved in the making of these robes comes from the sale of brocket cloth and regular export helps them to earn their livelihood. According to the Buddhist monks, the cloth is so pristine that to wear it, a man has to prove his qualities. Only monks of high status in Buddhist religion can use it.

“Varanasi silk cloth is very famous and it has been given high status in our religion, so a common man can”t use it. There should be some merits for a man to use it. It is mainly used in Chatpadu, Tibetan Lohsan, religious functions and programmes,” said Karma, a Buddhist monk.

Tibetan exiles set up makeshift shops every year for two months at various places in India as winter approaches and make brisk sales at reasonable prices. (ANI)

newspostonline.com

Meditation no cure, but it helps

2008-12-12T10:43:00.000-08:00

WHEN Guy Corrigall was two years in remission from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, he began meditating.

Not just any form of meditation, but mindfulness meditation, an increasingly popular practice for alleviating stress, depression, anxiety, and pain.

In Corrigall's case, he was hoping to curtail the depression that had crept into his life since the diagnosis. "Not that I wanted to throw myself off a tall building, but I had shut myself off from life ... The meditation was a wonderful safe place where I could just go and be," he says.

The 63-year-old financial planner now meditates for 40 minutes every day, and says it comes as naturally as brushing his teeth. "It's not a cure for the cancer, but it helped me accommodate it. It has been enormously rewarding and valuable."

One might assume Corrigall learned his practice in a Buddhist temple or during a yoga retreat, but it was actually at the Sydney Cancer Centre at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, in the Sydney suburb of Camperdown.

Clinical psychologist Elizabeth Foley runs the mindfulness clinic at RPA for cancer patients. In the past couple of years she has worked with over 200 such people.

"Because treatments are improving, 90 per cent of the time people are living with cancer. Certainly mindfulness helps people live with cancer, lets it be part of their lives without taking over their lives. It's about quality of life, about coping with the illness and having a really rich, wonderful life in spite of the diagnosis," she says.

Mindfulness meditation isn't new; the practice is derived from Buddhist vipassana meditation, but its acceptance into mainstream medicine is a recent occurrence, particularly in Australia.

In mindfulness meditation, participants are taught to focus their thoughts on their immediate physical sensations -- including ones normally taken for granted, such as breathing in and out -- in a way that helps them cope more easily with physical pain and to minimise any worries or anxieties they might have about the past or future.

The practice was popularised in the west by Jon Kabat-Zinn, emeritus professor of medicine and founding director of the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Centre for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. In the 1970s, Kabat-Zinn developed an eight-week course in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), in which he used meditation to teach patients the act of "paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgementally". Kabat-Zinn also ran clinical trials which found that MBSR resulted in reductions in chronic pain, anxiety disorders and psoriasis.

The form of mindfulness meditation that Foley uses in the Mindfulness Clinic is Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), a modification of MBSR developed at Oxford to target the cognitive processes associated with relapse into depression. A recent randomised controlled trial of MBCT that Foley ran with 115 clinic patients showed significant improvements in depression, anxiety and distress, and a trend for improved quality of life in the treatment group compared to a waitlist control group.

"Many of these patients have found it life-changing," she says. "The main thing clients tend to learn about is kindness. Developing kindness towards themselves rather than being so judgmental."

Corrigall recalls his own participation in the trial fondly. "It was highly structured and very disciplined. And as I'm a mathematician, I found it very well based." But that's not to say it was easy. "It's quite demanding. You have to say 'look, this isn't for fun'. You have to have a very strong purpose. Meditation is a discipline. It's something you have to concentrate on, like daily exercise," he says.

Overseas, studies of mindfulness meditation have been sprouting with increasing frequency since 2000. It has been credited with helping to increase immune functioning and preventing relapse or recurrence in major depression.

Bruno Cayoun, a clinical psychologist and research consultant in mindfulness-based research at the University of Tasmania, says Australia is lagging in its acceptance of mindfulness meditation, but gradually picking it up. "Had it not been called mindfulness or associated with Buddhism, it wouldn't have taken so long to catch on," he says.

But in psychology, according to Cayoun, the results mean everyone is now talking about mindfulness techniques. "It is coming from the floor -- clients are saying I want this because of the results -- and that is almost unheard of in therapy."

In 2009, Cayoun will be running an eight-week course in mindfulness for staff at Hobart's Risdon Prison, who will in turn teach it to inmates. "In America, it has been shown to reduce recidivism by 90 per cent," he says.

"If I train my brain twice a day not to react to sensations, when I have an emotion I'm not going to react. I'm going to feel it, but I'm going to be more tolerant of it and let it go. I'm not going to ruminate on it."

According to Griffith University psychology PhD student Angela Morgan, mindfulness can also be useful for people who suffer from eating disorders. In recently completed research with colleague Michelle Hanisch, Morgan ran a randomised controlled trial of group-based mindfulness intervention for binge-eating related disorders.

In two-hourly sessions over an eight-week period, they used mindfulness meditation to teach 128 women to tolerate and manage emotional experiences without using food.

"The mindfulness treatment resulted in significant improvements in the frequency of binge-eating episodes and compensatory behaviours (vomiting, laxative use, excessive exercise and fasting) per week," Morgan says. "At the end of the treatment the majority of the participants no longer met diagnostic criteria for eating disorders."

Morgan says 62 per cent of participants were no longer binge-eating and 80 per cent were no longer using the compensatory behaviours. The improvements were all maintained at a one month follow-up.

The effects of mindfulness meditation on the elderly are also being examined. In October the Tasmanian branch of Alzheimer's Australia began a risk-reduction program for healthy adults between the ages of 55 and 80 called Active Cognitive Enhancement (ACE) to combat mental decline. The program results will be evaluated as part of a research project at the School of Psychology at the University of Tasmania. During every two-hour session, participants practise cognitive training exercises, listen to educational lectures and engage in a brief period of mindfulness meditation.

Social worker Malcolm Tyler, with the Tasmanian Department of Health and Human Services, says sessions are short, but participants are often picking up the practice at home as well. "People are reporting increased cognitive effects already," Tyler says.

The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners says it recognises the clinical benefits of mindfulness meditation and the growing body of scientific evidence supporting its use in clinical practice.

The college offers Continuing Professional Development (CPD) points to GPs for several mindfulness meditation courses in Australia.

But Sydney GP Gillian Deakin says the medical community has not embraced mindfulness nearly enough. She considers the practice an essential part of good health, but says that puts her in the minority among medical practitioners.

"We tend to be enamoured with the power of the mind and the thinking mind in medicine, whereas meditation is beyond thinking," she says. "Medical training is a total anathema to this. I consider it a gross failing in medical training that they don't train all medical practitioners in the art of mindfulness. For the distress the average GP sees, largely the best form of treatment would be mindfulness training."

Deakin recommends mindfulness meditation to patients, but says she doesn't do so until physical causes are ruled out. She refers patients to Open Ground, a mindfulness-based stress reduction program that consists of weekly 2 1/2-hour group sessions over eight weeks. The program doesn't come cheap at $660, but director Timothea Goddard says there are payment plans and concessions.

Goddard tells of an 84-year-old man who came to the course having been through cancer and a number of bad accidents. "He was on massive amounts of painkillers and over the eight weeks he got off them. He said, 'I have pain, have bad pain every day, but I'm not making the same meaning of it. I'm interrupting the reactivity that says 'why me, I feel so miserable'. The pain is there and I choose to go and have a life'."

theaustralian.news.com.au

Research centre on Buddhism in Singapore

2008-12-12T10:40:00.000-08:00

Tibetans celebrate 19th anniversary of Dalai Lama’’s peace prize

2008-12-12T10:39:00.000-08:00

Dharamsala, India -- Tibetans living-in-exile in Dharamsala today celebrated 19th anniversary of the Dalai Lama receiving the Nobel peace prize in 1989.

Hundreds of Tibetan monks, nuns and students including some foreigners assembled in the main Buddhist premises at McLeodganj to celebrate the occasion.

Prime Minister of Tibetan government-in-exile Samdong Rimpoche also attended the celebrations.

Thubten Samphel, spokesperson of Tibetan government-in-exile said that conferment of the Nobel peace prize on Dalai Lama showed the international support for the cause of Tibetan freedom.

“The Conferment of the Nobel peace prize on Dalai Lama has shown international support for the peaceful cause of the Tibetans people for greater freedom in Tibet,” said Samphel.

The Dalai Lama was conferred the Nobel peace prize in 1989 for his non-violent efforts to free Tibet from Chinese rule.

Tibetans revere the Dalai Lama, 73, inside and outside the Himalayan region despite repeated Chinese campaigns to stamp out their loyalty to him.

The Buddhist spiritual leader set up his seat of power in Dharamsala after he and his followers fled to India in 1959, nine years after China occupied Tibet.

The Dalai Lama has renounced the goal of an independent Tibet and says he only wants more autonomy. China accuses the Dalai Lama with continuing to spark separatist efforts for the 2.7 million Tibetans and refuses to allow him back inside its borders.

On the web: The Dalai Lama's acceptance speech of the Nobel Peace Prize
http://www.tibet.com/DL/nobelaccept.html

buddhistchannel.tv

Bauxite houses a bounty of Buddhist relics

2008-12-12T10:38:00.000-08:00

Bauxite, AK (USA) -- A highly unlikely place to find 1,000 Buddhist relics, including those of the historical Buddha Shakyamuni, would be at the end of a winding paved and gravel road in the Saline County town of Bauxite.

The relics, pearl-like crystals found in the ashes of Buddhist masters after their cremation, were displayed at the Chua Bat Nha temple, which serves a mostly Vietnamese congregation.

The collection, photographed by Chris Dean in Thursday’s Style section, also includes relics of Buddhist masters from the Chinese, Indian, Korean and Tibetan traditions. Buddhists believe the relics are produced as a result of the master’s spiritual compassion and wisdom and are a reminder of the potential all people have for goodness.

The relics were in Bauxite recently as part of the Heart Shrine Relic Tour, sponsored by the Maitreya Project, a nonprofit group based in northern India. Maitreya, whose name means loving-kindness, is believed to be the future Buddha.

Caroline Vo, a temple member who helped organize the event, estimated that about 1,200 people visited the relics. Vo says she was “deeply moved” by the experience.

Read tomorrow's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.

Thank you for coming to the Web site of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. We're working to keep you informed with the latest breaking news.

buddhistchannel.tv

Buddhist relics bring enlightenment to the world

2008-12-12T10:36:00.000-08:00

ATLANTA, Georgia (USA) -- The room is humming with chants as visitors circle around a large, glowing table.

Some are openly weeping. Others are breathing deeply as they stare fixedly at the pebblelike objects on display. Some are in a trancelike state as they walk around and around the table, a giant golden Buddha statue towering over their heads.

The white noise of the chants is broken only periodically by the sound of a bell ringing or the whirring of a prayer wheel.

The exhibit is a rare collection of Buddhist relics found among the ashes of cremated spiritual masters around the globe over the last 2,500 years, including Shakyamuni, the historic Buddha. The tiny crystal and pearllike capsules are believed to contain the enlightened spirits of the monks who spent their lives praying and meditating.

"It's like we've entered into a nuclear power plant of positive energy," Carmen Straight, a Buddhist who is traveling with the relics as part of the Maitreya Project, told 50 or so people who gathered recently at a Tibetan Buddhist center in Atlanta to see the precious cargo.

These tiny artifacts are touring the world thanks to Maitreya, an India-based nonprofit trying to raise enough donations to build a $250 million shrine where the relics can have a permanent home in northern India. The shrine will include a 500-foot bronze Buddha statue, public temples, exhibition space, a school and a public hospital.

The tour will visit Sedona, Ariz., Dec. 12-14, before heading to Mexico. For now, the relics are scheduled to return to the United States in Soquel, Calif., in May, but that can change as more cities sign on to host the exhibit.

Two other collections of the same relics are traveling in Europe and Asia. The relics began touring the globe in 2001 from the personal collection of Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Maitreya's spiritual director.

The origin of the relics is something of a mystery. Buddhists believe the crystals simply appear, without explanation, in the ashes of cremated spiritual masters.

The exhibit, which is free to all visitors, includes relics from Chinese, Indian, Korean and Tibetan traditions. Many of the relics were recovered from Tibetan shrines destroyed during the Chinese invasion in the 1950s.

During the opening ceremony in each city, Buddhist monks bless visitors by placing a metal tube containing relics from the historical Buddha on their heads and saying a prayer.

"Two minutes in that room, and I felt immediately this sense of kindness, the opposite of my grumpiness," said Sandra Smith, who drove from New Market, Tenn., to Atlanta to see the relics. "There was an instant letting go of my way."

On the Net:Maitreya Heart Shrine Relic Tour: http://www.maitreyaproject.org/Drepung Loseling Monastery: http://www.drepung.org/

buddhistchannel.tv

The land of the Lama

2008-12-12T10:35:00.000-08:00

Dharamsala, India -- Dharamsala is a quaint little mountain town which is as famous for its views and the trails as it is for the fact that it is the Indian abode of Lamas.

Dharamsala attracts people from the world over – many of whom are prominent personalities in their own fields. People come here with the hope of getting a glimpse of the Lama and then be able to go back to their countries and tell their friends, ‘I met the old monk’ – like said Diana Kollet, from Bulgaria says.

Ask her why she wants to go to Dharamsala, and Diana says, “I have been in India for four months now. I would like to go to Dharamsala once because the Dalai Lama stays there and he looks like the kind of man who can actually bring world peace. He is also quite a charmer, from what I have gathered from all the articles I have read about him and quite witty too! But besides that, I have also heard that Dharamsala is a beautiful place! Some of my friends from Israel praised it a lot.”

And what will she do if she does happen to have a glimpse of the Lama? “Wow! I really cannot imagine that because I doubt if I am so lucky. But if I do, well, I will try and get his attention and shake hands with him. Maybe even bow to him!” she replies.

Frank de Brun is from France and has recently landed on the Indian soil. Here to do a project, de Brun plans to travel the country before he settles down for work. Ask him if he plans to visit Dharamsala, and he answers knowingly, “I have heard about this place. Isn’t it where the Buddha stays?” On being told that that's right, he continues, “Before I came here, me and my girlfriend were discussing where all should I be going and this was one of the places that we listed.”

Ask him what is it that brings him to Dharamsala and he replies, “I want to see where the Dalai Lama stays. Besides that, I am sure Dharamsala will also be about a lot of Tibetan culture and prayer flags and prayer wheels.” That it is, this charming valley has statuesque and colourful monasteries.
While meeting the Dalai Lama is the attraction of some, for the others, this place is a spiritual haven, energising people against the difficulties and stresses of life.

As notices Ryan Rodriguez, of Spain, “I went to Dharamsala, primarily for the beauty of the place and because it is a famous hill-spot. But now, when I look back, I realise I did not know anything about the place. The place is so mystic and there is this intrinsic sense of well-being which enveloped you. I think Dalai Lama’s presence in the town affects it this way. Everything is so holy-like there and I felt so pure.” Like says Richard Gere, “The Dalai Lama has an enormous, amazing impact. It’s rare to be in the presence of someone who wants nothing more than your happiness.”

The Dalai Lama has been the choice spiritual leader for the international community for a long time now. Richard Gere’s belief in the Dalai Lama’s philosophies made him embrace Buddhism and he generated the same interest in his Hollywood contemporaries about the Lama like Madonna did for Kabaalah! Dalai Lama has the Congressional US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pay him a visit and Sharon Stone go ga-ga to the world media about him. Steven Segal also makes regular visits to India to meet the head of Buddhist community and Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni meet him in disregard of China’s disapprovals.

buddhistchannel.tv

Buddhist Sites to be conserved in AP

2008-12-12T10:34:00.000-08:00

VISAKHAPATNAM: Andhra Pradesh Archaeology and Museums Department Director P Chenna Reddy said Rs 44.5 lakh was allocated for conservation works, such as, fencing boundaries in the Buddhist Sites and preservation of Chaityas, Stupas and Viharas at Thotlakonda and Pavurallakonda in the region.

Talking to newspersons here last night, Reddy said Rs one crore would be sanctioned in the second phase for protection, preservation, conservation of archaeology, arechaeological sites and historical monuments in the region.

The Driector said a regional museum for 'Buddhist Heritage' would be set up here. Efforts were on to attract buddhist tourists from south-east Asian countries, including Japan to the sites. The

Department had chalked programmes for three years from next year to promote tourism, he added.

sakaaltimes.com

Unlikely Guide for Holiday Shopping: Buddhist Teachings

2008-12-12T10:33:00.000-08:00

NORTHAMPTON, Mass. – Amid this economic slump, people are wondering how much they can afford to spend on loved ones during the upcoming holidays. The answer may not be in their checkbooks, but in Buddhist teachings, says one Smith College professor.

In his course “Happiness 101,” Jamie Hubbard, professor of religion, used Buddhist teachings to explore the relationship between happiness and materialism. It is an apt discussion at this time of year with critics noting that the holidays have become overly commercialized.

“The Buddhist point-of-view has no problem with material possessions,” says Hubbard, who co-taught “Happiness 101” with Philip Peake, professor of psychology. “Buddhism definitely thinks of material prosperity as an important component of happiness…there is a point at which you need a basic level of material ease and comfort.”

Further, the very “spirit” of the holidays – giving and generosity – are high virtues in Buddhism, he adds.

But don’t lunge for the checkbook yet.

Although Buddhism does not take issue with the acquisition of material goods, it does find fault with people’s attachment to material goods, Hubbard continues. Greed and desire for material items brings suffering, according to Buddhist theory. While material possessions are viewed as a component of happiness, they are only a basic component.

“Even the spirit of Christmas can become perverted,” says Hubbard. Although true happiness comes from compassion and generosity, according to Buddhism, commercialism driven by the fear that someone won’t be “happy” unless she or he is showered with presents is misplaced.

“At the holiday season, what seems to most often bring people to tears is giving,” said Hubbard. “Although generosity is important, you don’t need to break the bank — the best gift is the gift that leads to the happiness of inner peace.”

That route to happiness may appeal to non-Buddhists, too. As students within the team-taught “Happiness 101” learned, the Buddhist approach is one that is rapidly finding popularity in Western psychology.

Smith College educates women of promise for lives of distinction. One of the largest women’s colleges in the United States, Smith enrolls 2,800 students from nearly every state and 62 other countries.

smith.edu

France says Dalai Lama talks not meant to offend China

2008-12-09T14:46:00.000-08:00

PARIS (AFP) — France's foreign minister insisted Tuesday that President Nicolas Sarkozy did not intend to offend China by meeting the Dalai Lama at the weekend, despite angry protests from Beijing.

"We did not want to cause offence to China, to the Chinese people or to Chinese leaders," Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner told a parliamentary committee on foreign affairs.

But Kouchner defended Sarkozy's decision to meet the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, at a gathering of Nobel peace laureates in Poland, saying he was free to meet whomever he chooses.

"We regret China's attitude. I hope things will get better. They will have to get better," he added.

China accuses the Dalai Lama of seeking independence for his Chinese-controlled Himalayan homeland -- despite his repeated denials -- and views it as a national affront when foreign leaders meet with him.

Chinese state-run media said Sarkozy could expect the move to shrink the Chinese appetite for French products, in editorials that alluded to boycotts of French goods earlier this year in a previous flap over Tibet.

Dalai Lama receives honourary doctorate in Krakow

2008-12-08T10:30:00.000-08:00

The XIV Dalai Lama, Tibet’s Holy and political leader, has received an honourary doctorate from Jagiellonian University (UJ) in Krakow today.

The celebrations are taking place in the main auditorium of the university’s oldest bulding, Collegium Novum, at a university Senate meeting with invited members of the academic community and various guests.

Professor Beata Szymanska-Aleksandrowicz of the university’s Institute of Philosophy, nominated the Dalai Lama for the honour.

The UJ Senate agreed to the honourary doctorate in October 2007. The awarding of his honourary degree is based on the Dalai Lama’s high ethical standards in social and public life as observed in his inter-cultural and inter-religious dialogue and non-violent fight for freedom and rights for Tibetans.

Szymanska-Aleksandrowicz, stated in her speech upon bestowing the degree, that the “honourary doctorate is not only an expression of recognition for one man, whose whole life has been about living truth and ideals, but for all those who remain anonymous but have acted in the name of higher ethical standards and work for the moral propagation of good and truth.”

