4th June marks the completion of Kashag’s fourth year in office. From looking after the overall welfare of the exiled Tibetan community to seeking a peaceful solution to resolve the issue of Tibet, and now introducing the measures to prevent the spread of novel coronavirus in its community, the Cabinet of the Central Tibetan Administration, Kashag is all occupied yet energetic.
To learn more about CTA’s major accomplishments and preparedness in times of crisis, President of the Central Tibetan Administration Dr Lobsang Sangay was invited for an exclusive interview with Tibet News Bureau host Tenzin Chemey.
Below is the complete transcript of the President’s interview with Tibet News Bureau. Watch the interview here.
Tenzin Chemey: May we begin with asking the Central Tibetan Administration like all other administrations around the world has been and still continues to respond to the unexpected health emergency due to the COVID-19. The health sector being the epicentre of this crisis, how do you think CTA is performing in that arena?
President Dr Lobsang Sangay: Well, it is too early to say. My guess is that the Wuhan originated coronavirus takes 5 months cycle. If you look at China it took 5 months to subside or stabilize. Then in Europe too, it is normalizing but still, there is the infection and it is still spreading on a large scale. In India, we are entering the third month so June will be the fourth and I think it will be the most serious. Having said that, the whole world was caught off-guard and even rich countries like Europe and the US their health system could not cope with it. So we got time to learn from them. As far as preparation is concerned, we are well prepared. Since there is no vaccine for the infection, the best remedy now is to maintain social distancing and quarantine. What we have done is we have put in place in almost 90% of the Tibetan settlements quarantine centres. For anyone coming from the outside of the settlements, they are mandated to quarantine for 7 to 14 days. We have prepared places for them to stay with all the needed facilities. That is the best preventive measure. All our clinics and hospitals are converted to combat the coronavirus situation in the community. Also, we have shut down almost all the settlements including schools and monasteries, and social distancing is strictly maintained at all times.
We are conducting routine sanitization drives in all the settlements in addition to regular screening. That way I think we have managed to prevent the infectious spread of coronavirus in the Tibetan community. Unfortunately, we have a few cases primarily in New Delhi and a person, unfortunately, passed away due to it. Mr Denjong who passed away was an activist and community-oriented person. Our condolences to his family. We have already warned people that the only way to prevent this pandemic is to check-in at the quarantine facility provided. So far, we have managed but let us hope for the best.
Tenzin Chemey: You have always mentioned the priority that Kashag gives to the education of the students. Are you making sure that the students of the Tibetan community are getting a quality education in this unprecedented time?
President Dr Lobsang Sangay: As soon as we took care of the health measures, parallel to that we have also placed similar priority on education. Under the leadership of the Education Department and its Kalon Dr Pema Yangchen, they have done a very good job. From kindergarten to class 12 all the courses are taught online and every class is available for the children to study.
There are two advantages to that. Firstly, those children at home if their parents are diligent and active and the students are interested, all the courses are available. We have the best of teachers teaching online and the resources are available for years to come. That way, once the pandemic is over not only you can attend classes but you also have resources available online. This is one of the big achievements. And we have made sure that students from destitute homes have internet data at homes. Likewise, those students at college who are facing financial difficulty are equipped with financial assistance. Especially, in the case of Tibetan students who were stranded in Baroda after their hostels were shut down, we had to send them home. Every one of them was sent home and most of their expenses were compensated by the CTA. In fact, we had to book a whole bus to send them to Arunachal Pradesh, Mussoorie and others. We have borne all the expenses that were required of us. In that aspect, the Department of Education has done a really good job. The Education Kalon, Secretary and all the staff should feel proud. The public also says so.
I urge the children at home to not to waste time. Atleast, spend 5 to 7 hours a day to learning and studying, especially students of class X and XII. The board exams will take place. Even though the courses may decrease by 20 to 30 per cent but there will be board exams and that will determine your life beginning from which college you will get admission to. Therefore, you must study. Parents must pay attention. All the courses are available online now.
Tenzin Chemey: The livelihood of the Tibetan people are severely affected. How are you making sure that they are well looked after and well attended to?
