"Songtsen Gampo’s Hometown Is About To Be Completely Excavated" By Woeser

High Peaks Pure Earth has translated a blogpost by Woeser that was originally written for Radio Free Asia on April 14, 2010 in Beijing and posted on her blog on June 13, 2010.

Woeser had spent some time in Lhasa in February and March 2010 and this blogpost refers to that time. Since the earthquake that took place on April 14, 2010 in Kham, Woeser's blog writings focused on monitoring the situation and bringing out news, which perhaps explains the almost two month delay in posting this article. 

This is not the first time that Woeser has written about mining and environmental issues, see also the blogpost from November 2009 titled Tibet's Water Pollution and China's "Global Warming".

I went to Gyama in the summer of 2005. I visited the temple to make offerings to the statue of Songtsen Gampo and met with the elderly man who guards the temple. I also went into the nearby village and to the nunnery built on top of the mountain. Those photos were taken during the trip. Recently I heard that the elderly man who guards the temple already passed away. Because of the pollution caused by mining activities, many villagers have fallen ill and because of the “patriotic education”, which is carried out inside temples, in the nunnery, which I had visited, there are only a few nuns left, all others have been driven out…

"Songtsen Gampo’s Hometown Is About To Be Completely Excavated"
By Woeser

Let’s reflect upon the things which I came to understand in Lhasa. They concern mining. They also concern the town of Gyama, which I have actually written much about. The town of Gyama is situated in Medro Gongkar county near Lhasa. It is the hometown of the great Tibetan monarch, Songtsen Gampo. It is true that I mention Songtsen Gampo often, always in the hope that those greedy cadres and companies would show some mercy. In Han Chinese culture, the birthplace of all former dynasties’ emperors is considered to be the treasured place of “fengshui”, referred to as “dragon’s pulse”. Only occasionally dynastic changes destroyed the “dragon’s pulse” of a former emperor, but normally it would be meticulously protected and regularly sacrificed to seek protection and luck. According to this, Gyama, with its many sacred and beautiful places, is where the “dragon’s pulse” exists in Tibet and it should never have to endure such disembowelling hardship as it does today.

Only because Gyama, just like all other places in Tibet, is rich in natural resources, mining companies established at least 6 mining areas in the Gyama district alone many years ago, ruthlessly exploiting copper, molybdenum, lead, zinc, gold, silver etc. This has led to the destruction of the local ecology and brought disaster to local citizens. Since 2007, a gold miner belonging to the National Enterprise and the China Gold Group with an international background has become the new owner of Gyama. They swallowed many mining areas in one go and had Huatailong Mining Development Limited company subordinating to specialise in mining, everyday exploiting an amount of up to 12,000 tons. Today, Gyama has become the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau’s mining pit with the highest daily output. Last month, the “Tibet Daily” jubilantly praised: “the weekly sales revenue of Jiama’s copper-polymetallic ore has reached 1.1 billion Yuan.”

The article also announced that “1400 new employment opportunities for local people have been created”, claiming that mining brought about endless benefits to the local population. However, what does the reality look like? I heard about the following: Huatailong mining industry deprived over a hundred nomad families of their pasture.  The local authorities requested the nomads to move away from their pasture and promised to build them new socialist country houses as well as to provide them with a monthly allowance. Yet, the nomads say that away from their life on the grasslands they cannot do anything, it is just a road leading to a dead end. Numerous times, the nomads went to the township and county to appeal to the higher authorities but they were ignored. The Huatailong mining remains relatively quiet during the daytime but at night everything is brightly lit and thundering noise like roaring guns accompanies the mining activities that go on all night long. Blasts in the middle of the night were so powerful that it even made some villagers fall underneath their beds believing that it was an earthquake. Huatailong Mining built Gyama’s asphalt roads, which is of course mainly for the sake of making transportation of ore more convenient. In previous years, some villagers bought cars in order to transport ore for small mining companies; this created quite decent income opportunities. Today, Huatailong forced them to sell their cars to the company and now the villagers have become drivers of a transportation company receiving a monthly salary, which is far less than before. Resentment can be sensed everywhere. The Huatailong mining industry has caused most severe pollution, many livestock have died, many villagers have fallen ill but the compensation is not much. Last year, due to a drought, Huatailong used the villager’s water, causing serious conflicts. Reportedly, Huatailong had approximately up to 10,000 workers at their disposal, most of them Han Chinese, while there were only a few thousand villagers. Yet, immediately, a great number of military police, including special police forces, were sent from Lhasa patrolling through Gyama with armoured vehicles for many days arresting villagers. Up to the present day there are three villagers (one of them the village head) who are still imprisoned awaiting their sentence.

