“Cultural Genocide ” and Tibet

�“Cultural Genocide�” and Tibet

BARRY SAUTMAN�†

SUMMARY

I. INTRODUCTION.......................................................................................................... 174

II. CULTURAL GENOCIDE IN INTERNATIONAL LAW AND POLITICS................................. 177 A. Unquestioned Cultural Genocide...................................................................... 177 B. The Convention and Cultural Genocide............................................................ 181 C. Indigenous Peoples, Cultural Genocide, and Ethnocide .................................. 187

III. THE CLAIM OF CULTURAL GENOCIDE IN TIBET......................................................... 196 A. The Émigré Conception of Cultural Genocide.................................................. 196

IV. THE EMPIRICAL BASIS OF �“CULTURAL GENOCIDE�” IN TIBET.................................... 207 A. Tibetan Buddhism and Cultural Genocide........................................................ 208

1. Participation in Religious Activities .......................................................... 211 2. Attacks on the Dalai Lama......................................................................... 212 3. Regulation of Monasteries ......................................................................... 214

B. The Tibetan Language and Cultural Genocide................................................. 219 C. Arts, Vices, and Cultural Genocide................................................................... 226

V. WORDS MATTER: �“CULTURAL GENOCIDE�” AND THE QINGHAI RESETTLEMENT PROJECT .................................................................................................................... 232

VI. CONCLUSION............................................................................................................. 240 �“[I]n ten years there won�’t be a Tibet anymore.�”

Samdhong Rinpoche, president, Tibetan exile parliament (now Kalon Tripa, chief minister of the cabinet), 19941

�“Tant de gens se sont crus traqués et ont écrit une littérature de traqués sans tracas.�” [So many people have believed they were persecuted and have written a literature of persecution, without any persecution taking place.]

Jean Genet2

�† Associate Professor, Division of Social Science, Hong Kong Universtiy of Science and Technology. J.D.,

University of California at Los Angeles; LL.M., New York University; Ph.D., Columbia University. Professor Sautman is a political scientist and lawyer, whose principal research focus is on nationalism and the ethnic politics of China.

1. Bernward Krurup, Lives Will Be Lost but So Will Tibet, If We Don�’t Resist, DEUTSCHE PRESSE-AGENTUR, Nov. 2, 1994, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe.

173

2. PASCAL BRUCKNER, LA TENTATION DE L�’INNOCENCE [THE TEMPTATION OF INNOCENCE] 123 (2000).

174 TEXAS INTERNATIONAL LAW JOURNAL [VOL. 38:173

I. INTRODUCTION

In the 1930s, the sociologist Karl Mannheim famously described ideologies as instruments for use in political action by ruling groups that seek to retain or regain power. Ideologies, he adjured, should be approached critically to gain what insights they possess, but should never be confused with reality, which Mannheim deemed to be a socially and historically determined set of meanings.3 While nationalism may not be independent of such host ideologies as liberalism, conservatism, and fascism,4 it is a Mannheimian ideology because of its association with political myth.5 Nationalists are so myth-prone that their academic defenders strain to reconcile mythmaking with standards of intellectual integrity. A leading proponent of liberal nationalism contends that if nationalist myths suppress what is negative in the history of a nation, they do so to facilitate moralizing that encourages its members to live up to ancestral virtues.6 A conservative defender of nationalism argues that even deliberate falsehoods should be condoned where mythmaking is essential to a merited nationalist project.7

Nationalism is often based upon what Liah Greenfeld calls ressentiment, the cognitive dissonance between a conviction that a people should be well placed in the hierarchy of nations and the fact that it is not.8 Ressentiment is displayed as righteous anger at the purported victimization of a people by a powerful state. While examples of national oppression abound and give rise to many legitimate grievances, claimed aggrievance is ubiquitous among nationalist movements and serves the main function of an ideology, which is mobilization.9 Nationalists often seek to activate their nation or putative nation and garner international support by invoking �“nationalist myths�” of moral grievance�—even where there is no clear pattern of ethnic oppression or where some deleterious policies exist alongside countervailing practices.10 The nationalist penchant for magnifying ethnic particularities in order to reinforce national identities,11 combined with the not uncommon nationalist practice of hyperbolizing moral grievance, leads to the political mystification that Mannheim wrote about and that the Tibet case exemplifies.

The ideology of the Tibetan émigré leaders headquartered in Dharamsala, India centers on the notion that Tibet has been occupied by China for five decades and has thereby experienced a particularly destructive form of colonialism.12 The Dalai Lama has stated that �“Tibet was an independent country before its occupation by China . . . . There is

3. See KARL MANNHEIM, IDEOLOGY AND UTOPIA: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE SOCIOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE

49�–96 (1936). 4. See Michael Freeden, Is Nationalism a Distinct Ideology?, 46 POL. STUD. 748, 751 (1998) (arguing that

nationalism may act as a component in a broader, ideological family). 5. ERIC HOBSBAWM, NATIONS AND NATIONALISM SINCE 1780: PROGRAMME, MYTH, REALITY (1990). 6. DAVID MILLER, ON NATIONALITY 38 (1995). 7. David Archard, Myths, Lies and Historical Truth: A Defense of Nationalism, 43 POL. STUD. 472, 476�–77

(1995). 8. LIAH GREENFELD, NATIONALISM: FIVE ROADS TO MODERNITY (1992). 9. JOHN BREUILLY, NATIONALISM AND THE STATE 93 (1993). 10. See, e.g., Brian Fawcett, Some Questions and Issues About the New Nationalism, 31 J. CANADIAN STUD.,

Nov. 1996, at 189, 189�–92 (1996) (explaining that the �“aggrievement myths�” of Quebecers are baseless in light of Canadian history). See JEFF SPINNER, THE BOUNDARIES OF CITIZENSHIP: RACE, ETHNICITY, AND NATIONALITY IN THE LIBERAL STATE (1994) for a more extensive discussion on the Quebec case.

11. See K. Anthony Appiah, The Multiculturalist Misunderstanding, N.Y. REV. BOOKS, Oct. 9, 1997, available at http://nybooks.com/articles/1057 (last visited Oct. 7, 2002) (finding that recognition of cultural difference is an important basis for establishing and maintaining cultural identity).

12. Dalai Lama Calls for Afghan Plan, REUTERS, Nov. 28, 2001, at http://www.tibet.ca/wtn.archive/2001/11/29_6.html (last visited Oct. 1, 2002); see also UNREPRESENTED NATIONS AND PEOPLES ORGANIZATION, CHINA�’S TIBET: THE WORLD�’S LARGEST REMAINING COLONY (1997).

2003] �“CULTURAL GENOCIDE�” AND TIBET 175

no justification claiming that Tibet was �‘part of China�’ as Peking claims today.�”13 He has further said: �“Fundamentally, the issue of Tibet is political. It is an issue of colonial rule: the oppression of Tibet by the People�’s Republic of China (PRC) and resistance to that rule by the people of Tibet.�”14 This position is upheld even though every state in the world recognizes that Tibet is part of China, and no state deems Tibet a colony.

Émigré leaders attribute a malign purpose and effect to all actions of �“the Chinese�” in Tibet but do so especially where Tibetan culture is concerned. The Dalai Lama has stated: �“The Chinese authorities view Tibet�’s distinct culture and religion as the source of threat of separation. Hence as a result of deliberate policies an entire people with its unique culture and identity are facing the threat of extinction.�”15 Émigré leaders claim that the impetus for their demarches to China is �“to preserve the unique cultural identity of Tibet.�”16 The Dalai Lama acknowledges that the claim that Tibetanness is threatened by a Chinese effort to undermine Tibetan Buddhist culture is a drawing card for support of his cause because Buddhism enjoys a growing international following.17 To magnify this appeal, he has emphasized the redemptive features of this culture, stating: �“My main concern is the protection of Tibetan culture because [it] has the potential to create a peaceful human society, a compassionate society at peace with nature and the environment.�”18 Émigré leaders advance this claim while simultaneously applauding the theocracy that existed before Chinese state authority was reasserted in Tibet.19 They do so even though the Dalai Lama acknowledges that the social system of old Tibet was feudal20 and even though his most longstanding foreign supporter has characterized the monastic supremacy of old Tibet as �“a stern dictatorship.�”21

The émigré discourse of Tibetan culture is framed in the starkest terms in order to force the hand of international elites. Introducing a study of the purported PRC plan to �“crush an ancient civilization�” in Tibet, which was released in 2000,22 Kalon T.C. Tethong

13. Dalai Lama, Tibet was an Independent Country (April 3, 1991), in THE POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF HIS

HOLINESS THE XIV DALAI LAMA: SELECTED SPEECHES AND WRITINGS 60, 60 (A.A. Shiromany ed., 1998) [hereinafter SELECTED SPEECHES].

14. Dalai Lama, Address by His Holiness the Dalai Lama at the Palace of Westminster (July 16, 1996), at http://www.tibet.ca/wtnarchive/1996/7/16_5.html (last visited Sept. 23, 2002).

15. Dalai Lama, Speech of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to the European Parliament (Oct. 24, 2001), at http://www.tibet.ca/wtnarchive/2001/10/24_1.html (last visited Sept. 23, 2002).

16. Sino-Tibet Relations: Dalai Lama Pushes Middle Path, BANGKOK POST, May 25, 2001, at 14, 2001 WL 17380595.

17. See Robert Thurman, The Realpolitik of Spirituality: An Interview with His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, SHAMBHALA SUN, Nov. 1996, at http://www.shambhalasun.com/Archives/Features/1996/Nov96/ DalaiLama.htm (last visited Mar. 4, 2003) (noting the impact of international public opinion on government action).

18. Dalai Lama, Keynote Address at Tibet Support Group Conference (June 14, 1996), in SELECTED SPEECHES, supra note 13, at 118�–25.

19. Manifesto by Tibetan Leaders, in INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION OF JURISTS, THE QUESTION OF TIBET AND THE RULE OF LAW (1959). See Kyabje Gelek Rinpoche, Life in Old Tibet: A Clear-Eyed Reminiscence, WORLD TIBET NETWORK NEWS, Dec. 27, 1999, at http://www.tibet.ca/wtnarchive/1999/12/27_1.html (last visited Sept. 23, 2002) (relating the author�’s memories of his life as the son of one of the top incarnate lamas in Tibet); DEP�’T OF INFO. & INT�’L REL., CENT. TIBETAN ADMIN., TIBET: PROVING TRUTH FROM FACTS 40�–44 (3d ed. 1996). See also ROBERT COLES & STEVE LEHMAN, TIBETANS: A STRUGGLE TO SURVIVE (1998).

20. DALAI LAMA, MY LAND AND MY PEOPLE: THE ORIGINAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE DALAI LAMA OF TIBET 38 (1962) [hereinafter DALAI LAMA, AUTOBIOGRAPHY].

21. HEINRICH HARRER, SEVEN YEARS IN TIBET 89 (1953). An �“unrepentant Nazi,�” Harrer knows something of stern dictatorships. See ORVILLE SCHELL, VIRTUAL TIBET: SEARCHING FOR SHANGRI-LA FROM THE HIMALAYAS TO HOLLYWOOD 271 (2000).

22. DEP�’T OF INFO. & INT�’L REL., CENT. TIBETAN ADMIN., CHINA�’S CURRENT POLICY ON TIBET: LIFE-AND-DEATH STRUGGLE TO CRUSH AN ANCIENT CIVILIZATION (2000).


stated that �“Tibet today is in the throes of a second Cultural Revolution as the Chinese authorities step up their long-term strategy to exterminate Tibet�’s distinct cultural and ethnic identity�” and �“accomplish their Final Solution to the Tibet problem.�”23 Invocations of the Holocaust and other genocides24 have caused leaders of European and North American states�—states that do not endorse the émigré stance of rightful independence�—to demand that China refrain from actions that imperil Tibet�’s culture, the assumption being that the émigrés veridically point out the clear danger to Tibet that PRC cultural policies or Han Chinese migration to the region supposedly pose.

After the Dalai Lama visited the U.S. President in 2001, his representative averred that the United States had offered �“moral and material support to help preserve Tibet�’s unique linguistic, cultural, and religious identity.�”25 Meanwhile, Secretary of State Colin Powell has stated that Han Chinese migration to Tibet �“seems to be a policy that might well destroy that society�” and pledged �“solidarity with the Dalai Lama and the people of Tibet.�”26 In introducing the �“Tibet Policy Act�”27 in 2001, Diane Feinstein, a U.S. senator who has often sought better relations with China, stated that she crafted legislation to support the émigré cause because �“Beijing has repeatedly ignored promises to preserve indigenous Tibetan political, cultural and religious systems.�”28 Concomitantly, the émigré leaders try to foreclose any response to their charges by dismissing those who disagree as �“pro-Chinese�” or dupes of �“Chinese propaganda.�” Gabriel Lafitte, a pro-Tibet independence scholar and activist, observes that for the émigré leaders:

The picture is black and white, without ambiguities. China is often viewed monolithically, so the multivocality of Chinese elite contestation goes unheard. Chinese data is dismissed wholesale as propaganda�—even the data used by China�’s still enormous machinery of central planning.29

This essay analyzes the émigré claim that China commits cultural genocide by directly or indirectly extirpating Tibetan culture. It first discusses the origins of the concept of cultural genocide and its tenuous subsistence in international law. Genocide, cultural

23. Press Release, Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization, New Study Reveals China�’s Plans for Total Destruction of Tibetan Culture (Sept. 29, 2000), at http://www.unpo.org/press/000929tibet.htm (last visited Sept. 23, 2002). Since the late 1990s, the Dalai Lama and his supporters have repeatedly asserted that a �“second,�” �“new�” or �“mini-�” Cultural Revolution is taking place in Tibet, although they present no evidence of any actions associated with the Cultural Revolution itself, such as struggle meetings, the destruction of cultural objects, or other atrocities. China Chides France, Blames Tibet, ASSOCIATED PRESS, Dec. 10, 1998, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe; William C. Triplett, II, A Line in Tibet, WASH. POST, Jan. 2, 2001, at A15, 2001 WL 2533564; Vanya Kewley, My Hols, SUNDAY TIMES (London), Jan. 5, 1997, 1997 WL 9799445.

24. John Colvin, Books: Peking�’s Destructive Rage, DAILY TELEGRAPH (London), Dec. 5, 1992, at 21, 1992 WL 9079448 (quoting the Dalai Lama concerning �“the holocaust in which one and a fourth million Tibetans have lost their lives�”); Lynne O�’Donnell, China�’s Frontier Stacking Borders on the Genocidal, AUSTRALIAN, Oct. 2, 2000, at 37, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe (quoting Melbourne University Tibet activist Gabrielle Lafitte regarding the economic development of the PRC as a �“final solution�”). While invocations of the Holocaust affect people generally, the Dalai Lama�’s Jewish constituency is especially strong. A Jewish outreach program in Dharamsala estimates that three out of four Western visitors to the town are Jewish, and an Israeli news service has commented that �“Little Lhasa�” seems like �“Little Israel�” at times. Tibor Krausz, Shalom Haverim, JERUSALEM REP., Mar. 12, 2001, at 26, LEXIS, News Library, News Group File.

25. Bush Meets Dalai Lama Over China�’s Objections, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, May 24, 2001, 2001 WL 2413069.

26. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Questions Secretary of State Designee, Colin Powell (CNN television broadcast, Jan. 17, 2001).

27. Tibetan Policy Act of 2001, H.R. No. 1779, 107th Cong. (2001). 28. U.S. Congress Considers New Tibet Charges Against China, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, May 9, 2001,

2001 WL 2402608. 29. Gabriel Lafitte, Tibetan Futures: Imagining Collective Destinies, 31 FUTURES 155, 165 (1999), available

at http://www.sciencedirect.com (last visited Oct. 8, 2002).


genocide, and ethnocide (�“the extermination of a culture that does not involve physical extermination of its people�”30) are distinguished, and the deployment of the term �“cultural genocide�” in political discourse is analyzed. An overview is presented of the state of culture in Tibet, with a focus on religion, language, and the arts�—key aspects of culture in any society and featured factors of the émigré discourse of cultural genocide in Tibet. The essay concludes that the inclusion of the concept of �“cultural genocide�” as a stock in trade of Tibetan émigré ideology is meant to be provocative and incitory, rather than an intellectually appropriate conceptual framework for assessing PRC state policy as it affects culture in Tibet. Designed to bolster the legitimacy of the émigré ethno-territorial movement, much of the émigré discourse on cultural genocide is a systematic misreading of the effects of the cultural transformation that attends social and economic change in Tibet. It ascribes to Tibet�’s subsumption into China changes that are connected to late modernity that affect people throughout China and the world. The discourse is used by émigré leaders to foster a polemical polarity between themselves as the torchbearers of �“authentic�” Tibetanness31�—and thus the rightful rulers of an independent or quasi-independent Tibet�—and �“the Chinese,�” who as negators of Tibetanness, are disentitled to the exercise of sovereignty in Tibet.

II. CULTURAL GENOCIDE IN INTERNATIONAL LAW AND POLITICS

A. Unquestioned Cultural Genocide

Days before the International Olympic Committee met in Moscow in 2001 to award the 2008 Games, the Dalai Lama�’s envoy in Russia, Ngawang Gelek, told a journalist that Beijing should be denied the Games because �“China has been executing a policy in Tibet of ethnic and cultural genocide against the Tibetan people�” intended to �“erase the Tibetan people from the face of the Earth.�” He also claimed that there �“has not been one single [terrorist] incident in all the 50 years of [Tibetan] emigration,�” and he endorsed Russia�’s policies in Chechnya, stating that �“Chechens within the Russian Federation have a hundred times more freedom than the Tibetans inside the PRC,�” and that �“Russia has given the Chechen people full autonomy.�”32

The Dalai Lama�’s representative could not help but know of the Tibetan guerrillas who fought China for almost two decades33 and have been repeatedly praised by the Dalai Lama.34 The latter�’s stance on violence is pragmatic: �“Buddhists believe if the motivation is good and the goal is good, then the method, even the apparently violent kind is permissible. But here in our situation, in our case whether it is practical or not, that I think

30. Kurt Jonassohn & Frank Chalk, Introduction, in GENOCIDE AND THE MODERN AGE: ETIOLOGY AND

CASE STUDIES OF MASS DEATH 3�–21, 11 (Isador Wallimann & Michael Dobrkawski eds., 1987). The term was popularized by French scholars after World War II. Id.

31. Speaking of the émigrés, Lafitte has stated, �“The Tibetans appeal to the nostalgia and yearning inherent in modernity, presenting themselves as bastions of authenticity in a world seduced by materialism.�” Lafitte, supra note 29, at 159.

32. Dalai Lama�’s Envoy in Russia Urges Opposition to Beijing�’s Olympic Bid, (Ekho Moskvy radio broadcast, July 11, 2001), in BBC MONITORING, July 14, 2001, 2001 WL 24954182.

33. Jamyang Norbu, The Tibetan Resistance Movement and the Role of the CIA, in RESISTANCE AND REFORM IN TIBET 186�–96 (Robert Barnett & Shirin Akiner eds., 1994).

34. DALAI LAMA, AUTOBIOGRAPHY, supra note 20, at 190; Dalai Lama, March 10 Statement 1970, in SELECTED SPEECHES, supra note 13, at 376�–77. See also Claudia Dreifus, The Dalai Lama, N.Y. TIMES, Nov. 28, 1993, sec. 6 (Magazine), at 52, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe; Dalai Lama, March 10 Statement 1994, in SELECTED SPEECHES, supra note 13, at 441, 443.


is the big question.�”35 Gelek must be aware of bombings in Lhasa, eight of them from 1995 to 2000, and of endorsements of terrorism by the largest émigré organization, the Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC).36 TYC presidents of the late 1980s and early 1990s held that, because no Chinese in Tibet is innocent, war should be waged on civilians there,37 while the Dalai Lama allegedly encouraged extreme nationalist expressions �“to make him[self] look more conciliatory.�”38 �“A steady hate-China diet�” and talk of martyrdom through violence have been observed in Tibetan settlements in India.39

A faction of émigré notables fantasizes about terrorism�—without public rebuke from exile leaders�—and instead accuse China of �“state terrorism.�”40 For example, an ex-guerrilla leader has called for a �“force [to] rise up in Tibet, killing Chinese one by one.�”41 After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, a journal fostered by mainstream émigré leaders published a missive by a proponent of the discourse of cultural genocide,42 who urged émigrés: �“In future, if any individual is determined to take his or her

35. The Priest, the CIA, and Their Guerillas, GOLD COAST BULL. (Austl.), June 7, 2001, at T31, LEXIS-

NEXIS Academic Universe. See also Videotape: The Shadow Circus: The CIA in Tibet (Tenzing Sonam & Situ Sarin 1999) (on file with the University of California Extension Center for Media and Independent Learning). The Dalai Lama�’s statement could be read as directly contradicting his assertion that the Tibetan émigrés have �“abandoned war as an instrument of national policy. For us Tibetans the path of non-violence is a matter of principle.�” Dalai Lama, March 10 Statement 1997, in SELECTED SPEECHES, supra note 13, at 454, 455. The thirteenth Dalai Lama in his �“political testament�” stated, �“Use peaceful means where they are appropriate, but where they are not appropriate, do not hesitate to resort to more forceful means.�” John Billington, Power Before Prayer, INDEPENDENT (London), Oct. 12, 1997, at 5, 1989 WL 4030023. Robert Thurman, the Dalai Lama�’s closest academic associate, observes, �“There is a Buddhist theory [that] sometimes you have to do a little violence to prevent a larger violence.�” Barbara Crossette, The World: Searching for Tibet; The Shangri-La That Never Was, N.Y. TIMES, July 5, 1998, sec. 4, at 3, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe.

36. See Explosion Hits Tibet�’s Tense Capital: Report, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, Nov. 9, 2000, LEXIS, News Library, News Group File (discussing a bombing in Lhasa following the appointment of a new leader of the region); Ajay Singh, Letter from Little Lhasa, AM. SPECTATOR, Apr. 1999, LEXIS, News Library, News Group File (discussing TYC support of violence in furtherance of Tibetan independence); Officials Say Martial Law Has Thwarted Plans for Riots, ASSOCIATED PRESS, Mar. 21, 1989, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe (explaining that the TYC called for violence on China); China�’s 21st Century Soft Underbelly, BBC SUMMARY OF WORLD BROADCASTS, May 4, 1999, LEXIS, News Library, News Group File (noting the TYC�’s use of terrorism in order to �“mak[e] the Chinese so anxious that they will flee�”). In 1997, the Dalai Lama acknowledged there had been nine bombings in Tibet. NewsHour with Jim Lehrer: Zone of Peace (PBS television broadcast, Apr. 22, 1997), available at http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/asia/april97/tibet_4-22.html (last visited Oct. 22, 2002).

37. PIERRE-ANTOINE DONNET, TIBET: SURVIVAL IN QUESTION 186 (1994); John Gittings, Tibetan Exiles Defy Dalai Lama in Call to Arms, GUARDIAN (London), July 22, 1988, LEXIS, News Library, Guardian File. A well-known U.S. �“free Tibet�” advocate has stated that �“Chinese�” who live in Tibet are �“the purveyors of Tibet�’s destruction . . . .�” John F. Avedon, The Rape of Tibet, WASH. POST, Mar. 29, 1987, at C7, 1987 WL 2056613. TYC leaders continue to speak of using force. For example, TYC member Pema Lhundup stated, �“Unless and until we do any forceful action there won�’t be any chance for the Tibetan issue to get up onto an international level.�” China Tightens Yoke 40 Years After the Tibet Uprising, DEUTSCHE PRESSE-AGENTUR, Mar. 8, 1999, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe.

38. Robert Barnett, Violated Specialness: Western Political Representation of Tibet, in IMAGINING TIBET: PERCEPTIONS, PROJECTIONS AND FANTASIES 269, 315 n.82 (Thierry Dodin & Heinz Rather eds., 2001).

39. Sudeep Chakravart et al., Tibetan Refugees: Restless Rage, INDIA TODAY, May 18, 1998, LEXIS, News Library, News Group File.

40. Briefing on the Changing World Order: The Human Rights Situation in Tibet, Hearing Before the Congressional Human Rights Congress, WORLD TIBET NETWORK NEWS, Dec. 6, 2001, at http://www.tibet.ca/wtnarchive/2001/12/6_5.html (last visited Feb. 13, 2003) (statement of Bhuchung K. Tsering, Director, International Campaign for Tibet).

41. Arthur Max, Unity Behind Dalai Lama�’s Campaign Begins to Unravel, ASSOCIATED PRESS, May 31, 1998, LEXIS, News Library, News Group File.

42. Yangchen Kikhang, Coercive Birth Control: Women Face Cultural Genocide on the Roof of the World, in RONIT LENTIN, GENDER & CATASTROPHE 110�–16 (1997).


life, why not use this final act in a gesture of heroism? For example, like those Palestinians, carrying suicide bombs, in their freedom struggle.�”43

The Dalai Lama�’s representative must also know that specialists find Chechen autonomy much less than full. Chechen separatists are up in arms because Russia does not permit in Chechnya what Tibetan émigrés seek in Tibet�—a regime based on a preferred religion.44 Gelek sought Russian support by implying that Tibetan émigrés, in contrast to Chechens, uniformly practice non-violence, a notion linked to the essentialist discourse of the unique magnanimity and equanimity of Tibetans.45

The Kalon Tripa Samdhong Rinpoche speaks of �“Tibet�’s gentle civilisation,�”46 but power struggles among Tibet�’s spiritual and temporal lords were often violent. The seventeenth century Dalai Lama, who was called the �“Great Fifth�” by émigré leaders, ordered that his enemies, their families, descendants, and servants be annihilated without a trace.47 The present Dalai Lama�’s immediate predecessor instigated violence against both Tibetan and non-Tibetan opponents.48 Émigré leaders have only recently claimed that non-violence is essential to Tibetan culture and underlies their strategy.49 Along with armed actions in Tibet, there has been violence against émigrés who criticize the administration,50 which has suppressed publications that �“do not conform to the desired image of traditional Tibetan society.�”51

Ngawang Gelek�’s other assertion�—that unlike Chechens, Tibetans are deprived of any say in how their region is run�—is also a political myth. Tibetans are numerous at all rungs of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) political hierarchy, except as Regional Party Secretary.52 Their political participation is unlike the situation in Ladakh, which is a

43. Yangchen Kikhang, A Letter to My Fellow Tibetans, TIBETAN REV., Oct. 2001, at 28. For a discussion of

�“human bomb�” tactics, see Pimmi Pande, Guns Over Faith, TIBETAN REV., Jan. 2002, at 19. Ironically, the Dalai Lama�’s comments on the Israel-Palestinian conflict have largely been confined to criticizing the Palestinians, but not Israel, for using violence. See, e.g., Dalai Lama Foresees Free Tibet in 10 Years, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, May 11, 1992, LEXIS, News Library, News Group File. Asked by a journalist how Tibetans could look to Jews to preserve their culture in exile and regain a country, the Dalai Lama exclaimed, �“We need a Moshe Dayan!�” Molly Gordy, Everyone Benefits from a Democratic China, NEWSDAY, Apr. 27, 1994, at A31, LEXIS, News Library, News Group File.

44. See Wendy Atrokhov, The Khasavyurt Accords: Maintaining the Rule of Law and Legitimacy of Democracy in the Russian Federation Amidst the Chechen Crisis, 32 CORNELL INT�’L L.J. 367 (1999) (explaining the situation between Russia and Chechnya); JOHN DUNLOP, RUSSIA CONFRONTS CHECHNYA: ROOTS OF A SEPARATIST CONFLICT 149 (1998).

45. For example, Lafitte has put it that �“tolerance and forbearance are classic Tibetan strengths, taught at mother�’s knee.�” Lafitte, supra note 29, at 157.

46. Height of Darkness: Chinese Colonialism on the World�’s Roof, TIBETAN BULL., Nov.�–Dec. 2001, at 12, available at http://www.tibet.net/eng/diir/tibbul/0111/focus.html (last visited Feb. 13, 2003).

47. Elliot Sperling, Orientalism and Aspects of Violence in the Tibetan Tradition, in IMAGINING TIBET, supra note 38, at 317�–29.

48. MELVYN GOLDSTEIN, A HISTORY OF MODERN TIBET 1913�–1951: THE DECLINE OF THE LAMAIST STATE 42�–43, 513�–15 (1989).

49. Barnett, supra note 38, at 275, 308 n.23. The first instance in which the Dalai Lama mentioned non-violence in his annual March 10 Lhasa uprising commemorative speech was in 1988. See SELECTED SPEECHES, supra note 13, at 421.

50. Toni Huber, Shangri-La in Exile, in IMAGINING TIBET, supra note 38, at 357�–71. Cf. Vanessa Baird, Exit the Dragon: Is Dissent in the Exile Community a Sign of Nascent Democracy or Disintegration?, NEW INTERNATIONALIST, Dec. 1995, at http://www.newint.org/issue274/dragon.html (last visited Feb. 7, 2003) (stating that some Tibetan resistance leaders have received death threats).

51. Heather Stoddard, Tibetan Publications and National Identity, in RESISTANCE AND REFORM IN TIBET, supra note 33, at 121, 152; Huber, supra note 50, at 371.

52. Barry Sautman & Irene Eng, Tibet: Development for Whom?, 15 CHINA INFO. 20, 57 (2001). Here, �“Tibet�” is equated with the TAR, which in contrast to �“ethnographic Tibet�” encompasses the territory ruled by


largely Tibetan Buddhist area of India, a country whose political system the émigré leaders fulsomely praise.53 The Indian Administrative Service has reportedly never employed any of the many Ladakhi Buddhists who have passed its examinations.54

Ngawang Gelek�’s disregard of well-understood aspects of the politics of the place where he is from and the place where he is stationed did not lead the interviewer to question his assertions of �“ethnic and cultural genocide.�” The international mass media, self-represented challengers of received truths, curb their skepticism where émigré representations of the Tibet Question are concerned. They likely do so to avoid the accusations of being tools of the authoritarian PRC regime, accusations made by émigré leaders and their Western supporters against those who question their claims and perhaps also out of awe of a world religious leader and Nobel Prize winner. The Dalai Lama has himself observed that the Western �“media is very favourable, very supportive�” of his cause.55 Public opinion as expressed through the media �“gives inspiration for more support, and more concern in Parliament or Congress.�”56 The media is especially receptive to claims of cultural genocide,57 despite a consistent lack of evidence proffered by émigré leaders. Even where the phrase itself is not used, Western media reflexively allude to the concept. For example, in a report about how the head of the German parliament�’s human rights committee had invited the actor Richard Gere as �“someone who is �‘knowledgeable about the political situation�’ in Tibet,�” to testify before the committee, a wire service stated, �“Under Chinese rule, the Tibetan language and culture have been suppressed.�”58

Allegations of cultural genocide in Tibet resonate in the West because it is a largely unexamined concept that allows for individualized imaginings and because the notion intersects with continuous Western efforts to construct culturally homogenous nation-states in Europe, usually by ethnic cleansing.59 Westerners aware of their own countries�’ genocide of ethnic minorities and indigenous peoples may intuit that any majority will do the same.60 �“Cultural genocide�” does, however, have a known origin and a more-or-less accepted definition derived from its tenuous link to international law. Its grounding in law contrasts with metaphorical uses of the term by activists to denote any undesired, exogenous change in the culture of a subaltern ethnic group, a usage that diminishes the analytical utility of the concept and the forcefulness of condemnation that it brings to appropriate cases.

Dalai Lamas in the first half of the twentieth century. See Melvyn C. Goldstein, The Dalai Lama�’s Dilemma, FOR. AFF., Jan.�–Feb. 1998, at 83, 1998 WL 12052603 (outlining the evolution of China�’s Tibet policy).

53. See, e.g., Pritish Nandy, Encounter: India is Our Guru!, TIMES OF INDIA, Mar. 21, 2000, LEXIS, News Library, News Group File; Dalai Lama Calls India a �“Model Country,�” AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, Aug. 14, 1997, LEXIS, News Library, News Group File.

54. If Justice is Not Done to Us, This Northern Frontier Will Go, STATESMAN (India), Sept. 25, 2001, LEXIS, News Library, News Group File.

55. Thurman, supra note 17 (noting the impact of international public opinion on government action). 56. Id. 57. See, e.g., Dalai Lama Says China Pursuing �“Cultural Genocide�” in Tibet, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE,

Nov. 25, 2001, reprinted in WORLD TIBET NETWORK NEWS, Nov. 25, 2001, at http://www.tibet.ca/wtnarchive/2001/11/25_2.html (last visited Dec. 1, 2002); Peter Ellingsen, The Art of Oppression, THE AGE (Melbourne), Nov. 17, 2001, 2001 WL 28700071.

58. Richard Gere Invited to Appear Before German Human Rights Panel, ASSOCIATED PRESS, Feb. 4, 2002, WL Associated Press Newswires, WL File (quoting Christa Nickels, the head of German Parliament�’s Human Rights Committee).

59. Robert N. Clinton, The Rights of Indigenous Peoples as Collective Group Rights, 32 ARIZ. L. REV. 739, 745 (1990) (explaining the historical pattern of interaction between Western cultures and indigenous groups as being one of oppression by the West).

60. See id.


B. The Convention and Cultural Genocide

Referring to the ongoing Nazi genocide in 1944, Winston Churchill stated that �“[t]here is no doubt that this is . . . the greatest and most horrible single crime ever committed in the whole history of the world.�”61 In that year, a Polish-born lawyer in the United States first used the term �“genocide�” in a study of German atrocities. Rafael Lemkin, animateur of the Convention on Genocide,62 created the neologism �“genocide�” from genos, Greek for �“race�” or �“nation,�” and caedere, the Latin verb �“to kill.�” Lemkin defined genocide as �“a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.�”63 As means of this annihilation, he included mass murder, defined as �“the prevention of life (abortions, sterilizations) and also devices considerably endangering life and health (artificial infections, working to death in special camps, deliberate separation of families for depopulation purposes and so forth).�”64

In the years since then, scholars and activists have argued over how genocide should be defined, with �“definitions of genocide often revolv[ing] around particular political agendas of inclusion and condemnation.�”65 Differences in definition have naturally led to debates among scholars about which modern cases should be denominated as genocide, with the number ranging from one (the Jewish Holocaust)66 to scores.67 Some scholars and activists have attempted to broaden the definition beyond the one found in the Convention,68 but as a recent study argues,

[R]egardless of how many varying and conflicting academic opinions there may be on the �“best�” definition of genocide, there is only one universally accepted legal definition of genocide upon which effective international prevention, suppression, and punishment can be authoritatively based . . . . Besides being the only legally acceptable definition of genocide, the definition found in the Convention is the only practical, workable definition of genocide, if the international community is ever to have any hope of cooperating in halting genocide. International law offers the one authoritative source for legitimate collective action, as it represents the highest level of political unity among nation-states on a difficult issue . . . . Any attempt at broadening the definition, without first demonstrating a willingness to enforce the present definition, would make multilateral action to stop genocide less likely rather than more.69

61. MARTIN GILBERT, AUSCHWITZ AND THE ALLIES 341 (1981). 62. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Dec. 9, 1948, 102 Stat. 3045,

78 U.N.T.S. 277 (1951), adopted by G.A. Res. 260(III)(A), U.N. GAOR, 3d Sess., pt. 1, art. II, at 174, U.N. Doc. A/810 (1948) [hereinafter Genocide Convention]. For the three drafts of the Convention, those of the UN Secretariat, an Ad Hoc Committee, and the Final Draft, see WILLIAM SCHABAS, GENOCIDE IN INTERNATIONAL LAW 553�–68 (2000).

63. RAPHAEL LEMKIN, AXIS RULE IN OCCUPIED EUROPE: LAWS OF OCCUPATION, ANALYSIS OF GOVERNMENT, PROPOSALS FOR REDRESS 79 (1944) [hereinafter LEMKIN, AXIS RULE IN OCCUPIED EUROPE].

64. Raphael Lemkin, Genocide As a Crime Under International Law, 41 AM. J. INT�’L L. 145, 147 (1947). The means discussed by Lemkin are sometimes labelled as �“physical�” and �“biological.�”

65. ALEX ALVAREZ, GOVERNMENTS, CITIZENS AND GENOCIDE: A COMPARATIVE AND INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH 34 (2001).

66. See generally STEVEN T. KATZ, THE HOLOCAUST IN HISTORICAL CONTEXT (1994). 67. See generally HELEN FEN, GENOCIDE WATCH (1992). 68. Genocide Convention, supra note 62, art. II. 69. KENNETH J. CAMPBELL, GENOCIDE AND THE GLOBAL VILLAGE 22�–23 (2001).


