China - Tibet needs to be pacified

Tensions rise in Tibet as Chinese security forces bring fear to the streets

By David Piper

Published February 01, 2012
FoxNews.com

Jan. 31, 2012: Armed Chinese police officers patrol a Tibetan area of Chengdu in China's Sichuan province, neighboring Tibet.

There is great fear and tension on the streets of the Tibetan capital, Lhasa.

The most recent crackdown in Tibet by Chinese security forces has turned the historic capital into a place where citizens fear to walk the streets, according to various Tibetan groups.

With these forces deployed across the city, witnesses report random home searches for dissidents and instances where police forces interrogate people on the streets.

“How horrible it is! I dare not to look around in a casual manner, dare not move around freely,” a Lhasa resident said, describing the situation near the famous Jokhang Temple. “Armed personnel are everywhere, police are in every corner.”

Chinese authorities are using intimidation and surveillance in the country to install a culture of fear, Stephanie Brigden, the director of Free Tibet, told Fox News.

The latest crackdown in Tibet and surrounding provinces has been prompted by Beijing’s fear that protests in neighboring Sichuan province by Tibetans could spread to Tibet. Tibetans in Sichuan have been staging large demonstrations there for more than a week.

Tibetan support groups accuse the Chinese forces of firing on crowds in three separate incidents, killing five Tibetans and injuring scores more.

Many residents have told Tibetan groups abroad that these security personnel have warned them not to discuss politics during phone calls outside Tibet. In some instances, Tibetans have been warned that these security forces are somehow aware that they have made calls to relatives living outside the country.

Security has been increased around monasteries and major roads over fears of sabotage.

Qi Zhala, Lhasa’s Communist Party secretary, has warned clerics at monasteries they would be sacked if protests erupted.

He was quoted in the state-controlled Tibet Daily newspaper as telling officials they "must profoundly recognize the important significance of preserving stability in temples and monasteries," and warned that they must "strive to realize the goal of 'no big incidents, no medium incidents and not even a small incident.'"

On Wednesday, Chinese authorities gave their first detailed account of what has been going on in Sichuan. Beijing said “mobs” of rock-wielding Tibetan separatists attacked police stations and civilians.

The government-run China Daily newspaper said two Tibetan rioters were killed and 25 police and firefighters were injured in the clashes.

The paper went on to quote the Chinese government as saying, "No country governed by law would tolerate such violence directed against police and aimed at separating the country."

The article claimed that separatists were trying to stoke unrest in the area by encouraging monks to commit suicide by self-immolation.

It's difficult to substantiate the claims on either side since the Chinese severely restrict any access to the region by reporters.

More than a dozen monks, nuns and lay people have set themselves on fire there in separate incidents over the past year to protest Chinese control.

The people who take their lives are said to set themselves on fire after chanting for Tibetan freedom and the return of the Dalai Lama.

Tibet's spiritual leader remains in India after fleeing Tibet in 1959 after China took control.

The Dalai Lama has said he doesn't encourage self-immolation by monks and nuns protesting China's control over Tibet. And he has questioned its usefulness as a way to protest Chinese rule.

The ongoing protests have, though, worried the Chinese authorities.

It also highlights the apparent failure of Beijing to gain the support of the Tibetan people through its policies of economic growth in a very poor region.

Before this latest wave of protests, the Chinese security forces were already preparing for an annual period of protests centering on the Tibetan New Year in late February and a number of anniversaries in March from previous ant-Chinese uprisings.

The Chinese authorities have saturated the region with troops to try to contain any fresh uprising on the scale of nearly four years ago when 22 people died in violent clashes in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa.

But there are concerns that this Tibetan spring could bring greater violence than has been seen there in recent years.

china

Obama, Hillary, Bill, and Nancy - Ironic?

Irony: from the Ancient Greek meaning hypocrisy, deception, or feigned ignorance. Perhaps more appropriate than the Oxford dictionary definition.

For over seven years, now into its eighth year, we have had one party with one chant - human rights and how Bush seemed to violate them everywhere he went and everywhere the US went. The Democratic party attacked him mercilessly on this issue - from Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo Bay to the secret CIA prisons ... hearings and questions, rhetorical questions feigned by interested parties and a publicly stated interest to see America great again, drove the cause of attacking Bush. Questioning his cozy relationship with the Saudis, questioning everything he did, from day 1 until the day he left office.

Forget the tens of millions the Saud family donated to Bill. Forget Obama curtsying to the King (I would say he bowed but Obama denies he did so we'll call it a curtsy), and forget the fact Hillary marched off to China and never once raised the issue of human rights abuses and the tens of thousands of Tibetans who have been murdered by the PRC.

Once again, a woman, in China, has failed to utter a word about Chinese human rights violations - Nancy Pelosi. The woman who felt betrayed by the CIA not telling her about torture is in China where they do torture everyday, to virtually anyone they can get their hands on, and she has failed to say anything - yet again.


Irony?








Obama

China and the EU

Plea to China to keep Olympics TV live
By Roger Blitz in London
Published: March 27 2008 19:57 Last updated: March 27 2008 19:57

The International Olympic Committee has asked China to promise not to delay transmissions of the Beijing games, after France raised concerns about Chinese television’s censoring of Tibet protests at the torch-lighting ceremony in Greece this week.

French TV executives have asked the European Broadcasting Union to extract guarantees from Beijing that transmissions will be live and uninterrupted even if protests take place.

