This is a good and fair eyewitness re****t of events in Lhasa.
There is bias but this bias is to be expected from a Western observer.
A map of Lhasa with the main temples marked out in relation to the
main street "Beijing Road" is included and helpful. I agree with the
writer that naming it Beijing Road is provocative, a constant reminder
to Tibetans of Beijing's shadow over their lives. A better name
should perhaps be Mount Everest Highway (Way, Road, Street, Avenue,
Boulevard, ?) Then this road will have a distinctive name in Tibetan,
in Chinese and in English.
WIKI: Mount Everest, also called Chomolungma or Qomolangma (Tibetan:
???????????) or Sagarmatha (Nepali: ???????) is the highest mountain
on Earth,
A week in Tibet
Tra****ng the Beijing Road
Mar 19th 2008
http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10875823
LHASA
Our Beijing correspondent happened to be in Lhasa as the riots broke
out. Here is what he saw
ETHNIC-Chinese shopkeepers in Lhasa's old Tibetan quarter knew better
than the security forces that the city had become a tinder-box. As
word spread rapidly through the narrow alleyways on March 14th that a
crowd was throwing stones at Chinese businesses, they shuttered up
their shops and fled. The authorities, caught by surprise, held back
as the city was engulfed by its biggest anti-Chinese protests in
decades.
What began, or may have begun (Lhasa feeds on rumour), as the beating
of a couple of Buddhist monks by police has turned into a huge
political test for the Chinese government. Tibet has cast a pall over
preparations to hold the Olympic games in Beijing in August. Protests
in Lhasa have triggered copycat demonstrations in several monasteries
across a vast swathe of territory in the “Tibet Autonomous Region” of
China and in areas around it (see map). Not since the uprising of
1959, during which the Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader, fled to
India, has there been such widespread unrest across this
oxygen-starved expanse of mountains and plateaus.
Years of rapid economic growth, which China had hoped would dampen
separatist demands, have achieved the opposite. Efforts to integrate
the region more closely with the rest of China, by building the
world's highest railway connecting Beijing with Lhasa, have only
fuelled ethnic tensions in the Tibetan capital. The night before the
riots erupted, a Tibetan government official confided to your
correspondent that Lhasa was now stable after protests by hundreds of
monks at monasteries near the city earlier in the week. He could not
have been more wrong.
It was, perhaps, a sign of the authorities' misreading of Lhasa's
anger that a foreign correspondent was in the city at all. Foreign
journalists are seldom given permission to visit. In January 2007, in
preparation for the Olympics, the central government issued new
regulations that supposedly make it much easier for them to travel
around the country. Travel to Tibet, however, still requires a permit.
The Economist's visit was approved before the monks protested on March
10th and 11th, but the authorities apparently felt sufficiently in
control to allow the trip to go ahead as planned from March 12th. As
it turned out, several of the venues on the pre-arranged itinerary
became scenes of unrest.
Rioting began to spread on the main thoroughfare through Lhasa,
Beijing Road (a name that suggests colonial domination to many a
Tibetan ear), in the early afternoon of March 14th. It had started a
short while earlier outside the Ramoche Temple, in a side street close
by, after two monks had been beaten by security officials. (Or so
Tibetan residents believe; the official version says it began with
monks stoning police.) A crowd of several dozen people rampaged along
the road, some of them whooping as they threw stones at shops owned by
ethnic Han Chinese—a group to which more than 90% of China's
population belongs—and at passing taxis, most of which in Lhasa are
driven by Hans.
The rioting quickly fanned through the winding alleyways of the city's
old Tibetan area south of Beijing Road. Many of these streets are
lined with small shops, mostly owned by Hans or Huis, a Muslim ethnic
group that controls much of Lhasa's meat trade. Crowds formed,
seemingly spontaneously, in numerous parts of the district. They
smashed into non-Tibetan shops, pulled merchandise onto the streets,
piled it up and set fire to it. Everything from sides of yak meat to
items of laundry was thrown onto the pyres. Rioters delighted in
tossing in cooking-gas canisters and running for cover as they
exploded. A few yelled “Long live the Dalai Lama!” and “Free
Tibet!”
For hours the security forces did little. But the many Hans who live
above their shops in the Tibetan quarter were quick to flee. Had they
not, there might have been more casualties. (The government,
plausibly, says 13 people were killed by rioters, mostly in fires.)
Some of those who remained, in flats above their shops, kept the
lights off to avoid detection and spoke in hushed tones lest their
Mandarin dialect be heard on the streets by Tibetans. One Han teenager
ran into a monastery for refuge, prostrating himself before a
red-robed Tibetan abbot who agreed to give him shelter.
The destruction was systematic. Shops owned by Tibetans were marked as
such with traditional white scarves tied through their
shutter-handles. They were spared destruction. Almost every other one
was wrecked. It soon became difficult to navigate the alleys because
of the scattered merchandise. Chilli peppers, sausages, toys (child
looters descended on those), flour, cooking oil and even at one spot
scores of small-denomination bank notes were ground underfoot by
triumphant Tibetan residents into a slippery carpet of filth.
