Is Dharamsala truly safe for Tibetans?

[Rinchen]

This article is an old article that was posted about two years ago. However, it shows the kind of suffering that the Tibetan are facing when they are living as refugees in Dharamsala, India. They have been getting assaults and spit upon by the local Gaddi.

Some of the Tibetan women were even assaulted, raped and dumped by the road side. No one should be going through things like that and no one should be treated this way no matter what they have done.

It is a little amusing yet upsetting that even for the CTA office buildings are not being left alone. These building become "an open urinal" and the windows are being broken into. Yet, the CTA have nothing to say and none of the CTA staff dare to speak up to this.

Why do they let others treat them this way? Knowing that they do the same thing towards Dorje Shudgen practitioners will mean that they do not like what is going on. Thus, why do they do things that they do not like to others? Is this true Buddhism?

Is Dharamshala Safe for Tibetans?
By Mila Rangzen
June 12, 2014

No government or people on earth have ever helped exile Tibetans more than the government and people of India have done for the past six decades. They have helped Tibetans humanitarianly, educationally, economically, culturally, spiritually and even politically to a point. Tibetans all over the world will forever remain indebted to their wisdom and compassion in action. While the Dalai Lama is given great care and protection by the Indian Government, the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) should now make stabilising the status of the Tibetans in India a priority instead of going to functions and getting all the aid money for their families while thousands of poor illiterate Tibetans are at all kinds of risks.


For example, visit ICT website and see how much fat cats like Gyari Lodoe have been doing for the restoration of Tibetan dignity and materialisation of democratic freedoms--their stated mission for more than 25 years. Now after 56 years of hanging in a legal limbo, it’s time for a change. The harsh new reality for Tibetans in India today is the deteriorating social conditions that threaten a precious relationship - that of the Tibetan refugees and their Indian hosts. The focus here is Dharamshala and a way out with Indian citizenship on a new realistic Tibetan base in South India.

Small and dirty conditions of Dharamshala, illustrate how fragile life is for Tibetans without citizenship. Last year in Dharamshala, a Tibetan man in his 30s was thrown off from a third story building by a half dozen local Gaddi men in an altercation. Gaddis are one of the Indian tribal communities residing in Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh in north India. The man was rendered paralyzed below the waist for life but the culprits are roaming free. A Tibetan woman on a late night bus, alone as she was nearing her destination, lower Dharamsala, was brutally assaulted, raped and robbed and dumped on the roadside by the Gaddi bus driver and the conductor. She was hospitalized for a week at the Tibetan Delek hospital. Many Tibetan nuns hire cabs late night to get to their nunnery.

The cabs are run by Gaddi drivers. Often nuns get molested and raped by these Gaddi taxi drivers on their way to Dolma Ling Nunnery near Norbulingka, a few kilometers away from the headquarters of CTA. A couple of weeks ago, some Tibetan tenants (new arrivals from Tibet) were assaulted on their heads with pots and pans by their Gaddi landlord and his men for failing to pay the room rent on time. Several Tibetan women from Manali Regional Tibetan Women Association (RTWA) were repeatedly punched and kicked by the Gaddi restaurant owners (males) when they complained that they were overcharged for the lunch they ate at a bus stop. Since then they have refused to eat at the restaurant and carry their own lunch from home on their way to Delhi to participate in the Free Tibet demonstrations.

A 6’2’’ NGO friend, weighing 280lbs was threatened with a severe whipping by a skinny 12 year old Gaddi boy for parking his car on the roadside near his store in lower Dharamsala, and my friend said he could do nothing about it because if he yelled back, scores of idle Gaddi onlookers were already closing in on him with the fire of hatred raging in their eyes, itching to give him an unfair, aggravated mob assault for which there is no legal consequence as the mob would coolly melt away into the crowd if the police showed up at all and leave him for dead.

