Tibetans Self-Immolation as a Protest Against Chinese Forces

The Tibetans and the Navajo Native Americans are from different cultures. The Tibetan’s have lived intertwined with China for centuries. They tried to free themselves from China rules yet they failed. The 14th Dalai Lama fled China and found exile in India. China to this day has total control over Tibetan people. “Using all the tools of repression to deter and punish Tibetan resistance” as stated on Free Tibet. The people of Tibet are dedicated to the Dalai Lama. The monks and nuns play a vital part in the community, furthermore they are viewed as teachers and mentors. The Chinese did not want the Dalai Lama to have the followers that he had. If a person how any paraphernalia of the Dalai Lama could lead to their incarceration and or torture. The Chinese monitors and controls the religious aspects in Tibet. Consequently, the Chinese government found the devotion of the Tibetans to the Dalai Lama as a danger to their political goals. By way of contrast with the conflict with the Chinese government, the monks live a simple life. The Tibetan monks believes in the liberation of all being, personal enlightenment, compassion and nature around us.

“In 1949 35,00 Chinese troops invaded Tibet.”This was put into detail in an article by Hisyam Takiudin.The Chinese raped,tortured,and murdered one fifth of the Tibetan population,most in work camps and during arbitrary.As a result,47 million people in all have died during these tragic times. The brutality was so bad that the parents with children were forced to bury their children alive when they disobeyed.These crimes have lasted 49 years! Evidently,these crimes are still being committed! In Tibet today there is still no freedom of speech,religion, and arbitrary detainment still continues. As Tibetans are being slaughtered,we’re sitting here doing

Mao was the leader of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Above everything, he was a communist. His world revolves around him being a communist (Wood, 8, Class Notes). He believed that the world was divided into two separate sides, the communists and the capitalists. This shaped the way in which he conducted matters for mainland China because everything he did was justified by his communist ideologies (Mao, 13). Many of the things he did was because he always thought about communism being his number one priority. The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution are two main events that Mao led that shape his worldviews in having an underlying tone of communism which will be discussed later on in the essay. Mao wanted equality within all aspects of life throughout all classes in society. He believed that every individual should be treated the same (Mao, 19).

In recent years, China has become a worldwide superpower-seemingly out of nowhere. War-torn and sick of being trampled on by western powers, the Communist Party of China has given the almost 4,000 year old country a new lease on life. But all this newfound power and “prosperity” came at a price paid in sweat and blood. In the memoir Red Scarf Girl, Jiang Ji-Li recalls her experiences growing up during Chairman Mao’s “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution”, during a time where hundreds of thousands were unfairly persecuted and even tortured by their brainwashed friends and family. Although it is clear that my experiences and Jiang Ji-Li’s are very different, there are also some similarities.

The Republic of China never attained direct control over Tibet, and so there was a de facto independent Tibetan state. This unofficial and unrecognized country continued to exist for about forty years. During this time, Tibet was controlled by a very conservative people. Refusing to modernize and/or industrialize. When the communist revolution in China occurred, and the former government fled to Taiwan, they would have to face a new threat: the People’s Republic of China. The People’s Republic claimed that the Tibetan government was exploiting the citizens as serfs, and that they should be liberated from them by none other than the People’s Liberation Army. Although Tibet actually had a high resemblance to medieval European feudalism, the government never exploited the citizens per se. When the PLA was at their doorstep, they were nowhere near prepared and were conquered by the Chinese. They were eventually officially annexed into China, and the 14th Dalai Lama was exiled to India. Under the PRC, the Tibetans endured many hardships that were brought upon them. The so-called Great Leap Forward led to widespread starvation, and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution led the Red Army to destroy thousands of cultural artifacts and sites,

Tezin Gyatso, the head of state and the spiritual leader of Tibet, was born in Amdo, China on July 6, 1935 into a peasant family. At the age of two, Gyatso was recognized as the reincarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama, and therefore an incarnation of Avalokitesvara, the Buddha of Compassion. Gyatso’s life as the Dalai Lama began when he was enthroned at the age of four in Lhasa. However his political responsibilities did not arise until 1950 when thousands of soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army invaded Lhasa. In 1959, the Tibetans held the largest demonstration against China’s invasion of their home, therefore declaring Tibet’s already established independence. This was known as the Tibetan National Uprising, which was crushed by the Chinese army. As a result, Gyatso and over 100,000 Tibetans fled across the Himalayas and into India where His Holiness was given political asylum.

