There has been a lockdown on information coming from Tibet on protests that began peacefully fully a week ago and then erupted in a serious of violent clashes between ethnic Tibetans, Han, and paramilitary police on Friday and throughout the weekend. As a result, much of the reporting has been about the difficulty of reporting when everyones hands are tied and people from residents of Lhasa to even foreign NGO workers and academics fear repurcussions for
speaking out.
More productively, several sites have offered historical explanations of China's involvement in Tibet: Wall Street Journal, Reuters
From what I can piece together, it started March 10th with peaceful protest involving over 300 monks in Tibet. March 10th is an especially tense time. It is the anniversary of the deadly 1959 revolt in Tibet which was quashed by the PLA and as a result of which the Dalai Lama left for India where he has been living in exile ever since. This year was the 49th anniversary of that protest against Chinese rule.
The next day, a Tuesday, over 600 monks converged on Lhasa to demand the release of monks detained in the protests. Police and military presence escalated, the number of protestors escalated and them bam! suddently it took a turn towards the violent as rioting began, reportedly ethnically motivated as Tibetans attacked Hui and Han Chinese storekeepers. You could say this is an inevitable escalation of protest, that the Dalai Lama (if he was involved in organizing the protests, a claim he denies) and other monks should have worked harder to ensure protestors were nonviolent, a central tenet of their Buddhist faith. On the other hand, the diversion of planes in midair away from Lhasa and the quick evacuation of tourists, both Chinese and foreign, out of Tibet, seems to indicate that the military anticipated this escalation and was prepared to deal with it with brutal force.
Basically, no one really knows what's going on. Everyone's on edge but twiddling their thumbs. The information lockdown has extended to Gansu, where journalists are no longer welcome after Saturday afternoon. Also, YouTube has been blocked along with websites including the LATimes, and The Guardian.
James Miles of the Economist, just happened to be in Lhasa and is the only accredited foreign journalist filing from Tibet with other journalists perched just outside in Gansu. His dispatches: March 13, March 14, March 16 include this eyewitness account of the rioting last Friday:
"The mobs, ranging from small groups of youths (some armed with traditional Tibetan swords) to crowds of many dozens, including women and children, rampaged through the narrow alleys of the Tibetan quarter. They battered the shutters of shops, broke in and seized whatever they could, from hunks of meat to gas canisters and clothing. Some goods they carried away—little children could be seen looting a toyshop—but most they heaped in the streets and set alight.
Within a couple of hours, fires were blazing in the streets across much of the city. Some buildings caught fire too. A pall of smoke blanketed Lhasa, obscuring the ancient Potala—the city’s most famous monument, which covers a hillside overlooking the city."
At heart is a very complicated issue, well explained by Peter Hessler back in 1999 in a piece for the Atlantic Monthly. His conversations with both Han Chinese and Tibetans in Tibet offer much needed perspective. Hessler can always be counted on for measured and critical readings of controversial subjects in contemporary China. His comparisons of China's mishandling of Tibet with America's own manifest destiny taking of land once belonging to Native Americans is especially worth thinking over.
ESWN author Roland Soong also reminds us of the ease to jump to conclusions by bringing back these words written by writer Wang Lixiong:
"Today, information on Tibet is duopolized by two different political propaganda machines. One machine is located in Beijing, and the other in Dharamsala. Since Tibet is to a large extent still under a state of blockade, other individuals or organizations find it very difficult to obtain independent information (especially at the macroscopic level). Like it or not, people who are concerned about Tibet are getting most of their information from these two propaganda machines.These polarized lenses make any kind of meaningful debate difficult. Without images to support either side right now, I hope people take the time during this information blackout to rethink their own assumptions on Tibet and review history.
The bad thing is that the information from these two sources is almost surely conflicting with and even completely opposite to each other. Faced with this absurd situation, the solution is to choose your position first and decide which side you want to stand with, and then you treat the information from that side as true and everything from the other side as false."
Any debate on Tibet inevitably centers around the Dalai Lama, the leader in exile of the Tibetan people and faith. He has drawn criticism for his moderation (while the Chinese government would disagree) and his current advocacy for autonomy for Tibet rather than complete independance. However he does not mince words and his use of the term "cultural genocide" to describe the Chinese government's efforts in Tibet obscures his own message of nonviolence.
It is difficult to deny China's investment in the infrastructure and economy of Tibet not to mention the education of millions of Tibetans in a region once ruled by monks who functioned like feudal warlords. This may mar the West's image of a shangri-la haven of religious purity but development is always accompanied by a give and take process of change which could be labeled "cultural genocide". Sure, blind nationalism now drives China to keep its country whole and unified from the Tibetan plateau to the deserts and oases in Xinjiang, to "renegade province" Taiwan (which no actually thinks functions as part of China), but its taming of savages idea should be very familiar to the West whose own colonial history extends from the removal of Native Americans from their lands to imperalism in its highest form in Africa - a continent still reeling from colonial occupation and in the throws of actual genocide.
The repurcussions of a truly bloodly putdown in Tibet are great - a clout of fear leading to long-term reduction in tourism, and a potential boycott of the Olympics. The Chinese government cannot afford to have a public relations nightmare on their hands. If they are confident that it is Dalai's "clique" that is inciting these protests and that they are exercising restraint in breaking up violence, then they should allow foreign journalists in to witness themselves just as violent protesting outside Chinese embassies overseas have been uploaded to YouTube. The lack of information only arouses more suspicion about the government's motives and actions. It sounds like the government has most of the violence under control for now. I pray for peace ...and for freedom of information.
Links:
Late last week, Melinda Liu at Newsweek offered some of the most cogent analysis, which wisely referenced history, and made some apt predictions that sadly bode true a few days later.
Danwei also offered some good links.