And it doesn’t end there. I too have encountered dozens of very unpleasant experiences at the hands of the Gaddi mobs. Once a Gaddi mob of men, women and children subjected me to an aggravated assault for breaking a twig from a small skinny dead eucalyptus tree lying near a vertical rock on which I was painting a 20 feet tall Free Tibet slogan that could be seen from miles away. I was thrown around like a piece of rag and I am not a midget by Tibetan or Asian standard. The mob numbered around at least two dozen men from the nearby local village. A Tibetan boy around 8 years old was sitting on his seat in a bus near McLeod Ganj, perhaps getting off at Forsyth Ganj just 2 km away.

A Gaddi man around 40 years old hopped on the bus and began to unseat the boy by cursing and intimidation just as the bus started moving. This failed to work. The boy stood firm and resolute. The man tried to yank the little boy out of his seat. The boy resisted. The man then slapped the boy repeatedly on his face and that's when I jumped in and said enough is enough. Obviously, a fight ensued between the two of us, and in the next instant the bus stopped, and a dozen Gaddi passengers were all over me and I was once again mobbed unconscious and dumped along the roadside.

As much as the physical beatings were unbearably painful and dehumanizing, I was disgusted more by the sheer ethnic prejudice, racism and hatred spewing out of people whom I had never ever personally seen before! Obviously, there was no room for personal grudges. We didn’t even know each other. Their famous curse reserved especially for us Tibetans still echoes in my ears, “Lambayway! Mayawa judey khaneyway!” which translates into “You Tibetan mother fuckers who deserve a beating with shoes!” This curse is a prelude to a severe mob thrashing.

As you enter the main gate of the Tibetan Administration Secretariat in Gangkyi, it stinks of heavy urine. If you are looking for the Tibetan cabinet building and the administrative departments, you simply can’t miss it. The stink will confirm where you are. A bunch of Gaddi taxi drivers created an illegal taxi stand on the CTA property near the gate and they have turned it into an open urinal. Often they play cricket on the road breaking the windows of the CTA office buildings with the cricket balls. They eat at the small roadside tea cafe nearby and throw all the trash on the CTA turf. They sexually harass Tibetan female staff walking home alone after work. They scream, drink and break the bottles on the CTA compound. Not one cabinet minister or parliamentarian or CTA staff-- who usually acts so brave and tough when it comes to fighting among ourselves over trivial matters-- got the guts to complain and drive them off the property.

Playing it down is all they can do. The reader can well imagine the fear under which every day Tibetans exist. Communalism in essence is nothing short of terrorism albeit it comes in a different form. Many of these Gaddi cab drivers have sold their properties mainly small pieces of land to the Indian businessmen who have migrated from the plains, and now with all their money spent, uneducated and business not doing well, they vent all their frustration on Tibetans who they find easy targets. The Tibetan status of statelessness and “refugee” is taken advantage of to the point that they get away with even murder. Years ago, two of my soldier friends were beaten, murdered and thrown into a river by a mob of Gaddi villagers. Their crime was saying Namaste (greetings) to a pretty local woman but the murderers are free as innocents. Call it mob violence or ethnic persecution or hate crime, it has been going on and off since the late 80s.
       
CTA! We are tired of the racial hatred, envy and jealousy of the local Gaddis. We are sick of being insulted, humiliated, molested, assaulted, and bullied by Gaddi mobs everyday in restaurants, stores, schools, work place, hospitals, streets, buses, cabs and homes simply because we are stateless. We are sick of CTA’s silence on this. We are sick of being silenced on this ethnic persecution that is violating our basic human rights. We don't want to be told to act timidly and submissively simply because we are “refugees” or Buddhists or Tibetans. We are human beings first! We don’t want to be reminded of the loss of our country – a perfect excuse for the Gaddis to trample upon us in any way they want any time any where. Independence comes and goes but humanity, under all circumstances, must remain.

Humble and peaceful we are, arrogant and violent we are not. We have no communal clashes with the Brahmins, Jats, Sikhs and Rajput communities in Dharamsala. In any case, if the same persecution regardless of whether the nature is political or racial continues in any place in exile, we have no choice but to leave for a better safer place to live in peace, a place where we can be stateless and yet enjoy basic human dignity. Read “Dharamsala Days and Dharamsala Nights” by McDonald and you will get a good idea of what Tibetans have been going through racially in Dharamshala.

