What is happening in the Tibetan politics? Dr Lobsang Sangay's loyalty is being questioned. Has he been sold over to the Chinese or is he working under the pretext of a highly ambitious politician aiming at the Chinese Presidential post to recover Tibet?
"Mr Sangay went on to describe how he is portrayed in Tibetan thankas (religious paintings) in the place of a deity. He claimed that he had received His Holiness’ approval, and moreover that His Holiness had reasoned that other lay people like past Chinese emperors had also been portrayed in thangkas". It would be interesting to view this thangka. I wonder if Dorje Shugden is also depicted in the thangka as his protector?
Is Tibetan PM-in-exile Sangay a ‘Chinese national’?
Apr 04, 2014 - Maura Moynihan | Age Correspondent
When Steven Spielberg recently announced that he is shifting his film production to a spanking new $2.5-billion facility in Shanghai, one wondered if the director of Schindler’s List was briefed about the millions of Chinese people murdered by Mao’s regime and the millions still imprisoned in China’s labour camp system.
The legitimisation of China’s one-party dictatorship continues apace, but not everyone is on board for the ride; at the recent World Economic Forum session in Davos, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe gave a powerful oration telling the Western powers that they should make clear whose side they are on — Communist China or Asia’s democracies, Japan and India chief among them.
India is one of the few nations left standing that can mount a moral and strategic defence against China’s rise. While Western nations can appease Communist China, India must contend with increasing Chinese military incursions into its territory from occupied Tibet. India has given sanctuary to thousands of Tibetan refugees, notably Tibetan Buddhists who are persecuted by the Chinese state for practising their ancient faith. Thus the pro-China stance of the “Prime Minister” of the Tibetan government-in-exile based in Dharamsala, Lobsang Sangay, is all the more disturbing.
In a May 2013 speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, Mr Sangay stated that henceforth the Tibetan movement would abandon democracy as a goal, accept Communist rule in Tibet in its present structure, and accede to China’s full “discretion” in militarising the Tibetan plateau. This took many by surprise, but Mr Sangay’s pro-China drift has been some time in coming. While studying at Harvard Law School, Mr Sangay made a very public alliance with Ms Hu Xiaojiang, whom intelligence sources identify as a Chinese ministry of state security co-optee. Ms Hu was so trusted by the Chinese government that it allowed her access to the ultra-sensitive government archives in Lhasa to research her 2003 Ph.D. thesis on Chinese migration into Tibet. (Ms Hu makes special note of Mr Sangay in her acknowledgements).
In a defensive speech at the Tibetan parliament-in-exile in Dharamsala on March 22 this year, Mr Sangay tried to evade questions over his use of “Overseas Chinese National” travel papers on an academic junket to Beijing and Shanghai in 2005. Mr Sangay had long denied that he made this trip on “Overseas Chinese National” documents until he was confronted with irrefutable evidence in 2011 (a clip of this exchange can be seen on YouTube). The issue of concern is his willingness to declare himself as a Chinese “national” while continuing to hold a Tibetan refugee identity card issued by the Indian government.
In the same speech before the Tibetan parliament, Mr Sangay also refused to explain how he managed to pay off a $227,000 mortgage just one week before he became PM of the government-in-exile. In all representative democracies, candidates must disclose the source of their finances, but Mr Sangay will not explain how, just four years after buying a house near Boston, he paid off a quarter-million dollar mortgage in full, and with such fortuitous timing. No one would begrudge him his good fortune if he has a patron who supports Tibetan democracy, so why is he unable to provide a full account of how his mortgage disappeared overnight? Prior to the grilling he got in Dharamshala, Mr Sangay gave a public talk on March 5 at the Washington headquarters of the National Endowment for Democracy, where he stated that his abandonment of democracy and acquiescence to Chinese militarisation was no different than the policy laid out in a memorandum issued by his predecessor, but a careful reading of that document shows Mr Sangay’s assertion to be insupportable. Mr Sangay went on to describe how he is portrayed in Tibetan thankas (religious paintings) in the place of a deity. He claimed that he had received His Holiness’ approval, and moreover that His Holiness had reasoned that other lay people like past Chinese emperors had also been portrayed in thankas.
What does Mr Sangay’s comparison of himself to a Chinese emperor reveal about his ambitions? When Mr Sangay said that he embraced Chinese Communist rule, the courageous Beijing-based Tibetan writer Tsering Woeser said she felt like she had been “punched in the gut”. Ms Woeser had joked that Mr Sangay should join the Chinese Communist Party since he wants to be the “Obama of China”, a reference to a talk Mr Sangay gave back in 2008, when he said: “I nominate myself as the next President of China”.
In this context, Mr Sangay’s language regarding His Holiness the Dalai Lama is also cause for concern. In a 2003 article entitled “Tibet: Exiles’ Journey”, Mr Sangay refers to His Holiness the Dalai Lama as “the lama” 15 times — a level of disrespect usually seen only in Chinese Communist propaganda. In this same article, Mr Sangay describes the old Tibet as “feudal” and Buddhist monks as “reactionary”. Again, this is language seen only in Chinese propaganda tracts about Tibet, as a Google search of Xinhua articles will reveal. As India faces a growing threat across the Himalayas from Chinese-occupied Tibet, it must ask itself: Who is this ambitious young Tibetan exile politician, what are his ambitions, and where do his loyalties lie?
http://www.asianage.com/ideas/tibetan-pm-exile-sangay-chinese-national-414Maura Moynihan is a journalist and Tibet analyst based in New York
