Mar 17, 2007

Tibet: Disapproval of Fur Fashion


Below is an excerpt from an article published by Tibet Info Net:

Pictorial evidence and other documentation collected across Tibet provide an increasingly detailed picture of the scale and circumstances of the campaigns to burn animal skins that have been running in recent weeks. Apart from a clear but unspoken demonstration of the continuing influence of the Dalai Lama, who had expressed his disapproval at the habit of wearing wildlife furs and skins and thus put the campaign in motion, the picture that emerges reveals how Tibetans have become increasingly skilled in the tightrope walk of publicly expressing their feelings while avoiding provoking the Chinese authorities. In particular, efforts to present the religiously motivated movement in terms of environmental protection, and to encourage emulation and participation through the public display of the pelts before burning them, are conspicuous. The following report gives a primarily pictorial account of the campaign at two different spots in the eastern Tibetan Ngaba Qiang & Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture (Chin: Aba), Sichuan/Kham, a stronghold of the movement.

Thangkor

The action documented here took place in Thangkor village in Dzoege (Chin: Ruorgai) county in late February, a few days before the Tibetan New Year festival. Participants were mainly nomads and semi-nomads. According to an unconfirmed source, the skins burned in Thangkor were valued at around four million yuan […]. Although a few of the participants were arrested after the action, they were released a few days later.

The situation in Lhasa around the time of the New Year is reported as having been much tighter, with police notifying the population and people travelling to the city for the pilgrimage season that any individuals involved in fur burning demonstrations would be prosecuted. Students were warned especially that, if involved, they would be expelled from their institutions. This indicates the concern of the authorities that younger Tibetans have been involved at the forefront of the movement, a fact confirmed by independent observers, and which contradicts official and other views about the allegedly waning influence of the Dalai Lama on Tibetan youths. The warnings had their effect since no skin burning events have been reported around Lhasa during this time. However, during the New Year celebration, the absence of fur trimmed outfits in the Tibetan capital was conspicuous, even on the third day of the New Years festival, on which folk religious rituals are performed dedicated to protective deities (oracle ceremonies, renewing of prayer flags, incense burning etc.) and for which people traditionally wear their best garments trimmed with leopard and other animal skins. […]

Kirti

The burning of skins in the vicinity of the Kirti monastery received particular attention due to a video that was brought from Tibet in February 2006 and shown on phayul.com and other media. Stills and additional information supplied to TibetInfoNet by a western tourist who witnessed the large scale burning on 11 February allow for a more detailed insight into that event.

Aware of the PRC authorities’ aversion for Tibetans acting under foreign influence (Chinese shorthand for the Dalai Lama and exile Tibetan circles), the organisers of the event carefully played down the religious nature of the burning. Although it took place on the occasion of the winter festival, a religious event, the site selected for the action was outside Kirti monastery precincts, although still in its direct vicinity. The monks did not take part in the event and stayed instead inside the monastery performing prayers. The event had been well prepared and a printed announcement in Tibetan was distributed to the participants […]. The announcement adopts an international environmental tone, using key phrases borrowed from official sources on environmental issues. However, the poem at the end of the announcement bears clear inspiration from religious literature. Local Tibetan officials took active part in the action, but vehemently disputed that it had anything to do with the Dalai Lama, and only reluctantly admitted the religious nature of the event. Foreign tourists were encouraged by the participants to take pictures and to show these in their countries of origin and to tell their friends. Eyewitnesses underlined the strong effect that, as in Thangkor, exhibiting the skins on a rope before throwing them on the pyre had in encouraging others. One of them said: "Although skins were continuously carried from the rope to the pyre, their number did not seem to decrease. New people turned up with new skins. In fact, it seemed the more they burnt, the more skins were put on the rope".