Ten Thousand Things

"Ten Thousand Things" is a Buddhist expression representing the dynamic interconnection and simultaneous unity and diversity of everything in the universe.

At the Centenary of the SATYAGRAHA movement – Dalai Lama: Chinese High-Speed Railway Has Worsened Repression in Tibet

At the centenary of Mohandas Gandhi's Satyagraha Nonviolent Movement, the Dalai Lama and other experts continue their decades-old testimony against ongoing injustice and violence towards Tibetan people, Tibetan culture, and the Tibetan environment...

Jan 31, 2007: China rail link destroying Tibet: Dalai Lama
By Krittivas Mukherjee, Reuters

The Dalai Lama accused Beijing on Wednesday of using a new railway link to flood Tibet with beggars, prostitutes and the unemployed, destroying its culture and traditions.

"The railway link is a real danger," said the spiritual leader, who fled to India from Tibet after a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959.

"Beggars, handicapped people are coming. Their number is huge. Also jobless people facing difficulty in Chinese mainland are coming to Lhasa," he told a religious gathering in the Indian city of Mumbai.

The 1,142-km (710-mile) rail link opened last July. The world's highest, it passes through spectacular icy peaks on the Tibetan highlands, touching altitudes of 5,000 metres (16,400 feet)...

Tibetan exiles -- about 80,000 of them live in India – have dubbed the rail link to the "second invasion of Tibet". They say it will only increase Chinese migration, dilute Tibetan culture and militarise the region.

The Dalai Lama said Beijing was forcing poor villagers to relocate to Tibet and was also sending uneducated young girls from the countryside to be "inducted as prostitutes" in Lhasa...

Jan. 31, 2007: Chinese guards tortured captured Tibetans, says teenage survivor
By: Randeep Ramesh, Guardian Unlimited

More than 30 Tibetans were tortured and incarcerated in a labour camp after their bid to escape across the Himalayas from their homeland failed when Chinese border guards fired on the unarmed group, according to a survivor.

In the first reported account of what happened to those taken from the Himalayas, 15-year-old Jamyang Samten said that he was one of a number of Tibetans who ended up being electrocuted and forced to dig ditches "as a warning" to others...

Samten was part of a group of 75 people who were making their way over the 5,800-metre high Nangpa La Pass last September when Chinese guards opened fire. At least two people - including a Buddhist nun - were killed...

Forty-one of the refugees managed to reach India after the shooting, but 32 others were caught and detained. The teenager said he was captured and interrogated over a three-day period during which he was repeatedly hit with an electric cattle prod.

Although the teenager's account is impossible to verify, it echoes the stories of Tibetans who have made the arduous trek through the snows...

More than 4,000 Tibetans flee across the border into Nepal every year, undaunted by the fact it runs through several of the highest mountains on earth, including Mount Everest.

Supporters of the Dalai Lama say that China runs a repressive police state in Tibet, ruthlessly crushing dissent. Beijing regards Buddhism's most senior religious figure as a leading a separatist movement in exile.

With a new railway linking mainland China to Lhasa, Tibet's capital, Beijing has tightened its grip on the province. "China has become emboldened over Tibet. They have a 'strike hard' policy because nobody dares to raise the issue of with them. Of course that won't stop Tibetans leaving," said Phunchok Stobdan, an expert in Indo-Tibetan affairs.

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