Dharamsala (AsiaNews) – Chinese authorities in Tibet are planning to use the central government’s anti-corruption campaign against Tibetan government officials who secretly follow the exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama, said Chen Quanguo, Party Secretary of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR).
The Party, Chen added, will clampdown on ‘officials who have an incorrect view on minority people's (issues) and profess no religious belief but secretly believe.’ For Beijing, the Dalai Lama is a “monk in wolf’s robes”.
TAR’s party chief insisted that the Party “would go after officials who follow the Dalai Lama, go on pilgrimages to worship him, listen to religious sermons or send their children to schools organised by followers of the Dalai Lama”.
In 2013, he infamously vowed to educate and guide cadres and ordinary people of various ethnic groups to separate Tibetan Buddhism from the fourteenth Dalai Lama, and separate Tenzin Gyatso from the title of Dalai Lama.”
Since President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign got underway three years ago, only 15 minor party officials in Tibet have been investigated and punished for relatively minor embezzlement and corruption schemes .
This has led some to believe that party officials in Tibet are deliberately misinterpreting Xi’s corruption campaign by deflecting focus onto often imagined ‘separatist threats’ to shield themselves from real corruption investigations.
In a White Paper published on the TAR’s 60th anniversary (1951-2011) marking China’s invasion of the country, Beijing claimed that it had led the Tibetan people from a “Old and backward Tibet” to a “Golden Age”.
However, for the past few years, China has tried to wipe out Tibet’s cultural identity by arresting its writers, intellectuals and artists.
Starting with violent protests in 2008, 143 Tibetans have self-immolated themselves in opposition to Beijing’s iron fist and human rights violations.