Riots spreading in Tibet

[Shroom Man 777]

I wonder. When Peak Oil and Global Warming and whatnot fucks the world over, and China experiences these hardships, won't that cause an even FURTHER explosion of these bottled up and repressed dissident sentiments?

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I wonder. When Peak Oil and Global Warming and whatnot fucks the world over, and China experiences these hardships, won't that cause an even FURTHER explosion of these bottled up and repressed dissident sentiments?

The Chinese however, have shown from time to time, to be very very efficient and brutal with squashing dissent.

[Falkenhayn]

MSNBC

Tibet protests spread to Chinese provinces

BEIJING - Violence in Tibet spilled over into neighboring provinces Sunday where Tibetan protesters defied a Chinese government crackdown. The Dalai Lama warned Tibet faced “cultural genocide” and appealed to the world for help.

Protests against Chinese rule of Tibet were reported in neighboring Sichuan and Qinghai provinces and also in western Gansu province. All are home to sizable Tibetan populations.

“They’ve gone crazy,” said a police officer in Sichuan's Aba county, her voice trembling over the phone as the main government building there came under siege.

The officer, who declined to be named, said a crowd of Tibetans hurled gasoline bombs, burning down a police station and a market in the county’s main town, and set fire to two police cars and a fire truck.

The India-based Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy said at least seven people have been shot dead in the county. There was no way of immediately confirming the claim.

One ethnic Tibetan resident in Aba said there were sounds like gunshots and there was widespread talk of 10 or more dead.

“Now it’s very tense. There are police going around everywhere, checking and looking over people for injuries,” said another resident of Aba, adding that many of the rioters were students of a Tibetan-language high school.

Other protests
In Qinghai province, 100 monks defied a directive confining them to Rongwo Monastery in Tongren city by climbing a hill behind the monastery, where they set off fireworks and burned incense to protest the crackdown in Tibet.

Businesses were shuttered, and about 30 riot police with shields took up posts near the monastery. Police forced journalists to delete photographs of police.

In western Gansu province, more than 100 students protested at a university in Lanzhou, according to Matt Whitticase of London-based activist group Free Tibet.

A curfew was imposed in Xiahe city in Gansu province on Sunday, a day after police fired tear gas on a 1,000 protesters, including Buddhist monks and ordinary citizens, who had marched from the historic Labrang monastery.

Large communities of ethnic Tibetans live far outside modern Tibet in areas that were the Himalayan region’s eastern and northeastern provinces of Amdo and Kham until the communist takeover in 1951. Those areas were later split off by Beijing to become the Chinese province of Qinghai and part of Sichuan province.

'Cultural genocide,' Dalai Lama says
Sunday's demonstrations come after protests in the Tibetan capital Lhasa escalated into violence Friday, with Buddhist monks and others torching police cars and shops in the fiercest challenge to Beijing’s rule over the region in nearly two decades.

“Whether intentionally or unintentionally, some kind of cultural genocide is taking place,” said the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader. He was referring to China’s policy of encouraging the ethnic Han majority to migrate to Tibet, restrictions on Buddhist temples and re-education programs for monks.

He told reporters in Dharmsala, the north Indian town where Tibet’s self-declared government-in-exile is based, that an international body should investigate the government’s crackdown on the Lhasa protests.

Tibet was effectively independent for decades before Chinese communist troops entered in 1950. The latest unrest began March 10 on the anniversary of a 1959 uprising against Chinese rule of Tibet.

The protests are an embarrassment for China, coming just weeks before the Beijing Summer Olympics ceremonies kick off with the torch relay, which is set to pass through Tibet.

Thubten Samphel, a spokesman for the Dalai Lama’s government in exile, said multiple sources inside Tibet had counted at least 80 corpses since the violence broke out Friday. He did not know how many of the bodies were protesters. On Friday, the exiled government said at least 30 protesters had been killed by Chinese authorities and the number could be as high as 100.

The official Chinese Xinhua News Agency has said at least 10 civilians were burned to death Friday. The figures could not be independently verified because China restricts foreign media access to Tibet.

Calm in Tibet's capital
Lhasa appeared to remain under a curfew on Sunday, though some people and cars were seen on the streets during daylight. The government has not announced the curfew but residents said authorities have warned them not to go outside for several days now.

Hong Kong Cable TV said about 200 military vehicles each carrying dozens of armed soldiers, drove into the center of Lhasa on Sunday. The footage showed mostly empty streets, but for armored and military vehicles patrolling and soldiers searching buildings.

Loudspeakers on the streets repeatedly broadcast slogans urging residents to “discern between enemies and friends, maintain order.”

Xinhua said most shops in the Old Town area of Lhasa, which saw the brunt of the violence, were still closed Sunday. It said some shops in other parts of the town had reopened.

