Combating Chinese Propaganda aimed at the Dalai Lama

Combating Chinese Propaganda aimed at the Dalai Lama and false character assassination by Penn and Teller and similar dishonest reports.

Much is said against the Dalai Lama by people having learned Chinese propaganda, Much of the onslaught by Penn and Teller is based upon their opinion Tibetans are better under Chinese rule. Arrogantly they state Tibetans now have electricity, which seems to be the main benefit cited by the hosts of "Bullshit".  Why if this is true is the Dalai Lama met with cheers and crowds, compared with any Chinese authority being met with angry crowds and protests? Why are Tibetan monks setting themselves alight? The following will hopefully explain this and you can draw your own conclusion.


Comprehensive rebuttal of Chinese Communist Party Propaganda and dishonest reports like Penn and Teller's "Bullshit" on the Dalai Lama

Includes:

Reuters recent report on UN appeal to China

Answers the following allegations/sweeping statements

"Old Tibet was a backwards, feudal society and the Dalai Lama was an evil slaveholder"

On Chinese Media's attempt to draw parallels with the Dalai Lama and Nazism.

Tibetans are better off now than before the "Peaceful Liberation"

"Tibetans in exile, especially the Dalai Lama, are a bunch of aristocrats seeking to reestablish the old regime"
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Let's take a look at recent history before dismantling CCP (Chinese Communist Party) misinformation, which may have worked in the 1970s, is not likely to work today.

The Nobel Peace Prize 1989 was awarded to The 14th Dalai Lama

2012 The Dalai Lama, the Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader whose long-standing engagement with multiple dimensions of science and with people far beyond his own religious traditions has made him an incomparable global voice for universal ethics, nonviolence, and harmony among world religions, has won the 2012 Templeton Prize. He donated the $1 000 000 prize to Children in Need.

Specifically, he encourages serious scientific investigative reviews of the power of compassion and its broad potential to address the world's fundamental problems - a theme at the core of his teachings and a cornerstone of his immense popularity.

Dala Lama in 2007 received a US Congressional Gold Medal, saying "I believe that this also sends a powerful message to those many individuals who are dedicated toward promoting peace, understanding and harmony," the exiled Buddhist leader told the crowd gathered.

Despite fifty years of attempted Chinese Communist Party character assassination, the Tibetans still hold the Dalai Lama in high regard.
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Reuters recent report on UN appeal to China
2 November 2012 – The United Nations human rights chief today urged China to address the allegations of rights violations in Tibet, which have led to an alarming escalation of “desperate” forms of protest in the region, including self-immolations.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, said she was disturbed by “continuing allegations of violence against Tibetans seeking to exercise their fundamental human rights of freedom of expression, association and religion,” and pointed to “reports of detentions and disappearances, of excessive use of force against peaceful demonstrators, and curbs on the cultural rights of Tibetans.”

Ms. Pillay, who has had several exchanges with the Chinese Government on these issues, according to a news release from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), said authorities need to do more to protect human rights and prevent violations.

“I call on the Government to respect the rights to peaceful assembly and expression, and to release all individuals detained for merely exercising these universal rights,” she said.

Among the cases reported is that of a 17-year-old girl who was severely beaten and sentenced to three years in prison for distributing flyers calling for Tibet’s freedom and the return of the Dalai Lama. Others have been sentenced to up to seven years in prison for writing essays, making films or distributing photos of events in Tibet outside of China. Serious concerns have also been raised about fair trial standards, and the torture and ill-treatment of detainees.

The human rights chief appealed to Tibetans to refrain from resorting to extreme forms of protest and urged community and religious leaders to use their influence to help prevent any further loss of life.

“I recognize Tibetans’ intense sense of frustration and despair which has led them to resort to such extreme means,” she noted, “but there are other ways to make those feelings clear. The Government also needs to recognize this, and permit Tibetans to express their feelings without fear of retribution.”

Ms. Pillay also urged the Government to allow independent and impartial monitors to visit and assess conditions on the ground and to lift restrictions on media access to the region. There are currently 12 outstanding requests for official visits to China by UN Special Rapporteurs on various human rights issues, including freedom of religion and belief.

Independent experts, or special rapporteurs, are appointed by the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council to examine and report back on a country situation or a specific human rights theme. The positions are honorary and the experts are not UN staff, nor are they paid for their work.

“Deep underlying issues need to be addressed, and I call on the Government to seriously consider the recommendations made to it by various international human rights bodies, as well as to avail itself of the expert advice being offered by the UN’s independent experts on human rights,” she said, adding that OHCHR stands ready to assist on these issues and promote best practices with regard to the protection of minorities.

