Protests foreseen in one year in Tibet

11:32am Monday 31st March 2008

Comments (10)   Have your say »

With the eyes of the world fixed on China for the upcoming Olympic Games, Tibetans are making their voices heard. Reporter MATTHEW JENKIN, who spent a year in Tibet as a student, is not surprised.

CHINA has always claimed Tibet as part of its territory. This is despite the fact it enjoyed periods of independence in the past.

A full-scale invasion by Chinese troops in 1950 ended Tibet's political isolation and autonomy.

An uprising by thousands of Tibetans in the capital, Lhasa, on March 10, 1959, led to its spiritual and temporal leader, the 14th Dalai Lama, being exiled to India.

Martial law was imposed and the protests were brutally suppressed.

So it is no coincidence Tibetans chose the anniversary of this uprising to begin a series of protests on March 10 this year.

I spent a year in Lhasa in 2005 as part of my degree in the study of religion and Tibetan.

More than once during my stay I had heard rumours protests were being planned to coincide with the Olympic Games in Beijing this year.

Protests in Tibet are nothing new. Most are small, isolated and quickly silenced by the Chinese authorities.

But nothing has been seen on the scale of recent demonstrations in Lhasa since 1989, when martial law was again imposed.

An eyewitness, who wishes to remain anonymous, described to me how peaceful demonstrations by monks outside the Jokhang temple, in the ancient Tibetan centre of the city, soon spread to several major monasteries in the Lhasa region.

Arrests of monks by Chinese authorities made many lay Tibetans join demonstrations.

The eyewitness said: "Tibetans who saw these arrests couldn't hold back their anger and started to attack the police. Crowds formed and started to attack anything Chinese.

"With rickshaws they brought rocks and destroyed Chinese shops, fast food restaurants, banks, bus stands, groceries and police cars.

"However, they tried to spare Tibetan shops and houses and I could not find a school or hospital burned, as the Chinese media reported."

The witness added: "The demonstrators carried Tibetan swords or iron rods. Trying to escape, I found that on Yutog Street a commercial street in Lhasa cars were burning and the riot had already spread all over town.

"Five girls carrying a Tibetan flag were said to have been shot in front of the Jokhang and an 18-year-old boy was found shot in the forehead."

According to the state-run news agency Xinhua, 18 civilians and one police officer died and 382 people were injured during the protests.

But campaign group Free Tibet has estimated the number of dead at over 100 and hundreds have also been arrested.

No exact figures can be obtained at the moment due to restrictions on foreign media in Tibet.

Political independence is just one reason why Tibetans began protesting.

Mass immigration in the Tibetan Autonomous Region of China, combined with poor education, unemployment, and corruption, has left Tibetans feeling alienated and marginalised in their own country.

The situation in the autonomous region is currently stable but protests have now spread to neighbouring provinces with large Tibetan populations, such as Qinghai, Gansu, and Sichuan.

With the Games still months away, and the Olympic torch currently on its world tour, Tibet and human rights campaigners are likely to continue to embarrass the Chinese authorities.