About Dorje Shugden > General Discussion

Dalai Lama and his actions and supporters

(1/7) > >>

lodoe:
Dear friends,
1.I found this on you tube very interesting. It was clip of dalai lama proposal of sticks.
address is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvtX9nrRcL0 Small | Large

Must see it and comment.

2.Hey! Chinese Premier hold big conference yesterday and blame Dalai Lama. Even they said to possessed many evidences and proof of his involvement. After that this morning,Dalai lama hold press conference in Dharamsala. He was completely frustrated and angry over chinese accusation in recent tibet riots. He told that he would resign as leader of exile Tibetan government if people did not stop the protests. here reuters news in this evening but it was reedited. This morning in reuters also cited that Dalai lama asked to interrogate in his involvement by searching files in office and also check his pulse, urine and stool.
Even CNN;BBC, REUTERS and all other major independent news channel are covering up Dalai Lama talks.
So, It is sure that with Dorje Shugden Issue will be also suppressed in this way by those channel. Therefore also write them to acknowledge their wrong doing to prevent further such incidents.

Dalai Lama calls for end to violence in Tibet
Tue Mar 18, 2008 4:07pm EDT 

BEIJING (Reuters) - The Dalai Lama said on Tuesday he would step down as head of Tibet's government-in-exile if that would stop bloodshed in his homeland, but China repeated its charge that he was the mastermind of a violent uprising.

His officials, based in the Indian Himalayan foothills, said they believed 99 people had died in clashes between Chinese security forces and Tibetans over the past week, including 19 on Tuesday alone.

Chinese state-run media said more than 100 people had given themselves up to police after taking part in Tibet's most intense unrest against Chinese rule for nearly two decades.

Baima Chilin, vice chairman of the Chinese-run government of Tibet, said they had been "participants, and some were directly involved in beating, smashing, looting and arson".

Authorities had set a Monday midnight deadline for rioters to hand themselves in or face tougher punishment if caught.

Premier Wen Jiabao defended the crackdown on Lhasa, capital of the mainly Buddhist mountain region, and on ethnic Tibetan areas of neighboring provinces where protests have erupted.

"There is ample fact and plenty of evidence proving this incident was organized, premeditated, masterminded and incited by the Dalai clique," Wen told a news conference in Beijing.

"This has all the more revealed the consistent claims by the Dalai clique that they pursue not independence but peaceful dialogue are nothing but lies."

RIOTS "SPONTANEOUS"

The Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule, denied the charges and said he would quit as political leader of the exiled Tibetan movement if the violence got out of hand.

"Please help stop violence from Chinese side and also from Tibetan side," the Nobel peace laureate told a news conference in Dharamsala, northern India. "If things become out of control then my only option is to completely resign."

He has said he cannot give up his role as Dalai Lama, the reincarnated spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism. He says he does not seek independence for Tibet but wants autonomy within China, which sent troops into the region in 1950.

After days of anti-China protests led by monks, the unrest in Lhasa turned violent on Friday.

Mobs attacked non-Tibetan Chinese in the streets and set fire to shops and cars, in scenes sure to horrify a Chinese Communist leadership anxious to present an image of national harmony in the build-up to the Beijing Olympics.

The Dalai Lama's spokesman Tenzin Taklha said the rioting had spread fast. "This was very spontaneous," he said.

U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Christensen told a U.S. Congressional advisory panel hearing Washington had seen no evidence rioting was orchestrated by the Dalai Lama.

OLYMPIC "SABOTAGE"

There have been reports of further demonstrations this week. An exiled rights group, the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, said on its Web site (www.tchrd.org) on Tuesday that 30 people had been arrested after protesting near Lhasa.

The group also reported three small protests and a massive military presence in Litang, an ethnic Tibetan town in Sichuan province, next to Tibet. Litang has seen unrest in the past.

Reuters was unable to confirm the reports. Phone calls to officials were not answered and foreign media are barred from traveling to Tibet without permission.

Chinese authorities have said security forces exercised restraint in Lhasa, using only non-lethal weapons, and that just 13 "innocent civilians" died.

Wen said the protesters "wanted to incite the sabotage of the Olympic Games in order to achieve their unspeakable goal".

The rights group Reporters Without Borders urged officials to boycott the Olympic opening ceremony in August over the "brutal repression" in Tibet. "Let's consider it," French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner told a news conference.

