Tibet

Albert Owen Excerpts

Wednesday 10th December 2014 Westminster Hall

[Fabian Hamilton]

I thank the hon. Lady for that question, which is very pertinent. I have deliberately avoided mentioning Hong Kong, but she makes an important point. My impression, having studied Tibet and Chinese relations with Tibet for the last eight years, is that China is tightening its grip. There is further oppression of the Tibetan people and China is clamping down; there is no doubt about that.

In the eight and a half years since I was in Lhasa, Tibet and its people have come to mean a great deal to me, as they do to so many supporters of a free Tibet, both in this country and throughout the world. In a materialistic consumer society, the teachings of the Dalai Lama and the ideals of Tibetans living in exile provide us with an alternative to the lives we live today. It is not that I have become a kind of Jewish Buddhist—[Interruption.] Well, there might be such a thing. It is not that we should all convert and that the world would then be a better place, but this is an ancient culture with warmth, wisdom and a message of peace and love for all humanity—I do not mean Judaism—and that is a message that we rarely hear in the world today. The 14th Dalai Lama never stops telling anyone who will listen—many millions do listen to him—that we can live in peace and harmony together, without war or conflict. I can never understand why the Chinese Government believe he is such a threat to them, and even call him a terrorist.

Today is not only international human rights day but the 25th anniversary of the awarding of the Nobel peace prize to His Holiness. To quote from the announcement of the Nobel peace prize for 1989, which was made in Oslo on 5 October that year,

“The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize to the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, the religious and political leader of the Tibetan people. The Committee wants to emphasize the fact that the Dalai Lama in his struggle for the liberation of Tibet consistently has opposed the use of violence. He has instead advocated peaceful solutions based upon tolerance and mutual respect in order to preserve the historical and cultural heritage of his people. The Dalai Lama has developed his philosophy of peace from a great reverence for all things living and upon the concept of universal responsibility embracing all mankind as well as nature. In the opinion of the Committee, the Dalai Lama has come forward with constructive and forward-looking proposals for the solution of international conflicts, human rights issues and global environmental problems.”

Later today, I will attend a ceremony in London to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the awarding of the Nobel peace prize to the Dalai Lama. It is important that we never forget the contribution that he has made to global peace and understanding. Despite their best efforts, the Chinese Government can never remove the love and respect that the Tibetan people have for him. His message continues to be highly relevant in the modern world.

The cause of Tibet and freedom of expression is important, and not just to Tibetans. Let me outline some of the cases that have been drawn to my attention. One of the earliest cases I became involved in was that of Dhondup Wangchen, the Tibetan film-maker who produced a documentary that was critical of the Chinese Government in the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. For his crime of making a film called “Leaving Fear Behind”, Dhondup was given a six-year prison sentence, and he was only released on 5 June this year. When he was imprisoned, I raised his case in the House with the then Foreign Secretary, and subsequently wrote to the Chinese ambassador and the authorities at the prison where he was incarcerated.

Dhondup’s wife, Lhamo Tso, came to stay with my wife and me in Leeds three years ago while she was on a tour of the UK to raise awareness of her husband’s plight, which had left her and their four children living in extreme poverty in Dharamsala. This family’s story was typical of stories of the families of any Tibetan who dared to speak out against the Chinese Government and the way that Tibetans are routinely treated in their own land. “Leaving Fear Behind” is critical of the Chinese Government and records the feelings and thoughts of ordinary Tibetans about the Olympic games. It does not advocate violence or the overthrow of the state; it is not subversive in any way; and it would be considered quite mild if it had been a documentary about this country’s attitude to what the Chinese Government label an ethnic minority. However, such freedom of expression is forbidden in Tibet, so Dhondup had committed a criminal offence.

The outrageous and severe punishment he received almost took his life, because he contracted hepatitis B while he was in jail. Born in Amdo, Dhondup is now 40. He is free again and will soon be reunited with his wife and children, who are now in the United States. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Students for a Free Tibet took up his case and organised a worldwide protest, but it made no difference to the severity of his sentence; he was not released early.

Let me leave Dhondup’s case by quoting him on why he made the film:

“At a time of great difficulty and a feeling of helplessness”,

the idea of his film was to

“get some meaningful response and results. It is very difficult”—

that is, difficult for Tibetans—

“to go to Beijing and speak out there. So that is why we decided to show the real feelings of Tibetans inside Tibet through this film. Nowadays, China is declaring that they are preserving and improving Tibetan culture and language. That’s what they’re telling the world. Many organisations and offices have been set up for these things. What they say and what they do are totally different, opposites. If they really want to preserve and improve Tibetan culture and language in Tibet then they should withdraw Chinese people living in Tibetan areas. Tibetan culture and language has to be practised in all Tibetan areas. If it’s not practised, how can it be preserved?”

