In China, a 'Guantanamo Bay' for Tibetan Buddhist monks

By B Raman The military detention centre set up by the US in the Guantanamo Bay area of Cuba to detain and interrogate Al Qaeda suspects arrested in different parts of the world has been criticised by all right-thinking people around the world for a decade now.  Some have questioned the legitimacy of this centre; others have been more openly critical of its inhumanity. Yet, no one is talking about the new Guantanamo Bay-type military detention centre that has reportedly been set up by the Chinese authorities under the supervision of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to interrogate and subject an estimated 300 Buddhist monks, young and old, to so-called “legal education”. They are not Al Qaeda suspects. They are not terrorism suspects. They are not criminals who have committed murder, rape or any other common law crime. They are just religious people who have remained steadfast in their adherence to the Buddhist religion and in their support and loyalty to the Dalai Lama. Their only crime was to refuse to eat in solidarity with a 16-year-old monk who committed self-immolation on March 16 to protest against Chinese colonisation of Tibet. He belonged to the famous Kirti monastery in the Aba County in the Aba Tibetan-Qiang Autonomous Prefecture of Sichuan province. [caption id=“attachment_24640” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“The Chinese authorities have started a demonisation campaign against 300 monks who expressed solidarity with the young monk who self immolated  himself to protest against Chinese colonisation of Tibet. AFP”]  [/caption] Since then, the Chinese authorities of the Ministry of Public Security have started a demonisation campaign against 300 monks of the monastery who expressed their solidarity with the young monk. The monks have been accused of various petty crimes such as visiting prostitutes or inviting prostitutes into the monastery. Initially, the Chinese authorities had them confined in the monastery, reduced their daily rations and forced them to attend so-called “re-education classes”. When they could not break the monk protest movement, they reportedly shifted them to a special military detention centre set up in Sichuan province. So long as the monks were being detained in the monastery, the world was receiving some news of them; but since they were shifted to the military detention centre, the flow of information has come down. International human rights activists have been treating these monks as missing persons and are asking the Chinese for more information on them. They are demanding that human rights activists be allowed to visit the detention centre and meet the monks. The Chinese have refused to allow any humanitarian visit as provided for under international humanitarian laws. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei claimed on June 8 that there were no “enforced disappearances” at the Kirti monastery. Hong said the local authorities had taken some monks for “legal education”. The same day, UN officials asked China for details of the whereabouts of the monks. “We encourage the authorities to undertake full investigations into the ongoing practice of enforced disappearances,” said a statement from the UN’s working group on enforced disappearances. But at his weekly news conference, Hong told journalists that no such thing was happening in the monastery. “The relevant local authorities are conducting legal education for the Kirti monastery monks in order to maintain religious order there. There was no question of forced disappearances,” he said. Hong added that “relevant organisations” should “abandon bias and be objective and fair”. Meanwhile, there are indications that the protest movement by the monks has spread to Kardze (in Chinese, Ganzi) region, including Kardze town. No details are available. The Chinese authorities have imposed such an effective control on the use of the Internet by Tibetans that not much information is coming out, even through micro-blogging platforms.While the rest of the world is benefiting from the relaxation of restrictions and the greater transparency as a result of the Jasmine Revolution sweeping across West Asia and Africa, the Chinese have denied these benefits to Tibetans and their monks. They have sought to crush the ‘Tibetan jasmine’ even before it can bloom. It is time for the world to raise its voice and demand more information on the Chinese military detention centre and its Buddhist inmates. B Raman is Additional Secretary (retired), Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India; he is currently Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre for China Studies. Republished with permission from the Chennai Centre for China Studies.