No government has called for a boycott of the Games themselves. But in Taiwan, presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou of the opposition Nationalists told reporters he would consider an Olympic boycott if elected on Saturday.

The International Tibet Support Network handed a letter to the International Olympic Committee in Lausanne calling for the route of the torch relay carrying the Olympic flame to be changed to avoid Tibet and three neighboring provinces.

In Brussels, a demonstrator was injured and four were detained when exiled Tibetans tried to force their way into China's mission to the European Union, police said. About 100 people protested in front of the Norwegian parliament.

Chinese authorities said they believed a March 7 "terrorist" incident, in which a flight to Beijing from the restive Xinjiang region had to cut short its journey, was a failed attack by separatists based abroad, state media reported.

Militant ethnic Uighurs in Xinjiang, neighboring Tibet, have long agitated for an independent "East Turkestan" for their largely Muslim people. Exiled Uighurs have said China concocted the March 7 case to justify intense controls on Uighurs.

(Additional reporting by Benjamin Kang Lim and Guo Shipeng in Beijing, Jonathan Allen in Dharamsala, Marine Hass in Brussels, Paul Eckert in Washington and Francois Murphy in Paris; writing by John Chalmers; editing by Andrew Roche)

© Reuters 2008 All rights reserved

James:


Chinese beaten mercilessly - tourists
Article from: Agence France-Presse

 
By Sam Taylor in Kathmandu

March 18, 2008 11:39pm

RAMPAGING Tibetan youths stoned and beat Chinese
people in the Tibetan capital and set ablaze stores
but now calm has returned after a military clampdown,
say tourists emerging from the Himalayan region.

"It was an explosion of anger against the Chinese and
Muslims by the Tibetans,'' 19-year-old Canadian John
Kenwood said, describing an orgy of violence that
swept the ancient city of Lhasa.

Mr Kenwood and other tourists, who arrived by plane in
Nepal's capital Kathmandu yesterday, witnessed the
unrest, which reached a climax on Friday when they
said Han Chinese as well as Muslims were targeted.

They described scenes in which mobs relentlessly beat
and kicked ethnic Han Chinese, whose influx into the
region has been blamed by Tibetans for altering its
unique culture and way of life.

Mr Kenwood said he saw four or five Tibetan men on
Friday "mercilessly'' stoning and kicking a Chinese
motorcyclist.

"Eventually they got him on the ground, they were
hitting him on the head with stones until he lost
consciousness.

"I believe that young man was killed,'' Mr Kenwood
said, but added he could not be sure.

He said he saw no Tibetan deaths.

Tibet's government-in-exile said yesterday that the
"confirmed'' Tibetan death toll from more than a week
of unrest was 99.

China has said "13 innocent civilians'' died and that
it used no lethal force to subdue the rioting.
The Tibetans "were throwing stones at anything that
drove by", Mr Kenwood said.

"The young people were involved and the old people
were supporting by screaming - howling like wolves.
Everyone who looked Chinese was attacked,'' said
25-year-old Swiss tourist Claude Balsiger.

"They attacked an old Chinese man on a bicycle. They
hit his head really hard with stones (but) some old
Tibetan people went into the crowd to make them
stop,'' he said.

Mr Kenwood recounted another brave rescue when a
Chinese man was pleading for mercy from rock-wielding
Tibetans.

"They were kicking him in the ribs and he was bleeding
from the face,'' he said. "But then a white man walked
up... helped him up from the ground. There was a crowd
of Tibetans holding stones, he held the Chinese man
close, waved his hand at the crowd and they let him
lead the man to safety.''

Reacting to the tourists' accounts, Thubten Samphel, a
spokesman for the Tibetan government-in-exile in the
northern Indian hill town of Dharamshala, called the
violence "very tragic".

The Tibetans "have been told to keep their struggle
non-violent,'' he said.

The unrest began after Tibetans marked on March 10 the
49th anniversary of their failed uprising against
Chinese rule in 1959. Then, Tibet's Buddhist spiritual
leader the Dalai Lama trekked through the Himalayas
and crossed into India, making Dharamshala a base
after the revolt.

By last Saturday, Chinese security forces had locked
down the Tibetan capital.

The Chinese military ordered tourists to stay in their
hotels from where they said they could hear gunfire
and tear gas shells exploding.

On Monday the tourists were allowed some movement but
had to show their passports at frequent checkpoints.