Throughout the ages, music has often been used as a way of expressing protest. A number of Tibetan musicians have written and performed songs and made CDs, for which they have been arrested and severely punished. Lolo, a 30-year-old male Tibetan singer, was first detained on 19 April 2012, shortly after releasing an album with political lyrics. After a brief period of detention he was released but was later re-arrested. In February 2013, Lolo was sentenced to six years in prison by a court in Xining, Qinghai province, on charges of “seditiously splitting the state”, a catch-all offence that allows the Chinese authorities to punish ethnic minorities defending their rights. Lolo’s album, “Raise the Tibetan Flag, Children of the Snowland”, contained 14 songs that called for Tibet’s independence, the unity of the Tibetan people and the return of the Dalai Lama. The title track is a direct challenge to China’s rule.

Other musicians convicted for publishing controversial Tibetan songs include Kalsang Yarphel, who on 27 November, just two weeks ago, was sentenced to four years in prison by a Chinese court in Chengdu, Sichuan province. Pema Rigzin, 44, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison and a severe fine of 50,000 yuan for composing, releasing, and distributing music with alleged political overtones. Among the songs he produced were “In Memory of Tibet” and “Tears”, which have since been banned. Rigzin was detained on 7 May 2013 in Chengdu city, and held incommunicado until the trial. Rigzin’s family were barred from hiring the lawyer of their choice.

Kelsang Yarphel, who is 39, and a popular Tibetan folk singer and composer, was sentenced to four years in prison and given an immense 200,000 yuan fine. He was detained by the authorities in Lhasa on 14 July 2013 on charges that he performed a song with alleged political overtones in a concert. Though some of Yarphel’s music encouraged Tibetan unity, none has been known to express overtly political ideology. Song titles included “We Should Learn Tibetan” and “We Should Unite”. At the Lhasa concert he performed a song called “Fellow Tibetans”, which calls on Tibetans to learn and speak Tibetan and to “build courage” to think about Tibet’s “future path”.

Finally, I draw to the attention of hon. Members and the Minister the case of Tenzin Delek Rinpoche, a senior monk sentenced to life imprisonment on false charges. He is not a musician. He was arrested on 3 April 2002 following a bomb blast in Chengdu, along with his student Lobsang Dhondup. In November 2002, both were sentenced to death. At the trial, the main evidence presented against Tenzin Delek was a confession from Lobsang Dhondup, which Lobsang later retracted, claiming that he had been tortured. However, the appeal hearing in January 2003 upheld Lobsang Dhondup’s death sentence and he was executed on the same day. Tenzin Delek Rinpoche’s death sentence was suspended for two years, and then commuted to life imprisonment in 2005.

Tenzin Delek Rinpoche has consistently maintained his innocence. He is now suffering from severe ill health and there are serious concerns for his well-being, so much so that family members and others are calling for the international community to help press the Chinese authorities to grant him medical parole. Tenzin Delek is a highly revered Tibetan Buddhist lama and a community leader from Litang in Sichuan province. He has worked on numerous social, medical and educational projects and campaigned for the protection of Tibet’s fragile environment, working to stop indiscriminate logging and mining activities. I hope that the Minister adds his voice to the international calls for Tenzin Delek’s early release.

There is no doubt that the Chinese Government use a mix of systematic oppressive measures, propaganda and disinformation to stifle free expression and to present a positive image of their actions in Tibet to the outside world. Since peaceful demonstrations spread across Tibet in 2008, the Chinese authorities have adopted a harsher approach to suppressing dissent. In its current approach, which can be more accurately characterised as totalitarian, the state recognises no limits to its authority, imposes a climate of fear, and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life to crush all forms of dissent against Communist party rule. There has been a dramatic expansion of the powers of China’s policing and military apparatus in Tibet. This has created a climate of fear and lack of trust, even among families and close friends. Many Tibetans in exile report that they cannot talk to their families in Tibet on the phone, because of the danger to their families of their having contact with them as exiles.