President Dr Lobsang Sangay: As soon as I expected that India would also shut down or impose lockdown like other countries, on March 17 itself, I spoke with the staff here at DIIR. I told them to prepare for 2 to 3 weeks of shutdown, buy the required groceries and on March 25, India was officially shut down. After that, I also informed staff that the shutdown would continue for some more time. On May 3, as India was opening up, I had warned that the opening up could increase the risk of community transmission and we had to isolate ourselves more. Then on March 17, 25 and 21, we had discussions at the cabinet-level to protect the people who are Below the Poverty Line (BPL) from the crisis and address their urgent needs. Accordingly, we had issued directives and on April 3, the directive went to the Department of Home and to all the settlement officers. As per our directive, the settlement offices were instructed to ensure door to door delivery for those above the age of 65 and are registered under the Destitute or BPL. We have also distributed food essentials for those who are not registered as destitute but were facing shortages of food or means of livelihood amid the lockdown. By April 15, over 1000 Tibetans were provided with all the food essentials. Those under the BPL further categorised in four were all taken care of with stipends and additional advance stipend and food security.
Once you are in the BPL list, you are taken care of for life under the CTA poverty alleviation scheme. We have also asked for extra funding and accordingly, have distributed it as advance relief for them to ensure they have secured for the next 3 months. Another category in the BPL list are the children from the destitute household who can’t afford tuition fees and all of them have been covered as well. This time we have made sure that all the students could access online available resources. High school students and college students received Rs 2000 and Rs 5000 respectively to buy internet data. Hence they are all taken care of. Thanks to leadership and kindness of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the elder generation that today all the Tibetans under the BPL are taken care of for a lifetime. Thankfully since 2011 when there were more than 3000 people under BPL, it has been decreasing every year. Either their families have immigrated and their livelihoods have hence improved and others have found means of livelihood. Although the numbers are decreasing, we still continue to take care of them for life. This time we have even made sure that they have enough money in their pockets and bank account and atleast 3 times and in some cases 5 to 6 times we have distributed food essentials. As per the advice of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, our first commitment is to take care of the elderly, the poor and needy, those with physical and mental ailments and the youth. We see many migrant workers walking home and even in Switzerland, several thousand people were lining up for hours for grocery. We do not have these kinds of crisis. CTA has provided for and fulfilled the basic requirements of Tibetans in settlements.
Tenzin Chemey: Moving to one of the primary tasks of Kashag, ie., advocacy for Tibet, where the current limitations and restrictions on public gathering and many activities related to advocacy, campaign, lobbying can not be carried out right now. Do you think CTA is running behind its schedule with regards to advocacy-related activities?
President Dr Lobsang Sangay: I hope not, for example, as soon as the whole world shut down in March, and the debate arose as to all the Office of Tibet had to work from home, they could not travel, whether our month-long campaign in regard to the Panchen Rinpoche from April to May should continue or not, since there was such limited time and there were 2 views, some saying we should not because all the offices shut down anyways, no one is going to take any offer of petition that we are going to submit. Nonetheless, we went ahead and I suggested we should go ahead and do online campaign. The coronavirus originated in China, they are shutting us down but our Tibetan cause can not be shut down so we will go virtual and we did lobbying. I think we sent a petition and some 145 organisations cosigned the petition, we submitted to the relevant UN agencies. At the end of the Panchen Lama campaign,180 MPs signed up, 15 countries issued statements and news media from BBC to CNN to New York Times, all covered Panchen Rinpoche issue, so that shows that we have been very active, and in fact in the last 15-20 years, this is the first time we got such major coverage and support on Panchen Rinpoche so that shows that Chinese government may try to shut down the world and coronavirus may shut down many of our offices but our activism and campaign will continue. Similarly, the Tibetan Policy and Support Act the House passed and now it’s in the Senate, where we are making efforts to make sure that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee debates and then passes it. So they tried once and there are so many agendas, they debated and passed some with agendas, but the Tibet issue is still pending, hopefully, there will be debate and then the full Senate will vote and we will have the Tibetan Policy Support Act. So on every count, we are making efforts. And recently, with the Indo-China border issue and some controversial statement made by P.Stobdan, we made sure that all these things are answered. We are out there in some of the major Indian media and newspapers have covered it, so politically, we are very active.
Tenzin Chemey: The Central Tibetan Administration has approved 33 million rupees for its COVID-19 programme, as we all know the cost incurred as a result of CTA’s response to COVID-19 is of course, unexpected. How are you managing funds in these unforeseen circumstances? Is there any kind of new experiences that you learned from this, any lesson as an administration?