"Shops were all burnt out - all the merchandise was on
the street in a bonfire. Many buildings were gutted,''
said Serge Lachapelle, a tourist from Montreal in
Canada.

"The Muslim district was entirely destroyed - every
store was destroyed,'' said Mr Kenwood.



   
  __________________________________________

James:
 BEIJING, China (CNN) -- James Miles, of The
Economist, has just returned from Lhasa, Tibet. The
following is a transcript of an interview he gave to
CNN.
art.miles.jpg

James Miles

Q. How easy was it for you to see what you wanted to
see?

A. Well remarkably so, given that the authorities are
normally extremely sensitive about the presence of
foreign journalists when this kind of incident occurs.
I was expecting all along that they were going to call
me up and tell me to leave Lhasa immediately. I think
what restrained them from doing that, one very
important factor in this, was the thoughts of the
Olympic Games that are going to be staged in Beijing
in August. And they have been going out of their way
to convince the rest of the world that China is
opening up in advance of this. I think they probably
didn't want me there but they knew that I was there
with official permission, and one thing they've been
trying to get across over the last few months is that
journalists based in Beijing can now get around the
country more freely than they could before. Of course
Tibet is a special example. I've been a journalist in
China now for 15 years altogether. This is the first
time that I've ever got official approval to go to
Tibet. And it's remarkable I think that they decided
to let me stay there and probably they felt that it
was a bit of a gamble. But as the protests went on I
think they also probably felt that having me there
would help to get across the scale of the
ethnically-targeted violence that the Chinese
themselves have also been trying to highlight.

Q. What you say you saw corroborates the official
version. What exactly did you see?

A. What I saw was calculated targeted violence against
an ethnic group, or I should say two ethnic groups,
primarily ethnic Han Chinese living in Lhasa, but also
members of the Muslim Hui minority in Lhasa. And the
Huis in Lhasa control much of the meat industry in the
city. Those two groups were singled out by ethnic
Tibetans. They marked those businesses that they knew
to be Tibetan owned with white traditional scarves.
Those businesses were left intact. Almost every single
other across a wide swathe of the city, not only in
the old Tibetan quarter, but also beyond it in areas
dominated by the ethnic Han Chinese. Almost every
other business was either burned, looted, destroyed,
smashed into, the property therein hauled out into the
streets, piled up, burned. It was an extraordinary
outpouring of ethnic violence of a most unpleasant
nature to watch, which surprised some Tibetans
watching it. So they themselves were taken aback at
the extent of what they saw. And it was not just
targeted against property either. Of course many
ethnic Han Chinese and Huis fled as soon as this broke
out. But those who were caught in the early stages of
it were themselves targeted. Stones thrown at them. At
one point, I saw them throwing stones at a boy of
maybe around 10 years old perhaps cycling along the
street. I in fact walked out in front of them and said
stop. It was a remarkable explosion of simmering
ethnic grievances in the city.

Q. Did you see other weapons?

A. I saw them carrying traditional Tibetan swords, I
didn't actually see them getting them out and
intimidating people with them. But clearly the purpose
of carrying them was to scare people. And speaking
later to ethnic Han Chinese, that was one point that
they frequently drew attention to. That these people
were armed and very intimidating.

Q. There was an official response to this. In some
reporting, info coming from Tibetan exiles, there was
keenness to report it as Tiananmen.

A. Well the Chinese response to this was very
interesting. Because you would expect at the first
sings of any unrest in Lhasa, which is a city on a
knife-edge at the best of times. That the response
would be immediate and decisive. That they would
cordon off whatever section of the city involved, that
they would grab the people involved in the unrest. In
fact what we saw, and I was watching it at the
earliest stages, was complete inaction on the part of
the authorities. It seemed as if they were paralyzed
by indecision over how to handle this. The rioting
rapidly spread from Beijing Road, this main central
thoroughfare of Lhasa, into the narrow alleyways of
the old Tibetan quarter. But I didn't see any attempt
in those early hours by the authorities to intervene.
And I suspect again the Olympics were a factor there.
That they were very worried that if they did move in
decisively at that early stage of the unrest that
bloodshed would ensue in their efforts to control it.
And what they did instead was let the rioting run its
course and it didn't really finish as far as I saw
until the middle of the day on the following day on
the Saturday, March the 15th. So in effect what they
did was sacrifice the livelihoods of many, many ethnic
Han Chinese in the city for the sake of letting the
rioters vent their anger. And then being able to move
in gradually with troops with rifles that they
occasionally let off with single shots, apparently
warning shots, in order to scare everybody back into
their homes and put an end to this.