The Dalai Lama has, according to the professor, joined a long tradition of the University of bestowing honours upon known figures such as John Paul II and Mother Theresa of Calcutta.

Upon acceptance of the honour, the Dalai Lama told his audience that Poles have a special place in his heart – from the moment he heard about Lech Walesa and the Solidarity movement, he has been interested in Poland.

“Poles survived many difficult states in their history, but the Polish nation has kept its heart adamant,” he stated.

The Dalai Lama’s visit in Poland and meeting with Nicolas Sarkozy has riled up China and put strain on French-Chinese relations. However, the Tibetan leader claims that his visit in Poland is not political.

“But remember, my visit in Poland is not political. My visit to Brussels is political, but besides that, it is not,” he assured.

However apolitical the Dalai Lama’s visit is intended to be, China has cancelled a China-EU summit that was set to take place in Lyon, France.

He continued on to praise the successes of non-violent movements such as the Solidarity movement from the 1980s in Poland, stressing the importance of peaceful grassroots movements and family values including affectionate education and not force. (mmj)

polskieradio.pl

Dalai Lama says oppression continues in Tibet: Report

2008-12-08T10:29:00.000-08:00

Dharamsala, December 8: The exiled Tibetan leader His Holiness the Dalai Lama Monday said conditions in Tibet had “not improved at all” since the Olympics Games in Beijing, according to a media report.

The exiled Tibetan leader, currently in Poland on the last leg of his Europe tour, said "the Chinese government carried (out) immense sort of suppression" since demonstrations earlier this year against Beijing's rule in Tibet, AP reported.

The Dalai Lama said in Tibet "some arrests still continue."

The demonstrations against Chinese rule in March spread across the whole Tibetan region. China launched a massive crackdown in which Tibetan exile groups say more than 200 Tibetans died and more than 1,000 people have been detained.

China last month refused to answer questions from a United Nations human rights panel about the alleged torture and disappearance of dissidents, or provide official figures on the mistreatment of detainees in its prisons.

The UN Committee Against Torture, in its concluding observations of China’s report on its adherence to the UN Convention against Torture, expressed in its section on Tibet deep concern about allegations of “longstanding reports of torture, beatings, shackling and other abusive treatment, in particular of Tibetan monks and nuns, at the hands of public officials, public security and state security, as well as paramilitary and even unofficial personnel at the instigation or with the acquiescence or consent of public officials.”

The Committee also asked China to provide, within one year, a response to reports of widespread excessive use of force and other abuses related to the spring demonstrations in the Tibetan Autonomous Region and neighbouring Tibetan prefectures and counties.

China, however, rebuffed the allegations and called the UN torture report an “untrue and unprofessional outcome," saying it had prejudiced and politicized its members.

The Dalai Lama was speaking Monday in the Polish city of Krakow, where he received the Honoris Causa doctorate from Jagiellonian University.

According to a Polish online news site, Professor Beata Szymanska-Aleksandrowicz of the university’s Institute of Philosophy, nominated the Dalai Lama for the honour.

The University’s Senate agreed to the honourary doctorate in October 2007, thenews.pl reported, adding that the awarding of the honourary degree is based on “the Dalai Lama’s high ethical standards in social and public life as observed in his inter-cultural and inter-religious dialogue and non-violent fight for freedom and rights for Tibetans”.

Szymanska-Aleksandrowicz, in her speech upon bestowing the degree, reportedly stated that the “honourary doctorate is not only an expression of recognition for one man, whose whole life has been about living truth and ideals, but for all those who remain anonymous but have acted in the name of higher ethical standards and work for the moral propagation of good and truth.”

The Dalai Lama has, according to the professor, joined a long tradition of the University of bestowing honours upon known figures such as John Paul II and Mother Theresa of Calcutta.

Upon acceptance of the honour, the Dalai Lama reportedly told his audience that Poles have a special place in his heart – from the moment he heard about Lech Walesa and the Solidarity movement, he has been interested in Poland.

“Poles survived many difficult states in their history, but the Polish nation has kept its heart adamant,” His Holiness was quoted as saying by the online news site.

The Dalai Lama’s ongoing Europe tour and his Saturday meeting with the President Sarkozy of France have left China fuming. In protest Beijing canceled a long-planned China-EU summit and has told France to face serious consequences in diplomatic and economic ties between the two countries.

Meanwhile, the Dalai Lama urged the world to remain firm when dealing with China. He said, in order to protect the long-term interests of the Chinese people, world must not hesitate to raise human right issues with Beijing Government.

phayul

The Dalai Lama blames “greed” for financial crisis

2008-12-08T10:26:00.000-08:00

Brussels, Belgium -- A fter addressing an overflowing house of European Parliament December 4, the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, appeared at a joint press conference with Hans-Gert Poettering, the President of the only directly elected European institution, the European Parliament. Wit, humour, serenity and positive vibes were present in the packed environs of the Anna Politkovskaya European Parliament press room, named after the slain Russian journalist, as the Dalai Lama was at ease with international journalists.

Answering a question about economic crisis, the spiritual leader explained the ongoing market crisis around the world. Saying, “Market itself is a creation of human beings,” the Buddhist leader asked, “What is the real cause of this sort of economic crisis?” Citing answers from his business friends, the Dalai Lama told journalists: “Too much speculation and ultimately greed,” adding, “The potential to help is: reduce greed and (increase) self-discipline. “Economic crisis is something urgent so it will be helpful to reduce some other conflict (that are going on) in the name of faith and nationality.”

Going down memory lane, the Dalai Lama listed the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia, and Burma and North Korea as some of the instances that could not have happened or are still happening without China nodding its approval. Citing the “uncomfortable people of Hong Kong,” “reunification of Taiwan,” and the separatist factions in the southwestern Chinese province of Xinjiang as areas where such a moral authority should be displayed, the Buddhist leader insisted he only wants meaningful autonomy for Tibet under Chinese rule.

The leader from Tibet told journalists, “actually the whole world knows we are not separatists and also many Chinese writers and thinkers and many Chinese students if they have the opportunity to know the reality really support it and are in fact very critical of their government policy. “If Chinese government still accuse us of being splitists, we ourselves are confused. We are not ‘splittists,’ but the Chinese government still accuses us of being ‘splittists,’” he said.

China cancelled the annual EU-China Summit slated for December 1 when French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced he would meet the Dalai Lama in Poland. Sarkozy also represents the EU Presidency as France holds the rotating EU Presidency till the end of the year before handing it over to the Czech Republic for next six months.
When asked to comment on his meeting with Sarkozy, the Dalai Lama, with a cheerful smile said, “I have met the wife (Mrs. Sarkozy) and will be meeting the husband.”

Praising the Chinese people for their diligence and perseverance and citing “manpower, economic and military power” as positive desired contributors for China to becomes “a superpower,” the Dalai Lama pointed out, “Now one important factor is moral authority and that is lacking. “Because of its very poor record on human rights and religious freedom and freedom of expression and freedom of the press — too much censorship — the image of China in the field of moral authority is very, very poor,” he said.

“The sensible Chinese realise China should now give more attention to this field to get more respectability in world affairs,” the Nobel peace laureate said, adding, “My faith in Chinese people has never shaken,” while the top echelons of Chinese leadership is divided into hard liners and soft approach advocates.

The Dalai Lama called the Chinese regime a “capitalist totalitarian regime,” and urged the importance of trust and transparency telling journalists, “trust is the key factor and for that transparency (is) really very much needed.” Calling upon the Chinese authorities to “adjust to new reality,” the Buddhist leader suggested that the Chinese authorities also can change to fit into the changing world scenario. Earlier, he addressed the European Parliament during his second day in the Belgian capital, where he was greeted by loud applause and Tibetan flags.

President Poettering, assured that the parliament would “continue to defend the rights of the Tibetan people to their cultural and religious identity.” He called on Chinese leaders to hold meaningful talks with representatives of the exiled Dalai Lama, who lives in exile in India, and has sought “meaningful autonomy” for Tibet since he had to leave his homeland following a failed uprising in 1959 against Chinese rule, nine years after Chinese troops invaded the region. Ruled by China since the 18th Century, Tibet became independent in 1911, but the new Communist regime in China reasserted control in 1951, and installed a Communist government in 1953.

buddhistchannel

Maintenance on Sakya Monastery to finish next spring

2008-12-03T14:24:00.000-08:00

Xigaze, China -- Housing substantive Buddhism scriptures and frescos, the Sakya Monastery, located in the Sakya County of Xigaze Prefecture, is honored as "Second Dunhuang". Since 2002, the monastery has been undertaking several maintenances at a huge cost.

According to Dorje, who is responsible for the repair project, renovation of Sakya Monastery mainly focuses on protection of frescos, reinforcing of Aga soil, a kind of soil formed in the drought grassland in temperate zone, enhancing of Baimacao wall and replacing of indoor timbers.

Dorje said the renovation was carried out without changing of its original feature, which won yea from locals.

The maintenance project of Sakya Monastery, is a part of the "three cultural relics maintenance project" in Tibet, which costs 330 million yuan, and requires the most investment, highest technology and covers the largest renovation area in highest altitude among the three.

Found in 1073, the Sakya Monastery is the main monastery of the Sakya sect of Tibetan Buddhism and was inscribed into the state level protection cultural units in 1961.

buddhistchannel.tv

Amitabha Buddha says good bye to Indians

2008-12-03T14:21:00.000-08:00

AMIDA BUDDHA, the oldest known statue, also known as Amitabha Buddha, which was showcased for more than a month in the Zinkoji Shonin Exhibition held at the National Museum, the exhibition of Buddhist treasures from Japan, is finally flying back to Japan post the closing ceremony on Sunday (November 30). The statue, which was brought from Japan, represents the symbolic return of the "Ikkō Sanzon Amida (Amitabha) Zenko-ji Nyorai" (the statue of the Amitabha Buddha in the Zenko-ji temple), for the first time since its arrival in Japan in the sixth century, to the birthplace of Shakyamuni and Buddhism 2500 years ago.
The statue, a priceless historical artifact, is believed to belong to the Vaishali district of Bihar and came back to India after 1400 years. It was kept on display at the National Museum, New Delhi during the Zenkoji Shonin Exhibition. The exhibition also included other priceless relics from Japan including smaller statues, Japanese dolls, kimonos, historic paintings.

According to historians, the Buddha statue was brought to Nogaoya city in Japan from India in 552 AD.

As per the Zenko-ji Engi (the origin of Zenko-ji temple), the principal image, the Ikko Amida Triad, is said to be the oldest Buddha statue to have been brought to Japan in the year 552 AD, during the introduction of Buddhism. Therefore, this Buddha is said to represent the introduction of Buddhism in Japan.

Since then, it has been kept in the Zenko-ji temple visited by thousands of tourists daily. It is believed to have healing powers and bring luck wherever it goes and it is believed to be true for India as well.

The closing ceremony was held on Sunday (November 30), 2008, at the National Museum where a tribute was presented to Amida Buddha. A unique tea ceremony is organised, where tea is offered to the statue of Amida Buddha, alongwith other guests following the Japanese tradition.

Speaking on the closing ceremony, Hisamune, chief organiser of the exhibition and MOE director said, "India is the origin land of Amida Buddha and this exhibition is yet another expression of the relationship between Japan and India, which were initially forged by the visit of Prime Minister Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru to Japan in 1959."

merinews.com

Buddhist monks pray for world peace at Bodh Gaya

2008-12-03T14:20:00.000-08:00

Patna, Dec 1 (IANS) Buddhist monks and devotees from across the globe Monday offered prayers for world peace at the revered Mahabodhi temple in Bodh Gaya, considered the birthplace of Buddhism. It was here that the Buddha attained enlightenment over 2,550 years ago.

The special prayers for world peace were organised to mark the beginning of an 11-day long chanting prayer ceremony at the Mahabodhi temple, holiest shrine at Bodh Gaya.

“Buddhist monks and devotees prayed for a terror free and peaceful world for all living creatures,” an official of the Mahabodhi temple management committee said.

According to sources in Bodh Gaya, Buddhist devotees from America, Britain, France, Japan and other countries partcipated in the prayers.

thaindian.com

Book Review:Dalai Lama: A fight for faith

2008-12-03T14:19:00.000-08:00

Containing excerpts from the words spoken by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the spiritual and temporal head of the Tibetan people, this book has as its added attraction the foreword written by the famous Hollywood actor and philanthropist, Richard Gere, whose involvement with the Tibetans began in 1978 when he came upon the Tibetan refugees. Moved at their suffering, he met the Dalai Lama and became an admirer of this temporal head of the Tibetans, whose words are “seeds sown from his heart into ours,” and which we need to open out to receive them.

The present Dalai Lama was born as Tenzin Gyatso on July 6, 1935 who took over as the temporal head of the Tibetans when the thirteenth Dalai Lama died in 1935. Tnezin Gyatso was discovered as a child in whom the Buddha of Compassion was supposed to incarnate. It is said that when the thirteenth Dalai Lama’s body lay on his last days, in a shrine facing south, his head turned to the east twice and a great fungus appeared on the east side of a pillar of well-seasoned wood. The Regent of Tibet saw a monastery with roofs of jade green and gold. In1937, high lamas went throughout Tibet to search for the place seen in the vision. Kewtsang Rinpoche went east where a young boy wanted the rosary worn by the former. This was promised if the child could guess who the wearer was. The boy replied “Sera aga” (a monk of sere) and he also could tell who the real leader and servant was. After many further tests, the current Dalai Lama was enthroned in 1940. In 1950, at the age of 16, he was given more intensive religious education till he assumed full political power when China invaded Tibet. In March 1959, during the national uprising of the Tibetans against Chinese military occupation, the Dalai Lama went into exile and has been living on the foothills of Dharamshala in India, continuing with his worldwide travels, speaking in favour of ecumenical understanding, conveying the message of universal need for kindness, compassion and, above all, for world peace.

Some of his messages include:

Be altruistic and kind to others as it is “essential, essential Buddha Dharma”.
Compassion is the root of all forms of worship.
Right from the moment of birth we are under the care and kindness of our parents. And then later, when oppressed by sickness or old age, we are dependent on the kindness of others. And since we depend on others’ kindness, why can’t we be kind to others?
In every major world religion, the emphasis is on brotherhood.
The greatest danger facing mankind is nuclear destruction. “Hence I appeal to them to exercise their sanity and begin to work at dismantling and destroying all nuclear weapons,” he pleads.
“Under the bright sun, many of us are gathered together with different languages, different styles of dress, perhaps even different faiths. However, all of us are the same in being humans, and we all uniquely have the thought of ‘I’ and we’re all the same in wanting happiness and in wanting to avoid suffering”
“Anger, pride and so forth serve as obstacles to the development of one’s own altruistic attitude. They harm it. They injure it.”
Anger, hatred, jealousy—it is not possible to find peace with them. “Through compassion, through love, we can solve many problems; we can have true happiness, real disarmament.”
We have to create the atmosphere for peace and “peace must basically first come from within ourselves.”
At the end of the book questions and answers are given, compiled from the Dalai Lama’s numerous public and private lectures, scholarly seminars, private meetings and news conferences.

In short, this book is a compilation of talks the Dalai Lama has made at various universities, monasteries and inter-faith services around the world. His thoughts are lively and profound for one who meets him for the first time; he has a refreshingly wonderful sense of humour; and he is recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and has written many books.

organiser.org

Silencing Burma’s Monks

2008-12-03T14:17:00.000-08:00

Rangoon, Burma -- The 68-year prison sentence handed down to Ashin Gambira for his role in last year’s monk-led protests shows that Burma’s brutal junta now exercises total control over the country’s Sangha, or community of Buddhist monks, who many regarded as the last bastion of resistance against military rule.

Ashin Gambira, 29, was one of the organizers of the uprising, which captured international attention last September with dramatic images of thousands of peacefully marching monks confronting heavily armed soldiers. On November 18, he received an initial 12-year sentence, which was extended by another 56 years last week.

According to the Thailand-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), 143 young monks were arrested and detained for their involvement in the demonstrations.

Fifty-six of these monks have already received lengthy prison sentences, while another 87 remain in detention awaiting a final judgment by courts that invariably do the regime’s bidding.

Last year’s massive show of defiance was sparked by the heavy-handed response of security forces to a march by monks in Pakokku Township on September 5. The monks, who were responding to a sudden increase in fuel prices that had a devastating effect on Burma’s already struggling population, were tied to electrical poles and beaten in the streets.

The violence in Pakokku prompted Ashin Gambira and some other young monks to found the All Burma Monks Alliance (ABMA) to demand an apology from the regime. They also called for a reduction in prices, the release of all political prisoners, and a dialogue between the military and the political opposition.

The protests that ensued, in Rangoon and other cities around the country, were the largest the country had seen in nearly two decades. As in 1988, when the military last faced a serious challenge to its stranglehold on power, the peaceful demonstrations ended in a bloodbath, with dozens dead and hundreds of monks and nuns rounded up in late-night raids. Many more went into hiding or exile to escape arbitrary arrest and torture.

Ashin Gambira managed to evade capture for two months, but the authorities finally caught up with him last November. Even then, he remained defiant, according to his lawyer, Aung Thein, who said that Ashin Gambira demanded that the court recognize the detained monks’ right to remain in robes in accordance with Buddhist ecclesiastical law.

“We appealed to the court to respect Buddhist rules, which say that [government] authorities have no right to disrobe him or charge him with criminal offenses,” said Aung Thein in an interview with The Irrawaddy.

Ashin Gambira argued that just as the army has laws relating to military personnel, the actions of monks should be judged according to Buddhist regulations. The judge rejected his argument.

Lawyers for the detained monks said that senior monks should be permitted to hear their cases, since there is no law in Burma that forbids the chanting of the Metta Sutta, the Buddha’s teaching on loving-kindness.

Rather than recognizing the religious authority of the Sangha, the regime has continued to assert its control over the country’s monks. The minister for religious affairs, Brig-Gen Thura Myint Aung, said that in a meeting held on November 22, 47 senior monks agreed that the ruling military council governed more than 500,000 monks in accordance with Buddhist regulations and state law.

Ashin Kumara, chairman of the state-controlled Sangha Maha Nayaka committee, reiterated the regime’s position that monks are prohibited from participating in “secular affairs” or joining “illegal” organizations.

However, many senior monks insist that there is nothing wrong with monks taking action out of compassion for laypeople who are suffering as a result of misguided government policies.

“They called for a reduction of commodity prices, not to remove the government from power,” said a senior monk from Rangoon Theravada Buddhist University in Mayangone Township.

“They demonstrated for the benefit of Buddhism,” he added.

“Buddhism can only flourish when the basic needs of the people are met.”

“Our Lord Buddha instructed his fellow monks to wander and help in human affairs,” said Paragu, a well-known writer and former monk, in an interview with The Irrawaddy. “Historically, the sons of Buddha had responsibility not just to uphold the Buddha’s teachings, but also to work for the good of the laypeople.”

buddhistchannel.tv

Buddha’s skull found

2008-12-03T14:16:00.000-08:00

London, Nov 26: Archaeologists have claimed that a 1,000-year-old miniature pagoda, unearthed in Nanjing, China, holds a piece of skull belonging to Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism.

According to a report in the Telegraph, the pagoda was wedged tightly inside an iron case that was discovered at the site of a former temple in the city in August this year.

The four-storey pagoda, which is almost four feet high and one-and-a-half feet wide, is thought by archaeologists to be one of the 84,000 pagodas commissioned by Ashoka the Great in the second century BC to house the remains of the Buddha.

The pagoda found in Nanjing is crafted from wood, gilded with silver and inlaid with gold, coloured glass and amber.

It matches a description of another of Ashoka’s pagodas, which used to be housed underneath the Changgan Buddhist temple in Nanjing.

A description of the contents of the pagoda indicate the presence of a gold coffin bearing part of Buddha’s skull inside a silver box.

Although scans have confirmed that there are two small metal boxes inside the pagoda, experts have not yet peered inside.

According to Qi Haining, the head of archaeology at Nanjing Museum, “This pagoda may be unique, the only one known to contain parts of Buddha’s skull”.

But he said there would be a lengthy process before the cases could be opened.

“The discovery of the relic will have a huge influence on the cultural history of Buddhism in China and will establish Nanjing as a premier site. It will be a great encouragement for Buddhists as well as for future studies,” said De Qing, an expert in Buddhism in Nanjing.