When in 1946 the UN General Assembly first discussed genocide, it was noted that among its incidents are �“great losses to humanity in the form of cultural and other contributions.�”70 A Secretary-General�’s commentary on the draft convention proposed that an article prohibit cultural genocide, including proscriptions of national languages and the systematic destruction of monuments or other historical, artistic, or religious objects.71 A UN Ad Hoc Genocide Committee produced an initial draft convention, Article III of which proposed to prohibit

any deliberate act committed with the intent to destroy the language, religion or culture of a national, racial or religious group on grounds of national or racial origin or religious belief such as:

1. prohibiting the use of the language of the group in daily intercourse or in schools, or the printing and circulation of publications in the language of the group; 2. destroying, or preventing the use of, libraries, museums, schools, historical monuments, places of worship or other cultural institutions and objects of the group.72

Another amendment was soon proposed: �“The addition of a third paragraph worded as follows: �‘Subjecting members of a group to such conditions as would cause them to renounce their language, religion or culture.�’�”73

The rationale for including Article III in the draft treaty was articulated by one of its proponents on the Ad Hoc Committee:

The cultural bond was one of the most important factors among those which united a national group and that was so true that it was possible to wipe out a human group, as such, by destroying its cultural heritage, while allowing the individual members of the group to survive. The physical destruction of individuals was not the only possible form of genocide; it was not the indispensable condition of that crime.74

There was also a proposal that �“cultural genocide�” be covered in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,75 which the Third Committee was drafting while the Ad Hoc Committee worked on the Genocide Convention. Several European states proposed that a UDHR article guarantee minorities a right to have their own schools and cultural or religious institutions and to use their languages in the press and public assemblies and before courts and other state authorities. The United States, through its delegate Eleanor Roosevelt, asserted that it had no minorities and insisted that minority rights be excluded from the UDHR because there were no minority problems anywhere in the Western Hemisphere. It then misrepresented the degree of support for the article by other Member States in order to defeat it in a committee maneuver. Communist states had supported the

70. G.A. Res. 96(I), U.N. GAOR, 1st Sess., pt. 2, at 189, U.N. Doc. A/64/Add.1 (1946). 71. Draft Convention on the Crimes of Genocide, U.N. ESCOR, 5th Sess., at 6�–7, U.N. Doc. E/447 (1947). 72. Summary Record of Meetings, U.N. ESCOR, 7th Sess., Supp. No. 6, at 6, U.N. Doc. E/3/SR.175-225

(1948). 73. Summary Record of the Fourteenth Meeting of the Ad Hoc Committee on Genocide, U.N. ESCOR, 6th

Sess., 14th mtg., at 13, U.N. Doc. E/AC.25/SR.14 (1948). 74. Summary Record of the Fifth Meeting of the Ad Hoc Committee on Genocide, U.N. ESCOR, 6th Sess.,

5th mtg., at 2�–3, U.N. Doc. E/AC.25/SR.5 (1948). 75. G.A. Res. 217 (III), U.N. GAOR, 3rd Sess., at 71, U.N. Doc. A/810 (1948).


clause and proposed that it be expanded to provide that minorities be entitled to public funds for use in preserving their cultures.76

In the Ad Hoc Committee that drafted the Genocide Convention, the United States was the only member to oppose inclusion of a ban on cultural genocide. It argued that matters covered by the Article should be dealt with elsewhere and in connection with protection of minority rights. At the same time, the United States opposed a UDHR minority rights provision. When the draft Convention reached the Sixth Committee, Britain also opposed Article III, arguing that the concept of cultural genocide was so indefinite that it would render meaningless the idea of genocide tout court. Communist and some Middle Eastern states argued for a cultural genocide provision, pointing out that physical and cultural genocide are related and have been used to destroy ethnic groups.77

Two of three experts consulted by the Secretary-General had opposed including a ban on cultural genocide in the treaty, on the ground that protection of culture would be an undue extension of the struggle against genocide, which is designed to protect the physical integrity of groups. It was contended that forced assimilation did not constitute the crime of genocide and could be dealt with through a system for the protection of minority rights.78 Rafael Lemkin favored a cultural genocide clause because it would protect groups that could not continue to exist without the �“spirit and moral unity�” provided by their culture.79 He added, however, that a ban on cultural genocide must not be directed against policies designed to assimilate a group into a larger society, but only against �“drastic methods aimed at the rapid and complete disappearance of the cultural, moral and religious life of a group of human beings.�”80

The Sixth Committee rejected Article III in the face of arguments that physical genocide was so much more serious a crime than cultural genocide that the two should not be placed on the same level; that a ban might be �“interpreted so as to inhibit the assimilation of cultural or linguistic groups and thus would prevent various states from ratifying the Convention�”;81 that an article barring cultural genocide �“would lead to spurious claims, which would detract from the legitimacy of the convention�’s overarching goal�” of preventing the �“physical extermination of protected groups�”;82 and that cultural genocide claims would prove problematic because of the Convention�’s intent requirement.83 Delegates from several countries, including the United States and Canada, were also nervous about potential claims from indigenous groups.84 In rejecting �“cultural genocide,�” the United Nations limited genocide to �“essentially physical acts.�”85

76. Johannes Morsink, Cultural Genocide, the Universal Declaration, and Minority Rights, 21 HUM. RTS. Q.

1009, 1019 (1999). 77. Id. at 1029�–35; William Schabas, Les droits des minorités: une déclaration inachevée [The Rights of

Minorities: An Unfinished Declaration], in LA DÉCLARATION UNIVERSELLE DES DROITS DE L�’HOMME 1984�–1998, AVENIR D�’UN IDÉAL COMMUN 223�–42 (1999).

78. Draft Convention on the Crimes of Genocide, supra note 71, at 24. 79. LEMKIN, AXIS RULE IN OCCUPIED EUROPE, supra note 63, at 90�–95. 80. Draft Convention on the Crimes of Genocide, supra note 71, at 27. 81. Matthew Lippman, The 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide:

Forty-Five Years Later, 8 TEMP. INT�’L & COMP. L.J. 1, 38 (1999) [hereinafter Lippman, Forty-Five Years Later]. 82. STEVEN RATNER & JASON ABRAMS, ACCOUNTABILITY FOR HUMAN RIGHTS ATROCITIES IN

INTERNATIONAL LAW: BEYOND THE NUREMBERG LEGACY 29 (1997). 83. Developments in the Law�—International Criminal Law, Defining Protected Groups Under the Genocide

Convention, 114 HARV. L. REV. 2007, 2011 n.28 (2001).

84. William A. Schabas, Problems of International Codification�—Were the Atrocities in Cambodia and Kosovo Genocide?, 35 NEW ENG. L. REV. 287, 292 (2001) [hereinafter Schabas, Atrocities in Cambodia]. According to Macquarie University�’s Konrad Kwiet, Australia has thus far not incorporated the Genocide Convention into domestic law because it fears that the Convention may be used against it by Aborigines. Patrick


The United Nations of the 1940s in which the major Western powers prevailed against the concept of cultural genocide was an exclusive organization, but there is no indication that in an expanded, post-colonial United Nations most states would favor a ban on cultural genocide, as the actions of many states may give rise to charges against them. U.S. leaders, for example, were aware that their actions during the Vietnam War might subject them to a claim of cultural genocide.86 A report prepared for the UN Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities in 1985 recommended consideration of a cultural genocide provision, perhaps through an optional protocol.87 However, no change has taken place, and �“[r]ecent United Nations activity in this area suggests that ratification of [a contemporary equivalent of] Article III . . . would take a long time and might find only a few signatories.�”88 While at least one scholar urges that cultural genocide be incorporated into the Convention,89 international lawmakers have shown no interest in doing so. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, for example, brings genocide, but not cultural genocide, within its ambit.90 Critics of a ban on cultural genocide remain wary that it may impede assimilationist policies. Arguing in favor of a prohibition of cultural genocide, a leading scholar nevertheless recognizes that it can be realized only if framed as an adjunct of physical genocide:

[T]here is a distinction between [assimilationist] programs and the deliberate destruction and desecration of icons, libraries, monuments, and coercive religious conversion. The latter violent acts might be prohibited when undertaken in conjunction with acts of physical genocide. In such cases there is little doubt that there is an intent to both physically exterminate the group and eliminate all remnants of its existence.91

A conjunction of physical and cultural destruction was precisely the conclusion reached by analysts about the wars of the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia, where ethnic-based organized mass murders and expulsions were accompanied by a systematic destruction of hundreds of mosques, churches, museums, libraries, archives, and ancient houses.92

It has been observed that �“[w]hat was left out of the Convention is as important as what was included.�”93 That proposals were made in the 1940s for a ban on cultural genocide and were not adopted in a binding legal instrument has implications for how Barkham, Latvia Claims Right to Try �‘War Criminal�’: Australia Has Never Extradited an Ex-Nazi and Is Accused of Sheltering a New Generation of Murderers, GUARDIAN (London), May 28, 2001, 2001 WL 21560072.

85. Thomas W. Simon, Defining Genocide, 15 WIS. INT�’L L.J. 243, 252 (1996) (book review) [hereinafter Simon, Defining Genocide].

86. Matthew Lippman, The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide: Fifty Years Later, 15 ARIZ. J. INT�’L & COMP. L. 415, 476�–80 (1998).

87. Benjamin Whitaker, Special Rapporteur, Review of Further Developments in Fields with Which the Sub-Commission Has Been Concerned: Revised and Updated Report on the Question of the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide Prepared by Mr. B. Whitaker, U.N. ESCOR, Human Rights Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, 38th Sess., at 37, 40, U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1985/6 (1985) [hereinafter Whitaker, Revised Report].

88. Morsink, supra note 76, at 1055. 89. Matthew Lippman, The Drafting of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime

of Genocide, 3 B.U. INT�’L L.J. 1, 62�–63 (1985). 90. Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, art. 5, U.N. Doc. A/CONF.183/9 (1998), reprinted in

37 I.L.M. 999 (1998). 91. Lippman, Forty-Five Years Later, supra note 81, at 77. 92. See generally MICHAEL SELLS, THE BRIDGE BETRAYED: RELIGION AND GENOCIDE IN BOSNIA (1996);

ARYEH NEIER, WAR CRIMES: BRUTALITY, GENOCIDE, TERROR, AND THE STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE (1998); R. Bevan, The Arts: Bricks and Mortars, INDEPENDENT (London), Sept. 3, 2001, 2001 WL 23549744.

93. Diane Orentlicher, Genocide in Crimes of War: What the Public Should Know, in CRIMES OF WAR: WHAT THE PUBLIC SHOULD KNOW 153�–54 (Roy Gutman & David Rieff eds., 1999).


malign state actions affecting culture should be characterized. Proposals to the United Nations more than a half-century ago did provide parameters for the concept, which were the essential link of cultural genocide to physical and biological genocide and a requirement of intent. Their rejection by the United Nations mandates that no implication be made that a crime of cultural genocide exists94 and that the concept be strictly construed. Thus, William Schabas, the foremost specialist of the law of genocide, argues that although the defrocking of Buddhist monks and nuns and repression against Muslim Chams in Khmer Rouge-ruled Cambodia (1975�–1979) may be crimes against humanity, defined as �“persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds�” during wartime,95 and may also violate the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR),96 these actions would not amount to genocide.97 Under Article II of the Convention, genocide means

any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

a. Killing members of the group; b. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to

bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; e. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.98

The Genocide Convention requires �“a very specific intent . . . not only the intent to kill or destroy people but to kill or destroy them because they form a group such as referred to in Article II.�”99 Genocide is a �“premeditated, calculated, systematic, malicious crime, authorized by a state�’s political leaders�”100 and is distinguishable from atrocities such as ethnic cleansing, which may be intended to drive a people from a territory, but not to exterminate them. Studies of late twentieth century civil wars and ethnic conflicts include only two instances of genocide (Rwanda and Bosnia) among scores of cases.101 The International Law Commission has pointed out that in genocide �“the destruction in question is the material destruction of a group either by physical or by biological means. . . .�”102 As

94. The émigré leaders have argued that the whole half-century of �“Chinese rule�” in Tibet amounts to �“a crime of cultural genocide against the Tibetan people.�” Freedom from Religious Persecution Act of 1997: Hearing on H.B. 1685 Before the House Comm. on Int�’l Rel., 105th Cong. (1997) (testimony of Lodi G. Gyari, President, International Campaign for Tibet), 1997 WL 14150582.

95. Agreement for the Prosecution and Punishment of the Major War Criminals of the European Axis, Aug. 8, 1945, 59 Stat. 1544, 1547, 82 U.N.T.S. 279, 288.

96. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, G.A. Res. 2200, U.N. GAOR, 21st Sess., Supp. No. 16, at 56, U.N. Doc. A/6316 (1966) [hereinafter ICCPR] (�“In those states in which ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities exist, persons belonging to such minorities shall not be denied the right, in community with the other members of their group, to enjoy their own culture, to process and practise their own religion, or to use their own language.�”).

97. Schabas, Atrocities in Cambodia, supra note 84, at 291. 98. Genocide Convention, supra note 62. 99. Martti Koskenniemi, Evil Intention or Vicious Acts: What is Prima Facie Evidence of Genocide?, in

HELSINKI: FINNISH BRANCH OF THE INTERNATIONAL LAW ASSOCIATION, LIBER AMICORUM BENGT BROMS 180, 182 (Matti Tupamaki ed., 1999).

100. CAMPBELL, supra note 69, at 34. 101. TED GURR & BARBARA HARFF, ETHNIC CONFLICT IN WORLD POLITICS 160�–66 (1994); CHARLES

KEGLEY & EUGENE WITTKOPF, WORLD POLITICS: TREND AND TRANSFORMATION 367�–68 (1999).

102. Report of the International Law Commission on the Work of Its Forty-Eighth Session, U.N. GAOR, 51st Sess., Supp. No. 10, at 90, U.N. Doc. A/51/10 (1996).


two leading scholars of genocide point out, �“The suppression of a culture, a language, a religion, and so on is a phenomenon that is analytically different from the physical extermination of a group.�”103

The Khmer Rouge, for example, intended not to destroy Buddhists as such, but to eliminate Buddhist cultural institutions in order to diminish popular adherence to religion.104 It sought not to wipe out the Chams as such, but to force their assimilation into the Khmer majority.105 The Khmer Rouge killed people to accomplish these goals, but there was no �“cultural genocide�” as the original proponents of the concept conceived it because the actions were not an adjunct to physical destruction of protected ethnic or religious groups as such. As William Schabas has put it, �“[I]n light of the travaux preparatoires of the Genocide Convention, it seems impossible to consider acts of cultural genocide as punishable crimes if they are unrelated to physical or biological genocide.�”106 The effort to attach a label of �“genocide�” to these actions is, under a reasonably strict construction of the Convention, merely �“an attempt to stigmatise behavior [with] a word loaded with such terrible connotations.�”107

Despite the idiosyncratic preferences of some scholars,108 the acts originally contemplated as cultural genocide would not have been crimes under international law unless they had become part of a program to exterminate a protected group and were demonstrably intentional.109 In genocide, physical or cultural, �“organizers and planners must have a racist or discriminatory motive, that is, a genocidal motive, taken as whole. Where this is lacking, the crime cannot be genocide.�”110 The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) has said of the mass murders of 1994�–1995 in that country that �“many facts show that the intention of the perpetrators of these killings was to cause the complete disappearance of the Tutsi people.�”111 ICCPR Article 27, which states that group members cannot be denied the right to enjoy their own culture,112 differs from the proposed ban on cultural genocide under the Genocide Convention precisely because the latter expressly prohibited acts intended to destroy culture on grounds of racial origin or religious belief,113 while Article 27 does not require a showing of scienter or knowledge of

103. FRANK CHALK & KURT JONASSOHN, THE HISTORY AND SOCIOLOGY OF GENOCIDE: ANALYSES AND

CASE STUDIES 23 (1990). 104. Schabas, Atrocities in Cambodia, supra note 84, at 291. 105. Id. See also Simon, Defining Genocide, supra note 85, at 254�–55. 106. SCHABAS, GENOCIDE IN INTERNATIONAL LAW, supra note 62, at 187. 107. Schabas, Atrocities in Cambodia, supra note 91, at 292, 301. See also Simon, Defining Genocide, supra

note 92, at 252. The label of genocide is much more supportable in the case of anti-Vietnamese killings by the Khmer Rouge, which were intended to and virtually succeeded in the annihilation of 400,000 Vietnamese Cambodians. See generally BEN KIERNAN, THE POL POT REGIME: RACE, POWER, AND GENOCIDE IN CAMBODIA UNDER THE KHMER ROUGE (1996).

108. GEORGE TINKER, MISSIONARY CONQUEST: THE GOSPEL AND NATIVE AMERICAN CULTURAL GENOCIDE 6 (1993); Mark A. Michaels, Indigenous Ethics and Alien Laws: Native Traditions and the United States Legal System, 66 FORDHAM L. REV. 1565, 1569�–70 (1998) (terming U.S. law allowing Indian tribes to own casinos as cultural genocide); Julie C. Lythcott-Haims, Where Do Mixed Babies Belong? Racial Classification in America and Its Implications for Transracial Adoption, 29 HARV. C.R.-C.L. L. REV. 531, 551 (1994) (calling interracial adoption cultural genocide).

109. George J. Andreopoulos, Introduction: The Calculus of Genocide, in GENOCIDE: CONCEPTUAL AND HISTORICAL DIMENSIONS 1�–27 (George J. Andreopolous ed., 1994).

110. SCHABAS, GENOCIDE IN INTERNATIONAL LAW, supra note 62, at 255. 111. Prosecutor v. Akayesu, Case No. ICTR-96-4-T (ICTR Trial Chamber Sept. 2, 1998), 37 I.L.M. 1401,

1403 (1998). 112. ICCPR, supra note 96, art. 27. 113. See Lippman, Forty-Five Years Later, supra note 81, at 37 n.277.


the circumstances of the act.114 A fortiori, there can be no unintentional or unconscious cultural genocide.

Acts destructive of minority cultures are chargeable under the ICCPR against states that have ratified it (China has not), but neither the ICCPR nor any other treaty denominates a violation as �“cultural genocide.�” To do so would require that the acts be deemed violative only if they are genocidal, i.e., part of an intended program of mass killings of a protected group. Such an implication would raise the bar on the protection of minority cultural rights that should be guarded by law even where the violation of a culture is not part of a concerted extermination of an ethnic or religious group.

That there is no binding international law of cultural genocide reflects UN and state reluctance to mandate the protection of minority rights. For example, the 1992 UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious or Linguistic Minorities is not binding and has no enforcement mechanism.115 The same is true of a draft UN instrument on indigenous peoples�’ rights that speaks of cultural genocide.

C. Indigenous Peoples, Cultural Genocide, and Ethnocide

Although not inscribed in binding international instruments or customary law,116 the concept of cultural genocide has been introduced into proposed protections of the rights of indigenous peoples. The latter are defined not by treaty, but in a variety of ways by international organizations and diplomats.117 The most common definitions relied upon suggest �“indigenous peoples�” include only those who were affected by classic modern colonialism. A somewhat more encompassing definition appeared in a draft entitled �“International Covenant on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples�” which was prepared for the World Council of Indigenous People. It stated that an indigenous people is one:

a. who lived in a territory before the entry of a colonizing population, which colonizing population has created a new state or states or extended the jurisdiction of an existing state or states to include the territory, and b. who continue to live in the territory and who do not control the national government of the state or states within which they live.118

114. Richard L. Herz, Litigating Environmental Abuses Under the Alien Torts Claims Act: A Practical

Assessment, 40 VA. J. INT�’L L. 545, 629 (2000). For a violation of Article 27 to be established, however, the action in question must have �“effects as severe as might be expected in a cultural genocide claim . . . .�” Id. at 631.

115. Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities, G.A. Res. 47/135, U.N. GAOR, 47th Sess., Supp. No. 49, at 210, U.N. Doc. A/47/49 (1992).

116. See Beanal v. Freeport-McMoran, Inc., 969 F. Supp. 362, 373 (E.D. La. 1997), aff�’d, 197 F.3d 161 (5th Cir. 1999) (enumerating the differences between genocide, which is prohibited by law, and cultural genocide, which is not); Whitaker, Revised Report, supra note 87, at 17.

117. See Teri Leon, The Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: Three Case Studies, 6 NEW ENG. INT�’L & COMP. L. ANN. 47, 58 (2000) (providing definitions of �“indigenous peoples�” by the World Bank, the Independent Commission on International Humanitarian Issues, and U.N. Special Rapporteur José R. Martínez Cobo).

118. The former WCIP definition found in the 1984 draft of the International Covenant is quoted in Benedict Kingsbury, The Applicability of the International Legal Concept of �‘Indigenous Peoples�’ in Asia, in THE EAST ASIAN CHALLENGE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS 336, 348 (Joanne Bauer & Daniel Bell eds., 1999) is absent in the Authorized Version of the International Covenant on the Rights of Indigenous Nations of 1994, available at http://www.cwis.org/icrin-94.html (last visited Feb. 18, 2003).


That definition, however, was dropped from the final text. The only definition that fully dispenses with a link between indigenous peoples and colonialism is that of the World Bank, but it counterintuitively and counterfactually eliminates the criterion of historical continuity and the implied notion of historical priority by terming as indigenous all �“groups with a social and cultural identity distinct from the dominant society that makes them vulnerable to being disadvantaged.�”119 This overinclusive definition erases any distinction between indigenous and ethnic minority peoples, while a UN Special Rapporteur has adjured that indigenous peoples is a category that �“should not be confused with ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities.�”120

The most widely-cited definition of indigenous peoples and one that to some extent has guided UN practice121 is that of UN Special Rapporteur Martinez Cabo:

Indigenous communities, peoples and nations are those which, having a historical continuity with pre-invasion and pre-colonial societies that developed on their territories, consider themselves distinct from other sectors of the societies now prevailing in those territories, or parts of them. They form at present non-dominant sectors of society and are determined to preserve, develop and transmit to future generations their ancestral territories, and their ethnic identity, as the basis of their continued existence as peoples, in accordance with their own cultural patterns, social institutions and legal systems.122

Martinez Cabo�’s definition likely influenced the definition in International Labour Organization Convention No. 169, which refers to indigenous peoples as descended from inhabitants of a country �“at the time of conquest or colonisation.�”123 Mobilizations among the 300 million indigenes led to the 1981 formation of a UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations and to UNESCO meeting on �“ethnocide�” in Costa Rica.124 A Latin American meeting produced the Declaration of San Jose, which states that �“ethnocide, i.e. cultural genocide, is a crime against international law, as is genocide, the subject of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.�”125 The conferees erred in calling cultural genocide a violation equivalent to genocide: The latter is the most serious of crimes, while �“the crime of cultural genocide�” has only been an unsuccessful proposal. In addition to the Declaration drafters, other scholars have also been mistaken in equating ethnocide and cultural genocide.126

119. World Bank Operational Directive 4.20, reprinted in S. JAMES ANAYA, INDIGENOUS PEOPLES IN INTERNATIONAL LAW 69 (1996).

120. Aureliu Cristescu, The Right to Self-Determination: Historical and Current Development on the Basis of United Nations Instruments, at 41, U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/Sub. 2/404/Rev.1, U.N. Sales No. E.80.XVI.3 (1981).

121. Benedict Kingsbury, �“Indigenous Peoples�” in International Law: A Constructivist Approach to the Asian Controversy, 92 AM. J. INT�’L L. 414, 419 (1998).

122. Study of the Problem of Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations: Report of José R. Martínez Cobo, Special Rapporteur, at ¶¶ 379�–80, U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1986/7/Add.4 (1986).

123. Convention Concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries, June 27, 1989, 28 I.L.M. 1382, 1385, available at http://www.ilo.org/ilolex/cgi-lex/convde.pl?C169 (last visited Feb. 2, 2003). As of the end of 2002, only 17 states had ratified this Convention�—all of them, except Mexico, small, and none of them Asian. See Convention Ratification, at http://www.ilo.org/ilolex/cgi-lex/ratifce.pl?C169 (last visited Feb. 18, 2002).

124. UNESCO, Meeting of Experts on Ethno-Development and Ethnocide in Latin America, Final Report, San Jose (Costa Rica), Dec. 11, 1981, UNESCO Doc. SS 82/WS.32 (1981).

125. San José Declaration, 1981, Final Report on Study of the Problem of Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations, U.N. Commission on Human Rights, 35th Sess., Agenda Item 12, at 90, U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1982/2/Add.1 (1982).

126. See, e.g., Dean B. Suagee, Self-Determination for Indigenous Peoples at the Dawn of the Solar Age, 25 MICH. J.L. REFORM 671, 696 (1992) (stating that �“cultural genocide�” is generally synonymous with the term �“ethnocide�”); Thomas R. Moore, SIL and a �“New-Found Tribe�”: The Amarakaeri Experience, 4 DIALECTICAL


Unlike cultural genocide, which is invariably connected to mass ethnic murder on a grand scale,127 ethnocide, as envisaged by proponents of the concept, is not necessarily tied to killing.128 An influential early work on ethnocide identified it exclusively with the Western capitalist state,129 while cultural genocide has not been so circumscribed. Scholars have defined ethnocide in many ways. Alex Alvarez calls it �“the assassination of a culture and of identity. It is the murder of the ties that bind a group of people together and make them unique.�”130 Kazuo Sumi terms it �“a dislocation of indigenous people from their homeland, destruction of their way of life, and denial of their culture and language.�”131 For Maivan Clech Lam, ethnocide �“is the destruction, or severe disruption, of the social and material bases necessary to a people to sustain its human relations, body of knowledge, and sense of existential purpose, such that an essentially �‘de-knowledged�’ community now looks out at a world of chaos in which it may never again find its place.�”132 The Declaration of San Jose, while not as lyrical as academic pronouncements, assigns the term to actions of unambiguous malignancy:

Ethnocide means that an ethnic group is denied the right to enjoy, develop and transmit its own culture and its own language, whether collectively or individually. This involves an extreme form of massive violation of human rights and, in particular, the right of ethnic groups to respect for their cultural identity . . . .133

�“An extreme form of massive violation of human rights�” presupposes intent, which can be inferred from the nature of the acts, not actions that are �“unintentional�” or �“unconscious.�”134 As one scholar has observed, �“Usually the term ethnocide is applied to intentional acts resulting in culture death.�”135 The intent that underlies ethnocide may not be identical to the intent that underlies cultural genocide because ethnocide is not tied to the physical or biological destruction of a group, and is thus typically aimed at forced

ANTHROPOLOGY 113, 114 (1979) (stating that it is not necessary for physical genocide, which is linked to cultural genocide, to occur in relation to ethnocide). For a definition of cultural genocide that is also descriptive of ethnocide, see Vahakn N. Dadrian, A Typology of Genocide, 5 INT�’L REV. MOD. SOC. 201, 205 (1975) (�“[T]he destruction of the defining characteristic and qualities of a group involves forced assimilation and suppression of their ethnic characteristics.�”).

127. See, e.g., John W. Burton, Development and Cultural Genocide in the Sudan, 29 J. MOD. AFR. STUD. 511 (1991) (describing the cultural genocide of the Nilotic-speaking peoples of the southern Sudan); MICHAEL SELLS, BRIDGE BETRAYED: RELIGION AND GENOCIDE IN BOSNIA (1996); Robert van Krieken, The Barbarism of Civilization: Cultural Genocide and the �‘Stolen Generations,�’ 50 BRIT. J. SOC. 297 (1999) (describing the cultural genocide of the Australian aborigines).

128. Alison Palmer, Ethnocide, in GENOCIDE IN OUR TIME: AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY WITH ANALYTICAL INTRODUCTIONS 1�–6 (Michael Dobkowski & Isidor Wallimann eds., 1992).

129. See PIERRE CLASTRES, ARCHEOLOGY OF VIOLENCE (Jeanine Herman, trans., Semiotext(e), 1994) (1980).

130. ALVAREZ, supra note 65, at 51. 131. David Weissbrodt et al., Prospects for U.S. Ratification of the Convention Against Torture, 83 AM.

SOC�’Y INT�’L L. PROC. 529, 547 (1989) (quoting Kazuo Sumi, Professor of International Law, Yokohama City University, Japan).

132. MAIVAN CLECH LAM, AT THE EDGE OF THE STATE: INDIGENOUS PEOPLES AND SELF-DETERMINATION 31 (2000).

133. Declaration of San Jose, 1982, Preamble. See also Herz, supra note 114, at 633. (�“Cultural genocide is an extreme form of discrimination in that it consists of an effort to obliterate an entire culture.�”).

134. CHALK & JONASSOHN, supra note 103, at 23; Discrimination Against Indigenous Peoples: Report of the Working Group on Indigenous Populations on its Eighth Session, U.N. ESCOR, 8th Sess., at 47, U.N. Doc E/CN.4/Sub.2/1990/42 (1990).

135. Dennis O�’Neil, Glossary of Terms: Ethnocide, sec. E, at http://anthro.palomar.edu/change/glossary.htm (last visited Oct. 20, 2002).


assimilation, not population decimation. In any case, because �“�‘ethnocide�’ does not exist in UN human rights instruments,�”136 it is indeterminate, as everyone imagines what they will about it. Indeed, the term has been applied to scenarios where forced assimilation and other obviously intentional acts were carried out137 as well as to situations where no intent to harm is apparent.138

The Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples139 speaks moreover of �“cultural genocide and ethnocide,�” with use of the conjunctive indicating that the drafters held the two concepts not to be identical. In international law, the term �“ethnocide�” has only been applied to indigenous peoples and not to colonized peoples or ethnic minorities. It is found only in the Draft Declaration and not in other UN documents.140 The experiences of many minority and colonized peoples nevertheless resemble ethnocide.141 For example, from 1895 to 1945 in Japan�’s Taiwan colony, school curricula were purged of anything that might remind students that they were Chinese, and students who spoke Chinese in schools were penalized or even assaulted.142 In its Korean colony from 1919, Japan enforced

a policy of �“cultural control�” or �“material assimilation.�” This entailed the enforcement of Emperor worship and prohibition both of the teaching of Korean history and of the use of the Korean language in public places. Koreans were obliged to learn Japanese and to adopt Japanese names.143

In Turkey during the 1920s, the secular republican regime attempted to suppress Kurdish identity. A then-Minister of Justice, Mahmut Esat Bozkurt stated: �“Those who are not of pure Turkish stock can have only one right in this country, the right to be servants and slaves.�”144 The Kurdish language was outlawed, Kurdish organizations banned, and Kurdish land expropriated for settlement by Turks.145 Kurds, a fifth of Turkey�’s people, were deported across the country to force their assimilation and to guarantee that no area

136. Kathryn L. Boyd, Collective Rights Adjudication in U.S. Courts: Enforcing Human Rights at the

Corporate Level, 1999 BYU L. REV. 1139, 1175 (1999). 137. DAVID MAYBURY-LEWIS, INDIGENOUS PEOPLES, ETHNIC GROUPS AND THE STATE 15�–39 (1997). 138. JOE THOMAS, ETHNOCIDE: A CULTURAL NARRATIVE OF REFUGEE DETENTION IN HONG KONG 33�–34

(2000) (temporary detention of Vietnamese refugees). �“Cultural genocide,�” of course, is even more often applied to situations where there is no apparent intent to harm an ethnic group. For example, an executive officer of the Orange Order termed the ban on marching through an Irish nationalist community �“a policy of cultural genocide against the loyalist community of Northern Ireland.�” Parade Barred from Garvaghy Road, IRISH TIMES, July 3, 2001, at 7, 2001 WL 23510033.

139. Draft United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, U.N. ESCOR, Human Rights Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/1995/2/1994/56 (1994), reprinted in 31 I.L.M. 541 (1995). For an analysis of the draft, see Robert Coulter, The Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: What is it? What does it mean?, 13 NETHERLANDS Q. HUM. RTS. 123 (1995) and Julian Burger, The United Nations Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 9 ST. THOMAS L. REV. 209 (1996).

140. Julian Burger, Indigenous Peoples and the United Nations, in THE HUMAN RIGHTS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES 3, 7 (Cynthia Price Cohen ed., 1998).

141. See, e.g., RENE LEMARCHAND, BURUNDI: ETHNOCIDE AS DISCOURSE AND PRACTICE (1995). 142. Ping Chen, Policy on the Selection and Implementation of a Standard Language as a Source of Conflict

in Taiwan, in LANGUAGE PLANNING AND LANGUAGE POLICY: EAST ASIAN PERSPECTIVES 95, 97 (Nanette Gottlieb & Ping Chen eds., 2001). Until 1994, the use of Taiwanese, rather than Mandarin, in school was a punishable offense. Matt Forney, Taiwan Rediscovers Roots, Sheds Provincial Trappings, ASIAN WALL ST. J., July 27, 1999, at 1.

143. Bruce Armstrong, Racialisation and Nationalist Ideology: The Japanese Case, 4 INT�’L SOC. 329, 339 (1989).

144. DAVID MCDOWALL, THE KURDS: A NATION DENIED 38 (1992). 145. MICHAEL GUNTER, THE KURDS AND THE FUTURE OF TURKEY 5 (1997).


was more than five percent Kurdish.146 Kurds were designated as �“mountain Turks,�” and the term �“Kurd�” officially promoted as an insult.147 Kurdistan was termed the �“East�” of Turkey.148 It was only in 2001 that it became legal in Turkey to publish or broadcast in Kurdish; the language is still banned from schools.149

Cultural repression against colonized peoples and ethnic minorities has been more than matched by similar actions against indigenous peoples. These include an arguable form of cultural genocide that, due to English-mediated hegemony, is most associated with Native Americans, First Nations Canadians, and Australian Aborigines. Genocide Convention Article II(e) bans the forcible transfer of children of a protected group to another group, a process that indigenous activists term �“cultural genocide.�” However, the Convention framers rejected that concept; the Convention specifies that forcible transfer is genocide per se if committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or part, a protected group.150 The International Law Commission (ILC) treats Article II(e) as a type of �“biological genocide.�”151

Drafters framed Article II(e) because the Nazi Germanization policy in Poland and other occupied states included mass kidnapping and transfer of children to German families or orphanages to be raised as Germans who would disdain their former Slavic ethnic group and its culture.152 The Nazi transfer program in Poland precipitated the slaughter of several million other Poles and included plans to eventually murder Poles not deemed of �“good blood,�” to Germanize part of the remainder, and to reduce the rest to serfs.153 Attending the slaughter of Serbs by Croatian fascist forces, thousands of Serbian Orthodox children were forcibly transferred to Croatian Catholic orphanages and homes.154 Forcible transfer was thus an adjunct to physical genocide, as were, in varying degrees, transfers of indigenous children in the United States and Australia.

By the mid-nineteenth century in the United States, after two centuries of warfare intended to destroy Native Americans in whole or in part, including their cultures,155 �“public sentiment overwhelmingly favored destruction by civilization rather than by

146. Id. at 6. 147. Id. 148. Id. at 5�–10; JACK DAVID ELLER, FROM CULTURE TO ETHNICITY TO CONFLICT: AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL

PERSPECTIVE ON INTERNATIONAL ETHNIC CONFLICT 171�–73 (1999). 149. Twenty-Two Held Over Kurdish Education Campaign, S. CHINA MORNING POST, Jan. 19, 2002, at E5,

2002 WL 2304072. 150. Genocide Convention, supra note 62, art. II. 151. International Law Commission, Report of the Commission to the General Assembly on the Work of Its

Forty-First Session, at 102, para. 4, U.N. Doc. A/CN.4/SERA.A/1989/Add.1/(Part 2) (1989). Biological genocide has typically been an adjunct of physical genocide, but there has been biological genocide without physical genocide, for example, the sterilization of the African-Germans by the Nazis. Susan Samples, African Germans in the Third Reich, in THE AFRICAN-GERMAN EXPERIENCE 53�–70 (Carol Aisha Blackshire-Belay ed., 1996).

152. POLISH GOVERNMENT-IN-EXILE, THE QUEST FOR GERMAN BLOOD: POLICY OF GERMANIZATION OF POLAND (1943) (on file with author). SS leader Heinrich Himmler stated, �“What happens to a Russian, a Czech, does not interest me in the slightest. What the nations can offer in the way of good blood of our type, we take. If necessary, by kidnapping their children and raising them here with us. Whether nations live in prosperity or starve to death interests me only in so far as we need them as slaves for our Kultur, otherwise it is of no interest to me.�” 1 TRIAL OF THE MAJOR WAR CRIMINALS BEFORE THE INTERNATIONAL MILITARY TRIBUNAL 237 (1947).

153. MICHAEL BURLEIGH, THE THIRD REICH: A NEW HISTORY 441�–57 (2000); R.J. RUMMEL, DEMOCIDE: NAZI GENOCIDE AND MASS MURDER 31�–42 (1992). The physical genocide of Poles and other Slavs was to be accompanied by a cultural genocide. See CHRISTOPHER BROWNING, NAZI POLICY, JEWISH WORKERS, GERMAN KILLERS 14�–24 (2000).

154. Menachem Shelah, Genocide in Satellite Croatia During the Second World War, in A MOSAIC OF VICTIMS: NON-JEWS PERSECUTED AND MURDERED BY THE NAZIS 74�–79 (Michael Berenbaum ed., 1990).

155. WARD CHURCHILL, INDIANS ARE US? CULTURE AND GENOCIDE IN NATIVE NORTH AMERICA 34�–37 (1994).


killing.�”156 Ninety boarding schools for Native American children were established between 1878 and 1902.157 Richard Pratt, an �“Indian fighter�” who founded the first school, stated that �“the sooner all tribal relations are broken up; the sooner the Indian loses all his Indian ways, even his language, the better it will be for him and for the government.�”158 In contrast, European immigrants to the United States were allowed to have schools taught in their mother tongue.159 The Native American boarding schools existed until the mid-twentieth century and �“attempted to break the cultural continuity of tribal peoples by radically altering the cultural and social identities of Indian children,�” who were expected to become laborers or servants alienated from Native America.160 Claims of cultural genocide of Native Americans have been made long after the end of physical genocide.161

There has been an upsurge in the past decade of works on the colonial and post-colonial assault on Australia�’s aborigines.162 Several books have appeared recently that directly take up the question of a historical genocide.163 In Australia�’s controversy over the �“Stolen Generation,�”164 at least one scholar has argued that cultural genocide was implicated in the use from 1910 to 1970 of the Aborigines Protection Amending Bill to remove some 100,000 aborigine children from their biological parents and place them in white foster homes or state orphanages.165

The Canadian government generally did not wage a war of extermination against the First Nations, although some were annihilated.166 It is nevertheless charged that

156. Robert Utley, Introduction, in BATTLEFIELD AND CLASSROOM: FOUR DECADES WITH THE AMERICAN

INDIAN, 1867�–1904, at 35 (Robert Utley ed., 1964). 157. Debra Barker, Kill the Indian, Save the Child: Cultural Genocide and the Boarding School, in

AMERICAN INDIAN STUDIES: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH TO CONTEMPORARY ISSUES 47, 52 (Dane Morrison ed., 1997).

158. Id. 159. James Crawford, Endangered Native American Languages: What Is To Be Done and Why?, in

LANGUAGE AND POLITICS IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA: MYTHS AND REALITIES 17 (Thomas Ricento & Barbara Burnaby eds., 1998).

160. Jeffrey Hamley, Cultural Genocide in the Classroom: A History of the Federal Boarding School Movement in American Indian Education: 1875�–1920, at 208 (1994) (unpublished Ed.D. dissertation, Harvard University) (on file with author); Barker, supra note 158, at 59�–63.

161. See, e.g., PARKER NIELSON, THE DISPOSSESSED: CULTURAL GENOCIDE OF THE MIXED-BLOOD UTES: AN ADVOCATE�’S CHRONICLE (1998).

