by Gearóid Ó Colmáin / June 11th, 2012
Last year Tibet’s revered “spiritual leader” the Dalai Lama visited Toulouse in France for a festival celebrating Tibetan culture, while the Chinese government celebrated 60 years of communist rule in Tibet. The Tibetan spiritual leader gave lectures on the principles of Tibetan Buddhism; tolerance among religions and international peace. As a mark of respect for the Dalai Lama, the city of Toulouse was draped in the colours of the Tibet separatist movement.
But who exactly is the Dalai Lama? Why does the Buddhist leader have such a following in Western countries and why do the same Western countries support the Tibetan separatist movement? More importantly, what is the political significance of the annual Tibetan Buddhist festival in France, a country which claims to champion secular, republican values?
In order to answer these questions, we will have to look at some interesting facts about the Dalai Lama and the particular form of Buddhism he promotes in the context of the current geo-political game North Atlantic Treaty Organisation countries are playing with China.Tibet: From Serfdom to People’s Democracy
Although universally presented as a paragon of human rights, tolerance, democratic values and peace, the true story of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan separatists is rarely discussed in the mainstream media.
Buddhism was introduced into Tibet in 640 AD when Srongstan Gampo married a Chinese Buddhist wife. In the 13th century the Mongol Emperor Kubla Khan created the title of Grand Lama for the puppet ruler of Tibet.1
The title “Dalai Lama” was first given to Soman Gyatso, a monk of the Gelugpa (yellow hat) school of Tibet, by the ruler of Mongolia, Altan Khan, in 1578. The word “dalai” is a Mongolian translation of Soman Gyatso’s name which in Tibetan means ‘ocean of merit’.
Although recent Hollywood films and popular culture in general tend to present Lamaist Tibet as an idyllic Shangri-la, the reality was rather different.2The Tibetan Lama theocracy was arguably one of the cruelest, most despotic kingdoms in the history of humanity. The monastic Lama class ruled over a majority of serfs whose living conditions were often worse than those of animals.
The Tibetan monasteries were extremely hierarchical. The upper Lamas lived in opulent palaces, took children as sex slaves and lived off the labour of the lower lamas who, in turn, lived off the labour of the starving serfs. The punishment meted out to disobedient serfs included gouging out of eyes; evisceration; the severing of hands and legs and other more hideous forms of torture.
Professor Micheal Parenti writes:
In 1959, Anna Louise Strong visited an exhibition of torture equipment that had been used by the Tibetan overlords. There were handcuffs of all sizes, including small ones for children, and instruments for cutting off noses and ears, gouging out eyes, breaking off hands, and hamstringing legs. There were hot brands, whips, and special implements for disemboweling. The exhibition presented photographs and testimonies of victims who had been blinded or crippled or suffered amputations for thievery. There was the shepherd whose master owed him a reimbursement in yuan and wheat but refused to pay. So he took one of the master’s cows; for this he had his hands severed. Another herdsman, who opposed having his wife taken from him by his lord, had his hands broken off. There were pictures of Communist activists with noses and upper lips cut off, and a woman who was raped and then had her nose sliced away. 3
This is not quite the idyllic paradise of Hollywood lore! Serfs often had to carry their owners on their backs. As a result, a large number of serfs were stooped and crippled. It would not be incorrect to say that before the arrival of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in Tibet in 1951, the land of the Lamas was hell on earth. Over 70 percent of the population was comprised of poor illiterate serfs and nomads; they had absolutely no rights and no value.
The ruling government, (Kashag), the monastic class, and the manorial lords constituted a tiny minority of the country who arrogated all the wealth to themselves. Religious doctrine determined that the suffering of the serfs was in accordance with divine law.
Among the thousands of articles and news reports about the Dalai Lama, Tibetan independence, “democracy”, “human rights”, and “Chinese communist repression”, one will search in vain for the actual facts about the tyrannical dictatorship of the Lamas when they had “soley sovereign sway and masterdom” in Tibet.
Nor will one ever learn about what the Chinese People’s Liberation Army actually did when they entered Tibet in 1951. When the PLA arrived in Tibet, the upper lamas tried to portray them as cannibals and vandals who were intent on destroying Tibetan culture.
But the lower level lamas soon realized that the PLA’s purpose was to implement democratic reform, and that this was also in their own interest as they had themselves suffered much from the upper Lamas and the cruel autocratic Dalai Lama. Education in the monasteries was reserved for the top lamas such as the gesi. Most of the lower-level lamas could neither read nor write and were the sons of serfs.4
Pedophilia and sexual abuse was also rampant throughout Tibet’s monasteries. It was not until 1959 when a tiny minority of Tibetan lamas, backed by the CIA, rose up against the communist government that the Tibetan people finally freed themselves from the yoke of tyranny. The Lamas were forced by Tibet’s liberated serfs to go into exile in India.
