Profile
The International Campaign for Tibet works to promote self-determination, human rights, and democratic freedoms for the Tibetan people, and negotiations between the 14th Dalai Lama and the People's Republic of China. The three main departments of ICT are devoted to reporting and communications, advocacy, and Chinese outreach.
Monitoring and reporting on human rights, environmental and socio-economic conditions in Tibet makes up a significant portion of ICT's activities, with information coming directly from inside Tibet and also from a network of Tibetan researchers based in India and Nepal.
ICT advocacy efforts are focused on securing humanitarian and development assistance for Tibetans, and working with governments to develop policies and programs to help Tibetans. ICT asks its members to petition governments on behalf of Tibet, and organizes activities like the annual Tibet Lobby Day [3] which gives constituents a chance to directly ask their representatives to help Tibet. Additional advocacy efforts are focused on achieving the release of Tibetans imprisoned for their political or religious beliefs.
Through Chinese Outreach, ICT engages Chinese thinkers and the broader Chinese public with the goal of increasing mutual understanding between Chinese and Tibetans. ICT is a member of International Federation for Human Rights. [4] [5]
The Central Tibetan Administration, often referred to as the Tibetan Government-in-Exile, is a non-profit political organization based in Dharamshala, India. Its organization is modeled after an elective parliamentary government, composed of a judiciary branch, a legislative branch, and an executive branch.
The Tibetan independence movement is the political movement advocating for the separation and independence of Tibet from the People's Republic of China. It is principally led by the Tibetan diaspora in countries like India and the United States, and by celebrities and Tibetan Buddhists in the United States, India and Europe. The movement is no longer supported by the 14th Dalai Lama, who although having advocated it from 1961 to the late 1970s, proposed a sort of high-level autonomy in a speech in Strasbourg in 1988, and has since then restricted his position to either autonomy for the Tibetan people in the Tibet Autonomous Region within China, or extending the area of the autonomy to include parts of neighboring Chinese provinces inhabited by Tibetans. Additionally in 2017, the Dalai Lama asserted that Tibetans wanted to stay with China, and that they want more development from China.
Tibetan Americans are Americans of Tibetan ancestry. As of 2020, more than 26,700 Americans are estimated to have Tibetan ancestry. The majority of Tibetan Americans reside in Queens, New York.
The history of Tibet from 1950 to the present includes the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1950, and the Battle of Chamdo. Before then, Tibet had been a de facto independent nation. In 1951, Tibetan representatives in Beijing signed the Seventeen-point Agreement under duress, which affirmed China's sovereignty over Tibet while it simultaneously provided for an autonomous administration led by Tibet's spiritual leader, and then-political leader, the 14th Dalai Lama. During the 1959 Tibetan uprising, when Tibetans arose to prevent his possible assassination, the Dalai Lama escaped from Tibet to northern India where he established the Central Tibetan Administration, which rescinded the Seventeen-point Agreement. The majority of Tibet's land mass, including all of U-Tsang and areas of Kham and Amdo, was officially established in 1965 as Tibet Autonomous Region, within China.
The Australia Tibet Council (ATC) is an independent, non-profit Australian organisation working to promote the human rights and democratic freedoms of the Tibetan people. ATC is funded solely by members and supporters. The organisation's headquarters are in Sydney.
State Religious Affairs Bureau Order No. 5, officially named Measures on the Management of the Reincarnation of Living Buddhas in Tibetan Buddhism, is an order passed during a conference of the State Administration for Religious Affairs on 13 July 2007, marked for implementation on 1 September 2007.
Palden Gyatso was a Tibetan Buddhist monk. Arrested for protesting during the Chinese invasion of Tibet, he spent 33 years in Chinese prisons and labor camps, where he was extensively tortured, and served the longest term of any Tibetan political prisoner. After his release in 1992 he fled to Dharamsala in North India, in exile. He was still a practicing monk and became a political activist, traveling the world publicizing the cause of Tibet up until his death in 2018. His autobiography Fire Under the Snow is also known as The Autobiography of a Tibetan Monk. He was the subject of the 2008 documentary film Fire Under the Snow.
The 2008 Tibetan unrest was a series of protests and demonstrations over the Chinese government's treatment and persecution of Tibetans. Protests in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, by monks and nuns on 10 March have been viewed as the start of the demonstrations. Numerous peaceful protests and demonstrations were held to commemorate the 49th anniversary of the 1959 Tibetan Uprising Day, when the 14th Dalai Lama escaped from Tibet. The protests and demonstrations spread spontaneously to a number of monasteries and throughout the Tibetan plateau, including into counties located outside the designated Tibet Autonomous Region. The arrest of monks at Labrang Monastery increased the tension of the situation. Violence began when Chinese police and People's Liberation Army units used force on non-violent protests by monks and nuns, and spread when protesting Tibetans later clashed with security forces. Clashes also occurred between Tibetans and Chinese Han and Hui residents, resulting in Han and Hui stores and buildings being destroyed and numerous Chinese civilians being injured or killed.
