Serious population decreasing

5/25.2010

Choni Tsultrim

A beautiful picture of nearly hundered of thousand monks and nuns receiving teaching from a Buddhist Master XXX on face book captured my attention and recall me some of issue that we Tibetans facing today. Population decreasing. No matter what ethnical back ground or race to continue to sustain or survive under somebody else’s influencing of your own culture, language, religion, way of life and even believe and faith is so much in danger,

In Tibet case, we all know that we are struggling to maintain our ethical identity, religion, culture and much more that I don’t even need to repeat here. But because China has been practicing birth control in Tibet, most of areas Tibetan families are allow to have one child specially those who are working in verity different offices with name of government staff and families are living in urban area are on child policy. Some cases parents are fined thousands of Yuans (人民币), faced imprisonment and even suicide.

But what about Tibetans living in free world? Do we need think about to survive as nation, nationality and much more? Have this ever concerns you of population decreasing every year.
Here are six factors why our population is dramatically decreased for last couple of years:

1) One child policy in Tibet.
2) Fear of fine and imprisonment or lose job and position in office.
3) Families don’t have resource to support kids.
4) Thousands of Monks and nuns across the country contributed huge influence of population decreasing.
5) Facing world’s most populated country China with 1,337,700,000 population naturally losing purity of Tibetan identity.
6) keep send kids to monasteries and nunneries to sustain monastic communities.

Are there similar facts for the Tibetans living free world?

I got chance to talk to more than ten people from different back ground but grew up in free societies. They all agreed upon one thing that is they don’t have the resources to support multiple kids or be a plurality family. I am not sure is that right word to describe however with job, family, kids, and so much more that they will not be able to support multiple kids, specially Tibetans are living developing countries.

I am so totally understand all these Tibetans telling me about don’t have enough money and resources to supports pluralism but we have to understand that this is not a problem only Tibetans facing rather to acknowledge entire world is facing same problem.

It’s been clear Tibetans inside Tibet have no choice but to follow Chinese oppressive regime stay on one child policy. The question is Tibetans in free world keep excuse above reasons and ignore even if schools are becoming empty and closing , monasteries and nunnery are also facing closing in so many areas in Tibet and in exile communities.

What about 50 years later if we continue to ignore our population decreasing and keep all the kids freely allow to marry whoever they want. Keep put kids in Monasteries and nunneries from earlier age to become monks and nuns. For job and living convenience parents just have a single child. I don’t think China needs waste so much time and energy to sabotage Tibetan culture and identity but we Tibetans are not pay attention enough for our future population to support our unique culture. Without enough population to support our culture and identity alive, there is no need to doubt Tibet will become a written history soon. Therefore, I think Tibetans in free societies needs to take more serious responsibility not just your kids have brothers and sisters to help each other in life but more importantly think about our future survive and I think this is much more important than hold a signs regularly protest in streets.

Two days ago I participated Kalon Tripa and Mr. speaker Penpa Tsering discussion in Armenian Church in New York. This question was asked but there are no specific solution and alternative way to follow through. People are laugh and joke about it during the break. I think we are so behind or so in dark not know how serious population crises we are facing at this critical time.

I know we Tibetans are over sensitive if somebody say something about religion or some other topic that most people are scare to talk about even if we are in free societies. People easily targeted threw stone on them. I don’t want that stone on my head so I just want to clarify some of things that I mentioned in this article that I am not an anti-religious person and I am not against anything on any sets of religion in Tibetan communities. My concern is our future be as a nation with total unique survive on culture, language, every tiny bit aspect of our civilization. For that we need people.

I think there are much more researches need to be done on statistic and find conducive, alternative and best solution on this issue. How we are going to do that? Please drop some lines of your thoughts.