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The FRONTLINE Dispatch

Life in Tibet and What Comes Next

The FRONTLINE Dispatch

GBH

News

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 21 February 2025

⏱️ 18 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

After 75 years of Chinese Communist Party rule in Tibet, and as Tibet’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, approaches his 90th birthday, Tibet is at a critical juncture. FRONTLINE’s documentary Battle For Tibet goes inside the long-running struggle over the future of the mountainous region.

Award-winning producer and director Gesbeen Mohammad joins The FRONTLINE Dispatch to discuss what the film reveals about life in Tibet now, and the uncertain future for Tibetan Buddhism, language and culture. 

Drawing on undercover footage, interviews with Tibet and China experts, Chinese government statements, and accounts from Tibetans now living in exile, Battle For Tibet examines the Chinese government’s tight control over the territory, including its system of boarding schools and a vast network of surveillance inside places like monasteries. 

“Tibet is one of the world's most tightly guarded regions,” Mohammad told Raney Aronson-Rath, FRONTLINE’s editor-in-chief and executive producer. “So it felt like an important area to examine…particularly as there are various allegations that some of the policies are infringing on Tibetan’s religion and unique culture.” 

You can stream Battle For Tibet on FRONTLINE’s website, FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel, or the PBS App. 

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

This year marks 75 years of the Chinese Communist Party's rule of Tibet.

0:09.2

For the Chinese government, for the Chinese nation, the thing is very simple.

0:14.0

There is only one China, and Tibet is part of China.

0:17.8

Frontline's new film Battle for Tibet goes inside the long-running struggle over the

0:23.0

future of the region. Surveillance is at the heart of this process of subjugating the Tibetan

0:30.2

people. It's a critical moment. This year, Tibet's spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, turns 90.

0:36.4

What will happen when the time comes regarding his succession?

0:40.7

Director Gesheed Mohammed joins me today to talk about the film.

0:44.9

I'm Rainy Aronson Roth, editor-in-chief and executive producer of Frontline, and this is the Frontline Dispatch.

1:04.3

The Frontline Dispatch is made possible by the Abrams Foundation, committed to excellence in journalism, and by the Frontline Journalism Fund, with major support from John and Joanne Hegeler.

1:10.7

Gesh, thank you so much for joining me again on the dispatch.

1:13.8

Thank you so much for having me, Rainey.

1:15.5

So you've reported on China for us in the past about their pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong,

1:21.1

the plight of the Uyghurs in China.

1:23.3

What turned your focus to Tibet and why now?

1:27.3

Well, as a journalist, I find China's policies fascinating to examine to some extent because it's just such a hidden world.

1:35.0

And there's obviously censorship.

1:36.9

And under President Xi Jinping, it has become more difficult to report from there when we were making China undercover, which investigates the communist regime's mass imprisonment

1:48.3

of Muslims in Xinjiang and its use in testing of a sophisticated surveillance technology

1:53.4

against the Uyghur community, many experts told us that some of the policies implemented

1:58.5

in Xinjiang originated to some degree from Tibet.

2:02.5

And I suppose I want to just be clear that, you know, what's happening in Xinjiang and Tibet are

...

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