The Kashag, was the governing council of Tibet during the rule of the Qing dynasty and post-Qing period until the 1950s. It was created in 1721, and set by Qianlong Emperor in 1751 for the Ganden Phodrang in the 13-Article Ordinance for the More Effective Governing of Tibet. In that year the Tibetan government was reorganized after the riots in Lhasa of the previous year. The civil administration was represented by Council (Kashag) after the post of Desi was abolished by the Qing imperial court. The Qing imperial court wanted the 7th Dalai Lama to hold both religious and administrative rule, while strengthening the position of the High Commissioners.
The 14th Dalai Lama, known as Gyalwa Rinpoche to the Tibetan people, is the current Dalai Lama, the highest spiritual leader and former head of state of Tibet. Born on 6 July 1935, or in the Tibetan calendar, in the Wood-Pig Year, 5th month, 5th day, he is considered a living Bodhisattva; specifically, an emanation of Guanyin Bodhisattva (Avalokiteśvara). He is also the leader of the Gelug school, the newest school of Tibetan Buddhism, formally headed by the Ganden Tripa. The central government of Tibet, the Ganden Phodrang, invested the Dalai Lama with temporal duties until his exile in 1959. On 29 April 1959, the Dalai Lama established the independent Tibetan government in exile in the north Indian hill station of Mussoorie, which then moved in May 1960 to Dharamshala, where he resides. He retired as political head in 2011 to make way for a democratic government, the Central Tibetan Administration.
Lodi Gyaltsen Gyari Rinpoche, Kasur Lodi Gyari or "as he is universally known to the Tibetan-speaking world, Gyari Rinpoche" was a Tibetan politician, and journalist who served as the 14th Dalai Lama's special envoy to the United States. Exiled to India in 1959, he was also the executive chairman of the International Campaign for Tibet.
The Light of Truth Award is a human rights award which is presented nearly annually by the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT), an NGO aiming for the promotion of democracy and human rights for the Tibetan people. The award is presented since 1995 by the fourteenth Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, to the recipients personally.
Human rights in Tibet are a contentious issue. Although the United States advocates and provided funds to Dalai Lama's independence movement, the United States does not recognize Tibet as a country. Reported abuses of human rights in Tibet include restricted freedom of religion, belief, and association; arbitrary arrest; maltreatment in custody, including torture; and forced abortion and sterilization. The status of religion, mainly as it relates to figures who are both religious and political, such as the exile of the 14th Dalai Lama, is a regular object of criticism. Additionally, freedom of the press in China is absent, with Tibet's media tightly controlled by the Chinese leadership, making it difficult to accurately determine the scope of human rights abuses.
The Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) is a Tibetan non-governmental nonprofit human rights organization.
Protests and uprisings in Tibet against the government of the People's Republic of China have occurred since 1950, and include the 1959 uprising, the 2008 uprising, and the subsequent self-immolation protests.
Dhondup Wangchen is a Tibetan filmmaker imprisoned by the Chinese government in 2008 on charges related to his documentary Leaving Fear Behind. Made with senior Tibetan monk Jigme Gyatso, the documentary consists of interviews with ordinary Tibetan people discussing the 14th Dalai Lama, the Chinese government, the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and Han Chinese migrants to the region. After smuggling the tapes of the interviews out of Tibet, however, Dhondup Wangchen and Jigme Gyatso were detained during the 2008 Tibetan unrest.
As of May 2022, 160 monks, nuns, and ordinary people have self-immolated in Tibet since 27 February 2009, when Tapey, a young monk from Kirti Monastery, set himself on fire in the marketplace in Ngawa City, Ngawa County, Sichuan. According to the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT), "Chinese police have beaten, shot, isolated, and disappeared self-immolators who survived."
Tibet Justice Center, is an American legal association founded in 1989 that advocates human rights and self-determination for the Tibetan people.
Antireligious campaigns in China refer to the Chinese Communist Party's official promotion of state atheism, coupled with its persecution of people with spiritual or religious beliefs, in the People's Republic of China. Antireligious campaigns were launched in 1949, after the Chinese Communist Revolution, and they continue to be waged against Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, and members of other religious communities in the 21st century. State campaigns against religion have escalated since Xi Jinping became General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party on November 15, 2012. For Christians, government decrees have mandated the widespread removal of crosses from churches, and in some cases, they have also mandated the destruction of houses of worship, such as the Catholic Three Rivers Church in the city of Wenzhou. In Tibet, similar decrees have mandated the destruction of Tibetan Buddhist monastic centers, the destruction of sacred Buddhist sites, the destruction of monastic residences, the denial of the Tibetan people's right to freely access their cultural heritage, the ongoing persecution of high Buddhist lamas and the ongoing persecution of Buddhist nuns and monks. Reports which document the existence of forced re-education camps, arrests, beatings, rape, and the destruction of religious sites in Tibet are also being published with regard to the Uyghur people, who are being subjected to an ongoing genocide.
Tibet House US (THUS) is a Tibetan cultural preservation and education nonprofit founded in 1987 in New York City by a group of Westerners after the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, had expressed his wish to establish a cultural institution to build awareness of Tibetan culture.