162. See generally BRUCE ELDER, BLOOD ON THE WATTLE: MASSACRES AND MALTREATMENT OF AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINES SINCE 1788 (1996); RUSSELL MCGREGOR, IMAGINED DESTINIES: ABORIGINAL AUSTRALIANS AND THE DOOMED RACE THEORY, 1880�–1939 (1997); ROSALIND KIDD, THE WAY WE CIVILISE: ABORIGINAL AFFAIRS, THE UNTOLD STORY (1997). The assault had in common with other colonial infringements dispossession facilitated by an assumption that Australia was terra nullius (no one�’s land), even though the land is the situs of Aboriginal spiritual life and culture. Genevieve Lloyd, No One�’s Land: Australia and the Philosophical Imagination, HYPATIA, Spring 2000, at 26, at http://www.iupjournals.org/hypatia/hyp15-2.html.

163. See, e.g., HENRY REYNOLDS, AN INDELIBLE STAIN? THE QUESTION OF GENOCIDE IN AUSTRALIA�’S HISTORY (2001); Tony Barta, Relations of Genocide: Land and Lives in the Colonization of Australia, in GENOCIDE AND THE MODERN AGE, supra note 30, at 237�–53; ALISON PALMER, COLONIAL GENOCIDE (2000); COLIN TATZ, GENOCIDE IN AUSTRALIA (1999).

164. Ron Brunton, Betraying the Victims: The �‘Stolen Generation�’ Report, IPA BACKGROUNDER Vol.10/1, Feb. 1998, at 1 (criticizing the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families of the Human Rights Commission as intellectually and morally irresponsible) (Jolimont, Vic: Institute of Public Affairs, 1998); Forum, The Stolen Generation: Children: From Removal to Reconciliation, 21 U. N.S.W. L.J. 204 (1998); see also Dolores Estrada, Australia�’s Aboriginal Battle for Self-Determination and Equal Justice: A Case Study of the Stolen Generation (unpublished M.A. thesis, Georgetown University, 1998) (on file with author).

165. Robert van Krieken, The �‘Stolen Generations�’ and Cultural Genocide: The Forced Removal of Australian Indigenous Children from Their Families and Its Implications for the Sociology of Childhood, 6 CHILDHOOD: GLOBAL J. CHILD RES. 297 (1999), available at http://www.usyd.edu.au/su/social/robert/arc/papers/ gen2.htm (last visited Oct. 6, 2002).

166. JOHN BOYKO, LAST STEPS TO FREEDOM: THE EVOLUTION OF CANADIAN RACISM 176 (1995).


Canada�’s Native people have survived an intentional, sustained, well financed, and cleverly executed program of cultural genocide perpetrated by the government of Canada [waged by] stealing their past through eradicating their culture, by stealing their future through kidnapping their children, and by stealing their present by attacking their pride.167

The Canadian government aimed to absorb the First Nations into the general population through a scheme that used treaties to acquire their lands without promised payments and through forced inclusion of native children in residential schools that trained them as laborers, punished them for any use of native languages, and taught them to despise native culture.168 While most residential schools were phased out by the 1950s, the forcible transfer of thousands of native children to distant foster homes began. By the end of the 1960s, First Nations members, who constituted four percent of Canada�’s population, were 40 percent of children in �“protective custody.�”169

Despite a misapprehension of the concepts of cultural genocide and ethnocide, the Declaration of San Jose did provide impetus for the composition, beginning in 1985, of the Draft Declaration on Indigenous Rights, which was presented in final form in 1994 to the Sub-Commission and adopted by it without change.170 Since then, debate on the Draft Declaration in the Commission on Human Rights continues, but only two of its forty-five articles have been adopted as of 2001.171 The Draft Declaration provides:

Indigenous peoples have the collective and individual right not to be subjected to ethnocide and cultural genocide, including prevention of and redress for:

a. Any action which has the aim or effect of depriving them of their integrity as distinct peoples, or of their cultural values or ethnic identities; b. Any action which has the aim or effect of dispossessing them of their lands, territories or resources; c. Any form of population transfer which has the aim or effect of violating or undermining any of their rights; d. Any form of assimilation or integration by other cultures or ways of life imposed on them by legislative administration or other measures; e. Any form of propaganda directed against them.172

167. Id. at 176. 168. Id. at 177, 180�–84. 169. Id. at 180�–97; Michael Downey, Canada�’s Genocide: Thousands Taken from Their Homes Need Help,

MACLEAN�’S, Apr. 26, 1999, at 56, 1999 WL 100236514; Kevin Annett, Hidden From History: the Canadian Holocaust: The Untold Story of the Genocide of Aboriginal Peoples by Church and State (s.l. Truth Commission into Genocide in Canada, 2001), available at http://canadiangenocide.nativeweb.org (last visited Mar. 15, 2003); See also BEN SWANKEY, NATIONAL IDENTITY OR CULTURAL GENOCIDE? A REPLY TO OTTAWA�’S NEW INDIAN POLICY (1970).

170. Working Group on Indigenous Populations, Report of the Working Group on Indigenous Populations on Its Eleventh Session, U.N. Commission on Human Rights, Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, 45th Sess., Annex I, Agenda Item 14, at 50�–51, U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1993/29 (1993), reprinted in 9 ST. THOMAS L. REV. 212 (1996).

171. Warren Allmand, Canada Needs to Move on Aboriginal-Rights Declaration, GAZETTE (Montreal), June 20, 2001, at B2, LEXIS, News Library, News Group File.

172. Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, U.N. ESCOR Commission on Human Rights, Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, 46th Sess., Agenda Item 15, art. 7, U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1994/2/Add.1 (1994).


Under the Draft Declaration and in contrast to the evident intentionality prescribed in the Declaration of San Jose, either �“aim or effect�” may provide the basis for a claim of ethnocide. The Draft Declaration, however, �“is not binding upon UN member states . . . does not currently comport with internationally accepted definitions of genocide and does not establish a recognized norm of customary international law.�”173 It applies only to �“indigenous peoples�” and not to ethnic minorities.174 In contrast to the situation of colonies, whose status the UN Special Committee on Decolonization determines,175 no international body judges whether a population is an indigenous people or an ethnic minority. This is not surprising, given the lack of generally accepted definitions of �“indigenous peoples�” and �“minority�” in the international community.176 Because it is within the reserved sovereignty of states to make a designation, the Draft Declaration applies only to those groups that are recognized as indigenous peoples in their homelands.177 While �“the labels �‘ethnic minority�’ and �‘indigenous peoples�’ are . . . both highly political and subjective, reflecting competing efforts to define the social basis of nation-states,�”178 most Asian states reject the idea that there are indigenous peoples within their borders.179 Some UN officials assert that Asia is home to most of the world�’s indigenous people,180 but UN and state practice does not designate any indigenous peoples outside the Americas, Australasia, and Oceania.181 As an ILO official who formerly worked for the International Commission of Jurists explains:

�“Indigenous�” implies historical precedence in a particular area, and this is sufficiently true in the Americas and in parts of Oceania to be a useful term. However, only some ten percent of the indigenous and tribal peoples in the world live in North and South America. In much of the rest of the world, those who are covered by the two ILO Conventions [No. 169 and No. 107] were probably not in the region before other groups that now form the dominant population.182

Some Western scholars argue that China has indigenes,183 but the PRC has stated:

The indigenous issues are a product of special historical circumstances. By and large, they are the result of the colonialist policy carried out in modern history

173. Martin Geer, Foreigners in Their Own Land: Cultural Land and Transnational Corporations�—

Emergent International Rights and Wrongs, 38 VA. J. INT�’L L. 331, 396 (1998). 174. Leon, supra note 117, at 57. 175. For information on the decolonization process, see The United Nations, The United Nations and

Decolonization, at http://www.un.org/Depts/dpi/decolonization/main.htm (last visited Feb. 18, 2003). 176. Geer, supra note 173, at 346 nn.50�–51. 177. Leon, supra note 117, at 57. 178. Gerard Clarke, From Ethnocide to Ethnodevelopment? Ethnic Minorities and Indigenous Peoples in

Southeast Asia, 22 THIRD WORLD Q. 413, 416 (2001), available at http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/carfax/ 01436597.html (last visited Feb. 13, 2003).

179. Kingsbury, supra note 118, at 349�–50. 180. UN: Press Briefing on International Day of the World�’s Indigenous People, M2 PRESSWIRE, Aug. 5,

1998, 1998 WL 16516040. See also Indigenous Peoples: Pressing for Greater Rights, U.N. CHRON., Mar. 1993, at 95.

181. Richard Thompson, Ethnic Minorities and the Case for Collective Rights, 99 AM. ANTHROPOLOGIST 786, 793 (1997).

182. Lee Swepston, The ILO Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention (No. 169): Eight Years After Adoption, in THE HUMAN RIGHTS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES 17, 21 (Cynthia Price Cohen ed., 1998).

183. Dru Gladney, The Question of Minority Identity and Indigeneity in Post-Colonial China, 21 CULTURAL SURVIVAL Q. 50 (1997), 1997 WL 15427088; see Alexander Woodside, Territorial Order and Collective-Identity Tensions in Confucian Asia: China, Vietnam, Korea, 127 DAEDELUS 191, 202 (1998).


by European countries in other regions of the world, especially on the continents of America and Oceania.184

The Chinese government contends that there are no indigenous peoples or issues in China because �“[a]s in the majority of Asian countries, the various nationalities in China have all lived for aeons on Chinese territory.�”185 A PRC spokesman told a UN International Conference on Indigenous People in 1993 that

China�’s nationalities, including the Han nationality, have lived and multiplied in China for generations. Since no people of a particular nationality came from outside, differences between indigenous people and outsiders do not exist. The issue of indigenous people does not exist in China . . . .186

While the idea of long-fixed Chinese borders is ahistorical, China is not associated with the �“invasion�” and �“colonizing�” referents of definitions of �“indigenous people�”; namely, colonial-era aggression and settlement that have implicated several West European states, the United States, and Japan. It is thus not unreasonable for China to deny that people it designates as minorities are indigenous people, despite their historical priority to Han migrants in minority areas, the statelessness of these autochthonous peoples at the time of their incorporation into China, and other popular indicia of the indigenous. Whatever protections for indigenous peoples emerge will not bind China.

Although Western opinion leaders sometimes refer to Tibetans as �“indigenous people,�”187 the émigré administration does not use the term, and international law scholars sympathetic to the émigré cause find it uncertain that Tibetans come under its rubric.188 The Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples has been occasionally cited in connection with the Tibet Question189 and one émigré activist has proposed that Tibetans �“take the indigenous route.�”190 However, émigré leaders see that label as conflicting with their insistence that Tibet is an occupied state since, in popular conception, indigenous people were mainly stateless before the advent of the colonizers.191 They may also be influenced by the social evolutionism still pervasive in India and China. One émigré scholar has said about most of China�’s ethnic minorities that �“such pre-literate tribes cannot

184. China Concerned with Protection of Indigenous, XINHUA ENGLISH NEWSWIRE, Apr. 1, 1997, 1997 WL 3753665.

185. Considerations of a Draft United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, U.N. ESCOR Commission on Human Rights, 52nd Sess., Agenda Item 4, U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/1995/WG.15/2 (1995).

186. PRC Representative Claims No Problem of Indigenous People Exists in China, XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, Sept. 17, 1993, reprinted in BBC SUMMARY OF WORLD BROADCASTS, Sept. 30, 1993, LEXIS, News Library, News Group File.

187. Prepared Testimony of Rep. Christopher H. Smith Chairman Before the House International Relations Committee Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights, FED. NEWS SERV., Dec. 8, 1999, LEXIS, News Library, News Group File; China�’s Unsavory Resettlement Plan, BOSTON GLOBE, June 22, 1999, at A14, 1999 WL 6068139.

188. See, e.g., Hurst Hannum, The Limits of Sovereignty and Majority Rule: Minorities, Indigenous Peoples, and the Right to Autonomy, in NEW DIRECTIONS IN HUMAN RIGHTS 3 (Ellen Lutz ed., 1989).

189. Laura Ziemer, Application in Tibet of the Principles on Human Rights and the Environment, 14 HARV. HUM. RTS. J. 233, 242 (2001).

190. See Yodon Thonden, The Indigenous Route to Independence: Arguments for a Path Not Yet Taken, TIBET REV., April 1995, at 15�–16.

191. Id.; Eric Cleven & Chungdak Koren, The Correct Route to Independence: For Tibet, the Indigenous Route Is, at Best a Detour, TIBETAN REV., April 1995, at 17�–18. Ironically, some pro-Tibet independence Western scholars regard Tibet as having been stateless or �“almost stateless.�” Lafitte, supra note 29, at 164. See also Geoffrey Samuel, Tibet as a Stateless Society and Some Islamic Parallels, 41 J. ASIAN STUDIES 215, 218�–19 (1982).


be compared with Tibetan people�” and that �“[a]s far as the Tibetans are concerned, they are neither a tribe nor an ethnic group; they constitute a distinct civilizational category . . . .�”192 Because claims to indigenous status are eschewed,193 the concept of ethnocide and a de-linking from intentionality are not relevant to Tibetan émigré discourse, which from the outset has been framed in terms of genocide194 and, latterly, cultural genocide. Even if special scrutiny is needed, however, because Tibetans are a �“pre-existing nationality�” if not an indigenous one,195 state practices in Tibet do not amount to cultural genocide.

III. THE CLAIM OF CULTURAL GENOCIDE IN TIBET

A. The Émigré Conception of Cultural Genocide

In the first years after the emigration of 1959, the Dalai Lama charged that China had �“a view to the total extermination of the Tibetan race,�”196 had brought �“the danger of total destruction�” to Tibetans,197 and had instituted a form of oppression �“a thousand times worse than the system of apartheid.�”198 At the same time, he implied that China�’s aim was not physical annihilation, but assimilation and subordination, stating that China �“seems to attempt the extermination of religion and culture and even the absorption of the Tibetan race.�”199 In reports from 1959 and 1960, the CIA-funded International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), claimed that China was committing genocide in Tibet by eradicating the Tibetans through restrictions on religion that were destroying their way of life.200 Émigré leaders took up the term �“genocide�”201 but at times fixed on the idea of a supposed effort to destroy Tibetan culture, with the Dalai Lama stating in 1973 that �“our unique culture is being deliberately undermined.�”202 The émigrés�’ first use of the term �“cultural genocide�” dates back to at least the return of an émigré delegation from a 1980 �“fact-finding�” trip to Tibet.203 Cultural genocide has since been the centerpiece of émigré discourse, with hundreds of documents referring to it.204 Western politicians sympathetic to the émigré cause also refer to �“cultural genocide.�”205

192. DAWA NORBU, CHINA�’S TIBET POLICY 387, 381 (2001). 193. Self-identification as indigenous has been considered an important defining element for indigenous

status. INDEPENDENT COMMISSION ON INTERNATIONAL HUMANITARIAN ISSUES, INDIGENOUS PEOPLES: A GLOBAL QUEST FOR JUSTICE (1987).

194. See generally GENOCIDE IN TIBET: A STUDY IN COMMUNIST AGGRESSION (Rodney Gilbert ed., 1959). 195. James D. Wilets, The Demise of the Nation-State: Towards a New Theory of the State Under

International Law, 17 BERKELEY J. INT�’L L. 193, 212�–13 (1999). 196. Dalai Lama, Letter to Secretary-General, United Nations, in SELECTED SPEECHES, supra note 13, at 6, 8. 197. DALAI LAMA, AUTOBIOGRAPHY, supra note 20, at 30. 198. Dalai Lama, March 10 Statement 1964, in SELECTED SPEECHES, supra note 13, at 359. 199. INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION OF JURISTS, THE QUESTION OF TIBET AND THE RULE OF LAW 61 (1959)

(quoting the Dalai Lama, June 20, 1959). 200. See generally INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION OF JURISTS, THE QUESTION OF TIBET AND THE RULE OF

LAW (1959); INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION OF JURISTS, TIBET AND THE CHINESE PEOPLE�’S REPUBLIC: A REPORT TO THE INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION OF JURISTS BY ITS LEGAL INQUIRY COMMITTEE ON TIBET (1960).

201. Dalai Lama, March 10 Statement 1961, in SELECTED SPEECHES, supra note 13, at 349; Barnett, supra note 38, at 310�–11 n.43. In the early years of emigration, this claim was largely ignored internationally. See Donald Lavar Jensen, World Apathy to Genocide in Tibet (1970) (unpublished M.S. thesis, George Washington University) (on file with author).

202. Dalai Lama, March 10 Statement 1973, in SELECTED SPEECHES, supra note 13, at 382, 384. 203. Tibet Delegation Returns from Interrupted Tour of Tibet, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, Aug. 14, 1980,

LEXIS, News Library, News Group File. 204. See, e.g., A Tale of Cultural Genocide, TIBETAN BULL., July�–Aug. 2000, at

http://www.tibet.net/eng/diir/tibbul (last visited Oct. 7, 2002). 205. See, e.g., Lorien Holland, Chinese Poor �‘Invade�’ Tibet, INDEPENDENT (London), June 27, 1999, at 23,

LEXIS, Foreign News Section (quoting U.S. Sen. Connie Mack�’s description of China�’s resettlement project in


Statements by émigré leaders and their supporters about cultural genocide in Tibet rarely examine the concept and almost never include direct evidence that the PRC intends to de-culture Tibetans. The one instance in which the émigrés did assert that they had direct evidence that the Chinese government was �“planning cultural genocide�”206 concerned a �“secret meeting�” dubbed �“512,�” after the May 12, 1993 date on which it was convened near Chengdu, Sichuan, by the Chinese Communist Party�’s (CCP) United Front Work Department (tongzhan bu).207 The conferees are said to have decided to �“�‘transfer�’ large numbers of Chinese settlers into Tibet with the aim of making it demographically �‘impossible for Tibetans to rise,�’�” to break the unity of the Tibetan émigrés, and to manipulate �“international figures and religious personages in Tibet for propaganda purposes.�”208 The émigré Tibet Bureau in Geneva, Switzerland asserted that the realization of these aims would �“destroy the cultural and national identity of the Tibetan people and amount to a form of cultural genocide.�”209

Neither the existence nor the content of the �“512�” meeting has been independently verified. The claims about it do, however, exemplify how the émigré leaders and their supporters seek to own the idea of cultural genocide by assimilating to the concept virtually every policy or action undertaken or even permitted by the state in Tibet. In the instance of the �“512�” meeting, their all-inclusive conception of cultural genocide encompasses the ordinary political acts of mobilizing allies and dividing and discrediting opponents that they claim were mooted at the meeting. Only the émigrés�’ implication of ethnic swamping raises the issue of cultural genocide. Chalk and Jonassohn argue that population transfer plays a part in settler genocide against indigenes, but only �“when the victim group is numerically small�” and have in mind the brutal settler infusion into the Amazon region.210 A large state-organized population transfer program is said to be circumstantial evidence of genocidal intent in the Indonesian regime�’s massive killings in East Timor.211 This program can be contrasted with the transmigration before the New Order period (1966�–1998), which mainly aimed at diminishing social tensions around Jakarta and populating border areas in aid of Indonesia�’s confrontation with Malaysia, rather than extirpating ethnic groups.212 The Dalai Lama, incidentally, has recognized that there are substantial differences between the East Timor and Tibet cases.213

A state plan for large-scale migration of Han Chinese into Tibet would amount to cultural genocide only if three pre-conditions could be demonstrated: (1) if there were an intent to organize a transfer (as opposed to permitting voluntary migration); (2) if the intent

Qinghai province as an �“appalling act of cultural genocide�”); U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone, March 10th Observed in Washington D.C. (Mar. 10, 1997), in WORLD TIBET NETWORK NEWS, Mar. 12, 1997, at http://www.tibet.ca/wtnarchive/1997/3/12-3_5.html (last visited Dec. 29, 2002); 143 CONG. REC. H6957 (daily ed. Sept. 5, 1997) (statement of U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf).

206. Claire Nullis, Tibetans Accuse China of Planning Cultural Genocide, ASSOCIATED PRESS, Aug. 29, 1993, 1993 WL 4555580.

207. Secret Meeting in China Decides on �“Final Solution�” for Tibet, Statement from Tseten Samdup, Tibet Bureau for U.N. Affairs, Aug. 29, 1993, in WORLD TIBET NETWORK, Aug. 30, 1993, at http://www.tibet.ca/wtnarchive/1993/8/30-3_2.html (last visited Oct. 4, 2002).

208. Id. 209. Id. The émigré leaders did not reveal their source on the meeting, except to say that it was inside China. 210. CHALK & JONASSOHN, supra note 103, at 28. 211. See Christopher Goebel, A Unified Concept of Population Transfer, 22 DENV. J. INT�’L L. & POL�’Y 1,

24�–26 (1993) (giving the example of East Timor to support the proposition that people subjected to massive population transfer have been threatened with genocide).

212. Riwanto Tirtosudarmo, Demography and Security: Transmigration Policy in Indonesia, in DEMOGRAPHY AND NATIONAL SECURITY 199, 209�–10 (Myron Weiner & Sharon Russell eds., 2001).

213. See Shihoko Goto, Dalai Lama Backs Tibet Autonomy, ASSOCIATED PRESS, Oct. 10, 1999, 1999 WL 28126695.


of the transfer were to damage Tibetan culture (as opposed to securing Tibet politically and developing it economically); and (3) if the transfer were an adjunct to the physical extermination of Tibetans as such (as opposed to undertaking repressive action to curb separatist activities). None of these conditions apply.

First, there is no evidence of a �“government program to promote mass emigration of Chinese to water down the native Tibetan population,�” or an �“official effort to shift the ethnic balance�” in Tibet, as the Dalai Lama and �“Tibet supporters�” claim.214 The PRC government has not transferred most Han migrants who live in Tibet today, either by ordering their migration or by offering them inducements to settle in Tibet. Annual net migration rates from the 1950s to the 1970s were low, ranging from three to fourteen Han Chinese per thousand Tibetans.215 The number of Han with household registration (hukou) in the TAR peaked in 1980 at about 122,000,216 but fell to 70,000 in 1985.217 Ironically, in the same year, the Dalai Lama complained that Tibetans were threatened with loss of identity by �“the complete assimilation and absorption of our people by a vast sea of Chinese settlers streaming across our borders.�”218 The U.S. government, however, disparaged as �“inaccurate, incomplete and misleading�” the émigré claims made at the time that the PRC government was swamping Tibet with migrants.219

From 1964 to 1994, there was a net intake of 98,500 migrants who transferred their hukou to the TAR, but 70% were ethnic Tibetans from adjacent provinces.220 Han with TAR hukou in 1999 numbered almost the same as in 1985,221 and many Han who formerly lived in Tibet keep their hukou there even though they do not live in the TAR anymore.222 Han transferred to the TAR are a small part of recent migrants to Tibet. The PRC government has stated that 1268 cadres were sent to the TAR from 1994�–2001. Most are assigned for three years but spend only half that time in Tibet due to extended leaves.223

214. Dalai Lama Urges U.S. to Befriend China, UPI, Sept. 10, 1995, LEXIS, Nexis Library, UPI File; Jay

Taylor, Understanding Tibet, WASH. POST, Dec. 10, 1997, at A25, 1997 WL 16223066. 215. Judith Banister, Impact of Migration to China�’s Border Regions, in DEMOGRAPHY AND NATIONAL

SECURITY, supra note 212, at 256, 289. 216. Tibetan Population Grows by 19 Percent in 10 Years, XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, Mar. 30, 2001, 2001

WL 19012743. A PRC source stated in 1981 that the TAR then had a population of 1.8 million. Tibet�’s Development Praised by Dalai Lama�’s Former Secretary, XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, June 18, 1981, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe. The TAR population in 2000, including all those who had resided there for six months or more and not including the military, was 2.61 million, of which 205,200 were non-Tibetans.

217. WANG LIXIONG, TIAN ZANG: XIZANG DE MINGYUN [SKY BURIAL: THE FATE OF TIBET] 28 (1998). 218. Stewart Slavin, Dalai Lama Hopes for Return to Tibet, UPI, Nov. 9, 1985, LEXIS, Nexis Library, UPI

File. 219. Beijing Is Backed by Administration on Unrest in Tibet, N.Y. TIMES, Oct. 7, 1987, at A1, LEXIS-

NEXIS Academic Universe. 220. MA RONG, XIZANG DE RENKOU YU SHEHUI [POPULATION AND SOCIETY IN TIBET] 65 (1996). Some

122,800 Tibetans moved to the TAR in the period 1965�–1990. Ma Rong & Pan Naigu, The Tibetan Population and Their Geographic Distribution in China, in 1 TIBETAN STUDIES: PROCEEDINGS OF THE 6TH SEMINAR OF THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR TIBETAN STUDIES, 507�–16 (Per Kaverne ed., 1992). A significant number of these Tibetans were rural people or people from small towns who migrated to Tibet�’s cities. Ironically, the Tibetan émigré administration�’s vision of a future independent Tibet, written by the present Kalon Tripa, includes the interdiction: �“Migration of people from towns and villages to industrial areas will be strictly forbidden.�” SAMDHONG RINPOCHE, TIBET: A FUTURE VISION 23�–24 (1997).

221. XIZANG TONGJI NIANJIAN 2000 33 (2000). 222. SHENG LIJUN, CHINA�’S DILEMMA: THE TAIWAN ISSUE 45 (2001). 223. LIXIONG, supra note 217, at 32. This practice may be changing. Some aid-Tibet cadres were mobilized

to participate in workteams during the winter of 2001�–2002, a season in which they normally would have expected to return to their home provinces. Liu Liangmarg & Wang Jianxin, Take Affirmative Action to Change Work Style�—Cadres at Various Levels in Tibet Go to Grass-Roots Levels to Perform Actual Deeds to Spur Development, RENMIN RIBAO (P.R.C.), Jan. 20, 2002, reprinted in BBC MONITORING, Jan. 28, 2002, 2002 WL 11680397.


There were 17,000 Han cadres in the TAR in the mid-1990s,224 while TAR Han in 2000 (all Han civilians who had lived there for six months or more) numbered 155,000.225 The �“transferred�” thus amount to about one tenth of the total TAR Han population. It is inaccurate to say that �“[m]ost of the Han people in Tibet are there on government order, not out of choice,�”226 while reasonable for a leading demographer of China to conclude that �“there has been no policy of promoting massive permanent migration of Han Chinese people to the TAR.�”227

The vast majority of Han who go to Tibet engage in spontaneous migration on their own initiative and struggle to get by. They are surprised to hear that they are represented in the West as induced by state incentives to settle in Tibet, as some claim,228 and that they are well off, since only the relatively few transferred cadres receive incentives that raise their pay to a level already provided to the Tibetan and other cadres in Tibet.229 Most Han in Tibet�’s cities have less than a high school education,230 are from peasant and worker backgrounds, have blue-collar or lower middle-class jobs, and are ill regarded by the ethnic Tibetan and lao Xizang (old Tibet-based Han) elites.231 Most of this �“floating population�” (liudong renkou), moreover, are not �“settled�” in the sense of expecting to live long-term in a place. Many Han come to Tibet�’s cities for only the summer months to work on construction projects or engage in small businesses, such as repair work or making and selling handicrafts, and then return home for the rest of the year.232 Others secure employment or set up businesses for longer periods of time, but they seldom intend to stay for many years. As one scholar who has studied the Han in Lhasa observes, �“Most Han migrants stay for a period of perhaps five or six years and then go back taking with them the money they have accumulated.�”233 Another has noted that, in Tibet, �“many of the young [non-Tibetan] traders are not families but single men; professionals also will try to keep the hukou of at least one key family member in their place of origin.�”234 Similarly, Han traders from outside Qinghai, most of whose territory is on the Tibet Plateau, are said to generally stay there only for one to two years.235

The lack of evidence that the Chinese government has intended to engage in large-scale population transfers to Tibet since the �“secret meeting�” of 1993 is underscored by the

224. ZHONGGUO XIZANG DANGSHI DA SHIJI [GREAT EVENTS IN THE HISTORY OF THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY IN TIBET] 212 (1995).

225. See Chinese Officials Prepare 2000 Census of World�’s Most Populous Nation, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, Oct. 13, 2000, 2000 WL 24734971 [hereinafter Chinese Census]; Tibetan Population Grows by 19 Percent in 10 Years, supra note 216.

226. DAWA NORBU, supra note 192, at 391. 227. Banister, supra note 215, at 289. 228. See, e.g., Loretta Tofani, Tibetans Under Chinese Rule, in GENOCIDE 147, 151 (William Dudley ed.,

2001) (�“China offers economic incentives for working-class Chinese to emigrate to Tibet.�”). 229. Peter Hessler, Tibet Through Chinese Eyes, ATLANTIC MONTHLY, Feb. 1999, at

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/99/feb/tibet.htm (last visited Feb. 18, 2003); Tibet Leader Legqog on Assistance from Chinese Regions, TA KUNG PAO (Hong Kong), Aug. 10, 2001, reprinted in BBC SUMMARY WORLD BROADCASTS, Aug. 13, 2001, LEXIS, News Library, News Group File.

230. Wang Shuxin, Xizang Lhasa shi liudong renkou he shehui jingjin fazhan [Lhasa City, Tibet�’s Floating Population and Social and Economic Development], RENKOU YU JINGJI (P.R.C.), No. 6, at 3�–9 (1998).

231. Interviews with Tibetan cadres, in Lhasa (July 2000). 232. Banister, supra note 215, at 292. 233. ROBYN IREDALE ET AL., CONTEMPORARY MINORITY MIGRATION, EDUCATION AND ETHNICITY IN

CHINA 157�–58 (2001). 234. Graham Clarke, The Movement of Population to the West of China: Tibet and Qinghai, in MIGRATION:

THE ASIAN EXPERIENCE 221, 246�–47 (Judith Brown & Rosemary Foot eds., 1994). Graham Clarke, Some Statistical and Other Issues in Migration to Tibet and Qinghai, Paper Presented at the Oxford Workshop on Chinese Migration (July 3�–7, 1996) [hereinafter Clarke, Migration Paper] (on file with author).

235. Qinghai: Developing Status, CHINA ECON. REV., Mar. 13, 2001, 1999 WL 12722907.


absence of ethnic swamping since then.236 The 2000 census showed that ethnic Tibetans were 92.2% of the population.237 They were 96% in 1993,238 but that figure included only persons with a hukou in Tibet239 and thus failed to take account of all resident non-Tibetans. Tibetans were 95% of the 1990 population, when the census counted all those who had been living in the TAR for one year or more. The 2000 census covered all civilians who had lived in the TAR for six months or more.240 The increase in Han there since 1993 has thus not been large, calling into question émigré claims of a strategy �“to flood Tibet with more Chinese settlers�”241 and to �“drown the Tibetans in a sea of Chinese.�”242 The appearance of a large increase in Han in the TAR derives almost solely from observations made in Lhasa, a city where most TAR Han concentrate,243 but which accounts for less than one tenth of the people in that still very rural region.244 In the Tibetan countryside, according to a Western scholar who had done fieldwork over six years, Han cadres were usually limited to the accountant or agronomic expert at county level, and occasional medical personnel; in some cases, their relatives ran roadside restaurants and other petty-trading facilities, but there was little presence if any at the township level or below.245 Even Samdhong Rinpoche has recently admitted that the ethnic demographic balance has changed �“only in towns, not in the rural areas of Tibet�” and not at all in nomadic societies.246

While there is no evidence of a state endorsement of �“ethnic swamping�” of Tibet, the concept of ethnic swamping is supported by the ruling party of an area adjacent to the region. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Hindu nationalist party in power in India, �“stands for large-scale settlement of Hindus in the Vale of Kashmir, to overcome the Muslim majority.�”247 The Tibetan émigré leaders fully back India�’s Kashmir policy.248 If

236. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Dalai Lama and �“Tibetan exile organizations�” were already claiming that there were two million �“Chinese�” in the TAR compared to 1.8�–1.9 million Tibetans and that �“Chinese�” outnumbered Tibetans in Lhasa by ten to one. Dalai Lama Cautious About Tibetan Independence, JAPAN ECON. NEWSWIRE, Oct. 15, 1987, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe; Yojana Sharma, China: Dalai Lama Presence at Rights Meet Will Anger China, INTER PRESS SERV., May 7, 1993, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe. Even after several more years of alleged �“ethnic swamping,�” however, a U.S. journalist could say of Lhasa that �“claims by Tibetan exiles that Chinese are now in [the] majority appear to be overstated.�” Dele Olojede, Tibet Slowly Succumbs to Beijing�’s Influence, NEWSDAY, Nov. 7, 1999, at A7, LEXIS, News Library, News Group File.

237. Population in Tibet Doubles over Past Five Decades, XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, July 23, 2001, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe. For a discussion of China�’s 2000 census, see Chinese Census, supra note 225.

238. Tibet Enjoys Social Stability, Improved Likelihood: Tibetan Deputies, XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, Mar. 17, 1994, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe.

239. See Chinese Census, supra note 225. 240. TIBET INFO. NETWORK, NEWS REVIEW NO. 29: REPORTS FROM TIBET, 2000, at 99 (2001), at

http://www.tibetinfo.co.uk/publications/news-reviews/nra29.htm (last visited Oct. 28, 2002); Banister, supra note 215, at 287. The 1990 census also included those present in the TAR for less than one year but who were away for more than a year from the area where they have had a residence permit. Clarke, Migration Paper, supra note 234, at 4.

241. Dep�’t of Info. & Int�’l Rel., Cent. Tibetan Admin., Survival Under Surveillance: A Brief Overview of the Human Rights Situation in Tibet, 1994�–1995, at http://www.subliminal.org/tibet/exile/striving95/survival-A.html (last visited Feb. 12, 2003).

242. Dalai Lama, March 10 Statement 1995, in SELECTED SPEECHES, supra note 13, at 445�–53. 243. Some 55% of Han with hukou in Tibet in the late 1990s lived in Lhasa prefecture. LIXIONG, supra note

217, at 28. It is likely that the percentage is much higher among �“temporary�” migrants. 244. The 2000 census gives a figure of 81.1% for the rural portion of the population. Xizang zizhi qu tonji

ju, Guanyu Xizang di wu ci quan guo renkou pucha zhuyao shuju gongbao [A Public Report on the Main Statistics from the Fifth National Census in Tibet], XIZANG RIBAO (Tibet), Mar. 30, 2001, at 1. The rural population however contains almost no short-term migrants, while the urban population has many. For long-term residents, the rural proportion is thus significantly higher�—85% or more.

245. Clarke, Migration Paper, supra note 234, at 9. 246. Non-violent Movement the Only Option�—Samdhong Rinpoche (Rediff), in WORLD TIBET NETWORK

NEWS, Feb. 14, 2002, at http://www.tibet.ca/english/index.html (last visited Feb. 17, 2003). 247. JOHN COOLEY, UNHOLY WARS: AFGANISTAN, AMERICA, AND INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM 235 (2000).


privately organized migration of people of another ethnicity who settle in a region and dominate its trading sector is �“ethnic swamping,�” then ethnic Tibetans in India�’s Ladakh have been �“swamped�” by Muslims at least as much as Tibetans in Tibet.249 A senior Chinese analyst has also pointed to another instance where, impelled by a political agenda, �“ethnic swamping�” might be alleged to have taken place, even though as in the Tibet case there is no evidence of a state plan.250 He noted that in the 1940s native Alaskans made up more than half the population in what would become the United States�’ largest state, while today they constitute about fifteen percent.251 The analyst asked his American interlocutor, �“So are we both guilty of cultural genocide?�”252

Second, there is no evidence that the PRC intends to eradicate Tibetan culture through population transfer. Émigré reports on the �“secret meeting�” claim that the plan was to change the demographic balance in order to avoid a separatist uprising, not to extirpate Tibetan culture. Under international law, a state-organized population transfer (a �“settler implantation�” or �“settler infusion�”) into an area that is neither a colony nor under alien occupation253 resulting from international war is not unlawful, let alone genocidal.254 Claire Palley, a leading international jurist and specialist on population transfers, has stated that �“no international standard specifically addresses and outlaws the act of population transfer itself and its various forms.�”255 The Dalai Lama has compared the influx of Han into Tibet with the �“population transfer�” of Russians into the Baltic states during the Soviet period,256 but Palley and other scholars have concluded that it is not clear that Russians were

248. Statement of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, TIBET DEP�’T INFO. & INT�’L REL., Aug. 7, 2001, reprinted in

WORLD TIBET NEWS NETWORK, Aug. 8, 2001, available at http://www.tibet.ca/wtnarchive/2001/8/8_1.html (last visited Mar. 15, 2003). The émigré leaders have been across-the-board supporters of Indian government policy under the BJP. India�’s nuclear tests spurred �“wild rejoicing by Tibetan exiles in Dharamsala.�” Singh, supra note 36, at 62.

249. See H. NORBER-HODGE, ANCIENT FUTURES: LEARNING FROM LADAKH (1991) (noting the large-scale migration of Muslim Indians to Ladakh).

250. John Pomfret, A Less Tibetan Tibet: Many Residents Fear Chinese Migration Will Dilute Culture, WASH. POST, Oct. 31, 1999, at A31, 1999 WL 23312422.

251. Id. 252. Id. 253. The concept of �“alien occupation�” is found in Protocol Additional to the Geneva Convention of 12

August 1949, and Relating to the Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts, adopted June 8, 1977, 1125 U.N.T.S. 609 [hereinafter Protocol]. It was included in the Protocol to represent Israel�’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Richard R. Baxter, Humanitarian Law or Humanitarian Politics? The 1974 Diplomatic Conference on Humanitarian Law, 16 HARV. INT�’L L.J. 1, 12 (1975). Alien occupation is considered a special case of colonialism. Anwar Frangi, The Internationalized Noninternational Armed Conflict in Lebanon, 1975-1990: Introduction to Confligology, 22 CAP. U. L. REV. 965, 990 (1993). It is established in law through recognition by the UN, as in the case of the West Bank and Gaza. See G.A. Res. 3236, U.N. GAOR, 29th Sess., Supp. No. 31, at 4, U.N. Doc. A/9631 (1974). A regional organization may also validate a claim of alien occupation. L.C. Green, Strengthening Legal Protection in Internal Conflicts: Low-Intensity Conflict and the Law, 3 ILSA J. INT�’L & COMP. L. 493, 504 (1997). Neither the UN nor any regional organization has adjudged Tibet to be under �“alien occupation�” or �“colonial domination�”; indeed, all states recognize that it is part of China. Final Report of the Special Rapporteur, Mr. Al-Khasawneh, U.N. ESCOR, Commission on Human Rights, Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, Freedom of Movement, Human Rights, and Population Transfer, 49th Sess., U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/Sub. 2/1997/23 (1997).