 I am not complaining here about the occasional one-on-one violence which is although uncalled for is sometimes understandable, living in a big human society that is stressed out by competition for scant resources in order to survive. What is cowardly is the frequent sight of a dozen local Gaddi men bashing a single unarmed Tibetan man or woman in the streets of Lower Dharamsala or Mcleod Ganj or Manali as if we looted their entire generational family wealth. We Tibetans are also trying to survive like every one else. Disgusting is an understatement to describe their sheer exploitation of the protection that comes with tribal mob bashing opportunity.

However, Tibetans themselves suffer a terribly wrong notion that fighting back a “host” who urinates on their heads is ungrateful and shameful. This must be corrected. Self defense is a universal right. How it ends up in the court is another story. Nevertheless, not doing anything about it is not reducing the price in any way either. Sweeping it under the rug only emboldens the perpetrators and keeps our people and the international community in the dark. It strips us of basic human dignity. Going “OMG or Om Money Pay Me Hung every time a Tibetan is brutalized by a Gaddi mob in front of your eyes won’t do. It is too passive to say the least. What is needed is action with a plan A followed by plan B.

The fact that Dharamsala is on world tourism map is largely due to the presence of the Tibetan populace and its culture. The first step is to muster enough guts to refuse being the economic bait for the local traders for which the reward has been nothing but physical, verbal, mental, emotional and racial abuses on everyday basis.

To make matters worse, Dharamsala is a steep hilly forested terrain where there is a lack of flat open land space. This adds to the communal tension. On top of the town being tiny with narrow roads and even narrower streets, day to day physical interaction with the huge Gaddi populace is inevitable and herein lies one of the major correlations if not altogether the direct causes for communal frictions where Tibetans being the “guests” end up at the receiving end, often also at the mercy of the corrupt inefficient racist local criminal justice system that is in cahoots with the Gaddi mobs.

In more ways than one we are grateful to the state and people of Himachal Pradesh for sheltering nearly 25,000 migratory Tibetans; we do not, however, appreciate the indignity, insecurity and uncertainty that come with the package. If exile Prime Minister Lobsang Sangay can move his family to an all expense paid home in Boston, and Home Minister Dolma Gyari has a big house in Delhi, how can they ignore the plight of the poor illiterate Tibetans who look to the CTA for leadership? For more information, read “The High Cost of Protracted Refugee Syndrome” by Maura Moynihan onwww.rangzen.net

Forget fighting about Umey Lam and Rangzen, the stateless Tibetans in India are at risk and need to get citizenship first. Remaining “refugees” for mere symbolic purposes or sentimental value is the most stupid argument one can ever make. When CTA officials have passports and secure homes, why won’t the CTA do more to help everyday Tibetans in India get citizenship, which would give them the confidence, rights, voting leverage, legal protection, land and business ownership? Speaker Penpa Tsering said recently that the Dalai Lama once said that if worst came to worst he was confident that he could find a few countries that would take care of his personal welfare but was concerned about what would happen to the future of the exile Tibetans if Tibet issue is not resolved any time soon.
The answer lies in obtaining Indian citizenship. This idea terrifies China to the bone. CCP can’t even stand the Dalai Lama calling himself the son of India.

As an Indian citizen the Dalai Lama’s influence on the people of India toward the Tibet issue can multiply exponentially. Nowhere does it state in the UN charter that stateless people adopting another country automatically ceases their right to fight for their home country cause.CTA’s support must come out openly, actively and unconditionally.

Even the Dalai Lama has told some Indian officials he is for it! HH has been in discussion with high level Indian officials who support granting citizenship to Tibetan refugees. Time to move out of “Pango Refugee Mentality” has come! Time to ensure a secure base in the lush towering Western Ghats with citizenship has come! Time to erect a fenced “Tibet City” far away from the locals has indeed arrived! In my next post, I will show the reader how. Until then, stay alert!

