The 10th Panchen Lama was murdered by former Chinese president Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) and former Chinese premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶), a prominent Chinese dissident said in Taipei yesterday as he warned that Beijing’s cultural genocide in Tibet could serve an example for those Taiwanese who still have false expectations of China.
Citing the findings from his private interviews with Chinese and Tibetan officials, Yuan Hongbing (袁紅兵) told a press conference that the 10th Panchen Lama, Choekyi Gyaltsen, was poisoned to death in January 1989 rather than dying from a heart attack as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) claimed.
Yuan, a Chinese writer who sought political asylum in Australia in 2004, detailed the findings in a book he co-wrote with Tibetan author Namloyak Dhungser titled Shafo (殺佛) — killing a Buddha — which has since been published in Taiwan.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
The assassination was plotted by former Chinese presidents Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) and Li Xiannian (李先念), and Bo Yibo (薄一波), father of disgraced Chinese official Bo Xilai (薄熙來), and he was executed by Hu and Wen, said Yuan, who first revealed the allegation in 2011.
However, the reason Taiwanese should pay attention to Tibet is far more than the Panchen Lama’s death, he said, as they should understand that Beijing’s cultural genocide spanning several decades had caused the death of 1.2 million Tibetans and at least 126 cases of self-immolation in recent years.
“I would say that Tibet is far away and close to Taiwan at the same time, because what happened and is happening in Tibet could happen in Taiwan in the future,” Yuan said. “When President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) suggested that the cross-strait flights are domestic flights, that told you how close Taiwan could be to becoming the next Tibet.”
The signing of a peace agreement with Beijing in 1951 and the retreat from being an independent country to an autonomous region had both failed to bring Tibetans the peace and religious freedom they deserve, Yuan said, and the CCP was never serious about keeping its promises.
“[Beijing] has never stopped oppressing the Tibetan people in the past six decades. When you realize that, I don’t know what expectations Taiwanese could have of the CCP,” Yuan said.
National Taiwan University Hospital physician Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), who is mulling running in the Taipei mayoral election next year, said Yuan’s book was a reminder to Taiwanese about what they could learn from Tibet.
“It is also important for Beijing to understand that what happened in Tibet was why most Taiwanese still have doubts about China’s ‘peaceful unification’ pledge. Past experiences show that the CCP has not been trustworthy,” Ko said.
A total lunar eclipse coinciding with the Lantern Festival on March 3 would be Taiwan’s most notable celestial event this year, the Taipei Astronomical Museum said, urging skywatchers not to miss it. There would be four eclipses worldwide this year — two solar eclipses and two lunar eclipses — the museum’s Web site says. Taiwan would be able to observe one of the lunar eclipses in its entirety on March 3. The eclipse would be visible as the moon rises at 5:50pm, already partly shaded by the Earth’s shadow, the museum said. It would peak at about 7:30pm, when the moon would
Taiwan’s Li Yu-hsiang performs in the men’s singles figure skating short program at the Milano-Cortina Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, on Tuesday. Li finished 24th with a score of 72.41 to advance to Saturday’s free skate portion of the event. He is the first Taiwanese to qualify for the free skate of men’s singles figure skating at the Olympics since David Liu in 1992.
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) yesterday held a ceremony marking the delivery of its 11th Anping-class offshore patrol vessel Lanyu (蘭嶼艦), saying it would boost Taiwan’s ability to respond to Beijing’s “gray zone” tactics. Ocean Affairs Council Deputy Minister Chang Chung-Lung (張忠龍) presided over the CGA event in the Port of Kaoshiung. Representatives of the National Security Council also attended the event. Designed for long-range and protracted patrol operations at sea, the Lanyu is a 65.4m-long and 14.8m-wide ship with a top speed of 44 knots (81.5kph) and a cruising range of 2,000 nautical miles (3704km). The vessel is equipped with a
Two siblings in their 70s were injured yesterday when they opened a parcel and it exploded, police in Yilan said, adding the brother and sister were both in stable condition. The two siblings, surnamed Hung (洪), had received the parcel two days earlier but did not open it until yesterday, the first day of the Lunar New Year holiday in Taiwan, police said. Chen Chin-cheng (陳金城), head of the Yilan County Government Police Bureau, said the package bore no postmark or names and was labeled only with the siblings’ address. Citing the findings of a
RSS