Q. Would be false to suggest there was heavy-handed
security approach?

A. Well this was covering a vast area of the city and
I was the only foreign journalist, at least
accredited, to ... who was there to witness this. It
was impossible to get a total picture. I did hear
persistent rumors while I was there during this
rioting of isolated clashes between the security
forces and rioters. And rumors of occasional bloodshed
involved in that. But I can do no more really on the
basis of what I saw then say there was a probability
that some ethnic Chinese were killed in this violence,
and also a probability that some Tibetans, Tibetan
rioters themselves were killed by members of the
security forces. But it's impossible to get the kind
of numbers or real first hand evidences necessary to
back that up.

Q. Form any sense of where it would go from here?

A. Well I think they now have a huge problem on their
hands. When I left Lhasa yesterday the city was still
in a state of effectively Martial Law. They've been
bending over backwards this time not to declare
martial law as they did in 1989 after the last major
outbreak of anti-Chinese unrest in Lhasa. This time
they have not used that term and yet the conditions
now in Lhasa are pretty much the same as they were in
1989 under martial law. Officials say there are no
soldiers, no members of the People's Liberation Army
involved in this security operation. And yet I saw
numerous, many military vehicles, military looking
vehicles with telltale license plates covered up or
removed. And also many troops there whose uniforms
were distinctly lacking in the usual insignia of
either the police or the riot police. So my very, very
strong suspicion is that the army is out there and is
in control in Lhasa. And removing that security given
the way Tibetans are now focusing on the Olympics as a
window of opportunity, removing that security now I
think would be something they would be very, very
cautious about. And yet there are enormous pressures
on them to do so. Coming up to the Olympic torch
carrying ceremony in Lhasa in June. That is one
obvious event they will want the world to see and they
will want the world to see that Lhasa is normal. But I
think getting to that stage will be enormously tricky
given the depth of feeling in Lhasa itself among
Tibetans.

Q. Did you actually see clashes between security
forces and Tibetan protesters?

A. Well what I saw and at this stage, the situation
around my hotel which was right in the middle of the
old Tibetan quarter, was very tense indeed and quite
dangerous so it was difficult for me to freely walk
around the streets. But what I saw was small groups of
Tibetans, and this was on the second day of the
protests, throwing stones towards what I assumed to
be, and they were slightly out of vision, members of
the security forces. I would hear and indeed smell
occasional volleys of Tear gas fired back. There
clearly was a small scale clash going on between
Tibetans and the security forces. But on the second
day things had calmed down generally compared with the
huge rioting that was going on...on the Friday. And
the authorities were responding to these occasional
clashes with Tibetans not by moving forward rapidly
with either riot police and truncheons and shields, or
indeed troops with rifles. But for a long time, just
with occasional, with the very occasional round of
tear gas, which would send and I could see this,
people scattering back into these very, very, narrow
and winding alleyways. What I did not hear was
repeated bursts of machine gun fire, I didn't have
that same sense of an all out onslaught of massive
firepower that I sensed here in Beijing when I was
covering the crushing of the Tiananmen Square protests
in June, 1989. This was a very different kind of
operation, a more calculated one, and I think the
effort of the authorities this time was to let people
let off steam before establishing a very strong
presence with troops, with guns, every few yards, all
across the Tibetan quarter. It was only when they felt
safe I think that there would not be massive
bloodshed, that they actually moved in with that
decisive force.

Q. At time you left, were Han Chinese moving freely
back?

A. There were some on the Saturday morning. On the
second day we came back to the shops and I saw them
picking through the wreckage, tears in their eyes.
They were astonished, as I was, at the lack of any
security presence on the previous day. It was only
during the night at the end of the first day that this
cordon was established around the old Tibetan quarter.
But even within it, for several hours afterwards,
people were still free to continue looting and setting
fires, and the authorities were still standing back.
And it was only as things fizzled out towards the
middle of the second day that as I say they moved in
in great numbers. Ethnic Chinese in Lhasa are now very
worried people. Some who had been there for many, many
years expressed to me their utter astonishment that
this had happened. They had no sense of great ethnic
tension being a part of life in Lhasa. Now numerous
Hans that I spoke to say that they are so afraid they
may leave the city, which may have very damaging
consequences for Lhasa's economy, Tibet's economy. Of
course one would expect that ethnic Chinese would
think twice now about coming into Lhasa for tourism,
and that's been a huge part of their economic growth
recently. And leaving Lhasa, I was sitting on a plane
next to some Chinese businessmen, they say that they
would normally come in and out of Lhasa by train. But
their fear now is that Tibetans will blow up the
railway line. That it is now actually safer to fly out
of Tibet than to go by railway. We have no evidence of
Terrorist activity by Tibetans, no accusation of that
nature so far. But that is a fear that's haunting some
ethnic Han Chinese now.

