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FTR #548 Tibet or not Tibet

Lis­ten:
MP3 Side 1 [1] | Side 2 [2]

RealAu­dio [3]

Intro­duc­tion: Con­tin­u­ing an exam­i­na­tion of the Dalai Lama and some of the polit­i­cal forces with which he col­lab­o­rates, this pro­gram focus­es large­ly on the Tibet of old—before the Chi­nese inva­sion. Ide­al­ized as the ulti­mate man­i­fes­ta­tion of Bud­dhist wis­dom on earth, the pre-inva­sion Tibet was any­thing but the earth­ly par­adise the Dalai Lama and his asso­ciates claim that it was. In point of fact, Tibet was a bru­tal, theo­crat­ic feu­dal soci­ety, presided over by the Dalai Lama and oth­er Tibetan Bud­dhist prelates. Much of the pop­u­la­tion were serfs—actually lit­tle more than slaves. They had no rights to speak of, and were bound to the land owned by the reli­gious lead­ers. Even the small­est of offens­es was pun­ished with extreme brutality—grisly tor­ture was rou­tine. It is not hard to see why the SS felt affin­i­ty for the Tibetan elite. (This is dis­cussed at length in FTR#547 [4].) The broad­cast also high­lights the bizarre sex­u­al rit­u­al that char­ac­ter­izes Tibetan Bud­dhism. This aspect of the Dalai Lama’s faith gen­er­ates seri­ous sex­u­al abuse of both adults and chil­dren of both ages. The con­clud­ing part of the pro­gram reviews the Dalai Lama’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with Islamist and pan-Turk­ist sep­a­ratists in Xin­jiang province of Chi­na, as well as his long-stand­ing asso­ci­a­tion with ele­ments of the CIA. The dis­cus­sion of the Dalai Lama should be viewed in the con­text of a broad­er inquiry into covert action in Cen­tral Asia and oth­er parts of what the Nazis referred to as “the Earth Island.”

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The Dalai Lama’s close asso­ci­a­tion with Erkin Alptekin [5], a for­mer employ­ee of Radio Free Europe/Radio Lib­er­ty and an appar­ent asset of ele­ments of U.S. intel­li­gence; the Dalai Lama’s con­nec­tions to the CIA; the Dalai Lama’s link to Uighur ele­ments asso­ci­at­ed with Al Qae­da; the Dalai Lama’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Unrep­re­sent­ed Nations and Peo­ples Orga­ni­za­tion [6], head­ed up by Karl von Hab­s­burg, the heir to the throne of the Aus­tro-Hun­gar­i­an Empire; the Dalai Lama’s recent trip to the U.S. in order to pro­mote “peace­ful under­stand­ing” of Islam.

1. The pro­gram begins with review of a rel­e­vant quote from Christo­pher Hitchens. Address­ing a cog­ni­tive con­sid­er­a­tion cen­tral to grasp­ing the enor­mous gap between the pub­lic per­cep­tion of the Dalai Lama and the unsa­vory real­i­ty of his polit­i­cal con­nec­tions and reli­gious prac­tices, the broad­cast opens with a telling, rel­e­vant quote from Christo­pher Hitchens. Indeed, the Dalai Lama has his words and actions judged by his rep­u­ta­tion, not the oth­er way around.

“ . . . The great­est tri­umph that mod­ern PR can offer is the tran­scen­dent suc­cess of hav­ing your words and actions judged by your rep­u­ta­tion, rather than the oth­er way about. The ‘spir­i­tu­al leader’ of Tibet has enjoyed this unas­sail­able sta­tus for some time now, becom­ing a byword and syn­onym for saint­ly and ethe­re­al val­ues. Why this does­n’t put peo­ple on their guard I’ll nev­er know. . . .”