254. See, e.g., Report of the International Law Commission on the Work of Its Forty-Third Session, U.N. GAOR, 46th Sess., Supp. No. 10, at 250, U.N. Doc. A/46/10 (1992) (banning population transfer if connected with wartime occupation or colonialism). See also Alfred-Maurice De Zayas, Forced Resettlement, in 2 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PUB. INT�’L L. 422 (Rudolf Bernhardt ed., 1992) (connecting forced resettlement, but not settler infusion, to genocide).

255. Claire Palley, Population Transfers, in BROADENING THE FRONTIERS OF HUMAN RIGHTS: ESSAYS IN HONOUR OF ASBJORN EIDE 219, 231 (Donna Gomien ed., 1993).

256. McLaughlin�’s One on One: Interview with the Dalai Lama, FED. NEWS SERV., Apr. 19, 1991, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe.


unlawfully settled in the Baltic states after their 1940 annexation by the Soviet Union.257 This is so even though Baltic independence was firmly established, and several states, including the United States, refused to recognize the annexation. It was so even though many Balts opposed Russian migration, which, while largely individual, did alter the demographic balance and undercut Baltic nationalism.258 Although there is no indication that �“settlers�” were ever sent to Tibet to change the region�’s ethnic composition in order to stabilize it politically, even were that the case, it would not violate international law as long as the program was premised on national consolidation, and not on ethnic discrimination.

Third, there has never been a credible showing that physical genocide has been committed in Tibet. Claims that a fifth of the Tibetan population was annihilated from 1959 to 1979 through executions, famines, imprisonment, and other means are without any evidentiary basis; indeed, the émigré leadership has never revealed its sources for the numbers of Tibetans whom it claims died state-caused, unnatural deaths. In fact, �“[f]ar from being decimated by a demographic catastrophe, the Tibetan population of the PRC has likely doubled in a half-century.�”259 The 1953 PRC census estimated that there were 2.75 million Tibetans; by 1990, the number had increased to 4.6 million, and there are more than 5.2 million today.260 The still-large Tibetan families�—averaging 5.25 members in 1999, as compared to 3.63 members in China as a whole261�—have caused a few advocates of Tibetan independence to repudiate the conspiracism that characterizes the émigré discourse of �“demographic annihilation.�” U.S. academic journalist Barbara Erickson, for example, concludes, �“Tibetans are more numerous today than at any time in recent history. Population growth has been rapid and continuous and there is no sign that China wants to wipe out the Tibetan race.�”262

Absent a nexus to genocide per se, a claim of cultural genocide amounts to no more than a rhetorical device. Therefore, some advocates of Tibet independence base assertions of cultural genocide not on killing, but on a limitation of births among Tibetans. As Article II(d) of the Genocide Convention states: �“[I]mposing measures intended to prevent births within the group�” is genocide if carried out with intent to destroy the protected group as such.263 Article II(d) was framed as war crimes trials produced evidence of the Nazis�’ mass sterilizations and forced abortions against Jews and others, while in more recent times mass rapes involving ethnic animus can also be included within the �“biological genocide�” of Article II(d). Measures intended to prevent births need not be calculated to accomplish the destruction of a group in whole or in part, but they must be at least ancillary to a genocidal plan.264

Paul Ingram, in a book circulated by the émigrés, states that population transfers + coercive birth control = cultural genocide.265 A lawyer who heads the U.S.-based Tibet

257. Palley, supra note 255, at 240�–41; Joanne Skolnick, Grappling with the Legacy of Soviet Rule:

Citizenship and Human Rights in the Baltic States, 54 U. TORONTO FAC. L. REV. 387, 410�–11 (1996). 258. Marc Holzapfel, The Implications of Human Rights Abuses Currently Occurring in the Baltic States

Against the Ethnic Russian National Minority, 2 BUFF. J. INT�’L L. 329, 345 (1995); Andrea J. Hanneman, Independence and Group Rights in the Baltics: A Double Minority Problem, 35 VA. J. INT�’L L. 485, 493 (1995).

259. See generally Barry Sautman, Is Tibet China�’s Colony?: The Claim of Demographic Catastrophe, 15 COLUM. J. ASIAN L. 81 (2001) (discussing so-called demographic annihilation of the Tibetan population in the PRC); Yan Hao, Tibetan Population in China: Myths and Facts Re-Examined, 1 ASIAN ETHNICITY 11 (2000) (reexamining myths about the Tibetan population in China).

260. ZHONGGUO MINZU TONGJI NIANJIAN [CHINA ETHNIC STATISTICS YEARBOOK] 431 (2000). 261. ZHONGGUO RENKOU TONGJI NIANJIAN 2000 [CHINA POPULATION STATISTICS YEARBOOK] 473 (2000). 262. BARBARA ERICKSON, TIBET: ABODE OF THE GODS, PEARL OF THE MOTHERLAND 194 (1997). 263. Genocide Convention, supra note 62, art. II(d). 264. Schabas, Atrocities in Cambodia, supra note 84, at 172�–75. 265. PAUL INGRAM, TIBET: THE FACTS 297 (2d ed. 1990).


Justice Center advances the same formula,266 and the Dalai Lama has stated that China is �“forcing strict family planning rules on my people�” in order �“to make us [a] minority in our own land.�”267 Family planning, however, even where coercive, can be based on many objectives other than changing the ethnic balance, including the benign motive of improving the material well-being of those coerced.268 China�’s policy links fewer births with increased prosperity [shao sheng kuai fu].269 In Tibet, the rapid growth of the population over the past half-century has presented an obstacle to economic improvement in the countryside, where the bulk of the population lives. A TAR family planning document has indicated that the average landholding per capita in Tibet was 2.5 mu �“in the early years after liberation,�” but has now been reduced to 1.5 mu per capita due to population growth.270 Population growth offset two-thirds of the increase in grain production in the TAR from 1952 to 1992.271

Coercive birth control, moreover, cannot be related to a genocidal intent where the purported perpetrators subject themselves to greater coercion than is applied to alleged victims. In Nazi-occupied Europe, state pro-natalism for Germans accompanied efforts to end or reduce births among victim groups.272 Family planning in the PRC, however, is stricter for Han than for Tibetans and other minorities.273 Urban TAR Tibetans are limited to two children, but urban Han to only one child.274 There can also be no plan to reduce the Tibetan population through coercive birth control if most Tibetans are not coerced either because they are exempt (most rural TAR Tibetans), want no more children than the state allows (urban Tibetans), or can pay nominal fines for exceeding state birth limitations

266. Charles Burress, Berkeley Waves a Flag for Tibetan Freedom�—Only U.S. City to Do So, S.F. CHRON.,

Mar. 9, 1996, at A11, 1996 WL 3214908. 267. Tibet Issue �“Alive and Kicking,�” Says Dalai Lama, ASSOCIATED PRESS, Sept. 13, 1987, 1987 WL

3175091. 268. States with high birth rates often find it difficult to maintain, let alone increase, living standards. Saudi

Arabia�’s population increased an average of 4.4% over the last two decades, jumping from seven million in 1981 to eighteen million in 2002. David B. Ottaway, After Sept. 11, Severe Tests Loom for Relationship, WASH. POST, Feb. 12, 2002, at A1, 2002 WL 13817025. Meanwhile, incomes fell from over $28,000 per capita in current dollars in 1981 to below $8,000 in 2002. Elaine Sciolino, Bored Saudi Youth Take Wild Side to the Street, N.Y. TIMES, Feb. 20, 2002, at A6, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe. While much of the income fall is due to a drop in oil prices from $32 a barrel in 1981 to $22 (in 1981 dollars) in 2002, part of the fall may be attributable to families averaging between six and seven children. The Economy, N.Y. TIMES, June 23, 1981, at D1, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe; Price Trough Endangers Saudi Arabian Economy, HOUSTON CHRON., Nov. 21, 1981, at 2, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe.

269. M. Grovanna Merlis & Herbert L. Smith, Has the Chinese Family Planning Policy Been Successful in Changing Fertility Preferences, 39 DEMOGRAPHY 557, 577 (2002).

270. GUANYU XIZANG ZHIZHIQU DE RENKOU YU JIHUA SHENGYU GONGZUO [ON THE TIBET AUTONOMOUS REGION AND FAMILY PLANNING WORK] (1998).

271. ZHANG TIANLU, POPULATION DEVELOPMENT IN TIBET AND RELATED ISSUES 70 (1997). 272. Gisela Bock, Racism and Sexism in Nazi Germany: Motherhood, Compulsory Sterilization, and the

State, in DIFFERENT VOICES: WOMEN AND THE HOLOCAUST 166 (Carol Rittner & John Roth eds., 1993). 273. Prepared Statement of Julia V. Taft Before the House Int�’l Rel. Comm., 105th Cong. (1999) (statement

of Julia V. Taft, U.S. Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues, U.S. Department of State), FED. NEWS SERV., LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe (�“Tibetans receive preferential treatment along with 54 other minority ethnic groups, in marriage and family planning policies.�”); TIBET INFO. NETWORK, SURVEY OF BIRTH CONTROL POLICIES IN TIBET 12 (1994) (�“Chinese who work in the Tibet Autonomous Region face much stricter limits than Tibetans on family size.�”).

274. GUANYU XIZANG ZHIZHIQU DE RENKOU YU JIHUA SHENGYU GONGZUO [ON THE TIBET AUTONOMOUS REGION AND FAMILY PLANNING WORK] (1998); Tibet Provisional Procedures for Birth-Planning Management (for Trial Use), 32 CHIN. SOC. & ANTHROPOLOGY 82 (1992), reprinted in ZHONGUO SHUOSHO MIONZU JIHUN SHENGYO GAILUN [OUTLINE OF BIRTH PLANNING AMONG CHINA�’S NATIONAL MINORITIES] 230 (Xu Xifa ed., 1995) [hereinafter Tibet Provisional Procedures].


(many rural Tibetans).275 For these reasons, most claims of genocide based on coercive birth control have focused on forced sterilization, forced abortions, and forced implantation of birth control devices. The existence of such practices would not imply genocidal intent�—they are well-documented for Han areas276�—but a focus of the discussion of such distasteful practices as they supposedly affect Tibetans is useful to the émigré leaders in their effort to invoke visions of biological genocide.

An analysis of birth control policy in Tibetan areas by the U.K.-based Tibet Information Network (TIN) recounts one refugee�’s allegation of forced sterilization of 300 women in sparsely populated Ngamring County, Shigatse Prefecture, TAR, and another refugee�’s claim of coercive implantation of birth control devices in thirty-five women in Chamdo County, Chamdo Prefecture, TAR.277 A four-year study in the rural TAR by U.S. and Tibetan scholars, unaccompanied in the field by PRC officials, found no evidence of forced abortions or forced sterilizations in Ngamring County or other sites. In Ngamring, visited many times by Melvyn Goldstein and his co-researchers, including after the TIN report appeared, there was no two-child limit, as claimed by the refugee, nor, according to local nomads and officials, had any fines been imposed for having four or more births. In villages studied by Goldstein, while villagers complained to the researchers about many aspects of rural life and government regulation, �“[n]o formal or informal discussions with villagers about family planning, birth limits or local problems revealed even a hint of forced abortions . . . .�” The study did find, contrary to TAR officials�’ claims of no restrictions on rural births, that in the four townships studied, local officials do mandate a modest fine for bearing more than three children. But in three of the townships, the fine had never been imposed and in the fourth township it was imposed at only one-third the specified level. Birth rates had fallen from very high to high over the past two decades and are comparable to those among ethnic Tibetans in Nepal, with voluntary contraception becoming more widespread since the early 1990s, due largely to the effect of high population growth on the land-to-people ratio.278 Erickson also interviewed peasants and nomads in the TAR and reports that they were unaware of any restraints on family size. She adds: �“The Tibetans I met never spoke of birth control as a Chinese plot to exterminate their race. Many of them, in fact, supported family planning.�”279

A spokesman for the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT), the émigré leaders�’ arm in the United States, responded to the findings of Goldstein by asserting that coercive birth control is mainly carried out in cities and in the Qinghai province on the northeast Tibet Plateau, where Tibetans are a minority.280 The statement represents a tacit admission of the accuracy of PRC government assertions that it places no limits on rural births in the TAR, where 85% of the region�’s ethnic Tibetans live. In Qinghai, where birth rates were

275. Tibet Provisional Procedures, supra note 274; Yan Hao, Tibetan Population in China: Myths and Facts Reexamined, 1 ASIAN ETHNICITY 11�–36 (2000). Urban officials, factory workers, and military personnel are limited to two children. Id. at 27. However, there is no serious attempt to enforce birth control among Tibetan farmers and herdsmen. Id. at 28. Melvyn Goldstein & Cynthia Bell, China�’s Birth Control Policy in the Tibet Autonomous Region, 31 ASIAN SURVEY 294 (stating that urban Tibetans outside the formal sector�—i.e., not employed by the state�—are limited to two children); New Generation of Tibetans Prefer Fewer Children, XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, Sept. 4, 2001, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe (stating that more than sixty percent of urban Tibetan couples choose to have only one child).

276. For examples of coercive birth control tactics in Han areas, see THOMAS SCHARPING, BIRTH CONTROL IN CHINA 1949�–2000: POPULATION POLICY AND DEMOGRAPHIC DEVELOPMENT (2003); see also JOHN AIRD, SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS: COERCIVE BIRTH CONTROL IN CHINA (1990).

277. TIBET INFO. NETWORK, NEWS REVIEW NO. 29: REPORTS FROM TIBET, 2000, at 56 (2001), at http://www.tibetinfo.co.uk/publications/news-reviews/nra29.htm (last visited Oct. 28, 2002).

278. Melvyn Goldstein et al., Fertility and Family Planning in Rural Tibet, 47 CHINA J. 19, 31 (2002). 279. ERICKSON, supra note 262, at 195�–96. 280. David Murphy, Mother and Child: A New Study Disputes Charges by Tibetan Activists of Forced

Abortions and Sterilizations by Authorities, FAR E. ECON. REV., Dec. 27, 2001, at 35, 2001 WL-FEER 31519437.


traditionally low,281 family planning regulations have since 1992 allowed Tibetans in cities and agricultural areas to have two children and those in pastoral areas to have three.282 A study conducted in a mixed agricultural/pastoral part of Qinghai that is mainly inhabited by Tibetans found that government policy was to allow three children and that the average family size was 6.2 people.283 TIN did not report any Qinghai cases of forced measures. The Independent Tibet Network UK, the group most adamant in making such claims, has reported a single, anonymous �“eyewitness testimony�” of forced sterilization among Tibetans in a Qinghai village, a report provided by an affiliate of the émigré administration.284

The head of the TAR Committee for Family Planning, Purbu Zhoima, states that, in the Shigatse region, sterilization is mainly available for Tibetans with more than four children and abortion is not available at all. Meanwhile, more than 30% of TAR women have three or more children, and the birth rate in the region�’s farming and pastoral area stands at a high twenty per thousand.285 Among urban Tibetan and in the émigré community, as in most parts of the world, a decrease in family size attends increases in education and the adoption of more secular and consumerist values.286 In China as a whole, �“[a]s far as [most city residents] are concerned, there is no need to enforce a strict birth-control policy�” because few [urban] parents want more than one child.287 Survey results presented in the PRC media indicate that 30% of Lhasa Tibetans want one child, 40% would be satisfied with two, and 19% want to have three or more.288

Because physical genocide of Tibetans is clearly not evident, the Dalai Lama no longer speaks of genocide per se�—either with respect to the past or present.289 However, many prominent Western �“Tibet supporters,�” including journalists, continue to do so.290

281. SAMTEN KARMAY, THE ARROW AND THE SPINDLE: STUDIES IN HISTORY, MYTHS, RITUALS AND

BELIEFS IN TIBET 528 (1998). 282. SUN JIANGXIN, ZHONGGUO ZANGZU RENKOU [CHINA�’S TIBETAN POPULATION] 147 (1994). 283. Liu Yongsheng, International Hunting and the Involvement of Local People, Dulan, Qinghai, People�’s

Republic of China 19 (1993) (unpublished M.S. thesis, University of Montana). 284. MARTIN MOSS & JEFFREY BOWE, ORDERS OF THE STATE: RESPONSIBILITY AND COLLABORATION IN

CHINA�’S POPULATION PROGRAMME (2000). 285. Tibetans Seek Family Planning, CHINA DAILY, June 29, 1999, 1999 WL 17781243; Family Planning

Not Mandatory in Tibet, XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, May 24, 2001, 2001 WL 22032876. 286. JAYANTI ALAM, TIBETAN SOCIETY IN EXILE 170 (2000). According to a recent study by members of the

Health Department of the Tibetan émigré administration, the birth rate in the émigré community in India is 16.8 per 1,000 and has been in decline. See Shushum Bhatia et al., A Social and Demographic Study of Tibetan Refugees in India, 54 SOC. SCI. & MED. 411 (2002) (analyzing various social and demographic characteristics, including birth and death rates, of approximately 65,000 Tibetan refugees in India from 1994�–1996). Between 1880 and 1940, in the absence of most of the contraceptives now available, the average fertility rate among whites in the United States dropped from 4.4 children per woman to 2.1, and among blacks it dropped from 7.5 children to 3. Barbara Seaman, The Secret History of Sex, THE NATION, June 11, 2001, at 36, 2001 WL 2132643 (reviewing ANDREA TONE, DEVICES AND DESIRES: A HISTORY OF CONTRACEPTIVES IN AMERICA (2001)).

287. Clara Li, Beijing Relaxes One-Child Policy, S. CHINA MORNING POST, June 28, 2001, at 1, 2001 WL 22851452 (quoting Joseph Cheng, professor of Political Science at Hong Kong�’s City University).

288. Fewer, Healthier Births Valued in Tibet, XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, March 22, 2001, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe.

289. The last instance in which the Dalai Lama mentioned �“genocide�” in Tibet may have been his March 10 Statement 1987, in SELECTED SPEECHES, supra note 13, at 418, 419.

290. See, e.g., Maura Moynihan, Genocide in Tibet, WASH. POST, Jan. 25, 1998, at C7, 1998 WL 2463918; Giving Permanent Normal Trade Relations to China: Human Rights, Labor, Trade, and Economic Implications Before the Senate Comm. on For. Rel., 105th Cong. (2000) (prepared testimony of Gary L. Bauer, President, Family Research Council), in FED. NEWS SERV., July 16, 2000, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe; John Crace, Forbidden Territory: The Dalai Lama Has Been in Exile for Forty Years, GUARDIAN (London), Mar. 9, 1999, at 10, 1999 WL 12073777; God-King in Quest of a Lost Kingdom, SUNDAY TIMES (London), May 9, 1999, at 17, 1999 WL 14488921.


The Dalai Lama does often state that the Tibetan nation is �“facing extinction,�”291 sometimes implying that he means physical extinction,292 and at other times he conveys that what he refers to is the dissolution of the Tibetans as an ethnic group through the evisceration of their culture.293 He frequently uses the term �“cultural genocide�” and has said that it must end for peace to prevail in Tibet.294 In discussing his claim that �“[t]here is an attempt to destroy the integral core of Tibetan civilization and identity,�” he has cited �“[n]ew measures of restrictions in the fields of culture, religion and education.�”295

Since the early 1990s, the Dalai Lama has wavered between arguing that the cultural genocide that he alleges is deliberate296�—in line with claims by other émigré leaders of a �“calculated �‘cultural genocide�’�”297�—and arguing that China may or may not intend to engage in cultural genocide.298 Using the phrases like �“intentional or not,�”299 and �“intentionally or unintentionally,�”300 the Dalai Lama in recent years has repeated the formulation that �“[w]hether intentionally or unintentionally, some kind of cultural genocide is taking place.�”301 He contends that China commits intentional cultural genocide by controlling and restricting Buddhist study through political study in monasteries and by allowing bilingual Tibet University students to be more successful than monolingual Tibetan classmates. He avers that unintentional cultural genocide involves �“population transfer and sinicization policies�” that result in there being Han artisans and shopkeepers in Lhasa and Tibetans who speak Chinese among themselves in public, eat rice rather than barley, and display unruly behavior.302

Emigré leaders thus term as cultural genocide any action that introduces Han Chinese or Han culture into Tibet or that �“interferes with�” practices the émigré leaders deem

291. See, e.g., Dalai Lama, Interview to �‘The Times of India,�’ in SELECTED SPEECHES, supra note 13, at 201. 292. See Tibetan Dalai Lama has Audience with Pope, UNITED PRESS INT�’L, June 1, 1990, LEXIS-NEXIS

Academic Universe; Dalai Lama Asks Japan for Action, ASAHI NEWS SERV., Apr. 15, 1994, available at http://www.Tibet.ca/wtnarchive/1994/4/17_1.html (last visited Mar. 13, 2003).

293. See Pico Iyer, Over Tea with the Dalai Lama, SHAMBHALA SUN, Nov. 2001, available at http://www.shambhalasun.com/Archives/Features/2001/Nov01/Iyer.htm (last visited Mar. 13, 2003) (discussing the proposition that Tibetan cultural heritage is facing extinction); Dalai Lama Rails Against PRC Treatment of Tibetans, CHINA POST, Apr. 3, 2001, 2001 WL 9857137 (quoting the Dalai Lama as saying that �“Tibetans are facing the threat of extinction . . . [as] Tibetan ethnicity, culture and environment (are under threat)�”).

294. China Must End Cultural Genocide, TIMES OF INDIA, Dec. 19, 2001, 2001 WL 31420099. 295. Dalai Lama, Statement of His Holiness the Dalai Lama on the occasion of the 41st Anniversary of the

Tibetan National Uprising (Mar. 10, 2000), at http://www.buddhapia.com/tibet/march10.html (last visited Mar. 13, 2003).

296. Dalai Lama, Speech of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to the European Parliament (Oct. 24, 2001), at http://www.tibet.ca/english/index.html (last visited Mar. 13, 2003); Dalai Lama, Statement of His Holiness the Dalai Lama on the 39th Anniversary of Tibetan National Uprising Day (Mar. 10, 1998), at http://www.tibet.com/DL/10mar98.html (last visited Mar. 13, 2003); Dalai Lama Accuses China of �‘Cultural Genocide,�’ AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, Mar. 9, 1998, 1998 WL 2237963.

297. China�’s Propaganda War on Tibet Gets Cultural, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, June 29, 1999, 1999 WL 2630121.

298. Dalai Lama Supports Europe�’s �“Critical Dialogue�” with China, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, May 13, 1996, 1996 WL 3853193.

299. Dalai Lama Meets Top French Officials, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, June 17, 1998, 1998 WL 2303634. 300. Richard Ehrlich, Taiwanese Spies, Reborn Mao Worry Tibet�’s Spiritual Leader, TORONTO STAR, Sept.

13, 1992, at F3, 1992 WL 6567051; Dalai Lama, March 10 Statement 1993, in SELECTED SPEECHES, supra note 13, at 437, 439; Dalai Lama, Interview with the Associated Press, in SELECTED SPEECHES, supra note 13, at 200; Dalai Lama Hopeful about Hong Kong, Despondent about Tibet, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, June 4, 1997, 1997 WL 2127872.

301. Kalpana Sharma, Call to Preserve Tibetan Culture, THE HINDU, Mar. 13, 2000, 2000 WL 16305305; Dalai Lama Extols Nonviolence Despite �‘Cultural Genocide,�’ ASSOCIATED PRESS, Mar. 30, 2000, available at http://www.tibet.ca/wtnarchive/2000/3/30_2.html (last visited Feb. 18, 2003).

302. INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION OF JURISTS, TIBET: HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE RULE OF LAW 352�–54 (1997).


traditional. The Tibetan émigré leaders have set up a straw man by positing that their construction of �“traditional Tibetan culture�” is the standard against which existing culture in Tibet is to be measured. The phenomenon of deploying the most conservative interpretation of the �“traditional culture�” of their homelands as a standard against which to measure �“modernizing�” change is common among other upper and middle class transnational migrants. In her study of identity among well-off Indian immigrants in New York City, Monisha Das Gupta found that first-generation migrants, by distancing themselves from what they perceive to be American, invent what they understand to be appropriately Indian. They do so in order to control their children by labeling as �“American�” any behavior of which they disapprove. In interviews with the second generation, Das Gupta found that

[t]he notions of �“Indian tradition�” that emerged from the tension between cultures ironically bore few resemblances to contemporary middle-class attitudes in India. What the first-generation immigrants rigidly enforced as �“Indian�” ways were, in fact, specific to the context they were familiar with before they left India. My respondents were only too aware of this museumization of practices.303

It is one thing for a migrant elite to choose to museumize an ethnic group culture,304 but quite another to charge others with cultural genocide if those others have a less �“pure�” and more hybrid conception of the culture. This inflated view of cultural genocide bears no resemblance to the crime that proponents of a ban on cultural genocide have sought to eradicate. There is moreover no evidence of a substantial erosion of the key elements of Tibetan culture.

IV. THE EMPIRICAL BASIS OF �“CULTURAL GENOCIDE�” IN TIBET

In a survey of genocide of indigenous peoples, Hitchcock and Twedt refer to denials by states of such peoples�’ rights to practice their religions and speak their languages as �“cultural genocide.�”305 Most case studies of alleged cultural genocide of indigenous peoples or minorities also concentrate on religion and language.306 Charges of cultural genocide in Tibet have primarily focused on how migration,307 family planning,308 and

303. Monisha Das Gupta, What Is Indian about You?: A Gendered Transitional Approach to Ethnicity, 11

GENDER & SOC�’Y 572, 580 (1997). 304. For a discussion on museumization of another �“traditional�” culture, see Sharon Stephens, The �‘Cultural

Fallout�’ of Chernobyl Radiation in Norwegian Sami Regions: Implications for Children, in CHILDREN AND THE POLITICS OF CULTURE 303 (S. Stephens ed., 1995).

305. Robert Hitchcock & Tara Twedt, Physical and Cultural Genocide of Various Indigenous Peoples, in CENTURY OF GENOCIDE: EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS AND CRITICAL VIEWS 372, 373 (Samuel Totten et al. eds., 1997).

306. See, e.g., Lonza Pagans, Return of the White Buffalo: A Heuristic Study of Native American People Transcending Cultural Genocide (2000) (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Union Institute Graduate College) (discussing the religion of Native Americans) (on file with author); C. MICHAEL-TITUS, IN SEARCH OF �“CULTURAL GENOCIDE�” (1976) (discussing the religion of the Hungarian minority in Romania).

307. Dalai Lama Considers Taiwan Visit: Tibetan Leader Tells Clinton that Occupation of Lhasa by Chinese is Equivalent to Cultural Genocide, S. CHINA MORNING POST, June 22, 2000, 2000 WL 21994816; Geoffrey Varley, Dalai Lama has �“Private�” Meeting with Mitterand, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, Nov. 16, 1993, 1993 WL 10795483.

308. Dalai Lama Denounces Chinese Efforts at �“Cultural Genocide�” in Tibet, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, May 17, 1993, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe.


political repression309 are supposedly leading to cultural extinction.310 When they have been directly about culture, these charges have concerned religion,311 language,312 or both.313 There have also been allegations that changes in the performing arts are part of an effort to eradicate Tibetan culture and that �“vices�”�—prostitution, drug use, billiards, karaoke�—are promoted in Tibet to wean Tibetans away from their culture. There is, however, no evidence of an ongoing PRC government plan to destroy religion in Tibet, nor is there any indication that Tibetan religious institutions or religiosity are in sharper decline than those in other societies. Nor can it be inferred from available evidence that Tibetans in Tibet are losing their native language or that PRC authorities intend it to erode. Finally, the process of cultural hybridization in Tibet is not unusual or negative in a world context.

A. Tibetan Buddhism and Cultural Genocide

The Dalai Lama alleges that �“the Chinese are anti-religion�”314 and that �“the Chinese have made it nearly impossible for Tibetans to practice their Buddhist beliefs.�”315 He distinguishes, however, between culture and religion�—the former relating to society, while the latter to the individual�—and argues that Tibetan Muslims exemplify the principle that one can be Tibetan through association with Tibet�’s language and customs without adhering to Buddhism.316 Thus, if Tibetans were to cease being Buddhists, their retention of other cultural elements would allow for a continuing Tibetan ethnicity. In any event, an attempt to extirpate a religion through conversion to another faith or to atheism is not cultural genocide�—no matter how pious those affected or how central religion may be to their ethnic self-identity�—unless forced conversion is accompanied by physical destruction of the religious group. For example, the Myanmar junta is involved in forced conversions of Burma�’s seven million Muslims who return from exile. In addition, the junta forcibly assigns the children of these Muslims to Buddhist monasteries. Despite these acts, there is

309. Dalai Lama Calls for Talks, Urges China to Stop �“Cultural Genocide,�” AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, Nov.

28, 1996, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe. 310. The émigrés have termed �“population transfer�” as the �“indirect means of attempting to change and

control the nature of Tibetan culture and identity.�” Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, Impoverishing Tibetans, at http://tchrd.org/pubs/impoverishing/3_economic.shtml#A_marginalisation (last visited Oct. 21, 2002) [hereinafter Impoverishing Tibetans].

311. Senior French Minister Sees Dalai Lama Despite Beijing�’s Warning, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, Oct. 29, 1996, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe (quoting the Dalai Lama, who equates cultural genocide with �“losing one�’s culture, accepting the destruction of our spirituality, of Tibetan Buddhism . . . �”).

312. Richard Ehrlich, Taiwanese Spies, Reborn Mao Worry Tibet�’s Spiritual Leader, TORONTO STAR, Sept. 13, 1992, at F3, 1992 WL 6567051 (exemplifying cultural genocide, Dalai Lama states that �“the Tibetan lanaguage is becoming a useless language in our own country�” because most urban shops in Tibet �“are Chinese�”).

313. Don Lattin, Dalai Lama Speaks at Berkeley, S.F. CHRON., June 13, 1997, at A23, 1997 WL 6699334. 314. Devinder Sharma, Dalai Lama, I Pray for Change of Guard in China, JERUSALEM POST, Sept. 16, 1992,

at 1, 1992 WL 10516737. 315. Diego Ribadeneira, In Boston, Dalai Lama Seeks Support from Tibet Independence, BOSTON GLOBE,

Sept. 19, 1995, at 28, 1995 WL 5953776. An International Campaign for Tibet spokesman has stated that �“[y]ou cannot practice Buddhism as a dogma inside Tibet.�” Jiang: China has Freedom of Religion, ASSOCIATED PRESS, Feb. 21, 2002, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe.

316. See Kalpana Sharma, supra note 301. See also Pratibha Chauhan, Staunch Muslims, Tibetans at Heart, TRIBUNE NEWS SERV. (India), Dec. 5, 2000, reprinted in WORLD TIBET NEWS NETWORK, Dec. 6, 2000, at http://www.tibet.ca/wtnarchive/2000/12/6_5.html (last visited Oct. 22, 2002) (explaining that Tibetan Muslims are Tibetan in every respect aside from their faith). Ironically, TAR Party Secretary Chen Kuiyuan also discussed how Tibetan culture preceded the introduction of Buddhism in Tibet, making it �“utterly absurd�” to equate the two. Tibet Party Secretary Criticizes �‘Erroneous Views�’ of Literature, Art, XIZANG RIBAO (Tibet), July 16, 1997, at 4, reprinted in BBC SUMMARY OF WORLD BROADCASTS, Aug. 5, 1997, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe.


no evidence that the junta intends to destroy the Muslim minority as such and thus no proof of genocide or cultural genocide.317

Physical genocide based on the conjunction of ethnicity and religions been accompanied by cultural genocide of the kind that some states later sought to criminalize. During and after World War I, Turkish forces massacred between 500,000 and 2 million Armenians, sparing the 200,000 who converted to Islam.318 In the process, the Armenians sustained huge cultural losses.319 In World War II, Croatia�’s Ustashe killed a half-million Serbs, but those who converted to Catholicism from Orthodoxy were generally spared.320 Croatian fascists also attempted to extinguish the part of Serbian culture that differs from Croatian culture.321 Tibet presents no parallel with these paradigmatic examples of ethno-religious genocide and provides no evidence for the claim that cultural extinction is the goal of state restrictions on religion.

TAR leaders recognize that theirs is �“a region with a long religious history, where religion has great influence.�”322 Alongside the pious majority, there are a significant number of Tibetan cadres, intellectuals, and businesspeople detached from religious practice.323 Some agree with official pronouncements that may claim that Tibetan Buddhism adversely affects development324 or, alternately, with assertions that there is harm to development from separatist activities that use religion to justify the separatist cause.325

317. Refugees Forced to Convert to Buddhism: Junta �“Systematically Oppressing Muslims,�” BANGKOK

POST, July 19, 1997, at 3, 1997 WL 12489684. 318. See generally Vahakn N. Dadarian, Genocide As a Problem of National and International Law: The

World War I Armenian Case and Its Contemporary Legal Ramifications, 14 YALE J. INT�’L L. 221 (1989) (examining the Armenian genocide in World War I and the subsequent attempts to criminalize genocide); Steven Katz, The Uniqueness of the Holocaust: The Historical Dimension, in IS THE HOLOCAUST UNIQUE? PERSPECTIVES ON COMPARATIVE GENOCIDE 19, 34�–35 (Alan Rosenbaum ed., 1996).

319. See generally YERVANT AZADIAN, THE IMPACT OF THE HOLOCAUST ON ARMENIAN CULTURE: ARMENIAN CULTURAL LOSSES DURING THE GENOCIDE (1982).

320. Jonathan Steinberg, Types of Genocide? Croatians, Serbs and Jews, 1941�–1945, in THE FINAL SOLUTION: ORIGINS AND IMPLEMENTATION 175, 180 (David Cesarani ed., 1994); MARCUS TANNER, CROATIA: A NATION FORGED IN WAR 152 (1997).

321. Steinberg, supra note 320, at 175�–93; TANNER, supra note 320, at 151�–59. 322. Gyaincain Norbu Stresses Tibetan Autonomous Laws, Religious Freedoms, Economic Development,

(Central People�’s Broadcasting Station, Beijing, Oct. 30, 1994), reprinted in BBC SUMMARY OF WORLD BROADCASTS, Nov. 21, 1994, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe.

323. See Erik Eckholm, China Wins the Wallets of Tibetans, but Hearts are Still Slow to Follow, N.Y. TIMES, Dec. 1, 2001, at A8, 2001 WL 30653456 [hereinafter Eckholm, China Wins]. These �“atheist�” Tibetans tend nevertheless to have a high degree of Tibetan ethnic consciousness; they are appreciative of �“secular�” Tibetan culture and promotive of prosperity for the region. Interviews with Lhasa Tibetans, in Lhasa (1995�–2001) (on file with author). Tibetan Buddhists are also �“atheists�” in the sense of not recognizing a creator or interventionist god.

324. See the speeches of ex-TAR Party Secretary Chen Kuiyuan in late 1996. Communist Party Paper on Need to Clean up Tibetans Spiritually and Literally, XIZANG RIBAO (Tibet), Nov. 5, 1996, at 3, reprinted in BBC SUMMARY OF WORLD BROADCASTS, Nov. 22, 1996, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe; Regional Party Leader: �‘Narrow Nationalism�’ Creating �‘Ideological Chaos,�’ XIZANG RIBAO (Tibet), Nov. 12, 1996, reprinted in BBC SUMMARY OF WORLD BROADCASTS, Nov. 27, 1996, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe. See also Lynne O�’Donnell, Picking the Flesh off a Culture, AUSTRALIAN, Aug. 21, 2000, at 8, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe (quoting a Tibetan businessman who states that �“[m]onks are contributing nothing to our economic development, they are holding us back in poverty�”).

325. Tibet Leader Says Dalai Lama �“Biggest Obstacle�” to Economic Development, TA KUNG PAO (Hong Kong), Aug. 10, 2001, reprinted in BBC SUMMARY OF WORLD BROADCASTS, Aug. 13, 2001, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe; Police School Condemns Dalai Lama (Tibet television broadcast, Nov. 2, 2000), transcript reprinted in BBC SUMMARY OF WORLD BROADCASTS, Nov. 8, 2000, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe.


The state in Tibet demands that the devout �“adapt to socialist society�” and �“establish a normal order [of] traditional Tibetan Buddhism.�”326 State ownership of industry and socialist welfare practices are not at issue; indeed the Dalai Lama has repeatedly and recently said that there are good aspects to Marxism, that it has some common ground with Buddhism, and that he himself is a �“true socialist.�”327 What is in question is the CCP historical teleology in which secular modernist rule has supplanted that of feudal theocrats. �“Socialist society�” means a society shaped by the nominally socialist, but fulsomely nationalist, CCP. To adapt to it is to reconcile it with a CCP-led Tibet that is part of China, rather than an independent state led by the Dalai Lama, who is the highest figure in the sangha (the community of monks and nuns) and an ex-officio aristocrat. Acceptance of this status quo �“normalizes�” Buddhism in the view of PRC leaders. Despite the occasional anti-religion fulminations of these leaders,328 they are primarily concerned with Tibetan spirituality only insofar as it impinges on the ethno-territorial contest over sovereignty in Tibet and, to a much lesser extent, only insofar as it raises barriers to �“rational�” economic activity.329

Allegations of cultural genocide in Tibet that focus on religion concern freedom to participate in religious activity, efforts to alienate Tibetans from the Dalai Lama, and the regulation of monasteries, particularly in terms of admissions.330 These aspects of an alleged link between cultural genocide and religion are considered ad seriatim.

326. Vice-Premier in Tibet Stresses Aligning Religion with Socialist Society (Tibet television broadcast, Sept.

9, 2000) transcript reprinted in BBC SUMMARY OF WORLD BROADCASTS, Sept. 14, 2000, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe.

327. Richard M. Harley, Realpolitik from the Prince of Shangri-La, CHRISTIAN SCI. MONITOR, Aug. 20, 1981, at B14, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe; Sanjoy Hazarika, Dalai Lama Urges Peaceful Protest Against China, N.Y. TIMES, Oct. 8, 1987, at A8, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe; Suthichai Yoon, The Young Show Signs of Impatience and Frustration, NATION (Thail.), June 19, 1999, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe; Mercy Balm for Terror-Prone, STATESMAN (India), Sept. 19, 2001, 2001 WL 25975838.

