Are you persuaded by the stream of images released across social media and the internet showing Tibetans in various happy poses, framed in a context of contented modernity? Well the Chinese regime sure hopes so, as it wages a 24/7 psy-op to win your attention and lead you to conclude that Tibet is thriving and developing under China’s occupation. Yet everything is not as it seems in such staged shows of happiness. As indicated in the image above, behind the faked-smiles and flag waving lies the ever present hand of Chinese tyranny.
Leading fashion brands in staged fashion (propaganda) show in Lhasa, occupied Tibet, September 3, 2019
Image: palennyima/chinadaily
On Tuesday, September 3 the Chinese regime authorized in Lhasa, occupied Tibet what was reported to be an ‘international fashion show’. There are many such events promoted by China’s propagandist outlets, across social media and the internet.
It’s a clever deception targeting a western audience, a cynical psy-op to mislead and distract from the traumatizing reality of Chinese rule in Tibet. Fashion, after all, is considered a form of high culture, a beauteous design reflecting modernity. To stage such shows in Tibet offers the oppressors and torturers of the Tibetan people an opportunity to cement in the perception of an occidental mind the notion that China has brought positive development and economic progress.
It also provides the vultures of commerce a chance to profit, which no doubt explains why the following fashion brands were actively involved in the Lhasa event: Chopard, Max Mara, Lane Crawford, Dazzle, Ports 1961, Brunello Cuccinelli, Mikimoto, Mr & Mrs Italy
Yet as their designers, costumers, cosmetic artists, hair stylists and photographers assembled in Lhasa what consideration was given to the condition and suffering Tibetans beyond the show’s security perimeter?
Of course we know the answer, right? A willing collaboration with the Chinese authorities reveals a cold indifference to the misery, injustice, tyranny and torture inflicted upon Tibetans, beyond the four-star venue and hotels which accommodated these companies.
Next time you go to the mall, keep an eye open for products from those fashion brands and ask yourself if anyone supporting freedom and human rights would in all conscience be comfortable with buying any of their products?
Original image;usmissionchina/ap-upgraded by @tibettruth
The only fact that a visiting diplomat to occupied Tibet can come away with is this:
There is no way she or he will ever discover the nature or extent of Chinese oppression of Tibet’s people and culture because every moment of such trips are controlled and monitored. There is no freedom for independent assessment, everything is choreographed by the Chinese regime. The only Tibetans met will be those who are willing collaborators, minds contaminated by China’s propaganda, Ordinary Tibetans are fearful to speak, the conseqences being dark indeed.
In truth Ambassador Branstad has been a compliant player in an exercise of disinformation and censorship, we wonder if he will report that reality, or would such a disclosure be considered by the State Department too offensive to Chinese sensitivities?
Sera monastery, Lhasa, Tibet, now an indoctrination center and tourist attraction
Image: archivenet
For anyone selfish or unthinking enough to take a vacation to Lhasa its likely they will join a tour to Sera Monastery just north of the Tibetan capital. There they can see monks enjoying Buddhist debate, marvel at the traditional architecture and absorb the peaceful environs at which Buddhism is flourishing.
Meanwhile behind that staged show of supposed cultural freedom a darker reality exists for Tibetans, although you would not come into contact with that during your tightly controlled and monitored time at Sera.
Dictator Xi jinping prominently displayed within Sera Monastery
Image: Eric Baculinao
We wonder how such tourists would feel about their Tibet trip had they been in attendance at a March 13 meeting in Sera during which a panel of Tibetan collaborators (Lhakpa Tsering ‘Lhasa, Monastery Management Committee Director’, Tsetan Dorje, ‘Manager Sera monastery’ and Jampa Kelsang, ‘Media and Education Committee Director’ Sera Monastery) addressed some three hundred monks. Insisting that they should “… feel grateful to the Chinese government and show their loyalty to the nation by obeying the country’s laws,”.
Tibet’s religious centers are now under occupation by Chinese paramilitary and the thought-police of China’s regime
Image: Tsering Woeser
Surrounded by Chinese paramilitary police, security officials and ‘management’ staff the monks were ordered to stand against what was described as ‘sepratism’. They were also warned of a series of prohibitions regarding online activity, including posting any information the regime considers sensitive.
Tourists, undercover Chinese officials and paramilitary mingle within Lhasa’s Jokhang temple
Image: Tsering Woeser
The meeting concluded with an exultation ‘re-pay China’s generosity in Tibet and demonstrate loyalty to Beijing and love for the top leadership of China’s ruling Communist Party.’.
