New Development for Tibetan Refugees who are applying for Indian Passport

[michaela]

The CTA will no longer be issuing a letter of no objection for Tibetan refugees who are applying for Indian passports

---

In violation of Charter, Kashag impedes issuing of passports to Tibetans

By Lobsang Wangyal
MCLEOD GANJ, India, 3 August 2017
In violation of the exile Tibetan Charter, the Kashag (Secretariat of the Central Tibetan Administration) has ordered all the Departments under it to stop issuing NOC (no objection certificate) or any letter of support to Tibetans applying for Indian passport.

The Kashag’s order was issued on 5 July, and was circulated to the Tibetan settlement offices around India by the Department of Home on 7 July.

The Kashag took this decision following the RPO (Regional Passport Office) Bengaluru’s directive that Tibetans who have surrendered their RC (Registration Certificate, which is the stay permit in India) must leave the Tibetan settlement they are residing, and that they cannot take benefits from CTA.

A Tibetan who would like to apply for a passport must surrender their RC at the FRO, the Foreigner’s Registration Office at the police station where it is issued and renewed.

Since there is no instruction from the government of India to the police stations, there is a lack of uniform rules about surrendering RC. Some FROs have stopped asking for an NOC to surrender the RC, such as in Dharamshala. There are others who are requiring it such as in Mainpat in Chattisgarh. Some FROs, such as in Dalhousie, are not accepting the surrender of RC at all, claiming lack of instructions from higher authorities.

The Department of Security of CTA was issuing the NOC for Tibetans in and around Dharamshala, but it has now stopped since the Kashag’s order.

However, the Kashag’s order seems to be in violation of Article 8(2) of the Charter of the Tibetans-in-exile. This Article says: Any exile Tibetan can seek citizenship of another country and still retain their Tibetan nationality provided they fulfil the five clauses of Article 13.

The clauses of Article 13 are that a Tibetan must:

Have faith in the Central Tibetan Administration.
Respect and practice the Charter and the laws of the Tibetans-in-exile.
Take part in the Tibetan freedom struggle.
Pay tax to the Central Tibetan Administration as per the rules.
Fulfil responsibilities laid down by law at times of emergency for the Central Tibetan Administration and the Tibetan public.
It is on the basis of Article 8(2) that Tibetans who are living in and have acquired citizenship of another country retain their Tibetan nationality.

Lack of response from CTA

A monk from Mainpat has been asked for an NOC by the FRO in order to surrender his RC, but the settlement officer refused to issue the NOC, citing the Kashag’s order.

When this journalist requested the Kashag secretary, Topgyal Tsering, for an interview, the secretary refused to take questions.

In response to the statement that it was the responsibility of the position to answer questions from journalists, he said that the Tibet Sun’s stories have created problems and that this journalist has not taken his responsibilities.

Kashag has stated that the Tibetan youth should not think of short-term benefits, but must continue to fight for the Tibetan struggle, and that they should not eschew the exile identity.

With the Kashag secretary refusing to be interviewed, there now remain the unanswered questions:

Hasn’t Kashag violated the Charter of the Tibetans in exile by ordering not to issue NOC to apply for a passport?
Has the CTA confirmed with the Government of India whether the RPO Bengaluru rules were that of the Government of India?
Saying that youth shouldn’t think of short-term benefits (such as taking a passport) and must retain exile identity, what about the Tibetans at the top posts, including the President of CTA, who possess foreign passports/stay permits rather than RC?
If Tibetans without RC must stop taking benefits of the CTA as per the Government of India’s order, what about those in the CTA without RC who are taking benefits, including the President of CTA, Kalons (Ministers), and Members of Parliament?
The Kashag secretary refusing to answer is against the principles of democracy and freedom for which the CTA is ostensibly fighting. It is against the Tibetan people’s right to know, and reveals the lack of accountability of the secretary.

The secretary’s criticism of our reporting, and statment that it has created problems, call for an explanation. Tibet Sun’s reports have always been based on facts, and have never contained false or inaccurate information. Sticking to ethics and accountability, Tibet Sun works for matters relating to public concern and importance.

https://www.tibetsun.com/news/2017/08/03/in-violation-of-charter-kashag-impedes-issuing-of-passports-to-tibetans

[dsnowlion]

1) Hasn’t Kashag violated the Charter of the Tibetans in exile by ordering not to issue NOC to apply for a passport?