328. The PRC maintains that it �“has not conducted atheist propaganda in places of worship or among the faithful.�” Interim Report by the Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on the Elimination of All Forms of Religious Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief, 55th Sess., Item 116 (b), ¶ 59, U.N. Doc. A/55/280 (2000), available at http://www.un.org/documents/ga/docs/55/a55280.pdf (last visited Mar. 27, 2003). The atheism promoted among CCP members and officials is also modernist, as old Tibet was a �“totalizing religious state,�” and émigré leaders still have a negative view of Western-style political secularism. See Rebecca R. French, A Conversation with Tibetans? Reconsidering the Relationship Between Religious Beliefs and Secular Legal Discourse, 26 LAW & SOC. INQUIRY 95, 99�–102 (2001) (comparing and contrasting the Tibetan and American mixtures of politics with religion).

329. Thus the two ceremonial occasions that the émigrés have said were banned by the TAR authorities, a sangsol (incense burning) on the third day of the lunar new year at Kuru Bridge and the celebration of the Dalai Lama�’s birthday in July, have both been used for political purposes. Tibet Centre for Human Rights & Democracy, Annual Report 2000: Enforcing Loyalty, available at http://tchrd.org/pubs/2000 (last visited Oct. 22, 2002). More important ceremonial occasions continue. One of these, Monlam Chenmo, the Great Prayer festival, has in recent years at times been a mass phenomenon. See Tibetan Buddhists Celebrate Prayer Festival in Lhasa, UPI, Feb. 28, 1996, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe (describing thousands of Tibetan Buddhists streaming into Lhasa and putting Chinese authorities on �“high alert�”). At other times it has been restricted, but not banned, in Lhasa. See �“A Kind of Charade:�” Monks Bribed to Take Part in Official Celebration, Security Clampdown for 10 March Anniversary, TIBET INFO. NETWORK, Mar. 23, 2001, at http://www.tibetinfo.co.uk/news-updates/nu230301.htm (last visited Oct. 30, 2002) (explaining that Monlam Chenmo has been strictly controlled after various pro-independence demonstrations in the late 1980s). Simultaneously, the ceremony has encompassed thousands elsewhere. Top Stories of the Week in Asia (CNN television broadcast, Feb. 25, 2001) (Monlam at Labrang).

330. See, e.g., Tibet Centre for Human Rights & Democracy, Annual Report 2001: Human Rights Situation in Tibet, available at http://www.tchrd.org/pubs/2001/chapter2.1.html (last visited Oct. 22, 2002) (explaining that religious repression in 2001 centered on, among other things, restricting the admission of clergy into religious institutions) [hereinafter TCHRD, Annual Report 2001].


1. Participation in Religious Activities

Views on what constitutes freedom to practice religion are often culture-bound, but some observers are able to transcend cultural boundaries when considering questions of religious freedom in an external context. The U.S. evangelist Billy Graham, visiting the Soviet Union in 1982, stated, �“I think there is a lot more freedom here than has been given the impression in the United States because there are hundreds, thousands of churches open.�”331 For Graham, the existence of many sites of Christian worship indicated substantial freedom of practice, even though U.S. culture tolerates virtually no state regulation of religious practice and allows religious bodies to adopt any political stance.332 On the other hand, Soviet laws limited religious activity to churches and associations registered with authorities and barred religious activities that undermined the state and social system.333 In contrast, �“Tibet supporters�” apply Western (especially U.S.) standards of religious freedom,334 giving the émigrés the opportunity to represent that there is no freedom of religion whatsoever in Tibet.

Émigré leaders claim that �“Tibetans are not even permitted to undertake routine religious activities.�”335 They assert that 6000 monasteries were destroyed before or during the Cultural Revolution336 and that �“the handful of surviving monasteries are being used as

331. Walter Wisneiwski, Graham Winds Up Soviet Visit, UPI, May 14, 1982, LEXIS, News Library, UPI

File. 332. The U.S. legal system does distinguish between religious belief and action and has restricted some

actions, for example the former Mormon practice of polygamy. See, e.g., Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145 (1878) (enforcing a Congressional statute banning polygamy). This dichotomy allows the legal system to be used to change beliefs as expressed through religious practices. See generally Elizabeth Harmer-Dionne, Once a Peculiar People: Cognitive Dissonance and the Suppression of Mormon Polygamy As a Case Study Negating Belief-Action Distinction, 50 STAN. L. REV. 1295 (1998) (arguing that the legal suppression of religious practices, like polygamy, changes religious beliefs); Phillip Hammond, Conscience and the Establishment Clause: The Courts Remake the Sacred, 35 J. FOR THE SCI. STUDY OF RELIGION 356, 356�–67 (1996).

333. Janet Domowitz, Graham Calls Soviet Church �“Free,�” CHRISTIAN SCI. MONITOR, May 14, 1982, at 2, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe.

334. There are, in fact, different standards of religious freedom among Western states. In Germany, for example, the Church of Scientology has been under close government scrutiny. Gerhard Robbers, Religious Freedom in Germany, 2001 BYU L. REV. 643, 662. In a typical act of language inflation used to market political ideas in the United States, Scientologists protesting Germany�’s scrutiny of their co-religionists compared it to the treatment of Jews by the Nazis. Id. (citing Hass und Propaganda [Hate and Propaganda] (Church of Scientology International ed., 1993)). The UN Special Rapporteur on religious freedom characterized this comparison as �“childish.�” Id. (citing Implementation of the Declaration of the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religious Belief, U.N. ESCOR, 54th Sess., U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/1998/6/Add.2 (1998)).

335. The China Syndrome, ASIAWEEK, Oct. 26, 2001, at 8, 2001 WL 7832776.

336. Dalai Lama�’s Envoy in Russia Urges Opposition to Beijing�’s Olympic Bid (Ekho Moskvy radio broadcast, July 11, 2001), in BBC MONITORING, July 14, 2001, 2001 WL 24954182. Two decades ago, the Tibetan émigrés only claimed that there had been 2300 monasteries in Tibet, which for them includes all of �“historical Tibet.�” Harley, supra note 327. There was a wave of dismantling of monasteries and temples after the Lhasa uprising of 1959 was put down. According to Ma Chengyuan, founder of the Shanghai Museum, who was in Qinghai and central Tibet at the time, �“[t]he locals destroyed the temples themselves�” and sold artifacts to the Cultural Relics Bureau. Jasper Becker, Guardian of the Past, S. CHINA MORNING POST, Jan. 3, 2001, at 1, LEXIS, News Library, News Group File. The Cultural Revolution destruction of monasteries was largely the work of Tibetan Red Guards. A dissident scholar who conducted extensive interviews among Han and Tibetans who lived in Tibet during the Cultural Revolution found that Tibetans were the most extensive and enthusiastic destroyers of monasteries. In Lhasa and other areas under PLA (i.e., Han) control, less damage was done. LIXIONG, supra note 217, at 314�–23. See also Wang Lixiong, Cultural Introspection of the Tibet Issue, 1 CHINA AFFAIRS 79 (2000). A Canadian journalist reached the same conclusion based on interviews. Jan Wong, Life at the Top of the World, GLOBE AND MAIL (Toronto), Dec. 10, 1994, at D1, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe. An anthropologist who studies the Labrang area of Gansu province has stated that �“some of the most zealous activists . . . during the Cultural Revolution were young Tibetan women.�” Charlene Makley, On the Edge of Respectability: Sexual


public toilets and barracks [while] monks and nuns in Tibet have been forced by the Chinese to desecrate religious objects.�”337 Such claims are anachronisms designed to impart that a �“second Cultural Revolution�” is ongoing in Tibet. Yet mass participation in routine religious activities is evident to even sceptical observers. A U.S. journalist reports that in the TAR �“many hundreds of Tibetans�” prostrate themselves at temples daily, while U.S. human rights officials visiting Lhasa �“saw pilgrims crowded in front of the Jokhang [Tibet�’s most important temple] to perform ritual prostrations.�”338 The PRC claim that every year more than one million people visit the Jokhang339 goes unchallenged. Speaking of the major monasteries outside the TAR, Western reporters have noted that Labrang �“teem[s] with signs of religious activity,�” 340 and Kumbum �“appears to thrive.�”341 According to Chinese sources, the abbot of a monastery in Nagqu prefecture has stated that there are 1787 �“sites for Tibetan Buddhism�” in the TAR;342 a scholar in Qinghai puts the number of �“Tibetan temples�” in the PRC at over 3000,343 and Tibetan scholars even assert that there are now 300 more lamaseries and temples in the TAR than existed in the region before 1951.344 The PRC government also claims that, since 1978, it has contributed 300 million yuan (U.S.$36.2 million) and much gold and silver to TAR monasteries.345 Again, such figures are not disputed, but even if they were, the obvious involvement of Tibetans in quotidian religious activity belies a claim of cultural genocide through the suppression of the religious element of their culture.

2. Attacks on the Dalai Lama

State authorities seek to curb support for the Dalai Lama, especially in monasteries, which are the prime sites of pro-independence sentiment.346 They insist that these attempts are not connected to his devotion to Buddhism, but to his refusal to acknowledge that Tibet has ever been part of China and his campaigns for �“independence in disguise.�”347 Public Politics in China�’s Tibet, 10 POSITIONS 575, 600 (2002). See also TSERING SHAKYA, DRAGON IN THE LAND OF SNOWS: A HISTORY OF MODERN TIBET SINCE 1947, at 376 (1999).

337. Abdul Qadir, Why Peace Eludes Tibet: Photographs Tell Tales of Tibetans�’ Plight, TIMES OF INDIA, Jan. 19, 2002, reprinted in WORLD TIBET NEWS NETWORK, Jan. 19, 2002, at http://www.tibet.ca/wtnarchive/2002/1/19_3.html (last visited Mar. 27, 2003).

338. Kent Wiedenmann, Prepared Testimony Before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs (Sept. 7, 1995), FED. NEWS SERV., LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe.

339. Olojede, supra note 236; Religious Activities, XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, Jan. 24, 1999, 1999 WL 7913070.

340. Rena Miller, Hard Choices, FAR E. ECON. REV., Nov. 26, 1998, at 84, 1998 WL-FEER 13867294. 341. Christopher Bodeen, Monks, Chinese Police Coexist Uneasily at Tibetan Buddhist Monastery,

ASSOCIATED PRESS, Dec. 3, 2001, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe. 342. Living Buddha: Tibetans Enjoy Religious Freedom, PEOPLE�’S DAILY, Mar. 13, 2000, at 2, available at

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200003/13/eng20000313N102.html (last visited Oct. 30, 2002). 343. China Protecting Places of Worship in Tibet, XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, Mar. 25, 1998, 1998 WL

2798730 [hereinafter Places of Worship]. 344. Tibetan Scholar on Religious Freedom in China, XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, Aug. 8, 1997, 1997 WL

11192744. 345. Jokhan Monastery to be Better Protected, XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, July 28, 2002, LEXIS, News

Library, News Group File. 346. HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH/ASIA, CHINA: STATE CONTROL OF RELIGION 43�–45 (1997); see also RONALD

SCHWARTZ, CIRCLE OF PROTEST: POLITICAL RITUAL IN THE TIBETAN UPRISING (1994). 347. See NPC Foreign Affairs Committee Issues Statement on Dalai Lama�’s Speech at EP General Assembly,

XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, Oct. 27, 2001, 2001 WL 31840536 (arguing that the Dalai Lama poses as a religious leader but actually has ulterior motives to split the country); Tibet Official Says Fight Against �“Dalai Clique�” Must Continue, XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, Feb. 16, 2001, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe (detailing the Chinese government�’s opposition to the Dalai Lama due to his efforts at splitting the motherland). The émigré administration has stated that Tibet has always been independent and that a PRC pre-condition for negotiations�—the Dalai Lama�’s giving up �“splittist�” activities�—was in no way acceptable. Chinese Offer �“Not Genuine,�”


displays of his image have been banned in the TAR since 1994,348 and in monasteries, prayers for his longevity are not offered. Additionally, efforts to compel monks to criticize him were carried out as part of a Patriotic Education Campaign in 1996�–2000,349 although in some places, resistance by monks to denouncing the Dalai Lama have caused work teams to back away from that demand.350 In the mid- to late 1990s, monks were in essence told to �“distance yourself from the Dalai Lama, and we can offer you the freedom to pursue your religious studies.�”351 State authorities thereby conveyed to monks who revered the Dalai Lama that official hostility toward his persona was not to be taken as hostility to Buddhism per se. The TAR CCP has nevertheless intemperately labeled the Dalai Lama a �“hooligan politician�” [liumang zhengke],352 implying that he is guilty of moral turpitude. PRC media have quoted �“eminent monks�” who question the Dalai Lama�’s bona fides as a religious leader, based on his separatist political activity,353 but have also at times admitted that most Tibetans continue to respect the Dalai Lama and hope for his return.354

The level of the campaign to alienate people from the Dalai Lama depends on the authorities�’ perception of the degree of local separatist sentiment.355 There has been a more liberal attitude in eastern Tibetan areas than in the TAR,356 and in the TAR itself, attacks on TRIBUNE NEWS SERV. (India), Feb. 4, 2002, reprinted in WORLD TIBET NETWORK NEWS, Feb. 5, 2002, at http://www.tibet.ca/wtnarchive/2002/2/5_2.html (last visited Mar. 27, 2003). The distinction between the �“normal�” role that the Dalai Lama might have as a religious leader and his political role is exemplified in the comment of a young Lhasa Tibetan woman: �“Some people may respect him as a spiritual leader, but we don�’t want any political trouble from him.�” Thepchai Yong, Lhasa Turns into a China Boom Town, NATION (Thail.), June 16, 1999, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe. Conversations with Tibetan cadres and intellectuals from 1995�–2001 revealed this attitude to be common even among those who hope for the return to Tibet of the Dalai Lama as the spiritual primate.

348. TIBET INFO. NETWORK, Cutting Off the Sepent�’s Head: Tightening Control in Tibet, 1994�–1995, pt I, § 4 (1996). There is no evidence that anyone has ever been arrested for having a picture of the Dalai Lama. The émigré leaders, however, even represent that monks are murdered for having such pictures. See, e.g., Tibetans in Indian Town Protest Against Execution of Monks, DEUTSCHE PRESSE-AGENTUR, June 13, 1997, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe.

349. TIBET INFO. NETWORK, A SEA OF BITTERNESS: PATRIOTIC EDUCATION IN QINGHAI MONASTERIES (1999) [hereinafter A SEA OF BITTERNESS]; see also Education Improves Lamaseries Administration, XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, June 18, 2001, 2001 WL 23440294 (explaining the campaign to enhance patriotic education at lamaseries has taught many lamas about promoting the concept of the motherland and has resulted in many lamas abrogating their allegiance to the Dalai Lama).

350. Melvyn Goldstein, The Revival of Monastic Life in Drepung Monastery, in BUDDHISM IN CONTEMPORARY TIBET: RELIGIOUS REVIVAL AND CULTURAL IDENTITY 15, 49 (Melvyn Goldstein & Matthew Kapstein eds., 1998).

351. Miller, supra note 340, at 85 (quoting Robert Thurman). 352. Dalai Lama is �“Hooligan,�” XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, July 10, 2000, reprinted in BBC MONITORING,

July 10, 2000, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe. 353. See Tibetan Eminent Monks Doubt Dalai Lama�’s Status as a Religious Leader, XINHUA NEWS AGENCY,

May 15, 2001, 2001 WL 21398254. 354. Zhongguo Tongxunshe, Reports from Hong Kong Journalists�’ Tibet Trip, in BBC SUMMARY OF

WORLD BROADCASTS, July 16, 1991, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe. 355. See Relative Freedom? Tibetan Buddhism and Religious Policy in Kandze, Sichuan, 1987�–1999, at 98

(1999) (discussing local and diachronic differences on display of Dalai Lama photos and differences in sympathy toward religion between Party and state organs).

356. Miller, supra note 340, at 84; see Patrick Baert, Tibetans Hold Traditional New Year Celebration in Xiahe, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, Feb. 9, 2001, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe (depicting the relaxed religious atmosphere in the town of Xiahe, Gansu Province) [hereinafter Baert, New Year Celebration in Xiahe]; Patrick Baert, Strong Ties to Dalai Lama in Chinese-Dominated �“Greater Tibet,�” AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, July 29, 1999, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe (explaining the tension between Han Chinese and Tibetans in China�’s Yunnan Province); Charles Hutzler, Tibetans Aim to Reclaim Lives, ASSOCIATED PRESS, July 11, 1998, 1998 WL 6693806 (describing the religious freedom enjoyed by Tibetans in the Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Diqing); Gilles Campion, Beijing Easing Up Slightly on Tibet�’s Buddhist Monasteries, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, June 28, 1997, 1997 WL 2142735 (discussing renewed religious activities and appearances of photographs of the Dalai


the Dalai Lama have eased up after extended periods of political quiescence. At monasteries where monks are not involved in politics, �“they face minimal interference from local authorities in their religious life�” and the authorities overlook displays of respect for the Dalai Lama.357 In any case, attacks on the Dalai Lama are not tantamount to an attempt to destroy Tibetan Buddhism,358 let alone Buddhists as such, even in the eyes of the Dalai Lama. He has made clear that he does not regard his position as essential to Buddhism or to Tibetan culture, even stating, �“I do not want to preserve the institution of the Dalai Lama. But only the Tibetan people can abolish it.�”359 The Dalai Lama regards as �“nonsense�” that people revere him as a �“god-king�”360 and terms it �“ignorance�” that his position is seen as central to Tibetan culture. He has stated that �“Tibet�’s formal civilisation has lasted for 4,000 years, 6,000 to 8,000 by some historical findings. The Dalai Lama institution has only been around for 300 years. It is just a part of Tibet�’s history.�”361 The Dalai Lama, if not his �“supporters,�” recognizes that attacks on him are part of the politics of the Tibet Question, not an attempt to eradicate Buddhism.

3. Regulation of Monasteries

Official regulation of religious institutions in the PRC was significantly liberalized in the 1980s but became tougher in the 1990s, in part because religious organizations were perceived as playing a key role in the downfall of Communist-ruled states in Eastern Europe.362 In Tibet, the tightening of regulation came after demonstrations in Lhasa from 1987 to 1989 and eventually affected the regulation of monasteries. Tolerance of monastic expansion from the end of the 1970s to the mid-1990s led the authorities in 1997 to complain that because they had no standard for their restoration, there was �“uncontrolled development of lamaseries and temples.�”363 The late 1990s thus saw an imposition of greater control over the expansion of monasteries. Initially-elected Democratic

Lama in Tibet); but see Damien McElroy, Tibet�’s Cultures and Vultures Clash, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH (London), Nov. 19, 2000, 2000 WL 29564160 (describing Chinese officials�’ efforts to force Tibetans to repudiate the Dalai Lama).

357. Miller, supra note 340, at 84. The author observed two large portraits of the Dalai Lama inside the Kumbum Monastery in Qinghai in August 2002.

358. The attacks by Chen Kui-yuan and other TAR officials on Buddhist doctrine ironically coincided with the publication of Pope John Paul II�’s book, CROSSING THE THRESHOLD OF HOPE (1994), in which it was stated that �“[t]he Buddhist doctrine of salvation constitutes the central point, or rather the only point, of this system. Nevertheless, both the Buddhist tradition and the methods deriving from it have an almost exclusively negative soteriology [doctrine of salvation].�” Id. at 85. The Federation of Buddhist Organizations in Sri Lanka characterized this statement as �“an unqualified condemnation of Buddhism�” and threatened to boycott a planned inter-religious meeting in Sri Lanka that the Pope was to attend. John-Thor Dahlburg, Gospel According to German Author Links Jesus to Buddha, L.A. TIMES, Dec. 24, 1994, at A2, 1994 WL 2381512; Anna Tomforde & John Hooper, Papal Thoughts Get Lost in Translation, GUARDIAN (London), Dec. 14, 1994, at 13, 1994 WL 9726914.

359. Henry Chu, In Tibet, Dalai Lama Remains People�’s Choice, L.A. TIMES, Aug. 28, 1999, at A1, 1999 WL 2190828.

360. James A. Beverley, Buddhism�’s Guru, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, June 11, 2001, at 64�–72, 2001 WL 10317723 (describing the Dalai Lama�’s reaction to claims that he is a �“god-king�” and �“sinless�”).

361. Yoon, supra note 327. 362. Brent Fulton, Freedom of Religion in China: The Emerging Civic Discourse, in CIVIC DISCOURSE,

CIVIL SOCIETY AND CHINESE COMMUNITIES 53�–66 (Randy Kluver & John Powers eds., 1999); see also MICHAEL DILLON, RELIGIOUS MINORITIES AND CHINA 12�–14 (2001).

363. Religious Affairs Official Reviews �‘Patriotism Education�’ to Restore Order in Lamaseries, XIZANG RIBAO (Tibet), Nov. 11, 1997, at 2, reprinted in BBC SUMMARY OF WORLD BROADCASTS, Dec. 20, 1997, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe [hereinafter Religious Affairs].


Management Committees (DMC) have run the monasteries since the late 1970s364 and are supposed to be politically vetted.365 However, scrutiny was superficial through the mid-1990s, when authorities concluded that many DMCs had �“assum[ed] an ambiguous political attitude,�” �“persecuted lamas who love their country and religion,�” and �“showed no concern for the monks and nuns,�”366 (i.e., they engaged in favoritism and financial malfeasance). Since the mid-1990s, work teams have been posted at monasteries to carry out political indoctrination and administrative tasks.367

The main factor affecting the degree of regulation of the monasteries is the state leaders�’ perception of the extent to which religion is being used to foster separatism. Monasteries relatively far from Lhasa are for that reason subject to less scrutiny than those in or nearer to the city.368 Heightened separatist activity by monks that is linked to the émigrés or to the successes of their internationalization campaign generates political campaigns in monasteries and expulsions or arrests of recalcitrant monks and nuns.369 Regulation of monasteries is thus in part attributable to actions of the very émigré leaders who complain that regulation is part of �“cultural genocide.�” The waxing and waning of regulation of monasteries throughout Tibet in turn indicates that there is no concerted campaign to eradicate Buddhism per se.

Most recently, there are indications of a general easing of regulation of religion in Tibet and in China. At the Fourth Tibet Work Forum in August 2001, which was attended by all CCP Politburo Standing Committee members, Jiang Zemin stated: �“We must . . . lawfully protect people�’s freedoms to hold religious beliefs and conduct regular religious activities.�”370 Guo Jinlong, TAR Party Secretary since November 2000, has initiated �“a somewhat softer line on some religious conflicts than his predecessor,�” including the relaxation of pressure on government employees and their families to stop practicing Buddhism.371 At a late 2001 conference on religion, also attended by the whole Politburo Standing Committee, China�’s supreme ruling council, Jiang Zemin recognized

364. See Changing Life of Lamas in Tibet, XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, Mar. 20, 1979, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic

Universe (describing DMCs in charge of production and religious activities in Drepung); Solomon M. Karmel, Ethnic Tension and the Struggle for Order: China�’s Policies in Tibet, 68 PACIFIC AFFAIRS 485, 504 (1995), 1995 WL 15211342 (noting presence of DMC members in all of Tibet�’s major monasteries). Some DMCs are �“relatively independent and relatively democratic.�” TIBETAN CENTRE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS AND DEMOCRACY, ANNUAL REPORT 2000: ENFORCING LOYALTY ch. 2, available at http://www.tchrd.org/pubs/2000/chapter2.shtml (last visited Mar. 15, 2003).

365. Steven T. McFarland, Testimony of Steven T. McFarland on behalf of The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom Before the Committee on International Relations of The United States House of Representatives (May 10, 2001), 2000 WL 19303436.

366. Religious Affairs, supra note 363. 367. Id.; see Education Improves Lamaseries�’ Administration, XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, June 18, 2001, 2001

WL 23440294 (depicting China�’s efforts to improve religious order in Tibet�’s lamaseries); Question of the Violation of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, Including Policies of Racial Discrimination and Segregation and of Apartheid, in All Countries, with Particular Reference to Colonial and Other Dependent Countries and Territories: Report of the Sub-Commission Under Commission on Human Rights Resolution 8 (XXIII), U.N. ESCOR, 51st Sess., U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1999/NGO/13, available at http://www.unhchr.ch/Huridocda/Huridoca.nsf/(Symbol)/E.CN.4.Sub.2.1999.NGO.13.En?Opendocument (last visited Mar. 15, 2003) [hereinafter Question].

368. David Germano, Remembering the Dismembered Body of Tibet: Contemporary Tibetan Visionary Movements in the People�’s Republic of China, in BUDDHISM IN CONTEMPORARY TIBET: RELIGIOUS REVIVAL AND CULTURAL IDENTITY, supra note 350, at 53, 56.

369. For a discussion on expulsions and arrests, see Question, supra note 367. 370. Chinese President, Premiere Address Tibet Work Meeting in Beijing, XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, June 29,

2001, in BBC WORLDWIDE MONITORING, Aug. 2, 2001, LEXIS, News Library, News Group File.

371. Erik Eckholm, China�’s Upbeat Governor in Tibet Promises Investment, N.Y. TIMES, Nov. 7, 2001, at A3, 2001 WL 30059172.


the contribution of religion to upholding moral behavior and helping cope with crises.372 Other leaders and official commentators have spoken of mutual adaption of religion and socialism and have recounted contributions made by religion.373 Underground groups and foreign missionaries are now operating more openly.374 Ye Xiaowen, director of the State Religious Affairs Bureau, has indicated that �“simple methods,�” such as repression, do not work with �“complicated religious problems�” and are generally counterproductive.375

When he was in Tibet, the Dalai Lama imposed limitations on the numbers of monks,376 and today �“the Dalai Lama is against an overproliferation of monasteries�” in Tibetan settlements in India.377 For over a dozen centuries, Chinese authorities restricted the number of monks everywhere in their domain.378 That practice and almost every aspect of present-day regulation of Buddhism in China strikingly resemble the regulatory practices of emperors from the Tang to Song dynasties, who were acting under similar concerns about anti-state activities and economic harm that would arise from an unbridled expansion of monasteries and the sangha�’s complete freedom to preach.379 However, tight imperial regulation of monasteries coincided with official patronage of Buddhism, indicating that regulation per se does not evince a destructive design.

TAR officials have said that the number of monks and nuns �“satisfies Tibet�’s religious needs�” and have kept it in a steady state since the mid-1990s.380 The 46,000 monks in the TAR381 are much less than the approximately 114,000 there in 1959.382 As a

372. Jasper Becker, Kicking Karl Marx Out of the Party, S. CHINA MORNING POST, Jan. 26, 2002, at 16,

2002 WL 2304916 (describing Communist Party�’s efforts to gain support among religious groups in accordance with Theory of the Three Representatives, which holds that the Party must represent the foremost production forces, the most advanced culture, and the broad interest of the masses).

373. See Ching Cheong, Is China Facing New Era of Religious Freedom?, STRAITS TIMES (Sing.), Jan. 10, 2002, 2002 WL 4324135 (discussing China�’s recent praise for social stability function of religion); National Conference Held on Management of Religious Affairs, XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, Dec. 1, 2001, in BBC MONITORING, Dec. 13, 2001, 2001 WL 31751386 (stating mutual adaptation of religion and socialist society is correct direction for China�’s religious development); Religious Affairs in China Entering �“New Phase,�” Agency Says, XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, Dec. 1, 2001, in BBC MONITORING, Dec. 13, 2001, 2001 WL 31751524 (describing mutual adjustment of religious and socialist circles).

374. Frank Ching, Atheist Party Starting to See Light on Believers, S. CHINA MORNING POST, Feb. 17, 2001, at 9, LEXIS, News Library, News Group File.

375. Charles Hutzler, Beijing Rethinks Religious Policies, ASIAN WALL ST. J., Feb. 6, 2002, at 1, 2002 WL-WSJA 3343837 (quoting Ye Xiaowen). Ye Xiaowen�’s analog in the TAR, Director of the Ethnic & Religious Affairs Commission Tarqen [Ch: Tareqing], is an ethnic Tibetan. The head of the Commission�’s Religious Affairs Department Thubden [Ch: Tu Deng] is also Tibetan. Reincarnation of Living Buddhas in Tibet, XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, May 24, 2001, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe; Gittings, supra note 336, at P17. Tibetans have been directing the Patriotic Education Campaign on the regional level. See Tibet Official Says Monks Complaining of �‘Chaos,�’ Rotten Religious Practice, XIZANG RIBAO (Tibet), Nov. 11, 1997, at 1, reprinted in BBC SUMMARY OF WORLD BROADCASTS, Dec. 3, 1997, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe.

376. Goldstein, supra note 350, at 22. 377. Mehru Jaffer, Tibetan Monks Dream of Returning Home, JAKARTA POST, Sept. 23, 2001, 2001 WL

22491559. 378. C.K. YANG, RELIGION IN CHINESE SOCIETY 183 (1961); Kim-Kwong Chan, A Chinese Perspective on

the Interpretation of the Chinese Government�’s Religious Policy, in ALL UNDER HEAVEN: CHINESE TRADITION AND CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE PEOPLE�’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA 38 (Alan Hunter ed., 1992).

379. Tanya Storch, Law and Religious Freedom in Medieval China: State Regulation of Buddhist Communities, in RELIGION LAW AND FREEDOM: A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE 34�–44 (Joel Thierstein & Yahya Kamalipour eds., 2000).

380. Chu, supra note 359. 381. Gittings was given a figure of 47,500 monks and nuns. Because there are uncounted �“monks in

society,�” as well as monks resident in monasteries, the official PRC figure could be an underestimate. Gittings, supra note 336, at P17. In any case, the émigré administration has reported that approximately 25,000 monks and nuns came as �“refugees�” from Tibet to India from 1986�–1996, an indication that there are indeed tens of thousands of members of the �“clergy�” in Tibet. Situation in Tibet: Hearing on Humanitarian Aid to Tibet Before the Senate


percentage of adult males, however, they are more numerous than monks in all other Buddhist lands, and they far exceed the density of priests in Catholic Poland and Ireland.383 Among 61 million Catholics in the United States in 2000, there were 45,000 priests,384 a ratio of about one priest per 2500 Catholics. In the TAR, there was one monk for every 52 Tibetans. The Tibetan autonomous areas outside the TAR, which have slightly more than half of the PRC�’s ethnic Tibetans, have over 100,000 monks�—twice the �“clerical density�” of the TAR�—or about one monk for every 25 Tibetans.385 In any event, Tibetan Buddhism�’s hierarchy in various lands stresses that they are �“more interested in the intellectual quality than the numerical quantity of its priests.�”386

With such a large number of monks and monasteries in Tibetan areas, no credence can be given to émigré claims that �“the Chinese�” only allow monasteries to �“serve as museums to attract tourists rather than living cultural and religious institutions�” or that �“the limited number of monks allowed to join these monasteries serve more as showpieces for tourists and, in most cases, caretakers rather than true religious students and practitioners.�”387 There are scarcely a dozen monasteries in the Tibetan areas that attract any number of tourists and these house a very small percentage of the total number of monks. The PRC government states that monks and nuns in Tibet

study and debate the scriptures, attend lectures given by eminent monks, perform Abhiseka (consecration by pouring water on the head) and ordainment, disseminate Esoteric doctrines, perform Buddhist ceremonies, chant scriptures in the presence of believers, release the souls of the dead and pray for blessings by touching the heads.388

Because there are few ethnographies of monastic life in contemporary Tibet, it is difficult to gauge the depth of Buddhist study in these settings, but anyone who visits the region�’s monasteries sees monks studying sutras and debating.389 In contrast to old Tibet,

For. Rel. Comm., 104th Cong. (1997) (statement of Maura Moynihan, Consultant, Refugees International), 1997 WL 10571724.

382. This is the figure given by Chu in 1999. Journalist John Gittings gives a figure of 110,000. Gittings, supra note 336, at P17. Author Xu Mingxu states that there were 112,605. XU MINGXU, YINMO YU QIANCHENG: XIZANG SAOLUAN DE LAILONG QUMAI [INTRIGUES AND DEVOUTNESS: THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE TIBET RIOTS] 174 (1999). On the Internet, where �“Tibet supporters�” enjoy free rein to exaggeration, it is claimed that �“compared to pre-1959 levels, only 1/20 monks are still allowed to practice.�” Miguel Llora, Introduction to the Economic Displacement, Gradual Cultural Genocide and Population Transfer in Tibet, CANADA TIBET COMMITTEE, VANCOUVER, at http://ctcvan.ca/docs/FreedomCultural1.html (last visited Oct. 24, 2002).

383. Sautman & Eng, supra note 52, at 63�–64. 384. Dan Boylan, Last Rites Loom for Dwindling Priesthood, S. CHINA MORNING POST, July 17, 2001, at 12,

2001 WL 22853441. 385. See State Department International Religious Freedom Report 2001, Oct. 26, 2001, in WORLD TIBET

NETWORK NEWS, Oct. 28, 2001, at http://www.tibet.ca/wtnarchive/2001/10/28_1.html (last visited Mar. 15, 2003). 386. Francoise Michel, Buddhism Wins Over a New Generation of Converts in Russia, AGENCE FRANCE-

PRESSE, Feb. 16, 2002, 2002 WL 2341794. 387. TIBET: PROVING TRUTH FROM FACTS, supra note 19, at 79. 388. New Progress in Human Rights in the Tibet Autonomous Region, INFORMATION OFFICE OF THE STATE

COUNCIL OF THE PEOPLE�’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA, Feb. 24, 1998, at http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/32270.html (last visited Mar. 27, 2003).

389. Seth Faison, Icy Wind From Beijing Chills the Monks of Tibet, N.Y. TIMES, Nov. 18, 1998, at A3 (describing the debates at the monastery in Drepung); Patrick Smithers, High Road to Lhasa, THE AGE (Melbourne), Feb. 28, 1998, at 11 (describing activities of Sera monks, including debates); Michael Dempsey, Re-educated but not Suppressed, INDEPENDENT (London), Oct. 2, 1996 (describing debates among Sera monks).


where many monks did nothing to advance their learning,390 today monks at monasteries such as Drepung must be either full-time scholars of a fixed Buddhist curriculum or do productive work on behalf of the monastery. If they choose to be scholars, their monastery subsidizes them. A U.S. anthropologist who did fieldwork at Drepung from 1989�–1995 found hundreds of Drepung monks engaged in full-time study,391 belying claims that monasteries in Tibet are not mainly places for transmission of Buddhist thought and philosophical debate.392

Conditions for the functioning of religious institutions in Tibet are much better than they are in Beijing, which was once the religious capital of the world�’s most extensive empire. Most monasteries and temples in Beijing were closed in the 1950s and 1960s. Although significant numbers of Beijing people have become interested in Buddhism, Daoism, or Christianity, because of �“a longstanding policy designed to prevent Beijing [from] recovering its identity as a centre of religion remains,�” the government has refused to give religious bodies permission to reclaim any of the buildings that formerly housed monasteries and temples.393 In Zhejiang provinces in one year in 1999�–2000, the government closed 1200 temples or churches for carrying out �“superstitious�” activities or failing to obtain permission to operate.394

In old Tibet, most monks were sent to monasteries by their parents at between seven and ten years of age without regard to their wishes.395 There were then only a handful of schools in the region. When monasteries were revived from the 1980s to the early 1990s, many parents enrolled their children.396 Religious motives played a role, but so too did a desire to secure the livelihood of children from impoverished areas and the lack of secular schools.397 During a 1994 visit to Tibet, the UN Special Rapporteur on Religious Intolerance was told that child monks could be admitted if their act was voluntary and they had the permission of their parents.398 There is a regulation stating that one has to be at

390. According to one scholar, before 1959 �“only ten percent of monks were really studying Buddhist texts,

the others were meeting their own needs.�” Fabienne Jagou, La politique religieuse de la Chine au Tibet [China�’s Religious Policy in Tibet], REVUE D�’ETUDES COMPARATIVES EST-OUEST, vol. 32, no. 1, at 29, 41 n.6. (2001).

391. Goldstein, supra note 350, at 33�–34, 161 n.36. 392. Jagou, supra note 390, at 36. 393. Jasper Becker, Past a Matter of Faith for �“Atheist�” City, S. CHINA MORNING POST, Feb. 15, 2002, at

12, 2002 WL 2306772. 394. Up to 1,200 Temples Destroyed or Closed in Chinese Crackdown, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, Dec. 13,

2000, LEXIS, News Library, News Group File. No one conceives of such measures as �“auto-genocide,�” however. 395. Melvyn Goldstein, Religious Conflict in the Traditional Tibetan State, in REFLECTIONS ON TIBETAN

CULTURE 231�–47 (Lawrence Epstein & Richard Sherburne eds., 1990). Traditionally each Tibetan family was obligated to send a boy to become a monk, but today in ethnic-Tibetan Bhutan many rural families do not want to force their sons to be celibate. This is the case even though Buddhism is officially promoted. In Nepal, Sherpa families reportedly no longer want to send their children to become novices. See Kunda Dixit, Nepal-Culture: Winds of Change Sweep Sherpaland, INTER PRESS SERVICE, Sept. 21, 1995, 1995 WL 10134444 (describing the reluctance of Sherpa families to lose their sons to a life of monasticism).

396. See David Holley, Hope, Fear, Defiance Permeate Lhasa Monasteries: Tibet�’s Monks Battle China�’s Hold, L.A. TIMES, Feb. 19, 1989, at 12, 1989 WL 2335374 (describing the recent influx of boy monks to Tashilungpo monastery); Reports from Hong Kong Journalists�’ Tibet Trip, Zhongguo Tongxunshe, July 10, 1991, reprinted in BBC SUMMARY OF WORLD BROADCASTS, July 16, 1991, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe (reporting 200 boy monks among 650 monks at Drepung monastery). The proportion of child novitiates at Drepung in Lhasa was higher than at the exiled Drepung in south India, which in the late 1990s had over 3500 monks, of whom 260 were between the ages of 8 and 14. Keya Acharya, Tibet: Dalai Lama Says Tibetan Culture Safer in India, INTER PRESS SERV., Jan. 15, 1999, 1999 WL 5946626 (stating the proportion of child novitiates at Drepung monastery in Lhasa is higher than at exiled Drepung monastery in southern India).

