Splittism Must Be Opposed!

High Peaks Pure Earth readers who follow news from Tibet closely know that 'Opposing Splittism' is one of the main campaigns in Tibet, here we found an interesting take on opposing splittism by a blogger named Kardzewa (dkar mdzes ba). We haven't translated the comments but the readers ask Who are the Splittists?



Splittism Must Be Opposed

All sentient beings desire happiness and don’t wish to suffer; this is human nature. Maintaining world peace, uniting the motherland, and establishing a harmonious society are the common desires of humankind. Ethnic unity is the root of all happiness, and ethnic splittism is the source of all undesirable tragedies. Opposing splittism is the highest responsibility of all thoughtful beings. Furthermore, like the Tibetan saying goes, “For thirty people there are thirty different ways of thinking”, because of different beliefs and values, the way of viewing splittism is also different. I think one cannot accuse people who pursue truth in taking responsibility for the future of their nationality and the motherland, have pride and loyalty for their nationality as solid as a rock, and have genuinely pure motivation for the religion and culture of their nationality, as splittists. For decades, those confused nomads, whose tears of sadness were held back, placing their hope in the future, having less than a first grade primary school education, never having been taught a single clause of the constitution and laws, for these people it becomes very necessary to give legal and religious education. Because they are also the “daughter of one mother”, raising them with love and kindness is the practice of good parents. Otherwise, accusing them of splittism for saying one wrong thing is not fair.

At the same time, many of our leaders and officials don’t study the thousands of years of history of the Tibetan people, don’t respect local customs and traditions, distort history and trample on faith. This is not how you find truth from facts. In fact, I think this is the destruction of harmony amongst the nationalities. Moreover, as Tibetan people study and respect Chinese language, I think our Chinese brothers, leaders, and officials in Tibetan areas should also study and appreciate Tibetan language. Otherwise, they are directly and indirectly prohibiting Tibetan language, which is like a lifeline to Tibetan people, by claiming that if Tibetan is spoken, Chinese people don’t understand and if Tibetan is written, leaders don’t know it. This is a source of frustration for Tibetan people who have a great love for our mother tongue. Speaking for myself, I used to work at a broadcasting and television work unit. At that time, I even created a Tibetan special programme. However, this was the first Tibetan programme, and after discussions between the work unit leader and the county leader, we were not able to broadcast it because if Tibetan was spoken, Chinese people would not be able to understand. Likewise, after promoting this year’s patriotic education, since all workers had to write reports of their thinking, all of us Tibetan language teachers wrote in Tibetan. However, the education office returned our reports: they said if they weren’t written in Chinese, the leaders wouldn’t understand them. It created a lot of meaningless problems for us. We said this was unreasonable and we insisted a lot. Yet, many of our well-intentioned coworkers advised us “Don’t do this. If you do this, you’ll be accused of being a splittist.” Even though I can say that the friends who gave this advice meant well, by all of us doing this, if we do not honour the words affirmed in the country’s constitution that say all nationalities have the right to study and use their own speech and writing, it will be difficult to realize scientific development and scientific ethnic unity of the nation.