Source: http://www.tibettelegraph.com/2014/06/is-dharamshala-safe-for-tibetans.html

[grandmapele]

What's their complain? They dish out the same treatment to their own Tibetans. And, these Tibetans are just like the rest, surviving best as they can though they practice a slight difference int he that they propitiate Dorje Shugden. That's just karma returning.

If you discriminate against other in your very own community, you have no right to complain about discrimination by locals on whose land you reside. You created the karma. as the English saying goes, bed of thorns, bed of roses, you made it, you sleep on it.

[SabS]

It is absurb that CTA as the governing body of the Tibetans-In-Exile could act so cowardly and let the abuse on their people carry on without impunity. They should have the courage to stand up and speak out against these terrible acts of beatings and rapes. What, they are so brave to spend the millions of sponsorship monies in acts/propaganda against a legitimate enlightened Protector Dorje Shugden practice and they become timid when the safety of their people are in question? They even allowed the Indians to pee around their administrative buildings? Wow! Guess it is really karma coming back to bite CTA and their people for abusing the Shugden practitioners for 20 years. It also show their true nature that against the oppressor they cowered and against the humble, they bully.
I can understand the local Indians' sentiments on seeing how their land was ceded to the 'refugees' and seeing how these refugees prosper under the kindness of sponsorships & donations, without having to work much. The Indians who had to eke out their living the hard way would certainly be unhappy at the imbalance of life. What more when the Tibetans treated the Indians with the "look down' attitude, well, the boiling kettle will let out steam. Having said that, I definitely do not condone the acts of violence on the Tibetans as humans are capable of much higher beings of kindness & compassion. Nor do I condone the cowardly acts of CTA and Anti-Shugden's to subjugate Shugden practitioners into giving up their valid religious beliefs and their freedom to practice by removing human rights from them.
May CTA gain the courage to stand up and stop hiding behind their egos to do the right thing for their people, including Shugden practitioners. Work with the Indian authorities to clam down on abuses and to ensure the safety of Tibetans on the streets. Lift the Dorje Shugden ban and recognise that Shugden practitioners are your people. They had never given up on the government but the government had been using them as scrap goat to hide their failed promise of returning Tibet to their people. Time for reunification and present a united front to gain support for the dialogue with China. Be wise and kind as the Dalai Lama taught.

[Tenzin Malgyur]

It is very upsetting for the Tibetans to be caught in this situation at Dharamsala. As if losing their country and being a refugee is not bad enough, they are living in fear and hardships. Their only source of security and leadership, the CTA does not even make any attempt to alleviate their sufferings. Instead, the CTA added more hardships into the exiled Tibetans life by implementing a ban on the worship of Dorje Shugden who is a protector in Tibetan Buddhism.
How can the CTA protect the Tibetan refugees from the Gaddi if they themselves incite hatred and division among the Tibetans?

[grandmapele]

If you are angersome, it means you are spoiled.
If you want things to be given to you, then you want others to do your work.
If you complain without doing, it means you want an easy way out.
If you have no integrity, it means you have never earned respect.
If you are always late with your promises, it means you take things for granted.
If you always argue to win, it's because you allowed yourself to lose in life.
If you are not concerned about others, then you have been overly self absorbed.
If you don't wish to change your situation, it's because you don't consider others and their despair for you.
If you are arrogant, it's because others are to be used by you.
If you are intolerant, it's because you want things only your way.
If you are full of hatred, it's because you only wish to benefit yourself.
If you always lie, then you innately think others dumb and unworthy.

Does this apply to the the Dalai Lama and CTA?

[pgdharma]

I think the CTA should not complained on the situation in Dharamsala when they themselves are abusing their own people especially those who practice Dorje Shugden.  The Tibetans are suffering and splitting apart and I hope that the CTA will do the right thing for the Tibetans to help them alleviate their sufferings and stop inciting hatred and abuse Dorje Shugden practitioners.