“It is important for Buddhism as a religion to have these sarira, or relics, to show its followers. The more a Buddhist practises, the more relics will remain of him after his death. I am hugely excited. I think they should take the skull outside of the container, it is a sacred item, but it is not an untouchable item,” he added.

Siddhartha Gautama, who is believed to have been born in the fifth century BC, was a spiritual teacher and recognized by Buddhists as the Supreme Buddha of our age.

Also known as Shakyamuni, or the Sage of the Sakyas, his teachings are contained in the Tripitaka, the canon of Buddhist thought.

zeenews.com

Pagoda "holding Buddha remains" dug up in China

2008-12-03T14:15:00.000-08:00

The pagoda was wedged tightly inside an iron case that was discovered at the site of a former temple in the city in August.

The four-storey pagoda, which is almost four feet high and one-and-a-half feet wide, is thought by archaeologists to be one of the 84,000 pagodas commissioned by Ashoka the Great in the second century BC to house the remains of the Buddha.

Ashoka, one of India's greatest emperors, converted to Buddhism after waging a bloody war in the eastern state of Orissa. He is widely credited with spreading Buddhism throughout Asia, and across his kingdom, which stretched from Pakistan through Afghanistan and into Iran.

The pagoda found in Nanjing is crafted from wood, gilded with silver and inlaid with gold, coloured glass and amber. It matches a description of another of Ashoka's pagodas which used to be housed underneath the Changgan Buddhist temple in Nanjing.

A description of the contents of the pagoda was also found: a gold coffin bearing part of Buddha's skull inside a silver box. Although scans have confirmed that there are two small metal boxes inside the pagoda, experts have not yet peered inside. The pagoda is currently on display in the museum.

Qi Haining, the head of archaeology at Nanjing Museum, told state media: "This pagoda may be unique, the only one known to contain parts of Buddha's skull".

But he said there would be a lengthy process before the cases could be opened. In 2001, Chinese authorities found a case that was said to contain a relic of Buddha's hair, but declined to open the welded box in case it damaged the contents.

De Qing, an expert in Buddhism in Nanjing, said: “The discovery of the relic will have a huge influence on the cultural history of Buddhism in China and will establish Nanjing as a premier site. It will be a great encouragement for Buddhists as well as for future studies. It is important for Buddhism as a religion to have these sarira, or relics, to show its followers. The more a Buddhist practises, the more relics will remain of him after his death. I am hugely excited. I think they should take the skull outside of the container, it is a sacred item, but it is not an untouchable item.”

Siddhartha Gautama, who is believed to have been born in the fifth century BC, was a spiritual teacher and recognised by Buddhists as the Supreme Buddha of our age. Also known as Shakyamuni, or the Sage of the Sakyas, his teachings are contained in the Tripitaka, the canon of Buddhist thought.

He is said to have attained Enlightenment, or to have become a Buddha, which means "Awakened One", at the age of 35, after 49 days meditating underneath a pipal tree.

The second World Buddhist Forum, a gathering of monks and scholars from around the world, will take place near Nanjing next year in Wuxi.

telegraph.co.uk

Nepal 'Buddha Boy' returns to jungle

2008-12-03T14:14:00.000-08:00

KATHMANDU, Nepal -- A young man believed by followers to be a reincarnation of Buddha has returned to Nepal's jungles to meditate alone, police said Saturday, as scholars cast doubt on his supporters' claims.

Known as the "Buddha Boy," Ram Bahadur Bomjam, 18, became famous in 2005 after supporters said he could meditate motionless for months without water, food or sleep.

"Bomjam went back into the jungle late Friday and all the devotees have left," police officer Gobinda Kushwaha told AFP from Neejgad, a town in Bara District, 60 kilometres (37.5 miles) south of Kathmandu.

The "Buddha Boy" reappeared earlier this month after supporters said in March 2007 that he was going to meditate for three years in an underground bunker, although he was spotted on two occasions.

For the last 10 days, he has been blessing thousands of devotees who came daily to the site in dense jungle close to Neejgad.

The president of the Nepal Buddhist Council said claims by his supporters tha he was a reincarnation of Siddartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, were not credible.

"We do not believe he is Buddha. He does not have Buddha's qualities," said Mahiswor Raj Bajracharya, president of the Nepal Buddhist Council, a centre for Buddhist study and research in Kathmandu.

"He may have achieved great heights in meditation, but that alone does not make him a Buddha. A Buddha needs life experience, a young man who has not seen the world at all cannot be a Buddha," said Bajracharya.

Despite being officially secular under the new Maoist government, Nepal -- where around 80 per cent of people are Hindu and 11 per cent are Buddhist -- remains a deeply spiritual place.

"This is a country where people worship idols and stones, and everyone educated or not believes in the supernatural," the Buddhist scholar said.

Some 7,000 people gathered Friday to hear the youth speak.

"Materialism has brought forth fear, worry and disputes and has created war in this country. One should follow religion and philosophy for inner happiness," Bomjam told the crowds in a 15-minute address.

People joined a six-kilometre (3.75-mile) queue to be blessed, a wait that 43-year-old farmer Singha Bahadur Tamang said was worthwhile.

"This is a miracle and he is the reincarnation of Lord Buddha himself," said Tamang, who traveled eight hours by bus to hear Bomjam speak.

"I've been here for the last 10 days and the feeling is amazing. I really feel at peace here," he said.

The head of the committee that organises events around Bomjam insists he survives without food and water.

"We have never seen him eat or drink and we believe he's a god in human form," said Bed Bahadur Thing, president of the Buddha Jungle Meditation Conservation and Prosperity Committee.

At the height of Bomjam's fame, a French TV crew filmed the youth eating fruit and an AFP correspondent caught him napping.

On Friday, visitors to the jungle site put money into collection boxes, though Thing declined to say how much had been collected.

"Many people say we're just doing this for the money, but we have expenses for volunteers, food, security and maintenance," he said.

"After he has gone back into the jungle, we will make our accounts public."

buddhistchannel.tv

Meditation May Protect Your Brain

2008-12-03T14:13:00.000-08:00

San Francisco, CA (USA) -- For thousands of years, Buddhist meditators have claimed that the simple act of sitting down and following their breath while letting go of intrusive thoughts can free one from the entanglements of neurotic suffering.

Now, scientists are using cutting-edge scanning technology to watch the meditating mind at work. They are finding that regular meditation has a measurable effect on a variety of brain structures related to attention -- an example of what is known as neuroplasticity, where the brain physically changes in response to an intentional exercise.

A team of Emory University scientists reported in early September that experienced Zen meditators were much better than control subjects at dropping extraneous thoughts and returning to the breath. The study, "'Thinking about Not-Thinking:' Neural Correlates of Conceptual Processing During Zen Meditation," published by the online research journal PLoS ONE, found that "meditative training may foster the ability to control the automatic cascade of semantic associations triggered by a stimulus and, by extension, to voluntarily regulate the flow of spontaneous mentation."

The same researchers reported last year that longtime meditators don't lose gray matter in their brains with age the way most people do, suggesting that meditation may have a neuro-protective effect. A rash of other studies in recent years meanwhile have found, for example, that practitioners of insight meditation have noticeably thicker tissue in the prefrontal cortex (the region responsible for attention and control) and that experienced Tibetan monks practicing compassion meditation generate unusually strong and coherent gamma waves in their brains.

"There are a lot of potential applications for this," said Milos Cekic, a member of the Emory research team and himself a longtime meditator. He suspects the simple practice of focusing attention on the breath could help patients suffering from depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress and other conditions characterized by excessive rumination.

Meanwhile, a meditation-derived program developed at the University of Massachusetts called Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is gaining popularity for treatment of anxiety and chronic illnesses at medical centers around the U.S.

As far back as the 1960s, Japanese scientists who used electroencephalograms (EEG) to measure the brain waves of Zen monks found characteristic patterns of activity. But the advent of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in the 1990s gave researchers a chance to see brains functioning in real time. Functional MRIs measure the blood flow in different parts of the brain, which correlates with how active they are.

The Emory team, which also included Giuseppe Pagnoni and Ying Guo, wanted to see whether Zen meditators were indeed better than novices at controlling the flow of thought, as meditators themselves report. Cekic and Pagnoni asked a dozen seasoned Zen meditators -- including several monks -- and a dozen control subjects to perform a simple cognitive task while undergoing an fMRI scan. The Zen practitioners all had at least three years of daily practice experience, while the control group members had none.

Inside the scanner, the subjects were all asked to follow their breathing while looking at a screen on which words or wordlike combinations of letters were flashed at irregular intervals. Students had to decide whether they were seeing a real word or a made-up word and signal by pressing a button and then return to focusing on their breathing.

The random word or letter combinations engaged what is sometimes called the "default semantic network," a resting state in which words and thoughts arise spontaneously -- what we experience as mind wandering, Cekic said. Practitioners of zazen (seated Zen meditation) are taught to notice when the mind has started to wander and quickly return attention to the breath.

When the word or letter combinations flashed on the screen, the experienced meditators were quickly able to leave the default state and return to their breathing, Cekic says. "You have these extended reverberations in the semantic network after you give people a word," Cekic said. "The meditators pretty much turn it off as soon as it's physiologically possible, while the non-meditators don't."

This is the second set of findings to have come from the fMRI experiments, Cekic said. Although people lose neurons -- gray matter — and have more trouble concentrating as they age, the study published last year by the Emory team found this wasn't true of the Zen practitioners.

"What we saw in the meditators was pretty much a straight line," Cekic said. "There was no decrease with age in their gray-matter volume." There was also no decline in attention -- in fact, the effect of meditation on gray matter was most pronounced in the putamen, a brain structure linked to attention. "We can't say causally that meditation prevents cell death, but we did see in our sample that the meditators did not see a gray matter loss with age," Cekic said.

Meanwhile, Harvard University researcher Sara Lazar made headlines in 2005 when she reported that Western practitioners of insight meditation -- a non-judgmental awareness of present-moment experience that resembles zazen -- had significantly thicker tissue in their prefrontal cortex and insula than non-meditators.

Lazar, who practices insight meditation and yoga, performed fMRI scans on 20 experienced meditators and 15 controls with no meditation experience. Lazar said that because earlier research had mostly been conducted on monks, she wanted to see whether the once-a-day meditation sessions typical of most American meditators might affect brain structures.

Unlike earlier research, which had focused on brain waves or measured neural blood flow, Lazar's experiment yielded the first concrete evidence linking meditation practice to changed brain structure. "The nice thing about (studying) the structure is it's something solid," she said. "It's not performance on a task. It's your brain."

Lazar says it's too soon to tell whether meditation causes new gray matter to form or whether it protects against the normal decline of brain volume. The greatest contrasts were seen between the cortical tissue of meditators and control subjects who were in their 40s and 50s, she says, while the insula, which integrates sensory processing, was thicker in meditators of all ages.

Future research will require longitudinal studies -- following subjects through time -- to see whether or not meditation is causing the neural changes. "Maybe meditators are weird," Lazar said, suggesting that perhaps people with unusual brains are especially drawn to meditation.

Where does all this lead?

Andrew Newberg, a University of Pennsylvania researcher who has written such popular books as Why We Believe What We Believe and who has conducted brain scans of meditating Tibetan monks and Franciscan nuns engaged in contemplative prayer, believes the science shows meditation works.

"The overwhelming evidence is that meditation has benefits," he said. "If it makes your mind clearer and helps you focus your attention better, it should help people."

For more than a decade, Newberg has plumbed spiritual mysteries, using fMRI and SPECT (single photon emission computed tomography) to measure blood flow in the brains of not only meditators but people in the throes of other religious experiences, including speaking in tongues, as well.

"The fascinating thing to me is that when people have these mystical experiences, they not only describe it as real, but they describe it as more real than our everyday experience," he said. It raises the question of just what is real.

"I recognize that studying some of the things I study may get me to an answer," he added. "A lot of this has been my own spiritual journey, which has become a lot more meditative and contemplative."

buddhistchannel.tv

Young Buddhist leader waits in the wings

2008-12-03T14:12:00.000-08:00

SIDHBARI, INDIA -- Give the magnetic personality and hunky good looks of a rock star to a Tibetan Buddhist monk, and the result might be Gyalwang Karmapa, the third-highest lama in the Tibetan religious firmament.

The Karmapa, as he is known, is getting more than his share of attention these days.

He's being talked about as a possible transition figure for when the Dalai Lama, who's the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists, dies. The Dalai Lama, 73, was hospitalized last month to have gallstones removed.

At 23, the Karmapa has some unique characteristics that make him appealing to a broad cross-section of Tibetan Buddhists, and even to China, which now claims the right to approve or veto all reincarnations born to become "living Buddhas" — or senior lamas delivered to help alleviate human suffering. Reincarnation, or rebirth, is a basic tenet of Tibetan Buddhism.

Flight from Tibet

The Karmapa is the first Tibetan Buddhist reincarnation to be recognized by both the Dalai Lama and Communist Party authorities of China. He made headlines in January 2000, at age 14, with his flight from Chinese-ruled Tibet into exile, traveling by foot and horseback, then by jeep and helicopter to India. Allegations of espionage, intrigue involving a forgotten amulet and squabbling within a monastery marked his early years in India.

Exuding self-assuredness, the solidly built, 6-foot-tall Karmapa received several foreign journalists in a rare interview over the weekend at the university that's his temporary home near the mountain headquarters of the Dalai Lama. The Karmapa talked of his love of music, his future role for Tibetan Buddhists and the lack of human rights in China.

He criticized the Chinese government, which he said wanted "to create this ethnic conflict" that exploded in deadly rioting in Tibet in March. However, he spoke tenderly of the Chinese.

"Since I am born as a Tibetan, I really care about the Tibetan people and Tibetan community. At the same time, I also love the Chinese," he said.

Some Tibetan exiles say the Karmapa has a magnetic hold on Tibetans.

"He's young, he's charismatic and he's smart," said Lobsang Sangay, a Tibetan exile who's a senior fellow at Harvard Law School. At meetings among hundreds of senior exiles in nearby Dharamsala last week, Sangay said the Karmapa's name repeatedly emerged as a central figure in a post-Dalai Lama era.

The Dalai Lama, asked about the Karmapa at a news conference Sunday, described him as "young, energetic and of course (with) a lot of experience in Tibet," but declined to go further in elaborating on his future role.

The Karmapa is the head of the Karma Kagyu, one of four schools in Tibetan Buddhism, and is believed to have about a million followers in Tibet and several hundred thousand in Europe and the U.S.

He's been called the 800-year-old lama. That's because followers believe he's the 17th in a line of consecutive lamas reincarnated, or born, with the same spirit or consciousness. According to this belief, the current Karmapa embodies the collective wisdom and learning of all of his predecessors.

Using omens and a prediction note from the 16th Karmapa that turned up in an amulet, senior lamas identified a young boy, Ogyen Trinley Dorje, as the reincarnated Karmapa, and sent him for religious training at the Tsurphu Monastery near Lhasa, Tibet's capital. China gloried in its trophy lama, viewing him as a calming influence on restive Tibetans.

But the boy lama grew unhappy, leading to a daring escape to India. The flight into exile proved humiliating to China, which initially claimed that the Karmapa had gone to India to retrieve some musical instruments and key black hats worn by his Buddhist sect.

Once in India, the Karmapa found his movements constrained by Indian security agents who seemed to consider him a threat. He's never been allowed to visit the Rumtek monastery in Sikkim that's the seat of his sect in India.

Tight security

Even eight years after the more popular Karmapa's arrival, security agents still hover, barring journalists from bringing cameras, tape recorders or electronic devices to interviews.

Beijing has said nothing overtly critical of the Karmapa, making clear that it wants its great lama to return and counterbalance the criticism that the Dalai Lama regularly heaps on China.

But there's no sign that will happen. The Karmapa has been given a significantly looser leash by Indian security, winning a chance to visit with U.S. followers last summer in New York, Boulder, Colo., and Seattle.

His residence in exile carries some sadness, too, as his parents remain in Tibet. China doesn't permit them to travel to India. "I want to see my parents," he said. "Their life is very simple, in a remote place."

So he devotes himself to intense religious study, preparing himself for the future.

buddhistchannel.tv

HRW Vietnam

2008-10-23T11:22:00.000-07:00

HRW Tailand

2008-10-04T12:26:00.000-07:00

HRW Sri Lanka

2008-10-04T12:24:00.001-07:00

HRW China / Tibet

2008-10-04T12:13:00.000-07:00

HRW Burma

2008-10-04T12:12:00.000-07:00

HRW Bhutan

2008-10-04T12:09:00.000-07:00

HRW Nepal

2008-10-04T12:05:00.001-07:00

HRW Southeast Asia

2008-10-04T11:59:00.002-07:00

HRW East Asia

2008-10-04T11:59:00.001-07:00

Germany, Amnesty and EP Criticizes IOC and China

2008-08-05T15:32:00.000-07:00

Journalists at the press center in Beijing were unable to view several Web sites this week, German rights groups and politicians have slammed press restrictions at the upcoming Beijing Olympics as well as the IOC role in a row over Internet censorship for foreign reporters.

International Olympic Committee (IOC) Chief Jacques Rogge was under mounting pressure on Sunday, Aug 3 after he appeared to renege on previous promises of unfettered Internet access for the thousands of foreign journalists heading to Beijing for the Olympic Games next week.

"With his catastrophic crisis management and contradictory information, Rogge has seriously undermined the Olympic spirit and respect for human rights in China," Ulrich Delius, Asia expert at the Goettingen-based Society for Threatened Peoples said on Sunday.

The group, whose Web site is among a number of sensitive sites blocked by the Chinese government, accused Rogge of "caving in" to the arbitrary demands of the Chinese regime and have called on the IOC chief to resign.

Amnesty accuses IOC of flawed behaviour

At a press conference on Saturday, Rogge said no deal had been cut with Chinese authorities to allow censorship of sensitive sites, after journalists arrived this week to find they could not access a wide range of websites.

But Rogge stopped short of offering an apology despite the flood of criticism after China backtracked on Internet freedoms for the visiting press.

"I am not going to apologize for something the IOC is not responsible for. We are not running the Internet in China," Rogge said.

Amnesty International accused the IOC of serious flaws in their handling of the situation.

"The IOC never really took a clear stance and didn't really press the Chinese to stick to the promises they made on human rights and press freedom," the head of Amnesty International's Germany chapter, Barbara Lochbiler, said in an interview with German newspaper Neue Osnabruecker Zeitung.

Though China has eased restrictions following international criticism of its Internet censorship, many sites such as those of the Falun Gong still remain blocked.

"Censorship a blow against press freedom"

German Foreign Frank-Walter Steinmeier urged China to lift curbs on the media.

"I don't understand why the Chinese government once again limited Internet access and sparked international skepticism," Steinmeier told Der Spiegel.

Leading German newspapers and television stations have castigated what they call censorship by a dictatorial regime.

Berthold Kohler, chairman of the publishing board of the respected Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily said it was hardly surprising that Beijing wanted to control and restrict media reporting even during the Games.

He pointed out that the Chinese authorities have so far prevented the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and other international newspapers from being available daily on the stands in Beijing.

Even at the "German House" in Beijing, the papers would be available with the usual two to three-day delay during the Games, Kohler said, adding that the Chinese authorities justified it by saying they needed to first "check" the papers' content.

"This censorship is a blow against press freedom whether it's before, during or after the Olympic Games," he said.

E.P president Poettering wants a signal on Tibet

The president of the European Parliament, Hans-Gert Poettering weighed into the spiraling debate on human rights and press freedom at the Olympics on Sunday.

In an article in German newspaper Bild am Sonntag, Poettering called on Olympic athletes to protest against human right violations in Tibet.

"I would like to encourage the athletes, men and women, to look at things as they are, and not to turn away," he wrote in a column. "Each athlete can, in their own way, give a signal. No official should prevent that," he added, insisting that a love of sport and the Olympic Games is no excuse for "blurring our outlook" on human rights.

"It is our duty not to forget the people of Tibet, who are fighting for their cultural survival," Poettering said.

Poettering criticized the pace of talks between Beijing and the Dalai Lama's representatives and highlighted the Tibetan spiritual leader's planned appearance at the parliament in Strasbourg on December 4.