2) Has the CTA confirmed with the Government of India whether the RPO Bengaluru rules were that of the Government of India?

3) Saying that youth shouldn’t think of short-term benefits (such as taking a passport) and must retain exile identity, what about the Tibetans at the top posts, including the President of CTA, who possess foreign passports/stay permits rather than RC?

4) If Tibetans without RC must stop taking benefits of the CTA as per the Government of India’s order, what about those in the CTA without RC who are taking benefits, including the President of CTA, Kalons (Ministers), and Members of Parliament?

5) The Kashag secretary refusing to answer is against the principles of democracy and freedom for which the CTA is ostensibly fighting. It is against the Tibetan people’s right to know, and reveals the lack of accountability of the secretary.

Highlighting these VERY GOOD questions!!!

It is high time the light shines on CTA for the TRUTH. I think Tibetans have had enough, especially those who are educated. How long can the CTA go on b***s***ing people? They basically discriminate against their own and they insult their own people's intelligence to think and to question.

The moment I heard about the Dorje Shugden ban and how the CTA at that time Tibetan Exile Government executed the systematic ban on Shugden people from the monasteries to library, hospitals and even schools, you already know that this is not a government that believes in DEMOCRACY or a government that is honest, truthful and for the people. It is in fact, a dictatorship government very much or exactly like communism... they may be labelled as democratic but not an ounce of it is being applied and they carry on with their lies to the world. Well, I guess there is karma and it may be ripening!

[michaela]

3) Saying that youth shouldn’t think of short-term benefits (such as taking a passport) and must retain exile identity, what about the Tibetans at the top posts, including the President of CTA, who possess foreign passports/stay permits rather than RC?


I like this particular question. If the CTA is suggesting that the youths shouldn't think of short-term benefits (such as taking an Indian passport?) what kind of incentives that the CTA can offer to them in the long run?  We should not forget that most of the CTA officials including Lobsang Sangay have foreign or Indian passports themselves.  If the CTA  believes in the brighter future for Tibetans in exile who maintain their refugee status, then why do the CTA officials quietly hold either Indian or foreign passports?

[Matibhadra]

This whole thread shows that the only sensible solution for sincere Tibetans exiled in India is to renounce separatism, return to their homeland, and become good Chinese citizens of Tibetan nationality, thus joining the other 55 (official) nationalities living in freedom, peace, and prosperity within the great Chinese civilization.

Indeed, why should a Tibetan abandon their own roots and homeland just in order to become an Indian citizen? Specially as Shugdenpas are concerned, why should they become citizens of India, the very country refusing them constitutional protection against religious persecution, and brazenly supporting their unscrupulous oppressors?

[christine V]

The CTA is acting as they are already a country and all the Tibetan in exile have to obey them and not to questions their decisions. Even to host country - India, does the CTA show any respect to India ?

More than 50 years these Tibetan have recite in India, many of the Tibetan already have babies which born in Indian, are they consider India citizen or Tibetan? Is their feeling to their mother land - Tibet same as the feeling they have for India which is their birth place. How Many Tibetan new generation could stay at refugees status like this? How about their next generation?

I think CTA should consider their people welfare other than using their refugees status to milk donation from all over the world.

[michaela]

Christine, you brought up a very important point that it is about time that the CTA consider their people welfare other than using their refugees status to milk donation from all over the world. The CTA can't give them anything. Even the monasteries in the Tibetan settlement is raising their own fund. To me other than doing administrative work to maintain Tibetan refugee status, there is not much good to say about the CTA.

[Ringo Starr]

Back in 1998, in a full attack on Dorje Shugden practitioners, a convention of more than 750 ordained and lay Tibetans was held which resulted in a long list of resolutions made and subsequently enforced.