397. CATRIONA BASS, EDUCATION IN TIBET: POLICY AND PRACTICE SINCE 1950, at 104 (1998). 398. Implementation of the Declaration on the Elimination of all Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination

Based on Religion or Belief, U.N. ESCOR, 49th Sess., at 3, U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/1995/91 (1994).


least eighteen years old to take vows,399 but it is irregularly applied according to reports of abbots who state that they admit boys at age sixteen and according to those who say they became monks at that age.400 In Lhasa, the Religious Affairs Bureau �“turned a blind eye�” at underage monks at Drepung, which in the mid-1990s was �“replete with young monks in the under-18 age bracket.�” Although the minimum age was supposed to be enforced since 1996,401 the U.S. State Department observed in 2001 that �“[m]onasteries continue to house and train young monks . . . [M]any younger boys in fact continue the tradition of entering monastic life.�”402 It may not be unreasonable, now that there are more schools, to allow only adults to become monks. Indeed, in Tibetan areas where schools are lacking or support for separatism is thin, the authorities are more tolerant of the admission of underage monks.403 Some monasteries have established their own schools, or the authorities have hired monks as teachers.404

A minimum age of admission to a religious vocation is not necessarily a violation of international law. A UN declaration calls for children to have access to religious training in some form, but access can be regulated in �“the best interests of the child.�”405 In any case, the prohibition on the admission of child monks and nuns has not held back the growth of the sangha, let alone amounted to cultural genocide.

B. The Tibetan Language and Cultural Genocide

Language is often intimately connected to an ethnic group�’s culture, although there are ethnic groups composed of people who have more than one mother tongue, such as China�’s Yi minority.406 It is uncertain, however, whether ethnic groups that have a language in common fully share the same culture. A Canadian political philosopher doubts the reality of this notion:

399. Jagou, supra note 390, at 35; Walter Glaser, Where the Soft Chants Echo Again, FIN. TIMES, Feb. 17,

2001, at 20, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe. 400. See Gittings, supra note 336, at P17; China: Monastery�’s Legacy Well Preserved, CHINA DAILY, July

16, 1999, at 8, 1999 WL 17780964. 401. Goldstein, supra note 350, at 50 n.33, 161; see also Erick Eckholm, From a Chinese Cell, a Lama�’s

Influence Remains Undimmed, N.Y. TIMES, Feb. 23, 2003, at 6 (noting the dozens of young monks at the Tibetan Buddhist Monastery in Lithang); Qun Zeng, Laodongzhe sushi di shi fazhan Xizang jingji de Zhuygo zhiyue Yinsu [The chief constraining factor on Tibet�’s economic development is the low quality of its workers], trans. in 30 CHINESE EDUCATION AND SOCIETY 29, 32 (1997) (observing that most monks and nuns in Chamdo are school-age children).

402. U.S. Dep�’t of State, International Religious Freedom Report 2001, at 134, available at http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/9001.pdf (last visited Feb. 18, 2002).

403. See Baert, New Year Celebration in Xiahe, supra note 356. 404. A SEA OF BITTERNESS, supra note 349, at 98; Janet Upton, Home on the Grasslands? Tradition,

Modernity, and the Negotiation of Identity by Tibetan Intellectuals in the PRC, in NEGOTIATING ETHNICITIES IN CHINA AND TAIWAN 118 (Melissa Brown ed., 1996); Goldstein, supra note 350, at 44 (noting some 400 boys in Drepung�’s school in 1995). Some child monks or nuns leave their cloisters when secular education becomes available. Tibetan Girls Back to School, XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, Oct. 3, 2000, LEXIS, News Library, Group News File.

405. Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination based on Religion or Belief, G.A. Res. 36/55, U.N. GAOR, 36th Sess., Supp. No. 51, at 3, U.N. Doc. A/RES/36/55 (1981). Empirical studies in the United States that have found significant academic deficiencies in religious education compared to secular schooling are reviewed in JAMES DWYER, RELIGIOUS SCHOOLS VERSUS CHILDREN�’S RIGHTS (1998). Beatings of young monks by teachers in Tibet�’s monasteries are reportedly common. Richard S. Ehrlich, Tibet: Obsessed with Money, LAISSEZ FAIRE CITY TIMES, vol. 3, no. 25 (June 21, 1999) (on file with author).

406. David Bradley, Language Policy for the Yi, in PERSPECTIVES ON THE YI OF SOUTHWEST CHINA 195�–213 (Stevan Harrell ed., 2001).


If two groups share a language but differ broadly in their way of life and have relatively low rates of interaction, do they still belong to the same societal culture? [Take a] French-speaking Montrealer and compare him with another French speaker . . . one who lives in a rural village rather than amidst all the glittering sophistication of Montreal. The mother tongue will be the same between those two French-speaking Quebecois, but the differences in their ways of life are likely to be radical�—urbanites and rural dwellers have different modes of recreation, different architecture, have divergent career paths, dissimilar tastes and so on.407

In few places in the world are differences between rural and urban society more visible than in Tibet. Within Tibetan urban society, there are striking cultural differences between social strata, including language differences.408 This fact is not to deny that an overarching Tibetan culture exists, but rather underscores the idea that language and culture do not necessarily have a determinative relationship: A and B�’s speaking the same language does not mean that they fully share a culture. If A and B speak different languages, they may still share significant elements of a culture. For example, in 1990, only 200,000 of the 5.7 million members of the Tujia ethnic minority of southwest China could speak Tujia, with the vast majority speaking putonghua (Chinese). But in other respects, Tujia people share common cultural elements and an ethnic consciousness with one another.409

European colonialism eliminated at least 15% of all languages spoken at the time and �“language murder�” is recognized as �“one of the basic tools of ethnocide, of the deculturation of peoples, which has always been perpetrated by colonization and is still the semi-official aim of governments which do not recognize the rights of their native ethnic minorities.�”410 �“The Dalai Lama claims that migration to Tibet threatens to cause the eradication of the Tibetan language�”411 and has stated, �“Our own language no longer has any value in our own land.�”412 A U.S. Congressman has stated that �“Tibetan Buddhists face virtual extinction. There is cultural genocide today taking place in Tibet. Their language is being stripped out.�”413 These assertions are not mere hyperbole but falsely represent that �“linguicide�” is part of a plan to destroy Tibetan culture.

China�’s minority tongues are seen as preservative of ethnic cultures, while Mandarin is viewed as a bridge to the urban areas.414 PRC law states that minorities enjoy freedom to use their own languages in autonomous areas,415 where 98% of Tibetans live. In exercising their autonomy on language choice, ethnic minority areas have increasingly promoted bilingualism, especially in education.416 Minority area regulations encourage local

407. Brian Walker, Plural Cultures, Contested Territories: A Critique of Kymlicka, 30 CAN. J. POL. SCI. 211, 220�–21 (1997).

408. See Sautman & Eng, supra note 52. 409. Zhou Minglang, Language Attitudes of Two Contrasting Ethnic Minority Nationalities in China: The

�“Model�” Koreans and the �“Rebellious�” Tibetans, 146 INT�’L J. OF THE SOC. OF LANG. 1, 1�–2 (2000). 410. Roland J.-L. Breton & Ranka Bejeljac-Babic, Too Many Languages or Too Few?, 27 MEDIA ASIA 150�–

51 (2000). 411. Autonomy is Best Solution for Tibet, Says Dalai Lama, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, Sept. 11, 1997,

LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe. 412. Devinder Sharma, supra note 314, at 1. 413. Hearing of the House International Relations Committee on Religious Persecution, 105th Cong. (1999)

(statement of Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA)), FED. NEWS SERV., Sept. 9, 1997, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe. 414. Policy Favors Minorities to Foster Education, XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, Dec. 10, 1994, LEXIS-NEXIS

Academic Universe. 415. Putonghua Taken as Key Factor to Booming China�’s Western Economy, XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, Sept.

18, 2002, LEXIS, News Library, News Group File. 416. Zhou Minglang, The Politics of Bilingual Education in the People�’s Republic of China Since 1949, 25

BILINGUAL RES. J. 147, 156�–60 (2001); Tian Jiadong, Xizang de shuangyu jiaoxue [Bilingual Education in Tibet],


language use in primary instruction,417 with putonghua introduced in upper primary or lower middle school grades.418 Most minority areas, including Tibet, follow this practice.419 There is a measure of flexibility in the TAR, however. Some rural counties have reportedly abandoned bilingualism, in part due to a lack of putonghua-speaking teachers.420

Claims that primary schools in Tibet teach in putonghua are in error.421 Tibetan was the main language of instruction in 98% of TAR primary schools in 1996; today, putonghua is introduced in early grades only in urban schools.422 In six years of Tibetan primary school, pupils are said to spend a total of 1598 hours studying in Tibetan and 748 hours studying in Chinese, a two-to-one ratio.423 Because less than four out of ten TAR Tibetans reach secondary school,424 primary school matters most for their cultural formation. In other Tibetan areas, primary schooling may be in Tibetan, and in some places, parents can choose the language of primary education.425 More often than not, however, Tibetan students outside the TAR are taught in putonghua because of either parental choice or, in some places, because Tibetan language instruction is unavailable due to a shortage of Tibetan instructors or a high percentage of other ethnies living among Tibetans.426

Secondary education in Tibetan is more common outside the TAR than inside it.427 TAR authorities in 2000 asserted that �“local junior middle schools are gradually turning to teaching subjects on natural sciences with Tibetan language�” and that �“Tibetan language is the only teaching language for 102 classes in some local middle schools in [the TAR],

in SHUANGYU JIAOXUE YU YANJIU [BILINGUAL EDUCATION AND RESEARCH] 131�–37 (Zhu Chongxian & Wang Yuanxin eds., 1998).

417. Bonnie Johnson, The Politics, Policies, and Practices in Linguistic Minority Education in the People�’s Republic of China: The Case of Tibet, 33 INT�’L J. EDUC. RES. 593, 594 (2000); Explanation of Minority Nationalites Law, PEOPLE�’S DAILY (P.R.C.), June 4, 1984, reprinted in BBC SUMMARY OF WORLD BROADCASTS, June 19, 1984, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe.

418. Circular Concerning the Use of and Examination on Han Language Teaching Materials by Minority Nationality Middle and Primary School Students in the Tibetan Region, Oct. 28, 1994, reprinted in 30 CHINESE SOCIETY 38�–40 (1997).

419. See generally Jing Lin, Policies and Practices of Bilingual Education for the Minorities in China, 18 J. MULTILINGUAL & MULTICULTURAL DEV. 193, 197 (1997).

420. John Gittings, Claims of Forced Abortions in Tibet Are Untrue, Says Report, GUARDIAN (London), Feb. 25, 2002, at 13, 2002 WL 14615481 [hereinafter Gittings, Claims of Forced Abortions].

421. Lobsang Sangay, Education Rights for Tibetans in Tibet and India, in HUMAN RIGHTS: POSITIVE POLICIES IN ASIA AND THE PACIFIC RIM 285�–307 (John Montgomery ed., 1998).

422. Bass, supra note 397, at 233; China Denies Education Clampdown in Tibet, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, May 7, 1997, LEXIS, News Library, Group News File. See Senior Tibetan Official Meets U.S. Ambassador to China, XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, Apr. 17, 1997, LEXIS, News Library, Group News File (suggesting that lessons in both the Tibetan and Chinese languages are necessary to combat illiteracy).

423. Tibetan Language Dominates Local Life, XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, Sept. 2, 1997, LEXIS, News Library, World News File.

424. John Gittings, A Railroad to Progress or Just Another Chain to China?: After 50 Years of Chinese Rule, Tibetans Remain Sceptical [sic] of Plans to End Their Poverty and Isolation, GUARDIAN (London), Feb. 9, 2002, at 15, LEXIS, News Library, Guardian File.

425. Miller, supra note 340, at 85. TAR officials insist that �“parents always have the possibility of choosing between a class of Tibetan and Chinese mixed or a class only in Tibetan.�” Gilles Campion, Schools, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, June 9, 1997, LEXIS, News Library, Group News File.

426. BASS, supra note 397, at 95�–96.

427. Id. at 233�–34. See Education for Tibetans Boosted in Qinghai, XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, Nov. 30, 1991, LEXIS, News Library, Group News File (indicating that few secondary schools exist within the Tibetan region); The Tibetan Language School of Sichuan Province (Wu Bangfu trans., Sept. 1999), at http://www.khamaid.org/programs/education/tibschool.htm (last visited Mar. 15, 2003).


while the Tibetan language is partially used in some other local middle schools.�”428 In the famous Lhasa Middle School, the region�’s best, there are six classes a week on the Tibetan language, five on putonghua, and four on the English language.429 Many parents want instruction to be in putonghua for the (mainly urban) children who go on to middle school; thus, the TAR regulation that requires middle schools to use Tibetan has not been enforced.430 There is evidence that Tibetan students in the best secondary schools in Lhasa prefer Chinese as the language of instruction,431 while those elsewhere would benefit from having Tibetan as the main language of schooling.432

In 1999, secondary school Tibetan language texts were introduced in the TAR, and Tibetans are now about 50% of TAR secondary school teachers.433 Two trends, however, seem to be clashing in terms of the language of instruction for Tibetans. On the one hand, instructional material in Tibetan is increasingly available;434 on the other hand, Tibetan parents generally want bilingual education for their children, even at the primary level, so that they can compete with native putonghua speakers if they do continue their educations at higher levels.435 This attitude is no different from what obtains in the émigré community

428. Tibetan Language in Wide Use, XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, Aug. 2, 2000, LEXIS, News Library, Group

News File. 429. Mary Kwang, Tibet Today, STRAITS TIMES (Sing.), Nov. 5, 1999, at 26, 1999 WL 8266171. The émigré

leaders have singled out the school for condemnation because of its supposed �“slighting of the Tibetan language�” and its integration of Tibetan and Han students. Kevin Platt, Culture Clash Over Teaching Tibet, CHRISTIAN SCI. MONITOR, Sept. 24, 1999, at 8, LEXIS, News Library, Group News File [hereinafter Platt, Culture Clash].

430. Bonnie Johnson & Nalini Chhetri, Exclusionary Policies and Practices in Chinese Minority Education: The Case of Tibetan Education, 2 CURRENT ISSUES IN COMP. EDUC. (2000), at http://www.tc.columbia.edu/cice/articles/bjnc122.htm (last visited Mar. 15, 2003); Gittings, Claims of Forced Abortions, supra note 420. See Legislation Boosts Position of Tibetan Language, XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, Mar. 17, 1989, LEXIS, News Library, Group News File (explaining the regulations requiring bilingual education in Tibetan schools).

431. Campion, supra note 424. 432. See Education Commission of the Tibet Autonomous Region and the Leading Group for Tibetan-

Language Instruction of the Regional Education Commission, Summary of Pilot Project Work in Middle-School Tibetan-Language Instruction, 30 CHINESE EDUC. & SOC�’Y 41, 41�–48 (1997) (explaining the results of a pilot project in which students were given Tibetan language instruction).

433. New Tibetan Language Textbooks to Be Used, CHINA DAILY, June 28, 1999, at 3, 1999 WL 17780510. In 1991, only 39% of high school teachers in the TAR were Tibetans and other minorities. Zhou Runnian, Xizang jiaoyu sishi nian de zhuyao chenyjou ji jingyan [The Major Achievements and Experiences in Education in the Past Forty Years of Education in Tibet], 6 MIAZU YANJOU 28, 28 (1991).

434. First Set of Tibetan Textbooks Published, WORLD TIBET NETWORK, Jan. 21, 2001, http://www.tibet.ca/wtnarchive/2001/1/22_3.html (first Tibetan textbooks in Qinghai).

435. Tibetan Parents Worried by Spread of Chinese Language, REUTERS, Nov. 29, 2001, http://tibet.ca/wtnarchive/2001/11/30_1.html (last visited Oct. 23, 2002). Some Tibetan parents want their children to study at a middle school in China proper. David Hsieh, Beijing Glorifies Tibet�’s Progress, STRAITS TIMES (Sing.), Nov. 13, 2001, at A3, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe; More Tibetan Students Wish to Study in Interior Cities, XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, July 20, 1995, LEXIS, News Library, Group News File; see also Tibetan Teens Dream of Study in Beijing, XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, June 30, 2000, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe; Tibetans Craving to Send Children to Inland Cities for Education, XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, July 18, 1996, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe. Anyone visiting Lhasa in July, when entrance exams for inland schools are given to several thousand prospective students, can confirm that competition for places is fierce. The above-cited articles admit that the quality of neidi schools attended by Tibetans is better than those in Tibet. However, they also indicate that 70% of the Tibetan students studying at neidi schools are from peasant or herder families because a quota limits to 30% the proportion of cadres�’ children who can enter the program. The schools provide for instruction in Tibetan and visits by monks. By 1999, after fourteen years of such programs, about 20,000 Tibetans had graduated from inland secondary schools. Inland Areas Help Tibet Train Students, XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, July 28, 1999, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe. There were 13,000 Tibetan students enrolled in inland secondary schools in 2002, including Tibetan-only secondary schools in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu and Tianjin. Inland Schools Help Educate Tibetan Students, XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, Oct. 20, 2002, LEXIS News Library, News Group File.


in India, where �“Tibetan students fear that a Tibetan medium primary education will reduce their chance of success in secondary schools as well as their career prospects.�”436

At the tertiary level, many Tibetans major in humanities, and, at two universities, they can study humanistic disciplines in Tibetan.437 At that level it is unlikely that putonghua instruction contributes to language erosion. At universities around the world where much instruction is not given in the national language, but in English (e.g., Hong Kong, Netherlands, Sweden), students still speak their mother tongue.

There are some recent indications that Chinese may become the main (although not sole) medium of instruction in more TAR primary schools,438 but this alarm has been raised before,439 and at the same time, there are counter-indications that the TAR government is reconsidering its bilingual education policies.440 Language of instruction issues are debated around the world, with no easy choice among mother tongue, bilingual, or national language instruction. Where the outcome is use of a national language, the choice may be wrong pedagogically. It may even impinge upon the language rights of an ethnic minority, without being part of a purposeful effort to stifle the minority language, let alone commit cultural genocide. A specialist of education in Tibet has noted that it was not until 1994 that the émigré administration endorsed Tibetan as the language of instruction in the primary schools of Tibetan settlements in India, and �“the Tibetan government-in-exile may have been no more successful than the Chinese government in providing Tibetan-medium education for the children in the refugee community in India, even though the preservation of Tibetan culture is one of its primary goals.�”441 It should also be noted that mother tongue instruction in Tibet compares favourably to the situation of ethnic Tibetan natives of India�’s Ladakh. Schooling there is largely only for boys and occurs in monasteries. Instruction in the Ladakh state school system is in Urdu, a language unfamiliar to Ladakhi children, 90% of whom fail to finish school.442

The émigrés have contended that �“Chinese-built schools teach Chinese history and culture in the Chinese language and propagate communism while denigrating religion�” and that the education system is aimed at �“erasing cultural identity.�”443 However, a study of a Tibetan secondary school in Sichuan by a U.S. anthropologist found that textbooks used in the school �“do contain a fair amount of material drawn from Tibetan sources and relevant to Tibetan cultural life in the broad sense�”; that the lessons based on the texts �“play an important role in establishing a sense of unified Tibetan culture and identity among young Tibetans�”; and that religious concepts were treated respectfully by the Tibetan teachers.444

436. BASS, supra note 397, at 260. 437. Id. at 188; Sangay, supra note 421, at 297; Edward J. Kormondy, Observations on Minority Education,

Cultural Preservation and Economic Development in China, 25 COMPARE 161, 161�–78 (1995). 438. Increase in Chinese Medium Teaching in Tibetan Schools, TIBET INFO. NETWORK, Nov. 27, 2001, at

http://www.tibetinfo.net/news-updates/nu271101.htm (last visited Mar. 15, 2003). 439. China Denies Education Clampdown in Tibet, supra note 422. 440. Gittings, Claims of Forced Abortions, supra note 420. 441. BASS, supra note 397, at 260. The language of instruction from grade six to twelve remains English and

the curriculum at all levels, except in social studies, is the one prescribed by the Indian government. B. Tsering Yeohi, Tibetanisation Project: Teachers�’ Meanings and Perspectives 65�–66 (2001) (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Univ. of Va.) (on file with author).

442. Jonathan Glancey, Sweet Valley High: The Classrooms Will Be Handsome, the Food Will Be Fresh and the Toilets Won�’t Smell. In the Heart of the Himalayas, a Very Unusual School Is Taking Shape, GUARDIAN (London), Jan. 28, 2002, at 10, LEXIS, News Library, Group News File.

443. J. Stapleton Roy, Human Rights Situation of the Tibetan People, DEP�’T ST. BULL., Dec. 1987, at 49, LEXIS, News Library, Group News File; Platt, Culture Clash, supra note 429.

444. Janet Upton, The Development of Modern School-Based Tibetan Language Education in the PRC, in CHINA�’S NATIONAL MINORITY EDUCATION: CULTURE, SCHOOLING, AND DEVELOPMENT 281, 307, 311 (Gerald Postiglione ed., 1999).


Local Tibetans themselves, however, did not necessarily consider Tibetan to be their first choice as a language of instruction because it narrowed career choices compared to Chinese.445

The TAR issued regulations in the late 1980s on the use of Tibetan,446 with the aim to �“make Tibetan the dominant language in Tibet.�”447 A TAR law to protect the Tibetan language was finally passed in 2002.448 While Tibetan is by no means dominant in urban Tibet, it is in most rural areas, where some 85% of Tibetans live. Regulations provide that public signs and documents issued by public institutions at or above the county level must be bilingual, while documents at the township and village levels can be in Tibetan only.449 Since 1991, a regulation has allowed lower-level bodies to forgo implementing orders specified in any document that does not have a Tibetan version,450 even though regional authorities admit that a sufficient pool of qualified translators is lacking.451 There has in fact been an effort in the TAR to ensure that notices are bilingual. The Minister for Information & International Relations of the émigré administration has said that with 80% of television programming in Tibet being in Chinese, the Tibetan language is no longer the prominent language in the region.452 However, some 76% of households in the TAR had television sets in 2000, and it has been reported that there are sixteen hours per day of Tibetan-language television broadcasting.453 A �“Tibet-Xinjiang Project�” was launched in September of that year to set up more television and radio relay stations in rural areas in an effort to reach virtually all Tibetan villages. Tibetan-language newspapers, radio, films, and other media also exist in all Tibetan areas, although much of what they produce is translated from Chinese, due in part to limited funding.454

445. Id. See also TIBET INFO. NETWORK, NEWS REVIEW NO. 29: REPORTS FROM TIBET, 2000, Language and

Tibetan Identity, at 55 (2001), available at http://www.tibetinfo.net/publications/news-reviews/nra29.htm#Contents (last visited Mar. 15, 2003) (discussing traditional material in textbooks used in Tibet).

446. Tibet: Ngapoi and Bainquen Stress Use of Tibetan Language (radio broadcast, Lhasa, July 4, 1987), in BBC SUMMARY OF WORLD BROADCASTS, July 8, 1987, LEXIS, News Library, News Group File; Other Report on Tobacco Smuggling; Decision on Use and Development of Tibetan Language (radio broadcast, Lhasa, July 11, 1987), in BBC SUMMARY OF WORLD BROADCASTS, July 15, 1987, LEXIS, News Library, News Group File; Commission for Guiding Use of Tibetan Language (radio broadcast, Lhasa, Feb. 10, 1988), in BBC SUMMARY OF WORLD BROADCASTS, Feb. 17, 1988, LEXIS, News Library, News Group File.

447. First Meeting of Tibetan Language Commission on Problems Caused By Leftism (radio broadcast, Lhasa, Mar. 13, 1988), in BBC SUMMARY OF WORLD BROADCASTS, Mar. 16, 1988, LEXIS, News Library, News Group File.

448. Tibetans Pass First Law to Protect Mother Tongue, XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, May 22, 2002, LEXIS, News Library, News Group File. The full text of the law can be found at Tibet Info. Network, http://www.tibetinfo.net/publications/docs/languagelaw.htm (last visited Mar. 13, 2003).

449. Tibetan Language Assumes Larger Role, CHINA DAILY, Aug. 5, 2000, at 4, available at http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/english/200008/05/eng20000805_47415.html (last visited Mar. 26, 2003).

450. Id.; Tibetan People Embracing Change, Retaining Culture, CHINA DAILY, June 28, 1999, at 4, 1999 WL 17780512.

451. Use of Tibetan Advocated, CHINA DAILY, Aug. 3, 2000, 2000 WL 25554274. 452. Tibetan Government in Exile Refutes Chinese White Paper, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, Feb. 26, 1998,

LEXIS, News Library, News Group File. 453. Modern Media Brings Tibetans Closer to Outside, CHINA DAILY, Dec. 20, 2001, available at

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/highlights/ChinaInBrief/Tibet/news/l12.htm (last visited Feb. 18, 2003); China Tibet Information Center, Media, http://www.tibetinfor.com.cn/english/reports/soc_tech/media/media_01_zl.htm (last visited Feb. 18, 2003).

454. Language and Tibetan Identity, supra note 445, at 57�–58; Information Office of the State Council of the People�’s Republic of China, The Development of Tibetan Culture, June 22, 2000, reprinted in XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, Full Text of White Paper on Tibetan Culture, June 22, 2000, LEXIS, News Library, News Group File; Tibetan Language Widely Used in Tibet, XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, Aug. 9, 2000, LEXIS, News Library, News Group File; Embassy of the People�’s Republic of China in the United States of America, Tibet�’s March Toward Modernization, Nov. 8, 2001, at http://www.china-embassy.org/eng/20484.html (last visited Feb. 26, 2003);


Except for some persons living at the edge of the Plateau,455 Tibetans continue to speak their mother tongue and moreover associate it with both social status and group solidarity. In the TAR, an ethnic Tibetan who cannot speak Tibetan is practically unheard of,456 while in the whole PRC, some 92.5�–94% of Tibetans speak Tibetan; the remainder speak either another ethnic minority language or putonghua.457 Outside the TAR, 10�–30% of Tibetans can also speak putonghua, but in the TAR, apart from Lhasa, only about 5% of Tibetans can do so.458 Even assuming that all TAR Tibetans in cities and towns are to an extent bilingual, only about 15% of Tibetans would be accorded that classification.459 In fact, �“Tibetans with anything beyond a rudimentary grasp of putonghua comprise a very small portion of the total population.�”460 Members of a Western �“mission�” dispatched to Tibet by the émigré administration claim that �“Chinese is the dominant language which everyone is expected to speak.�” This assertion is plainly wrong and was based only on a visit to a secondary school and a university in Lhasa.461 Tibetan peasants are not expected to speak Chinese, nor are urban Tibetan workers, unless they work with non-Tibetans.

None of the many recent studies of endangered languages deems Tibetan to be imperiled,462 and language maintenance among Tibetans contrasts with language loss in even the remote areas of Western states renowned for liberal policies.463 In the United States, for example, all indigenous languages are nearly extinct in California, though some groups are attempting to revitalize those communication forms.464 French is found increasingly less in Louisiana,465 and there is official and popular hostility toward other

China�’s Media Drive Goes West, FIN. TIMES INFO., Feb. 7, 2002, in BBC MONITORING INTERNATIONAL REPORTS, LEXIS, News Library, News Group File.

455. Miller, supra note 340, at 86. 456. China Opens Tibetan Access Road to Information Superhighway, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, Oct. 13,

1997, LEXIS, News Library, News Group File (stating that 95% of the TAR population speaks Tibetan). 457. ZHONGGUO SHEHUI KEXUE YUAN MINZU YANJIU SUO, ZHONGGUO SHAOSHU MINZU YUYAN SHIYONG

QINGKUANG [THE SITUATION OF CHINESE ETHNIC MINORITY LANGUAGE USE] 750�–53 (1994). 458. Id.; Zhou Minglang, supra note 409, at 4, 14. 459. Zhou Wei, Xizang xiandai taocheng zhong yuyan shiyong moshi de fenxi yu taolun [Analysis and

Discussion of Language Use Models in the Process of Tibet�’s Modernization], 4 ZHONGGUO XANGXUE 21, 29 (2001). According to the PRC government, �“[i]n Tibet, the Tibetan language is the only everyday oral and written means of the 2.4 million ethnic Tibetans.�” Law Guards Tibetan Language, XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, May 24, 2002, LEXIS, News Library, News Group File.

460. Regie Stites, Writing Cultural Boundaries: National Minority Language Policy, Literacy Planning, and Bilingual Education, in CHINA�’S NATIONAL MINORITY EDUCATION: CULTURE, SCHOOLING, AND DEVELOPMENT 95, 115 (Gerard Postiglione ed., 1999).

461. Cees Flinterman et al., Tibet Mission Report, in UNREPRESENTED NATIONS AND PEOPLES ORGANIZATION 1997 ANNUAL REPORT, at 196, 208�–09 (1998).

462. See, e.g., DANIEL NETTLE & SUZANNE ROMAINE, VANISHING VOICES: THE EXTINCTION OF THE WORLD�’S LANGUAGES (2000); DAVID CRYSTAL, LANGUAGE DEATH (2000); LENORE GRENOBLE & LINDSAY WHALEY, ENDANGERED LANGUAGES: LANGUAGE LOSS AND COMMUNITY RESPONSE (1998); TOVE SKUTNABB-KANGAS, LANGUAGE GENOCIDE IN EDUCATION, OR WORLDWIDE DIVERSITY AND HUMAN RIGHTS (2000).

463. See, e.g., Guy Lanoue, Language Loss, Language Gain: Cultural Camouflage and Social Change Among the Sekani of Northern British Columbia, 20 LANG. SOC�’Y 87, 87�–92 (1991) (arguing that English is preferred despite the fact that English is at odds with the Sekani�’s pan-Indian sentiments); Tove Bull, Language Maintenance and Loss in an Originally Trilingual Area in North Norway, 115 INT�’L J. SOC. LANG. 125, 125�–27 (1995) (explaining the shift from bi- or trilingualism to monolingualism among children growing up in coastal Norway).

464. Leanne Hinton, Language Loss and Revitalization in California: Overview, 132 INT�’L J. SOC. LANG. 83, 83�–87 (1998).

465. See Rodrigue Landry et al., French in South Louisiana: Towards Language Loss, 17 J. MULTILINGUAL MULTICULTURAL DEV. 442, 464�–65 (1996).


�“ethnic�” languages and bilingualism in general.466 The United States is described as �“a veritable cemetery of foreign languages�”�—only 16% of second-generation children of Asian and Latin American immigrants report fluency in their parents�’ tongues.467 Among third-generation Americans of Asian ancestry, only 5�–10% can speak their ancestral language and not necessarily fluently.468 Of all U.S. territories, only Puerto Rico�’s native people have retained their language, while one-fourth of them have the very bilingualism decried by the Dalai Lama.469

The experience of language loss has also affected Tibetans who emigrate outside of South Asia. In Canada, �“young Tibetans lead Western lifestyles and speak little Tibetan.�”470 A scholar writing in an émigré online newspaper has observed that young Tibetan-Americans generally do not speak Tibetan and that no one in the Tibetan community in Washington, D.C., could read Tibetan.471 Tibetans who emigrated from Nepal to New York City �“tend to favor speaking Nepali rather than Tibetan and English.�”472 The Dalai Lama has had to urge Tibetans in the United States to speak Tibetan in their homes.473

Bilingualism in Tibet is promoted by policies that require that all laws, official notices, commercial signs, and the like be bilingual; that allow Tibetans to interact with government in their own language; and that have created mass media with substantial Tibetan components.474 Official policies in Tibet go beyond the respect for minority languages required by international law or practiced in European �“rights-based�” states.475 Most of these states have not ratified the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, even though its obligations are fairly minimal. In education, for example, it is satisfied by making available pre-school education in minority languages.476

C. Arts, Vices, and Cultural Genocide

Because they conflict with the idea of cultural genocide in Tibet, state efforts to preserve Tibetan cultural accomplishments and popularize Tibetan culture by creating venues for its development are ignored in the émigré discourse even while they are touted

466. See, e.g., Ana Celia Zentella, The Hispanophobia of the Official English Movement in the US, 127 INT�’L

J. SOC. LANG. 71, 74�–77 (1997); COLIN BAKER, FOUNDATIONS OF BILINGUAL EDUCATION AND BILINGUALISM 170 (1996).

467. Alejandro Portes & Lingxin Hao, E Pluribus Unum: Bilingualism and Loss of Language in the Second Generation, 71 SOC. EDUC. 269, 269�–94 (1998).

468. Richard Alba et al., Only English by the Third Generation? Loss and Preservation of the Mother Tongue Among the Grandchildren of Contemporary Immigrants, 39 IMMIGRANTS DEMOGRAPHY 467, 480 (2002).

469. Jorge A. Vélez, Understanding Spanish-Language Maintenance in Puerto Rico: Political Will Meets the Demographic Imperative, 142 INT�’L J. SOC. LANG. 5, 16�–18 (2000).

470. Ross Marowits, Religious Beliefs Unite Tibetans, TORONTO STAR, Mar. 9, 1990, at C4, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe.

471. Language and Tibetan Indentity, supra note 445, at 58. 472. Amy Levine, The Politics of Nostalgia: Social Memory and National Identity Among Diaspora Tibetans

in New York City (2001) (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago) (on file with author). 473. John Hughes, The Farewell Poignancy of the Dalai Lama�’s Tour, CHRISTIAN SCI. MONITOR, May 16,

2001, at 9, LEXIS, News Library, News Group File. 474. Tibetan Language in Wide Use: Article, XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, Aug. 3, 2000, LEXIS, News Library,

News Group File. 475. See generally Lauri Malksoo, Language Rights in International Law: Why the Phoenix is Still in the

Ashes, 12 FLA. J. INT�’L L. 431, 432�–34, 448�–54 (2000) (arguing that states should pay more attention to minority language rights and provide more protection than the unsatisfactory norms in international law).

476. European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, Nov. 5, 1992, art. 8, Europ. T.S. No. 148, available at http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/EN/Treaties/Html/148.htm (last visited Mar. 26, 2003).


in official PRC statements.477 Thus, the publication of many literary works478�—large-scale efforts such as the compilations of the many-volumed, encyclopaedic Tripitaka and the world�’s longest epic, King Gesar�—go unacknowledged by émigré leaders. This is so even though Western scholars have noted them,479 and an eminent émigré historian has spoken of a renaissance of Tibetan publications, including rare manuscripts and texts, as well as worthwhile novels and short stories by Tibetan writers, whose �“work does not always merely follow the diktats [sic] of the Party, even when it is written in Chinese and published under the eyes of the censors . . . [and who] are able to bring burning issues into the foreground . . . .�”480 The same studious ignorance is generally feigned concerning cultural centers in Tibet and their performances, although the director of the ICT in Washington has acknowledged that he enjoys watching the annual Losar (Tibetan new year) programs on Lhasa TV featuring the Lhasa City Performing Arts Troupe or TAR Performing Arts Troupe.481

Most often émigré leaders represent the performing arts in Tibet as polluted and have stated that �“[i]n this calculated �‘cultural genocide�’ the Chinese ma[ke] every effort to remove any vestige of Tibetan character in the performing arts.�” Lobsang Samten, artistic director of the Dharmasala-based Tibet Institute of Performing Arts, avers that TAR troupes cannot �“put on an authentic performance,�” and instead stage Tibetan operas that are �“like a Chinese drama with monkey kings or something.�”482 He argues that there has been an �“annihilation of Tibetan opera, folk dances, monastic music, Buddhist writings, and literature�” in order to allow the PRC government to claim that Tibet never had a separate cultural identity.483 The Dalai Lama�’s representative in Australia asserts that �“[c]ulturally Tibet is being strangled to death. There is no room for the Tibetans to carry on any independent cultural activities without interference and influences from the Chinese.�”484 There is a burgeoning sense of modern painters, both Tibetan and Han, in Lhasa, who produce impressive works and receive state support through the artists�’ union or teaching positions.485 Western scholars have also described an �“artistic renaissance�”486 and �“resurgence of Tibetan cultural production.�”487 The émigré leaders, however, consider thanka (religious scroll) painting to be the only authentic Tibetan style and disapprove of paintings produced by ethnic Tibetans in the TAR as being corrupted by Chinese influences. Even artists educated in contemporary Tibet who emigrate to India, such as Gongkar Gyatso, are spurned as inauthentic in Dharmasala, where authorities are unhappy that the main trend in Tibetan art, in or out of Tibet, has been modernistics, i.e., from

477. Tibet�’s March Toward Modernization, supra note 454. 478. For an overview see Danzhu Angben, 2 Zangzu wenhua fazhan shi [History of the Development of

Tibetan Culture] 1181�–22 (2001). 479. See, e.g., Geoffrey Samuel, The Gesar Epic of East Tibet, in TIBETAN LITERATURE: STUDIES IN A

GENRE 358, 358 (Jose Cabezon & Roger Jackson eds., 1996). 480. Tsering Shakya, The Waterfall and Fragrant Flowers: The Development of Tibetan Literature Since

1950, TIBETAN BULL., July�–Aug. 2001, at 28, 39�–40, http://www.tibet.net/eng/diir/tibbul/0107/shakya.html (last visited Oct. 9, 2002).

481. Bhuchung Tsering, When Sera Means Two Different Places, TIBETAN REV., July 2001, at 28. 482. China�’s Propaganda War on Tibet Gets Cultural, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, June 29, 1999, LEXIS,

News Library, News Group File [hereinafter China�’s Propoganda War]. 483. Kevin Platt, Tibetan Music Sings Out Amid the Mishmash, CHRISTIAN SCI. MONITOR, Dec. 31, 1999, at

18, LEXIS, News Library, News Group File [hereinafter Platt, Tibetan Music]. 484. China�’s Propaganda War, supra note 482. 485. Elke Hessel, Modern Artists of Lhasa, 27 TIBET J. 1�–2, 217�–36 (2001). 486. Rob Liarothe, Creativity, Freedom, and Control in the Contemporary Renaissance of Reb gong

Paintings, 26 TIBET J., 4, 5�–90 (2001).