Sera monastery is in truth no longer a center for Buddhist learning, like monasteries across Tibet it is an indoctrination facility, placed under a suffocating control by the thought-police of the Chinese regime.
Sera monastery is effectively a prison in which its Tibetan Buddhist inmates are under 24/7 surveillance and forced to perform for tourists.
Image: Tsering Woeser
It also has another function, one that exploits the wonderment, gullibility and ignorance of those who travel to Lhasa for an exotic vacation. It’s calculated and tightly controlled illusion of a thriving Tibetan Buddhist culture is an important propaganda tool to manipulate and deceive.
Image: courtesy of the Chinese regime/adapted by @tibettruth
The surrounding regions of Lhasa such as Ngari witness regular convoys of buses heading off to Tibet’s capital. On board are Tibetan children and their Chinese ‘minders’ headed for indoctrination centers.
Image: courtesy of the Chinese regime/adapted by @tibettruth
The aims of which are to erode Tibetan cultural identity. The language medium is Chinese, classrooms and corridors display the propaganda slogans of China’s communist party regime, each day children are lined up to sing in praise of dictator Xi Jinping. Chinese culture dominates every aspect of attendance at these centers, including the food!
Image: courtesy of the Chinese regime/adapted by @tibettruth
This psychological assault is one of the weapons used to assimilate Tibetans and eradicate any notion of national and cultural distinctiveness.
Tibetan Puppets On China’s String, Performing In Lhasa, March 23 2019
Image:newscn
No other political authority reaches the excesses of China’s regime when it comes to the deployment of euphemism. Within its monolithic structure there’s a dedicated team engineering pretentious titles to deflect from or mask the odious realities of China’s tyranny.
Take the phrase democratic reform used by China to describe a ‘process’ born it claims from Tibetans, who we are asked to believe appealed for the Chinese authorities to suppress the Lhasa Uprising of 1959. Following that military response the ‘reforms’ were launched with devastating consequences for the Tibetan people and their culture.
Apart from being a calculated deception it is of course an oxymoron of titanic proportions that a totalitarian, self-described communist state, headed by the dictator Mao Zedong could describe the cultural genocide which followed as a democratic transformation.
Whatever injustices existed withing Tibetan society were replaced by a foreign military occupation, mass arrests, forced labor camps, political thought-control, and the armed imposition of policies which targeted Tibetan culture as ideologically corrupt and regressive.
Like a serial kleptomanic who has come to believe his delusional insistence that thievery is economic redistribution, the Chinese government regards its deranged falsehoods as legitimate. In truth the so-called ‘reforms’ it celebrates are a political fiction and no amount of smiling Tibetan dancers performing in the front of Lhasa’s Potala Palace will change that fact.
Tibetans and their culture victims of voyeurism by floods of tourists
Image:usatoday
We’ve long taken the position that tourism to occupied Tibet serves the interests of the China’s regime and bank-balances of Chinese dominated tourist businesses. Those seeking the ‘spiritual experience’ of visiting Tibet are exploited, manipulated and controlled by the Chinese authorities. What they are allowed to see is an ersatz version of Tibetan culture, engineered by the same regime which, away from the stage-managed tourist hot-spots, wages a genocidal assault upon Tibetan national and cultural identity.
Image:archivenet
Our just criticism and opposition on this issue occasionally results in weak responses from those who attempt to justify tourism to Tibet by claiming their presence enables information on the plight of Tibetans to reach the wider world. This reasoning held some credibility in the late 1980s and 1990s but no longer. With the instant access of the internet (informed by the knowledge, testimony, courage and sacrifices of Tibetans inside Tibet) the dire circumstances endured by Tibet’s people is freely available, 24/7 via a few taps of a mobile device or laptop.
The once pristine shores of Tso Ngonpo in Amdo region of Tibet now trashed by tourism
Image:chinacn
The fact is that travelers are lead by a leash along well worn and safe tourist routes, constantly monitored, meeting approved Tibetans and exposed to China’s distorted version of Tibetan culture. They do not see the torture centers, visit forced labor camps, or witness the misery of Tibetans forced into concentration settlements.
Tourists smile for the occasion, oblivious to the fact that from this location near Lhasa’s Jokhang Temple Chinese paramilitary threw Tibetan monks to their death
Image:archivenet
Of course that inconvenient reality is not what tourists to Tibet are paying top dollars for. They come for the illusion of a Buddhist Shangri-la, which the Chinese tyranny is more than happy to fabricate, while milking them as cash-cows and promoting its propaganda narrative.