The Chinese Government have stepped up Communist party presence in Tibet, sending thousands of Chinese officials to carry out surveillance and so-called “political education”, and to disseminate propaganda. The Chinese state media call it a “war against secessionist sabotage”, in which the Chinese Government seek to replace loyalty to the Dalai Lama in Tibetan hearts and minds with allegiance to the Chinese party-state and, in doing so, to obliterate memory and undermine Tibetan national identity at its roots.

Just nine days ago, on 1 December, the Chinese Government announced a programme of sending artists, film-makers and TV personnel to ethnic minority and border areas to help local artists

“form a correct view of art”.

Announcing the programme, the state-run news agency, Xinhua, commented:

“Art and culture cannot develop without political guidance”.

It also congratulated Chinese President Xi Jinping for

“emphasising the integration of ideology and artistic values”.

Since last May, following the killings in Xinjiang, an expansive counter-terrorism drive has been launched by the Chinese Government and has expanded across China, including Tibet. In Tibet, the Chinese authorities have organised large-scale military drills and intensified border security, and are holding training exercises for troops on responding to self-immolation and on dealing with problems in monasteries, in spite of the absence of any violent insurgency in Tibet. Armed responses to protests, including killing with impunity and the torture and imprisonment of individuals, have become the cause of instability and are therefore deeply counter-productive.

In conclusion, I have a number of requests for the Government to consider, which I believe will help the cause of Tibet and allow Tibetans the right to free expression that we in Europe and the west take so much for granted. I hope that the Minister will discuss these points with the Foreign Secretary, and that on this international human rights day of 10 December, the British Government will continue to be proactive in supporting the human rights of Tibetans in Tibet.

My requests are these. First, as a matter of urgency, I urge the British Government to call on China to engage in a broader and more substantive dialogue with Tibetan representatives, and to involve the Dalai Lama in discussions on Tibet’s future. There needs to be a more robust approach, given that the current approach is clearly not achieving anything.

Secondly, I urge the Government to strengthen policies towards China and Tibet, and to be more robust, with a clear stance and directive regarding human rights, civil society and democratic rights. The Government should adhere to their stance that human rights are integral to the United Kingdom’s foreign policy. Thirdly, I want the Government to challenge China’s policies in Tibet, in particular where the Chinese Government are flouting international standards on human rights and civil liberties. Fourthly, the Government should take the lead in the European Union in explicitly calling on the Chinese Government to address the policies in Tibet that threaten Tibetan culture, religion and identity and are the root cause of the crisis. These are the key grievances of the Tibetan people.

Fifthly, I urge the Government to prevail on the Chinese leadership to end the military build-up and to limit the dominance of the security apparatus in Tibet. Sixthly, I want the Government to initiate a scholarship scheme in the UK for Tibetans inside Tibet, as well as for Tibetan refugees. Seventhly, the Government should explore the possibility of cultural exchanges with Tibetans inside Tibet or, if that is not possible, with Tibetan refugee communities in India and Nepal, to help promote and preserve Tibetan culture. Eighthly, I want the Government to provide funding for a BBC Tibetan service. Ninthly, I urge the Government to call for medical parole for Tenzin Delek Rinpoche, who is serving a life sentence and is seriously ill.

Over the past seven years, I have been privileged to meet His Holiness the Dalai Lama no fewer than eight times: twice in India, five times in London, including when he was awarded the Templeton prize at St Paul’s cathedral in May 2012, and once when he came to my home city of Leeds. I am grateful to both the office of the Dalai Lama in London and to the Tibet Society for their help in organising the visits of His Holiness to the UK, and to Mr Speaker for hosting the Dalai Lama in Parliament in 2012, against the advice given to him from certain quarters that such a meeting could damage relations with the People’s Republic of China. The Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister also deserve praise for agreeing to meet the Dalai Lama in 2012 at St Paul’s cathedral, an event that had repercussions for UK-China relations for many months afterwards.

I thank Philippa Carrick and Paul Golding from the Tibet Society and Chonpel Tsering from the office of the Dalai Lama for all their help in preparing my speech today. Finally, I strongly believe that Tibet and the Tibetan people should be free, and I will never give up my support for their struggle. I give everyone today the traditional Tibetan greeting: tashi delek, or blessings and good luck.

[Albert Owen (in the Chair)]

Before I call Mr Loughton, I remind the Chamber that I will call the shadow Minister at 10.40 am. We have 40 minutes and four speakers have indicated that they wish to speak.

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[Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), as I am also a member of the all-party parliamentary group for Tibet. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton) on getting this timely debate. I will not go into the individual cases that he carefully and properly raised. An important aspect of today’s debate is that we get the names of those brave Tibetans who are being held in custody or have been imprisoned for long sentences out to the rest of the world, and that has been done well this morning.

