TIME interview with THE DALAI LAMA

San Francisco, USA, 16 April 2006 (By Amanda Bower, Time Magazine)

Dalai Lama: Tibet Wants Autonomy, Not Independence

Tibet's spiritual leader speaks.

The Dalai Lama's schedule is usually set seven years in advance, but the Tibetan spiritual leader made a rare change to his plans in order to attend a San Francisco conference convened by Muslim leaders to discuss religious tolerance. His Holiness, as Tibetans call him, spoke with Time's Amanda Bower about Islam, his hopes to return to his homeland after 47 years in exile, and his hobby of tinkering with timepieces.

TIME: What was so important about this conference that you changed your schedule to attend?

THE DALAI LAMA: I have two major commitments. Number one is the promotion of human values � not because of religious belief, but because of biological reasoning. We need peace of mind. Peace of mind is good for health, good for community, good for family, and also for physical growth. A peaceful mind is more proper. A disturbed mind, harmful. My number two commitment, as a believer, is for harmony among the different religious traditions. In the last 20, 30 years, I made these two commitments whenever I had the opportunity. As far as the promotion of religious harmony is concerned, I think I made some contribution, at least between the Tibetan Buddhist community and our Christian brothers and sisters. I think we have very good, close understanding. For example, there are many Christian practitioners now showing their respect and understanding about Buddhist concepts, as there is among Buddhists now an appreciation of Christian contribution for the betterment of the world and humanity.

Personally, from my childhood, there is a Muslim community in Lhasa [Tibet's capital] for the last four centuries. Very peaceful. Very gentle. No quarrels. Nowadays, in the outside world, sometimes people get the impression Muslims are more militant. I think that is wrong. I think these wrong impressions must be eliminated. They are no good for the world. [Islam] is one of the important world religious traditions that we must respect.

But everyone gathered here is a moderate. Do you think the extremists who have been giving Islam a bad name will listen to what you have to say?

[Laughs] I don't think they will listen. In my Buddhist community, the radicals don't listen... But our attempt is to try to explore the same values, send messages, and make them known to other people. Some mischievous people always remain. Doesn't matter. It's a mistake to generalize the behavior of a few individuals to the whole tradition. Since 11th of September, some Muslims really carry some violence, including terrorism. This should not be considered representative of the whole Muslim faith. A few mischievous individuals are everywhere, among the Hindus, among the Christians, among the Muslims, among the Buddhists.

China's President Hu Jintao is visiting the U.S. at the same time as you are, and you have urged your supporters here not to demonstrate against him. Why?

Since we already have some official contact with the Chinese, we believe it is very important to create impressions that we are very sincere, we are fully committed.

Two weeks ago, the Chinese government said it would allow you to visit your homeland, which you fled in 1959, if you abandoned your pursuit of independence for Tibet. But haven't you long said that you want autonomy, not independence, for Tibet?

Oh yes. The world knows the Dalai Lama is not seeking independence. The world knows. Still the Chinese do not know. [Laughs]

Do you have any heaviness of heart about giving up hope for Tibetan independence?

No. It's not necessary. Of course the present situation, in reality, I think that 99% of the Tibetan population is very, very unhappy. Every year, I think more than 10,000 Tibetans come to India. Some escape, some with permission. Every single Tibetan, when you meet them, is crying, complaining, including some Tibetans who have high level positions and are party members. I think many foreigners who visit Tibet and who have some close contact with local Tibetans also get the same impression. There are a large number of police forces there. Why? Too much suspicion, too much fear. If what the Chinese government claims is true, there's no need for security like that. This is very bad, not only bad for Tibetans, but also for the People's Republic of China as a whole.

As far as the future is concerned, look at the European Union. In the past centuries, those nations talked most about their sovereignty. Now, today, the common interest is more important than each individual nation's sovereignty. Tibet is a landlocked country, a large area, small population, very, very backward. We Tibetans want modernization. Therefore, in order to develop Tibet materially as a modern nation, Tibet must remain within the People's Republic of China. Provided Chinese give us a full guarantee of preservation of Tibetan culture, Tibetan environment, Tibetan spirituality, then it is of mutual benefit. [Besides] foreign affairs [and] defense [are] all the things which Tibetans can manage by themselves. Tibetans should have the full autonomy.

As a hobby, you like to collect and repair watches. It seems an unusual thing for a Tibetan monk to do.

Many Tibetans, including many monks, like wristwatches. I think monks are more fond of watches than lay people. Lay people have a lot of other things. [Laughs] I don't buy them for myself, they are all presented by other people.

Obama says Bush should weigh boycott of Olympic ceremony

LEVITTOWN, Pennsylvania (Reuters) - President George W. Bush should boycott the opening ceremony of the Olympics if China does not take steps to help stop genocide in Darfur and improve human rights in Tibet, U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama said on Wednesday.

But Obama qualified that by saying any decision should be made closer to the date of the Olympic Games in Beijing in August.

