Chinese Damage Control

While continuing to make arrests of suspected participants in the revolt inTibet, the Chinese have at the same time mounted a damage control exercise toprevent the developments in Tibet from having an impact on their successfulholding of the Beijing Olympics in August, 2008.

The arrests, which started on March17, 2008, have not so far been as massive asoriginally feared. The total number of Tibetan youth arrested so far has beenestimated at about 150. What the Chinese have been doing is to arrest identifiedpast offenders, who had spent time in the jail in the past for undesirableactivities and had been released after they had completed their prison terms. Inthe initial wave of arrests, they have also been looking for persons withoutvalid documents.

The Chinese have been trying to prove that those, who attacked the Han and Huisettlers and members of the security forces, were not sons of the soil, who,according to the Chinese, are happy with the Chinese rule and have excellentrelations with the Hans, but infiltrators from outside. In the initial phase ofenquiries, they are focussing on those Tibetans, who have relatives in India andthe West in order to see whether any of them had recently visited theirrelatives abroad or whether their relatives living abroad had recently visitedthem.

The Chinese are convinced that the disturbances were not spontaneous, butpre-meditated and well organised. In his customary press conference after theconclusion of the session of the National People's Congress (NPC) held at Bejingon March 18,2008, the Prime Minister, Mr Wen Jiabo, linked the disturbances tothe Olympic Games and described them as "organized, premeditated,masterminded and instigated by the Dalai Lama clique".

The campaign against the Dalai Lama and his set-up in Dharamsala has beenstepped up by the Chinese authorities as well as the government-controlled mediain Beijing and Lhasa. He has been accused of telling lies when he talked of acultural genocide in Tibet in his press conference of March 16. He has beenprojected as insincere and deceitful. In this connection, reference is beingmade to his protestations of his belief in non-violent methods and the actualviolence in Tibet and Sichuan.

Even while condemning the Dalai Lama in strong language, the Chinese have keptopen the possibility of a dialogue with him. Mr Wen said at his pressconference: "The door of dialogue is still open to Dalai, so long as hegives up the position for "Tibet Independence", so long as herecognizes Tibet and Taiwan as inalienable parts of the Chinese territory."But he remained silent on the Dalai Lama's assertion that he was advocatinggenuine autonomy for Tibet and not independence.

This is an intriguing part of the entire revolt in Tibet. While the Dalai Lamahad been repeatedly saying even in the past that his aim is genuine autonomy andnot independence, the monks and the youth, who participated in the uprisingbetween March 10 and 14, 2008, were calling for independence. The Tibetan YouthCongress elements in India and the West do not seem to agree with the Dalai Lamathat the Tibetans would be satisfied with genuine autonomy. It is apparent thatthe Tibetan Youth Congress played an active role in organising the world-widedemonstrations on March 10, 2008, which in Tibet and Sichuan took a violentanti-Han turn.

The questions arising from this are: Was the Dalai Lama aware of the plans ofthe Tibetan Youth Congress? If so, why did he not try to stop them? If not, ishe really in effective control of the Youth Congress? Was the violent uprisingin Lhasa pre-meditated by the Youth Congress? If not, who was behind it? Noconvincing answers to these questions are available. The Chinese authorities seethe entire thing as deliberately planned and organised by the Youth Congresswith the knowledge of the Dalai Lama.

In a strongly-worded commentary based on a report from the Lhasa Bureau of thegovernment-owned Hsinhua news agency published on March 18, 2008, thegovernment-owned People's Daily wrote as follows:

"Memories of horror were alive again. Rioting that erupted in Lhasa on Friday resembled two previous riots in 1959 and 1989, only in its cruelty and always indisputable links to peace-preaching Dalai Lama.......In the shocking degree of cruelty which local Tibetans said they had not seen in their whole lives, "brutal" was an understatement of the true picture, but the word was only reserved for the mob, and not for the policemen......Such hostility was not "non-violence" as Dalai preached, but what the "revered" monk practiced. Religious leaders, local Tibetans and other residents stood out and condemned the riot.

It is obvious that the latest well-planned sabotage in Lhasa was another bloody exercise of Dalai clique's political conspiracy....In recent years, the Dalai clique has been telling the world that they have stopped seeking "Tibetan independence". However, it is just another huge lie. In an effort to fan up the international community to link the "Tibet issue" with the Beijing Olympics, he repeatedly preached during his frequent international trips that the year 2008 is of key importance and the Olympic Games would be the "last chance" for the Tibetans. How can the Dalai clique justify themselves when the Tibetan Youth Congress vowed to pursue "Tibet independence" at the cost of blood and lives in a March 10 statement, which says "they would never give up the fight for Tibet independence"? ....After the riot broke out in Lhasa, the Dalai clique maintained real-time contacts through varied channels with the rioters, and dictated instructions to his hard core devotees and synchronized their moves, police sources say. Evidence again mounted against the Dalai coterie's trumpet for "non-violence", exposing them as a deceitful bunch."

The Chinese have been avoiding giving an impression of panic in Beijing overthe developments. All the senior officials of the Tibet Administration and partyapparatus, who had gone to Beijing to attend the NPC session, continue to bethere and are letting their subordinates handle the situation in Tibet andSichuan.

Before starting the arrests in Tibet on March 17, 2008, the local authoritiesordered all foreign tourists and journalists to leave the region for their ownsafety. They also stopped issuing permits for foreigners to visit Tibet. PrimeMinister Wen has, however, promised that once the situation improved, thegovernment would take the initiative in taking a team of foreign journalists toTibet.

B. Raman is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. ofIndia, New Delhi, and,presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies,Chennai.