Looking through Tibet Watch’s excellent booklet, “Broken promises”, I was reminded of how we were all were duped—or how many people were; I feel personally that I was not—into feeling that if China got the Olympics, it would make such a difference and China would do all these wonderful things, changing its whole attitude to human rights. We went along with that, but what has happened? Not a single thing has changed in relation to Tibet. Indeed, as has been mentioned, things are getting worse by the day.

I, too, had the privilege of hearing from the gentleman at yesterday’s meeting who had recently been to Tibet. It is clear that the Chinese Government are making a huge attempt to rapidly change the face of Tibet—not just to change civil liberties and human rights, but to change the physical structure of Tibet. Some 13 million Chinese tourists visited Tibet last year, and we are seeing a concentration of Chinese people who are given money to go and settle in Tibet. The Chinese Government want to eliminate every last sign or vestige of Tibetan culture and the history of that wonderful country. We must be clear that none of our warm words about working closely with China seems to be having any effect whatever. I will be interested to hear what the Minister says about that.

I want to go into a little more detail about something that the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham mentioned. I am also concerned about the Confucius institutes, of which I think there are now 24 in the United Kingdom. These are Chinese Government-funded cultural centres that are set up at universities all over the world, although the UK has the second highest number after the United States. Several universities in the United States and Canada—including the university of Chicago, Pennsylvania State university and the Toronto district school board—recently pulled out of relationships with Confucius institutes because of accusations and proof of discriminatory hiring practices and censorship of certain topics. In order for a university to receive Chinese money, the Chinese do not want any mention of Tibet or any criticism of anything that is happening.

I was privileged to hear recently from an American professor at a meeting in Parliament about how China’s influence on an American university is threatening freedom of speech. If we cannot have freedom of speech in our universities, we really are on a slippery slope. It is worrying and sad that one of our most famous universities, the London School of Economics, has been reluctant to give out information on how much money it has been getting from China. It is only through journalists’ use of freedom of information requests that we have discovered the exact amounts given out. It has been revealed that the LSE

“has received £863,537.91 from the Chinese state for housing a Confucian Centre and a further $33,000 for teaching Chinese government officials via BHP Billiton, a mining conglomerate.”

If China has 25 of these cultural outposts right at the hearts of our main universities, that funding will extend to several million pounds. Of course that may sound wonderful—isn’t that great: universities that are suffering from a shortage of resources are getting money directly from China? The danger, however, is that no matter how much the university hierarchies say that that will not influence or affect what they do, the reality on the ground is that it does. In fact, they are taking what could be said to be Chinese gold in return for getting out Chinese propaganda—sometimes subtly, sometimes less subtly. I really believe that our Government should be investigating this and making sure—[Interruption.]

[Albert Owen (in the Chair)]

Order. I think the hon. Lady’s phone is vibrating and being picked up by the microphones.

[Kate Hoey]

I am sorry. The phone is turned off. I am glad I am not in Tibet, because it would have been monitored.

There is a serious issue. We are seeing Chinese developments coming into this country, into London, and the big money coming in to build tower blocks and hotels. On the subject of hotels, let me say how shocking it was that InterContinental Hotels went ahead and built one in Lhasa that employs Chinese people and is part of efforts there to destroy Tibetan culture. Tibet groups across the world are trying hard to organise some kind of boycott of InterContinental Hotels, because of what the company is doing in that part of Tibet. We must get to the bottom of the money that is coming in

There have also been incidents, such as the ones we heard about only yesterday, which happened recently in Sheffield, where there are substantial numbers of Chinese students. Many of those students are very political indeed, and we heard about the example of a shop owner who had put a Tibetan flag in the window. I do not think it was a huge flag; nevertheless, they were threatened that if they did not take it down, things would happen. In fact, the windows were broken, which was reported to the police, but the attitude was, “Well, this was just students being a bit silly.”

The reality is that this is not students being a little silly. What is happening here is coming from the very top in China. I am very worried indeed that unless we face up to it early, China will do in this country and other parts of Europe what it has done in Africa, which is to go in and simply use its money as a way of getting its message across and its way of doing things. That relates directly to Tibet, in the sense that Tibet is the issue in this country that gets the most publicity in our universities, and yet many of our students are being stopped from getting their message across because of the worry about China.