(“His Mate­r­i­al High­ness” by Christo­pher Hitchens; Salon.com; 7/13/1998.) [7]

2. Before pre­sent­ing infor­ma­tion about the sex­u­al prac­tices of Tantric Bud­dhism, the pro­gram reviews the pro­fes­sion­al cre­den­tials of the Tri­mondis [Her­bert and Mar­i­ana Röttgen] [8], whose work fea­tures promi­nent­ly in the broad­casts deal­ing with the Dalai Lama. As we see, they were close pro­fes­sion­al, polit­i­cal and spir­i­tu­al sup­port­ers of the Dalai Lama and meta­mor­phosed into fierce crit­ics, once they learned more of the Dalai Lama’s his­to­ry and reli­gious beliefs. The Tri­mondis also note that the Dalai Lama goes out of his way to deceive about his actu­al beliefs and agen­da. The pub­lic face of the Dalai Lama is one with which no one could take issue. The real­i­ty of the Dalai Lama is some­thing else, again.

“ . . . STEPHENS: . . . How did you first come to know the Dalai Lama? TRIMONDI: We first met the XIV Dalai Lama in the eight­ies and became friends while pub­lish­ing his writ­ings in our pub­lish­ing house, Trikont-Dianus-Ver­lag. While orga­niz­ing inter­na­tion­al con­fer­ences with him and oth­er famous speak­ers on inter­re­li­gious and inter­cul­tur­al top­ics and specif­i­cal­ly secur­ing gov­ern­men­tal lev­el invi­ta­tions to Ger­many and Aus­tria for him, we began to seri­ous­ly explore Tibetan Bud­dhism. How­ev­er, after many years of exten­sive study and reflec­tion, we seri­ous­ly ques­tioned some of the fun­da­men­tal tenets of the Tantric Bud­dhism the Dalai Lama pro­fessed and even­tu­al­ly became one of his sharpest crit­ics. . . Frankly speak­ing, the Dalai Lama has two faces. He makes his offi­cial con­tact with the West under the max­im of Mahayana Bud­dhism and then deft­ly assim­i­lates the high­est val­ues and ideals of west­ern cul­ture (Chris­t­ian, Jew­ish and human­ist). On his present trip to Amer­i­ca he has met with Mus­lims like Mohammed Ali, Jesuits at the Uni­ver­si­ty of San Fran­cis­co, polit­i­cal lead­ers from Repub­li­can and Demo­c­ra­t­ic per­sua­sions, and then will com­fort­ably meet with ethi­cists and sci­en­tists at MIT and Har­vard. Through diplo­mat­ic tol­er­ance he wins agnos­tics as well as the hearts of unsus­pect­ing Jews and Chris­tians, to whom he preach­es in the tongue of ‘a man of peace’ and as a human rights activists relates pas­sages of ‘com­pas­sion, love, and non-vio­lence’ from the ‘Ser­mon on the Mount.’ Near­ly all of the speech­es the Dalai Lama deliv­ers in pub­lic are extreme­ly tol­er­ant, human and com­pas­sion­ate. You can only agree. And yet, there is anoth­er face that peeks out from behind the mask of good­ness, char­i­ty and kind­ness, which gives one pause to think more deeply about the shad­ow of this ‘man of peace’. . . .”

(An inter­view with Vic­tor and Vic­to­ria Tri­mon­di [9] by James C. Stephens; 9/11/2003.) [9]

3. Next, the Tri­mondis describe the sex­u­al rit­u­al­ism asso­ci­at­ed with Tantric Bud­dhism, and how it often leads to abuse. As not­ed here, the abuse is a direct, insti­tu­tion­al out­growth of this par­tic­u­lar brand of Bud­dhism.