The Olympic Games, which start on Friday and run through until August 24, are being seen by many world leaders as an opportunity to pressure China into rights concessions, particularly with regard to Tibet.

tibetpost.net

Human Rights Groups Urged to Press China to End Tibet Repression

2008-08-05T15:21:00.000-07:00

Dharamshala: The Tibetan Solidarity Committee has urged countries and particularly the human rights organizations around the world to press the Chinese government to immediately halt all activities of repression and to respect the fundamental human rights and religious freedom of the Tibetan people.
"His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Central Tibetan Administration has, since the beginning, supported the Beijing Olympic Games as a fitting tribute to China's ancient civilization and a respect to the Chinese people's aspirations," noted a press released issued by the committee on 2 August.

"However, in the name of Olympic security, the government of China has intensified security clampdown amounting to stifling of Tibetan people's religious freedom and human rights," the press note added.

The Tibetan Solidarity Committee - constituted by the Kashag and the Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile - aims to plan, inform, co-ordinate and lead the movement in exile in unity under the policy of Middle-Way Approach of the Central Tibetan Administration to resolve the present crisis in Tibet.

The full text of the press release follows:

At Odds with the Olympic Principles

The Olympics symbolize peace, harmony and progress. The Principle 4 of the Olympic Charter states, "(the) practice of sports is a human right". Similarly, Principle 5 of the charter stress the importance of the Olympic spirit against any form of discrimination when it states, "any form of discrimination with regard to a country or a person on grounds of race, religion, politics, gender or otherwise is incompatible with belonging to the Olympic Movement".

Mr. Liu Jingmin, the Vice President of the Beijing Olympic bid told that in 2001 that, "by allowing Beijing to host the Games you will help the development of human rights." Accordingly, Mr. Jacques Rogge, the President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in April 2002 reassured that "the Olympic Games will improve human rights in China".

His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Central Tibetan Administration has, since the beginning, supported the Beijing Olympic Games as a fitting tribute to China's ancient civilization and a respect to the Chinese people's aspirations. However, in the name of Olympic security, the government of China has intensified security clampdown amounting to stifling of Tibetan people's religious freedom and human rights. Following are some of the examples to validate these concerns:

1. At present, whole of Tibet and Tibetan inhabited areas are under heavy military clampdown with the free movements of the Tibetan people highly restricted. The monasteries around Lhasa, including Drepung monastery, have been turned into a virtual prison with movements, in and out, of the monasteries strictly controlled.

2. Those Tibetans living in Beijing and other Chinese cities are put under scanner with majority of them asked to return back to their native places. Similarly, all the hotels and lodges wherever Tibetan people are found to be staying, the relevant police departments are ordered to conduct thorough inquiries, leading to embarrassment and harassment of the Tibetan origin customers. This is an outright discrimination on the basis of one's nationality and ethnic belonging.

3. Whole of Tibet is undergoing through an intense period of "patriotic reeducation campaign". The monks and nuns are forcibly asked to denounce His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Moreover, all the monks and nuns under the age of 18 years old are being expelled from their monasteries.

4. In some places as in Karze prefecture, the new regulation to close down the monasteries and demolition of monk's accommodation are under implementation. This regulation was recently enforced on the monastic communities in Tibet and is based on certain percentage of monks and nuns taking part in the protests.

5. Continuous crackdown on the peaceful protesters and unfair trial of the prisoners is still rampantly followed.

6. As the month of August approached, the movements of Tibetan people have been restricted almost in all the Tibetan areas. In some places such as Drago (Ch: Luhou) county in Karze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, the authorities have even closed down the gas vending stations apparently to restrict the movements of those Tibetan who have their own vehicles.

7. A widespread clampdown on the communication facilities is undergoing with particular emphasis on the use of telephones and internet. Eavesdropping and surveillance of telephone conversations is in place with the police interrogating every incoming call from outside Tibet.

8. All the Tibetan officials and government employees have been debarred from seeking any leave during the month of August. Frequent and randomly conducted raids and arbitrary detention or arrest has become order of the day.

In sum, at this point of time, Tibet has become a large prison with all the restrictions imposed on the Tibetan people, whereas Chinese immigrants are free of any checks and control. In terms of human rights, the situation has markedly deteriorated in all of Tibet, without any significant improvement, in comparison to periods before.

In ancient Greece, a truce used to be announced before and during each Olympic festival. Wars used to be suspended, the carrying out of death penalties forbidden and safety of travellers and visitors were guaranteed. Even during the most infamous 1936 Olympic Games in the history of modern Olympics, Hitler's oppression of the Jews is no match to what China is doing in Tibet.

While China complains about the politicization of Olympics to avert international criticism of her rights records, it is but China herself who from the very beginning of the present Olympic Games has involved the issue of human rights to politicize the Games at the first place. China is still using the Games as a tool to push forward its political agenda.

Therefore, we urge all the countries and particularly the human rights organizations around the world to press the government of China to immediately halt all activities of repression and to respect the fundamental human rights and religious freedom of the Tibetan people.

Tibetan Solidarity Committee

tibetcustom.com

China jails 42 over Tibet unrest, others on trial: state media

2008-07-15T14:43:00.001-07:00

BEIJING — China has jailed 42 people for their roles in this year's unrest in Tibet, with more than 100 others still on trial who may face the death penalty, state press reported on Friday.

Twelve people were jailed for unspecified periods of time on June 19 and 20, adding to the 30 people who were sentenced the previous month and whose cases had already been reported, Xinhua news agency said, citing a Tibetan leader.

No-one had yet been given the death penalty but those still on trial may be, the executive vice chairman of Tibet, Palma Trily, was cited as saying.

"It would be decided under Chinese laws whether some would be sentenced to death," he said.

The total number of people currently on trial is 116, he said.

Those jailed or on trial have been charged for their roles in riots in Tibet's capital, Lhasa, on March 14, Xinhua reported. Their crimes include arson, robbery and assaulting government offices, according to Xinhua.

Peaceful protests that began on March 10 in Lhasa to mark the anniversary of a 1959 uprising against China's rule of Tibet escalated into widespread violence across the city on March 14.

China says 18 "innocent civilians" and one policeman were killed in the riots.

China sent a massive security force into Tibet and closed the Himalayan region off to foreigners, but it has insisted it acted with restraint in quelling the unrest.

However, Tibet's government-in-exile says more than 200 people were killed in the Chinese crackdown on the unrest, which spread to other parts of western China that have Tibetan populations.

The 30 people jailed in April were sentenced for between three years and life.

However, human rights groups said they were not given a fair trial, and the US government expressed concern over their cases.

"Guilty or innocent, these Tibetans are entitled to a fair trial," Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, said following the sentencing of the first 30.

"Instead, they were tried on secret evidence behind closed doors and without the benefit of a meaningful defence by lawyers they'd chosen."

Tibetan Festival Banned, Troops Muster

2008-07-15T14:41:00.001-07:00

(RFA)Chinese authorities cancel a Tibetan festival that erupted in protests a year ago.

DHARAMSALA, India—Authorities in a Tibetan region of China’s southwestern Sichuan province have ordered a build-up of security forces in the region and canceled an annual horse-racing festival that was marked by protests a year ago, according to residents and exiled Tibetans from the area.

“There is a huge Chinese military force in Lithang,” one Tibetan resident said. “They are intimidating local Tibetans by conducting firing drills and other military exercises.”

“The sounds of explosions and firing of weapons can be heard loudly in the Lithang area,” he said, adding that the noise had frightened away birds, making it impossible to conduct traditional “sky burials” in which carrion birds carry off the bodies of the dead.

“The noise from the firing drills and explosions is so intense and loud that no birds are flying in the area,” he said.

Travel ban

Numerous exiled Tibetans with relatives in Lithang [in Chinese, Litang] confirmed a build-up of security forces around the town and its monasteries.

“I haven’t been able to contact my hometown for quite some time,” Amdruk Tseten, a Lithang native now living in India, said. “Today, I got through. Starting from July 5, Chinese security forces have been deployed in different places.”

The noise from the firing drills and explosions is so intense and loud that no birds are flying in the area."
Lithang resident
“They have warned that no-one is allowed to move around or go to Lithang town and its monasteries for three days. If anyone goes, the local authorities have warned that the Chinese security forces are authorized to shoot,” he added.

He said Tibetan residents of neighboring counties, including Nyakchuka [in Chinese, Yajiang] county, were banned from Lithang town.

“The Lithang International Horse-Racing Festival is also banned this year,” he said. “Additional troops have been sent to the area, and many Chinese soldiers are disguising the number of troops by putting on Tibetan dress.”

2007 protests

Lithang is home to a high proportion of Tibetans, especially nomads. The town saw a mass protest during a horse-racing festival in mid-August last year, and the area has a long history of chafing under Chinese rule.

The standoff began during a festival ceremony Aug. 1, 2007 after police detained Yonru nomad Ronggyal Adrak for whipping up the crowd to shout in support of the Dalai Lama.

Nomads issued three specific demands, including the release of Ronggyal Adrak, who was later jailed for “splitting the country,” religious freedom including the right to hear teachings by the Dalai Lama, and the release of revered Tibetan monk Tenzin Delek Rinpoche, among other prisoners.

They withdrew only after Tibetan leaders begged them to do so, vowing to restart their protests if the demands weren’t met. The authorities promptly launched a “patriotic re-education” campaign and posted Tibetan officials away from the area.

Tenzin Dorjee, a Tibetan monk from Lithang now living in southern India’s Drepung monastery, said the restrictions were being imposed for fear of similar incidents this August.

“This year, the Chinese authorities have ordered local people not to organize a horse racing festival,” he said. “Tibetans in Lithang are also now seeing a build-up of Chinese troops.”

“They are deployed in different areas in Lithang. A contingent of more than 600 Chinese soldiers is stationed very close to the monastery of Tenzin Delek Rinpoche in Nyakchuka county. The Chinese army camp is only two miles from the monastery,” he said.

‘Patriotic education’

Calls to government and police departments in Lithang went unconnected during office hours this week.

The Chinese authorities have launched a concerted “patriotic education” campaign among Tibetans aimed at diminishing support for the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

Beijing blames the Dalai Lama for violence that erupted in Lhasa, capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region, on March 14 following several days of peaceful protests.

Beijing says that 22 people were killed in rioting, which spread rapidly from Lhasa to other Tibetan areas of western China. Tibetan sources say scores of people were killed when Chinese paramilitary and police opened fire on crowds of unarmed demonstrators.

Chinese authorities have blamed the Dalai Lama for instigating the protests and fomenting a Tibetan independence movement. The Dalai Lama rejects the accusation, saying he wants only autonomy and human rights for Tibetans.

Original reporting by Lobsang Chophel for RFA’s Tibetan service. Director: Jigme Ngapo. Written for the Web in English by Luisetta Mudie. Translated by Karma Dorjee. Edited by Sarah Jackson-Han.

Army cordons seal off rebel monasteries in Tibet

2008-07-15T14:39:00.001-07:00

Lhasa, Tibet (China) -- More than 1,000 Buddhist monks are still locked up under armed guard in monasteries around Lhasa, four months after anti-Chinese riots, while the authorities implement their harshest crackdown on religion in decades.

Eyewitnesses confirm that People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops have sealed off Drepung, the largest monastery in Tibet. Nobody may go in or out. Photography is banned and passers-by are shooed away.

A camp of olive-green tents and two rings of roadblocks surround this sanctuary of meditation. Local people say the monks pay the army for food to be sent to them.

Drepung was singled out for punishment and “re-education” because Chinese security forces identified many of its monks on video recordings of the protests against Beijing’s policies in Tibet.

The Nechung monastery, about a mile south, was also sealed off. Tibetans said its monks were known for their fidelity to the Dalai Lama.

Although pictures of him are banned, the exiled spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism still exercises an uncanny grip on his people that half a century of Chinese propaganda has failed to break.

Modern Chinese rhetoric omits to say that the Dalai Lama, then a very young man, did his best to co-operate with China when its troops entered Tibet in 1950. He fled to India in 1959 after communist policies set off an uprising among the Tibetans.

The Dalai Lama himself has always condemned violence. He says he does not want independence but genuine cultural and religious autonomy within China. The Chinese say they do not believe him.

That is why control over the religious life of Tibet is crucial to Chinese rule.

Drepung may be a fortress of resistance but across Lhasa the picture varies. Some monasteries have complied with Chinese officials and installed party-controlled committees, allowing them to pursue their Buddhist studies in troubled silence.

One pleasing result for the authorities can be found at the Sera monastery in north Lhasa, whose 500 monks did not join the protests and have collaborated in the formation of an “administrative committee” to supervise them.

“We now study the Chinese constitution, the law against separatism, the law against demonstrations, the criminal law and other documents requiring us to love the motherland, love the government, support stability and understand the real intentions of the Dalai Lama,” said a monk named Chamba.

Tibet was reopened to foreign tourists on June 25. Compared with foreign diplomats and journalists, who have been admitted only on short, tightly controlled tours, tourists have been able to circulate with relative ease.

Accounts from travellers paint a picture of frightened Chinese residents protected by bored soldiers, while Tibetans are divided between government employees loyal to China and a majority of sullen, resentful people.

Economic growth, fast and furious under Chinese stewardship, has deepened some of the divisions. Most taxis are driven by Han Chinese; most rickshaws are pedalled by Tibetans.

Superficially, coercion appears to be working. On the road to Lhasa from the airport, every Tibetan farmhouse flies the red and gold Chinese flag. Sentries are posted on bridges and outside official buildings.

On every street corner in the city centre, a soldier stands watch. Most temples and monasteries are under 24-hour surveillance.

“I began to realise that Tibetans hate the Han [Chinese] from their bones and their hearts,” said a shopkeeper who migrated to Lhasa from Shanxi province in central China. “They are a very strange nation. They do not care about material things but only about the spirit.”

buddhistchannel.tv

China: Olympics Media Freedom Commitments Violated

2008-07-10T15:04:00.000-07:00

IOC Ignores Beijing’s Broken Pledges and Denial of Access
(Hong Kong, July 7, 2008) – The Chinese government continues to block and threaten foreign journalists despite repeated promises to lift media freedom restrictions ahead of the Olympic Games, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today.

The Chinese government has prohibited local Chinese-language media from publishing unflattering news ahead of the Games, leaving foreign media as the only source of factual reporting about a wide range of crucial issues in China today. But systematic surveillance, obstruction, intimidation of sources, and pressure on local assistants are hobbling foreign correspondents’ efforts to pursue investigative stories.

“Proponents and critics of the Beijing Games agreed on one thing – that fewer restrictions for international media and scrutiny of China at this time would constitute progress,” said Sophie Richardson, Asia Advocacy Director for Human Rights Watch. “Yet the Chinese government – with the help of the International Olympic Committee – has done its best to impede progress.”

The 71-page report, “China’s Forbidden Zones: Shutting the Media out of Tibet and Other ‘Sensitive’ Stories,” draws on more than 60 interviews with correspondents in China between December 2007 and June 2008. It documents how foreign correspondents and their sources continue to face intimidation and obstruction by government officials or their proxies when they pursue stories that can embarrass the authorities, expose official wrongdoing, or document social unrest.

Some journalists have suffered serious threats to their lives or safety. Most recently, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has declined to investigate death threats made against more than 10 correspondents and their family members in March and April 2008. In September 2007, senior Reuters correspondent Chris Buckley was beaten and detained by plainclothes thugs after interviewing rural citizens who had come to Beijing seeking redress for abuses committed by local authorities who were held at an illegal detention facility in Beijing. The following month, a European television news journalist suffered similar treatment while trying to report on unrest in Hebei province.

China is also threatening to restrict entry to news organizations that do not toe the line. In November 2007, a foreign cable news network that had publicly complained about previous harassment and detention by Anhui province officials was informed by a Chinese foreign ministry official that its accreditation to cover the Olympic Games was in jeopardy. A number of news organizations have reported difficulties obtaining visas and accreditation in advance of the Games, and several have begun to publicly voice concerns about restricted access to venues such as Tiananmen Square.

“These constraints limit what the estimated 25,000 correspondents going to China for the Olympics can cover,” said Richardson. “Journalists who try to report objectively on the complex realities of modern China are facing real risks, despite the government’s commitments to give them greater freedom.”

In 2001, the Chinese government promised the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that it would respect free expression in the run-up to the Beijing Games. In May 2007, the government announced new freedoms for accredited foreign journalists in the “Service Guide for Foreign Media” (http://hrw.org/english/docs/2007/05/31/china16029.htm). The temporary regulations, in effect from January 1, 2007 until October 17, 2008, allow foreign journalists to freely conduct interviews with any consenting Chinese organization or citizen. The regulations do not allow similar freedoms for Chinese journalists.

While some correspondents have noted improvements brought about by the new regulations, the majority say the regulations have done little to enable them to report on issues that government officials are determined to conceal. Those include high-level corruption, ethnic conflicts, social unrest, public health crises, and the workings of China’s large detention system, including prisons, labor camps, mental hospitals, and police stations.

For example, national and local authorities were unusually open to media coverage of their rapid responses following the May 12 earthquake in Sichuan. Yet as soon as the news turned to those authorities’ possible culpability for not doing more in advance to minimize damage, they reverted to more obstructionist tactics. On June 3, police forcibly dragged an Associated Press reporter and two photographers away from the scene of a protest by the parents of student victims. It remains unclear whether foreign correspondents will be able to report growing public demands for accountability.

In Tibetan areas, the site of the biggest government crackdown since the June 1989 Tiananmen Massacre, news remains difficult to report. Although the government announced on June 26 that it would reopen Tibet to foreign journalists, it has specified that “previous procedures” will apply. Those “previous procedures” were an onerous application process that, according to one veteran foreign correspondent, made going to Tibet “virtually impossible.” In addition, the fear of retribution for talking to foreign journalists remains so high that Tibetans are unlikely to be willing to approach them with important information. That means correspondents are unlikely to be able to verify the origins of the protests or determine how many were ultimately killed, injured, or arrested.

Officials have also sought to undermine foreign journalists by intimidating their more vulnerable Chinese sources. In several cases, correspondents told Human Rights Watch that officials interrogating them focused on obtaining the names, mobile phone numbers and locations of their local sources. One source for a foreign television journalist was beaten so badly that he required hospitalization; after his release, he was placed under house arrest. Other foreign correspondents spoke of sources’ subsequently being fired from their jobs or being threatened – sometimes with criminal charges – by local authorities.

“In recent months foreign journalists have continued to provide important coverage of serious issues in China,” said Richardson. “But neither they nor their sources should have to endure abuses ranging from harassment to death threats in order to do so, especially in light of the rights ostensibly granted by the temporary regulations.”

Article 51 of the Olympic Charter obliges the IOC to take “all necessary steps in order to ensure the fullest coverage by the different media and the widest possible audience in the world for the Olympic Games.”

Despite Beijing’s documented record of ignored pledges and denial of access, the International Olympic Committee has not publicly criticized the Chinese government’s violations of media freedom pledges. Indeed, some IOC representatives have publicly praised China’s media freedom. In April 2008, while foreign journalists were barred from Tibet and some were receiving death threats amidst a state media-driven vilification of “western media bias,” the head of the IOC press commission, Kevan Gosper, praised the “open-mindedness” of the Chinese government in “supporting the interests of ... international journalists.”

“The corrosive effects of the violations of Olympics-related media freedom pledges will linger long after the last athletes have left Beijing,” Richardson said. “It’s in the interest of the IOC and the foreign heads of state who will attend the Beijing Olympics to try to ensure that media freedom is a lasting legacy of the Games rather than a broken promise.”

hrw.org

"At least 24 journalists and cyber-dissidents arrested or sentenced since January"

2008-07-02T15:25:00.000-07:00

Reporters Without Borders has recorded 24 cases of journalists, cyber-dissidents or free expression activists being arrested or sentenced to jail terms since the start of the year. At the same time, at least 80 foreign journalists have been obstructed in the course of their work, above all in the Tibetan regions and in Sichuan.
"Where is the opening so often promised by the organisers of the Beijing Olympic Games and the International Olympic Committee?" the press freedom organisation asked. "Instead of an opening, these games are being used, more than ever, as a pretext to arrest, harass and censor. This situation is unacceptable and reflects the IOC’s inability to guarantee a favourable environment for the games in accordance with the Olympic Charter."

Last year ended badly with the arrest of leading activist Hu Jia in late December, and the start of this year was marked by his sentence to three and a half years in prison. But at least 23 other journalists, online writers and free speech activists have been arrested or sentenced to prison terms.

