by Emily Larsen
| May 22, 2019 12:01 AM
U.S. Ambassador to China Terry Branstad is scheduled to make a rare visit to Tibet this week to raise concerns about Chinese restrictions on Buddhist practices and to advocate for the preservation of Tibetan culture. If he wanted, he could seek knowledge and advice from a surprising source: Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who wrote her college thesis on Tibet, but has been strangely quiet about the issue while in Congress.
Gillibrand is proficient in Mandarin and interviewed the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, as part of her 1988 senior thesis at Dartmouth College on the history of Tibetan resistance to Chinese occupation. The New York senator was an Asian Studies major at Dartmouth and studied abroad in China and Taiwan.
A young Gillibrand thought that compromise rather than full independence could be the answer to the friction, an idea suggested by the Dalai Lama.
“[A] substantial change in China’s policies toward religious and cultural freedom could provide for an acceptable arrangement between the Tibetans and the Chinese,” Gillibrand wrote in her thesis, obtained by the Washington Examiner.
But despite her knowledge and experience, Gillibrand has not been vocal about the relationship between China and Tibet since she joined Congress in 2007.
Unlike some of her Democratic colleagues, including 2020 primary rivals Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Gillibrand did not sponsor a number of bills or resolutions relating to human rights or culture in Tibet, such as a measure that became law last year to deny visas to Chinese officials who keep Americans from accessing Tibet and a resolution expressing support for the people of Tibet. Her staff did meet with representatives from Students for a Free Tibet lobbying for a bill last year.
Gillibrand is, however, a co-sponsor of a bill to “condemn gross human rights violations of ethnic Turkic Muslims,” or Uighurs, in China. China denies that it is trying to eliminate the presence of Uighurs.
Gillibrand’s Senate office and presidential campaign did not respond to requests for comment relating to her actions and thoughts on Tibetan issues.
In one chapter of her thesis, Gillibrand detailed the horrors of China’s “socialist transformation” of Tibet in the ’60s and ’70s.
“In order to find the ‘hidden enemies of the people’ and lead Tibet on the socialist path towards class struggle, the Chinese imposed thamzing or struggle sessions,” Gillibrand wrote. “Tibetans were brought in front of a tribunal of Chinese officials and were made to bend at the waist in a cowed position. The tribunal official would read off the ‘crimes’ the prisoner had committed in front of large gatherings of fellow Tibetans and Chinese … A witness to the prisoner’s nd suggest further punishment.”
[ Also read: Gillibrand on immigration: ‘I wouldn’t use the detention system at all’]
Suggested punishments included burning alive, hanging, beheading, stoning, or forcing small children to shoot their parents, according to Gillibrand’s thesis.
“Another step to encourage the development of socialism was to discourage Tibetans’ devotion to religion since religion opposed the communist ideology,” Gillibrand wrote. “… In order to create ideologic hegemony and therefore a stable government, there could be no difference between the beliefs, goals, and values of the Tibetans and the Chinese.”
The Chinese imprisoned people for reciting Tibetan mantras, turning prayer wheels, and having photographs of the Dalai Lama, Gillibrand explained. Most of those who went to prison died due to the severe conditions.
Today, Gillibrand brushes off the term “socialism” in relation to policies that she supports, telling New York Magazine in March that “the country is very well aware of the difference between capitalism and greed.” She advocates for Medicare for All with the expectation of essentially eliminating private insurance and has said that there is “nothing socialist” about the Green New Deal.
In 2009, Gillibrand suggested that her knowledge of China and experience traveling in Asia could help her be pragmatic in dealing with human rights in China.
“Our relationship with China is extraordinarily complicated, and when you do understand the culture better, having that appreciation means you can hopefully find compromises,” she told the New York Times.
source: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/
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