“TRIMONDI: The sex­u­al prac­tices of Bud­dhist Tantrism are not to be con­fused with nor­mal sex­u­al abuse by some Lamas. The lat­ter also has been a great prob­lem in the Bud­dhist com­mu­ni­ties, which were rocked by scan­dals caused by such promi­nent lead­ers as Chogyam Trung­pa Rin­poche, founder of Col­orado’s Naropa Uni­ver­si­ty, who was accused of hav­ing sex with his women stu­dents. In 1993, 21 West­ern Bud­dhist teach­ers met the Dalai Lama in India and issued an open let­ter that lament­ed var­i­ous teach­ers’ ‘sex­u­al mis­con­duct with their stu­dents, abuse of alco­hol and drugs, mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion of funds and mis­use of pow­er.’ The group urged believ­ers to con­front teach­ers and pub­li­cize their mis­con­duct. Here in Europe, one of the most well known and dis­cussed cas­es involved the Scot­tish Bud­dhist June Camp­bell and the attempt of her teacher, the most hon­or­able eighty year old Lama Kalu Rin­poche, to mis­use her sex­u­al­ly. The 10. Feb­ru­ary 1999 head­line of the British news­pa­per The Inde­pen­dent read: ‘I was a Tantric sex slave.’ But Camp­bell shows also in her con­fes­sion­al book Trav­eller in Space that the sex­u­al mis­use of women is not only a blame­able atti­tude but that it is a cen­tral part of the Lamaist Tantric reli­gion. The sex­u­al mag­ic prac­tice exer­cised by a Lama with a woman has the spe­cif­ic goal to trans­mit the erot­ic and female ener­gy into the spir­i­tu­al and world­ly pow­er of the male part­ner. Such sex­u­al rit­u­als are the core of Tibetan Bud­dhism. Also in the secret high­er ini­ti­a­tions of the Kalachakra Tantra sex­u­al mag­i­cal rites take place. The rit­u­al texts can be inter­pret­ed sym­bol­i­cal­ly or real (!). Both are pos­si­ble. The orig­i­nals say that eleven-year-old girls may be used as sex­u­al part­ners.”

(Idem.)

4. Much of the pro­gram focus­es on the nature of the theo­crat­ic soci­ety over which the Dalai Lamas presided before the Chi­nese inva­sion of that coun­try. Far from the ide­al­ized, Bud­dhist “par­adise” mar­ket­ed by the Dalai Lama and his milieu, the Tibet of old was a bru­tal, feu­dal soci­ety. One should note that old Tibet was a theoc­ra­cy, presided over by the prelates of the Bud­dhist hier­ar­chy and head­ed up by the Dalai Lama him­self. In FTR#547 [10], we exam­ined the attrac­tion that Tibetan soci­ety had for the Nazi SS. In addi­tion to the philo­soph­i­cal attrac­tion they felt for the brand of Bud­dhism prac­ticed in Tibet, the SS found the dai­ly expres­sions of polit­i­cal pow­er in Tibet to be con­sis­tent with their atti­tudes and prac­tices. Exam­in­ing what fol­lows, one can see how the Tibetan nobil­i­ty “with their ‘impe­ri­ous, self-con­fi­dent behav­ior’ and sharp cheek­bones” were viewed as kin­dred spir­its by the Nazis. The text pas­sages that fol­low speak for them­selves, and need no inter­pre­tive com­men­tary.

“ . . . But what of the Dalai Lama and the Tibet he presided over before the Chi­nese crack­down in 1959? It is wide­ly held by many devout Bud­dhists that Old Tibet was a spir­i­tu­al­ly ori­ent­ed king­dom free from the ego­tis­ti­cal lifestyles, emp­ty mate­ri­al­ism, and cor­rupt­ing vices that beset mod­ern indus­tri­al­ized soci­ety. West­ern news media, trav­el books, nov­els, and Hol­ly­wood films have por­trayed the Tibetan theoc­ra­cy as a ver­i­ta­ble Shangri-La. The Dalai Lama him­self stat­ed that ‘the per­va­sive influ­ence of Bud­dhism’ in Tibet, ‘amid the wide open spaces of an unspoiled envi­ron­ment result­ed in a soci­ety ded­i­cat­ed to peace and har­mo­ny. We enjoyed free­dom and con­tent­ment.’ A read­ing of Tibet’s his­to­ry sug­gests a dif­fer­ent pic­ture. In the thir­teenth cen­tu­ry, Emper­or Kublai Khan cre­at­ed the first Grand Lama, who was to pre­side over all the oth­er lamas, as might a pope over his bish­ops. Sev­er­al cen­turies lat­er, the Emper­or of Chi­na sent an army into Tibet to sup­port the Grand Lama, an ambi­tious 25-year-old man, who then gave him­self the title of Dalai (Ocean) Lama, ruler of all Tibet. Here is quite a his­tor­i­cal irony: the first Dalai Lama was installed by a Chi­nese army. To ele­vate his author­i­ty beyond world­ly chal­lenge, the first Dalai Lama seized monas­ter­ies that did not belong to his sect, and is believed to have destroyed Bud­dhist writ­ings that con­flict­ed with his claim to divin­i­ty. The Dalai Lama who suc­ceed­ed him pur­sued a sybarit­ic life, enjoy­ing many mis­tress­es, par­ty­ing with friends, and act­ing in oth­er ways deemed unfit­ting for an incar­nate deity. For this he was done in by his priests. With­in 170 years, despite their rec­og­nized sta­tus as gods, five Dalai Lamas were mur­dered by their high priests or oth­er courtiers.”