The authorities have made some concessions, such as the release of Ching Cheong and Yu Huafeng, but they have taken no account of the fact that the health of Zhang Jianhong, a writer better known as Li Hong, and Yang Maodong, a writer better known Guo Feixiong, has deteriorated in prison.

The terrible earthquake in Sichuan has not helped to reduce the repression either. Journalist Qi Chonghuai was sentenced to four years in prison the day after the quake. And Huang Qi, a well-known activist who has a human rights website, was arrested on 10 June for reporting the arrest of a person who had been writing accounts of the quake and its aftermath.

The harassment of activists who talk to the foreign news media or write articles for overseas Chinese media has also been stepped up. This campaign is being orchestrated by the public security and state security departments in order to intimidate human rights activists who might try to speak out before or during the games.

Reporters Without Borders’ chief demand, as regards the Beijing Olympics, has always been the release of imprisoned journalists, cyber-dissidents and free expression activists before the start of the games.

thetibetpost

Lhasa monks all but vanish in Chinese crackdown

2008-07-02T15:19:00.000-07:00

by GEOFFREY YORK, Phayul

LHASA, June 23 — The pilgrims returned to the Potala Palace yesterday, spinning their prayer wheels and prostrating themselves in front of the Dalai Lama's ancient palace on a mountaintop in Lhasa.

For two days, the Buddhist pilgrims had been pushed to the sidelines to make room for the Olympic torch relay in Lhasa. The traditional pilgrimage route at the Potala Palace was unceremoniously shut down, in one of many security measures by Chinese authorities, even though a month-long Buddhist festival has drawn thousands of pilgrims to the Tibetan capital.

But as the pilgrims returned, a mystery remained: Where are Lhasa's monks? A visit yesterday to the Sera monastery, the second-biggest Buddhist monastery in Tibet, found that its 550 monks had virtually disappeared from sight. Most buildings and outdoor areas at the monastery were nearly empty, and only about 10 monks could be seen.

Three days of travel around Lhasa - the first permitted visit by a Canadian journalist since the Tibetan uprising in March - found that the monks were almost entirely gone from the city streets, even in the historic quarter around the Jokhang temple, the holiest temple in Tibetan Buddhism.

Tibetan exiles, who have contacts in Lhasa, say the monks have been subjected to severe restrictions for most of the past three months, since the wave of anti-government protests that erupted in March.

"There are checkpoints and random checks of identification cards throughout Lhasa," said Tsering Shakya, a prominent Tibetan writer and professor at the University of British Columbia.

"There are police stationed at the exits of the monasteries, and they check the IDs and register them. It is deterring a lot of monks."

Lhasa residents are finding it difficult or impossible to phone the Sera monastery to reach relatives who are monks there, Mr. Shakya said. "It's a security measure. The monks were the most vocal in the protests, and they are the targets of the current campaign. They're under careful surveillance."

Lobsang Choepel, a 77-year-old monk who heads the government-controlled administration at the Sera monastery, denied there were any restrictions on the monks. "They can go downtown to do shopping and they can go to the market to buy vegetables," he said yesterday. But he didn't explain why so few monks were visible on the streets or in the monastery itself.

After giving brief answers to five questions from foreign journalists, the monk was hustled away by Chinese officials, who refused to permit further questions. They told the journalists to hurry to the next event on the government-sponsored visit. No other access to the monks was permitted, aside from a guided tour of the monastery's historical relics.

Sera monastery, whose monks helped lead the protests that began in Lhasa on March 10, has remained under tight security control since then. Several uniformed policemen were posted at the monastery's entrance yesterday, carrying radios.

China deployed a massive security operation in Lhasa on the weekend as it sent the Olympic flame on a two-hour dash through the city.

Invited guests were allowed into the opening and closing ceremonies, but most ordinary Tibetans were kept far away from the Olympic flame as it was carried on a shortened run through the Tibetan capital on Saturday morning.

Thousands of paramilitary police and regular police kept a close eye on the event, which passed without incident, despite government reports that Tibetan separatists were trying to sabotage it.

Much of the city, aside from the torch route, was almost deserted. Residents were told to stay inside their homes, unless they had a special pass allowing them to cheer for the torch. Hundreds of shops along the torch route were shuttered for the day. Tibetans who ventured outside were kept behind steel barriers on side streets.

A small group of foreign journalists, invited to attend the relay, were not permitted to see any of the nine-kilometre run, except the beginning and end. They had to pass through a barbed-wire checkpoint and other security checks before they were permitted to attend the opening ceremony.

At the end of the relay, the Olympic flame was greeted by a carefully choreographed display of ethnic dancing and rhythmic flag-waving from thousands of schoolchildren and other hand-picked spectators.

Chinese officials took advantage of the Olympic event to launch another verbal blast at the Dalai Lama, whom they blame for the unrest in Tibet.

"We will certainly be able to totally smash the splittist schemes of the Dalai Lama clique," Zhang Qingli, the hard-line boss of the Tibetan Communist Party, said in a speech to the crowd at the end of the torch relay. He spoke through an interpreter because he is not fluent in the Tibetan language.

His attack on the Dalai Lama was the latest sign that Beijing has no intention of negotiating seriously with the Tibetan spiritual leader, whose representatives held preliminary talks with Chinese officials last month. The second round of talks has been postponed at China's insistence.

Another senior Chinese official fired a fresh salvo at the Dalai Lama this weekend. "He has been hiding the truth from the Tibetan people," said Palma Trily, executive vice-chairman of the Tibetan regional government, at a press conference in Lhasa.

"His real aim is to turn Tibet back into a system of feudal serfdom. He has not brought any benefit to the Tibetan people in the past, nor will he bring them any benefit in the future."

Critics said the Chinese authorities had put Lhasa virtually under martial law. "With the way it has militarized the Tibetan capital, China might as well parade the Olympic torch through Lhasa atop a tank," said Han Shan, an activist with an exile group, Students for a Free Tibet.

Human-rights groups also were critical of the decision to parade the torch through the Tibetan capital. "This provocative decision - with the blessing of the International Olympic Committee - could aggravate tensions and undermine the fragile process to find a peaceful long-term solution for Tibet and the region," Sharon Hom, executive director of Human Rights in China, said in a statement.

"The government's insistence on parading the torch through Lhasa can only undermine the respect and trust required for a genuine dialogue process with the Dalai Lama."

studentsforafreetibet

Four monks arrested from Tarmo monastery

2008-07-02T15:15:00.000-07:00

Chinese authorities have on June 18 arrested four monks of Tarmo monastery in Driru (Ch: Biru) county, Nagchu (Nagu) prefecture while they were on their way to Lhasa for some works related to the monastery, according to a confirmed report. The arrested are abbot or the President of the Democratic Management Committee of the monastery Ngawang Gyalten (42) and his administrative colleagues, Ngawang Jampa (around 40), Ngawang Sangye (38) and Kalsang Lochok (20).

In late March, the Chinese authorities in TAR launched an extensive campaign of patriotic reeducation in almost all Tibetan areas including Sok(Ch: Suo) county, Drachen (Ch: Baqeng) county and Driru (Ch: Biru) county that saw mobilization of armed forces to oversee the repressive measure. During this campaign, Tarmo monastery also received a contingent of work team asking the monks to denounce His Holiness the Dalai Lama. The Abbot and the President of the Democratic Committee of the monastery, Ngawang Gyatlen had then resisted the campaign by insisting that, as a Buddhist it was ethically unjustifiable for the monks to condemn their root guru. He also demanded from the authorities to invite His Holiness the Dalai Lama back to Tibet. The abbot was then joined by all the monks of the monastery compelling the work team to return but with a stern warning that the fate of the monastery would be decided later in the month of July when another contingent of work team arrives. The arrest is most probably related to the above incident.

The authorities alleged that these monks had embarked on the journey [to Lhasa] in violation of the monastery's regulation without taking proper leave, but their arrest have already been planned due to the above incident and the reason cited by the authorities are just an excuse, sources have added. It is yet not known where these four monks are being held.

In view of the ongoing critical situation inside Tibet, we urge the United Nations and the International community and organizations to the following urgent needs:

To immediately send an independent international fact-finding mission into Tibet
To exert pressure on the PRC government to allow unfettered access to free press in whole of Tibet
To pressure the PRC to end the brutal killings in the whole of Tibet
To immediately release all the arrested and imprisoned Tibetans
To extend immediate medical assistance to those injured Tibetans
To allow free movement of people and provide access to daily needs
- Tibetan Solidarity Committee

secrettibet

China Orders arrest of 36 Tibetans

2008-07-02T15:14:00.000-07:00

An order issued by the prefectural Public Security Bureau of Karze (Ch: Ganzi) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture (TAP) dated May 7, 2008 pronounced the arrest of 36 Tibetans listed by their names, sex, residential address, residential registration card no., physical description and photographs.

The edict announces among other things that, "Tsering Nemay and other Tibetans enlisted in this order are suspects of certain crime. All the enlisted 36 Tibetans are on the run. All concerned local Public Security Bureaus are directed to immediately detain the suspects from the day of receipt of this arrest order. Anyone providing leads and information, and those involved in the arrest of the suspects, whether individual citizen or office, shall be appropriately rewarded for their good work".

Among the enlisted Tibetans, the youngest one is 22 years old Chodak from Trehor township under Drakgo (Ch: Luhuo) county while the oldest is a 62 years old Tashi from Gyashoe village under Serta (Ch: Seda) county. Six among the listed 36 Tibetans are women. No additional information is yet known about how many of them have been arrested. Following are the names of all the 36 Tibetans ordered to be arrested by the Public Security Bureau (PSB):

1) Tsering Nemay, 25 yrs. Lhopa township, Karze county, 2) Shao Men Men, 43 yrs. female, No. 8 section, Karze town. 3) Gonpo Wangchuk, around 40 yrs. Nyagzam township, Karze town. 4) Tsetan Phuntsok (monk) 38 yrs, Rongpatsa township, Karze county, 5) Rigzin Karma, 22 yrs, Tsogo township, Drakgo county, 6) Chodak, 22 yrs., Trehor township, Drakgo county, 7) Rigzin, Trehor township, Drakgo county, 8) Tseyang alias Yangtso, female, 36 yrs., Tsogo township, Drakgo county, 9) Tenthup, 53 yrs., Nyitoe township, Serta county, 10) Sherten, 30 yrs., Ragtsong township, Serta county, 11) Adron, female, 36 yrs., Taktse township, Serta county, 12) Choeden Kyab, 35 yrs., Choktsang township, Serta county, 13) Soepa, 52 yrs., Yalung township, Serta county, 14) Kyare, female, 30 yrs., Wuda township, Serta county, 15) Woepe, 42 yrs, Serta county, 16) Nyipo, Serkhog township, Serta county, 17) Solo, 40 yrs., Taktse township, Serta county, 18) Tsultim Wangpo, 38 yrs, Taktse township, Serta county, 19) Konchok, 48 yrs, Taktse township, Serta county, 20) Tsekyi, 40 yrs, Choktsang township, Serta county, 21) Sonam Dorje, 25, Yango township, Serta county 22) Lobsang Jamyang alias Lojam, 26 yrs., Serkhog township, Serta county, 23) Sherdrak, 39 yrs, Khamleg township, Serta county, 24) Thupga, 30 yrs, Khamleg township, Serta county, 25) Lodoe alias Ngozum Takdong, 36 yrs, Ragtsong township, Serta county, 26) Tade, female, 55 yrs, Khamleg township, Serta county, 27) Topdo, 38 yrs, Ragtsong township, Serta county, 28) Nyisher, 27 yrs, Samshulthang village, Serta county, 29) Dade, 43 yrs, Nyitoe township, Serta county, 30) Phundo, 51 yrs, Kheokor township, Serta county, 31) Nyima, 40 yrs, Khamleg township, Serta county, 32) Jamyang, 42, Nyitoe township, Serta county, 33) Woetso, 28 yrs, Khamleg township, Serta county, 34) Choetso, female, 53 yrs, Serta county, 35) Tashi, 62, Gyashoe village, Serta county, and 36) Kelsang (butter seller), 31 yrs, Serta county.

Report:-Tibetan Solidarity Committee
secrettibet

Nepalese police break up Tibetan protest, detain 50

2008-06-27T15:45:00.000-07:00

Kathmandu, June 27 - Nepalese police detained about 50 Tibetan exiles who were protesting Friday against China's crackdown in their homeland, a day after the United States raised concerns about Nepal's treatment of Tibetan demonstrators.

The group of Tibetan exiles, including many monks and nuns, had gathered in front of the Chinese Embassy's visa office in the heart of Katmandu and were chanting anti-China slogans.

They were stopped by police and quickly put in vans and trucks and driven to detention centers.

Police official Ramesh Thapa said about 50 Tibetans were detained but were likely to be freed later in the day.

The State Department issued a statement Thursday saying the U.S. was concerned about Nepal's treatment of Tibetan activists protesting against China's crackdown in their homeland.

"The ongoing harsh treatment of peaceful protesters during their arrests by the Nepali police is distressing," State Department spokesman Tom Casey said in the statement.
It urged Nepal to ensure the humane treatment of peaceful protesters and adhere to its international human rights obligations.

Nepal has been criticized by human rights groups for its handling of the Tibetan protests, which have occurred almost daily since March.

Nepalese police initially used batons to beat protesters. However, after criticism and pressure from rights groups, police stopped using force but have continued to detain demonstrators.

Nepalese officials say protests against friendly nations, including China, will not be allowed and Tibetan refugees are barred from all political activities.

China says 22 people died in anti-government violence in Tibet's capital of Lhasa in March, while foreign Tibet supporters say many times that number were killed in the protests and a subsequent crackdown.

phayul

Reporter charged with 'inciting' public ire

2008-06-27T15:44:00.000-07:00

Nem Davies

A reporter of a Rangoon-based weekly journal—'Ecovision', has been charged with 'committing crimes against public tranquility' and 'inciting hatred against the government'.

Ma Eint Khaing Oo, of Ecovision was produced before the Tamwe Township Court in Rangoon Division for the first time today and charged under Section 505(b) and 124(a) of the Criminal Code.

"She was brought from Tamwe police station, produced before the Court and charged her under section 505(b) and 124(a) of the Criminal Code. After which, she was taken back to Insein prison in the evening," her relative who did not want to be named for fear of reprisal by the authority told Mizzima after visiting her in Court today.

Eint Khaing Oo, a law graduate was employed by the Rangoon-based weekly journal only two months ago. She was arrested, while she was covering the plight of the cyclone victims, who had approached Rangoon-based INGOs for more aid. Initially, she was kept in police custody at Tamwe police station and then produced before the Court. Her family is still looking for a lawyer to defend her.

About 30 cyclone victims from the ravaged South Dagon Township in Rangoon, tried to approach Rangoon-based INGOs to ask for more aid as they were receiving inadequate aid and assistance from the government. They were arrested on their way to these INGO's offices. Some of them were released later.

.mizzima.com

Lone Demonstrator Arrested at Rangoon City Hall

2008-06-27T15:43:00.000-07:00

A lone women demonstrator was arrested on Wednesday in Rangoon, after she called for the release of political prisoners including democracy icon Aung San Su Kyi.

A worker near Rangoon City Hall confirmed that an unidentified woman staged a solo protest in front of the building at about 2 pm on Wednesday.

Dr Win Naing, a member of the National League for Democracy information department, said that about 10 police cars came to the scene and the woman was arrested.

“We do not know who she is and or what kind of slogan she was shouting because she was already taken away when we arrived at the scene,” he said. “We are trying to find information about her, her background and if she belongs to an organization.”

Last year, the government arrested veteran political activist Ohn Than after he staged a lone protest in front of the US embassy on August 23 with a poster calling for the regime to give up power. He was sentenced in April to life in prison.

According to Amnesty International, Ohn Than is now suffering from cerebral malaria, which is said to be at an advanced stage. He has been denied access to special medical attention.

Prison authorities reportedly wrote to Ohn Than’s family in his name, saying that he no longer needed visitors.

Prison authorities routinely refuse to give medication and treatment to political prisoners.

According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, Myo Yan Naung Thein is in need of special medical attention after he was paralyzed following torture around his head and abdomen. His head injuries led to paralysis on the left side of his body, and he can no longer walk without help.

“He (Myo Yan Naung Thein) has been transferred to the prison hospital, but the authorities are still refusing to let him see a neurologist he has requested,” said Tate Naing, a leading AAPP member.

Myo Yan Naung Thein, a member of 88 Generation Students group, played a prominent role at the start of mass protests in Burma last August. He was arrested for his work with other democracy activists and because he gave interviews to exiled media.

Myo Yan Naung Thein was hospitalized for two weeks in May. However, his conditioned failed to improve. He has been punished by being placed in solitary confinement in an "ayutike" cell, which is used to hold prisoners with psychological problems—real or imagined.

After the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Burma issued a report early this month, the military government delivered a “rebuttal statement” in response to the criticism it leveled at the treatment of political prisoners.

The military government said prisoners all received regular medical check ups by prison doctors, and are allowed to meet with specialist medical practitioners, if prisoners are in serious condition or need special attention.

According Tin Yu, a resident of Hlaing Tharyar Township who recently visited Insein Prison to see his son, most political prisoners are sick and depressed, and the authorities do not provide them with proper medical treatment.

He said a woman activist, Su Su Nywe, who was arrested last year, was reportedly sick and depressed and had banged her head against a wall in the prison because of her illness.

irrawaddy.org

Amnesty International calls for prisoner release

2008-06-27T15:42:00.000-07:00

Jun 26, 2008 (DVB)–Rights group Amnesty International has called on the military regime in Burma to release political prisoners Myo Yan Naung Thein and U Ohn Than immediately to allow them to seek urgent medical attention.

In an urgent action released last week, the group said that Myo Yan Naung Thein was partly paralysed after being tortured and was being held in solitary confinement in poor conditions, while U Ohn Than had reportedly contracted cerebral malaria, which is almost always fatal if left untreated.

“They both are innocent and shouldn’t have been arrested in the first place,” said Haider Kikabhoy from AI’s Southeast Asia team.

“Myo Yan Naung Thein is almost paralysed in the lower part of his body and U Ohn Than is suffering from cerebral malaria,” Kikabhoy continued.

“They haven’t been given proper treatment even though they are in need of urgent medical attention, and that’s why we are calling for their immediate release.”

Myo Yan Naung Thein is a member of the 1988 Generation Students group which played a leading role at the start of the mass protests in Burma in August 2007.

He has been held in Burma’s notorious Insein prison since he was arrested on 14 December 2007 for his links to activists who filmed the demonstrations and spoke to media outside the country.

Myo Yan Naung Thein was hospitalized for two weeks in May. However, the treatment failed to improve his condition, and when he asked to see a neurologist, he was punished by being placed in solitary confinement.

Authorities sentenced U Ohn Than to life imprisonment on 2 April after a grossly unfair trial for staging a solo protest in front of the US Embassy in Rangoon on 23 August 2007.

U Ohn Than was initially held in Insein prison, but since his sentencing he has been moved three times. He is now in Khamti prison in Sagaing Division in north-western Burma.

He is suffering from cerebral malaria, which is said to be at an advanced stage. During his detention, U Ohn Than has also suffered from hypertension and kidney stone problems.

Haider told DVB that as well as calling on the military regime for the immediate release of Myo Yan Naung Thien and U Ohn Than, Amnesty International would increasingly advocate to the international community including the UN Human Rights Council, China, Russia and ASEAN countries for the release of all political prisoners in Burma.

Reporting by Moe Aye

More than 30,000 Myanmar refugees resettled

2008-06-27T15:41:00.002-07:00

BANGKOK, Thailand—More than 30,000 Myanmar refugees living in camps in Thailand have been sent to third countries in what the United Nations said Wednesday had become the world's largest refugee resettlement operation.
Most of the refugees are Karen ethnic minority people who had been sheltered in nine refugee camps along the Thai-Myanmar border.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said 30,144 refugees have left Thailand to start new lives abroad since the resettlement operation began in January 2005. A UNHCR statement described it as the world's largest refugee resettlement operation.

But the camps remain home to 123,500 refugees and asylum-seekers.

"Some of the refugees have been here for nearly two decades. Some were born in refugee camps, grew up there and are now raising their own families in refugee camps," UNHCR regional representative Raymond Hall said Wednesday. "For them resettlement offers a way out of the camps and the opportunity for a fresh start in life."