China’s communist government is hoping Beijing’s hosting of the Aug. 8-24 Olympics will boost its popularity at home as well as its image abroad. But the event has already attracted international scrutiny of China’s human rights record and its pollution problems.

International criticism of the crackdown in Tibet so far has been mild, with no threats of an Olympic boycott or other sanctions.

"What is happening in Tibet and Beijing's responses to it will not affect the games very much unless the issue really gets out of control," said Xu Guoqi, a China-born historian at Kalamazoo College in Michigan.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called Sunday on China “to exercise restraint in dealing with the protests.”

Rice said she was “concerned by reports of a sharply increased police and military presence in and around Lhasa.” Her statement urged China to release those jailed for protesting.

International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge said Saturday he opposed an Olympic boycott over Tibet.

The latest unrest began Monday on the anniversary of a 1959 uprising against Chinese rule.

Initially, the protests were led by Buddhist monks demanding the release of other detained monks. Their demands spiraled to include cries for Tibet's independence and turned violent Friday when police tried to stop a group of protesting monks. Pent-up grievances against Chinese rule came to the fore, as Tibetans directed their anger against Chinese and their shops, hotels and other businesses.

Amid the clampdown that followed, foreign tourists in Lhasa were told to leave, a hotel manager and travel guide said, with the guide adding that some were turned back at the airport.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

A little more detail to the violence which is turning into an ethnic issue...
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/ ... 53/1/.html

CHENGDU, China: Enraged Tibetan youths embarked on a rampage of destruction against Chinese businesses in Lhasa that left parts of the once-fabled city in ruins, according to one tourist who saw the protests.

Juan Carlos Alonso, 46, a Spaniard staying on Beijing Street in the old quarter near some of Lhasa's holiest shrines, recounted how he saw Tibetan anger toward the Chinese boil over into violence.

"The purpose was to destroy everything on that main street, beginning with all the Chinese stores and restaurants," Alonso told AFP after arriving in Chengdu airport late Sunday before catching a flight home.

"The restaurant owners and those Chinese on the street had to hide," said the former employee of a German engineering firm who had a first-hand view of the onslaught in the streets of Lhasa on Friday.

"They (the Chinese) lowered the shutters, but the Tibetans kicked their way in, dragging people out, beating them with stones. There were knifes, stones, machetes, butcher knifes -- they were using everything that came to hand."

"Many Chinese were running for their lives," Alonso said, estimating that he had seen at least 35 ethnic Chinese covered in blood, but had not seen any dead.

Describing the masses of rioters as mainly Tibetan men in their late teens with only a few monks in the crowd, he said that in front of the Banakshol hotel where he was staying, all the stores and restaurants had been ransacked.

"There are none left, they've all been burnt," he said.

Alonso, who arrived in the city on Wednesday, said the tension between Tibetan and Chinese police had been palpable before youths exploded with rage.

The unrest in Lhasa began on March 10, the 49th anniversary of a failed Tibetan uprising that led the Dalai Lama to flee into exile in India. China's atheist communist rulers have controlled the devoutly Buddhist region since 1951.

"I was not afraid," continued Alonso. "I knew they weren't going after me. It would be one thing if they said 'get the Spaniard,' but the Tibetans were going after the Chinese."

"One girl, they grabbed her on the street and took her towards a door before kicking and stoning her. The girl was crying out for help."

As vehicles, storefronts and restaurants burned late Friday, the Chinese military rolled in with tanks and armoured vehicles. Alonso said he and a Dutch couple he had befriended knew it was time to escape.

"There was a time (Friday night) when shots were fired. Then on Saturday morning there were shots -- several bursts of them."

"With every passing moment, there were more and more soldiers. We said, 'we're leaving'."

As Alonso and his friends cut through back streets swarming with heavily armed Chinese troops, the Spaniard said parts of the ancient city were already in ruin.

Buildings and cars burned, while all manner of goods -- rice, flour, meat, dresses, textiles, desks, chairs -- littered the streets.

"At one point, one super aggressive Chinese military guy came up to us yelling," Alonso said.

"The guy grabbed his gun, shot bang, bang, bang into the air. I thought to myself, 'He better not drop his machine gun.'"

With foreign journalists being denied entry into Lhasa, it is impossible to determine how many people were killed in the violence.

Thirteen people were killed, the chairman of Tibet's government, Qiangba Puncog, told reporters in Beijing. Exiled Tibetan groups say about 80 Tibetans were killed, and possibly many more.

"Both sides are victims here. That's the way it is when politics are involved," Alonso said. - AFP/ac

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... id=topnews

Beijing's Crackdown Gets Strong Domestic Support
Ethnic Pride Stoked by Government Propaganda

By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, March 17, 2008; A12

BEIJING, March 16 -- In the West, the name Tibet has long evoked unspoiled Himalayan landscapes, cinnamon-robed monks spinning prayer wheels and a peace-loving Dalai Lama seeking freedom for his repressed Buddhist followers.