(“Friend­ly Feu­dal­ism: The Tibet Myth” by Michael Par­en­ti; 7/04.) [11]

5. “Reli­gions have had a close rela­tion­ship not only with vio­lence but with eco­nom­ic exploita­tion. Indeed, it is often the eco­nom­ic exploita­tion that neces­si­tates the vio­lence. Such was the case with the Tibetan theoc­ra­cy. Until 1959, when the Dalai Lama last presided over Tibet, most of the arable land was still orga­nized into mano­r­i­al estates worked by serfs. Even a writer sym­pa­thet­ic to the old order allows that ‘a great deal of real estate belonged to the monas­ter­ies, and most of them amassed great rich­es. . . . In addi­tion, indi­vid­ual monks and lamas were able to accu­mu­late great wealth through active par­tic­i­pa­tion in trade, com­merce, and mon­ey lend­ing.’ Drepung monastery was one of the biggest landown­ers in the world, with its 185 manors, 25,000 serfs, 300 great pas­tures, and 16,000 herds­men. The wealth of the monas­ter­ies went most­ly to the high­er-rank­ing lamas, many of them scions of aris­to­crat­ic fam­i­lies. Sec­u­lar lead­ers also did well. A notable exam­ple was the com­man­der-in-chief of the Tibetan army, who owned 4,000 square kilo­me­ters of land and 3,500 serfs. He also was a mem­ber of the Dalai Lama’s lay Cab­i­net. Old Tibet has been mis­rep­re­sent­ed by some of its West­ern admir­ers as ‘a nation that required no police force because its peo­ple vol­un­tar­i­ly observed the laws of kar­ma.’ In fact. it had a pro­fes­sion­al army, albeit a small one, that served as a gen­darmerie for the land­lords to keep order and hunt down run­away serfs.”

(Idem.)

6. “Young Tibetan boys were reg­u­lar­ly tak­en from their fam­i­lies and brought into the monas­ter­ies to be trained as monks. Once there, they became bond­ed for life. Tashì-Tser­ing, a monk, reports that it was com­mon for peas­ant chil­dren to be sex­u­al­ly mis­treat­ed in the monas­ter­ies. He him­self was a vic­tim of repeat­ed rape, begin­ning at age nine. The monas­tic estates also con­script­ed impov­er­ished peas­ant chil­dren for life­long servi­tude as domes­tics, dance per­form­ers, and sol­diers. In Old Tibet there were small num­bers of farm­ers who sub­sist­ed as a kind of free peas­antry, and per­haps an addi­tion­al 10,000 peo­ple who com­posed the ‘mid­dle-class’ fam­i­lies of mer­chants, shop­keep­ers, and small traders. Thou­sands of oth­ers were beg­gars. A small minor­i­ty were slaves, usu­al­ly domes­tic ser­vants, who owned noth­ing. Their off­spring were born into slav­ery. The greater part of the rur­al population—some 700,000 of an esti­mat­ed total of 1,250,000—were serfs. Serfs and oth­er peas­ants gen­er­al­ly were lit­tle bet­ter than slaves. They went with­out school­ing or med­ical care. They spent most of their time labor­ing for high-rank­ing lamas or for the sec­u­lar land­ed aris­toc­ra­cy. Their mas­ters told them what crops to grow and what ani­mals to raise. They could not get mar­ried with­out the con­sent of their lord or lama. And they might eas­i­ly be sep­a­rat­ed from their fam­i­lies should their own­ers send them to work in a dis­tant loca­tion. One 22-year old woman, her­self a run­away serf, reports: ‘Pret­ty serf girls were usu­al­ly tak­en by the own­er as house ser­vants and used as he wished.’ They ‘were just slaves with­out rights.’ Serfs need­ed per­mis­sion to go any­where. Landown­ers had legal author­i­ty to cap­ture those who tried to flee. One 24-year old run­away wel­comed the Chi­nese inter­ven­tion as a ‘lib­er­a­tion.’ He claimed that under serf­dom he was sub­ject­ed to inces­sant toil, hunger, and cold. After his third failed escape, he was mer­ci­less beat­en by the land­lord’s men until blood poured from his nose and mouth. They then poured alco­hol and caus­tic soda on his wounds to increase the pain.”