The United Nations and human rights groups say that over the years the Myanmar military has burned villages, killed civilians and committed other atrocities against the Karen, who have long fought for autonomy from the central government.

Some activists have charged that Myanmar's ruling junta is waging a genocidal campaign against the Karen and other rebellious ethnic groups.

Hall said prospects for the refugees to return to Myanmar or settle permanently
in Thailand were dim.

Nearly 21,500 of the resettled refugees have gone to the United States, while Australia has received 3,400 and Canada 2,600.

Other resettlement countries are Britain, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and Sweden.

Myanmar refugees are now leaving Thailand for resettlement at an average rate of more than 300 a week, the UNHCR said.

mercurynews

NLD member in prison not allowed medical treatment

2008-06-27T15:41:00.001-07:00

Phanida

Chiang Mai – Member of Burmese political opposition Thant Zin Myo, who has been in custody in the notorious Insein prison for over 11 months, has been denied medical treatment despite his deteriorating health, his wife said.

Hla Hla Maw, wife of Thant Zin Myo, who has been detained without any trial, said the authorities had rejected him from undergoing medical treatment and that she is concerned over his deteriorating health.

"He told me that he was suffering from arthritis, gastric ulcer and a swollen face when I visit him in prison. He said he has not received any medical treatment but was given only medicines for gastric ulcer.

Thant Zin Myo, was also denied a blood test for his rheumatoid fever, his wife added.

"My husband is suffering from various diseases," said Hla Hla Maw, adding that That Zin Myo has heart problems, rheumatoid fever and gastric ulcer even before his arrest and had previously undergone medical treatment.

Two months ago, authorities rejected a petition signed by his family and sent to Snr. Gen Than Shwe, prison in-charge, for medical treatment.

Thant Zin Myo was charged along with his co-defendants Kyaw Soe Win, San Win and Thant Zaw Myint under Section 505(b) and 143 of the Criminal Code, of committing an offence against public tranquility.

They were arrested for staging protests against rising commodity prices at Rangoon's downtown district of Hledan on September 28, 2007.

"I was worried about his health when I met him during my prison visit. If he does not receive proper treatment inside the prison, he will not last long," his wife said.

"Our request and our petition have fallen on deaf ears and we have not yet received any reply from the authority," she added.

His family members said they are now approaching a young lawyer, Maung Maung Latt, to defend his case, when he is produced before the Court.

Pho Phyu, another young lawyer, said the government has kept pending on cases of those arrested in connection to the September protest last year.

"The courts are hearing other cases only," Pho Phyu said.

He said, the authorities despite of proceeding with the trail 16 monks, who were arrested for September protests, later suspended.

Currently, cases of the 7 - 8 monks from 'Ngwe Kyar Yan' monastery, who are arrested in connection with the September protests, are being trialed. And the authorities also began the trial of student activists including the 88 Generation Students, 96 Generation Students, and other activists arrested for vote 'NO' campaign in the May referendum, and distributing of Rambo IV VCDs and activists related to ILO report cases.

"Their family members are exhausted and cannot afford to bear the financial burden for their cases," he said.

Besides, people who assisting the activists in their court cases are now focused on the cyclone relief operation in Irrawaddy Division, leaving the detained activists in difficulties even to get food, he added.

mizzima

Junta denies medical treatment to detained student activist

2008-06-27T15:40:00.000-07:00

Phanida

Chiang Mai – Despite the deteriorating health of 88 Generation Student Myo Yan Naung Thein, prison officials of Insein prison have not allowed him proper treatment and produced him before the court on Thursday.

88 Generation Student Myo Yan Naung Thein (34), who hails from Kamayut Township, has been in custody in Insein prison since December 14, 2007. He is paralyzed from the waist downwards and has not been allowed any medical treatment.

"He was produced before the court today, but not yet allowed treatment and hasn't yet got a medical certificate allowing him to undergo treatment outside. He was paralyzed from the waist downwards due to torture during interrogation. He cannot walk and was taken to court in a stretcher today," Pho Phyu, his defence counsel told Mizzima.

"His health situation has taken a turn for the worse and he couldn't walk today. He was carried into the courtroom. He was remanded again as the witness did not come today. He did not get bail," lawyer Myint Thaung, a member of the NLD Legal Aid group told Mizzima.

He was first arrested by the regime in July 1997, for leading a students' protest, which took place in December 1996 along with 8 other 88 Generation Students. Then he was sentenced to 7 years' imprisonment. Later he led the Saffron Revolution, which took place in September 2007, and was arrested again. His friend Kyaw Lynn Oo, who is living in Thailand, now said that he was tortured both times.

He has been charged under section 505(b), of committing an offence against public tranquility, facing at least two years' imprisonment if convicted, his defence counsel Pho Phyu said.

Four other '88 Generation Students' were produced before the court today along with Myo Yan Naung Thein.

Zaw Min from Syriam, Min Min a.k.a. Baung Baung, Khin Moe Moe from North Okkalapa and Kyaw Soe are also charged under section 505(b) of the Criminal Code.

Moreover, Khin Moe Moe and Kyaw Soe were found with foreign currency in their possession, when they were arrested. They are also charged under Section 24 of the Foreign Exchange Act, Myint Thaung said.

Detained activist injures herself in prison

2008-06-27T15:39:00.002-07:00

(DVB)–Detained human rights activist Su Su Nway banged her head against the wall of her cell on Wednesday, slightly injuring herself, after an argument with prison officials, according to her lawyer.

Su Su Nway's lawyer Daw Khin Htay Kywe said the detained activist was disappointed with the prison authorities after they decided to reduce her exercise time from the usual four hours down to two.

On 25 June, Su Su Nway asked prison officials to open her cell door as she was having trouble breathing due to her heart condition.

Daw Khin Htay Kywe said the prison officials agreed to her demand and opened the cell door but then did something that upset her and so she banged her head against the wall and collapsed.

Su Su Nway's sister said the family was worried after they heard about the incident from a close friend.

"We heard she had an argument with prison officials and banged her head against her cell's wall," she said.

"This is a very worrying situation – there is no proper medical treatment and she seems to be under great stress."

She said Su Su Nway was suffering from high blood pressure earlier this week but she was getting better when the family visited her on Tuesday.

Su Su Nway and her co-worker, activist Bo Bo Win Naing, were arrested by authorities in November last year while hanging anti-government posters in front of the Mya Yeik Nyo hotel in Bahan township.

She was charged with joining an assembly intended to cause public unrest under sections 143 and 147 of the penal code and on two other charges along with Bo Bo Win Hlaing under sections 142(a) and 505(b).

Su Su Nway and Bo Bo Win Maung appeared on Insein prison court on Wednesday but their court hearing was cancelled due to a change of judges on the case.

Reporting by Khin Hnin Htet

Kyauk Tan villagers forced to work for aid

2008-06-27T15:39:00.001-07:00

(DVB)–Residents of Meepya village in Kyauk Tan township, Rangoon, have been forced to work on a reconstruction project in order to receive aid materials given by private donors.

The villagers were told they would not receive the supplies unless they contributed labour to rebuild a dam that was damaged in the cyclone.

About 500 households in Meepya village, which is located on an estuary, were damaged in the cyclone, leaving many people homeless.

The village received assistance from private donors, but village Peace and Development Council chairperson U Aye Kyaw Myint and other members of the council seized the items and forced villagers to work on the dam on 26 May in return for aid.

Villagers were angered by the demands, particularly as the PDC had already collected around 4.5 million kyat from local businesses and residents for the reconstruction of the dam but were not putting the funds to their designated use.

Reporting by Khin Hnin Htet

Regime orders reduction of death toll in Higyi Kyun Island

2008-06-27T15:38:00.001-07:00

IMNA

The Burmese military regime has avoided mentioning the exact death toll in Higyi Kyun Island, Irrawaddy delta following Cyclone Nargis lashing the country, survivors in the Island said.

According to residents in Chaung Wa village in Higyi Kyun Township, over 1,000 in their village died.

Chaung Wa villagers said "the Village Peace and Development Council (VPDC) registered about 280 deaths in the village." But the villagers said that the VPDC called Ya-ya-ka in Burmese recorded a lesser death toll because of orders from higher authorities.

The VPDC members told survivors that the Burmese authorities ordered recording only about 200 deaths in the villages where the death toll was between 500 and 600.

The authorities did not record the death toll systematically and the VPDC's also reported according to orders, claimed survivors.

The government controlled media The New Light of Myanmar reported on June 23 that about 84,537 were dead, 53,836 were missing and 19,359 were injured in the cyclone.

Earlier the junta said the cyclone killed 77,738 people, left 55,917 missing and 19,359 injured.

Five days after Cyclone Nargis lashed Burma, the regime controlled media reported that over 22,000 people were dead and 41,000 were missing.

An IMNA source said that some cyclone hit areas are using water provided by the NGOs and the government had promised that they would build houses for people.

Some survivors in Higyi Island moved to Bassein (Pathein) the capital of Irrawaddy (Ayeyawaddy) division and some relocated to their relatives.

Villagers flee to border to escape abuses by Burma Army

2008-06-27T15:37:00.002-07:00

Villagers from Kunhing township, southern Shan State have been fleeing to Tachilek, Thai-Burma border to escape arrests and abuses committed by Burma Army following clash with Shan State Army last week, a Shan Herald reporter, Long Mai reports from the border.

By Hseng Khio Fah
26 June 2008

Before the clash between 75-strong unit from Light Infantry Battalion (LIB) 524 led by Lt Aung Win and 30-strong SSA troops from Brig 759 led by Cap Sai Ywe in Kunkwe village, Kunhing township, some civilians were arrested and tortured by members of LIB 524 for not reporting information about SSA operating in the area, according to villagers who arrived in Tachilek.

Long Kaw, 62, and Long Ta, 52 together with other three villagers from Papha village were arrested by LIB 524 before clash with SSA troops for half-an-hour in the morning of June 17. They were tortured by Burmese troops for not informing about SSA movement in the area, said one of the villagers.

He said, he was not sure when the five arrested would be released.

The next day after the clash, the LIB arrested the village headmen of Kunkwe, Sonkwe, Papha and Nagay villages, said the source.

“They were beaten every time when they were asked about the SSA. The villagers could no longer withstand the torture and told them where the SSA was located. But the Army did not follow the SSA. Then they told us to leave the village,” the source said.

The villagers were forced to leave their villages as a punishment for not informing the Burma Army about SSA operating in the area, according to Long Mai.

Sixteen villagers from Kunhing township arrived in Tachilek and more are still on their way to the border town, said the villagers.

“We just have to lead our lives here at the border. We dare not to go to Thailand too, because we don’t have any documents,” said one of the villagers.

shanland

Sexual violence continues in Shan State

2008-06-27T15:37:00.001-07:00

Sexual violence goes on in Shan State as the clashes between Burma Army and Shan State Army (SSA) increase, since the Burmese military beefed up its security forces, before the May 10 referendum and after the Cyclone Nargis devastated its delta areas, according to a Shan Herald reporte from the border.

By Hseng Khio Fah

A group of 6 soldiers led by Lt Tat Kyaw from Kunhing based Infantry Battalion 246, Company # 3, on 21 June abducted a 24 year old girl named Nang Nu on her way home at around 14:30 and raped her near Keng Lom where the Burma Army and the SSA fought last week. The soldiers were on duty to provide security for the military trucks coming from Taunggyi to Mongpiang, said the source.

“She was raped while she was returning from selling her bamboo buds at the market of Kali,” a villager told a Shan Herald reporter. “She arrived home with an unhappy face and told her parents how she was perpetrated by the Burmese soldiers. But the family dared not open the case because there was no witness. The village headman was also afraid to charge the soldiers for the crime.”

Nang Nu is looking after of her old father Long Pha Heing and her leper mother with a daily income from selling vegetables. Due to her mother’s disease, the family lives 1 mile far from Naloe village, Kali tract.

Similar incidents happened in Kunhing township.

On 24 May, a gang of Burmese soldiers who patrolling around Kunhing area took a 21 year old girl who wishes to be unnamed coming back from harvesting hillside cultivation to Yala lake, north of Kunhing at 11:30 and raped her, according to the border sources.

“She returned back home with torn dirty clothes at around 16:00. She just sat and cried every day since she was raped. We couldn’t ask her anything. Now, she just acts like she’s gone out of her mind,” said her close relative.

“They [soldiers] threatened her with their guns and dragged her to the lake,” said a 10 year old boy eye witness.

The family went to tell the village headman to complain to the officials in the town but nothing came out of it. The victim lives in Nammawn village, north of Kunhing.

shanland

School teacher tortured by Army in Buthidaung

2008-06-27T15:36:00.000-07:00

Buthidaung, Burma: A school teacher (Junior Assistant Teacher- JAT) was tortured by the Army last month and suffered two broken ribs on allegations that he had enlisted foreign support to aid his son, who was studying in a university, according to a local trader.

The school teacher was identified as Anwar Mail (60), son of Fazal Ahamed. He hailed from U Hlapee village tract of Buthidaung Township in Arakan State, Burma.

Earlier, Anwar used to teach in the middle school of Phone Nyo Hlake village tract of Buthidaung Township. Currently, he is a teacher of the affiliated middle school of Sine Daung village tract of Buthidaung Township.

Last month, a section of Army personnel from Battalion No. 551, went to Anwar's house at midnight and arrested him along with his three sons, who are in high school and college, said an aide close to the army.

Before they were arrested, the Army personnel searched the house, but did not find any incriminating document.

Later, Anwar and his elder son, who was studying in Akyab College, were taken to a nearby mountain by the army personnel, where the father was severely beaten up and two of his ribs were broken. The army tried to extract a confessional statement regarding where he got the money to support the education of his children. However, his sons were not tortured.

Later that night, he was released after he paid Kyat 80,000 to the Army.

Anwar has been suffering from broken ribs since last month and his condition is critical. He was not allowed to go Akyab (Sittwe), the capital of Arakan state and did not have the means to go to a neighboring country for treatment, a close friend said.

kaladanpress

China: Free Tiananmen Prisoners Before Olympics

2008-06-25T15:03:00.000-07:00

Dozens Still in Prison on 19th Anniversary of Massacre
– On the 19th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, the Chinese government should honor its commitment to improve human rights before the 2008 Beijing Olympics by releasing the estimated 130 Tiananmen prisoners improperly arrested or tried, Human Rights Watch said today.

Chinese army troops initiated a massacre of an estimated 2,000 unarmed people in and around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square and other Chinese cities on and after June 3-4, 1989. The Chinese government has wholly failed to account for those killings and bring justice to the victims.

“The Chinese government should show the global Olympic audience it’s serious about human rights by releasing the Tiananmen detainees,” said Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. “Beijing’s use of Tiananmen Square as a macabre prop for China’s Olympic ‘coming-out-party’ adds insult to injury.”

The 1989 crackdown extended to major urban centers across China and resulted in the arrest of hundreds of people on charges ranging from “counterrevolutionary” offenses to “hooliganism,” including robbery, arson, and assault. The government continues to harass survivors, their families, and those who dare to challenge the official version of the events at Tiananmen Square. Current figures are not made public, but as recently as 2004, at least 130 individuals arrested in the wake of the June 3-4 massacre were still in prison.

The Chinese government intends to use Tiananmen Square for various Olympic functions. It has already held the starting ceremonies for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games torch relay at Tiananmen, and will hold the closing ceremonies there as well. In February 2001, the Chinese government dropped Tiananmen as the proposed venue for beach volleyball at the request of an International Olympic Committee (IOC) evaluation team that visited Beijing five months ahead of the July 2001 IOC decision to award the 2008 Games to Beijing.

On June 3-4 1989, the Chinese government turned its troops and tanks against its own citizens to suppress a movement of students, plus some workers, academics, writers and journalists, demonstrating peacefully for a pluralistic political system. The death toll included the slaughter of hundreds of ordinary Chinese who massed in the streets of Beijing to stop the army from reaching Tiananmen Square.

China was globally condemned for its crackdown on the protesters, and several states imposed sanctions, including the ongoing European Union arms embargo. In 1990, however, then-President Jiang Zemin dismissed international condemnation of the Tiananmen Massacre as “much ado about nothing.”

On the 19th anniversary of the June 1989 Tiananmen massacre, Human Rights Watch again urges the Chinese government to:
overturn the 1989 official pronouncement labeling the student movement a “counterrevolutionary rebellion;”

publicly recognize that the June 1989 massacre is a deeply divisive source of pain and frustration even within the ranks of the ruling Chinese Communist Party, by providing redress to the victims;

cease the harassment, arrest and imprisonment of survivors, family members, and scholars who demand state accountability for Tiananmen abuses; and
issue a complete list of those who died or were injured, and those who were imprisoned, as no such lists are publicly available.
“The Chinese government wants the 2008 Beijing Games to expunge the memories of the 1989 Beijing massacre,” said Richardson. “China could replace the image of the lone man blocking the tanks with the image of the Tiananmen prisoners being freed – a truly Olympian gesture.”

hrw.org

China: Rights Lawyers Face Disbarment Threats

2008-06-25T15:01:00.000-07:00

Intimidation Overshadows Reforms to Law on Lawyers
– Two prominent Chinese lawyers who offered to represent Tibetans face the loss of their professional licenses as part of a recent drive to threaten lawyers and law firms, Human Rights Watch said today. The government’s unprecedented efforts to intimidate firms into refusing politically sensitive cases reflects the vulnerability of the legal profession, and overshadows the June 1, 2008, enactment of revisions to the Law on Lawyers, which is supposed to establish new procedural protections for lawyers.

The Beijing Judicial Bureau has to date refused to renew the professional licenses of Teng Biao and Jiang Tianyong, two lawyers with distinguished records of defending civil and human rights cases. The deadline for renewal is May 31. The move followed a weeks-long delay by the bureau to complete the annual registration of more than a dozen law firms, many of which employ lawyers who have been involved in what the government deems to be “sensitive cases.” Some lawyers have privately denounced the bureau’s actions as “large-scale blackmail,” designed to deter law firms from getting involved in cases that may be embarrassing to the government.

“Beijing is trying to intimidate the legal profession by suspending these two lawyers and threatening not to renew many licenses,” said Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. “The goals are to deter lawyers from representing human rights cases, and to deter firms from employing lawyers who want those cases.”

In early April, following the government’s announcement that several hundred Tibetans had been taken into custody for their role in the March protests in Lhasa, a group of 18 prominent civil rights lawyers issued an open letter offering to provide legal assistance to the detainees. “As professional lawyers, we hope that the relevant authorities will handle Tibetan detainees strictly in accordance with the constitution, the laws and due process for criminal defendants,” the letter said. “We hope that they will prevent coerced confessions, respect judicial independence and show respect for the law.”

The Ministry of Justice, which has authority over lawyers and bar associations and controls their professional licenses through a system of annual renewal, immediately responded by threatening the letter’s signatories and their respective law firms with disciplinary sanctions and holding up the renewal of their professional licenses. Beijing judicial authorities summoned individual lawyers and heads of law firms, told them the Tibetan protesters were not “ordinary cases but sensitive cases,” and asked law firms to dissociate themselves from the individual signatories or to terminate their employment.

Several law firms where notified in writing by the judicial authorities why their registration was being delayed: “The lawyers from your law firm are involved in representing some sensitive cases, therefore, the annual inspection and registration of your firms will be temporarily postponed,” the notification said. A number of lawyers were also warned by national security personnel against accepting retainers from relatives of Tibetan defendants. The Beijing Bar Association, which like other Chinese bar associations remains controlled by the local judicial authorities, also warned heads of law firms of possible disciplinary sanctions. The head of the Beijing Bar also accused the lawyers of having provided support to the “Dalai Lama clique.”

In a second open letter published on May 24, a week before the registration deadline, the signatories of the original appeal explained the motives behind their offer to defend Tibetans, and rejected the view that equated their offer of legal services with a proof of support for Tibetan separatism ideas (which constitutes a state security crime under Chinese law).

“To provide legal defense to criminal suspects and defendants is the function of a lawyer. It is an important component of the rule of law, and to defend them is not equivalent to agreeing to their position or actions,” the signatories wrote. “We could not imagine that issuing this appeal would result in such tremendous pressure and impact the yearly renewal of professional licenses.”

The authors also stressed that deeming cases “politically sensitive” and therefore denying due process conflicts with the rule of law: “…progress [towards the rule of law] lies precisely in these so-called politically sensitive cases. The more openly they are handled, the most visible the progress. As the world has its eyes on China, hastily trying defendants without allowing them their choice of counsel will only damage the image of legalism in China,” they wrote.

