China's‘patriotic education’ campaign launched in Lhasa, Tibet

22 April, 2008

In yet another effort to combat pro-Tibet, anti-China sentiments and demonstrations worldwide in the run up to the Olympics Games to be held in the Chinese capital of Beijing in August 2008, an uneasy Chinese government has embarked on a 2-month “patriotic education” campaign in Lhasa, Tibet’s capital.

The Chinese drive is aimed at “denouncing the Dalai Lama and teach the public the government’s stance on riots there in March 2008,” the International Herald Tribune quoted the Tibet Daily, a communist party newspaper.

The campaign launched by China’s communist government will cover the city of Lhasa and its surrounding rural areas and “focus on strengthening relations between local people and grassroots communist party officials.” It also aims at “unifying their thinking, deepening their struggle against independence forces, and hitting back at the Dalai clique’s splittist plots,” the report in the Tibet Daily added.

The Chinese government has repeatedly accused the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader who lives in exile in Dharmasala in India, of plotting to “secede” Tibet from China and has also charged his supporters with “instigating protests” in Lhasa that had ended in violence on March 14, 2008.

The Chinese communist party newspaper Tibet Daily said that in the “patriotic education” campaign,“The party members plan to educate rural people about the riots and give them ‘patriotic education.’ They will show videos and pictures, invite those involved in the riots to talk and hold denunciation sessions of the Dalai Lama. The campaign has been named ‘Oppose splittism, Protect stability, Encourage development.”

As a prelude of sorts to the “patriotic education,” China had, earlier in April 2008, declared that it would to start a campaign that would require Buddhist monks in Tibet to “denounce the Dalai Lama and declare their loyalty to Beijing.”

Western media has reported that, in fact, it was the so-called “patriotic education” campaigns that have been existing for over a decade now that possibly culminated in severe protests by monks in Tibet and other Tibetan areas occupied by China.

Meanwhile, in continuing protests against the Chinese occupation of Tibet worldwide, a group of Tibetans on hunger strike is marching a distance of 70 kilometres to the Chinese embassy in Canberra, Australia, to coincide with the Olympic torch relay to be held there on April 24, 2008.

Motorists honked their horns and waved as the group of 16 members of the Tibetan community in New South Wales, dressed in traditional Tibetan dress and waving Tibetan flags, set off on their march on foot from Bungendore, east of Canberra, on the morning of April 21, 2008, Australian newspaper The Sunday Morning Herald has reported.

A spokesman of the group on march, which expects to arrive at the Chinese embassy on April 23, 2008, where they will join local Tibetans in a candlelight vigil, was quoted by The Sunday Morning Herald as saying,“We are walking to Canberra in three days without food in a show of solidarity to Tibetans in Tibet who have been denied access to food and water and electricity. At the same time, we want the Chinese Government to release all the political prisoners, start a dialogue with the Dalai Lama, and allow press into Tibet to see what really has happened and what is happening in Tibet.”