(Idem.)

7. “The serfs were under a life­time bond to work the lord’s land—or the monastery’s land—without pay, to repair the lord’s hous­es, trans­port his crops, and col­lect his fire­wood. They were also expect­ed to pro­vide car­ry­ing ani­mals and trans­porta­tion on demand. They were taxed upon get­ting mar­ried, taxed for the birth of each child, and for every death in the fam­i­ly. They were taxed for plant­i­ng a tree in their yard and for keep­ing ani­mals. There were tax­es for reli­gious fes­ti­vals, for singing, danc­ing, drum­ming, and bell ring­ing. Peo­ple were taxed for being sent to prison and upon being released. Those who could not find work were taxed for being unem­ployed, and if they trav­eled to anoth­er vil­lage in search of work, they paid a pas­sage tax. When peo­ple could not pay, the monas­ter­ies lent them mon­ey at 20 to 50 per­cent inter­est. Some debts were hand­ed down from father to son to grand­son. Debtors who could not meet their oblig­a­tions risked being placed into slav­ery some­times for the rest of their lives. The theoc­ra­cy’s reli­gious teach­ings but­tressed its class order. The poor and afflict­ed were taught that they had brought their trou­bles upon them­selves because of their wicked ways in pre­vi­ous lives. Hence they had to accept the mis­ery of their present exis­tence as a karmic atone­ment and in antic­i­pa­tion that their lot would improve upon being reborn. The rich and pow­er­ful of course treat­ed their good for­tune as a reward for, and tan­gi­ble evi­dence of, virtue in past and present lives.”

(Idem.)

8. “In the Dalai Lama’s Tibet, tor­ture and mutilation—including eye goug­ing, the pulling out of tongues, ham­string­ing, and amputation–were favored pun­ish­ments inflict­ed upon run­away serfs and thieves. Jour­ney­ing through Tibet in the 1960s, Stu­art and Roma Gelder inter­viewed a for­mer serf, Tsereh Wang Tuei, who had stolen two sheep belong­ing to a monastery. For this he had both his eyes gouged out and his hand muti­lat­ed beyond use. He explains that he no longer is a Bud­dhist: ‘When a holy lama told them to blind me I thought there was no good in reli­gion.’ Since it was against Bud­dhist teach­ings to take human life, some offend­ers were severe­ly lashed and then ‘left to God’ in the freez­ing night to die. ‘The par­al­lels between Tibet and medieval Europe are strik­ing,’ con­cludes Tom Grun­feld in his book on Tibet. In 1959, Anna Louise Strong vis­it­ed an exhi­bi­tion of tor­ture equip­ment that had been used by the Tibetan over­lords. There were hand­cuffs of all sizes, includ­ing small ones for chil­dren, and instru­ments for cut­ting off noses and ears, goug­ing out eyes, and break­ing off hands. There were instru­ments for slic­ing off kneecaps and heels, or ham­string­ing legs. There were hot brands, whips, and spe­cial imple­ments for dis­em­bow­el­ing. The exhi­bi­tion pre­sent­ed pho­tographs and tes­ti­monies of vic­tims who had been blind­ed or crip­pled or suf­fered ampu­ta­tions for thiev­ery. There was the shep­herd whose mas­ter owed him a reim­burse­ment in yuan and wheat but refused to pay. So he took one of the mas­ter’s cows; for this he had his hands sev­ered. Anoth­er herds­man, who opposed hav­ing his wife tak­en from him by his lord, had his hands bro­ken off. There were pic­tures of Com­mu­nist activists with noses and upper lips cut off, and a woman who was raped and then had her nose sliced away.”

(Idem.)