In late April, under instructions by the party secretary of the Tibetan Autonomous Region to proceed to “quick prosecutions and sentencing,” a court in Lhasa had summarily sentenced the only group of Tibetan defendants known to have been prosecuted so far. The defendants had been tried covertly in the preceding weeks without the benefits of choosing their legal counsel.

In addition, the June 1 revisions of the Law on Lawyers are being gutted before they are promulgated, leaving the legal profession as vulnerable as ever. The revisions, adopted in October 2007, were initially designed to address the problem of widespread difficulties met by lawyers when they try to exercise key procedural rights such as meeting their clients in custody, gaining access to evidence and court documents, or independently collecting material and testimonies for the defense.

But the revisions fall far short of the expectations of the legal profession, and of the minimum standards for justice prescribed under international law, such as the UN’s Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers, which China has endorsed. Bar associations still have virtually no autonomy from the Ministry of Justice. A new clause that lawyers’ court statements not “endanger state security” limits their immunity. And article 306 of the Criminal Law, which is frequently used to prosecute lawyers in sensitive cases for perjury if their clients or witnesses retract or alter statements collected by the police or the prosecution, remains unchanged.

Chinese lawyers are also thwarted by law enforcement and judicial institutions that deny the lawyers’ rights. For example, the right to access clients in detention, which was supposed to have been significantly improved by removing a widely abused clause allowing the police or the prosecution to deny client-attorney meetings “if the case involves state secrets” has been effectively nullified by an announcement by the Supreme People’s Procuratorate (the public prosecutor) that such restrictions will still be imposed, no matter what the revised Law on Lawyers stipulates. On April 30, Zhang Geng, deputy procurator general, told the state-run China Daily, “If the suspect’s request is refused, prosecutors must inform detention centers of the refusal, and the suspect will not be allowed to meet a lawyer.”

Human Rights Watch has extensively documented abuses of lawyers, widespread violations of the right of the defense in legal procedures, and a pattern of interference and political control, especially in cases viewed as politically sensitive by the authorities.

“Chinese lawyers should be able to work without fear of interference or retaliation,” said Richardson. “Until the legal profession is truly independent, legislative fixes will remain mostly cosmetic.”

Human Rights Watch said that no lawyer should be denied renewal of registration on the basis of the cases he has represented or is representing, and called on the Chinese government to use the occasion of the promulgation of the revised Law on Lawyers on June 1 to publicly guarantee that lawyers’ annual registration would not be subjected to political considerations or other arbitrary factors.

“Curbs on lawyers defeat the goal of justice, and only undermine legal reforms,” said Richardson. “This is a high price to pay for short-term political expediency.”

hrw.org

Burma: Stop Forced Evictions

2008-06-25T15:00:00.000-07:00

Much of Devastated Irrawaddy Delta Remains Uninhabitable
– The Burmese government should immediately halt forcibly evicting people displaced by Cyclone Nargis from their temporary shelters, Human Rights Watch said today. The Burmese government should abide by its pledge to the United Nations and allow full humanitarian access to all cyclone victims.

“It’s unconscionable for Burma’s generals to force cyclone victims back to their devastated homes,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Claiming a return to ‘normalcy’ is no basis for returning people to greater misery and possible death.”

Human Rights Watch has received credible reports that Burmese authorities have expelled hundreds, if not thousands, of displaced persons from schools, monasteries, and public buildings, and urged them to return to their destroyed villages in the Irrawaddy Delta. The authorities emptied some public buildings and schools to serve as polling stations for the May 24 referendum on a new constitution, despite pleas from United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to postpone the referendum and focus all resources on humanitarian relief. Since then, the military government has undertaken a large-scale campaign to evict displaced persons from dozens of government-operated tented relief camps in the vicinity of Rangoon, ordering the residents to return to their home areas, regardless of the conditions there.

Many in the camps fled areas that were completely devastated by the cyclone, which in some areas destroyed 95 percent of homes and other structures, according to humanitarian agencies. Many affected regions of the Irrawaddy Delta remain virtually uninhabitable, lacking shelter, clean water and food, posing a serious health hazard. Continuing unnecessary restrictions on humanitarian access have greatly exacerbated the problems.

The forced evictions are part of government efforts to demonstrate that the emergency relief period is over and that the affected population is capable of rebuilding their lives without foreign assistance. A government official at one camp where people had been forced to leave told Reuters, “It is better that they move to their homes where they are more stable … here, they are relying on donations and it is not stable.” An editorial in the Burmese-language Kyemon newpaper said that people in the delta could survive on “fresh vegetables that grow wild in the fields and on protein-rich fish from the river” if they could not get “bars of chocolate donated by the international community.”

“This not a question of choosing ‘wild vegetables’ over chocolate bars – the junta should not be telling victims to forage for food and mocking the efforts of aid agencies when Burma’s displaced people are still in desperate need and at grave risk,” said Adams. “Without shelter, food, and clean water, the government’s suggestion amounts to sending people to their deaths and is courting a greater disaster.”

People forced from their homes by Cyclone Nargis are considered to be internally displaced persons under international law. Under the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, the Burmese government should ensure the right of “internally displaced persons to return voluntarily, in safety and with dignity, to their homes or places of habitual residence, or to resettle voluntarily in another part of the country.”

In conducting voluntary returns, the authorities should make “[s]pecial efforts … to ensure the full participation of internally displaced persons in the planning and management of their return or resettlement and reintegration.” The guiding principles also provide that the Burmese authorities should “grant and facilitate for international humanitarian organizations and other appropriate actors, in the exercise of their respective mandates, rapid and unimpeded access to internally displaced persons to assist in their return or resettlement and reintegration.”

“International law says that disaster victims cannot be forced back to unsafe areas,” said Adams. “International pressure is needed to avoid adding yet another violation to the Burmese government’s long list.”

hrw.org

Cyclone victims decry false promises

2008-06-18T15:38:00.000-07:00

Burma: Free Celebrity Activist Critical of Aid Response

2008-06-18T15:32:00.000-07:00

Concerned Governments Should Press for Zaganars Release

(New York, June 13, 2008) – Burma’s military government should immediately free detained activist Zaganar and permit him to continue distributing aid unhindered to communities affected by Cyclone Nargis, Human Rights Watch said today.

Zaganar, a famous comedian and social activist in Burma, was arrested on June 4 after giving interviews to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and the exile magazine The Irrawaddy about shortcomings in the government’s aid efforts and the slow response by United Nations agencies.

“To arrest one of Burma’s most famous public figures for talking to the media at the time he was distributing aid shows the Burmese government is more concerned with controlling its citizens than assisting them,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Countries genuinely concerned about Burma should be pressing the government for Zaganar’s immediate release.”

During his arrest, officials searched Zaganar’s house, seizing foreign currency and videos of the cyclone and the September 2007 protests in Rangoon. He is reportedly being held and questioned at an interrogation center in downtown Rangoon. Zargana’s network of more than 400 volunteers had reached some villages affected by the cyclone and had been distributing urgently needed food aid.

Zargana, the performing name of Maung Thura, was previously detained for a year following the 1988 pro-democracy demonstrations in Burma. In 1990, the authorities jailed him for four years for making political speeches, and they have routinely harassed him by banning some of his movies and performances. For instance, the health ministry stopped a planned public health benefit involving Zaganar and others on World AIDS Day on December 1, 2006 at a clinic for people living with HIV.

Police arrested Zaganar again in September 2007 for publicly supporting the protests by monks, and detained him for 20 days. During his detention in 2007, Zaganar was initially detained at the City Hall, but authorities subsequently moved him to Thanlyin, the Government Technical Institute, and then Insein Prison. Upon his release, Zaganar told Human Rights Watch about the experience. He believed he was moved frequently to keep him out of contact with other prisoners. In Insein Prison, Zargana was held in solitary confinement in the so-called “War Dog” compound. The compound, which has nine cells, has been used for holding other prominent political prisoners such as activist from the ’88 Generation student movement, Than Tin, and National League for Democracy member, Myint Soe.

Zaganar’s cell in 2007 was cramped (7 feet by 7 feet), poorly ventilated, isolated and guarded by some 30 dogs. Zargana slept on a thin mat on the floor. The iron bar door was covered with a large steel plate with only a small opening at the bottom of the cell. Zaganar could not see or hear anything. A 40-watt light bulb in the room came on infrequently throughout the night, attracting mosquitoes. Burmese authorities held Zaganar there for eight days, and did not permit him to bathe until the fourth day of his detention. There was no toilet or water – Zaganar had to relieve himself on a tray. When it became full, he tried to urinate under the door, but the dogs tried to bite him.

Upon his release, Zaganar spoke with foreign journalists and was subsequently re-detained for several days.

On October 28, 2007, the authorities compelled him to sign a pledge stating he would not talk to the media as a condition of his release. It is widely believed that authorities are holding Zaganar for breaking this pledge in speaking to the BBC. Human Rights Watch expressed concern that Zaganar could be subjected to the same deplorable prison conditions now, and urged governments to press the Burmese authorities to immediately release him. Zaganar’s family has been unable to visit him since his arrest. It is unclear if the authorities have filed any charges against him.

In 1991, Zaganar received the Hellman/Hammett Prize, given by the Fund for Free Expression, a committee organized by Human Rights Watch.

Since the visit of United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the international pledging conference on May 25 in Rangoon, the Burmese government has eased visa restrictions for personnel from UN agencies and international humanitarian agencies to permit them to enter Rangoon. However the government has been inconsistent in its approach to aid, allowing some aid and workers into the Irrawaddy Delta region while blocking others, including some Burmese individuals and groups (http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2008/06/12/burma19124.htm).

“The outrageous arrest of Zaganar, for speaking the truth about government hindrance of aid to cyclone victims, makes a mockery of the claim that handing out of a few visas is a ‘breakthrough,’” said Adams.

Amnesty International says more than 1,000 unaccounted for in Tibet

2008-06-18T15:24:00.000-07:00

By: Meera Selva, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

LONDON - A human rights group says more than 1,000 protesters detained during anti-government riots in Tibet three months ago have not been accounted for.

Amnesty International says a quarter of about 4,000 people detained by police during the riots in Tibet in March are unaccounted for. The others have been either released or placed under formal arrest.

The Olympic torch will pass through the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, on Saturday.

China says it has ruled Tibet for centuries, although many Tibetans say their homeland was essentially independent for much of that time.

Amnesty's Asia-Pacific director, Sam Zarifi, says the event should draw attention to the missing and those in prison.

"There is very little information coming out of Tibet, but the information we have paints a dire picture of arbitrary detentions and abuse of detainees," he said. "With the torch relay about to enter Tibetan areas, this should be an opportunity to shine some light on the situation there."

Buddhist monks in Lhasa held demonstrations against Chinese rule in March. The protests spread across Tibet and turned violent as protesters clashed with police. Chinese authorities responded with a security clampdown and made parts of Tibet off limits to foreign tourists and most of the international media.

Amnesty International said police and security forces have confiscated mobile phones and computers from monasteries, nunneries and private homes in Tibet to stop people communicating with the outside world.

680news.com

Burma's Army Accused of Killing, Torturing Ethnic Karen

2008-06-06T15:27:00.000-07:00

While Burma's ruling military fails its people suffering after a devastating cyclone, it is committing crimes against humanity in a brutal campaign against ethnic Karen civilians, an international human rights group said Wednesday.

The London-based Amnesty International said the Karen in eastern Burma are being killed, tortured and forced to work for the military while their villages are burned and their crops destroyed.

An estimated 147,800 Karen people remain refugees in their own land because the junta forcibly relocated them from their villages to camps, in efforts to stamp out a decades-old rebellion by a segment of the Karen community seeking autonomy from the central government.

"These violations constitute crimes against humanity ... involving a widespread and systematic violation of international human rights and humanitarian law," an Amnesty report said.

The government has repeatedly denied similar allegations in the past, saying it was only engaged in security operations in Karen State aimed at wiping out "terrorists."

Amnesty said the continuing campaign is the fourth turbulent episode in the country's recent history.

The others include a brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protests last September, a recent referendum on a constitution designed to perpetuate military rule and "a humanitarian and human rights disaster in the wake of Cyclone Nargis," it said.

The international community has sharply criticized the junta for barring foreign aid workers from areas worst hit by the cyclone and itself providing little help to survivors.

Amnesty said that unlike in earlier campaigns against the Karen National Union, the key rebel group, the current one that began 2 1/2 years ago has "civilians as the primary targets."

The group said it documented cases of more than 25 Karen civilians killed by the military in Karen State in the two years since July 2005.

One farmer working in his field in a township KNU controlled was beaten and shot by soldiers after he told them the location of a rebel camp. Another farmer told of a civilian detainee being stabbed in the chest and then dropped down a mountain slope "just like an animal."

"If they found us they would kill us, because for the Burmese army the Karen and the Karen National Union are one," a 35-year-old villager in Thandaung township told Amnesty.

Arbitrary arrests, sudden disappearances, forced labor and portering for the military continue to be widespread, Amnesty said. A woman from Tantabin township said she and other porters were forced to act as human minesweepers, and that some stepped on mines.

To purportedly separate civilians from the armed rebels, villagers have been forcibly relocated from their homes into camps where men, women and children are also forced to work for the military. Often the villages they left behind were torched.

irrawaddy.org

Forced labour for 'No' voters; villagers build military outpost

2008-06-06T15:24:00.000-07:00

The Burmese military junta authorities have engaged villagers from remote areas in Chin state, Burma to construct a military outpost. Engaging the villagers as labour is the regime's way of harassing the people who rejected the draft constitution during the referendum held on May 10.

Captain Thang Cing Thang, camp commander of the Light Infantry Battalion (20) stationed in Shinletwa village in Paletwa Township, southern Chin state issued an order directing the villagers to build and fence military camps on the Indo-Burma border, a village headman in Chin state said on condition of anonymity.

On May 23, military authorities paid a surprise visit to Shinletwa village to find out who all rejected the new constitution, a village head said.

During the referendum, Shinletwa and its nearby villages in the Shinletwa military territory were said to have overwhelmingly voted "No" in the referendum, which the regime said had been supported by 92.4 percent of 99.07 percent of voters who turned up.

"The military authorities came to the village and asked villagers who had told them to reject the constitution. They also wanted to know who the leader is," a village headman said.

Those unwilling to participate in the construction of the military outpost must pay Kyat 30,000 the order said.

So far, Ramri, Pari, Sha O, Hamapi, Arakan and Hemar Te villages have paid Kyat 30,000 each to the camp commander of the Shinletwa military camp. There are 15 villages in the camp territory.

At least five villagers from each village along with the village headman from the respective villages are involved in the construction of a new military camp, according to a villager who arrived on the Indo-Burma border.

Nearby villages of Shinletwa – which have been hit by famine caused by bamboo flowering, are also facing shortage of food.

Soldiers arrested four 'vote No' campaigners in Shinletwa ahead of the referendum poll on May 7. – Khonumthung.

Rights group accuses Myanmar junta of commiting rights abuses

2008-06-06T15:23:00.002-07:00

BANGKOK, June 5 (Kyodo) - Rights group Amnesty International accused Myanmar’s military government Thursday of committing human rights abuses in cyclone-hit areas of the country.

The group’s Myanmar specialist Benjamin Zawacki told reporters at a press conference in Bangkok that the main concern a month after Cyclone Nargis hit Myanmar is not only getting humanitarian assistance into the country but also human rights issues.

Zawacki said the group has evidence of more than 30 instances of people being forced to relocate.

“The Myanmar regime is violating the rights of victims,” he said.

The report by the Amnesty team said the Myanmar regime wanted to show the international community that they can handle the situation.

According to the briefing report, Amnesty International also criticized the junta for going ahead with a constitutional referendum soon after the cyclone.

The group urged the junta to provide enough relief to people, open all access for humanitarian workers to help cyclone victims and allow people to return home voluntarily or resettle in other parts of the country.

Cyclone Nargis, which struck the Irrawaddy delta in early May, killed around 78,000 people. Another 56,000 remain missing.

burmadigest

Burma Army cremates Rohingya Muslims

2008-06-06T15:23:00.001-07:00

Maungdaw, Arakan: The Burmese Army based in Bandohla camp, near the Burma-Bangladesh border, near pillar No.50, cremated two Rohingya Muslims on June 1 evening, according to a villager near the camp. The bodies ought to have been buried.
Bandohla camp is a border outpost with the special armed forces located near the Burma-Bangladesh border.

On June 1, a section of army personnel patrolling the area, found two bodies near the camp, between pillars No.54 and 55 and took the bodies to the camp, according to official source.

The troops informed camp authorities that the dead were Muslims, who had gone to cut bamboo inside the government controlled forest and could have been killed by Bangladeshi robbers, the official source more added.

On May 31, in the morning, a group of army went to the forest to check the border and they shot to the bamboo cutters while they were cutting bamboo and cranes from the forest not far from the camp. The patrol group, hearing the voice of the bamboo cutters, the army blindly fired to them and killed two bamboo cutters on the spot, but some others were managed to escape. But, the nearby villagers did not dare to expose the name of the dead bodies, according to the villagers inside Arakan.

Of the two dead one was old and another young. The army was unable to identify them or get their address. The officer-in-charge ordered their cremation.

"Bodies of Muslims are not cremated as per traditional Muslim custom, but the army didn't handover the bodies to the nearest Muslim village and cremated them in keeping with Buddhist customs," said the sources.

kaladanpress.org

Xinhua: Buddhist monks arrested in Tibet

2008-06-06T15:21:00.000-07:00

BEIJING, China (CNN) -- Police in Tibet have arrested 16 Buddhist monks and are seeking three more for their alleged involvement in one bombing and two attempted bombings, authorities in Tibet told state-run media.

All three cases occurred in Tibet's Mangkam county during the first half of April, according to the Tibet Autonomous Regional Department of Public Security.

The suspects confessed, police said, saying they had listened to foreign radio and were following separatist propaganda from the Dalai Lama, China's Xinhua news agency reported.

CNN could not confirm whether the suspects confessed.

The Dalai Lama has said he does not advocate violence or a separate and independent Tibet. He has said he wants a genuine autonomy that preserves the cultural heritage of Tibet.

Beijing blames the Dalai Lama and his followers for violence that erupted March 14 amid anti-Chinese demonstrations in Tibet. Some protesters advocated independence from China while others demonstrated against the growing influence of ethnic Han Chinese in Tibet and other regions of China with ethnic Tibetan populations.

The Chinese authorities cracked down on the protests, which began peacefully on the 49th anniversary of a failed Tibetan uprising.

Widespread violence broke out across China's Tibetan region, especially in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa, following a week of protests by hundreds of Buddhist monks.

"Real Buddhists should learn Buddhist scriptures by heart, love their country and their religion, abide by the law, and bring happiness to people," said Dainzin Chilai, vice-chairman of the China Buddhist Association and vice-chairman of the People's Political Consultative Conference of Tibet Autonomous Region. "They should not involve themselves in cruel killing and sabotage."

Both groups Chilai represents are affiliated with the Chinese government.

The unrest resulted in the deaths of at least 18 civilians and one police officer, according to government figures. It also injured 382 civilians and 241 police officers and led to the looting of businesses and home and the burning of shops and vehicles.

Tibet's self-proclaimed government-in-exile put the death toll from the protests at 140.

At the time of the unrest, roughly 1,000 people hurled rocks and concrete at security forces, demolishing military trucks and pushing back riot police, a witness told CNN, and Tibetans seemed to be targeting shops and vehicles owned by Han Chinese, the predominant ethnic group in China.

Rights Groups Report Post-Cyclone Abuses

2008-06-06T15:20:00.000-07:00

irrawaddy.org

Burmese and international human rights groups have accused Burma’s ruling junta of committing serious rights violations in the wake of Cyclone Nargis, heightening concerns that the regime’s refusal to allow an open and transparent international relief effort is endangering the safety of victims of the deadly storm.

In a statement released on Friday, the Thailand-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners-Burma (AAPP) said that inmates of Rangoon’s Insein Prison were being forced to eat spoiled rice, even after the International Committee of the Red Cross replaced “moldy, foul and inedible rice” damaged by exposure to rain.

AAPP said that a few days after prison authorities received the new rice, they reverted to using rice that had been stored in a warehouse when Cyclone Nargis ripped the roof off the building.

