download the report - International Campaign for Tibet

INTERNATIONAL CAMPAIGN FOR TIBET
freedoms and the broader freedoms to dispose of their own
income in legal ways they choose.
Zhou Yongkang acquired a significant degree of political
power in a remarkably short period of time: less than 10
years ago, aside from being on the periphery of the CCP Central
Committee, his entire career had been spent in politically
appointed positions within China’s state-owned oil
industry. His meteoric rise has since taken him through two
ministerial-level positions, and Party Secretary of Sichuan
province. His most recent promotion in October 2007 made
him elevated to become one of only nine members of the
Politburo’s Standing Committee, the highest and most powerful
body in the CCP’s hierarchy.
Former Minister for
Public Security, Zhou
Yongkang
When he was promoted to the Politburo’s Central Committee, Zhou was also promoted
from being Deputy Secretary to full Secretary of the Political and Legislative Affairs
Committee within the CCP’s Central Committee, granting him political authority
over China’s entire police, judicial and state security structures.
A prominent feature of Zhou Yongkang’s three-year tenure as Party Secretary of
Sichuan province was a severe crackdown on the practice and teaching of Tibetan
Buddhism in the province. Two large and thriving monastic teaching institutions —
Larung Gar and Yachen Gar — which were spearheading the revival of Tibetan Buddhism
in the area, were both drastically reduced in size when many hundreds of
monks and nuns, including many Chinese devotees, were expelled and their dwellings
demolished, ostensibly because the institutes did not have official permission to
expand as much as they had. It is thought that the campaigns against the institutions
were led by Yin Fatang, who served as Party Secretary of the TAR from 1980 to 1985,
but Yin without doubt had the backing and encouragement of Zhou Yongkang.
It was also during Zhou Yongkang’s tenure as Party Secretary of Sichuan province
that the influential and highly popular religious leader in Kham, Tenzin Delek Rinpoche,
was detained on what are regarded widely as trumped up bombing charges.
Tenzin Delek Rinpoche had studied in India in the 1980s where he was recognized by
the Dalai Lama as the reincarnation of a senior lama. Upon his return to Tibet he frequently
crossed paths with the local authorities in his efforts to prevent or limit deforestation
in his local area, to open schools and old people’s homes, and to re-establish
monasteries which had been shut down or destroyed during the Cultural Revolution.
115