The Terrified Monks
Filed Under Tibet, Human Rights, China | Posted on May 15, 2008
Via Tricycle and Danny Fisher:
In the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof writes an interesting and more-balanced-than-usual commentary on the violence and repression in Tibet.
In the last couple of months, this greater Tibet has also become a land of arsonist monks, armed troops and bloodied protesters. It’s not formally under martial law today, but that’s what it amounts to, and foreigners have been mostly kept away.
I sneaked through these Tibetan areas in Gansu and Qinghai Provinces, eluding the troops by taking a local car with curtains pulled over the windows, and it became clear that the recent anti-Chinese protests spread across a larger area in traditional Tibet than is sometimes realized. This was, in effect, a popular uprising against Chinese rule throughout Tibetan areas, and the region is still seething.
Chinese citizens have been understandably outraged by anti-Chinese rioting by Tibetans in Lhasa in March. Tibetans burned 1,000 Chinese-owned shops (a few with people inside them) and savagely attacked or stoned ordinary Chinese citizens, even a child of about 10. The Dalai Lama and pro-Tibetan Westerners were far too leisurely about condemning Tibetan brutality, and America came across as hypocritical for apparent indifference when the victims in Tibet were Chinese.
Yet few will ever hear about the harsh crackdown unfolding here in the ancient Tibetan region of Amdo. Although there was some rioting here in Xiahe, and some attacks on the police and burning of police vehicles elsewhere, most of the demonstrators were peaceful. But even where protests were entirely peaceful, the repression has been merciless.
Read the full article here.
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