According to the group, the spoiled rice was causing intestinal problems such as diarrhea and dysentery, as well as other symptoms, including vomiting, dizziness, rashes and stomach swelling.

Meanwhile, leading international human rights advocacy group Amnesty International (AI) claimed on Thursday that the Burmese military junta has been misusing international aid and forcing cyclone victims out of emergency shelters.

In a report titled “Myanmar Briefing: Human rights concerns a month after Cyclone Nargis,” AI said that the ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) began evicting homeless cyclone survivors from government and unofficial relief camps after it declared an end to the rescue and relief phase of its disaster response on May 20.

The report also details cases of local officials “obstructing or misusing aid.” Despite statements against such conduct by senior leaders, corruption continues to go unpunished, according to the report.

The group said that it had received over 40 reports or accounts of aid being confiscated by government officials, diverted or withheld instead of being handed to cyclone survivors.

AI’s Burma researcher, Benjamin Zawacki, told The Irrawaddy on Friday that the report aims to alert the donor community of ongoing human right abuses and “ideally, to ensure that they will stop.”

The main human rights concern after the cyclone was displacement in the affected areas, he said.

Zawacki also said that claims by the United Nations that its agencies had provided relief goods to one million survivors needed to be put into context.

“Even if it is correct that one million people have been reached, that simply means that they have received some formal assistance.

“That doesn’t necessarily mean that it has been comprehensive or sufficient. Some formal assistance—that could be a single bottle of water for a single person,” he said.
He also noted that more than 2.4 million were affected by the cyclone.

“So even if the UN’s one million figure is correct, that is still less than half of all the people who need to have assistance,” he said. “That is a really huge concern, as it shows that access to the Irrawady delta is still not what it should be.”

Zawacki described the arrest of Burmese comedian Maung Thura, also known as Zarganar, on Thursday as a “message of intimidation” directed at political activists.

“By detaining him, the SPDC is seeking to send the message that political dissidents and people who are politically active should not be involved,” the AI researcher said.

He added that by arresting Zarganar, the junta was contradicting an announcement it made on May 27, when it declared that individual donor were free to carry out relief work.

AI also published another Burma-related report on Thursday.

“Crimes against humanity in eastern Burma” deals with the Burmese army’s ongoing military offensive against ethnic Karen civilians.

The offensive, which began two years ago, has involved widespread and systematic violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, according to the report.

Cyclone refugees threatened with relocation

2008-06-06T15:19:00.000-07:00

Jun 6, 2008 (DVB)–Local authorities in Rangoon division's Shwe Paukkan township are forcing cyclone victims out of makeshift refugee camps in town and threatening them with relocation to Arakan state if they refuse to leave.

A refugee living in one of the camps in the township said they had been told they would be sent to Butheetaung-Maung Taw township if they did not return to their villages.

"We’ve been at this camp since the day after the cyclone hit our homes. So far we have received no assistance from the government and now the local authorities are forcing us to go back to our homes," the refugee said.

"They said those who refused to leave the camp would be relocated to Butheetaung-Maung Taw township in Arakan state with an allowance of 100,000 kyat," he said.

"We don't want to go and live there but we have no homes left to go to."

An aid volunteer who has been working in Shwe Paukkan said it would be impossible for the cyclone victims to return to their homes.

"These refugees have no money to rebuild their homes and the places where their houses used to be are now surrounded by water,” the aid worker said.

“Now they are getting kicked out of the refugee camps, but they have nowhere to go,” he said.

“The government has provided no assistance for them – they have had to rely on aid from private donors."

The United Nations has said that forced returns of cyclone refugees are unacceptable, but authorities are continuing to send victims back to their villages.

Reporting by Htet Yazar

US says disaster officials waiting still to help victims of cyclone

2008-06-06T15:17:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON (AP) - The United States said Thursday that U.S. disaster specialists are still waiting in Thailand for permission to enter neighboring Myanmar more than a month after a devastating cyclone struck.

Director of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance Ky Luu told reporters that there are still far too many people in need and urged the military-led government of Myanmar to allow in experienced aid workers.

Luu estimated that about a million people have not gotten adequate assistance. He said access is so bad that officials do not know what condition many victims are in.

Rights groups said many people in stricken areas still have not received any aid and the military leaders continue to impose constraints on international rescue efforts.

Also Thursday, the U.S. condemned Myanmar’s detention of a popular comedian known both for his barbs against the government and his work to assist the country’s cyclone victims.

The family of Maung Thura - better known by his stState age name, Zarganar - said he had been taken into custody by police. He had just returned from the cyclone-shattered Irrawaddy delta where he had been donating relief items to survivors.

Department spokesman Kurtis Cooper said the detention shows Myanmar is “more concerned with silencing critics than with meeting the critical needs of” Myanmar’s people.

UN Envoy Urges Burma to Explain Cyclone 'Prison Killings'

2008-06-06T15:15:00.000-07:00

By VOA News
06 June 2008

A United Nations human rights envoy is urging Burma to investigate reports that soldiers killed a number of prison inmates during the cyclone that devastated much of the country last month.

Tomas Ojea Quintana, the U.N. Human Rights Council's new investigator for Burma, is calling on the military government Friday to respond to allegations that security troops shot and killed prisoners during the cyclone. He says Burmese authorities should conduct an open investigation to clarify the facts about the so-called "arbitrary killings."

A Thailand-based rights group says Burmese troops killed 36 prisoners and wounded many others last month in the town of Insein. The rights group says the soldiers opened fire after cyclone winds tore the roof off the prison and panicked the inmates.

Burmese officials deny there was any case where troops or security guards turned their weapons on prisoners.

INDIAN POLICE ARREST 265 TIBETANS MARCHING TO TIBET

2008-06-04T15:15:00.001-07:00

March had just resumed after 13-day standoff as China prepares to take Olympic torch to Tibet

Nainital - 259 Tibetan marchers and six members of the organizing committee were arrested by police after resuming the March to Tibet following a 13 day stand-off with police. They had covered 16 kilometers when they were arrested at Berinag, approximately 180 kilometers from the Indo-Tibetan border area. Fifty marchers, including leading Tibetan activist Tenzin Tsundue and Shingza Rinpoche of Sera Monastery, stayed behind at the the campsite at Banspatan in Uttarakhand State, determined to continue to Tibet in the event that their fellow marchers were stopped. The five presidents of the NGOs organizing the March and one coordinator are still being held in Roshanabad Jail near Hardwar.

“As China prepares to parade its Olympic torch through Tibet next week in a blatant attempt to legitimize its rule in Tibet, the increasing repression is compounding the Tibetan people’s suffering under China’s illegal occupation,” said Lhakpa Tsering, a marcher as well as an executive member of the Tibetan Youth Congress. “My only wish is to reach Tibet and join my brothers and sisters. Even if I can’t lessen their suffering, I can at least make sure the world knows about their suffering.”

The nonviolent marchers were arrested this afternoon just after entering Berinag, where a heavy deployment of police barred them from proceeding. The marchers immediately locked arms and sat down to form a solid human chain. They chanted slogans demanding China quit Tibet as they were arrested by the police and loaded onto seven buses and three jeeps. The arrests started at 3:30 PM and lasted for an hour and a half. It is not clear where the marchers have been taken.

For the last 13 days, the police have obstructed food rations and imposed tight travel restrictions on Tibetans in the area in order to isolate the marchers. Yesterday, police at Ganai Gangoli checkpoint blocked a truck carrying food to the marchers.

“As Tibetan refugees in India, we have the right to return to our homeland,” said Tenzin Palkyi, a member of the organizing committee. “In 1959, Tibetans came down this road to escape Chinese persecution. Now again, we are walking on the same road but in the opposite direction to join our brethren who are rising up across Tibet to protest China’s occupation.”

The March to Tibet started on March 10th from Dharamshala, Himachal Pradesh, and reached Banspatan after traversing through many states. On the fourth day of the March, the first group of 100 marchers were arrested and put under judicial custody for 14 days. However, a second group of 48 Tibetan exiles resumed the March two days after the arrest and were joined by the first group soon after their release. Since then the march has grown in size, with as many as 300 marchers.

Tibetans living in exile in India launched the March to Tibet as part of the Tibetan People’s Uprising Movement. On the same day that the march was launched, monks from monasteries in Lhasa, as well as in eastern Tibet, led nonviolent demonstrations, shouting slogans supporting the Dalai Lama and independence for Tibet. Chinese authorities brutally suppressed peaceful protests that continued for days, leading to rioting in the capital and a wave of large public demonstrations that have rippled across the country.

The March to Tibet and the Tibetan People’s Uprising Movement aim to revive the spirit of the Tibetan National Uprising of 1959, and engage in nonviolent direct action to bring about an end to China’s illegal occupation of Tibet.

Burma: Stop Forced Evictions

2008-05-31T13:24:00.000-07:00

Much of Devastated Irrawaddy Delta Remains Uninhabitable

(New York,) – The Burmese government should immediately halt forcibly evicting people displaced by Cyclone Nargis from their temporary shelters, Human Rights Watch said today. The Burmese government should abide by its pledge to the United Nations and allow full humanitarian access to all cyclone victims.

“It’s unconscionable for Burma’s generals to force cyclone victims back to their devastated homes,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Claiming a return to ‘normalcy’ is no basis for returning people to greater misery and possible death.”

Human Rights Watch has received credible reports that Burmese authorities have expelled hundreds, if not thousands, of displaced persons from schools, monasteries, and public buildings, and urged them to return to their destroyed villages in the Irrawaddy Delta. The authorities emptied some public buildings and schools to serve as polling stations for the May 24 referendum on a new constitution, despite pleas from United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to postpone the referendum and focus all resources on humanitarian relief. Since then, the military government has undertaken a large-scale campaign to evict displaced persons from dozens of government-operated tented relief camps in the vicinity of Rangoon, ordering the residents to return to their home areas, regardless of the conditions there.

Many in the camps fled areas that were completely devastated by the cyclone, which in some areas destroyed 95 percent of homes and other structures, according to humanitarian agencies. Many affected regions of the Irrawaddy Delta remain virtually uninhabitable, lacking shelter, clean water and food, posing a serious health hazard. Continuing unnecessary restrictions on humanitarian access have greatly exacerbated the problems.

The forced evictions are part of government efforts to demonstrate that the emergency relief period is over and that the affected population is capable of rebuilding their lives without foreign assistance. A government official at one camp where people had been forced to leave told Reuters, “It is better that they move to their homes where they are more stable … here, they are relying on donations and it is not stable.” An editorial in the Burmese-language Kyemon newpaper said that people in the delta could survive on “fresh vegetables that grow wild in the fields and on protein-rich fish from the river” if they could not get “bars of chocolate donated by the international community.”

“This not a question of choosing ‘wild vegetables’ over chocolate bars – the junta should not be telling victims to forage for food and mocking the efforts of aid agencies when Burma’s displaced people are still in desperate need and at grave risk,” said Adams. “Without shelter, food, and clean water, the government’s suggestion amounts to sending people to their deaths and is courting a greater disaster.”

People forced from their homes by Cyclone Nargis are considered to be internally displaced persons under international law. Under the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, the Burmese government should ensure the right of “internally displaced persons to return voluntarily, in safety and with dignity, to their homes or places of habitual residence, or to resettle voluntarily in another part of the country.”

In conducting voluntary returns, the authorities should make “[s]pecial efforts … to ensure the full participation of internally displaced persons in the planning and management of their return or resettlement and reintegration.” The guiding principles also provide that the Burmese authorities should “grant and facilitate for international humanitarian organizations and other appropriate actors, in the exercise of their respective mandates, rapid and unimpeded access to internally displaced persons to assist in their return or resettlement and reintegration.”

“International law says that disaster victims cannot be forced back to unsafe areas,” said Adams. “International pressure is needed to avoid adding yet another violation to the Burmese government’s long list.”

hrw.org

"Unimaginable torture inflicted by the Chinese authority"

2008-05-28T15:43:00.001-07:00

Dharamshala: (wwww.stoptibetcrisis.net)-On May 24 2008, as a result of unimaginable torture inflicted by the Chinese authority, Paltsel Kyab, 58 years old Tibetan from Ngaba County, Amdo province, died in the Chinese custody.
He was formerly arrested in the end of April after protesting against Chinese government. Similarly, in another case, a Tibetan named Takho sustained severe physical injury and consequently hospitalized after both of his legs were broken by Chinese police. And his brother Choepe's whereabouts remained unknown. They both were surviving sons of a Tibetan lady, Nechung from Charupa Village in Ngaba District, who died following her immediate release by Chinese police.

On May 23 2008, two nuns namely Jampa Lhamo and Rigzin Wangdon, from Dhargey Hardu Nunnery in Kham Kardze Province, were physically tortured severely and arrested after they protested against Chinese government for long live His Holiness the Dalai Lama, for his immediate return and for the immediate release of all the recent political prisoners. In another case, in the evening May 22, 2008, fours nuns from Gesey Nunnery School in Kardze District, viz. Tenga, Rinchen, Jamga Dolma and Pema were arrested after they protested against Chinese Government while distributing documents.

On May 23, 2008, two monks namely Lobsang Dorjee and Kunga from Ngaba monastery in Amdo province were arrested after they were accused by Chinese Authority of not complying with the so-called patriotic education. In Taktsang Lhamo Kirti monastery, ever since Chinese authorities imposed patriotic education for two months, the daily spiritual activities in the monastery has been disrupted and came to a standstill. Though the Chinese authority has gave consent to observe prayer congregation in the monastery except 190 monks who were involved in the peaceful demonstration, however, the rest of the monks declined to comply saying they can't do so without the presence of those 190 monks. Similarly, in Se Monastery in Ngaba Area, Amdo Province, since the Chinese authority imposed heavy restrictions thereby not allowing the monks to observe spiritual practices and movements, the said monastery has turned vacant.

Jamyang Choepel, a monk from Yulkyong Monastery and an enrolling student in Kirti Monastery in Rebkong in Amdo province was arrested in March 2008 and was sentenced to put under custodial interrogation for fifteen months, however, they allegation (on what ground they were arrested) have been unknown. In another case, a monk called Ludrup from Kirti Monastery in Ngaba Area was arrested in March 2008 and his whereabouts remains unknown.

In another incident, the Chinese authority has announced to pay a reward of one lakh Chinese yuan per person whoever informed them the whereabouts of three Tibetans namely Rigdak, Menkyab and Goeso. The above three Tibetans have escaped from being arrested by the Chinese authority in the peaceful demonstration in March 2008, at Phughu Shang in Sertha County of Kardze in Tibet Autonomous Region. Moreover the Chinese authority has announced to give death sentence if they failed to surrender. However, on May 16, 2008, one of them, after being surrendered to the Chinese authority was taken away that his whereabouts remains unknown. Those three Tibetans were local businessmen who were so helpful to local Tibetans. Similarly, two other Tibetans namely Sungkyab and Drukpo (whose wife is said to be 30 years old) were arrested after they were found participated in the recent peaceful demonstration in Sertha County.

thetibetpost

Kaw Hmoo cyclone victims forced out of camps

2008-05-22T08:43:00.000-07:00

May 21, 2008 (DVB)–Authorities in Kaw Hmoo township of Rangoon Division have been pressuring around 1000 cyclone victims currently sheltering in monasteries and churches to go back to their homes.

A private donor who recently visited to give rice to the refugees told DVB the camps were being dismantled.

“When I was there yesterday, I was told that local police had people in the refugee camps to remove the camp signposts and Red Cross flag poles, and told the refugees to go home,” the donor said.

“I found out that the same thing happened in four places, including the camp inside Yadanarmundaing monastery in Ahpyauk village, which has more than 400 people, the camp at church in Magyikan village and the camp inside Phayarkone monestary in Ahpyauk village, where there are over 300 people.”

The donor said the refugees were reliant on private contributions of food.

“Private donors go there almost every day to distribute food among refugees,” the donor said.

“They don’t have anything to cook for themselves so they just have to wait for the food to come,” he continued.

“Monks at monasteries are trying their best to feed people, rice and bean soup, twice a day.”

Although people are being forced out of the current refugee camps, they don’t have anywhere to live and can’t move on with their lives, the donor said.

“The houses and shacks on their farms were destroyed by the storm and their buffalo and cows were killed,” he said.

Reporting by Nay Say Phaw

Cyclone Nargis survivors ousted from shelters in Myanmar

2008-05-22T08:41:00.002-07:00

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) -- With few places to seek refuge, the wooden schoolhouse seemed as good as anywhere.

Though its roof was partially blown off by Cyclone Nargis, and panels were ripped from its walls, hundreds of people swarmed here after the storm.

Now the government has forced them out to make space for a weekend vote on a new pro-military constitution - a referendum delayed in parts of Myanmar because of the deadly cyclone.

"The school will be used as a polling station," said Sandar, a teacher who refused to give her last name. "We needed people to leave."

"Most of them set up temporary bamboo huts," Sandar said Wednesday. Like most people in Myanmar, she did not want to be fully identified because the government dislikes people talking to the press.

As many as 2 million people are struggling to find the basic necessities of life following the May 2-3 storm, sleeping in tents near their shattered homes or crowding into monasteries, schools and other de facto relief shelters.

But now many are being displaced again to make way for polling stations needed to hold a referendum that is - by official reckoning - already a done deal.

The government will open polls in the hardest-hit Irrawaddy delta and Yangon areas on Saturday. The rest of the country voted May 10; state radio said the late balloting could not reverse the constitution's approval by 92.4 percent of the 22 million eligible voters.

In a big pavilion - a flat expanse of concrete under a green sheet roof - also on the outskirts of Yangon, dozens of homeless were packing up.

About 100 old people and children put their stuffed canvas sacks and bags on the benches in the middle of the hall. Some people sat on the floor. Others were out on the road, waiting.

A half hour later, they were gone.

A green banner was being put up in front by men, apparently security personnel in plainclothes, along with polling tables inside.

Junta arrests 13 opposition youth

2008-05-22T08:41:00.001-07:00

Mizzima News
Thursday, 22 May 2008 14:05

New Delhi – The Burmese military junta in a bid to keep the opposition in disarray on Thursday arrested 13 prominent youth leaders of the country's main opposition political party – the National League for Democracy - a senior party member said.

Thirteen important leaders of the NLD were rounded up by Rangoon's police of the Special Branch and officials from the Ministry of Home Affairs early on Thursday from their homes, a NLD senior member Aung Thein told Mizzima.

A relative of Ohn Mar, one of the arrested youth leader's said, a group of officials including the police from the Ministry of Home Affairs and the SB came to their house at about 3:15 a.m. and took her away.

"They said they wanted to talk to her and took her away. They clarified that they were not arresting her but she has not returned till now," a family member of Ohn Mar told Mizzima over telephone.

The family member, who declined to be named, said she saw several other NLD youth members including Ma Pah Pah, Ma Cho, and Ko Lay Lwin on a Hylux light-truck that the officials came in.
The NLD youth leaders including Tun Zaw Zaw, Khin Tun, Ohn Mar, Ma Pah Pah, Ma Cho, and Ko Pauk have been playing a pro-active role in trying to help cyclone victims in Rangoon and Irrawaddy division and were planning to leave for Dae Da Ye town for relief work, the family member said.

"We are terribly worried and her mother could not even eat," the family member said.

The NLD youth leaders including Tun Zaw Zaw, Khin Tun, Ohn Mar, Ma Pah Pah, Ma Cho, and Ko Pauk were also playing a pro-active role in trying to expose the regime's unfair practices in the May 10, referendum.

While the reason for the arrest of the NLD youth leaders is still not clear, Aung Thein said it may be connected to the visit of the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to the country today.

The world body chief on Thursday arrived in Rangoon on a mission to persuade the ruling junta to allow relief supplies and aid workers access to the cyclone affected regions of Irrawaddy delta and Rangoon division.

A young NLD party member in Rangoon, speaking to Mizzima on condition of anonymity said the arrested youth leaders have been secretly working to expose the junta's unfair practices in the referendum.

"These people are key members of the NLD youth and they have been also working undercover to expose the junta's unfair means to win supporting votes in the constitutional referendum," the NLD youth said.

The junta on May 15, five days after the nation-wide referendum, declared that the constitution had been supported by 92.4 percent of voters. However, due to the killer Cyclone Nargis' lashing the country on May 2 and 3, the junta postponed the referendum date in 47 townships in the affected areas to May 24.