Thank you, Chair.
Thank you, Doctor, for appearing before our committee.
In 1981, the Communist Party declared that the great proletarian revolution “was responsible for the most severe setback and the heaviest losses suffered by the party, [country,] and the people since the founding of the People's Republic”, yet they never talked about Tibet in that rare moment of acknowledgement of the horrors of Communist Party rule.
I believe it was mentioned that of 6,200 monasteries that existed only six survived. That's less than 0.1% of thousands. Of 600,000 Tibetan monks and nuns, by 1979 virtually all had been murdered or disappeared. Often they were labelled monsters and demons, yet this policy of ethnocide seems to continue under the current regime.
In 2016, over 2,000 Buddhist monks and nuns were expelled from the largest Buddhist institute, the Larung Gar, and you referenced the desperation of Buddhist monks and nuns. One hundred and fifty have self-immolated. Buddhism is central to your identification as a people, but you also referenced that it's no longer the one road. There are now many roads. There are planes. There are trains. There is a wholesale repopulation of Tibet going on, so time seems to be of the essence.
How do you react to that particular reality? It seems as though the situation is no longer just desperate; it's almost at the point of being not recoverable. How much time is there? Time is of the essence.