Once the Dalai Lama and his cohorts had been exiled, celebrations followed in Lhassa as the title deeds of the manorial lords were burned in bonfires. The freed Tibetan serfs received title deeds to land, cattle and tools for farming.5
The liberation of Tibet permitted other minority ethnic groups such as Loba, Monba and Deng to play an active role in society for the first time. Over half the secretaries in the Tibet Autonomous Region’s Party Committee were Tibetan. The people of Tibet had never known so much autonomy and freedom in their history.6
For the first time in the history of Tibet, the majority of the people were taught how to read their own language. The communists constructed thousands of schools and hospitals throughout the country providing free health and free education for the Tibetan people. Tibetan Women were given equal rights to men. Quoting from his field research notebooks, historian Mobo Gao writes:
A former serf declares that without the CCP there would not have been a life for serfs like him. Another interviewee, the son of a well-known living Buddha and the most outstanding Tibetan photographer, states he really believed in Mao and thought everything said by Mao was the universal truth. In the 1980s when he was received by His Holiness the Dalai Lama (outside China) he told his Holiness that it was the truth that the majority of the Tibetans supported the CCP because the CCP really liberated the serfs. The first interviewee, an ordinary Tibetan woman in Lhasa, states that Mao helped a lot of people, that the world cannot do without people like Mao, that Tibet used to be unfair when some were rich while some did not have enough to eat and that Mao’s revolution changed everything.7
Rapid industrialization followed the liberation of Tibet. The communists built roads and infrastructure and local industries were developed. By 1974 Tibet had, for the first time in its history, grown enough grain to feed its people.
Under the despotic feudalism of the Lamas where famine was common, Tibet’s population declined by over 1 million in the 200 years preceding the liberation. By the mid 70s, however, Tibet’s population had grown by 400,000 and minority ethnic groups of Loba, Deng and Monbas, who had been the most oppressed under the Lamas, were also growing in numbers.8
When the Chinese People’s Liberation Army arrived in Tibet in 1950, thousands of serfs rose up against the tyranny of the nobility and the lama monks. Many monasteries were attacked and vandalized. Exactions and retribution by liberated serfs against their former oppressors were common.
However, the Chinese Communist Party discouraged such actions and concrete measures were implemented to protect temples and monasteries from vandalism. Article 3 of “The Resolution on Carrying Out Democratic Reform in Tibet Adopted by the Second Plenary Session of the Preparatory Committee for the Autonomous Region of Tibet” on July 17, 1959, reads:
The policy of protecting the freedom of religious belief, protecting the patriotic and law-abiding temples and monasteries and protecting the historical cultural relics must be strictly adhered to in the democratic reform as in the past. A campaign must be launched in the temples and monasteries against rebellion, feudal prerogatives and exploitation.The policy of “buying out” is to be followed in dealing with the land and other means of production of patriotic and law-abiding temples and monasteries. The livelihood of the lamas is to be arranged for by the government. Subsidies will be given where the income of the temples and monasteries is not sufficient to meet their proper spending.9
Not only did the CPC outlaw vandalism against Tibetan monasteries and culture, they actually restored many monasteries that had been neglected during the reign of the Dalai Lama.
Although pro-Tibetan separatist propaganda in the West claims that it is a separate country, Tibet has been part of China for centuries. Since the publication of Halliday and Chang’s book, Mao, the Unknown Story, in 2005, a concerted attempt has been made to demonise the Chinese communists and Mao Tse Tung, in particular.
However, in his book The Struggle For China’s Past, Chinese scholar, Mobo Gao, identifies hundreds of unsubstantiated claims, inconsistencies, lies and distortions in Chang’s book. According to Professor Gao, the book ignores the most basic procedures of academic writing. Needless to say, Chang’s Mao, the Unknown Story, has become a best seller in the West and has had a phalange of reactionary historians praising its merits. “Mao is the greatest monster of them all,” declares Simon Sebag Montifiore.10
Referring to a detailed academic critique of Chang and Halliday’s book, Gao writes:
to demonise Mao is the right politics of course. When someone pasted some criticism of the Chang and Halliday book on the Amazon sales website, it was immediately attacked as ‘ugly Chinese propaganda’(Jin Xiaoding 2005). On the other hand, Jin’s critique of the book was met with absolute silence by the Western media (no Western media outlet was ready to publish the 17 questions raised by Jin). WQhen the Chinese version of Jin’s critique appeared on the Chinese language website duowei, there was a lively debate. Jung Change had to admit, when asked, that Jin’s 17 questions are good questions but refused to provide convincing replies to them.For Western media it does not matter as long as the politics is right, and the right politics is that Mao must be discredited.11
The Dalai Lama, Nazi War Criminals and Historical Falsification
The French press has been devoting considerable attention to China over the last year. The Edward de Rothshild owned Libérationnewspaper has published articles promoting the French translation of the Chang and Halliday book.12
The editor of Le Monde newspaper and this years’ Bilderberg conference attendee, Eric Israelowitcz, is no friend of China. He recently wrote a much-publicized book entitled l’Arrogance Chinoise which advocates a more aggressive stance from the West against China.