Songtsen Gampo's hometown has almost been completely excavated by the China Gold Group. In fact, most part of the entire Medro Gongkar County has almost been bought up; even the county government has sold their land to the above company and moved to a different area.  Many local Tibetans say that one might as well just change the name of Medro Gongkar County into Huatailong County and Gyama village into Huatailong village. In actual fact, it isn’t merely one county or one village, in Lhundrup County near Lhasa, every village has been affected by mining, even far in the west, in Ngari,  everywhere is full of mines. The mountains in Dram on the border have been excavated by gold miners; they might soon even start digging up to the side of Nepal. 

In March this year, the high official Jampa Phuntsok said to the media in Beijing: “Tibet is not only the country’s protective screen in terms of ecology and security; it is also the base where the electricity in the western region is to be transported to the eastern area, a base for mining, the centre of diverse natural life and it will even become one of the world’s main tourist destinations.” Being “a base for mining” as he says, clearly reveals that Tibet’s rivers and mountains will be a scenery of destruction in the future. Some days later, the slogans hanging in the streets of Lhasa were changed into: “Showing a New Image, Casting New Brilliance, Promoting the Harmonious Development of Mining Areas”, does this not imply that in the near future, there will be mining on a much larger scale? 

Beijing, April 14, 2010

The pictures below were downloaded from the website of Tibet Huatailong Mining Development Co., Ltd:

These two photos were taken by me on March 18, 2010 in the streets of Lhasa:

Tibet's Water Pollution and China's "Global Warming" by Woeser

Photo taken by locals of mining area in Gyama Village 

High Peaks Pure Earth has translated a blogpost by Woeser that was originally written for Radio Free Asia on November 19, 2009 and posted on her blog on December 16, 2009. Please scroll down for more photos.

Tibet's Water Pollution and China's "Global Warming"

By Woeser

Today, global warming is a fashionable topic; leaders of superpowers and popular environmental organisations all talk about wanting to curb global warming. An authoritative scientific publication reported that global warming will “impact every person’s life, with the poor and the weak being most severely affected”. Yet, all the elements that lead to global warming, such as environmental pollution, soil erosion and desertification, a sharp decrease in forest resources, water pollution, toxic waste pollution and much more, are in fact man-made and visible everywhere on the Qinghai-Tibet plateau, which is often exaggeratedly called 'the world’s last piece of pure land'.

The water of the Qinghai-Tibet plateau in particular is really deteriorating. Originally, as noted in the classic works, the Buddhist master Atisha uses graceful poetry to praise: “taste a mouthful of the water of the Land of Snows, it is ice-cold and tasty, fresh and pure, clear and fragrant; when one drinks it, it will not hurt one’s spleen or stomach, but it will moisten one’s heart. This is Tibetan water with its eight virtues.” But what about today? Nyima Tsering, a monk from Jokhang Temple, once said when interviewed by journalists, that in the past when he became a monk he could drink the water from the Lhasa River and it was absolutely not toxic, but now it was really a pity that one could not drink the river water anymore.