Participants in the convention, who were going out for the blood of Dorje Shugden practitioners, included delegates from United Cholsum Organization's central executive committee, advisors to individual Provinces, presidents and general secretaries of regional branches in India and Nepal, delegates from local Tibetan enclaves, representatives of monasteries, local assemblies, Tibetan Freedom Movement offices, Tibetan Youth Congress, Tibetan Women’s Association, the Tibetan Institute in Varanasi, Tibetan Homes Foundation in Mussoorie, an the Tibetan Children’s Village in Dharamsala.

One of the resulting resolutions was Resolution F:

"To make it impossible for those who are engaged in undermining the prestige of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and our government to get access to (clearance for) foreign travels, admission into schools, old age benefits, child support systems, and aid for the destitute, we will urge that these people are not put in the same category as other Tibetans. They should be subjected to similar scrutiny in the local Tibetan enclaves.

It should also be checked whether these people have membership cards of their respective Provinces. In short we will urge (the exile Tibetan government) to not disappoint the general Tibetan public (by treating those who worship Dorje Shugden against the injunctions of the Dalai Lama on par with other Tibetans).

Likewise, the local Tibetan Freedom Movement offices should check whether or not any Tibetan applying for or updating the Green Book* (without which no Tibetan is eligible for any Tibetan government programmes or foreign aid through the Tibetan government) has a valid membership card of his or her local Province (issued by the local branch of the United Cholsum Organisation)."

*Tibetans contributing tax called Chatrel are issued a Green Book. This book has over the years in effect become the passport of the exiled Tibetans to claim their rights from the CTA.

For the full account of the resolutions passed, please read this article:
http://www.dorjeshugden.com/all-articles/the-controversy/resolution-adopted-by-consensus-at-the-tibetan-general-convention/

Essentially, this resolution made the CTA, its employees and practically every non-Dorje Shugden practitioner or sympathizer, the not-so-secret Gestapo.

It also had the effect of denying Dorje Shugden practitioners a Green Book and therefore omit them from receiving all the services provided by the Tibetan government in exile including medical treatment and schooling. It also disallowed identified Dorje Shugden practitioners from voting in the elections for members of the Kashag (Parliament). It left identified Dorje Shugden practitioners "stateless" as they neither had CTA-issued papers nor India passports.

Fast-forward today, the power-hungry and money grubbing CTA and their cronies and doing the same thing to Tibetans-at-large living in India. They are showing their true colors, that they will use all means to keep power to themselves and rule by silly and illogical laws and resolutions.

This is why the Dorje Shugden ban never did make any sense. Rather it was and is still being used by the CTA to perpetuate their authoritarian-style stateless state. Now this is being used against all Tibetans in India.

Tibetans will really see the true colors of their "leadership".

Read this article and see how pissed-off Tibetans are today. Read especially the comments section:
https://www.tibetsun.com/news/2017/09/23/kashag-not-against-tibetans-taking-indian-citizenship-cta-president

[Brian Little]

What future does Tibetans in India under CTA has? Either I will leave for another country to restart a new life which stands way better chance of succeeding rather than still living under the corrupt and inept CTA.

[grandmapele]

Yeah!!! CTA is not supporting the application by Tibetan refugees for Indian passport. And, then there is this Tibetan throwing himself in front of a train and messing up the rail tracks not to mention the inconvenience he put the whole city through. And, for what? For protest against Switzerland not granting asylum to Tibetan refugees?

If CTA cannot even pull up their socks and help these poor Tibetans in India, why should they expect the world to? After all, they have been on India for more than 50 years. isn't it high time, they actively help their own people?

The CTA’s Incompetence Claims Another Life
http://www.dorjeshugden.com/all-articles/the-controversy/the-ctas-incompetence-claims-another-life/

[Celia]

Really is there no end to CTA’s greed? After decades of ripping off its people, CTA is even now attempting to clamp down alternative avenues for a better life for Tibetans in India.  Already CTA has not done much towards improving the welfare of Tibetans in Indian settlements and out of desperation, some Tibetans fought a long battle on their own to get a shot at a better life. To make matters worse, when some form of success is achieved and people now can apply for Indian citizenship if they want (especially those who think that by doing so they have better rights and possibly better secured future), CTA now puts obstacles to prevent them from pursuing such chance so that CTA can continue to reap financial advantages from the sordid state and suffering of fellow Tibetans.