During the night the authorities sent in fire engines, backed by a
couple of armoured personnel-carriers laden with riot police, to put
out the biggest blazes. By dawn they had also sealed off the Tibetan
quarter with a ring of baton-carrying troops and stationed officers
with helmets and ****elds in the square in front of the Jokhang temple,
Tibet's most sacred shrine, in the heart of the old district. But they
did not move into the alleys, where rioting continued for a second
day. Residents within the security cordon attacked the few Han
businesses left unscathed and set new fires among the piles of debris.
The risks of crackdown
Han Chinese in Lhasa were baffled and enraged by the slow reaction of
the security forces. Thousands of people probably lost most, if not
all, of their livelihoods (the majority of Lhasa's small businesses
have no insurance, let alone against rioting). But the authorities
were clearly hamstrung by the political risks involved. Going in with
guns blazing—the tactic used to suppress the Tiananmen Square protests
of 1989 and the last serious outbreak of anti-Chinese unrest in Lhasa
earlier that year—would risk inciting international calls for a
boycott of the Olympic games. Instead they chose to let the rioters
vent their anger, then gradually tighten the noose.
On March 15th occasional rounds of tear-gas fired at stone-throwing
protesters eventually gave way to a more concerted effort to clear the
streets. Paramilitary police began moving into the alleys, firing
occasional bullets: not bursts of gunfire, but single deliberate
shots, probably more in warning than with intent to kill. They also
moved from rooftop to rooftop to deter residents from gathering on
terraces overlooking the alleys. Rumours abounded of Tibetans killed
by security forces in isolated incidents during the earlier rioting,
but not during the final push to reassert control over the city. By
Chinese standards (not high when it comes to riot control), that
effort appeared relatively measured.
By late on March 15th the alleys were quiet. Patrols firing the odd
bullet kept most of them deserted the next day, too. A Western student
said she saw six Tibetan boys hauled out of their homes by troops,
pushed to the ground, kicked and beaten with batons. The boys were
then bundled into a bus and driven away. Troops covered up the
bloodstains on the road with a white substance, she said. The Tibetan
quarter is now gripped by fears of widespread and indiscriminate
arrests as the authorities attempt to find “ringleaders”. China's
official news agency says 105 rioters have surrendered to the police.
When residents began venturing out more normally on March 17th, the
extent of the rioting became clear. Numerous Han Chinese-owned
premises well beyond the Tibetan quarter had been attacked. Several
buildings had been gutted by fire. The gate of the city's main mosque
was charred, and the windows of the guard-house of the Tibet Daily,
the region's Communist Party mouthpiece, had been smashed.
The city was under martial law in all but name. The government said
that only police were involved in the security operation, but there
were many military-looking vehicles on the streets with their
tell-tale licence-plates covered up or removed. Some troops refused to
say what force they belonged to. Two armoured personnel-carriers were
parked in front of the Potala Palace, Lhasa's most famous tourist
attraction on the side of the hill overlooking the city, which is now
closed. Troops with bayonets were deployed along roads leading to the
city's main monasteries, which have been sealed off by police. The
rioting on March 14th and 15th involved mainly ordinary citizens, but
monks are often at the forefront of separatist unrest in Tibet.
The approaching flame
The government's decision not to declare martial law, or any emergency
restrictions, reflected its concern about the Olympics. In March 1989
the authorities imposed martial law in Lhasa to quell separatist
unrest. Its measures were barely distinguishable from those now in
force in the city. The old Tibetan area has been sealed off by
gun-carrying troops, but officials prefer to refer euphemistically to
“special traffic-control measures”. This time foreign tourists in
Lhasa have been “advised” rather than ordered to leave. On March 18th
police and troops began moving the 100 or so remaining tourists to
hotels far from the site of the riots. In 1989 foreign journalists
were expelled from Lhasa. This time your correspondent was allowed to
stay, but only until his permit expired on March 19th. No others were
allowed in.
For all the government's attempts to appear unruffled, the recent
unrest in Tibet exceeds the challenge it faced in 1989. Since March
10th protests have been re****ted not only in Lhasa's main monasteries
(Drepung, Sera and Ganden), but also at Samye Monastery about 60km
east of Lhasa, Labrang Monastery in Gansu province, Kirti Monastery in
Sichuan province and Rongwo Monastery in Qinghai province. Tibet's
traditional boundaries stretch into these provinces. Outside Labrang
Monastery Tibetans attacked Han Chinese shops on March 15th.
TibetInfoNet, a news service based in Britain, re****ted several
protests in various parts of Gansu on March 16th. Unlike in the ethnic
violence in Lhasa, it said, the protesters' main targets were symbols
of state power and government-owned properties.
The challenge is partly a security one. The martial-law regulations
imposed in Lhasa in March 1989 were not lifted until May the following
year. This time China will need to move faster to restore a semblance
of normality. On June 20th the Olympic flame, having been carried up
the Tibetan side of Mount Everest the previous month, is due to arrive
in Lhasa, where a big ceremony is planned. Barring journalists and
flooding Lhasa's streets with troops would be embarrassing. More so
would be cancelling the event.