9. “Ear­ly vis­i­tors to Tibet com­ment about the theo­crat­ic despo­tism. In 1895, an Eng­lish­man, A. L. Wad­dell [sic, actu­al name: Wad­dell, L. A. (Lau­rence Aus­tine) [12]], wrote that the pop­u­lace was under the ‘intol­er­a­ble tyran­ny of monks’ and the dev­il super­sti­tions they had fash­ioned to ter­ror­ize the peo­ple. In 1904 Perce­val Lan­don described the Dalai Lama’s rule as ‘an engine of oppres­sion.’ At about that time, anoth­er Eng­lish trav­el­er, Cap­tain W.F.T. O’Con­nor [13], observed that ‘the great landown­ers and the priests . . . exer­cise each in their own domin­ion a despot­ic pow­er from which there is no appeal,’ while the peo­ple are ‘oppressed by the most mon­strous growth of monas­ti­cism and priest-craft.’ Tibetan rulers ‘invent­ed degrad­ing leg­ends and stim­u­lat­ed a spir­it of super­sti­tion’ among the com­mon peo­ple. In 1937, anoth­er vis­i­tor, [F.] Spencer Chap­man [14], wrote, ‘The Lamaist monk does not spend his time in min­is­ter­ing to the peo­ple or edu­cat­ing them. . . . The beg­gar beside the road is noth­ing to the monk. Knowl­edge is the jeal­ous­ly guard­ed pre­rog­a­tive of the monas­ter­ies and is used to increase their influ­ence and wealth.’ . . .”

(Idem.)

10. The pro­gram reviews the links of the Dalai Lama and his milieu to var­i­ous intel­li­gence agen­cies and some of the groups that they spon­sor. Review­ing infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed in FTR#547 [4], we note that the Dalai Lama him­self is no stranger to ele­ments of U.S. intel­li­gence, specif­i­cal­ly the CIA.

“ . . .How­ev­er, through­out the 1960’s, the Tibetan exile com­mu­ni­ty was secret­ly pock­et­ing $1.7 mil­lion from the CIA, accord­ing to doc­u­ments released by the State Depart­ment in 1998. Once this fact was pub­li­cized, the Dalai Lama’s orga­ni­za­tion itself issued a state­ment admit­ting that it had received mil­lions of dol­lars from the CIA dur­ing the 1960’s to send armed squads of exiles into Tibet to under­mine the Maoist rev­o­lu­tion. The Dalai Llama’s annu­al pay­ment from the CIA was $186,000. Indi­an intel­li­gence also financed both him and oth­er Tibetan exiles. He has refused to say whether he or his broth­ers worked for the CIA. The agency has also declined to com­ment. . . .”

(Idem.)

11. Gain­ing a broad­er view of the polit­i­cal milieu of which the Dalai Lama is a part, the broad­cast notes that the Dalai Lama has col­lab­o­rat­ed with Islamists from among the Uighur pop­u­la­tion of Xin­jiang province of Chi­na. The Uighurs–a large­ly Mus­lim pop­u­la­tion who speak a Tur­kic language—have been agi­tat­ing for inde­pen­dence from Chi­na. (The Uighurs refer to Xin­jiang as East or East­ern Turkestan.) With Xin­jiang province being rich in petro­le­um, the Uighurs have had lit­tle trou­ble obtain­ing sup­port from for­eign intel­li­gence ser­vices. For addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion about Uighur involve­ment with the Mus­lim Brotherhood/Al Qae­da milieu, see FTR#348 [15]. It should be not­ed that we are a long way from deal­ing with “Bud­dhists” here!! The Dalai Lama’s milieu is part of a larg­er Under­ground Reich vir­tu­al state. It is also impor­tant to bear in mind that the milieu of which the Dalai Lama is a part appears to focus on Cen­tral Asia—that part of the “Earth Island” seen by geopoliti­cians as key to con­trol­ling that land mass and, as a con­se­quence, the world.

