China’s cruelty and insolence know no bounds, nor does its faith in the world’s credulousness. It not only slaughters and oppresses ethnic and religious minorities, it also has the chutzpah to tell the world that it is actually helping its victims, be it in Xinjiang or Tibet. With reports emerging that Tibetans too are being subjected to the barbarous treatment of relocation and re-education, Beijing organized a guided tour for foreign journalists to witness how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) “has improved life” in the province.

The pattern is same: journalists are taken to predetermined places and sites; they are made to meet people of the minority community; the interviewees invariably shower fulsome praise on the local authorities and laud the ideology that has robbed their liberties, rights, history, culture, and religion. In China, ideology, like power, flows from the barrel of a gun.

“Sitting in a home built by Chinese authorities near Tibet’s capital of Lhasa, one of the highest cities in the world, Sunnamdanba tells foreign journalists on a government-sponsored tour how much the Communist Party has improved life—and how irrelevant religion has become for him,” <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/china-wants-to-build-a-tibet-with-more-wealth-and-less-buddhism-2319239" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Bloomberg reported today</a>

The report quoted the 41-year-old father of two as saying, “I could have never dreamed my life would be so good.” Asked about the Dalai Lama, Sunnamdanba said: “I never met him and I don’t understand him.” Ditto with Buddhism, the religion that has for more than a millennium been the foundation of Tibetan culture. “I spend most of my time and energy now on work and making a living,” he said. “There’s less time to spend on religion.”

About a portrait of Chinese President Xi Jinping hung in his living room, he said, “None of this could have happened without the party.”

Evidently, the CCP bosses still believe that such controlled interactions will convince the world how nice they have been to the people in Xinjiang and Tibet. It didn’t occur to them that they were presenting a deracinated Tibetan, Sunnamdanba, to the world. A man who has discarded—or has been forced to discard—his faith, culture, ethos. A man who only works to make a living, who has less, if any, time for religion. A humanoid rather than a human being.

This is not to say that those who are not religious are less human; but an agnostic or atheist in a democracy is a person who has decided to become so; he is not a non-believer because the ruling party wants him to be one.

This is not the case with the Tibetans. At a meeting on Tibet issues in August, Bloomberg reported, Xi told officials to “actively guide Tibetan Buddhism to adapt to socialist society, and promote the Sinofication of Tibetan Buddhism.”

Sinofication means CCP bosses deciding what is good and what is bad in Buddhism. “Due to some outdated conventions and bad habits—particularly the negative influence of religion, people put more attention on the afterlife, and their desire to pursue better living this life is relatively weaker,” Tibet Governor Qi Zhala told reporters at a briefing that was part of the trip. “Therefore, in Tibet, we’ll need to not only feed the stomach, but also fix the mind.”

Notice the verdict on Buddhism and Buddhists: outdated conventions, bad habits, the negative influence of religion, more attention on the afterlife. Also notice “fix the mind.” The CCP has imprisoned Tibetans in its vicious ideology; the ideology surrounds them, straitjackets them; like the poisonous gas it enters their bodies, hearts, and minds. Fixes their minds.

This is totalitarianism in action: the state controlling every aspect of life, be it economic, social, religious, or cultural.

And the Chinese have the cheek to showcase their totalitarian prison to the world and claim that it is a paradise..