US State Department Condemns China’s Control over Religious Freedom in Tibet

By Asmita Bakshi / June 12, 2018;

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The International Religious Freedom Report 2017 was released by the United States State Department on May 29. The report is published annually and describes the status of religious freedom in every country, covering government policies which violate religious belief as well as US policies to promote religious freedom around the world. The report is submitted in accordance with the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998.

In the section on China, the report highlights the control exercised by the Chinese authorities over religious freedom in Tibet in the year 2017, –saying that while the constitution of the People’s Republic of China states that citizens “enjoy freedom of religious beliefs”, the authorities place strict regulations on the practice of Buddhism in the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR).

The report brings out some of these regulations in detail – including the assertion of State control over religious venues, groups and personnel; the authorities reserving the right to “deny permission for a lama to be recognised as reincarnated”, saying that “The government continued to exercise its authority over the approval of reincarnations of Tibetan Buddhist lamas and the supervision of their religious education,” and added that “authorities closely supervised the education of many key young reincarnate lamas” and that “government officials, rather than religious leaders, continued to manage the selection of the reincarnate lamas’ religious and lay tutors in the TAR and some other Tibetan areas.”It also referred to the authorities’ “formal control over the building and management of religious structures”.

It reports the “forced disappearance, physical abuse, prolonged detention, and arbitrary arrest of persons due to their religious practice” and revealed that according to local sources, 11,500 monks and nuns were evicted from Buddhist institutes at Larung Gar and Yachen Gar by Chinese authorities, and thedestruction of “as many as 6,000 homes where they resided and subjecting many of them to ‘patriotic re-education.’”

The report further states that cases of self-immolation as a means of protest against government policies doubled this year and stood at six, as against the previous year when three protestors lost their lives. The youngest of these protestors was 16-year-old ChagdorKyab, who set fire to himself in Bora (Bola) Township of Xiahe (Sangchu) County, Gansu Province, “while calling for Tibetan freedom and the return of the Dalai Lama.”

The report drew attention to the fact that “Government officials regularly denigrated the Dalai Lama publicly” and “continued to maintain tight control over the activities of religious leaders and religious gatherings of laypersons,” including the prohibition that “many monasteries and laypersons [should] not celebrate or organise any public gatherings for celebrations of the Dalai Lama’s 82nd birthday in July”, among other significant commemorative events.

The report stated that the “US government repeatedly pressed Chinese authorities to respect religious freedom for all faiths and to allow Tibetans to preserve, practice, teach, and develop their religious traditions and language without interference from the government. US officials expressed concerns to the Chinese government at the highest levels about the severe restrictions imposed on Tibetans’ ability to exercise their human rights and fundamental freedoms, including religious freedom and cultural rights.”