Here in China, people have embraced a different view; they regard Tibet as a historical part of the nation and see its sympathizers in the West as easily fooled romantics. Thanks to government propaganda, but also to ethnic pride, most Chinese see the Dalai Lama and his monks as obscurantist reactionaries trying to split the country and reverse the economic and social progress that China has brought to a backward and isolated land over the past 58 years.

The violent protests by Buddhist monks and other Tibetans that exploded in Lhasa on Friday, therefore, have generated widespread condemnation among the country's majority Han Chinese. In street conversations, Internet discussions and academic forums, most Chinese have readily embraced the government's contention that the violence resulted from a plot mounted by the Dalai Lama from his exile headquarters in India.

Against that background, the Communist Party has met with broad popular approval in vowing to crack down on the rioters -- most of whose victims were Han Chinese -- and in qualifying the "impudent" Dalai Lama as a "master terror maker" who has hoodwinked the West with his appeals for peace. While the rest of the world invokes the Beijing Olympics and advises restraint, Chinese specialists and the public have urged the government to move decisively -- and gamble that the Olympics will not be spoiled.

"The riot in Lhasa was caused by the Dalai Lama," said Zhang Yun, a professor at the government-sponsored Chinese Center for Tibetan Studies in Beijing.

"The monks are very easily influenced by their religious leader, so they are irrational compared to other types of people," he added. "I don't believe any country in the world would allow anything that would destroy social order and ruin people's lives. There is a lot of prejudice against the Chinese government. People believe all that stuff about the Dalai Lama, and that the Chinese government is all wrong. But actually, the reality is not like that."

Jorge Chiang, a stylishly dressed Hong Kong businessman on a trip to Beijing, said he, too, believed the bloody rioting was set off on orders from the Dalai Lama. Now, he predicted, the Chinese government will use the violence as a reason to round up the most prominent activist monks and "tighten its control over Tibet."

"I believe the government is capable of resolving this situation," said a young woman walking in central Beijing on a brilliant spring afternoon. "It's not the first time this has happened."

An Internet commentator who identified himself as Roomx said Buddhist monks have no more right than anybody else to torch shops and kill the Han Chinese businessmen inside. "They are all Chinese citizens," he added. "The monks who are connected to this conduct have to be arrested. Otherwise, it is not in conformity with rule by law."

Dramatizing how broadly such views are held even among the computer-savvy young generation, similar outrage exploded on the Internet after the Icelandic pop singer Bjork capped a concert in Shanghai on March 2 by shouting "Tibet! Tibet!" after a song about independence. Censorship officials huffed about how her gesture was out of place and pledged to tighten controls over foreign performers in China.

The Tibet Autonomous Region's local government issued an announcement after the riots saying the Dalai Lama and his followers instigated the violence "intending to break Tibet away from the motherland." Their allegation reflected China's long-standing complaint that the Dalai Lama, although he preaches limited autonomy, in fact has not abandoned his campaign to make Tibet and its 2.8 million residents fully independent from China.

For those with long memories in Beijing, that has always been the situation. The Dalai Lama, now 72, led a violent uprising with help from the Central Intelligence Agency after Chinese troops reimposed rule from Beijing in 1950. The subversion campaign failed, and he was forced in 1959 to flee on horseback to India, where he has lived in exile for half a century. It was to mark the anniversary of his dramatic flight over the Himalayas that anti-China demonstrations in Lhasa got started last Monday.

Tibet, a 750,000-square-mile territory sitting between the Himalayan and Kun Lun mountain ranges, was more or less part of various Chinese empires over the centuries, paying fealty but often too remote to be totally controlled. With the Dalai Lama as its leader, however, Tibet governed itself as an independent nation while China was torn by the upheavals of the first half of the 20th century. So for Beijing officials and the public they have educated through propaganda, the Dalai Lama is less a devout Buddhist than a secessionist rebel.

"Now the blaze and blood in Lhasa has unclad the nature of the Dalai Lama," said an editorial from the official New China News Agency. "And it's time for the international community to recheck their stance toward the group under the camouflage of nonviolence, if they do not want to be willingly misled."

The Dalai Lama's hold on people's imagination in the West has long irritated the Chinese government. The New China News Agency editorial described his Nobel Peace Prize, awarded in 1989, as "tainted" by Friday's rioting. The Congressional Gold Medal, which injected a chill into U.S.-China relations last October, turned out to be a "fig leaf" for the "rhetoric lama to sell his deceitful philosophy," it said.

In any case, the Chinese government has portrayed its presence in Tibet as beneficial for the population, citing the breakup of traditional serfdom in the countryside, improved health care and school construction. A Beijing-to-Lhasa train that began service in July 2006 was designed to further accelerate economic development, bringing in tourists and taking out minerals.