"If the Chinese do not take steps to help stop the genocide in Darfur and to respect the dignity, security and human rights of the Tibetan people, then the president should boycott the opening ceremonies," Obama, a Democratic senator from Illinois, said in a statement.

"I am also deeply concerned about China's failure to support efforts to halt the genocide in Darfur. Regarding the Beijing Olympics this summer, a boycott of the opening ceremonies should be firmly on the table, but this decision should be made closer to the Games," he added.

Obama, who holds a lead over his rival Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York in the race to become the Democratic presidential nominee, did not go as far as Clinton in his statement on China and the Olympics. Clinton's call for Bush to weigh a boycott did not include any qualifiers about making the decision at a later date.

Clinton and Obama are vying to become their party's nominee to run in the November election to pick a successor to the Republican Bush.

Bush plans to attend the Summer Olympics opening ceremonies in Beijing in August and so far has resisted pressure to change his plans in response to a violent crackdown against protesters in Tibet by Chinese authorities.

China has also been accused of refusing to use its influence on the Sudanese government to get it to stop what the United States calls a genocide in Sudan's Darfur region.

At a rally earlier in the day, Obama was asked about China and said the United States needed to take a stronger and more consistent stance toward Beijing when it comes to human rights issues.

"In our policy toward China, we have not been consistent enough and tough enough in pushing them to deal with Tibet properly but also (on) their continued support of Sudan, a country that has been engaging in genocide against the peoples of Darfur," he said.

But Obama also said the United States lacked leverage with China because the country holds so much U.S. debt.

"It's very hard to tell your banker that he's wrong," he said. "And if we are running huge deficits and big national debts and we're borrowing money constantly from China that gives us less leverage."

(Reporting by Caren Bohan, editing by Patricia Zengerle)

Tibet effect: China shutters 25 video sites, penalizes 32

ARS Technica Article
By Nate Anderson

Originally published: March 21, 2008 - 01:51PM CT



If video is going to be streamed in China, the state wants to know about it. China requires a streaming company to obtain a state license and then avoid airing clips that might inspire fear, contain pornography, or endanger national security. That's a huge burden for sites that feature user-generated content, especially when "endangering national security" includes showing video clips of Chinese unrest. This week, China mounted a crackdown on 62 separate web sites that in violated a new law against showing online audio and video without permits.

When the government first instituted the law back in January, Internet video sites had already become hugely popular in China, and it was widely suspected that the rules would not be strictly enforced. At first, these suspicions appeared justified, as nothing happened for two months, even to the many sites that never bothered to obtain the state license to broadcast.

But yesterday, authorities penalized 32 sites for infractions, shut down 25 more for not having a license, and referred five cases to another department for follow-up. It was a fairly gutsy display of central control, one that may have been hastened in part by recent protests in Tibet (China recently blocked YouTube access over clips from Tibet that were appearing on the service).

It's not that the ruling Communist Party doesn't like online multimedia services; it does. Even capitalist advertising, which is surging in China, is no problem. After all, every minute spent watching a squirrel water-ski is a minute not spent thinking about massive economic inequality, rural unrest, corruption, one-party rule, or what might really be going on in Tibet.

Sina.com, the largest portal in China, is reportedly spending millions of dollars to upgrade its infrastructure in advance of the Olympics to be held this summer in Beijing, when millions of Chinese users are expected to watch the games over the Internet. While the games might seem like a perfectly innocuous thing to air, recent calls for international boycotts or protests over Tibet and other human rights issues could politicize the games more than China would like.

The country will also have to drop many of its filtering restrictions in the Beijing area to accommodate an influx of visitors. Not everyone sees a block on sites like YouTube as no big deal, and China knows it.

It has to tread carefully, however. Regulations last year designed to make bloggers register their real names with the government were abandoned in the face of popular protest, and even this year's imposition of licenses for Internet broadcast sites included concessions for established (and popular) companies.

Monks speak out!

Tibet Will Reopen to Tourism After Protests.

Tibet will be reopened to tourists on May 1, a decision announced Thursday even as authorities showed no sign of lifting restrictions preventing foreign journalists from freely visiting Tibet and other Tibetan regions in western China to report on episodes of ethnic unrest.
Meanwhile, Communist Party officials in Tibet plan trials this month for people arrested in the violence. Wang Xiangming, a deputy Communist Party secretary in Lhasa, the capital, said more than 1,200 people would be prosecuted, according to accounts in the Chinese and Hong Kong news media.
Tibet has been closed to domestic and foreign tourists since March 16, two days after violent riots erupted in Lhasa.
Zhanor, deputy director of Tibet’s tourism bureau, said organized tours and independent travelers could return to Tibet beginning in May, according to China Daily, the official English-language newspaper.
Authorities in Lhasa attributed the tourism closing to safety concerns and property damage from the violence.
On Thursday afternoon, Xiao Youcai, an official from Aba County, a Tibetan region in Sichuan Province, said the area had largely returned to normal after a March 16 protest. State media have reported the police in Aba fired on Tibetan protesters after they tried to storm a police station. Overseas Tibetan advocacy groups have asserted that up to 20 Tibetans were killed.