“India should have rea­sons to be con­cerned over the Dalai Lama’s hob­nob­bing with the pan- Islam­ic ele­ments in Xin­jiang. One can­not avoid sus­pect­ing that the influ­ence of these ele­ments must have been behind his par­tic­i­pa­tion in a con­fer­ence orga­nized in Chen­nai last year by some ele­ments, which have been act­ing as apol­o­gists for Gen. Per­vez Mushar­raf, the Pak­istani mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor, which was attend­ed by a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Huryi­at of J&K and a large num­ber of Pak­ista­nis, some of them retired Pak­istani mil­i­tary offi­cers. The Dalai Lama’s set-up sub­se­quent­ly denied or played down some of the con­tro­ver­sial remarks attrib­uted to him at the con­fer­ence. The Gov­ern­ment of India should con­sid­er con­vey­ing to the Dalai Lama its unhap­pi­ness and con­cern over his asso­ci­a­tion with pan-Islam­ic ele­ments in Xin­jiang.”

(“US & Ter­ror­ism in Xin­jiang” by B. Raman; From the web­site of the South Asia Analy­sis Group [an Indi­an intelligence/national secu­ri­ty think tank]; 7/02.) [16]

12. More on the Uighur involve­ment with Al Qae­da:

“10. The Islam­ic Move­ment of Uzbek­istan and the Abu Sayyaf of the south­ern Philip­pines have been des­ig­nat­ed as For­eign Ter­ror­ist Orga­ni­za­tions under the US law of 1996, but not the East­ern Turkestan Islam­ic Par­ty, though all the three are mem­bers of Osama bin Laden’s Inter­na­tion­al Islam­ic Front For Jehad Against the USA and Israel. In ini­ti­at­ing action, either for des­ig­na­tion as a For­eign Ter­ror­ist Orga­ni­za­tion or for action under the UN Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil Res­o­lu­tion No, 1373 in respect of bank accounts, the US and the Euro­pean Union have focused essen­tial­ly on ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions, which are per­ceived by them as inter­na­tion­al in nature or which are seen as pos­ing a threat to their nation­als and inter­ests. Ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions viewed by them as pure­ly indige­nous have been exclud­ed. These mul­ti­ple yard­sticks have been used vis-a-vis Chi­na as well as India.”

(Idem.)

13. Note that both the Islamist ele­ment of the Uighur inde­pen­dence move­ment and its sec­u­lar allies have col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Dalai Lama.

“7. Uighurs were found fight­ing with al-Qae­da in Afghanistan. We are aware of cred­i­ble reports that some Uighurs who were trained by al-Qae­da have returned to Chi­na. . . .24. The sec­ond sim­i­lar­i­ty relates to the exter­nal caus­es of aggra­va­tion of the ter­ror­ist vio­lence in Xin­jiang. Just as in J & K, in Xin­jiang too, there are two dis­tinct terrorist/extremist move­ments- ‑one resort­ing to vio­lence on eth­nic grounds to assert the Uighur eth­nic iden­ti­ty against the per­ceived Han Chi­nese dom­i­na­tion and the oth­er using reli­gious and pan-Islam­ic argu­ments to jus­ti­fy vio­lence for the estab­lish­ment of an inde­pen­dent Islam­ic State. While the eth­nic sep­a­ratist ele­ments have been the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of sym­pa­thy and sup­port from the Dalai Lama’s set-up and the Tibetan dias­po­ra abroad, and the US, Tai­wanese and Turk­ish intel­li­gence agen­cies, the reli­gious fun­da­men­tal­ist ele­ments have been in receipt of sup­port from the Inter-Ser­vices Intel­li­gence (ISI)-backed jeha­di orga­ni­za­tions in Pak­istan, the Tal­iban and bin Laden’s Inter­na­tion­al Islam­ic Front For Jehad Against the USA and Israel.”

(Idem.)

14. Accord­ing to the Raman paper, the CIA had close con­nec­tions to Erkin Alptekin, a mem­ber of the board of the Dalai Lama foun­da­tion and a func­tionary of the move­ment to estab­lish Xin­jiang province of Chi­na as an inde­pen­dent (Mus­lim) Uighur state—East Turkestan. It should be not­ed that Alptekin is an oper­a­tive of the Pan-Turk­ist move­ment, which is dis­tinct from the Islamist ele­ment in the Uighur inde­pen­dence move­ment. The Pan-Turk­ist move­ment is dis­cussed at length in RFAs 14 [17] and 21 [18], avail­able from Spit­fire.

