| Original Article
Tight security on show alongside re-education in Tibet
By John Garnaut, Sydney Morning Herald, 30 June 2010.
In March 2008, two weeks after bloody riots erupted across the Tibetan plateau [1], a group of monks stormed a Chinese-government led tour of foreign journalists at Jokhang temple.
“We want freedom … they are telling lies,” said the monks, some in tears, saying they had been imprisoned in the temple after being falsely accused of causing the carnage.
Yesterday, on another tightly controlled foreign media tour[2], a Jokhang administrator agreed to present one of those monks to show he had not been badly punished. “I have not been beaten [or arrested], I had to learn more about the law,” said the shy 29-year-old monk, Norgye. “Through law education I realised what I had done.” [3]
Norgye’s impromptu testimony, relayed through a local government translator, provided some evidence that the Tibetan government’s patriotic education blitz to bring monks to heel is yielding results.
The re-education campaign has taken place alongside a security blitz, which a US congressional report says has led to the arrest and detention of at least 643 Tibetans since March 10, 2008.
Towards nightfall clusters of armed police walk anti-clockwise [4] into the crowds of monks, shoppers and occasional tourists circling around Jokham temple.
Police with semi-automatic rifles are stationed at intersections, others in full riot gear loiter in groups, and plain-clothed men struggle to hold back Alsatian dogs. [5] But after dusk in hidden corners of the majestic old city, occasionally Tibetans give alternative views of life under the Communist Party’s hard-line rule. One man, 28, said the situation remained “tense” and “terrible”.
After leading the Herald to a secluded room, he said in a quiet but excited voice that “the Dalai Lama is the number one best person” and told how he and many friends had photographs of the exiled spiritual leader hidden in home villages far away.
Photos of the Dalai Lama are now impossible to obtain in Lhasa say the Tibetans, and also the Han Chinese proprietor of New Beauty Painting Shop, which sells posters of government-approved Tibetan gods and spiritual leaders. [6]
She, like many migrants from eastern China who bore the brunt of senseless violence [7] that killed 18 mainly Han Chinese [8] in March 2008, was also feeling the pressure of Lhasa’s barely concealed divisions. “Of course it’s better [in my home town of Wuhan],” she said, declining to give her name.
“The people here just shit in the streets.” [9]
The Chinese government has taken some steps to reduce tensions in Tibet, including offering discount flights for international tourists and inviting in our small band of journalists. [10] |
Analysis
[1] Over 159 protests are known to have taken place in Tibet during March and April 2008. The vast majority are known to have been peaceful. The Chinese Government continues to characterise the 2008 uprising as violent.
[2] Access to Tibet for foreign media is still limited to tightly controlled media tours of this sort. Access beyond Lhasa has been almost unheard of since 2008.
[3] The “law education” to which Norgye refers is part of a coercive program of “patriotic re-education” ramped up dramatically since 2008. Designed “to build anti-separatist sentiment”, such programs include forcing Tibetans to denounce the Dalai Lama and endorse negative portrayals of Tibet prior to the Communist Party’s “peaceful liberation” of the 1950s.
[4] In Tibetan Buddhist tradition, adherents always walk clockwise around Temples and other sacred sites. The anti-clockwise circling of the Jokang by security forces is understood to be a deliberate attempt to insult and provoke.
[5] John Garnau’s observation here illustrates the amount of brute force being used to maintain stability in Lhasa.
[6] A poignant illustration of the interference of the avowedly atheist Chinese Government in the religious affairs of Tibet.
[7] While there was undoubtedly violence in Tibet’s capital on 14 March 2008, this is widely understood among experts to have been underpinned by decades of oppression, marginalisation and frustration at failed Chinese Government policies.
[8] Official Chinese statistics claim a total of 21 deaths in March 2008, of which 18 were Han Chinese and all of which were at the hands of Tibetans. Independent figures range between 140 and 400, the vast majority being Tibetans understood to have been killed by security forces.
[9] More than anything else, this throw-away comment may be indicative of the immense rich-poor divide between Lhasa’s Han elite and the heavily disadvantaged indigenous Tibetans, along with well-documented prejudiced and disparaging attitudes of Han towards ‘backward’ and ‘uncivilised’ Tibetans.
[10] The Chinese Government has misjudged the nature of the problems in Tibet if it believes that these measures will help ease tensions on the ground.
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