Q. When you were told to leave, what were you told?

A. Well I had an 8-day permit to be in Lhasa. That
permit began two days before the rioting, on March 12,
and was due to run out on March 19. My official
schedule was basically abandoned after a couple days
of this. Many of the places on my official itinerary
turned out to be hotspots in the middle of this
unrest. They left me to my own devices. I was stopped
by the police at one point, taken to a police station.
They made a few phone calls and then let me go back
out on the streets full of troops and police carrying
out the security crackdown. They insisted however that
when my permit did expire on the 19th that I had to
leave. I asked for an extension and they said
decisively no.

Q. So you weren't expelled? It just ran out?

A. Well we're in a gray area here. Because in theory
China has been opened up to foreign journalists since
January 2007, which means no longer, which was the
case before, do we have to apply for provincial level
government approval every time we leave Beijing for
reporting. The official regulations don't mention
Tibet. But orally, officials have made it clear that
Tibet is an exception to these new Olympic rules and
journalists who have made their own way there,
unofficially, both before this unrest and during it
have been caught or ... and expelled. Or those who
have succeeded in making it out without being detected
have been criticized by the authorities for doing so.
So one could argue that yes I was expelled, if one
looks at the regulations they've announced which one
could interpret as meaning we have the freedom to be
where we like. But in their interpretation, Tibet is
an exception and in their view they were being rather
liberal towards me by letting run to the end of my
official permit.
advertisement

Q. Is Dalai behind this?

A. Well we didn't see any evidence of any organized
activity, at least there was nothing in what I sensed
and saw during those couple of days of unrest in
Lhasa, there was anything organized behind it. And
I've seen organized unrest in China. The Tiananmen
Square protests in 1989 involved numerous
organizations spontaneously formed by people in
Beijing to oppose, or to call for more reform and
demand democracy. We didn't see that in Lhasa. There
were no organizations there that ... certainly none
that labeled themselves as such. These accusations
against what they call the Dalai Lama clique, are
ritual parts of the political rhetoric in Tibet. There
is a constant background rhetoric directed at the
Dalai Lama and his supporters in India. So it is not
at all surprising that they would repeat that
particular accusation in this case. But they haven't
come across, haven't produced any evidence of this
whatsoever. And I think it's more likely that what we
saw was yes inspired by a general desire of Tibetans
both inside Tibet and among the Dalai Lama's
followers, to take advantage of this Olympic year. But
also inspired simply by all these festering grievances
on the ground in Lhasa.

James:

He May Be a God, but He’s No Politician
 
By PATRICK FRENCH
NEARLY a decade ago, while staying with a nomad family
in the remote grasslands of northeastern Tibet, I
asked Namdrub, a man who fought in the anti-Communist
resistance in the 1950s, what he thought about the
exiled Tibetans who campaigned for his freedom.
 “It may make them feel good, but for us, it makes
life worse,” he replied. “It makes the Chinese create
more controls over us. Tibet is too important to the
Communists for them even to discuss independence.”

Protests have spread across the Tibetan plateau over
the last two weeks, and at least 100 people have died.
Anyone who finds it odd that Speaker Nancy Pelosi has
rushed to Dharamsala, India, to stand by the Dalai
Lama’s side fails to realize that American politics
provided an important spark for the demonstrations.
Last October, when the Congressional Gold Medal was
awarded to the Dalai Lama, monks in Tibet watched over
the Internet and celebrated by setting off fireworks
and throwing barley flour. They were quickly arrested.

It was for the release of these monks that
demonstrators initially turned out this month. Their
brave stand quickly metamorphosed into a protest by
Lhasa residents who were angry that many economic
advantages of the last 10 or 15 years had gone to Han
Chinese and Hui Muslims. A young refugee whose family
is still in Tibet told me this week of the medal,
“People believed that the American government was
genuinely considering the Tibet issue as a priority.”
In fact, the award was a symbolic gesture, arranged
mostly to make American lawmakers feel good.

