Chinese Policemen Arrest Doctor in Mongolia
The series of posts issuing from the news is solely intended to gather media data, to be used as objects of study and regular source of information on contemporary Tibetan medicine. The information presented therein may not represent the opinion of Laurent Pordié.
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"The Chinese government is anxious to stamp out any cultural ties between Mongolians and Tibetans following last year’s uprising protests across the Tibetan Plateau"
Article originally published in TibetanReview.net, on October 26, 2009.
Title: “China Seizes and Takes Back Doctor from Mongolia“Police from Chinese-ruled Inner Mongolia have, with help from the local police, seized and taken away from independent Outer Mongolia on Oct 3 a doctor of Tibetan medicine who was seeking UN asylum there with his wife and daughter. He had left Inner Mongolia after being involved in a series of disputes with the Chinese authorities over the right to maintain the Mongolian and Tibetan characteristics of a medical school he had set up in Ordos city.
Four Chinese police officers sent from China accompanied by more than 10 Mongolian police detained Batzangaa, his wife Bayanhuaar, and their nine-year old daughter, reported Radio Free Asia online Oct 21. The doctor, 35-year-old Batzangaa, was taken into custody as he stepped out of the UN High Commission for Refugees office building in Ulaanbaatar and was whisked away to Ordos city in Inner Mongolia on the same day. No deportation proceedings of any kind were held, New York-based Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center (SMHRIC) was cited as saying.
Batzangaa’s wife, released from detention afterwards with her daughter but placed under house arrest, was notified of her husband’s formal arrest on Oct 8.
Batzangaa had developed a network of traditional Mongolian-Tibetan medical practitioners around Inner Mongolia and had, in 2001, set up the Ordos Mongol-Tibetan Medical School in Dongsheng. The school enrolled more than 1,000 Mongolian students who began practicing Mongolian medicine, providing affordable, sometimes even free, medical treatment to poverty-stricken rural Mongolian communities. He later set up an affiliated hospital with the coordination of Henan County Mongol Tibetan Hospital in Khukhnuur province.
SMHRIC has cited official documents as showing the authorities placed the school under surveillance, alarmed by its growing ties with Tibetans and Mongolians, and cancelled its land lease.
The report also cited the Chairman of Inner Mongolian People’s Party Xi Haiming as saying the Chinese government was anxious to stamp out any cultural ties between Mongolians and Tibetans following last year’s uprising protests across the Tibetan Plateau.
“I think that this case is very political, because at the beginning of this dispute the authorities were saying that it had nothing to do with money, that it wasn’t an economic problem,” Xi was quoted as saying. “They are too sensitive about the use of the word ‘Tibetan’.”
The ancient Tibetan “science of healing” gets official recognition in India
Village clinic in Ladakh © Nomad RSI
For the practitioners of Tibetan medicine in India, the 10 September 2009 will remain a historical date. The Union Cabinet of India gave official recognition to “Sowa-Rigpa”, the ancient Tibetan “science of Healing”, by approving the amendment of the Indian Medicine Central Council Act, 1970. The meeting was held under the Chairmanship of Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India. Sowa Rigpa will become an official medical system in India after the next Parliament Session, and join the already well-established Ayurveda, Siddha, Yoga, Naturopathy and Homeopathy.
The news has come as a relief for many institutional or institutionally trained Indian practitioners (the amchi), who hoped to have their system integrated in the AYUSH Department of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. This claim lies in the early establishment of Tibetan medicine in the north-western Himalayan kingdoms around the tenth or eleventh centuries, and is justified by its relatively autonomous development since then. They thus aimed to receive stronger economic and structural support, but also to ward off any problem that could take them to court.
“We could get imprisoned if we have a problem with a patient because today we need to be legal. Although we have practised for over a thousand years here, we are not legal,” confided to me a practitioner in the winter 1999. Interestingly, this man was paid by the government and was in-charge of a clinic in a government-sponsored hospital. His remarks shed light on a great paradox: although this medicine was not fully recognized by the central government of India, support issuing from the state and the central government did exist in the form of governmental amchi, a research unit and a state-sponsored Tibetan medical school.
In Ladakh, a region in north-western Himalayas, the recognition of their practice is a struggle that the institutional amchi began in the early 1990s, and achieved to obtain nearly two decades later, by making alliance with other regional groups and under the local leadership of Dr. Padma Gyurmet, Research Officer at the Sowa Rigpa Research Unit.
The situation nevertheless poses some thorny problems, as concerns the fate of the village, non-institutional amchi. A comparison with the modern development of Ayurveda in India proves to be useful.
Like Sowa Rigpa, Ayurveda is scholarly medicine classically learnt during long years with a master holding his knowledge by hereditary lineage. This type of knowledge transmission, which still benefits from a strong traditional legitimacy, tends to disappear today. The Ayurvedic masters are replaced by therapists much poorly educated, but legally recognized and licensed, in the numerous Ayurvedic colleges of the country. Their practice shows a pronounced integration of concepts, tools and diagnostic methods, nosological and etiological categories relating to biomedicine (‘modern medicine’ or ‘allopathy in India), in both institutional and private settings. Medical research and clinical trials aiming to give proof of efficacy are widely promoted. The mass production of medicines and by-products, a significant part of which aims at the export, make them an important player in the international market for alternative medicine. The prosperous wellness industry, in which Ayurveda know profound change, attracts in India a considerable part of national and international tourists. To make short a complicated story, Ayurvedic practice is transformed (from simplifications to radical innovations) and increasingly market-oriented rather than patient-centered.
