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Kate Saunders, International Campaign for Tibet
A vibrant literary and cultural resurgence has swept Tibet since Spring 2008 when supporters of the Dalai Lama went into open protests against Chinese government policy across the plateau.
A new generation of Tibetan intellectuals, often fluent in Chinese and familiar with digital technology, are daring to refute China's official narrative. Their critiques, expressed particularly in the written word, are among the most wide-ranging indictments of Chinese policy in Tibet for 50 years.

A prominent Tibetan writer has been detained, after he and a group of Tibetan intellectuals
based in Xining wrote an online open letter criticising government corruption in earthquake relief efforts:

High Peaks Pure Earth has translated two blogposts from the Xining-based Tibetan website www.sangdhor.com. The first blogpost reports the arrest of a prominent Tibetan writer and intellectual called Shogdung  (or Zhogs Dung, his pen name, meaning "morning conch") on April 23, 2010 and was posted online on April 25, 2010. The second blogpost is an open letter to victims of the earthquake in Kham.

Dechen Pemba of High Peaks Pure Earth

In an article titled "China's Continued Crackdown in Tibet" published in the British magazine "The Economist", it says: "In Tibet, March is the cruellest month, and it is also the traditional season for doomed protests against Chinese rule. This year the authorities are unusually edgy. They have mounted a pre-emptive clampdown of a severity rarely seen in recent years [...] Helmeted troops bearing rifles patrol Lhasa, the Tibetan capital. Snipers lurk on rooftops near the Jokhang temple, Tibet's holiest shrine and often a focus for protests."

This passage just as much applies to March this year, which is closely associated with the penetrating clamour of the authorities' propaganda. Since March 10, 2010, apart from armoured vehicles and armed patrol cars as well as those brand new military and police cars whose names we don't know, there have also been propaganda cars decked with coloured banners and Five-Starred Red Flags passing through the Lingkhor road and main roads of Lhasa. 

by High Peaks Pure Earth

By Woeser,
Lhasa in February, with the arrival of Losar (Tibetan New Year), the city is slowly being swept away by sandstorms. In the past, the storms would never start this early, is global warming the only reason behind this? The Lhasa river valley used to be surrounded by a group of mountains called the "eight lotus petals" but today as it has been completely destroyed by mining machines, as soon as the wind starts to blow, sand and dust spreads everywhere. Also, on top of Lhasa valley, in the past it used to be the homeland of Tsangpo Songtsen Gompo but today even the local Medro Gongkar county government simply sold its own land to one of China Gold Group's mining companies. The officials lined their own pockets but contaminated water has polluted farmland and even killed livestock or given the farmers strange diseases.

High Peaks Pure Earth has translated a new hip hop music video from Amdo. The group who call themselves Yudrug in Tibetan, Green Dragon in English and Qinglong in Chinese, are from Machu in Amdo and they released their new track on their blog on February 5, 2010, as a gift to fans for Tibetan New Year. The video was subsequently quickly re-posted on other Tibetan blogs.


Although they call themselves "green dragon" in English, Yudrug is actually a name of a type of horse. This horse is very popular in Machu and considered a jewel, a source of wealth, as clearly stated in one of their previous songs.

The Dalai Lama today voiced strong public support for the Uihgur struggle mentioning East Turkestan by name. "Let us also remember the people of East Turkestan who have experienced great difficulties and increased oppression," he told about 3,000 Tibetans in Dharamsala. "I would like to express my solidarity and stand firmly with them" he said, a gesture bound to infuriate the Chinese authorities.

    

Fifth Dalai Lama, at left has the upper hand, as does Obama, right

The Tibetan scholar Robert Barnett asks the same question we did about Obama's failure to drink tea with the Dalai Lama, when he met him on 18 February: 

"The photograph shows a tea-cup and a cookie in front of the Dalai Lama, while the President has neither, an unmistakable sign that the President did not deign to drink with his visitor."

But Barnett's analysis of the closely parsed meeting is detailed and riveting and suggests that the Obama Administration has a bit more lead in its pencil on the subject of Tibet than has been previously advertised.

"Even the garbage bags that the Dalai Lama passed on his exit (seen as either incompetence by White House staff or a veiled message to Beijing) and the Dalai Lama's flip-flops (seen as a metaphor for his policies or a rebuttal to Rupert Murdoch's claim that the Tibetan leader wears Gucci shoes) were debated," he writes.