Expelled from monasteries, the nuns suffer violence and rape in horrendous “detention centers”

The violence against the nuns of Yachen Gar

The recent news of the detention of about 3,500 Tibetan monks and nuns in  the Yachen Gar Buddhist Center in   Palyul County in Kardze, a  prefecture  in   Sichuan province , highlights another dimension of the CCP ‘s persecution of  minority groups such as Tibetans. he  Uighurs. The history of communist oppression reveals that such abuses and torture against Tibetans have always been a feature of the Chinese government’s policy in Tibet. And the CCP’s effort to “sinize” Tibetan religion and culture with indoctrination programs continues: detained monks and nuns are forced to become Chinese “patriots” in concentration camps, and any hint of dissent or resistance entails torture and serious abuse.

If you look   at China’s human rights violations against Tibetans in Tibet, the detainees are predominantly monks and nuns. One of the most striking features of the repression is the gender-based violence perpetrated against Tibetan nuns. The CCP’s heavy crackdown on dissent and resistance is well known, however in such an oppressive environment, what specific types of violence are unique to Tibetan nuns? How do their overlapping identities of gender, ethnicity and religious beliefs make them doubly marginalized?

Subvert Buddhism with the arbitrary detention of Tibetan monks and nuns

The  monastery Yachen Gar , as Larung Gar, is a place apolitical: a monastic education, academic learning and preparation for meditation founded in 1985 by Achuk Rinpoche. The institute, as imagined by its founder, is one of the places dedicated to the preservation of Tibetan Buddhist culture after the  Cultural Revolution . It has hosted about 10 thousand nuns and monks from different parts of  Tibet  and is one of the  largest  female monasteries in the world. For this reason it has also been called the ” city ​​of nuns “. After the eviction of the Tibetans and the subsequent demolition of Larung Gar, the number of people living in Yachen Gar has  increased .

However, the Yachen Gar Center, due to the expansion of Tibetan Buddhist influence attracting people from various parts of the world, is a controversial issue for the Chinese authorities. In 2001, the Communist Party, then led by Jiang Zemin, had partially completed the  demolition  of many houses of nuns and monks. In 2017, after removing them from the center, the Chinese authorities  destroyed the homes of “over a hundred nuns”. For  two years  , access to the site was forbidden to foreign visitors. With  Xi Jinping in power the state reaffirmed the policy of incorporating “religions” into “socialism with Chinese characteristics”. In the speech that Xi gave to the National Religious Conference in April 2016, he stressed the need to actively guide “the adaptation of religions to socialist society, an important task in view of their  sinization “.

But in reality, Xi Jinping’s policy is insidiously incorporating  Tibetan Buddhism into the monolithic framework of the Chinese state. It is a plot to reduce the influence of Tibetan Buddhism and strengthen and support the CCP’s nationalist monopoly. In essence, it is a form of persecution of Tibetan monks and nuns who are already marginalized by the Chinese state apparatus. The Tibetan nuns and monks of Yachen Gar can be seen as the natural guardians of Tibetan Buddhism and therefore pose a threat to the state policy of  Sinization .

A series of evictions carried out in May resulted in the expulsion of 3,500 people and, as of July 16, the number had risen to 7,100 with the expulsion of another  3,600 monks and nuns  from Yachen. The deported are then held in detention centers for two or three months.

Psychological and sexual violence against nuns

Detained nuns are required to undress and wear military uniforms. Those from Jomda County are forced to continually sing patriotic “Red Songs” praising the CCP. The nuns are also pressured to watch “war propaganda films”, feature films that glorify China’s victories over Japan. Some nuns who were “shot down” and “wept” were violently beaten for this ” alleged display of disloyalty .”

Nuns in detention centers are also victims of sexual violence. The testimony of a monk who spent 4 months in a  detention center  in Sog county located in Nagchu prefecture, in  the  Tibet Autonomous Region, confirms these reports. According to a report published by the Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy that cites the testimony of a Tibetan monk, the nuns were forced to pay for military uniforms out of their own pockets. The report also claims that monks and nuns were incarcerated without due process and without having committed any crime.

One of the most horrifying aspects of the CCP’s human rights violations in detention centers is that nuns are also subjected to gender-based violence. The monk saw Chinese officials sexually abusing nuns by “groping the breasts” of those who passed out during military training in prison camps. As reported by the monk himself, there have been many cases in which Tibetan Buddhist nuns have been sexually assaulted. Chinese party cadres have been accused of ” groping the bodies of nuns ” and “lying on unconscious nuns in their bedrooms.”

Nuns deprived of their right to pursue their monastic education are also regularly subjected to physical and sexual violence. The nuns of Yachen Gar are unlikely to be exempt from such gender-based violence by the CCP authorities, as they are currently one of the targets of Xi’s most repressive policies. It also becomes extremely difficult for nuns to obtain legal aid as the CCP law enforcement agents themselves are complicit in state-authorized and gender-based violence against them. Indeed the state is the very symbol of unlimited power and discriminatory policies that silence the voices of Tibetan nuns.

Studies on colonialism highlight the narrative that colonizers’ subjugation of colonized peoples is commonly disguised as a liberation to bring modernity to the primitives. This rhetoric is often used to justify mass murder and violence. The sexual abuse of Tibetan Buddhist nuns by CCP officials can be seen as the CCP’s (atheist) attempt to subvert Buddhism by opposing the principles of its philosophy and to impose Chinese hegemony on all spheres of life in Tibet. . There are many documented cases of nuns and monks forced to marry, to carry feces on thankas, of nuns raped in prison with electric cattle prods and sexual assaults perpetrated in detention centers.Nun bodies thus became a tool for advancing the CCP’s political ambitions.

The CCP’s tactic of regrouping Tibetan monks and nuns in Tibet strikes the analogy with the mass detention of another “minority”, the Uyghur Muslims in East Turkestan (the name Uighurs give to the region the Chinese call  Xinjiang ). Just like Tibetan women, Uyghur women are harassed with the ” Beauty Project ” which bans the use of the veil to make them “look modern”. Their eventual disobedience involves arbitrary detention and extreme measures to “reeducate” them to “socialist” values ​​in what the CCP calls  transformation through education camps .

Intersectionality and oppression

Kimberle Crenshaw  has proposed a theory of intersectionality –  to describe the experiences of women of color in the United States of America as they face multiple forms of “intersecting” oppression based on their gender and racial identity. Similarly under the CCP’s rule, Tibetan women are vulnerable to multiple and converging forms of discrimination due to their ethnic and gender identity, namely being Tibetan and women. Tibetans, especially nuns (in this case), can be doubly marginalized due to the intersecting inequalities of their bodies, religious beliefs and ethnicity. Their ethnicity and gender, in an increasingly Han-dominated environment, limit their social mobility as they are usually subjected to careful surveillance by the state  that limits their ability to leave the county of origin. Monks and nuns are not allowed to return to their monasteries and must report regularly to the authorities in their respective hometowns.

One wonders what will be the fate of the monks and nuns of Yachen Gar after their eviction. Once forced to divest themselves of the monastic state and unable to continue their activities, how will these people realize their aspirations and pursue the life they want? Since most of these monks and nuns do not have the skills that lay people have to support themselves, how will they get on or earn a living? What about their fundamental human dignity? Or their freedom? How will they recover from the physical and mental violence and suffering they endured in detention if they cannot even access the health system?

Source : Bitter Winter, 08/20/2019