After arresting hundreds of Christians for attempting to worship in unapproved services, the Chinese have turned to Buddhists for a crackdown that has reportedly taken the lives of two Tibetans. Chinese forces raided the Kirti Monastery (shown left) after accusing monks of disrupting social order and . . . wait for it . . . defaming their religion. That’s right, the government that occupied Tibet, killed Tibetan monks, sent the Dalai Lama in hiding, and destroyed countless temples has accused these monks of defaming their own religion.
In our continued tracking of blasphemy prosecutions, this is a new twist — arresting monks for defaming their own religion by not doing what the state demands.
Foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei explained (with a straight face) that “[i]nrecent days, a small number of monks in Kirti Monastery in Aba county, Sichuan have disrupted social order and disobeyed Tibetan Buddhist rules” including acts that “defamed the image of Tibetan Buddhism and harmed the feelings of Buddhist followers.” Well, if you can’t accept the Chinese government’s view of what is needed to protect the image of Tibetan Buddhism, I can hardly imagine whose view you would accept.
In this case, the Chinese government was faced with monks defaming Buddhism and had no choice but to arrest 300 monks and send them to “re-education.” Police also stopped to issue some re-education to laypeople gathered at the temple by beating them. One monk’s account stated that “[p]eople had their arms and legs broken, one old woman had her leg broken in three places, and cloth was stuffed in their mouths to stifle their screams.” All traditional Buddhist forms of observance, I hear.
Clearly these monks did not read this helpful sign in Tibet and other places reading “Police Attention: No distributing any unhealthy thoughts or objects.”
Source: Google
“Police Attention: No distributing any unhealthy thoughts or objects.”
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A clumsy translation I’m sure. It should probably read “Please remain in the free-speech zone and do not distribute pamphlets to passersby”
What they are really saying…is you swore to uphold peace….now your faith with be put into check because you have no place to go…..
If you stop and think in the Existentialism terms….we in America are not being treated very much different….
“The Queen has no legs” and “the king can do no wrong” is spreading to every imagination.
http://powertoxins.blogspot.com/2011/04/sovereign-immunity-source-toxins-of.html
I am guessing that the re-education training is not alot of fun!
I can remember being a boy in the 1950′s eagerly awaiting my National Geographic each month. Then one month, perhaps 1955 or 1956 a lead article appeared about Tibet and about it’s teen-aged Dalai Lama. It filled me with wonder and wanderlust as I dreamed of one day visiting that whole area. Then some few years afterward the Chinese invaded and with them died the dream of a little country, so different from the rest of the world. It abetted the growth of my political consciousness. We live in a world where ubiquity has become rare and magical visions of foreign lands have died. Humanity is poorer for it. When towards the end of the 60′s I met the Maoist faction in my Union, they were surprised by the disgusted antipathy towards them radiated by this young, radical hippy.
This is really a stupid excuse to avoid inhumane treatment to my Tibetan people in Tibet. Hong Lei if thats your excuse, we might have to catch up to the # of broken Human rights. Tibet 1 and
CCP XXXXXXXXXXXXXX INFINITE!!!