487. Mark Stevenson, The Politics of Identity and Cultural Production in Amdo Reb gong, 24 TIBET J. 35, 45 (1999).


religious or ritualistic to secular.488 At the same time, younger Tibetan exiles have become more detached from traditional culture, such as the secular theatre, as �“the new generations have turned to Western cultural models, transmitted especially through music and cinemas, as well as through direct contact.�”489

The émigré discourse of the arts and cultural genocide is a classic nationalist opposition of the inauthentic in �“occupied Tibet�” to a �“pure�” preserved culture in emigration.490 Tibetan specialists and artists have a different view: They recognize that Tibetan arts retain their own Tibetan form in Tibet; that Tibetan culture has long been a hybrid; that traditional Tibetan art forms can profit from a further melding; and that, in the arts, the competing culture is not �“Chinese�” per se, but global. A Tibetan musicologist in the United States has written that the Tibetan singing style in Tibet continues to differ from the Chinese style.491 Tseten Dorjee, a folk singer who performs in Tibetan and Hindi with a Tibetan opera troupe in Lhasa, has commented that �“all Tibet is a mishmash of influences from the eastern and western tips of Asia.�”492 Asked about the popularity of discos with young Lhasa Tibetans, he ventured that �“[j]ust about every point on the planet is becoming more global, and Tibetan musicians have to compete with that if they want to survive.�”493 The singer Yungchen Lhamo, in emigration in Australia, has said that she likes to experiment and that her albums include songs with an electronic accompaniment. She comments:

I like to make connections with the modern world because this will keep Tibetan culture alive. If young people like Michael Jackson or the Spice Girls or something like that, then we lose our younger generations. And then we lose our culture. But if old and new are joined together, our culture will live.494

Indeed, some Tibetan monks in India listen to Western pop music.495 Concomitantly, �“in the fields of literature, art, film, and music alike, Chinese intellectuals and artists have been turning more and more frequently to Tibet as a source of inspiration.�”496

The authorities in Tibet�’s cities have been responsible for the replacement of Tibetan-style structures with inelegant and dysfunctional �“Chinese�” (read: faux-Western) buildings.497 To label the result �“the scars of cultural genocide,�”498 however, is extreme. There is no evidence that Tibetans did not join with Han in this pseudo-modernizing affront to the eyes. As anyone who has been to Lhasa in the mid-1990s and more recently can

495. Julian Gearing, Struggle for Tibet�’s Soul, ASIAWEEK, Oct. 20, 2000, at 62, 2000 WL 8938199.

488. CLARE HARRIS, IN THE IMAGE OF TIBET: TIBETAN PAINTING SINCE 1959, at 192�–96 (1999). 489. Antonio Atlasani, Tibetan Secular Theatre: The Sacred and the Profane, 21 PAJ: A JOURNAL OF

PERFORMANCE AND ART 1, 1�–2 (1999). 490. See, e.g., Minister Tashi Wangdi, Message from the Kalon [of the Department of Religion and Culture,

Dharamsala], at http://www.tibet.net/eng/religion/message (last visited Feb. 18, 2003); Jean Bartlett, Chaksampa, Tibetan Dance and Opera Company, Offers Thrilling Cultural Insight, PACIFICA TRIB., Aug. 15, 2001, at http://www.tibet.ca/wtnarchive/2001/8/20_4.html (last visited Oct. 9, 2002).

491. Bhuchung Tsering, Making Sense of the Music Scene in Tibet, TIBETAN REV., Feb. 2002, at 27. (quoting CHOPATHAR WAYEMACHE, MUSICAL ARTIST IN TIBET: SELECTED ESSAYS (1998)).

492. Platt, Tibetan Music, supra note 483. 493. Id. 494. Cathrin Schaer, Tibetan Enchantress Brings a Tear to Her Audiences, SUNDAY STAR-TIMES

(Auckland), Feb. 14, 1999, at F3, 1999 WL 8145073.

496. Janet Upton, The Politics and Poetics of Sister Drum: �“Tibetan�” Music in the Global Marketplace, in GLOBAL GOES LOCAL: POPULAR CULTURE IN ASIA 101 (Timothy Craig & Richard King eds., 2002).

497. See KNUD LARSEN & AMUND SINDING-LARSEN, THE LHASA ATLAS: TRADITIONAL TIBETAN ARCHITECTURE AND TOWNSCAPE (2001).

498. Andrew Anders, Tibet Carries Scars of �‘Cultural Genocide,�’ GUARDIAN (London), June 17, 1993, at 9, 1993 WL 9916607.


attest, there has also been some effort to correct past mistakes by putting up more attractive and well-adapted Tibetan-style buildings. The damage done to architecture in Lhasa, where the buildings central to the cultural heritage of the city have been either preserved or destroyed, stands in stark contrast to more overt attacks on buildings in other parts of the world that are part of a national heritage.499 Architecture in the Tibetan diaspora is also not unproblematic, with one Western authority noting that the way in which buildings are constructed often reduces the distinctive elements of traditional Tibetan architecture to �“cosmetic clichés.�”500 He also finds that not only is there a lack of traditional Tibetan buildings in Dharamsala, but many �“resemble the box-like concrete structures which are now found over most of India.�”501

The émigrés try to attribute �“vices�” found in Tibet�’s cities to cultural corrosion due to the Han presence. Lhasa, like many cities around the world, has abundant outlets for prostitution, gambling, and drugs.502 The ICT director has stated, �“We are concerned that more and more young Tibetans are being tempted by the very worst aspects of Chinese culture.�”503 However, none of the �“vices�” complained of are particularly �“Chinese.�” Billiards is a Western invention, karaoke was born in Japan, and prostitution and drugs are universals. When questioned about Lhasa�’s discos and nightclubs, the Tibetan vice-chairman of the TAR referred to them as part of �“the Western lifestyle�” and said that they added diversity to the Tibetan and Han cultures found among local people,504 although TAR authorities do denounce gambling and prostitution and stage raids in an effort to rid the TAR of those vices.505 �“Vices�” in Tibet decried by the émigrés are for the most part also present in such religious centers as Dharamsala506 and Kathmandu507 and are not uncommon among Buddhist monks in some countries.508

499. See, e.g., Milo�š R. Perovi & �Žoran Zegarac, The Destruction of an Architectural Culture: The 1999

Bombing of Belgrade, 17 CITIES 395, 396 (2000) (discussing the destruction of Belgrade�’s architectural monuments during the twentieth century).

500. William Semple, Tibetan Architecture: Exploring a Cultural Continuum, 98 CULTURES IN TRANSITION 96, 98 (1996).

501. Id. 502. See China�’s Tibet Policy Reminiscent of Cultural Revolution: Dalai Lama, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE,

Mar. 10, 2000, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe (last visited Oct. 8, 2002); John Grey, Modernise, or Else!: Building the New Lhasa, HIMAL, Jan.�–Feb. 1995, at 10, 13; Social Evils: Prostitution and Pornography in Lhasa (Tibet Info. Network Background Briefing Paper, 1998).

503. Kevin Platt, Chinese Migrants Change Face of Tibet, CHRISTIAN SCI. MONITOR, Sept. 10, 1999, at 8, 1999 WL 5382258.

504. Yong, supra note 347. 505. Teresa Poole, Paying the Price of Progress, INDEPENDENT (London), Aug. 20, 1995, at 10, 1995 WL

9804128; Raids on Entertainment Spots in Tibet (Tibet People�’s Broadcasting Station, Lhasa, Sept. 19, 1996), in BBC SUMMARY OF WORLD BROADCASTS, Oct. 22, 1996, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe (last visited Oct. 9, 2002).

506. J. West, Tibetans Accuse Dalai Lama of Spiritual Betrayal, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH (London), Apr. 26, 1998; Ajay Singh, Tibet: Fires of Frustration�—The Dalai Lama May Start Talks with Beijing Even as Many Tibetans Tire of His Peaceful Campaign, ASIAWEEK, Sept. 11, 1998, at 52, available at http://www.asiaweek.com/asiaweek/98/0911/feat7.html (last visited Mar. 26, 2003) (stating that �“not a few�” Tibetans in Dharamsala �“gravitate to drugs�”); Isabel Hilton, Children of a Lhasa God, GUARDIAN (London), Mar. 6, 1999, at 24, 1999 WL 12074131. A Tibetan youth in Dharamsala, referring to other Tibetan youths, states, �“A lot of people my age turn to drugs and alcohol.�” Id. KEILA DIEHL, ECHOES FROM DHARAMSALA: MUSIC IN THE LIFE OF A TIBETAN REFUGEE COMMUNITY 48 (2002) (noting the involvement of young Tibetan men in hashish selling in Dharamsala). Shefalee Vasudeu, New Buddhism: The Buddha Bar, INDIA TODAY, July 22, 2002, at 50 (noting the widespread availability of drugs in Dharamsala and the involvement of monks in heterosexual sex); Dilip Ganguly, Dalai Lama�’s Return to Tibet Enmeshed in Negotiations, ASSOCIATED PRESS, Jan. 5, 1987 (reporting the head of the Tibetan Youth Congress in Dharamsala as stating that the Tibetan youth there like discos); Jagdish Bhatt, Tensions Between Locals, Tibetans Rise in Manoli, TIMES OF INDIA, July 7, 1999 (quoting


�“Cultural erosion,�” including the adoption of words of foreign origin, is as prevalent in Dharamsala as in Lhasa.509 It has been said of Tibetans in India that �“[d]aily life is laden with markers of reified Tibetanness, and a nagging anxiety that the necessary accommodation to the Indian host society dilutes more and more the Tibetanness of each generation of exile.�”510 Additionally, �“[i]n daily life people speak English and Hindi more than Tibetan, and even if people speak Tibetan, they pepper their conversation with many English and Hindi words.�”511 In contrast, Tibetans in India who attended school in Tibet �“even if they didn�’t finish middle school, are often better in both their spoken and literary Tibetan than exile students, even those who finish university.�”512 This outcome is expected, as Tibetan settlements in India have �“secondary schools struggling to integrate Tibetan curricula into a mandatory Indian syllabus.�”513

While émigré and Western leaders object to Han cultural influence in Tibet, they are usually much less concerned about Western influence on traditional Tibetan culture.514 Young Tibetans, it has been observed, have become more attuned to �“a Western dress sense and a greater awareness of life outside�” than Han Chinese.515 In largely ethnic Tibetan Bhutan, a student in Thimphu, the capital, has commented, �“Sometimes the young people here copy the Westerners so much that they are almost Westerners themselves.�”516 Visiting the émigré version of Lhasa�’s Sera monastery in south India, a journalist observes:

Reeboks are standard gear, and the strains of Pearl Jam not unknown in these regions. And the tuck [snack] shop outside the monastery is a slice of Middle America, well stocked with chips, chewing gum and soft drinks . . . . Change can grow from the barrel of a Chinese assault rifle, but it can also grow from the mouth of a Coke can.517

Sonam Chophel, the Tibetan Welfare Officer in Dharamsala, notes that �“western music, jeans and related western mores�” are common among Tibetans in India, but �“does not blame the Indian social fabric for these influences. �‘If we cannot safeguard our own culture, it is our own fault.�’�”518 In effect, he recognizes that the �“Indian social fabric�” and Western cultural elements are imbricated and that acculturation need not be a function of that local Indians in Himchal Prudesh [state in which Dharamsala is located] state that Tibetan exile youth �“drink homemade brew and engage in brawls�”).

507. Dirty Dancing in Kathmandu, S. CHINA MORNING POST, July 9, 2000, at 1, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe.

508. Thailand to Host World Buddhism Summit Without Dalai Lama, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, Nov. 2, 2000, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe (last visited Oct. 8, 2002).

509. Amy Mountcastle, Tibetans in Exile: The Construction of Global Identities 190 (1997) (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Rutgers University) (on file with author).

510. Lafitte, supra note 29, at 165. 511. Language and Tibetan Identity, supra note 445, at 60; See also DIEHL, supra note 506, ch. 3, for a

discussion on the deep influence of Indian speech, films, music, and culture on Tibetans in Dharamsala. 512. Id. 513. Lafitte, supra note 29, at 165. 514. See, e.g., Dalai Lama in Slovakia Says Tibetans Facing Cultural Genocide, SLOVAK INT�’L TELEGRAPH

AGENCY, Oct. 16, 2000, in BBC SUMMARY OF WORLD BROADCASTS, Oct. 18, 2000, LEXIS, News Library, Group News File.

515. Claire MacDonald, Inside Lhasa: Tibet�’s Tale of Two Cities, ASIAWEEK, May 28, 1999, at 68, at http://www.asiaweek.com/asiaweek/99/0528/nat6.html.

516. Dexter Filkins, Land of Thunder Dragon Opts for Democracy Without Dissent, L.A. TIMES, Feb. 13, 1999, at A8, 1999 WL 2129640.

517. Ranjit Hoskote, Lamas Cope with Change in Tropical Shangri La, TIMES OF INDIA, Aug. 1, 1999, 1999 WL 24797766.

518. Uttera Choudhury, Tibetan Boy Lama Sets Off on First Pilgramage Around India, AGENCY FRANCE-PRESSE, Feb. 21, 2001, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe.


state imposition, but may actually be welcomed by some elements of the community. A journalist interviewing young Tibetans in India described the teenage Dolma who �“instead of speaking Tibetan . . . uses a smattering of Hindi, English, and the local Kanadda language. She prefers Indian movies, Western clothes, and rap music to Buddhist poetry.�”519 Tempa Samkhar, an émigré political cabinet secretary, has noted that 60% of Tibetans in India were born there and that

[t]hese youngsters are more Indian than Tibetans. They are fond of Indian food . . . and Hindi is their second mother tongue. Tibetan girls often wear salwar kameez . . . . The young are more fond of Hindi films and film songs than Tibetan songs.�”520

The Dalai Lama himself has said that �“I have spent the better part of over 43 years of my life here in India. I�’m practically Indian.521

The Dalai Lama recognizes that Tibetan culture has synthesized many different cultures. The Tibetans, he points out, have �“adopted Chinese food, Indian philosophy and the Mongolian way of dressing.�”522 As in the Tibetan diaspora, Tibetans in Tibet today are undergoing cultural hybridization in the context of the state in which they live. Even some observers who are severe critics of state policy in Tibet acknowledge that this hybridization is not compelled. For example, one Western reporter has noted, �“It might offend Western romantic sensibilities, but young Tibetan men adore kung fu movies and karaoke.�”523 As in the diaspora, their learning of the national language in order to partake of economic opportunities and communicate with non-Tibetans, as well as their cultural adoptions from the state�’s dominant ethnie�—generally of elements of Western culture�—hardly amounts to forced assimilation.

There is, however, a Tibetan-ruled Himalayan land, Bhutan, where minorities are required by law to speak the national language and, despite widespread illiteracy, to write it as well. They are also required to wear the dominant people�’s traditional dress in public. Minority people who entered the country after the late 1950s are not admitted to citizenship. Forced assimilation is a factor in tens of thousands of minority people fleeing the kingdom.524 The Tibetan émigrés have not, however, criticized this �“cultural genocide�” and have friendly relations with Bhutan.

519. Meenakshi Ganguly, Generation Exile: Big Trouble in Little Tibet, 10 No. 3 TRANSITIONS (Kampala) 4

(2001). 520. Aditi Kapoor, More Indian than Tibetan, THE HINDU, July 30, 2000, 2000 WL 23318748. 521. Ramananda Sengupta, Don�’t Fight Terror with Terror: Dalai Lama, WORLD TIBET NETWORK, Feb. 7,

2002, at http://www.tibet.ca/wtnarchive/2002/2/7_1.html (last visited Oct. 9, 2002). 522. Kalpana Sharma, supra note 301; Dalai Lama Breaks the Ice with Broken English, Spreads Laughter,

EXPRESS NEWS SERV., Mar. 13, 2000, at http://www.friendsoftibet.org/130300i.html (last visited Sept. 16, 2002). 523. Poole, supra note 505.

524. A.C. Sinha, Bhutan in 1994: Will the Ethnic Conflict Be Resolved?, 35 ASIAN SURV. 166, 167�–68 (1995), 1995 WL 14890115; see also Ben Saul, Cultural Nationalism, Self-Determination and Human Rights in Bhutan, 12 INT�’L J. REFUGEE L. 321, 326�–35 (2000) (discussing the effect of nationality laws and cultural protection laws on the decision to flee). Bhutan also bans Christian churches from conducting religious activities. Civil and Political Rights, Including Religious Intolerance, U.N. ESCOR, 57th Sess., Agenda Item 11(e), at 8, U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/2001/63 (Feb. 13, 2001).


V. WORDS MATTER: �“CULTURAL GENOCIDE�” AND THE QINGHAI RESETTLEMENT PROJECT

Language inflation is targeted to affect policymaking by altering perceptions and limiting the options of political actors. Confronted by accusations from a world spiritual leader that China is committing cultural genocide in Tibet, many Westerners unquestioningly accept this characterization. Meanwhile those who doubt its accuracy nevertheless become reticent and find that they must, per Secretary Powell, show �“solidarity with the Dalai Lama and the people of Tibet.�”525 In doing so, they perforce diminish their capacity to aid in a compromise of the Tibet Question by signaling to the PRC that they are in the thrall of separatists526 and by strengthening those Tibetan émigré forces that oppose compromise.

The long-term, diffuse effects on the Tibet Question of the discourse of cultural genocide have been accompanied by more immediate and direct consequences for a group of poor and mainly ethnic minority Chinese. In March 1999, China announced that it would match U.S.$40 million of a World Bank loan�—the total loan amount from the World Bank was U.S.$160 million�—over the next five years to relocate 57,750 peasants from one county belonging to Xining City (population density 337 persons per square kilometer) and five ethnic minority autonomous counties (ACs) in Haidong prefecture, eastern Qinghai (114.3 persons per square kilometer; arable land per capita 0.157 ha).527 They were to move more than 550 kilometers to the �“oasis�” of Xiangride, the second largest town in Dulan County, Haixi Mongolian and Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture (one person per square kilometer), in western Qinghai.528

Sixty-five percent of Qinghai�’s population is packed into the 2% of provincial territory designated as Xining City and Haidong Prefecture.529 Haixi Prefecture�’s area, in contrast, is 45% of Qinghai and contains 7% of the province�’s population, of whom 76% are Han, 11% Tibetan, 7% Mongol, and 5% Hui. Average annual per capita income in the fourteen national poverty counties of Qinghai, which include the six move-out counties, was Y755, which is about half that of the rural TAR.530 Some 170,000 persons applied for resettlement, and 34% were selected, with a selection rate of 40% among Tibetans.531 Peasants had made repeated resettlement applications in the 1990s, and those not selected

525. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Questions Secretary of State Designee, Colin Powell (CNN

television broadcast, Jan. 17, 2001). 526. See, e.g., the essay by the well-known Chinese intellectual, Wang Xiaodong, who is a self-proclaimed

nationalist and democrat, The West in the Eyes of a Chinese Nationalist, HEARTLAND: EURASIAN REV. OF GEOPOLITICS, 2000, no. 1, at 17, 19, in which Wang states that with regard to the Tibet Question that �“[i]t appears that Westerners are full of a sense of justice, but they are completely under the influence of an ill-natured propaganda by the hegemonic media.�”

527. WB Loan to Benefit the Poor, CHINA DAILY, July 2, 1999, at 4, 1999 WL 17780623. 528. World Bank Loans to Promote Qinghai Aid-the-Poor Project, XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, Mar. 23, 1999,

LEXIS, News Library, News Group File; Pieter Bottelier, Was World Bank Support for the Qinghai Anti-Poverty Project in China Ill-Considered?, HARV. ASIA Q., Winter 2001, at http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~asiactr/haq/ 200101/0101a007.htm (last visited Feb. 18, 2003).

529. Susette Cooke, The Politics of Population Transfer, TIBET INFO. NETWORK, Oct. 28, 1999, at http://www.tibetinfo.co.uk/news-updates/nu281099.htm (last visited Oct. 9, 2002).

530. The World Bank Group, China: Western Poverty Reduction Project, Annex: Social Aspects Report, Project Information Document No. 6960, June 1, 1999, http://www-wds.worldbank.org/servlet/WDSContent Server/WDSP/IB/1999/06/12/000178830_98111703525331/Rendered/INDEX/multi0page.txt (last visited Mar. 15, 2003) [hereinafter World Bank, Poverty Reduction Project Report].

531. China�’s Poor See Hope in Resettlement, REUTERS, Aug. 11, 1999, at http://www.tibet.ca/wtnarchive/ 1999/8/11_5.html (last visited Oct. 23, 2002); W. Kazer, Controversy Dogs China Relief Project, REUTERS, Aug. 10, 1999, at http://www.tibet.ca/wtnarchive/1999/8/11_4.html (last visited Oct. 23, 2002) [hereinafter W. Kazer, Controversy].


told Western journalists that they were disappointed. Ninety percent of those selected had a per capita income of less than Y580 (U.S.$70) per annum, with many earning Y200�–300 (U.S.$24�–36). They suffered from malnutrition; had to rely on the government or others for food six months of the year; complained that they lacked water, schools, medical facilities, transport, and electricity; and said that local roads were little more than dirt tracks.532 Western journalists who visited the move-out area found that �“[e]thnic Tibetans in Ka Village have no school, no doctor and little more than bare rooms papered in newspaper.�”533 They also found that the Tibetan village of Shangchia

has no school, no electricity and no medical facilities. There is no transport, and an illness would mean a 20 km hike to the nearest hospital. Everyone interviewed in the village, home to these dirt poor people for generations, expressed eagerness to leave, a sentiment echoed in other villages.534

The move-out counties�’ population was 1,333,484, of which 124,842, or 9.4%, were Tibetan.535 Only 6% (3466) of selected settlers were Tibetans, so the Tibetan share of the move-out counties�’ population would increase to 9.5%. Han were 48.7% of the move-out counties�’ population but only 42.3% of total people to be moved. Thus, 57.7% of the settler group were members of various ethnic minorities, yet some opponents of the project claimed that it involved �“moving nearly 60,000 Han Chinese farmers.�”536

Before the proposed �“move-in,�” Dulan County had 52,669 people. The move would have doubled the county population, while Tibetans in the county would have increased from 11,952 to 15,418.537 After move-in, the percentages of three ethnic groups in Dulan were to drop: Han (from 53.1% to 47.5%), Tibetans (from 22.7% to 14%), and Mongols (from 14.1% to 6.7%), while those of three other groups were to increase: Hui (from 7.2% to 22.1%), Salar (from 1.5% to 4.2%), and Tu (from 1% to 5.4%).538

The percentages of ethnic change from resettlement would have been different if an area larger or smaller than the county were the unit of measurement�—for example, if the entire move-in prefecture or the project specific area, a 200-square kilometer part of Dulan County where settlement was to take place, had been used. Haixi Prefecture Tibetans were 11.1% of the population and would fall to 10.3% as a result of the move.539 Haixi Han would rise from 236,918 to 261,375,540 but since the prefecture was 76% Han before the move-in and only 42% of those resettled were to be Han, Han in Haixi would fall to 70.7%.

The project specific area had a population of about 4000 of whom 26.3% were Han, 69.1% Mongols (352 of them herders), and 4.6% Hui. There were no Tibetans. In project townships, the rural area that included the project specific area plus adjacent lands (2000

532. Qinghai: Developing Status, CHINA ECON. REV., Mar. 13, 2001, LEXIS, News Library, News Group

File. Special Report: Development and Population Transfer in Qinghai�—The Qaidam Basin Project, TIBET INFO. NETWORK, Apr. 27, 1999, at http://www.tibetinfo.co.uk/news-updates/nu270499.htm (last visited Mar. 15, 2003).

533. Renee Schoof, Helping Some of China�’s Poorest People�—But at What Cost?, ASSOCIATED PRESS, Sept. 5, 1999, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe.

534. W. Kazer, Controversy, supra note 531. 535. World Bank, Poverty Reduction Project Report, supra note 530. 536. Isabel Hilton, Climate of Fear: Clare Short Tries to Dismiss Complaints About the Brutal Plans of

Chinese Leaders as �‘Hollywood Fantasy,�’ GUARDIAN (London), June 28, 2000, 2000 WL 23284491. 537. World Bank, Poverty Reduction Project Report, supra note 530. 538. Id.; World Bank Still Reviewing Controversial Loan to China, DEUTSCHE PRESSE-AGENTUR, July 24,

1999, LEXIS, News Library, News Group File. 539. Paul Lewis, U.S. May Try to Stop Loan Seen as Bad for Tibetans, N.Y. TIMES, May 30, 1999, at A4,

LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe. 540. Id.


square kilometers total), there were 5736 people. This number included 276 Tibetan herders who lived 120 kilometers from the project specific area in the summer and autumn and 60 kilometers from it the rest of the year. After settlement, Tibetans in the project specific area would rise from 0% to 5.6% and Han would rise from 26.3% to 41.3%. The number of Mongols would remain the same, but their percentage would drop from 69.1% to 4.5%. If the project townships were considered instead, Han would rise to 41.8% and Tibetans to 5.9%, with Mongols falling to 4.9%. No Tibetan or Mongolian farmers already in the project specific area were to be relocated or displaced.541

In opposing the project, the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) adopted two disparate figures. It highlighted the decrease in the proportion of Tibetans in Dulan County from 22.7% to 14% and the increase in Han in the project specific area from 26.3% to 41.3%.542 It never disclosed the obverse effect�—that Tibetans in the project specific area would rise from 0 to 5.6% and that Han in Dulan County would fall from 53.1% to 47.5%�—even though this effect would probably be more meaningful, since Tibetans would for the first time have a presence in a part of the county where they were absent, while the proportion of ethnic minorities in the county would increase. Almost all Western news sources relied on ICT and other �“Tibet support group�” press releases, rather than detailed World Bank statistics. An unproblematic impression was created that Han were to increase in the relevant political jurisdictions and thereby threaten whatever influence Tibetans may have over local decisionmaking.

The ICT also sought to create an impression that it was mainly Tibetans living in an indisputably Tibetan area who would be affected by the project. The ICT president stated, �“This is an area where Tibetans have lived for generations . . . . It�’s like moving people from Denver to a [N]ative American reservation in Colorado.�”543 While Tibetans have long lived in Dulan, they were scarcely present in project townships. Mongols and other peoples have also been present for generations, including Hui and Han who have been settled there since the 1920s, although an influx of Han also arrived in the 1950s.544 The analogy with a Native American reservation was inaccurate because reservations are generally populated by one Native American ethnie, not a variety of �“tribes.�” Moreover, reservation authorities generally have the power to exclude non-Native Americans and Native Americans from tribes other than the eponymous tribe, not only from settlement, but even from entry for most purposes.545 In contrast, at every level from project specific area to prefecture, the Qinghai project move-in area was already ethnically diverse. In addition, compared to the sovereign-nation status that Native Americans enjoy under U.S. and international law, in practice, PRC minority groups cannot exclude other ethnic groups from settling in ethnically autonomous areas unless the central government agrees.

The move-in area is one of the last, largely unsettled areas of Qinghai suitable for irrigated agriculture. The economic benefits touted by the World Bank for the project were largely undisputed. Crop yields near the move-in area were already three to four times higher than those in the move-out area, and the World Bank estimated that, in a few years, the settlers would be able to triple or quadruple their incomes, as well as have better health

541. World Bank, Poverty Reduction Project Report, supra note 530; Bottelier, supra note 528; Charles

Hutzler, World Bank Draws Fire Over Plan To Put Poor Chinese in Tibetan Lands, ASSOCIATED PRESS, June 18, 1999, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe.

542. World Bank Under Renewed Pressure over Divisive Project, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, June 17, 1999, LEXIS, News Library, News Group File.

543. Joseph Kahn, World Bank Rejects China�’s Proposal To Resettle Farmers, N.Y. TIMES, July 8, 2000, at A3, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe.

544. Susette Cooke, supra note 529. 545. FELIX COHEN, HANDBOOK OF FEDERAL INDIAN LAW 247�–52 (1982).


care and educational facilities than they had in eastern Qinghai.546 While there were no schools for many of the settler group children in eastern Qinghai,547 ten schools that would reflect the ethnic and language background of the students were to be constructed for ethnic minority transmigrants.548 Because the settlers were to live in twenty-four compact villages in a small part of the county, they would have largely left the rest of it undisturbed.549 Tibetans were to live in a separate area, near villages inhabited by fellow Buddhist ethnic Tu people.550 The projected increase in economic activity in the county would likely provide some opportunities for those already living there. As pointed out by the Dalai Lama�’s nephew, who lives in his uncle�’s hometown in Ping�’an County (part of the move-out area), those remaining in the move-out area would also benefit from an increase in available land there and from less strain on resources.551

The Tibetan Centre for Human Rights & Democracy (TCHRD) in Dharamsala claimed that no Tibetans were included among the settlers, although there were to be some 3500 Tibetans, and that Tibetans farming in the region would be displaced by the migration,552 although no forced displacement was to take place. They contended that the project �“directly contributes to the assimilation and dilution of the Tibetan culture and destruction of the Tibetan way of life.�”553 Other opponents among Tibet support groups argued that the project was �“part of a Chinese effort to dilute and eventually destroy Tibetan heritage�”554 and would �“desecrate unique local Tibetan culture.�”555 Knowing that most settlers were not to be Han and that many were to be Hui, the TCHRD nonetheless claimed that �“the Hui Chinese are not different from the Han Chinese except for the fact that they are Muslims,�”556 contradicting the findings of Western social scientists who have done fieldwork among the Hui.557 Traditional Hui culture not only differs from Han culture with regard to religion, some aspects of language, folklore, and customs, but Hui ethnogenesis has accelerated under the PRC.558 The Hui regard themselves as descended from Arabs, Persians, and Central Asians who came to China over the course of hundreds

546. Bottelier, supra note 528. 547. W. Kazer, Controversy, supra note 531; TIN Special Report: Development and Population Transfer in

Qinghai�—The Qaidam Basin Project, supra note 532. 548. WB Loan to Benefit the Poor, supra note 527. 549. Bottelier, supra note 528; William Kazer, World Bank Walks Away and Poor Pick Up the Party Bill in

Qinghai, S. CHINA MORNING POST, July 14, 2000, 2000 WL 21996634. 550. World Bank Loan to Help Alleviate Poverty in Western China, XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, July 14, 1999,

LEXIS, News Library, News Group File. 551. Relocation Project Will Assist Farmers, CHINA DAILY, Aug. 9, 1999, at 8, 1999 WL 17781501. 552. Press Release, Urgent Action Appeal: Stop Population Transfer in Tibet, Tibetan Centre for Human

Rights and Democracy (May 20, 1999), at http://www.tchrd.org/press/1999/pr19990520.shtml (last visited Sept. 20, 2002). Migration is a flow of a population to a place to live temporarily or permanently. Displacement takes place when incoming migrants in effect drive out the pre-existing population.

553. Id. 554. Sarah Jackson-Han, World Bank Approves China Loan but Sidesteps Tibetan Issue, AGENCE FRANCE-

PRESSE, June 25, 1999, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe (last visited Sept. 26, 2002). 555. Florence Chong, The Dalai Lama Ensures Bucks Stop at the World Bank, AUSTRALIAN, July 12, 2000,

at 33, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe. 556. Annual Report, 1999�—Tibet: Tightening of Control, Tibetan Centre for Human Rights & Democracy, at

http://www.tchrd.org/pubs/1999/08_population.shtml (last visited Sept. 20, 2002). 557. See MARIS GILLETTE, BETWEEN MECCA AND BEIJING: MODERNIZATION AND CONSUMPTION AMONG

URBAN CHINESE MUSLIMS (2000); Dru Gladney, Muslim Chinese: Ethnic Nationalism in the People�’s Republic (1996); Rafael Israeli, Muslim Plight Under Chinese Rule, in THE CRESCENT IN THE EAST: ISLAM IN ASIA MAJOR (R. Israeli ed., 1989).

558. LI SHUJIANG & KARL LUCKERT, MYTHOLOGY AND FOLKLORE OF THE HUI: A MUSLIM CHINESE PEOPLE (1994); Dru Gladney, Clashed Civilizations?: Muslim and Chinese Identities in the PRC, in MAKING MAJORITIES: CONSTITUTING THE NATION IN JAPAN, KOREA, CHINA, MALAYSIA, FIJI, TURKEY, AND THE UNITED STATES 106�–31 (D. Gladney ed., 1998).


of years and intermarried with locals.559 In addition, a study has found a firm genetic basis for the separate historical origins of Hui and Han paternal ancestries.560 Ironically, the TCHRD assertion also conflicts with the outlook of eastern Tibetans, who distinguish between Han and Hui and have a greater animus toward the latter,561 as a major clash in Qinghai between Hui and Tibetans in 2003 demonstrates.562

The TCHRD reported that �“Tibetans in Dulan�” had written to express a fear that �“tens of thousands of Muslim Chinese�” would come to Dulan and complained that �“the Chinese�” already in the county were �“eroding the Tibetan religion, national identity, traditional dress and customs . . . [and] . . . [b]y doing so they [were] trying to sinicize [Tibetan] people.�”563 The report, however, distorted the contents of the purported letter, which did not speak of an influx of �“Chinese,�” or even Muslim Chinese, but of �“tens of thousands�” of Salar, although only 3853 Salar were to move-in. A reference in the letter to the possibility of Tibetan casualties if resettlement went forward was an allusion to disputes between Dulan Tibetan and Salar herders over pastureland.564 Herder disputes in Amdo can indeed be violent: In skirmishes from 1997 to 1999 between Tibetan herders (the �“Ngulra tribe�”) of Maqu County, Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture (TAP),565 Gansu, and Mongolian herders (the �“Arig tribe�”) of neighboring Henan Mongolian AC, Huangnan TAP, Qinghai, twenty-nine people were shot dead.566 However, the worries expressed about the Salar were highly speculative. There were no Tibetan herders in the project specific area, but only Mongols who were to receive better pastureland as a result of the project. Few people in eastern Qinghai work primarily as herders, and there is no reason to suppose that any settlers would do so. Thus, there was no reason to suppose that the project would deepen resentment between Tibetans and other ethnic groups, as opponents claimed.567

Having assimilated the Hui with the Han as �“the Chinese,�” the TCHRD designated the Salar as part of �“the Chinese�” as well.568 Salar number some 100,000, and most live in the Xunhua Salar AC, Haidong Prefecture, Qinghai, where the tenth Panchen Lama was born. They are a Turkic people who migrated to the northeast edge of the Tibet Plateau in the thirteenth century from Samarkhand in present-day Uzbekistan.569 Pre-modern Salar social structures incorporated both Tibetan and Hui elements.570 Today, in addition to their Salar mother tongue, which is Turkic but has a vocabulary that is 30�–40% Chinese and Tibetan,

559. JONATHAN LIPMAN, FAMILIAR STRANGERS: A HISTORY OF THE MUSLIMS IN NORTHWEST CHINA

(1997). 560. Michael L. Black et al., A Genome-Based Study of the Muslim Hui Community and the Han Population

of Liaoning Province, PR China, 73 HUM. BIOLOGY 801, 811 (2001). 561. The Current Population Transfer Policy in Tibet, WORLD TIBET NETWORK, Mar. 30, 1995, at

http://www.tibet.ca/wtnarchive/1995/3/30_5.html (last visited Sept. 20, 2002). 562. Clash Between Tibetans and Chinese Mulims Injures Hundreds, ASSOCIATED PRESS, Feb. 23, 2003,

LEXIS, News Library, News Group File (reporting that a large number of Muslim-owned shops and restaurants were ransacked by Tibetans).

563. Annual Report, 1999�—Tibet: Tightening of Control, supra note 556. 564. Abid Aslam, Fears for Tibet Over World Bank Project, WORLD TIBET NETWORK, June 8, 1999, at

http://www.tibet.ca/wtnarchive/1999/6/8_1.html (last visited Sept. 20, 2002). 565. The Ngulra are famous for being formidable warriors. See LI AN-CHE, LABRANG: A STUDY IN THE

FIELD 11 (1957). 566. Nomads Killed in Pasture Fights, TIBET INFO. NETWORK, June 21, 1999, at

http://www.tibetinfo.net/news-updates/nu210699.htm (last visited Sept. 20, 2002). 567. Editorial, Bank Should Retract China Loan, L.A. TIMES, June 27, 2000, at B8, 2000 WL 2254945. 568. Urgent Action Appeal: Stop Population Transfer in Tibet, supra note 553. 569. MA WEI, MA JIANZHONG & KEVIN STUART, THE FOLKLORE OF CHINA�’S ISLAMIC SALAR NATIONALITY

2�–3 (2001). 570. Arienne Dwyer, Ethnogenesis in Amdo Qinghai: Historical Questions on the Development of Salar

Identity, Paper Presented to the Annual Conference of the Association of Asian Studies (1999).


about 50% of Salar comprehend Amdo Tibetan.571 Some Salar cultural forms, such as singing, are influenced by Tibetan culture.572 Like the Arig, the Salars are partially Tibetanized. Thus, the ethnic group characterized as the most threatening of �“the Chinese�” coming to Dulan to commit �“cultural genocide�” against Tibetans were a people who derive much of their own culture from Tibetans.

Another ethnic minority among the migrants that the émigrés designated as part of �“the Chinese�” also share their religion with Tibetans. The settler group was to include 5431 Tu,573 also known as Monguor. The Tu descend from Mongol soldiers who first came to what is now northeast Qinghai in the thirteenth century and intermarried with locals. Like the Dalai Lama and Panchem Lama, they traditionally adhere to the Gelugpa school of Tibetan Buddhism. Numbering over 200,000, they live mainly in Qinghai�’s Huzhu Tu AC, in the move-out area, as well as Minhe Hui, and Tu AC.574

Opponents, including U.S. Congress members, argued that the Qinghai project would result in �“cultural genocide�” against Dulan�’s Tibetans.575 The ICT called the project �“part of a larger Chinese policy which is now the greatest threat to the continued existence of the Tibetans as a distinct people and culture.�”576 It is also said that the project was �“evidence of the Chinese policy of ethnic cleansing,�”577 even though ethnic cleansing typically involves mass ethnic murder and forced transfer of minority peoples from their traditional area of settlement. The Qinghai case, however, involved no forced transfers, let alone killings, and the ethnic groups who transferred in were mostly from the diverse array of ethnies already present in the settlement area.