************************************************
It is the fact that the EU et al., must consider asking China to guarantee that the television coverage be live without interuption - THAT is why China is not in the same category as Europe or America. THAT is why they cannot be trusted. THAT is why we must never relinquish one inch to China on any issue. They are not in the same category. Until their politically repressive communist system is plowed under, it will remain a threat.

You want the reason why China can't be trusted? The fact the EU must ask to keep coverage live is all we need. More than enough.


UPDATE: April 3, 2008
Witnesses confirm: Chinese soldiers "dressed as monks" sparked the violence

Tibet

Where is the outrage. Where is the demand by all good people to stop this. Why is the world basically quiet on this subject yet noisier than a train wreck on US actions however trivial.


March 22, 2008

Tales of horror from Tibet

Witnesses to the unrest describe protesters’ rage against Chinese, and troops firing into crowds.

By Barbara Demick. Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

Beijing - On a cloudless day near the top of the world, Swiss tourist Claude Balsiger had just finished a late-morning cup of tea and stepped out onto the streets of Tibet’s capital. Buddhist monks had been marching against Chinese rule all week, but today seemed calmer. Suddenly, Tibetan youths started hurling paving stones at police, who tried to protect themselves with their riot shields.

Over the next few hours, the odor of tear gas and fires replaced the scent of incense wafting from backpacker cafes. The intense Himalayan light was blacked out by smoke. And in the days that followed, violence would spread beyond Lhasa to ethnic Tibetan villages deep inside China and to Chinese embassies worldwide.

China has barred Western journalists from entering Tibet and ethnic Tibetan areas. But interviews with foreign witnesses and Chinese residents, as well as blog postings by Tibetans too frightened to be interviewed, show that during three crucial hours on March 14, woefully unprepared police fled, allowing rioters to burn and smash much of Lhasa’s commercial center.

Tibetans randomly beat and killed Chinese solely on the basis of their ethnicity: a young motorcyclist bludgeoned in the head with paving stones and probably killed; a teenage boy in school uniform being dragged by a mob. When authorities did regroup, paramilitary troops fired live ammunition into the crowds. Witnesses did not see protesters armed with anything other than stones, bottles of gasoline or a few traditional Tibetan knives.

Despite a massive deployment of Chinese forces, the protests show no signs of abating. In New Delhi on Friday, Tibetan exiles stormed the Chinese Embassy. And China posted a “most wanted” list of 21 alleged rioters, featuring grainy photographs taken from video shot by a hidden camera.

The death toll of Tibetans had risen to 99 as of Friday, with a 16-year-old girl being shot by police in China’s Sichuan County, the Tibetan government in exile said.

Chinese authorities say 19 Chinese have been killed in Lhasa: one police officer and the rest civilians.

Since their homeland was invaded by Chinese communists in 1951, Tibetans have risen up periodically against Beijing’s rule. Led by the Dalai Lama, a Buddhist monk and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, their movement has been largely nonviolent. There hadn’t been a substantial uprising in Lhasa since the late 1980s, giving the city a reputation as a laid-back Shangri-La.

“Tibetans usually are so calm and friendly, but suddenly they were insane,” said Balsiger, 25, a teacher. “They were howling like wolves. . . . It was so brutal, so violent.” Monastery slit their wrists in suicide attempts, andmonks at Sera Monastery start a hunger strike. Water supplies are cut to many of the monasteries.

A foreign tourist wanders into Sera Monastery at 3 p.m., just as hundreds of monks are rushing out, their hands in the air and in obvious distress. Police surround them.

“They were grabbing monks, kicking and beating them. One monk was kicked in the stomach right in front of us and then beaten on the ground,” the tourist later tells BBC.

Paramilitary forces block roads leading out of the remote Ganden Monastery. The Chutsang Nunnery is also surrounded. neighbors’ businesses.

The mob is more interested in destroying than looting. Witnesses see cellphones, bicycles, clothing, food and furniture smashed along Beijing East Street. Cars are overturned and set on fire, often topped with burning Chinese flags.

Riots spread to the Muslim quarter, targeting the Hui, Chinese Muslims who have been opening businesses in Tibet. Rioters smash holes through metal shop gates and pour in gasoline. A Muslim family later describes to Chinese journalists how they hid in a bathroom as flames spread around them. The main gate of the mosque is set on fire, but the mob doesn’t get inside.
It is not until 4 p.m. that Chinese authorities venture back into the center of Lhasa. What happens next is unclear, because by this time the city is under a strict curfew. According to Tibetan sources, the Public Security Bureau lifts an order restricting the use of live ammunition by the paramilitary forces.

Tibetans say many people are killed in front of the main temple, the Jokhang, and that families come to collect the bodies late at night, offering prayers and strewing traditional white prayer scarves.

“Many of those killed were young Tibetans, both boys and girls,” a rioter tells Radio Free Asia. “Those who are dead sacrificed their lives for 6 million Tibetans. My disappointment is that we were not armed.”

Amid the raging violence, some Tibetans do step in to help the beleaguered ethnic Chinese.
A 24-year-old Chinese assistant at an optometry shop recalls how a teenage neighbor escorted her home, only to be chastised by a Tibetan security guard who asked, “How can you come back with a Han Chinese?”

The Tibetan girl “was horrified,” recalled her Chinese friend. “In her eyes were confusion, perplexion, sorrow and mostly astonishment.”