[Celia]

Really is there no end to CTA’s greed? After decades of ripping off its people, CTA is even now attempting to clamp down alternative avenues for a better life for Tibetans in India.  Already CTA has not done much towards improving the welfare of Tibetans in Indian settlements and out of desperation, some Tibetans fought a long battle on their own to get a shot at a better life. To make matters worse, when some form of success is achieved and people now can apply for Indian citizenship if they want (especially those who think that by doing so they have better rights and possibly better secured future), CTA now puts obstacles to prevent them from pursuing such chance so that CTA can continue to reap financial advantages from the sordid state and suffering of fellow Tibetans.

As if actively blocking and frustrating such applications is not bad enough, it is really unbelievable low, not to mention despicable, of CTA to still attempt to stigmatise such applications in order to deter Tibetans from taking up this option.  For example, Dawa Tsering, a CTA official went on record stating that Tibetans shouldn’t have a choice about citizenship because “taking Indian citizenship will dilute the power and energy of the Tibetan movement. We have to remain as Tibetans to show solidarity with our countrymen who are suffering under Chinese occupation”.

It is extremely hypocritical of CTA to ask Tibetans in exile to remaining “refugees” for mere symbolic purposes or sentimental value. It is also the most pathetic argument for CTA to make. Especially when almost all CTA officials, particularly those right at the top, have passports and secure homes internationally.

Thus, one would think CTA, having enjoyed citizenship benefits elsewhere, would do more to help everyday Tibetans in India get citizenship, which would give such people the confidence, rights, voting leverage, legal protection, land and business ownership. Instead, CTA creates more obstacles to frustrate such applications in order to capitalise on the refugee status of fellow Tibetans.

To add salt to injury, CTA, in effect, is selfishly sabotaging the efforts by some Tibetans to improve their sordid state in India when CTA failed to deliver in CTA’s promise to improve the welfare of Tibetans in the first place.

Seriously, why is there still support for CTA?

[vajrastorm]

Why is the CTA so selfish? Why can't they give some thought to the poor Tibetans who are stateless and unlike them , have nowhere to go should India decide to take back their land and remove all the privileges these Tibetans have been enjoying as refugees for the last 60 years?Already the hospitality of the Indians towards th Tibetans is wearing thin. See how the Indians in places like Arunachal Pradesh are holding huge protests, asking the Tibetans to go home! The Indians are asking why the Tibetans have been accorded those privileges for the last 60 years when local indigenous people are suffering because of inadequate aid to them by the Indian Government.

http://www.dorjeshugden.com/all-articles/news/indians-openly-demand-tibetans-go-home/

[Harold Musetescu]

One day the CTA will learn a painful lesson from the Indian Government or its courts.

All that settlement lands that they live on does not belong to the CTA.

It belongs to India.

Tibetans who are now Indian "Citizenship" may go to the Indian Gov't or the Courts and request the CTA be removed from all powers of "Governance" on "Settlement" land.

Then its "Bye Bye CTA".

[DharmaSpace]

Thank you Michaela, yes CTA is typically being CTA a double headed snake.

Outwardly the CTA say they allow Tibetans in exile freedom to apply for Indian citizenship. The article below again reiterate, CTA has no willingness to give the best to its people. As long as there are Tibetans to govern then CTA exists.

Tibetans who spoke to The Washington Post said they had heard messages from the CTA on the radio urging Indian-born exiles not to apply for passports. Most of the discouragement, they said, has happened through word-of-mouth campaigns. A Tibetan-language circular from the CTA also urges passport applicants to “take a long-term view rather than considering short-term advantages.” Outwardly, however, the CTA has said that Tibetans are free to choose Indian nationality.

The above is extracted from the full article 'After nearly six decades of exile, some Tibetans in India are slowly letting go of the past'

BANGALORE, India — When ­Tenzin Dechen Deshar first heard that Tibetan exiles could apply for Indian passports, she agonized over the choice.

A Tibetan born in India, Deshar lived a double life. She went to an Indian boarding school but spent summers in a refugee settlement, trying to learn to read Tibetan. She watched Bollywood movies with her Indian friends but fell asleep listening to her grandmother’s stories about a Himalayan wonderland.

