Letter to the editor from José Amrein-Murer in the local newspaper "Freier Schweizer"
Globi in Tibet
The Tibetan flag – today it flies again in many town halls in Switzerland and Germany, including in Küssnacht. It commemorates the illegal occupation of Tibet by China and the bloody suppression of the popular uprising on March 10, 1959 in Lhasa, but also all oppressed peoples, ethnic groups and religions.
There are about 80 million Christians in China. They, too, are suffering under Xi Jinping's increasingly radical Sinicization program. The Central Committee of the Communist Party, with its all-powerful President, is increasingly ruthless in determining what serves the state in all areas. For example, crosses had to be removed from churches and portraits of Mao and Xi Jinping hung next to images of Jesus.
Sinicization includes the gradual destruction of Tibetan culture. We keep a special eye on the children. About a million Tibetan children, some as young as four, are forced to live in boarding schools. There they are taught exclusively in Chinese and systematically indoctrinated to adopt a Chinese identity. In a recent statement, the leading committee of the Swiss parliamentary group Tibet, in which members of all political parties are represented, expressed its deep concern about this forced assimilation. He refers to a UN expert report.
But what does this have to do with Globi? The day before yesterday was the vernissage of the latest Globi book "Globi bei den Yaks" in the Rietberg Museum in Zurich. Globi encounters a seriously ill yak calf in the Graubünden Alps. In order to cure it, he agrees to seek a rare medicinal herb in the Himalayas. On his adventurous journey he meets the Tibetan people and their culture, customs, customs and habits. On the way back he even meets the humorous Dalai Lama and learns that he has something in common with him...
The entertaining book was created in cooperation with the Swiss-Tibetan Friendship Society. She is very happy to be able to present this sympathetic work on her 40th anniversary. After all, it offers an excellent opportunity to do what Tibetan children are driven to do: enjoy the unique Tibetan culture, whose main characteristics are compassion and wisdom. May it find many small and large readers.