The economic development has been accompanied by an influx of Han Chinese who, Tibetan nationalists complain, have tightened their grip on all the economic and political levers. The Han Chinese who were killed in Friday's rioting, for instance, were identified as shop owners and employees singled out by Tibetans resentful of their economic domination.

The Chinese arrivals, Tibetans and their supporters abroad say, have submerged Tibetan culture and Buddhist traditions by drawing the territory more closely into the rest of China. Signs along the main street leading to Lhasa's celebrated Jokhang Temple, they note, are just as likely to be written in Chinese as Tibetan, and the saleswomen tend to speak Mandarin rather than the region's own tongue.

A Chinese Tibet specialist in Beijing who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the tensions said the situation was inevitable as China pursues economic development of the region. Like the American West in the 19th century, he said, modernization of China's West in the 21st century is bound to dilute the traditional Tibetan ways so esteemed abroad.

"China's government does not intend to destroy Tibetan culture," he said. "But with the economy developing, the culture will change gradually, the same as in other places in the world."

Obviously, some people yearn for the older days of backwardness which apparently is part of their culture to be technologically backward, and also, at this rate they are going, the PLA would merely squeeze harder and harder. In short, it's a general uprising, and there are reports of 200 or so military vehicles moving in and other war materiel as well. Things are not going to be pretty, but the rebels should have known that this was bound to happen anyway.

[Darth Wong]

Ahhh, our old friends: ethnic and religious separatism. What would we do without your loving influence?

[darthbob88]

Ahhh, our old friends: ethnic and religious separatism. What would we do without your loving influence?

Agreed. Bringing people together so they can tear others apart. Gotta love it.

[K. A. Pital]

Well, who'd guess. With religion, you pretty much should know this should be so: Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, hey, anywhere you pick and see religious rebels you pretty much know it will be so.

People who use their "culture" as a pretext for "we'll remain backwards no matter what you do and we'll even rebel if you try to change that!".

[Sidewinder]

Damn it, I visited Qinghai in 1997! I saw NOTHING that would suggest ethnic tension there would spill over like that! I'd probably be equally shocked if I visited Yugoslavia in 1981 and then heard about the wars that tore apart that nation.

I have to wonder what the Tibetans were thinking when they began rioting. Were they expecting the US to do what it did in Kosovo and send troops to support the independence movement? For India to do so? For Buddha to magically grant them superpowers so they can overpower the PLA units sent to quell the riots?

[TithonusSyndrome]

Ahhh, our old friends: ethnic and religious separatism. What would we do without your loving influence?

Agreed. Bringing people together so they can tear others apart. Gotta love it.

I strongly recommend John Hartung's "Evolution of In-Group Morality" on the subject, for what it's worth.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Damn it, I visited Qinghai in 1997! I saw NOTHING that would suggest ethnic tension there would spill over like that! I'd probably be equally shocked if I visited Yugoslavia in 1981 and then heard about the wars that tore apart that nation.

I have to wonder what the Tibetans were thinking when they began rioting. Were they expecting the US to do what it did in Kosovo and send troops to support the independence movement? For India to do so? For Buddha to magically grant them superpowers so they can overpower the PLA units sent to quell the riots?

The Ethnic tension seems rooted in the Tibetan Youth Congress, which I taken to rename the "Tibetan Youth Angst Congress" really.

[CJvR]

The new Commie-Lama naturally fully supports whatever his commie masters do to "his" people.

[hongi]

The Dalai Lama has balls:

Dalai Lama to resign if violence worsens

The Dalai Lama threatened Tuesday to step down as leader of Tibet's government-in-exile if violence committed by Tibetans in his homeland spirals out of control.

Demonstrations in Tibet turned increasingly violent last week, and the Dalai Lama, speaking to reporters, urged his countrymen to show restraint.

He said that "if things become out of control" his "only option is to completely resign."

While much of the violence in Tibet has been directed against protesters, there have also been reports of Tibetan demonstrators attacking shops and burning cars.

Later, one of his top aides clarified the Dalai Lama's comments.

"If the Tibetans were to choose the path of violence he would have to resign because he is completely committed to nonviolence," Tenzin Takhla said. "He would resign as the political leader and head of state, but not as the Dalai Lama. He will always be the Dalai Lama."

[Buddha]

The way things are going and how this has turned nasty all make me not support this anymore. I can't support somthing that could mean people being killed even if the people of Tibet have been oppressed for a long time by the Chinese. About the Dalai Lama resigning, I don't think he can do that because of how they think he is the earthly incarnation of Chenrezig and not elected into office. The Chinese do not completely understand this and this has been an issue for them in chosing a course of action. Yes, backwards as it is, it could be worse and just remember somthing. Buddhists are not like the Muslims as this kind of behavoir is very unusual, no matter how much of a backwards culture they have.