Deshar spent her childhood convinced that she would someday see the land her family had left behind when Chinese forces seized control of Tibet. Then, in September 2016, the Delhi High Court ruled that Tibetans born in India between 1950 and 1987 are eligible to apply for Indian passports.

The new offer of nationality presented a dilemma. Take the passport, some said, and end decades of virtual confinement to a single country. Buy a car, own a house, apply for government jobs. Others argued that giving up your statelessness was akin to betraying the Tibetan cause that three generations have fought for.

“It was not a decision I took lightly,” Deshar said, lunching on dumplings between appointments at a regional passport office in Bangalore in southern India. But the long internal conflict had led her to a realization. “My grandmother’s stories were just that — stories, like fairy tales. I’ve never even seen snow. Or a yak.”

Tibet is a mountainous, nominally semiautonomous region in China. But Tibetans consider themselves ethnically and culturally different from the Chinese.

[Monks, mosquitoes and Richard Gere: What India’s biggest Buddhist gathering is really like]

Deshar’s grandparents were among tens of thousands who fled Tibet in 1959, after Mao Zedong’s Communist Party took control of Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, massacring thousands of Tibetans. Though some eventually found homes in the West, the vast majority of Tibetan exiles, 122,000 people, live in neighboring India and have endured nearly six decades of limbo.

For years, the Tibetan movement has hung its hopes on international support for its exiles.

Heart-rending stories of Tibetans walking through icy mountain passes to reach India — their land seized, their monasteries razed, their prayers silenced — buttressed U.S. efforts to isolate China during the Cold War and have continued to rake up support on college campuses and outside Chinese embassies worldwide. “Free Tibet” long ago became a familiar cry.

But without a stateless population to field the sympathies of Western democracies, some fear that the Tibetan struggle could crumble.

“What’s happened is that an entire nationality, so to speak, has given up on its nation,” said Giriraj Subramanium, a lawyer in Delhi who has argued more than a dozen Tibetans’ cases for passports in the Delhi High Court. “Tibet is over” is a common refrain among his clients, he said.
Tibetan exiles in India have a registration certificate that allows them to stay in the country. (Vidhi Doshi/The Washington Post)

An Indian government official said there is no count of how many Tibetans have made applications for passports. A spokesman from the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA), the exile organization that oversees Tibetan affairs, said only that a small number had applied.

Stateless Tibetans face a number of restrictions when traveling: They have to get exit permits and police verification in India, which often means paying bribes to authorities. At home, not having Indian nationality can complicate getting a mobile SIM card or registering a business.

In 1959, as Chinese troops consolidated power over Lhasa, the Dalai Lama, only 23 at the time, disguised himself as a soldier and fled to India. Eighty thousand Tibetans followed. India allowed him to set up an exile government in the Himalayan town of Dharamsala. In the 1980s, hoping for compromise, the Dalai Lama stopped demanding complete independence and decided instead to settle for a “middle way” seeking “genuine autonomy” for the people of the Tibetan plateau.

[In the high altitude Himalayas, India works to secure a remote border with China]

Many Tibetans, however, did not give up hope.

Karten Tsering, president of the residents welfare association in a Tibetan colony in New Delhi, explains Chinese control of the Tibet region in Buddhist terms: as part of the ever-changing nature of the universe. “Nations rise up and down — that is happening everywhere. Britain ruled India for 200 years. China was once under the rule of Tibetans,” he said, referring to the 7th-century Tibetan empire. “In our time, we’ve been born on the loser side.”

Deshar rolled her eyes at the mention of the Tibetan empire. “Does anyone think China’s going to be like, ‘Come back’? Is that realistic, really? We have to stop living in a limbo,” she said.

China’s economic strength means even the Dalai Lama’s ­dialed-down demands for autonomy are a distant dream. For Beijing, the strategic importance of the Tibet region eliminates any question of conceding power; a sizable proportion of China’s water reserves are on the Tibetan plateau and the region includes a long land border with India, a neighbor with which China regularly spars.

