Wednesday, 10 March 2010
Tibetans struggle to find normality amid smothering security
Two years after the city erupted in a riot that set off anti-government protests across Tibetan areas of China, heavy security is now normal. Helmeted paramilitary police stand guard behind spiked barriers at some street corners. Men on rooftops train binoculars on the square and streets in the Barkhor, the heart of the old city that surrounds a holy temple.
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Tibetans struggle to find normality amid smothering security
Associated Press in Lhasa
09 March 2010
The troops with automatic rifles patrolling the Tibetan quarter of Lhasa are as ever-present as Buddhist pilgrims.
Two years after the city erupted in a riot that set off anti-government protests across Tibetan areas of China, heavy security is now normal. Helmeted paramilitary police stand guard behind spiked barriers at some street corners. Men on rooftops train binoculars on the square and streets in the Barkhor, the heart of the old city that surrounds a holy temple.
Their presence is so common that people in the Tibetan capital were startled last week when the uniformed patrols seemingly disappeared. In their place, fit young men with military crew cuts - some wearing yellow and black tracksuits - marched in groups. The reason: a rare visit to the tense Tibetan administrative capital by foreign reporters arranged by the government.
“Walking in the streets of the Barkhor and other parts of Lhasa, I realised all the army people had become plain-clothed overnight. Only today I learned that it was because the journalists were visiting,” said a Tibetan woman who declined to give her name for fear of official retribution.
This week opens an always edgy time in Lhasa: two weeks of anniversaries marking a Tibetan revolt in 1959 that failed, led Tibet’s theocratic ruler the Dalai Lama to flee into exile and brought the long-isolated Himalayan region under Beijing’s direct control. In 2008, demonstrations that sputtered for days flared into a riot on March 14. Sympathy protests spread to Tibetan communities across a quarter of west China - the widest uprising against Chinese rule in a half-century.
Many Tibetan areas have lived under smothering security ever since and are struggling to find normality amid the intrusive policing and a mix of government threats and economic incentives to toe the line. Premier Wen Jiabao said on Friday the government would speed up economic development in Tibet and the heavily Muslim area of Xinjiang, which was hit by communal violence in July that further challenged China’s ethnic policies.
At a news conference on Sunday, Beijing-appointed governor Padma Choling renewed the verbal attacks. “The Dalai’s lies to the world and media have adversely affected Tibet’s development,” he said.
Government officials defend the actions and say that Tibetans’ loyalty to Beijing grew in the wake of the shocking violence of the riot, which left 22 dead by official count and is known as the 3/14 riot for the day it occurred. Hao Peng, the vice-governor of Tibet, told the visiting journalists: “Because of the 3/14 incident, the people in Tibet understand more clearly the true nature of the Dalai clique. They are ‘splittists’ in nature. The people understand more that ‘splittism’ brings misfortune and ethnic unity brings happiness. Tibet is enjoying increased ethnic unity and harmony. Everything is moving in the right direction.”
During their week-long trip to Lhasa and the eastern Tibet town of Nyingchi, the foreign reporters were closely monitored and often followed if they managed to slip their government escorts, making candid interviews difficult. Paramilitary police on guard duty forced a reporter to delete photographs of them. Pilgrims refused to answer questions about whether they supported the Dalai Lama.
When a similar question was posed to Basang, a 39-year-old farmer in Sangzhulin village outside Lhasa, an official interrupted the translator to make sure the right answer was given: she prefers the Panchen Lama, a high-ranking cleric selected by Beijing. “I don’t know what the Dalai Lama does,” the official interpreted Basang as saying.
Still Lhasa residents seem grateful, if begrudgingly so, for the intense security. The city carries physical scars from the riot; the Yishion clothing store where five young women burned to death has left its charred shop front as a memorial.
Although Tibetans dislike the denunciation of their revered Dalai Lama, they and Han Chinese residents said violence might reignite if troops were withdrawn.
Unaddressed since the riot are its underlying grievances, said one Tibetan man who declined to give his name because he was worried about official retribution. Among the gripes are restrictions on religion and worries that the Han Chinese majority are benefiting more than Tibetans from economic growth.
Tibetans too are benefiting from China’s buoyant economy and from the more than 154 billion yuan (HK$175 billion) the government has poured into the region this decade. Nyingchi, a prosperous town at the bottom of a valley, is experiencing a tourism boom. An airport, still a rarity on the Tibetan plateau, opened three years ago.
Dawa Dunzhu is another success story. With only a primary school education, the Tibetan went off to the northwestern industrial city of Lanzhou to work on construction projects. With the money he earned, plus a government loan, he started the Tibet Dashi Group that makes speciality food products such as mineral water from the glacier melt of Mount Everest. His organic walnut oil is made with nuts grown by Tibetan farmers and is sold in upmarket food stores in Beijing.
“This is a really unique Tibetan resource that wasn’t used before. Now we are taking advantage of it,” he said.
In recent months, the communist government began tweaking its economic policies toward Tibet, moving away from the big infrastructure projects that are seen to encourage Chinese migration, and targeting funds into the pockets of farmers and poorer Tibetans. Rather than winning over Tibetans, however, experts contend the new policies are still too top-down and fail to give Tibetans the kind of say that would make them feel less like second-class citizens.
“Tibetan resentments are not necessarily about development, but about disempowered development and about being a dominated and subordinated minority,” Andrew Fischer, of the International Institute of Social Studies at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, said.
Some in Lhasa seem weary of the tensions, whether caused by disgruntled Tibetans or government actions. “As long as those few people don’t spread rumours or make the situation worse in the future, we’ll have better co-operation and unity,” retiree Neyma Tsering said.
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