It was also erroneously claimed that �“Dulan is officially designated an area of Tibetan autonomy within Qinghai.�”578 It is the prefecture�—not the county�—that is the relevant unit of autonomy, since a county within an autonomous prefecture may have its own separate autonomy only if the county�’s ethnic minority or minorities are substantially different from the eponymous minority or minorities of the prefecture. This situation is not the case with Dulan County and Haixi Prefecture. Opponents stated that they feared that if resettlement

571. Beth Ranson, The Salar of Northwest China, WOMEN�’S MISSIONARY UNION, at http://www.wmu.com/wmu/organizations/aom/people/salar.html (last visited Sept. 20, 2002). See ZHONGGUO SHEHUI KEXUE YUAN MINZU YANJIU SUO, supra note 457, at 887.

572. Arienne Dweyer, The Text of Tongues: Languages and Power in China, in NATIONALISM AND ETHNOREGIONAL IDENTITIES IN CHINA 68, 78 (William Safran ed., 1998); MA YIN, CHINA�’S MINORITY NATIONALITIES 121 (1989).

573. World Bank, Poverty Reduction Project Report, supra note 530, at 108. 574. Gao Bingzhong, Qinghai Huzhu xian he Minhe xian Tuzu diqu diaocha [Local Investigation of the

Qinghai Huzhu County and Minhe Counties], in MA RONG ET AL., ZHONGUO MINZU SHEQU FAZHAN YANJIU [STUDIES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHINESE MINORITY COMMUNITIES] 216�–91 (2001).

575. Sathnam Sanghera, Tibet Report Dispute Throws World Bank into Disarray: Directors�’ Ruling on Publication Has Fuelled Anger over Loan, FIN. TIMES (London), June 26, 2000, at 10, LEXIS, News Library, News Group File; Paul E., World Bank OKs Loan to China Despite U.S. Objection, JAPAN ECON. NEWSWIRE, June 24, 1999, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe (reporting a comment by Benjamin Gilman, chair of the House International Relations Committee: �“For Tibetans, it is not development or poverty alleviation, it is cultural genocide�”). It was reported that �“the Dalai Lama sees the proposed resettlement�—which would affect the area where he was born�—as �‘cultural genocide.�’�” Bank Should Retract China Loan, supra note 567, at B8. The Dalai Lama was also quoted as stating in response to a question about the project, �“Under the present circumstances this would be a source of more problems. Therefore it is not the right time.�” Harry Dunphy, World Bank Internal Review Criticizes Loan to Relocate Chinese Farmers, ASSOCIATED PRESS, June 23, 2000, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe.

576. Lewis, supra note 539, at A4. 577. World Bank Plays Down �“Tibet Issue�” in Mass Relocation Project, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, June 17,

1999, LEXIS, News Library, News Group File.

578. Tibetans Oppose World Bank Project, TIBET INFO. NETWORK, June 15, 1999, at http://www.tibet.ca/english/index.html (last visited Oct. 3, 2002).

http://www.tibet.ca/english/index.html


went forward, attendant demographic changes would result in �“tipping the ethnic balance so heavily against Tibetans and Mongolians that the region�’s autonomous status ultimately could be stripped�”579 and withdrawn from an area that is one tenth of the Tibet Plateau.580 These opponents spoke of how losing autonomous status would result in �“fewer government posts for minorities and less support for bilingual education and cultural preservation.�”581 They did so without a hint of the irony involved: Émigré leaders have always argued that autonomous status brings no benefits whatsoever to ethnic minorities and that, in the autonomous areas, �“Tibetans have little or no say in running their own affairs�” and �“are completely deprived of their political identity.�”582 �“Tibet supporters�” outdo each other in being dismissive of autonomy in Tibetan and other PRC minority areas.583

The PRC government pointed out that �“[o]nce [an area is] granted autonomous administrative status, there is no constitutionally explicit mechanism for �‘decertifying�’ such status, and there is no triggering method for such a process even when the percentage of ethnic people in an autonomous area falls low.�”584 Officials have stated that no autonomous area of China has ever lost that status because of changes in the ethnic population balance.585 There are large APs where the eponymous ethnic group is a small percentage of the prefecture�’s population, an example being the Bayingol Mongolian AP in Xinjiang, where in 1990 Mongols were 13.6% of the total population.586 The Party Secretary of Haixi pointed out that, as it stands, �“[t]here are only a little over 20,000 Mongolians and 30,000 Tibetans among the 320,000 population of Haixi, but it is a Mongolian and Tibetan autonomous prefecture.�”587

Sixty members of the U.S. Congress voiced opposition to the Qinghai resettlement project.588 The issue arose just after Lawrence Summers was nominated to be U.S. Secretary of the Treasury and was to go before a Senate panel for a confirmation hearing in which the ICT had already organized senators to ask questions about the Qinghai project.589 While it was reported that U.S. officials clearly had their doubts about the émigré argument

579. Abid Aslam, World Bank Nears Vote on Tibetan �“Death Sentence,�” INTER PRESS SERV., June 21, 1999, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe.

580. Aslam, supra note 564. 581. Schoof, supra note 533. 582. Height of Darkness, supra note 46, at 17. See also ICT, THE MYTH OF TIBETAN AUTONOMY: A LEGAL

ANALYSIS OF THE STATUS OF TIBET (1994). 583. See, e.g., Dawa Norbu, Han Hegemony and Tibetan Ethnicity, 32 INT�’L STUDIES 297, 304 (1995)

(stating that TAR has �“puppet government�”); James Seymour, Toward an East Asian Confederation of Independent States?, BULLETIN OF CONCERNED ASIAN SCHOLARS, July�–Sept. 1993, at 44�–48 (autonomy for minorities in China �“fake�”); Warren Smith, The Nationalities Policy of the Chinese Communist Party and the Socialist Transformation of Tibet, in RESISTANCE AND REFORM IN TIBET, supra note 33, at 51�–75. (Tibetans only have autonomy in theory). But see Guo Xiaolin, Rice Ears and Cattle Tails: A Comparative Study of Rural Economy and Society in Yunnan, Southwest China (1996) (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of British Columbia) (on file with author) (comparing two counties in northern Yunnan province, one autonomous and the other not, and finding that autonomy provides substantial advantages). Those essays by scholars not affiliated with the émigré administration also generally conclude that autonomy provides a modicum of power to Tibetans. Tibetan Autonomy and Self-Government: Myth or Reality?: Report of the Proceedings of the Workshop Held in November 1999 (Tibetan Parliamentary and Policy Research Centre, 2000).

584. WB Loan to Benefit Poor, supra note 528. 585. Interviews with State Ethnic Affairs Commission Officials (Guojia minwei), in Beijing (June 2001). 586. Zhang Guanghua et al., (Tian Xueyuan ed., 1998) ZHONGGUO GE SHENG QU SHAOSHU MINZU RENKOU

576, 582�–83 (1998). 587. Haixi Appeals for World Bank Funds Poverty Relief Project Beneficial, CHINA DAILY, Oct. 1, 1999, at

2, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe. 588. Antoaneta Bezlova, No Longer Poor, Beijing Barred from Low-Cost Loan Window, INTER PRESS SERV.,

June 29, 1999, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe. 589. David E. Sanger, Karma and Helms; A Stick for China, a Carrot for Tibet�’s Lobby, N.Y. TIMES, July

11, 1999, sec. 4, at 18, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe.


that the project would dilute Tibetan culture, �“they were unwilling to defend the loan and [thereby] appear to be siding with Beijing.�”590 The U.K. Minister for Development, Clare Short, stated that

[t]he Tibetan lobby in the United States is very strong, in Hollywood and so on . . . . I do not accept the allegations that were made and I think it is wrong that a sort of fashionable cause can be traduced to make people, for political reasons, . . . force you to vote wrongly.591

In July 2000, the United States and Germany voted against the World Bank Qinghai project, while France and Italy abstained. After an Inspection Panel issued a negative report, indicating that the World Bank had failed to follow its own procedures, especially in terms of assessing the environmental impact of the project,592 China withdrew its loan application rather than wait for additional studies to take place. A consultant for the Inspection Panel, a professor of political economy and development at the London School of Economics, observed:

[A]ll the heat and fury of the current debate has obscured the fact that the Qinghai project represents a historic breathrough. By agreeing to the proposals of the bank�’s response, the Chinese government has agreed to have the environmental and social assessments carried out by �“internationally recognized experts�” whose work will be disclosed locally and in Washington. More important, a panel of experts will be assembled to provide independent technical advice to the bank and the Chinese government. Their regular reports to the bank and the government will be made public without being censored by either side.593

In January 2002, it was announced that hundreds of households had already left for Dulan on a �“trial basis�”; that 17,000 to 20,000 settlers would be moved there in small groups beginning in March 2002; and that U.S.$80 million had been allocated for construction that was underway on irrigation works and improvements to farmland. The ethnic composition of the settlers was to remain close to the World Bank plan.594 In late 2001, almost all buildings in Xiangride, Dulan County, were marked for demolition and a new townscape was to be created to receive the migrants.595

The outcry over �“cultural genocide�” in 1999�–2000 in opposition to the Qinghai project had succeeded in reducing the number of the eastern Qinghai poor to be moved to western Qinghai, a result that may be best for the environment of the project area. The overall effect, however, on the impoverished of Qinghai was not as sanguine. Whatever

590. David E. Sanger, World Bank and Treasury Nominee at Odds Over Loan to China, N.Y. TIMES, June

23, 1999, at A3, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe. 591. Hilton, supra note 536. 592. E-mail from Jack Churchward, World Bank Inspection Panel Report on the China Western Poverty

Reduction (June 26, 2000), at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg00130.html (last visited Oct. 7, 2002).

593. Robert Wade, A Move for the Good in China: The World Bank Has Been Unfairly Criticised Over the Qinghai Resettlement Project, FIN. TIMES (London), July 4, 2000, at 15, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe.

594. Christopher Bodeen, China Pushing Ahead with Controversial Resettlement of Farmers to Tibetan Lands, ASSOCIATED PRESS, Jan. 22, 2002, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe; China Revives Controversial Tibetan Migration Project, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, Jan. 23, 2002, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe.

595. Resettlement and Urban Reconstruction in Former World Bank Project County, TIBET INFO. NETWORK, Feb. 17, 2002, at http://www.tibet.ca/english/index.html (last visited Oct. 3, 2002).


the deficiencies of the plan, the leveling of the untenable charge of cultural genocide foreclosed the possibility for an open-minded evaluation of the plan�’s utility and thus denied tens of thousands of mainly minority people, including thousands of Tibetans, an opportunity to better their lives through the planned move. �“Tibet support groups�” offered no convincing evidence that the plan would have had an adverse effect on the culture of local Tibetans, but merely represented that this was inevitable once �“the Chinese�” had arrived. The opposite, however, could well be argued. With the planned increase in the number of Tibetans in Dulan and the addition of partially Tibetanized Salars and Tu as well, Dulan Tibetan culture might have been strengthened. That was the view implicit in the comment to a Western reporter by Gongbu Danzhou, a Dulan Tibetan, who stated, with Tibetans from eastern Qinghai slated to arrive, �“Perhaps we will be able to build a temple.�”596

VI. CONCLUSION

Tibetologist Elliot Sperling observes that �“within certain limits the PRC does make efforts to accommodate Tibetan cultural expression�” and �“the cultural activity taking place all over the Tibetan plateau cannot be ignored.�”597 Other supporters of the émigré cause, including Tibet scholar Robert Barnett and German Green Party leader Antje Vollmer, also recognize the inaccuracy of the cultural genocide claim.598 By all accounts, Tibetanness remains robust. As a U.S. reporter recently observed: �“[F]or all the change in styles and attitudes�—mostly among the small minority of Tibetans living in cities�—Tibetan identity remains strong.�”599

If the concept of cultural genocide in Tibet is inapposite legally and empirically, the charge also has baleful political effects. In universal terms, the application of the concept exemplifies a language inflation that disserves the urgent struggle against destruction of peoples and their cultures. It has been said that �“the notion of genocide is marked by conceptual confusion, often compounded by its rhetorical use on the part of those seeking to inflame and stigmatise social and political discourse.�”600 Scholars have catalogued many misuses of the term,601 with one concluding that �“when one needs a catch-all term to

596. China�’s Poor See Hope in Resettlement, supra note 532. The same might be said of the likely effect of

increased income levels of Tibetans. As one Tibetan in Lhasa observed when asked about the effect of the controversial Qinghai-Tibet railway, �“When transportation is developed, local people�’s lives will become better, and there will be more alms giving to temples.�” Tibetan NPC Deputies Hail Construction of Qinghai-Tibet Railway, XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, Mar. 7, 2001, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe.

597. Elliot Sperling, Exile and Dissent: The Historical and Cultural Context, in TIBET SINCE 1950: SILENCE, PRISON OR EXILE 31�–36 (Melissa Harris & Sydney Jones eds., 2000). See also Henry Zhuo, Forms on the Root of the World, 13 NEW LEFT REV. 146�–51 (2001).

598. Ed Douglas, The Rape of Tibet; After Witnessing Mass Executions, Beatings, and His Country�’s Destruction by the Chinese, Palden Gyatso Does Not Call for Retribution. He Just Wants to Bear Witness, GUARDIAN (London), Sept. 29, 1997, at T2, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe; Georg Blume, Antje Vollmer�’s Secret Diplomacy Between Peking and the Dalai Lama, WORLD TIBET NETWORK, Aug. 20, 1998, at http://www.tibet.ca/wtnarchive/1998/9/4_1.html (last visited Feb. 18, 2003).

599. Eckholm, China Wins, supra note 323. 600. ALVAREZ, supra note 65, at 33. 601. See, e.g., Helen Fein, Genocide, Terror, Life Integrity and War Crimes: The Case for Discrimination, in

GENOCIDE: CONCEPTUAL AND HISTORICAL DIMENSIONS, supra note 109, at 95; Walter Ezell, Investigating Genocide: A Catalog of Known and Suspected Causes and Some Categories for Comparing Them, in 3 REMEMBERING THE FUTURE: THE IMPACT OF THE HOLOCAUST ON JEWS AND CHRISTIANS 2881 (Yehuda Bauer et al. eds., 1989).


describe �‘oppression�’ of one form or another, one often resorts to labelling it �‘genocide.�’ The result is the debasement of the concept.�”602

It is equally common for nationalists to deploy a charge of cultural genocide against changes they oppose in traditional lifestyles. A Canadian First Nations leader has stated that the goal of animal rights activists who seek restrictions on trapping fur-bearing animals is the cultural genocide of the Inuit by taking away their means of subsistence.603 Non-Christian Australian Aborigines have criticized Christian Aborigines who evangelise as committing cultural genocide by diminishing traditional tribal spirituality.604 The Turkish media has attacked as cultural genocide a Saudi plan to demolish al-Ajyad Castle, an old fort in Mecca, because it evinces an intention to rid the kingdom of reminders of former Ottoman domination.605 Coca leaf farmers term Bolivian anti-drug eradication of their crops �“cultural genocide�” because the Andean people have long used the plant for ritual and health purposes. This is not to say that the complainants do not raise legitimate issues, but they have chosen inflated terms to describe these grievances, in order to create the impression that their cultures, or even their ethnic groups, are threatened with destruction from actions that are not based on that intent and cannot have that effect.

If those who have legitimate grievances can play that game, so too can those who represent historically oppressive forces and now perceive their culture to be threatened by resistance to that oppression. Since the 1980s, neo-fascists such as Jean-Marie Le Pen in France and Gianfranco Fini in Italy have grabbed hold of �“cultural genocide�” in their attacks against immigrants and foreigners who allegedly threaten �“European�” culture.606 The Grand Orange Lodge, a cornerstone of the Northern Ireland Protestant ascendency, has denounced as cultural genocide the police�’s rerouting of a march through a Catholic community, on the ground that such marches are integral to the �“loyalist community.�”607 A South Carolina state senator has argued that efforts to remove the Confederate flag that flew above the state legislature�’s building would result in cultural genocide because the flag is an integral part of South Carolina�’s heritage.608 New Mexico stockmen accuse environmentalists of cultural genocide because the latter seeks to protect endangered species through measures that may adversely impact the cattle raising that the stockmen argue is basic to Southwestern U.S. culture.609

With many causes competing for the attention of those from whom the Tibetan émigrés seek support, it may appear to them that the most extreme, rather than the most

602. Jack N. Porter, Introduction: What is Genocide? Notes Toward a Definition, in GENOCIDE AND HUMAN

RIGHTS: A GLOBAL ANTHOLOGY 9�–10 (J.N. Porter ed., 1982). 603. Inuit Accuse Fur Activists of �‘Cultural Genocide,�’ TORONTO STAR, July 27, 1989, at A22, LEXIS-

NEXIS Academic Universe. 604. Indigenous Group Slams Holy Divide, TOWNSVILLE BULL. (N.Z.), Oct. 29, 2001, at 2, LEXIS-NEXIS

Academic Universe. 605. Culture Minister Says Turkey No Longer Views Ties with Riyadh Friendly: Strange Defence by Saudis�—

Demolition of Ottoman Castle Is an Internal Matter, TURKISH DAILY NEWS, Jan. 10, 2002, at http://www.turkishdailynews.com/old_editions/01_10_02/for.htm (last visited Oct. 3, 2002).

606. Michel Guerrin, Front Tries to Seize Cultural High Ground, MANCHESTER GUARDIAN WKLY., Feb. 23, 1992, at 14, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe; Allison Tarmann, The Flap over Replacement Migration, POPULATION TODAY, Summer 2000, at 1, 1�–2, 2000 WL 9722734; Daniel J. Wakin, Europe�’s New Political Generation: Ascendant Right, Groping Left, ASSOCIATED PRESS, Dec. 25, 1994, 1994 WL 3373809.

607. Kevin Myers, An Irishman�’s Diary, IRISH TIMES, July 5, 2001, at 17, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe.

608. Robert Tait, Flying a Flag of Distrust and Division, SCOTSMAN, Feb. 19, 2000, at 11, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe.

609. Jeffrey St. Clair, From Belgrade to Santa Fe?, IN THESE TIMES, Sept. 19, 1999, at 6, LEXIS, News Library, News Group File.


accurate, language best serves their cause. Martti Koskenniemi has described the deleterious effects of such a course with regard to the concept of genocide:

To accuse one�’s adversary of having committed genocide may have powerful ideological effects, whatever the substance for such claim. The doubt is inserted in the minds of outsiders (�“but what if that is true . . . ?�”) and half the ideological battle may already have been won. An indiscriminate and proliferating use of the tag will lose its normative or evocative strength. The more accusations of genocide are routinely thrown by political and military adversaries against each other, or the more the notion is defensively used in order to direct attention away from one�’s own acts, the less power the notion is going to have . . . . The concept of genocide will be associated in the popular mind with the kind of politics as usual that it so delights in cynically dismissing; as just another meaningless phrase concocted by politicians or ideologists to support whatever agendas they may have.610

Another commentator has noted a �“sobering contrast�” between the �“rhetorical overuse of the concept of genocide�” and �“its [limited] practical impact in halting state-sponsored mass killing.�”611 The contrast may well rest on a causal link. With so many claims of physical or cultural genocide being made without connections to the Convention conception of genocide, it may be hard to recognize a serious instance when it is in progress: Rwanda, for example. There are scholars, such as Adam Hochschild, who studied Belgian colonial depredations in the Congo that caused ten million unnatural deaths, who recognize that even extreme brutality may not amount to genocide where it does not involve the systematic extermination of a people.612 Then there are the Tibetan émigré leaders and their supporters who are seemingly oblivious to the consequence of making the most damning charges without any evidentiary foundation.

In specific terms, use of the concept of cultural genocide as a tactical weapon in the Tibet case disserves the effort to resolve the Tibet Question. Genocide has been called the �“crime of crimes�” and the �“crime of the century.�”613 A UN body has deemed it �“the ultimate crime and the gravest violation of human rights it is possible to commit.�”614 As Koskenniemi observes:

To be branded as a genocidal State is to be classified as the worst kind of criminal, a pariah, an outlaw among States, to have been put beyond the pale of civilised humanity. The evocative strength or the symbolic value of genocide is formidable . . . . Even to be accused of genocide affects a State�’s international standing, its political, diplomatic and commercial contacts with other States.615

610. Koskenniemi, supra note 99, at 186�–88. 611. John Torpey, �“Making Whole What Has Been Smashed�”: Reflections on Reparations, 73 J. MODERN

HIST. 333, 347 (2001). 612. ADAM HOCHSCHILD, KING LEOPOLD�’S GHOST: A STORY OF GREED, TERROR AND HEROISM IN

COLONIAL AFRICA 225 (1998). 613. Report of the Working Group on a Draft Statute for an International Criminal Court, Yearbook . . . 1994,

2358th meeting, p. 208, para. 41 U.N. GAOR Int�’l L. Comm., 46th Sess., U.N. Doc. A/CN.4/458/Add.1 (1993) (remarks of Rapporteur James Crawford); Matthew Lippman, Genocide: The Crime of the Century; The Jurisprudence of Death at the Dawn of the New Millenium, 23 HOUS. J. INT�’L L. 467, 467 (2001).

614. Whitaker, Revised Report, supra note 87, Provisional Agenda Item 4. 615. Koskenniemi, supra note 99, at 186.


The attempt to associate China�’s leaders with the level of criminality implied in a charge of genocide, even if �“only�” cultural,616 surely hardens their distrust of the émigrés with whom they must deal if a compromise on Tibet is to be reached. PRC and local leaders, both Tibetan and non-Tibetan, are convinced that they have done the opposite of committing �“genocide�” by pouring great treasure and effort into the development of Tibet, while preserving key elements of traditional culture.617 They deem it an affront that accusations of �“cultural genocide�” emanate from émigré leaders.618 The latter, according to PRC leaders, have �“done nothing to contribute to Tibet�’s economic and social development,�”619 �“[know] nothing of the real situation there,�”620 and seek to �“set aside [Tibet] as a museum of ancient culture.�”621

Moreover, the PRC government can respond to accusations of �“cultural genocide�” by recalling the misdeeds of the countries that émigré leaders rely upon for support in their �“free Tibet�” campaign. Examples include the cultural genocide of Indians during the westward expansion of America, the West�’s colonial rule in Asia and Africa, and the West�’s gunboat policies.622 China�’s leaders point to the increased Tibetan population, rising living standards (however lagging behind other parts of the PRC),623 and the existence of the Tibetan language and culture, as counterpoints to the fate of indigenous peoples and many ethnic minorities elsewhere. After the U.S. Congress invoked �“cultural genocide�” in Tibet, a PRC organ responded:

Remember, American troops slaughtered native Americans and drove them into small reservations. In the United States in the 18th century there were one million Indians on the new continent. But by the end of the 19th century, the number of Indians had slumped to 240,000. And what the remaining Indians faced was not the increasing economic prosperity other Americans enjoyed, but barren land, rising unemployment and disappearing languages. In the reservation areas, the Indians were left isolated from the outside world, living in poverty. This was how the Americans �“preserved the Indians�’ cultural, religious, linguistic, and ethnic identity.�”624

616. See Prepared Testimony of Lodi G. Gyari, Special Envoy of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and

President, International Campaign for Tibet Before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, FED. NEWS SERV., May 13, 1997, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe, for the assertion that �“the history of Chinese rule of Tibet�” since 1949�–1950 has been �“a crime of cultural genocide.�”

617. Qian Stresses Tibet�’s Role in Anti-Separatism, XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, Mar. 5, 1997, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe.

618. Daily Calls for Resisting Dalai Lama �“Clique,�” XIZANG RIBAO (Tibet), Jan. 2, 2001, at 4, reprinted in BBC SUMMARY OF WORLD BROADCASTS, Feb. 22, 2001, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe.

619. Series of Reforms Brings Enormous Changes to Tibet, CHINA DAILY, July 1, 1999, at 4, 1999 WL 17780607. See also Chinese Official Says Dalai Lama Has Done Nothing to Help Tibet, XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, Oct. 28, 2001, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe.

620. Dalai Lama Lies About Tibet�’s Religion, Culture, XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, Oct. 28, 2001, at LEXIS, News Library, News Group File.

621. Xin Zhiming, Ignorant or Just Arrogant?, CHINA DAILY, May 14, 2001, 2001 WL 7482229. 622. Chinese Top Paper Accuses NATO of Blaspheming Human Civilization, XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, May

12, 1999, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe. 623. See Sautman & Eng, supra note 52. The per-capita income of TAR peasants and herdsmen in 2001 was

Y1410, while it was Y7090 for TAR city residents, a 1-to-5 ratio, far above that in China as a whole and much greater than in most developing countries. Computer Popular on �“World Roof,�” XINHUA NEWS AGENCY, Jan. 29, 2002, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe.

624. Zhiming, supra note 621.


The Dalai Lama often states that he is concerned most of all about the preservation of culture.625 His main international alliance, however, is with politicians in the United States, a country whose cultural hegemony plays a major role in eroding traditional cultures, including in China proper and Tibet. An Australian journalist visiting China for the first time in the late 1990s commented that �“Westerners traveling in Asia expect culture shock, but the shock of China to me was not how Eastern it appears, but how Western. How capitalist.�”626 It is plain to anyone who has been in Tibet since the 1990s that most non-traditional elements of contemporary Tibetan culture, although mediated through Han Chinese, are Western (clothing styles, architecture, high technology, etc.) or non-Chinese Asian (karaoke, Bollywood films) in origin. A political philosopher who studies the politics of cultural difference argues that general structural transformations in state, markets, firms, and bureaucracies may determine what is sometimes experienced in local communities as ethnic oppression:

What if groups systematically misread the effects of these social and economic transformations and ascribed to their minority position developments which in fact affected minority and majority cultures alike? What if late modernity posed a generalized cultural threat which all collectivities had to deal with as they tried to reformulate their traditional lifeways in a context of constant radical change?627

Such questions are relevant to the charge of cultural genocide in Tibet, which ignores the fact that many cultural changes deemed objectionable are actually incidents of an asymmetrical, America-centered, global structural transformation that affects Han areas of China in many of the same ways as Tibet is affected by Chinese-mediated late modernity. While some Chinese argue that this process amounts to �“cultural colonialism,�”628 when it is understood against the cultural repression carried out under classic colonialism, the ultra-nationalist hyperbole in appropriating the term �“colonialism�” to frame the critique is apparent.

A leading proponent of globalization observes, �“Culturally speaking, globalization is largely the spread (for better or worse) of Americanization�—from Big Macs and iMacs to Mickey Mouse.�”629 Opponents of globalization assert that the movement brings �“cultural genocide�” even to developed countries.630 The Dalai Lama notes that as globalization has proceeded, �“some communities have gained power over other communities.�”631 He has added, however, that �“the interference of Western culture is not a bad phenomenon when taking this process separately, but it always depends on the strength of the affected culture and the cultural heritage.�”632 He wants young diasporic Tibetans, �“the future leaders of

625. Close Tibet-China Relationship Important, Dalai Lama Says, JAPAN ECON. NEWSWIRE, Mar. 24, 1997,

LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe. 626. Mary Lou Nolan, In Money and Commerce, East Bows to West, AAP NEWSFEED, June 15, 1998,

LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe. 627. Walker, supra note 407, at 222. 628. See generally The Contention in China Over �‘Cultural Colonialism,�’ CHINESE SOC. AND

ANTHROPOLOGY, SUMMER 1999 (Stanley Rosen ed.). 629. Thomas L. Freidman & Ignacio Ramonet Dos Capital, Dueling Globalizations: A Debate Between

Thomas L. Freidman and Ignacio Ramonet Dos Capital, 116 FOREIGN POL�’Y 110 (1999), LEXIS, News Library, News Group File.

630. Peter Newman, Why I�’ll Fight the FTAA, MACLEAN�’S, Apr. 30, 2001, at 20, LEXIS, News Library, News Group File.

631. Dalai Lama in Slovakia Says Tibetans Facing Cultural Genocide, SLOVAK INT�’L TELEGRAPH AGENCY, Oct. 16, 2000, reprinted in BBC SUMMARY OF WORLD BROADCASTS, Oct. 18, 2000, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe.

632. Id.


Tibet,�” to learn about Western cultures633 and relies upon Westerners to �“help save Tibetan culture from annihilation�” and preserve it in their museums.634

The Dalai Lama thus does not seem particularly concerned that �“cultural genocide�” might be carried out under the aegis of Westerners or Westernizing influences. The situation with Tibetan cultural artifacts is exemplary in this regard. Émigré leaders claim that �“China�” has �“plundered and sold priceless statues and religious objet�’s art [sic].�”635 In 2001, they accused Chinese authorities of �“looting�” the Potala Palace and �“emptying Tibet of its religious treasures�” because some artifacts were to be shipped to Shanghai, although there was no indication that the artifacts were to remain permanently out of Tibet. They have also asserted that China earned over U.S.$80 billion from selling artistic and religious objects in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Tokyo during the Cultural Revolution, although they have offered no basis for this fantastical amount.636 While many Tibetan artifacts were shipped to Beijing during the Cultural Revolution and some were sold as scrap metal, an essay on the émigré administration�’s own website states that PRC leaders stopped this practice in the early 1970s when they learned of it and that thousands of artifacts were returned to Tibet in the 1980s.637

In contrast, émigré leaders have not opposed the continuous flood of Tibetan artifacts to the West in the 1990s, and in the present decade, they have in effect sanctioned this activity. The number of Tibetan objects on offer in the West is said to be equal in number to all of India�’s offerings, with annual revenue from Tibetan art running in the tens of millions of U.S. dollars for Western auction houses and galleries that sell works that they cannot prove left Tibet legally. Western dealers apparently claim that if these artworks are returned to Tibet they might be destroyed and, therefore, that applicable UN treaties on the repatriation of pilfered national treasures do not apply.638 They make this claim even though the greatest collections of Tibetan art in the world are in Tibet at the Potala Palace (which has 600,000 registered objects), the Jokhang Temple (10,000 tankas), and Drepung.639 Artifacts sold to Western collectors include some pieces taken from monasteries during the Cultural Revolution, but most have been removed in recent years,

633. Eetta Prince-Gibson, The Chosen Ones, JERUSALEM POST, Aug. 25, 2000, at 18, LEXIS-NEXIS

Academic Universe. 634. Barbara Crossette, Dalai Lama Sees a Culture Endangered, N.Y. TIMES, Mar. 22, 1989, at A3, LEXIS,

News Library, News Group File; Cultural Looting, INT�’L HERALD TRIB., Sept. 18, 1995, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe.

635. Dep�’t of Info. & Int�’l Rel., Cent. Tibetan Admin., A Tale of Cultural Genocide, TIBETAN BULL., July�–Aug. 2000, at http://www.tibet.net/eng/diir/tibbul/0007/news.html (last visited Feb. 20, 2003).

636. Dep�’t of Info. & Int�’l Rel., Cent. Tibetan Admin., Potala Palace Desecrated, TIBETAN BULL., Mar.�–June 2001, at http://www.tibet.net/eng/diir/tibbul/0103/potala.html (last visited Feb. 20, 2003).

637. Rinbhur Tulku, The Odyssey of Jowo Mikyo Dorjee: A Search for Tibet�’s Holiest Buddhist Statue, (Tendar trans., Dep�’t of Info. & Int�’l Rel, Cent. Tibetan Admin.) (1987), available at http://www.tibet.com/Buddhism/jowo-mikyo-dorjee.html (last visited Mar. 15, 2003).

638. See UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects of 1995, 32 I.L.M. 1332, available at http://www.unidroit.org/english/conventions/c-cult.htm (last visited Feb. 26, 2003). China acceded on May 7, 1997. Only eleven states have ratified the treaty, and seven have acceded as of May 21, 2002. Neither the United States nor any European state with large antiquities collections garnered abroad are among the ratifying states. International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (UNIDROIT), http://www.unidroit.org/english/ implement/I-95.htm (last visited Mar. 15, 2003).

639. Demand for �‘Lost�’ Tibetan Art Soars, UPI, June 27, 2001, at http://www.tibet.ca/wtnarchive/2001/6/27_4.html (last visited Oct. 23, 2002); Jasper Becker, Last of Tibet�’s Religious Art Falls Prey to Rich Collectors, S. CHINA MORNING POST, Aug. 29, 2000, at 18, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe.


often it seems by Tibetans.640 Tibetan dealers market stolen artifacts in London, Paris, New York, and Hong Kong. The Dalai Lama, however, has raised no objection to the vast numbers of precious Tibetan artworks in the collections of Western museums and wealthy owners. In his introduction to the 1990 Royal Academy catalog of �“The Sacred Art of Tibet�” exhibition in London, he �“gave the trade his blessing,�” stating, �“We have treasured these works of art for centuries in Tibet and are deeply moved that they are . . . treasured by the open-minded people of the whole world.�”641

The accelerated flow of stolen Tibetan artifacts follows the journey to the West taken by looted Chinese art. It is estimated that as many as one million Chinese objets d�’art that were not acquired legally are in foreign hands, including some of the greatest relics of Chinese antiquity that are now lodged in Western museums or in the hands of rich denizens of New York, London, Tokyo, and other cities. Commenting on the treasure trove of artifacts pillaged from China, the curator emeritus of the Shanghai Museum has stated, �“It is a real pity that right now, if Chinese people want to study their own history they must go abroad to do so.�”642 It is sometimes argued that such art is better off being in foreign collections and museums, where it will be preserved, but the Western editor of a leading journal of archaeology and art in China points out that art taken to Europe before World War II is now in ashes from bombings and that the Dalai Lama admits that Tibetan art is being stolen for money, not to preserve it.643 Even pro-Tibet independence Western scholars and journalists acknowledge that the high prices paid by Western collectors stimulate thefts of Tibetan artifacts and that �“[the Tibetan art] heritage remains seriously threatened�—not by Beijing but by the art markets of the West.�”644 There have been repatriations of Tibetan artifacts by émigrés, but only one case involving a Westerner.645

The émigré leaders do not hesitate to imply that Chinese culture is a polluting influence in Tibet. They almost always speak of Chinese culture in the negative, despite its many aspects found compellingly attractive to people around the world. A range of themes invoked by émigré leaders against �“the Chinese�” call to mind diatribes that took place a continent away and a half-dozen decades ago when it was falsely charged that one ethnic group sought to corrupt and destroy another through its promotion of irreligion, prostitution, pornography, drugs, intermarriage, non-traditional art forms, and demographic catastrophe.646 Those who advance the theme of a particular ethnic group or nation as �“corrupters of peoples,�” fervently hold this conviction, and claim to have �“proof�” of its validity in fact make their claim all the more pernicious. Those subject to such accusations moreover will feel fully entitled to resent it and treat with the utmost suspicion those who make it.

640. Tibetan Art Dealer Arrested in Attempt to Stop Relics Theft, TIBET INFO. NETWORK, July 20, 1999,

reprinted in WORLD TIBET NETWORK NEWS, July 28, 1999, at http://www.tibet.ca/wtnarchive/1999/7/28_1.html (last visited Oct. 28, 2002).

641. Geraldine Norman, Tibetan Survivors: Smuggled Past Chinese Border Checkpoints, Treasures That Have Been Hidden Away in Tibetan Monasteries for Centuries Are Finding Their Way West�—And Fetching High Prices, INDEPENDENT (London), May 28, 1995, at 94, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe.

642. Lynne O�’Donnell, Raiders of the Lost Art, WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN, Aug. 12, 2000, at R2, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe.

643. Id. 644. Isabel Hilton, A Culture in Urgent Need of Repair: The Theft and Destruction of Tibet�’s Treasures Is

Almost Without Parallel in the 20th Century, FIN. TIMES (London), Aug. 12, 2000, at 1, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe.

645. Id. See also Souren Melikian, Dealers and Scholars in Uneasy Dilemma; Should Looted Works Be Published?, INT�’L HERALD TRIB., Apr. 24, 1999, at 9, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe (discussing the benefits of publicizing and auctioning looted works).

646. ROBERT WISTRICH, HITLER AND THE HOLOCAUST 22, 34, 42 (2001).


The existence of émigré leaders�’ ties to U.S. politicians, alongside the émigré administration�’s unsupported charges of cultural genocide in Tibet, fuels suspicions of PRC and TAR officials that the Dalai Lama is hypocritical in his pronouncements about Tibetan culture.647 Furthermore, by extension, his claims raise suspicions about other matters, including his desire to arrive at a solution to the Tibet Question that respects the territorial integrity of China.648 If such a solution is indeed contemplated by the émigré leaders, a retreat from the discourse of �“cultural genocide in Tibet�” is warranted as one of the many steps needed to smooth the way to negotiations. In this way, the émigré leaders and �“Tibet supporters�” would better position themselves to engage in a credible and productive critique of the deficiencies of cultural policy and of human rights in Tibet.

647. See Liu Weitao, Culture Exhibition Exposes Dalai�’s Lies, CHINA DAILY, Nov. 30, 2001, 2001 WL

7485189; Zhiming, supra note 621.

648. The many inconsistencies in the Dalai Lama�’s pronouncements have complicated confidence building. For example, the Dalai Lama has often spoken of �“Communist oppression.�” See, e.g., Dalai Lama Refuses to Conciliate Religion with Communism, CENT. NEWS AGENCY (Taiwan), May 24, 1986, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe. In 1979, however, when the TYC announced a plan to seek arms from the U.S.S.R. to launch a guerrilla war in Tibet, a spokesman for the Dalai Lama stated that �“[t]here is nothing wrong in approaching the Soviet Union for help.�” Kosygin Welcomed by Tibetan Community, JAP. NEWS AGENCY, Mar. 9, 1979, reprinted in BBC SUMMARY OF WORLD BROADCASTS, Mar. 13, 1979, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe. For its part, the Soviets warmed to the émigrés, accusing China of genocide and colonialism in Tibet. Tibetans Prefer �“Trials of Exile�” to �“Life of Semi-Slavery in China,�” (Radio Peace and Progress Broadcast, Asia, Aug. 12�–13, 1982), reprinted in BBC SUMMARY OF WORLD BROADCASTS, Aug. 16, 1982, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe. An aide to the Dalia Lama reported a Soviet offer of military assistance. Frederic A. Moritz, Dalai Lama in Bargaining Game with China, CHRISTIAN SCI. MONITOR, Aug. 26, 1982, at 7, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe.


Documents

“Cultural Genocide ” and Tibet