A similar misunderstanding occurred in 1987 when the
Dalai Lama was denounced by the Chinese state media
for putting forward a peace proposal on Capitol Hill.
To Tibetans brought up in the Communist system — where
a politician’s physical proximity to the leadership on
the evening news indicates to the public that he is in
favor — it appeared that the world’s most powerful
government was offering substantive political backing
to the Dalai Lama. Protests began in Lhasa, and
martial law was declared. The brutal suppression that
followed was orchestrated by the party secretary in
Tibet, Hu Jintao, who is now the Chinese president.
His response to the current unrest is likely to be
equally uncompromising.

The Dalai Lama is a great and charismatic spiritual
figure, but a poor and poorly advised political
strategist. When he escaped into exile in India in
1959, he declared himself an admirer of Mahatma
Gandhi’s nonviolent resistance. But Gandhi took huge
gambles, starting the Salt March and starving himself
nearly to death — a very different approach from the
Dalai Lama’s “middle way,” which concentrates on
nonviolence rather than resistance. The Dalai Lama has
never really tried to use direct action to leverage
his authority.

At the end of the 1980s, he joined forces with
Hollywood and generated huge popular support for the
Tibetan cause in America and Western Europe. This
approach made some sense at the time. The Soviet Union
was falling apart, and many people thought China might
do the same. In practice, however, the campaign
outraged the nationalist and xenophobic Chinese
leadership.

It has been clear since the mid-1990s that the popular
internationalization of the Tibet issue has had no
positive effect on the Beijing government. The
leadership is not amenable to “moral pressure,” over
the Olympics or anything else, particularly by the
nations that invaded Iraq.

The Dalai Lama should have closed down the Hollywood
strategy a decade ago and focused on back-channel
diplomacy with Beijing. He should have publicly
renounced the claim to a so-called Greater Tibet,
which demands territory that was never under the
control of the Lhasa government. Sending his envoys to
talk about talks with the Chinese while simultaneously
encouraging the global pro-Tibet lobby has achieved
nothing.

When Beijing attacks the “Dalai clique,” it is
referring to the various groups that make Chinese
leaders lose face each time they visit a Western
country. The International Campaign for Tibet, based
in Washington, is now a more powerful and effective
force on global opinion than the Dalai Lama’s outfit
in northern India. The European and American pro-Tibet
organizations are the tail that wags the dog of the
Tibetan government-in-exile.

These groups hate criticism almost as much as the
Chinese government does. Some use questionable
information. For example, the Free Tibet Campaign in
London (of which I am a former director) and other
groups have long claimed that 1.2 million Tibetans
have been killed by the Chinese since they invaded in
1950. However, after scouring the archives in
Dharamsala while researching my book on Tibet, I found
that there was no evidence to support that figure. The
question that Nancy Pelosi and celebrity advocates
like Richard Gere ought to answer is this: Have the
actions of the Western pro-Tibet lobby over the last
20 years brought a single benefit to the Tibetans who
live inside Tibet, and if not, why continue with a
failed strategy?

I first visited Tibet in 1986. The economic plight of
ordinary people is slightly better now, but they have
as little political freedom as they did two decades
ago. Tibet lacks genuine autonomy, and ethnic Tibetans
are excluded from positions of real power within the
bureaucracy or the army. Tibet was effectively a
sovereign nation at the time of the Communist invasion
and was in full control of its own affairs.
But the battle for Tibetan independence was lost 49
years ago when the Dalai Lama escaped into exile. His
goal, and that of those who want to help the Tibetan
people, should be to negotiate realistically with the
Chinese state. The present protests, supported from
overseas, will bring only more suffering. China is not
a democracy, and it will not budge. — New York Times

Patrick French is the author of “Tibet, Tibet: A
Personal History of a Lost Land.”



   
  ____________________________

James:
After week of rioting, Tibet now calm

China takes control of capital, sets midnight deadline
for protesters to turn themselves in
By Ching-Ching Ni

LOS ANGELES TIMES
Article Launched: 03/18/2008 03:03:05 AM PDT

BEIJING -- A Chinese shopkeeper in Tibet's capital
came out of hiding Monday for the first time since
mobs ransacked his herb store last week during the
biggest uprising against the region's Chinese rulers
in nearly two decades.