Tibetans also went into exile due to this event. Since then the Dalai Lama has lived

What comes out of this massive and detailed dossier is a tale of horror in which Mao emerges as one of the greatest mass murderers in history, responsible for the deaths of at least 45 million people between 1958 and 1962. It is not merely the extent of the catastrophe that dwarfs earlier estimates, but also the manner in which many people died: between two and three million victims were tortured to death or summarily killed, often for the slightest infraction.

The People’s Liberation Army, during the early years of the People’s Republic of China, invaded Tibet due to its rich mineral resources and its tangential historical relationship with China. The current Dalai Lama was extremely young and just recently installed, making his life analogous to the struggles of the Tibetan people. After various early struggles for independence between the Tibetan people and China, the Dalai Lama was forced to flee into exile. Since then he has been espousing a vision for Tibet encompassing autonomy within China. Mishra’s article also discusses the governmental, social, and cultural aspects of the Dalai Lama’s life and the Tibetan independence movement. But, perhaps most important, the piece emphasizes the Dalai Lama’s modernistic and progressive attitudes, including a belief that he might be the last Dalai Lama as he considers the institution to have “outlived its

Unlike many other children in China, I received a Buddhist upbringing, and spent altogether 8 months in Tibet studying traditional Tibetan Buddhism at the age of 12. One thing I learned from this surreal experience is that it’s not enough just to pray and to read the Buddhist scriptures aloud like quite a number of believers do in Mainland, China. I noticed that Lamas (Tibetan monks) would not only practice Buddhism, but also respect and even research on other religions other than Buddhism. Regardless of the stereotypes about its esoteric and even mysterious doctrines, Tibetan Buddhism is very interesting and appealing to learn and is full of vivid stories. The thoughts conveyed and the stories embedded in What the Buddha Taught are practically

China's and Tibet's long and haggard history reached its dramatic climax in 1949, the start of China's invasion and illegal annexation of a country they claimed was crying out for ‘liberation' from ‘imperialist forces' and from the ‘reactionary feudal regime in Lhasa', with ludicrously fabricated justification that it had the right to do so using its own colonial policies,

As of 2009, The Chinese Communist Party has allegedly tortured and killed approximately 2,000 (Jacobs, 2009 pg.1) people who practiced Falun Gong. Falun Gong is a peaceful group. They don’t quite consider themselves a religion, but the CCP has deemed them a “cult” (Chang, 2004 pg.96). What is it about this organization that threatens the CCP so much, that they feel the need to imprison them, torture them, and sometimes execute them? To answer that question, you must first look at China’s traditional and political history, and also examine objectively, the history and ideals of Falun Gong.

On April 16, 1989, in Tiananmen Square which is in Beijing, China experienced a protest which was called the June Fourth incident or more commonly known as the Tiananmen Square Protest. China, which had been controlled by the Communist Party since Mao Zedong’s rise of power during the Cold War, had been ruled over by Deng Xiaoping at the time of the protest. More than a million protesters which mostly consisted of students, had gathered at the square, protesting for reforms and the political transition to a democratic society. Through time, the student based protesters soon gained support nationwide as many supporters travelled to Beijing to support the students. However, the protest for reform did not only occurred at the square; the people who sided with the protesters spread the revolt to nearly four hundred cities in China. The protest had been smoothly executed without violence until the government sent forces which ended in a massacre.

An estimate near one million Chinese citizens, most of which were young students, gathered into the center of Beijing protesting for greater democracy. They also demanded Chinese Communist Party authority to resign, because of their restrictive form of governing. Protestors chanted, marched and even staked out for about three weeks. Much of the events were recorded and reported by western reporters to be released in United States and Europe. Both Chinese troops and police mortally attacked the protestors at the Tiananmen Square, the center of Beijing. This brutal attack occurred on June 4, 1989. The troops and police randomly fired into the crowds. Thousands of students tried escaping from the massacre. Some of the protestors fought back. The

After few days later, October 1st will be China’s 68th birthday. There are going to be a magnificent celebration ceremony at Tian An Men square. In 1949, Chairman Mao boarded the gate tower of Tiananmen and then announced to the world in his native mandarin that new China was founded after the Chinese people won a peaceful and stable country after decades of fighting. In the meantime, we have the awakening of our own consciousness and the struggle between different ideologies of traditional culture. The martyr's resistance with all cost is to live with dignity and for the sake of their posterity. It is a very proud thing that we can stand on our own land and strive for ourselves.