In a separate development, OHCHR today welcomed last week’s announcement of the passage of China’s first mental health law by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress.

“We have only just received the Chinese text of the law and we have not yet managed to analyze it in detail but we understand that it addresses some key areas of concern. For example, it provides that individuals with psychiatric conditions who are deemed unlikely to cause harm to themselves or others should not be held in psychiatric institutions against their will,” OHCHR’s spokesperson, Rupert Colville, told reporters in Geneva.

“The law should provide an important framework for civil society in China to monitor and advocate on mental health care issues, and for persons suffering such disabilities to better claim their rights and entitlements,” he added.
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In addition Penn and Teller assert that

"Old Tibet was a backwards, feudal society and the Dalai Lama was an evil slaveholder"
Beijing (as well as sympathetic Western scholars such as Michael Parenti, Tom Grunfeld and Anna Louise Strong) asserts that "pre-liberation" Tibet was a medieval, oppressive society consisting of "landowners, serfs and slaves." Tashi Rabgay, a Tibetan scholar at Harvard, points out that these three alleged social classes are arbitrary and revisionist classifications that have no basis in reality. There were indeed indentured farmers in old Tibet. There were also merchants, nomads, traders, non-indentured farmers, hunters, bandits, monks, nuns, musicians, aristocrats and artists. Tibetan society was a vast, multifaceted affair, as real societies tend to be. To try to reduce it to three base experiences (and non-representative experiences at that) is to engage in the worst kind of revisionism.

No country is perfect and many Tibetans (including the Dalai Lama) admit that old Tibet had its flaws and inequities (setting aside whether things are better under Chinese occupation). But taking every real or imagined shortcoming that happened in a country over a 600-year period and labeling it the "way it was" is hardly legitimate history. Any society seen through this blurry lens would come up short. And in many ways, such as the elimination of the death penalty, Tibet was perhaps ahead of its time. The young 14th Dalai Lama had begun to promote land reform laws and other improvements, but China's take-over halted these advances. It is instructive to note that today the Tibetan government-in-exile is a democracy while China and Tibet are under communist dictatorship.

On Chinese Media's attempt to draw parallels with the Dalai Lama and Nazism.

 “Shocking, outrageous and totally unacceptable”: This is how the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a leading Jewish human rights organization, characterized the Chinese media’s attempt to draw an analogy between Nobel Peace Laureate Dalai Lama and the Nazi perpetrator of the World War II Holocaust. The Center demanded that China Tibet Online and the Xinhua News Agency apologize for slandering the Dalai Lama and denigrating the holocaust victims.

Titled “Seven questions to the 14th Dalai Lama”, the commentary, posted on China Tibet Online and carried by the official Xinhua News Agency on 24 March, accused the Dalai Lama of advocating policies that would result in the expulsion of Chinese from the Tibetan territories. “The remarks of the Dalai Lama remind us of the cruel Nazis during the Second World War,” it stated, adding, “How similar it is to the Holocaust committed by Hitler on the Jews!”

Taking strong exception to this piece, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center devoted to imparting the lessons of the Holocaust and promoting tolerance, said:

“It is shocking, outrageous, and totally unacceptable that any Chinese official would permit the denigrating of the victims of the Nazi Holocaust as a tactic to slander a spiritual leader who has earned the world’s respect over the span of decades, precisely because he pursues his agenda through peace and dialogue. Indeed, the Dalai Lama stands for the values that the Nazis sought to destroy. We urge China Tibet Online and the Xinhua News Agency to apologize for this double slander.”

Tibetans are better off now than before the "Peaceful Liberation"

To imply that Tibetans are incapable of developing their own country is insulting, condescending and chauvinistic. Nor is it proper to compare apples and oranges: Tibet five decades ago cannot be compared with today, since a free Tibet would not have existed in a vacuum in the intervening years. One only has to look at the model success of the Tibetan refugee community to wonder how much better life in Tibet could be if Tibetans were actually in charge of their own country.

"Tibetans in exile, especially the Dalai Lama, are a bunch of aristocrats seeking to reestablish the old regime"

The notions that the Tibetan refugee community longs to reestablish an aristocracy has nothing to do with the real aspirations of the Tibetan freedom movement. Currently there are over 150,000 Tibetans living in exile around the world; to characterize this group as "former aristocrats" is ludicrous when one considers their numbers and diverse backgrounds from Tibet.

Tibetans never saw their country as perfect and the Tibetan government-in-exile is not advocating reestablishing the system that existed before 1959 (nor would it be possible). The Dalai Lama has declared that he won't hold a political position in a free Tibet - despite that the vast majority of Tibetans inside and outside of Tibet would probably elect him in a heartbeat.

This hopefully paints a more honest picture.