Ma Zhonglong, 20, said he had had nothing but a few
packets of instant noodles to eat since he ran for
cover Friday when he saw hundreds of Tibetans smash
and burn storefronts near the Jokhang Temple, the
religious and geographical heart of Lhasa, the Tibetan
capital.

"I went outside and saw people fighting on the
street," Ma said in a telephone interview. "I hurried
back and closed the door. Through the glass window I
could see the mob rushing toward me. They carried
knives, stones, sticks. I ran further back into this
courtyard to hide. Outside I could hear them smashing
everything."

On Monday morning, as Ma emerged and found his store
in ruins and expensive herbs looted, the Chinese
government had taken control of Lhasa and ordered all
rioters to turn themselves in by midnight or face
serious consequences.

A calm descended on the Tibetan capital Monday after a
week of protests that turned violent and spread to two
nearby provinces. Even Beijing, the Chinese capital
saw demonstrations, with dozens of students at the
Central University for Nationalities gathered for a
candlelight vigil under the heavy security presence.

Chinese authorities, weary of bad publicity in the
run-up to the Summer Olympics in Beijing in August and
eager
Advertisement
to avoid any reminder of the violent crackdown on
pro-democracy student protests at Tiananmen Square in
1989, offered a portrait of official restraint during
the effort to restore order.

Qiangba Puncog, the head of the Tibet regional
government and who was in Beijing on Monday attending
the annual meeting of China's parliament, denied that
soldiers used lethal weapons or excess force. Rioters,
he said, set fire to more than 300 homes and shops,
leaving at least 13 civilians burned or stabbed to
death and 61 police officers injured.

Aides to the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual
leader, have put the death toll at 80. There was no
independent way to verify the conflicting tolls
because Beijing forbids foreigners from visiting Tibet
without official permission.

Witnesses say that Lhasa had been turned into a war
zone, with both sides suffering casualties.

"I saw mayhem everywhere: Tibetans throwing rocks,
setting fires, people running scared like cats and
dogs," said a 27-year-old migrant worker from Sichuan
province, who was told to stay home by his employer.
"The Tibetans were looking for Han Chinese to kill,
adults and children.

"Somebody told me they hung these Chinese schoolboys
on the beams inside the Jokhang Temple, to protest, I
guess," said the migrant worker, who requested
anonymity and, like other Chinese in Lhasa, was
interviewed by telephone.

"It was very scary," said a 40-year-old Chinese man
who works in a car dealership with an office near the
Jokhang temple. "There was fire and killing
everywhere. When peace and stability is gone, ordinary
people suffer."

Authorities blamed the violence on a "small clique" of
Dalai Lama supporters who the government says
instigated chaos to put China in a bad light ahead of
the Olympics. The Nobel laureate, who fled Tibet in
1959 after a failed uprising and runs an exile
government in India, has denied any role in inciting
the violence.

China's critics blame the unrest and the underlying
ethnic tension on what they call the Communist
regime's long-standing policy of cultural and economic
strangulation, which they say has pushed Tibetans to
the breaking point.

As a result, the Tibetans and Chinese keep mostly to
themselves, reinforcing the ethnic divide and
simmering tensions.

"It's normal for the Tibetans to hate the Chinese. You
are on their turf, of course they hate you," said the
27-year-old migrant worker from Sichuan.

Zhaxi Duoji is a Tibetan who runs the Tibet Cafe and
Inn in southwestern China's Yunnan province. He
organizes regular tours to Tibet but had to put them
on hold since the disturbances began.

"I am a Tibetan, and I think what is happening in
Lhasa is terrible. I can say 90 percent of ordinary
Tibetans are opposed to this kind of violence," he
said in fluent Mandarin, adding that he is a Buddhist
and not a Communist Party member.

"The Chinese government's policy on Tibet is
improving," he said. "Every country has a minority of
people who want to go back to the past. That's based
on ignorance. Many Tibetans are disadvantaged because
they don't speak Mandarin, can't express themselves
and are easily taken advantage of by other people."

It remains to be seen how hard Beijing will clamp down
on the protesters today after the deadline for turning
themselves in. Meanwhile, extra security has been
deployed to other regions of western China.

"I know the Communist Party will take care of
everything by midnight and restore order," said the
migrant worker from Sichuan. "But then again, how can
we go back to normal with so many stores on so many
streets burned and destroyed?"


   

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page