The official recognition of Sowa Rigpa is seen as good news, but careful attention must now be given not to drop out the existing ‘traditional’ practitioners, who are important members of their community and insure most of the health coverage in the Himalayan rural milieu.
Laurent Pordié
Laurent Pordié wins the Colleague Choice Award of the ICAS Book Prize 2009
Bestowal Ceremony, ICAS Book Prize, Daejeon, Korea
Laurent Pordié has recently been awarded the Colleague Choice Award of the ICAS Book Prize bestowed biannually by the International Convention of Asian Scholars, Leiden.
The ICAS Book Prize honours the best academic books in Asian studies, after a global competition including dozens of monographs and edited volumes. Laurent Pordié has received the prize for his book on “Tibetan Medicine in the Contemporary World. Global Politics of Medical Knowledge and Practice” (Routledge, 2008). The ceremony was held in Daejeon, Korea, on August 6, 2009, during the ICAS 6, taking place from August 6 to 9.
“Critical yet respectful discussions engage with the practice of Tibetan medicine both in Asia and the West and this well-produced volume is a landmark in the field which will be required reading for students and specialists alike. It is a cohesive collection, and its essays are fresh and original, as well as readable and highly informative. It will be a basic source for many years to come.”
Reading Committee ICAS Book Prize (2009)
The Ladakh Project as ‘Good Practice’ for the Convention on Biological Diversity
In situ medicinal plant conservation in the Himalayas © Nomad RSI
The project conducted by the organizations Nomad RSI and Ladakh Society for Traditional Medicines on the conservation of Medicinal Plants in Ladakh, Himalayan India, was chosen in 2009 as an example of good practice for meeting the Target 13 (Practices and Innovations in Healthcare) of the Convention on Biological Diversity.Download the entire report.
This project was initiated in 1998 by Laurent Pordié, who won the 2000 Rolex Award. Focused on research and action on the local system of medicine (sowa rigpa, or ‘Tibetan Medicine’), the project gradually developed to include medicinal plant conservation activities. Many of the region’s rare and valuable medicinal plants are under threat for a variety of reasons, including increased commercial harvesting, overgrazing by livestock, ineffective management and unsustainable collection practices, particularly of plants of which the roots or rhizomes are used in drug production.
The project aims to develop integrated conservation and healthcare initiatives which will improve access to essential medicinal plants for local healers and assist the concerned communities to take a more active stand in the management of collection sites. It is a multi-phase programme, which works towards ensuring sustainable access to medicinal plants for amchis in the long term.
On the globalization of Asian medicine (DVD)
Les médecines d’Asie aujourd’hui
Directed by Momoko Seto (Réseau Asie – CNRS/IMASIE) – 2008, 88 min (French).
Trailer (3’22″)
Over the course of history, various types of medical knowledge have crossed cultures and political borders and been grafted on to diverse therapies, some of which have interconnected histories. These processes of construction in Asian medicines continue today. Therapeutic globalization is a contemporary example, which gives to these therapeutic forms a cosmopolitan character. The transformation of these medicines correspond to varied contexts and allow over time the rise of socially and, to some extent medically, different therapies. What may be thought of as the same medical system is in fact significantly transformed when it is practised in Paris, Shanghai, Berlin or Mumbai. While Asian medicines cannot therefore be longer confined within their cultures and source societies, the foundations of their legitimacy remain there, however. In other words, the international circulation of the practitioners and their medicines underscore, sometimes reinforce, the cultural and identity dimension of medicine.
This DVD addresses these issues. It offers insights into the challenges of today’s society, such as globalization, nationalisms and cultural change, through the lens of Chinese, Tibetan and Indian medicines transformation. The movie was realised during the 3rd Congress of the Réseau Asie (CNRS-IMASIE) in Paris (Sept. 2007), at a panel coordinated by Laurent Laurent Pordié (IFP / Nomad RSI), with the participation of Anne-Cécile Hoyez (CNRS), Evelyne Micollier (IRD), Brigitte Sébastia (IFP) and Francis Zimmermann (EHESS).
This DVD ca be ordered directly to the Réseau Asie.
Project on Tibetan Medicine presented as “Good practice” by the High Council for International Cooperation
The Ladakh Project © Nomad RSI
The project laureate of the 2000 Rolex Awards is presented as an example of “Good practice” in sustainable health in the latest report of the High Council for International Cooperation (HCCI) of the French Republic (2006), pertaining to Sustainable Development and International Solidarity. Dowload the report (in French).
Nomad RSI started its activities in Ladakh (Himalayan India) in 1998. Initially, a socio-economic survey was carried out to gain an overview of Tibetan medicine in the region and a detailed understanding of the conditions facing its practitioners (known as amchis). During the year 2000, Nomad RSI established a pilot amchi health centre in an isolated area and launched a school of Tibetan medicine. In parallel, the Nomad Research Unit started a large programme of research in the anthropology of Tibetan medicine, which continues to the present day. This period also saw the beginnings of a profound change in Nomad RSI’s mode of operation, as the Ladakhi team began a gradual process of localisation, resulting in the formation of an independent NGO under Indian law, Ladakh Society for Traditional Medicines (LSTM).
Since then, LSTM has taken-over responsibility for programme development and implementation, while Nomad RSI provides technical and operational guidance. The primary concern of this partnership was the training of 16 young amchis (2000-2004) and, in subsequent years, their ongoing education, and the establishment and support of clinics in their villages of origin. This network of village-level practitioners today ensures widespread access to Tibetan medical treatment across the region and the survival of this medical system in the rural areas. Since 2004, the Nomad RSI / LSTM partnership has continued with many of its earlier activities, but has directed increasing effort towards the conservation of Himalayan medicinal plants.