Hence, how is it possible that the once so fresh water has turned into dirty water? On the upper reaches of the Lhasa River, a variety of cultural and historic sites with long history as well as plenty of natural resources can be found. For example, Gyama village of Meldro Gungkar County is the birthplace of Songtsen Gompo, the greatest monarch of the Tibetan Empire. This place not only offers beautiful scenery, it is also rich in a variety of metals such as copper, lead, zinc, gold and silver, which, according to reports, have a potential economic value of 120 billion RMB. Hence, the place has also become a destination for many Chinese miners tending to their business of greed. The Gyama copper mine, which is home to polymetallic ore, is currently the mine that generates the largest daily turnover on the Qinghai-Tibet plateau with 12, 000 tons per day. The mining rights belong to the China National Gold Group, which has direct ties with the Chinese State Council.

A Han Chinese miner whose online name is “Tibet’s Stonemason” revealed on his blog: “Beneath this stunning scenery, everything is already heavily damaged. Originally, there were four or five companies mining for Gyama’s polymetallic ore. Moreover, these companies distributed the mining rights to many different mining groups. And those groups would open at least one, but often many new mining holes. Outside those holes, on the mountain slope, it would always be full of discarded stone scrap...”

Over the past few years, when I went to Gyama village, I learned that because in some mining areas there was none or no adequate sewage systems in place, this has caused dirty water polluted with chemicals to flow all over the place. It not only led to the nearby villages’ loss of drinking water but also forced them to gain access to drinking water through a primitive pipeline connected to the isolated and rugged area at the back of the mountain. The harvest of highland barley in the fields decreased massively and forage grass on the pasture land was also poisoned. Along with the worsening of the current situation, livestock has been dying more frequently and many farmers and herdsmen have contracted obscure and difficult to cure diseases, life has become very tough.

The locals of the region have repeatedly tried to submit petitions to the environmental departments requesting to solve the pollution problem. Last year they appealed to the authorities saying that “since mining started, four thousand mu (1 mu = 0.0667 hectares) of farmland have slowly been destroyed and it is even more difficult to measure the damage it causes to grassland, trees, livestock and wild animals [...] we have reported this to the higher authorities in the past but we were blamed for this ourselves, they say we should have reported it when the factories were first set up but we are just ordinary citizens, we could not know that the establishment of mining factories would bring about such disastrous consequences. This year, they are building another, even bigger processing factory, when the people did not agree to have the factory built, the township government forced us to give our consent…”.

On 20th June this year, because Tibet endured a drought that had never occurred before, the mining areas in Gyama village even used Tibetan people’s drinking water to wash the ore, which polluted the source of drinking water. Tibetans strongly opposed on just grounds but only suffered from Han Chinese violence leading to many Tibetans being severely injured. Tibetans gathered at the township government and protested, hence, the authorities sent out thousands of military police to suppress the protesters and arrested the Tibetans who led the protests with the excuse of “inciting separatism”.

This really left people greatly disappointed, what was originally about the exploitation of natural resources, and the associated problems of water pollution, was politicised by local officials; this is actually the thing that the authorities in Tibet are best at, they politicise all problems which are initially of social or an economic nature just to be able to unscrupulously pillage Tibetan people and gain access to the natural resources. But this also makes people even more anxious because of the harm that over-exploitation has done to the local people, another danger with specifically Tibet-related characteristics comes to the surface: should this not also be part of the current “global warming” debate in China today? 


Beijing, November 19, 2009


The following photos show Gyama Village and the polluted environment due to mining that has destroyed the area, as well as poisoned the villagers and livestock. (Photos taken by local Tibetans).

The following photos were downloaded from the internet from the Han Chinese miner "Tibet's Stonemason's" blog who photographed the mining area and revealed: "Beneath this stunning scenery, everything is already heavily damaged":

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"Tibet's Stonemason's" blog exclaims: "This is located in Tibet's Meldro Gungkar county and shows Gyama township's newest core sample of black ore. Blue bornite and golden yellow chalcopyrite in the entire core, it's so abundant!"