[Pema8]

This is really shocking! Tibetans have lost so much. Not only have they lost their country, culture and many friends because of the Dorje Shugden conflict, and what is their government doing for them? Instead of improving their situation for the Tibetans in India and Tibet / China, they fight mainly against Dorje Shugden practitioners, produce and publish Anti-Shugden videos and documentary. How can a government not take care of their own people? Karma is hitting hard already but there is much more to come as it seems.

[Matibhadra]

The irony is that many of these Dharamsala Tibetans, now mistreated by local Indians, had no scruples about enthusiastically supporting the racists, murderous anti-Chinese 2008 Lhasa riots, which saw around 100 Chinese merchants and their families brutally murdered by local Tibetans.

Needless to say that such bloody, CIA organized 2008 Lhasa riots were worldwide supported by Soros-funded organizations and demonstrators (just as they do against Trump now, by the way), and the violence was also publicly applauded by the Soros puppet, the evil dalie lame.

Many of these Dharamsala Tibetans are nothing but disgruntled CIA ex- or current operatives, anxiously lining to receive their US green cards, thus lacking any love for India and Indians, and their arrogance and contempt towards local Indians is felt, and now sees its unpleasant retribution.

[Geraldine Sarie]

Sad for those Tibetan being assaulted, harassed, killed and dumped at roadside by the locals. Why the CTA is not doing anything to help and protect their people? Where are their human rights? It’s obviously that Dharamsala is no longer safe for Tibetan refugees as more becoming victim of humiliation and crime. CTA should take full responsibility on their security by helping them to get citizenship to gain their confidence.

[Richardlaktam]

Dharamsala is definitely not safe for Tibetans. But in the first place, why did the Gaddi let go their grudge on Tibetans? Things always happen for a reason. It won't be suddenly people treat us people treat us badly, unless it is really their karma. Then, another question is, why is not CTA doing something about this? Is that how a government protect their people? No. They even break their own people into groups and pieces, especially to discriminate those who practice Dorje Shugden. It is really shameful. Actually there's a solution to this. Only the so called Tibetan leadership doesn't want to adapt that solution. They have government, they have their own home land and their own country, it is China. Over a decade, Tibetan leadership can't solve this problem, is it time to change their method to solve the problem? They need to have conversation with China government. But they refuse to do so. If they continue their stubborn and hold on to their grudge over China government like this, it is not going to solve any problem. Not even about protecting Tibetan in Dharamsala. This is a big joke leadership in the whole world. Want to show the whole word how bad condition they are in? Want the whole world to pity them so that country from the west will continue supporting them? CTA, when are u going to wake up?

[psylotripitaka]

Nowhere in samsara is safe for anybody, get out!

[samayakeeper]

I feel sorry that innocent people got hurt. I do not condone such actions regardless who the victims were or what they had done or not done. This is exactly what Tibetans who refused to give up Dorje Shugden practice have experienced and still experiencing because of the ban on Dorje Shugden. Racial and religious discrimination should be eradicated from the top down. To start off with, the Dalai Lama can and has the power to lift the ban. After all, it started with him.

[Dondrup Shugden]

From what is reported even though in 2014, I doubt very much that the Tibetans in Dharamsala are any better off today.  The logical conclusion I have on the matter is the inert and inefficient operational style of the CTA.
If the governing authority of the people is always in the mode of creating division and schism, how can they even consider fighting for the rights of their people to live in safety away from harm by racists like the Gaddi tribes of India.

How can any logical person even expect the CTA to progress for their people in exile when they have accomplished nothing of value for the last 56 years.

As a Buddhist, it is very disturbing to see people suffer from discrimination and torture from others, but in also believing in Karma, this may be a result of karma returning to inflict harm as harm had been inflicted on Dorje Shugden devotees.

Time for CTA to wake up and realise that matters can be resolved by lifting the ban on Shugden people and eliminating suffering to gain progress for Tibetans worldwide.