According to Israelowicz, China has become too powerful and arrogant and needs to be taught a lesson by the West. This extremely hostile, belligerent and biased view of China is reflected in the editorials and news reports throughout the Western media complex.
In this context Tibet is routinely depicted as a country that has been colonized and oppressed by China. We are never told the facts about pre-communist Tibet. Although Libération has published articles in the past which reveal some uncomfortable truths about the Dalai Lama, these facts are subsequently ignored when dealing with the Tibetan leader’s quarrels with Beijing.
For example, on 25th of April 2008, Libération journalist, Laurent Dispo, published an article on the story of an Austrian mountain climber and Nazi SS man, Heinrich Harrer, and his relationship with the Dalai Lama. Harrer was a famous mountain climber in the Third Reich. A close friend of Heinrich Himmler, the Nazi SS official was sent to Tibet in order to establish links there with the ruling class so as to prepare the terrain for possible Nazi collaboration. Harrer wrote about his experiences in the Chinese province in a book entitled Seven Years in Tibet. The book was adapted into to a film by French director Jean Jacques Annaud in 2006.
Dispo concluded his Libération article by stating that the Dalai Lama’s connections with Nazism were sufficient reason for Western leaders to withdraw their support for his nationalist cause.
The controversial article did not go unnoticed by the supercilious academes of the Dalai Lama’s French fan club. On May 6th, 2008, a response to the allegations of the Dalai Lama’s Nazi connections was published in Libérationby the crème de la crème of French academia: Anne-Marie Blondeau, director of studies at the École Pratique des Hautes Études; Katia Boutrille, anthropologist at the École Pratique des Hautes Études; Heather Stoddard, a professor at INALCO’s Tibet section; and Francoise Robbin, a teacher at the same institute.
To the general reader, the formidable qualifications of these people should put one in no doubt about the weight and import of their argument. The group-authored article argued that there was no evidence to suggest the Dalai Lama or Tibetan authorities ever met with top Nazi officials.
The notion that Harrer was sent to Tibet by the Nazi government, the professors pointed out, is not supported by any documentation. Rather, they averred, it was Ernst Schaefer, a German zoologist, who was sent by the German government to do some scientific research.
They went on to argue that Schaefer met with some Tibetan officials but the meeting was of little consequence. Harrer, they claimed, only met the 14th Dalai Lama in 1949. The distinguished professors concluded that the Nazi interest in Tibet was minimal and that there were no real connection between the Lamaist theocracy and Nazi Germany.
Dispo’s article was therefore an egregious example of, as they put it, “conspiracy theory” and had no basis in rigorous historical research. The authors went on to suggest that it was no surprise to see a pro-Chinese article in the Western press given the lies and propaganda being spread by the Chinese government to distract from the human rights allegations being leveled against them before the Olympic Games. 13
It would therefore appear, following the logic of the Dalai Lama’s defenders, that any criticism of his holiness amounts to a Chinese conspiracy of demonization against their bête noir. But, of course, there is no documentary evidence of such as Chinese conspiracy.
However, there is strong and irrefutable evidence of the Dalai Lama’s connections with Nazi war criminals and terrorist groups. These have been well documented and do not need any help from “conspiracy theorists” nor from the Chinese government.
Speaking on radio France Culture on September 10th, 2006, French historian George André Morin revealed that contacts between Nazi Germany and Tibet were quite extensive and profound.
According to Morin, Schaefer and Harrer participated in a German expedition to Tibet as part of the Ahnenerbe SS project to research the origins of the Aryan race. The solar symbol of the swastika on the Nazi flag was inspired by the swastikas of Tibetan monasteries. The thirteenth Dalai Lama, even personally undertook the translation of Hitler’s Mein Kampf into Tibetan.
The British attempted to conquer Tibet in 1904. This prompted the thirteenth Dalai Lama to flee to China. Tibet subsequently became internationally recognized as part of China. It was not until the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in the 1930s that Tibet claimed some independence. But it was only the fascist dictatorships of Europe and the Vatican which officially recognized the Tibetan state. 14
Apart from Tibet’s cultural value, the Nazis were hoping to explore Tibet as a strategic base from which to conquer British India and parts of China.