Any concessions to Tibetans could draw the ire of hard-liners within China’s ruling Communist Party and rouse nationalist fervor in Inner Mongolia and other regions.

Matthew Akester, an independent Tibet researcher, said the Central Tibetan Administration’s political strategy had failed to achieve its objectives.

“People see the Dalai Lama getting the Nobel Peace Prize, being selected for the cover of Time magazine, delivering speeches to packed audiences in Western countries,” he said. “But in terms of real politics, these things are not actually meaningful. For many years, the strategy has been, ‘If we are attractive and popular enough with Western countries, they will put pressure on China.’ That hasn’t worked.”

The CTA claims to represent all Tibetans but has little contact with the vast majority in Chinese territory. Though there is opposition to China from within Tibet (for instance, the 2008 protests ahead of the Beijing Olympics), it is the exiles who have played a central role in achieving sustained international support for the Tibetan movement.

“The CTA and even the Dalai Lama to a certain extent — their relevance will only remain if there are a large number of Tibetan exiles in India,” said Subramanium, the lawyer representing a number of Tibetans in court. After last year’s Delhi High Court ruling, the Indian government, which is closely allied with the CTA, introduced a number of bureaucratic hurdles for Tibetan applicants, such as having to leave their settlements and forfeit refu­gee documents.

[Watch the Dalai Lama mock the shape of Donald Trump’s mouth]

Tibetans who spoke to The Washington Post said they had heard messages from the CTA on the radio urging Indian-born exiles not to apply for passports. Most of the discouragement, they said, has happened through word-of-mouth campaigns. A Tibetan-language circular from the CTA also urges passport applicants to “take a long-term view rather than considering short-term advantages.” Outwardly, however, the CTA has said that Tibetans are free to choose Indian nationality.

“There have been murmurs in the Tibetan community that we shouldn’t do this, that this is wrong,” Deshar said. “But if I think about it, what am I really giving up? I’m not insecure about my Tibetan identity. I don’t feel the need to preserve statelessness to preserve who I am.”

Taking Indian nationality need not mean the end of the Tibetan struggle, said Robert Barnett, ­director of the Modern Tibetan Studies Program at Columbia University.

As Indian citizens, Tibetans could form a strong lobby within India’s political system. “There is this Tibetan idea that politics is all about public relations,” he said. “It could be replaced by the idea that politics is about skill and strategy and building coalitions and understanding opponents.”

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Few exiled Tibetans have been able to return to China. Becoming Indian may symbolically represent giving up hope for eventual repatriation, but in some cases it could increase Tibetans’ chances of getting visas to travel to China.

Many Tibetans remain uncertain about the nationality question. “People don’t really want to engage with the question of whether politics should be pragmatic or ideal. .?.?. For decades, they’ve left these kinds of decisions to lamas and political leaders,” Barnett said. “With young people, that kind of attitude still remains. It is not born out of ignorance or irresponsibility, but a fear of upsetting the system.”

Others, like Lobsang Wangyal, editor of the news website Tibet Sun and founder of the Miss Tibet pageant, whose landmark case won Tibetans the right to Indian passports, are thrilled. “I thought, wow, now I’m an Indian,” he said.

But many others, like Tashi Topden, a musician born in India and raised in a Tibetan settlement in New Delhi, said they would not apply on principle. “My heart is Tibetan,” he said.“I want to remain Tibetan.”

[TARA]

This whole thread shows that the only sensible solution for sincere Tibetans exiled in India is to renounce separatism, return to their homeland, and become good Chinese citizens of Tibetan nationality, thus joining the other 55 (official) nationalities living in freedom, peace, and prosperity within the great Chinese civilization.

Indeed, why should a Tibetan abandon their own roots and homeland just in order to become an Indian citizen? Specially as Shugdenpas are concerned, why should they become citizens of India, the very country refusing them constitutional protection against religious persecution, and brazenly supporting their unscrupulous oppressors?

I share the same view as Matibhara.  When Tibetans become Chinese citizens they enjoys many benefits that refugees in India don't and especially so for Shugden practitioners.  Why remain in India and be made pariahs by CTA?  China welcome Shugden practitioners with open arms.