I would add that South Africa recently refused to give His Holiness the Dalai Lama a visa, which meant that the conference of all Nobel prize winners had to be cancelled—it is now happening in Rome, in Italy, this week. Meanwhile, the Chinese Government, having put pressure on South Africa, immediately thanked the South African Government and more or less said, “We will now do something for you, as you were so kind as to stop the Dalai Lama visiting.”

We are getting to the point where I want to ask our Government, “What dreadful thing would the Chinese Government have to do in order for our Government to start standing up to China?” What would have to happen for us to start calling in the Chinese ambassador and doing things that make a difference, such as saying, “I’m sorry, we might need the money—the investment is great—but you, China, are fundamentally a pariah state and we’re going to treat you as such”? Unless we start standing up to China, as the European Union or as a country, it will not buckle to anything other than force, in terms of what we are saying—I am not suggesting we invade China, but I am suggesting that we start to mean what we say.

Warm words have come out of all Governments, including this one and the previous one. We were the last country not to recognise that Tibet was part of China, but David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary in the previous Government, changed that, telling the House that it would make a great difference and that China would start behaving better. Of course that did not happen.

China has a terrible human rights record not only in Tibet, but all over China. I want the Minister to outline clearly what more the Chinese have to do to people in Tibet and through their influence in this country before we as a British Government say, “Enough is enough.”

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[Jim Shannon]

I am not aware of what the First Minister does, but I suggest that we should have done so and that he needs to do so. Similarly, the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) mentioned direct contact and using all available opportunities. I know that the Minister who is here today does it, and I am sure that he will outline such issues.

Even children in Tibet face abuses of their freedom and human rights. Tibetans are not free to protest or speak openly about their situation, and even peaceful demonstrations are met with heavy-handed military crackdowns. In 2008, thousands of Tibetans staged the largest protests in Tibet for over 50 years, and demonstrations swept across the entire Tibetan plateau. Chinese authorities arrested an estimated 6,000 protesters; about 1,000 of them are still unaccounted for. Where are they? What questions have the Government asked about those forgotten people and forgotten prisoners—if they are still alive?

We are all aware of the Tibetan monks who, horrifically, have set fire to themselves as a method of protest to highlight these issues. Every one of us can remember those horrific, horrendous stories of people driven to extremes to express themselves and to seek liberty, the democratic process and the right to religious freedom through their deaths.

Prisons in Tibet are full of people detained for simply expressing their desire for freedom. People have been arrested and sentenced to prison for peaceful acts, such as distributing leaflets or sending information abroad about events in Tibet. We take such things for granted in this country because they are part of our democratic right—we are speaking about them democratically here today. Yet those everyday freedoms—those small acts of democracy—that we enjoy, as part of the great nation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, in Tibet can lead to imprisonment and even torture. The clear violation of human rights is shocking. As a country, through this debate today and through our Government, we have to take action.

Reporters Without Borders ranked China 175th out of the 180 countries on its press freedom index. There are more foreign journalists in North Korea than in Tibet. Despite what by our own standards we can describe only as atrocities, this week a top Chinese official in Brussels told reporters that China does not need lessons on human rights from the EU; well, actually, it does. Li Junhua—putting a Northern Ireland accent on a Chinese name—a director-general in the Foreign Affairs Ministry, has said that China has its own model of human rights. It does, but that model does not conform to the model that we have in the free west. He claimed that China had a clear understanding of how human rights will be carried out in his country and was confident of its own model.

The US diplomat Sarah Sewall recently claimed that there was

“not a degree of freedom for Tibetans within China”

after meeting Tibetan refugees from Nepal and India and gleaning first-hand information about their lives in the country before they had to flee because of persecution. Clearly the ongoing hardships and crimes against them that Tibetans still face on a daily basis back up Ms Sewall’s point. Tibetans cannot enjoy any freedoms, which in turn means they are denied their basic human rights. That is the issue. The Chinese may well measure their version of human rights differently from those of us in the EU and the USA, but that does not mean that we should simply sit back and accept the situation, because ultimately it is not good enough.

It is not good enough that people are denied their freedoms—freedom of expression, freedom of religion and freedom of speech, to name just a few. People have fought and died to secure those rights; in 2014, Tibetans are either fleeing, being imprisoned or being killed to try to secure them. We must let the Tibetans know that they are not struggling in vain or suffering in silence. We must do all that we can—at Westminster, in Brussels and on the world stage—to persuade China to change its oppressive ways in its bid for political support.

[Albert Owen (in the Chair)]

I will be calling the Opposition Front-Bench spokesperson at 10.40 am at the latest.