As Mobo Gao has argued, Tibet was recognized by the international community as part of China before the Chinese revolution of 1948. It was only when land was being redistributed to the poor peasantry by the Chinese communists that the capitalist ‘international community’; that is to say, the United States and its allies, began to talk about Tibetan “independence”, “Tibetan freedom” and, of course, the all-important meme of imperialist discourse, “human rights”.
In 1994, the current Dalai Lama attempted to organize a meeting with some of his closest friends in London. Among the sweet and cuddly Dalai Lama’s closest friends were ex Waffen SS man Heinrich Harrer, Bruno Beger, a former Nazi ethnologist who worked in Auschwitz, and the Chilean neo-Nazi Miguel Serrano. Serrano happens to believe that Adolf Hitler was a god. 15
Neo-Nazi dictator of Chile, Augusto Pinochet, was also a close friend of the Dalai Lama, who personally intervened in Spain to get the Butcher of Chile off the hook when he was about to be tried for crimes against humanity in 1998.
Another important friend of the Dalai Lama is the Japanese Shoko Asahara, a religious cult leader who was convicted of terrorism in Japan in 1995 after having organized a poison Sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway.
Asahara has been a close associate of the Dalai Lama since meeting him at a ceremony of the Ashun-Su sect in Tokyo. Since then, Asahara met with the Dalai Lama several times and was deeply influenced by the Tibetan leader.
Sarin gas was first developed in Nazi Germany. Asahara’s insane cult hoped to seize power in Japan by spraying the poison gas into the Japanese parliament from a helicopter. The first part of the terrorist attack involved murdering people in the Tokyo metro with the Sarin gas. The following is apparently the hymn Asahara’s followers sung:
It came from Nazi Germany, a dangerous little chemical weapon,
Sarin! Sarin!
If you inhale the mysterious vapor, you will fall with bloody vomit
from your mouth,
Sarin! Sarin! Sarin — the chemical weapon.
Song of Sarin, the brave.
In the peaceful night of Matsumoto City
People can be killed, even with our own hands,
Everywhere there are dead bodies,
There! Inhale Sarin, Sarin,
Prepare Sarin! Prepare Sarin! Immediately poisonous gas weapons
Will fill the place.
Spray! Spray! Sarin, the brave Sarin.16
On February 10th, 1999, Julie Campbell, a Scottish Buddhist nun, revealed that she had been a sex-slave for years to the Buddhist guru Kalu Rinpoche, the teacher of the 14th Dalai Lama.17 Sexual abuse figures prominently in the legacy of Lamaist Buddhism.
The more one considers the Dalai Lama’s friends and followers, the more the connections with neo-Nazism become apparent. One is tempted here to resurrect the cliché which states that one can judge someone by the friendship he keeps.
The Dalai Lama: Religious Tolerance, Human Values
According to the Toulouse Tibetan festival website, the purpose of the Dalai Lama’s visit to the French town was to engage in dialogue on the promotion of human values, the promotion of tolerance among religions and the well-being of the Tibetan people.
The official press reports of the Toulouse Tibetan festival were relayed by the French media without any discussion as to their validity or veracity. It is well known, for example, that the Dalai Lama has outlawed the Dorje Shugden sect of Buddhism in Dharamsala, India, the city which is home to the separatist Tibetan government in exile.
In 2008, France 24 broadcast a report from Dharamsala where they filmed Dorje Shugden monks being shunned by the local community on the Dalai Lama’s orders. The report showed how signs are regularly put on many shops in the region forbidding the entry of Dorje Shugden worshipers. According to the report, whole families have been ostracized due to their belief in the traditional Buddhist god Dorje Shugden.
Although the Dalai Lama claims that Dorje Shugden is a demon and that the cult is a deviation, the worship of the Dorje Shugden is widespread throughout traditional Tibetan Buddhism. Since the Dalai Lama’s decision to outlaw this practice, thousands of monks have been excluded from visiting temples. In fact, the Dalai Lama’s dictatorial campaign against the Dorje Shugden religion threatens to exclude over 4 million Tibetans from practicing their religion.
According to the Dalai Lama, the Dorje Shugden are traitors to the cause of Tibetan independence. Such is the Tibetan leader’s “tolerance”. The Dalai Lama’s violations of human rights are rarely, if ever, mentioned among the cacophony of hysterical “free Tibet” sloganeering in the mass media.
Death threats and the ostracism of whole families who practice this traditional form of Buddhism are common in Dharamsala. Thousands of people have had to flee Dharamsala due to the “tolerant” Dalai Lama’s commands. Many people have been murdered.
The French documentary made it abundantly clear that the Dalai Lama functions as an absolute dictator in Dharamsala. The French film crew was even prevented by Tibetan officials from recording a dispute between a Dorje Shugden monk and his pro-Dalai Lama opponent.