But easing the clampdown would be risky. Many Tibetans see the
Olympics as a golden op****tunity to bring the world's attention to
their problems under Chinese rule. Tibetans living outside China,
particularly in India, have been taking advantage of the Olympics to
step up their publicity efforts. This is an annoyance to India, which
does not want to disrupt relations with China by appearing to condone
efforts to disrupt the games. Indian police have blocked efforts,
launched on March 10th by hundreds of dissident Tibetans, to stage a
march across the mountains into their homeland.
China worries too about the possibility that other ethnic minorities
in China, particularly Muslim Uighurs in the far western region of
Xinjiang, may be emboldened by Tibetan activism if it is left
unchecked. The Chinese authorities have played up re****ts about recent
alleged terrorist activities in Xinjiang (as an excuse to suppress
peaceful dissent, say sceptics), including what officials say was an
attempt by a Uighur woman to start a fire on board a flight bound for
Beijing on March 7th.
Richer, but not happier
The longer-term challenge for China is to rethink its Tibet policy.
One reason why Chinese officials appeared so surprised by the unrest
is that Tibet has not behaved like the rest of China, where rapid
economic growth appears to have staved off a repeat of Tiananmen-style
protests. A surge of government spending on infrastructure in recent
years and strong growth in Tibet's tourism industry (made easier by
the new infrastructure, especially the rail link, which was opened in
2006) have helped the region's GDP growth rate stay above 12% for the
past seven years. In 2007 it was 14%, more than two points higher than
the national rate.
Incomes have been rising fast too. Officials predict a 13% increase
this year for rural residents, a sixth straight year of double-digit
growth. Urban residents enjoyed a 24.5% increase in disposable income
last year. Robbie Barnett of America's Columbia University says a new
middle class has emerged in Lhasa in recent years. But, he says, this
has made very little difference to what Tibetans think about politics.
AFP
A man not easily angeredIn the old Tibetan quarter, many see the Han
Chinese as the biggest beneficiaries of economic growth. Hans not only
run most of the shops, but are moving into the Tibetan part of the
city. Some Tibetans believe Han Chinese now make up around half of the
city's population, with the railway bringing in ever more. (An
official, however, points out that it is now also easier for Tibetans
to reach Lhasa from distant parts of the plateau.)
The economic statistics may be misleading. Incomes may have been
growing fast on average, but in the countryside averages have been
skewed by soaring demand in the rest of China for a type of
traditional medicine known as caterpillar fungus. Tibetans in rural
areas where this fungus grows have seen their incomes rocket (and
fights have broken out among them over the division of
fungus-producing land). In the cities, many complain about fast-rising
prices of goods im****ted from other parts of China. Inflation is a big
worry elsewhere in China too, but Tibetan bystanders watching the
riots said that Chinese officials had promised the rail link would
help bring prices down. The near-empty expanse of the Lhasa Economic
and Technological Development Area suggests that officials are having
trouble replicating in Tibet the manufacturing boom seen elsewhere in
China.
Tibetans also resent the hardline policies of Tibet's party chief,
Zhang Qingli. Mr Zhang, who is a Han (China apparently does not yet
trust Tibetans to hold this crucial post), was appointed in 2005 after
a spell spent cru****ng separatism in Xinjiang. When he took charge,
neglected rules banning students and the families of civil servants
from taking part in religious activities began once more to be
rigorously enforced. Mr Zhang also stepped up official invective
against the Dalai Lama, who is widely revered. (Many Tibetans in Lhasa
defiantly hang ****traits of him in their homes, or did until the
troops moved in.) Mr Zhang urged more “patriotic education” in
monasteries, part of which involves denouncing the Dalai Lama. He
banned the display of ****traits of the Karmapa Lama, who fled to India
in 1999 and enjoys a devoted following in Tibet.
The Dalai Lama's role
Chinese officials have been divided over whether greater contact with
the Dalai Lama would help to pacify Tibet. Between 2002 and July last
year Chinese officials held six rounds of talks with the Dalai Lama's
representatives. Laurence Brahm, an American author who has tried to
mediate, says the discussions reached a high point in 2005 when the
Chinese appeared to recognise that the Dalai Lama was crucial to
resolving Tibet's tensions. At one stage the Chinese even considered
allowing the Dalai Lama to visit Wutai Mountain in Shanxi province as
a confidence-building measure, but they got cold feet. Talks
eventually foundered over China's refusal to accept the Dalai Lama's
statements that all he wants is Tibet's autonomy within China.
With troops on the streets, dialogue looks unlikely in the near
future. China has accused the “Dalai Lama clique” of organising the
riots. The Dalai Lama has denied involvement and has accused the
Chinese of carrying out “cultural genocide” in his homeland. But he
also needs to worry about the future of Han Chinese in Tibet. Many Han
business people in Lhasa say they are planning to leave. Tourism from
the interior, crucial to Lhasa's economy, is likely to be hard hit
too. In the end, China may have a point with its obsession about
economics. The recent boom has not won the loyalty or affection of
Tibetans, but a slump would make them all the more angry.
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