By Tenzin Nyidon
DHARAMSHALA, April 7: A 21-year-old Tibetan soldier named Tsephel was arrested by Chinese authorities in Sershul County last September for killing a Chinese soldier, according to Tibet Times, a Tibetan-language news outlet on Tuesday.
According to the report, Tsephel was on vacation and was running an errand in the market when he saw two Chinese soldiers bullying and pushing a Tibetan woman begging in the streets. On witnessing the incident, he intervened while asking them not to do so and said, “If you don’t have anything to give, then why do you bully an innocent person?” The Chinese soldiers further escalated the situation by replying, “Tibetans are like animals,” and continued beating the beggar.
This led to a physical fight amongst them where one of the soldiers was killed, while the other fled from the scene. The report also said that a large group of Tibetans who were gathered at the scene at that time hailed Tsephel as a hero.
The information obtained by Tibet Times also confirmed that the Chinese police arrested the 21 year old soldier and subsequently ordered his family members on the third day of his detention to not share the information with others. He is currently detained somewhere in Kardze, and his family members have been unable to contact him for the past five months.
A sources in Tibet told Tibet Times that family members of Tsephel were denied the right to appoint a lawyer after numerous attempts. The authorities warned his family that he would be sentenced to prison terms ranging from 16-18 years for his alleged crime.
Tsephel hails from Sershul County in Eastern Tibet. His mother passed away when he was just 21, and his father, Pema Dorjee, brought him up. At the age of 5, Tsephel was sent to a primary school in Sershul County and served the military till March 2022.
This is a tragedy! The words the Chinese police used against Tibetans says it all!!! “Tibetans are like animals”! This is the attitude of colonialists of every clime throughout history. The Chinese have deep Han chauvinistic attitude. This is in their DNA. They treat all other nationalities as uncivilised and regard them as their bogeyman. This is not new by the way. It has been this way ever since Tibet was illegally occupied by communist China. I remember receiving a letter from Tibet through a western travelling group in 1988, that said, “if they (Tibetans) had a bomb, they want both parties (Tibetans and Chinese) to be blown up together”! It also said, “just as fire and feather cannot exist together, Tibetans and Chinese cannot coexist”! The gross human rights abuse in Tibet is the result of Chinese racism and chauvinism. If a Chinese citizen is killed, the Tibetans are punished with utmost severity which always result with death penalty but when the Chinese kill Tibetans, nobody is brought to account. The Chinese police have a free hand to arbitrarily arrests, torture, detain and kill any Tibetan at will. The custodial death of Tibetans is one of the most shocking statistics but the Chinese state hushes up by criminalising the victims family never to disclose or else they will face the same fate! How many Tibetans have disappeared? There is no count! The victim’s family are terrified of Chinese State terror and never disclose the disappearance of their loved ones! The reason why so many Tibetans have committed self-immolation is precisely to highlight the dire situation prevailing in Tibet and there is no other option except to burn themselves to death! Meanwhile, the international community has all but forgotten Tibet. French President Emmanuel Macron and European Union President-Elect Ursula von der Leyen are visiting China but Tibet is far away from their thoughts. They have only Russian aggression on Ukraine and Chinese relationship with Russia on the top of the agenda accompanied by the subjugation of Hong Kong democracy and harassment of Taiwan by communist China as their agenda for discussion.
The Tibet issue is fading away even as the Dalai Lama ages and exile Tibetans are getting complacent about the shocking situation in Tibet. Some of the Representatives at the parliament are even envisaging to stop talking at all about Tibet which they feel is only angering the Chinese communists! The fact is, it’s been almost forty years since Tibetans have appeased communist China in the hope of Chinese “good will and generosity”! Since, the year 2000, the word Rangzen was more or less criminalised in order to suck up to the Chinese terrorist State! (I say the Chinese communist government is a terrorist State because according to Noam Chomsky, “terrorism is the use of coercive means aimed at civilian populations in an effort to achieve political, religious or other aims”. This description fits the Chinese communist state which rules by instilling fear in the hearts of the people). What has been achieved by such pusillanimous policy? The Tibetans in Tibet are subjected to inhuman cruelty not because of the protestations by few exiles but it is Chinese State policy to subdue Tibetans by sheer terror because the Chinese perceive the Tibetans as no different from animals!!! Chinese attitude to Tibetans is exactly the same as that of the racist Ku Klux Klan’s attitude towards the black slaves in the era of American slavery. Tibetans have become slaves in our own country after our country was illegally occupied by communist China. Tibetans have no rights, be it religious freedom, cultural rights, linguistic rights, land rights or freedom of movement. The whole Tibetan population has become slaves to the Chinese communist State and they can do anything with the lives of any Tibetan. They can be arbitrarily arrested, imprisoned, incarcerated, detained without informing their families, or disappear for good and nobody is made accountable for the crime. Tibetans are treated with extreme cruelty because according to the Chinese, they perceive them as subhumans ; Calling Tibetans “animals” clearly demonstrate that the Chinese have no respect for the lives and well-being of Tibetan people. Having been stripped of every right (freedom) including even travelling inside the country, the situation is a carbon paper of the plight of African slaves who arrived in America in the 1619. JUST AS THOSE SLAVES WHO ARRIVED ON TO VIRGINIA’S SHORES IN 1619 WERE CAPTIVES WHO WERE ENSLAVED AGAINST THEIR WILL, TIBETANS HAVE BEEN ENSLAVED AGAINST THEIR WILL BY THE CHINESE COMMUNIST TERROR STATE!
Tibetans in exile must change tactics to make the terrorist State accountable for its crimes against the Tibetan people by doubling our effort to drum up international support. The policy of appeasement has ONLY EMBOLDENED THE CCP and Tibetans gained absolutely nothing from it.