“25. In the 1970s and the 1980s, the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency (CIA) of the USA had built up a net­work of con­tacts with the Uighur sep­a­ratist ele­ments and some of those, who had in the past worked for the Munich-based Radio Lib­er­ty of the CIA such as Erkin Alptekin, chair­man of the Europe-based East­ern Turkestani Union and a close Uighur asso­ciate of the Dalai Lama, are now in the fore­front of the eth­nic sep­a­ratist move­ment. . . .”

(Idem.)

15. In addi­tion to his back­ground with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty—both close­ly con­nect­ed to U.S. intelligence—Erkin Alptekin is a founder and key mem­ber of the UNPO, about which we will have more to say in weeks to come.

“ERKIN ALPTEKIN is one of the fore­most human rights advo­cates for the Uighur peo­ple of East­ern Turkestan, also known as the Xin­jiang Autonomous Region of the People’s Repub­lic of Chi­na. Mr. Alptekin was employed by Radio Free Europe/Radio Lib­er­ty from 1971 to 1994. He is one of the founders of the Unrep­re­sent­ed Nations and People’s Orga­ni­za­tion (UNPO), and cur­rent­ly serves as its gen­er­al sec­re­tary.”

(Excerpt from the list of the board of the Dalai Lama Foun­da­tion.) [19]

16. Look­ing ahead to future dis­cus­sions of the milieu to which the Dalai Lama belongs, the pro­gram high­lights the head of the UNPO—Karl von Hab­s­burg, the heir to the throne of the Aus­tro-Hun­gar­i­an Empire. (For more about the Hab­s­burgs and their fas­cist con­nec­tions, see—among oth­er programs—FTR #536 [20].) Again, we are a long, long way from deal­ing with “Bud­dhists” here! With the Dalai Lama and his milieu, we appear to be look­ing at man­i­fes­ta­tions of the Under­ground Reich as a “vir­tu­al state”—a state with­out for­mal geo­graph­i­cal bor­ders. We should also note that Cen­tral Asia—the area that is the focal point of the Dalai Lama’s and UNPO’s sup­port for Uighur sep­a­ratist ele­ments was viewed by geopoliti­cians as crit­i­cal for main­tain­ing con­trol of the Earth Island.

“The eldest son and heir of the dynasty is Karl, who lives in Aus­tria and has served in the Aus­tri­an army and was a mem­ber of the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment, like his father, from 1996–1999. [Empha­sis added.] He has worked hard to keep the fam­i­ly in the pub­lic lime­light, even host­ing a pop­u­lar tele­vi­sion game show. He works qui­et­ly to change the Aus­tri­an laws of 1919 that for­bid the Hab­s­burgs from hold­ing any polit­i­cal office and has often been men­tioned as a pos­si­ble Chan­cel­lor of the Aus­tri­an Repub­lic. At this time he is the Gen­eraldirek­tor of the UNPO (Unrep­re­sent­ed Nations and Peo­ples Orga­ni­za­tion). In 1993 Karl mar­ried Francesca Thyssen-Borne­misza who is well known in Euro­pean high soci­ety.”

(Entry for Karl von Hab­s­burg.) [21]

17. Recent­ly, the Dalai Lama vis­it­ed the Unit­ed States in order to, in part, “pro­mote under­stand­ing” of Islam on the part of Amer­i­cans. An alto­geth­er laud­able under­tak­ing on the sur­face, this effort rais­es some ques­tions. Is the Dalai Lama actu­al­ly run­ning inter­fer­ence for some of the Islamist ele­ments with which he is asso­ci­at­ed? In this con­text, one should recall the advi­so­ry giv­en by the Tri­mondis in para­graph #2. They warn that the Dalai Lama goes out of his way to be less than forth­com­ing about his true beliefs and agen­da.

“The Dalai Lama, a pow­er­ful icon for peace world­wide, will gath­er influ­en­tial Amer­i­can Mus­lim lead­ers in San Fran­cis­co today to help refash­ion Islam’s image in the Unit­ed States. Con­cerned that Mus­lims are unfair­ly demo­nized in Amer­i­can pop­u­lar con­scious­ness, the world-renowned Bud­dhist leader hopes to help show Islam in what he sees as its truest form, one of peace. . . .”

(“Dalai Lama Seeks to Improve image of Islam in U.S.” by Matthai Chakko Kuruvi­la; San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle; 4/15/2006.) [22]