Tibet

Zhang Shuguang, Director of the Transportation Bureau of the Ministry of Railways, announced that the Qinghai-Tibet railroad will begin commercial operation on July 1, 2006, according to December 12 articles in Xinhua and China Daily. Zhang said that direct connection to the new railway line will be available at Beijing's West Railway Station from July 1, according to Xinhua, and that other Chinese cities, including Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Chengdu, will launch direct railway passenger service to Lhasa on July 1.

Gyaltsen Norbu, the boy the Chinese government installed as the Panchen Lama, concluded a Buddhist ritual offering at the tombs of his predecessors by saying that he would "live up to the expectations of the Chinese Communist Party and the central government," according to a December 15 Xinhua report. The ritual took place one week after the 10th anniversary of the December 8, 1995, ceremony at Tashi Lhunpo Monastery, in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), where State Councilor Li Tieying presided over then five-year-old Gyaltsen Norbu's installation as Panchen Lama, according to the China Tibet Information Center.

A government program to settle Tibetan nomadic herders has placed about 10,000 families in Qinghai province (89 percent of the nomads) in communities of fixed dwellings, according to an October 4 report in the Sydney Morning Herald. The government program may mean the end of a traditional way of life that Tibetans, Mongols, and other ethnic groups in China regard as integral to their culture and self-identity.

Officials in the Lhasa area are increasing both supervision of "patriotic education" programs conducted in Tibetan monasteries and nunneries and examinations of monks and nuns, according to a report by the India-based Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) on October 13.

Senior Chinese government and Party officials attended a September 1 ceremony in Lhasa marking the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), according to a Xinhua report.

Chinese security forces patrolling the China-Nepal border allegedly opened fire on a group of Tibetans attempting to flee China by hiking from the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) into Nepal on August 26, according to a September 23 report by Radio Free Asia (RFA). The group of 51 persons hiked from Dingri county in the TAR's Shigatse prefecture, and included a monk, two nuns, and six children. Only three of the group eluded capture and escaped to Nepal. The security forces took the remaining 48 into custody, according to an account provided by one of the escapees.

The 80,000 volume collection of centuries-old texts at Sakya Monastery will be moved to another location temporarily, according to an August 17 Xinhua report. The texts will be handled carefully under the close watch of Sakya's monks, according to the same report. Each person handling the volumes will be required to sign a log, even though the storage facility is 250 feet from the monastery's main hall. Tibetan worshippers consider the chance to walk through the chamber behind the main altar, where the texts are kept in 30-foot high racks in near darkness, to be of profound religious significance.

Jampa Phuntsog (Qiangba Puncog), the Governor of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), told reporters in Hong Kong that it is too early to consider the Dalai Lama's return to his homeland, according to a July 19 South China Morning Post (SCMP) report. Accusing the Dalai Lama of continuing to work for Tibetan independence, Phuntsog complained that the Tibetan government-in-exile "has set up a parliament," "expanded its separatist activities," and "made the Tibet problem an international issue." He made the remarks during "Tibet Culture Week," a program that is sponsored by the State Council Information Office, the TAR government, and the Hong Kong Liaison Office, according to a July 20 Xinhua report.