China’s anti-corruption campaign targets Dalai Lama supporters

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His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama during his exclusive interview with the International Network of Street Papers (INSP) in Inverness, Scotland, 23 June 2012. (Photo courtesy: Simon Murphy/ www.streetwise.org)
His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama during his exclusive interview with the International Network of Street Papers (INSP) in Inverness, Scotland, 23 June 2012. (Photo courtesy: Simon Murphy/ www.streetwise.org)

(TibetanReview.net, Jan29, 2015) – China said Jan 27 that it had put under investigation in 2014 “several” officials who had allegedly participated in the illegal underground “Tibetan Independence” organization, provided intelligence to the Dalai Lama clique and assisted activities that would harm national security. The report by the official globaltimes.cn Jan 27 did not give any information on the kind of intelligence that were allegedly provided to the so-called “Dalai Lama clique”, a pejorative collective term China uses for all Tibetan groups and individuals abroad who criticize its policies in Tibet.

Nor has anyone heard of a group called “Tibetan independence” unless, like the “Dalai Lama clique”, this is a collective term used by China to refer to all individuals and groups within Tibet who criticize its rule or policy.

The report also cited Wang Gang, an official with the Party discipline inspection commission of Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), as saying that a total of 15 officials were punished by the Communist Party of China (CPC) for violating Party and political discipline in 2014. He has added that six “typical” cases of Party members and civil servants violating discipline had been announced in the TAR while 45 officials who abandoned their positions and neglected their duties were severely punished.

There were no details on these cases too.

In Nov 2014, Ye Dongsong, head of an inspection team of the CPC discipline commission, had said after a two-month inspection visit to the TAR that some officials had failed to take a firm stand on issues related to the Tibet question and some grass-root officials in the region were found to be seriously corrupt. The above findings were obviously made after the TAR discipline inspection department carried out the recommendations of the Ye Dongsong team.

The globaltimes.cn report said the TAR discipline inspection department had received 1,494 reports about misbehaving officials from local residents in 2014, an increase of 131.7 percent year-on-year. It added that 329 of these cases were investigated, an increase of 161.1 percent since 2013. Reported but excluded from investigation would obviously be those with the right connections in the TAR leadership, which would logically be mostly ethnic Chinese officials.

The report also said a total of 240 people were dealt with for breaches of the “eight-point” anti-bureaucracy and formalism rules issued in 2014, with 138 of them having been given Party punishment.

The Ye Dongsong inspection team was part of China’s ongoing nationwide anti-corruption campaign. However, in the case of Tibet, corruption was clearly only a part of the team’s focus of attention, with ethnic Tibetan officials perceived as being pro-Dalai Lama or being not pro-China enough being hauled up for lacking patriotism or for dereliction of duty.

Previously, when China launched “strike hard” anti-crime campaigns across the country ahead of important national and international events, their implementation in Tibet had always assumed a similar political hue.

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