President Dr Lobsang Sangay: Yes, several and one challenge is always, CTA even though it’s a small exile entity, a freedom movement but if you look at the rules and regulations, it’s like a cobweb, so many rules and regulations so when the emergency happened related to COVID-19, we all were caught off-guard like many of the countries as you can see and then some of which we managed now, we found an emergency clause where we could seek funding from the Parliament and we were sanctioned 15 million and another 10 million rupees because there were many families, especially in urban areas, outside the settlement, doing business or rent places, they couldn’t pay rent or make a living, so we said we could give 5000 rupees each to 1000 families but then the applicants increased to 2000 and then we managed to distribute 1 crore to all of them so even though it’s double the amount we expected but nonetheless, we said we should go ahead and distribute from our sources and then we applied to the PRM from the US government because it’s easy to say you should be prepared from health point of view to prevent pandemic but so many expenses from quarantine centres,PPEs, sanitisation,hospitals so we then managed to get the funding and done that. As you mentioned, for below poverty section, we have made sure that they have money to spend in case of anything they need, so now we have also applied for some funding from USAID because many people can not do agricultural work, summer business, taxi and winter business, how do we help them by giving zero interest rate loans. All these things are planned, as per plan we have approached it systematically, from health to education to political to poor people to economy, things I have put in place and we are executing it as we move forward so far we have managed it.
Tenzin Chemey: As an administration based in a country not your own and in such kind of unprecedented times, what lessons did you learn?
President Dr Lobsang Sangay: One big lesson that the whole world learned is that once you are physically shut down, how do you function? Because in the old world, meeting people, coming to office is the norm, you have to be friendly, now the new normal is you have to maintain social distance, more people more risk, so when CTA was shut down our biggest worry was now what do we do about education, how can we take care of health, the old, the sick and the poor. But we found out like many countries that it is quite difficult to function online. Now we have a plan, a task force, how do we move from manual-based to e-governance of CTA, that’s the plan. So we have already ordered and sought funding for 200 or so laptops and they all are coming and we have put in software at SARD where staff members can log in at 9 am and then can see their functions on an hourly basis at the end of the day you can put all the things that you have done for the day. On a weekly basis, you can see who is performing, who’s not, so those kinds of software in place, and training is being provided to all the departments and with all these laptops that will be distributed, we will move from manual-based to e-governance CTA, that’s the biggest lesson we learned so that even in future when there is pandemic CTA will be open and our movement will continue.
Tenzin Chemey: In the last year’s 10th December statement, you have announced that the CTA will observe or dedicate the year 2020 to thank His Holiness the Dalai Lama, as we see half the year has passed now, do you have any plans to extend this gratitude year or how are you planning to begin observing the ‘Thank you Dalai Lama year’?
President Dr Lobsang Sangay: His Holiness is the life and soul of Tibetan people, he is our heartbeat, we are very grateful to him for all the contributions he has made towards Tibetan movement and people. So now He is approaching 85 years and we dedicated this year as a gratitude year and we had planned activities from April 1 to March 3. Now because of the coronavirus, we got caught off guard and many offices shut down so we could not do much but having said that we had a discussion at the Cabinet/Kashag and now have decided that all the activities will begin from July 1 and then carry on till June end next year because TIPA also has its summer event which will start in early July which is dedicated also to His Holiness and then the July 6 will be His Holiness’ birthday. Last year, His Holiness had kindly agreed to attend the birthday personally and I had invited the US ambassador to India as a Chief guest, he had also agreed. In fact, the ambassador had called me saying he is willing and happy to come and participate. Now in a week or two we will decide, so we will have an event, what kind we will see, then there are activities related to schools and students, Health also, through the Home department, so on so forth. All the activities will begin from July on and then we will, of course, celebrate in some form, but it will be modified given the circumstances but yes we will observe this gratitude year to His Holiness the great 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet.
Tenzin Chemey: The 4th year in office has been completed, looking back at the past year, what do you think is the Kashag’s biggest achievement?
President Dr Lobsang Sangay: I will be, in fact, all of my colleagues will be, we have made it a norm to speak more in detail in the month of August because August 8 is the 9th year of my Sikyong’s term. So all of my colleagues will come out and share what they have achieved and report to the general public. But last year, you can see Tibet Support and Policy Act in the US House was a major achievement with 392 votes in the US House and to the Senate and then internationally, our participation everywhere was maintained and the funding has increased, all the activities within India have gone on very well. As far as education has been the number 1 priority, performance of class 10 and 12 has been very good last year. In fact, I was surprised that when I went to Ladakh and Bihar and many places, most of the states in India, their pass percentage of class 12 from 50% to 80% of government schools, they think is really great if it’s 75%, our’s is 98% to 99% so if we have one school get 90% we’re very disappointed so even you compare it to India or South Asia or South-east Asia, our performance in our circumstances has been very good so in the last 9 years, in the 4 years we have improved on things that we have been doing, and then we keep doing better and then you see the transformation of Gangkyi, you don’t want to list too many things.