After a relative lull of about nine days from March 19 to 27, 2008, there hasagain been unrest in Tibet and the adjoining Tibetan-inhabited areas of Sichuan,Gansu and Qinghai in the form of public demonstrations by the Tibetans andclashes with the security forces when they tried to disperse them.
Since March 27, 2008, the anti-Beijing and pro-Dalai Lama incidents have beenmore frequent and widespread in Sichuan and Gansu than in Tibet. The lastconfirmed report of demonstrations in Lhasa was on March 29, 2008, when a largenumber of monks and youth tried to take out a procession, but were dispersed bythe People's Armed Police units. Subsequently, there were reports of strikes byTibetan students in a number of educational institutions of the adjoiningprovinces.
On April 3, 2008, at least one Tibetan monk was killed and many monks andstudents were injured when the the People's Armed Police opened fire on a crowdof nearly 1,000 monks and others near the Tongkor monastery in the Kardze area.The crowd was demanding the release of two monks earlier arrested by the PublicSecurity Bureau. However, Tibetan exile groups have alleged that at least 15Tibetans were killed in the firing. There was another protest by a large numberof Tibetan monks and students on April 5,2008, in the same area. FifteenTibetans were injured when the police opened fire to disperse them. There are sofar no reports of any fatalities. The official Xinhua news agency has admittedthe incident of April 3, but not the incident of April 5.
Advertisement
Tibetan monks walk past the military headquarters along the main street of Xiahe, western China's Gansu province on April 3, 2008
The post-March 27 incidents have been triggered off by the continuing wave ofarrests of suspected participants in the violent incidents between March 10 and18, 2008, and by the launching of a "patriotic re-education" programmein all the monasteries and educational institutions by the local Bureau ofPublic Security. Under this programme, all monks and others are asked to gatherin the centre of the towns and shout slogans denouncing the Dalai Lama as atraitor and affirming their loyalty to China. The Chinese intelligence andsecurity forces personnel have also been searching houses for pictures of HisHolines. The monks and students are then asked to make a bonfire of thepictures.
The monks and others have been countering the security forces by shoutingslogans praising the Dalai Lama and calling for his return. Other slogansshouted by the demonstrators called for Tibetan independence in some towns andfor democracy and the end of the Communist rule in some other towns. In placeswhere the influence of the Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC) is strong, the slogansshouted were for independence and in places where the TYC is not very active,the slogans were for democracy.
Since March 14, 2008, when rioting Tibetan demonstrators in Lhasa attacked Hansand damaged or destroyed their property, there have been no other similar majorincidents of anti-Han violence. The post-March 27 incidents have been directedmostly against party and government officials, including members of the securityforces.
The Chinese authorities have claimed to have recovered a large quantity of armsand ammunition during house searches. Photographs of arms and ammunitionallegedly recovered have been carried by the government-controlled media. Thereis no way of confirming their claims. From the reports of government-organisedbonfires of the Dalai Lama's pictures received from the interior areas, it wouldseem that thousands of his pictures have been smuggled in despite the fact thatit is a crime to possess his picture.
Since the Chinese occupation of Tibet in 1951, Beijing's policy towards Buddhismand the monks has passed through three stages. Between 1951 and 1959, theChinese authorities refrained from interfering in religious matters. After theescape of His Holiness to India in 1959, they brutally suppressed Buddhism andthe monks. They closed down the monasteries, confiscated all jewellery and othercostly articles kept in them and forced the monks to give up their lives asmonks and live like ordinary persons. The Buddhists and their monks also becamethe brutal victims of the Cultural Revolution.
Deng Xiao-ping changed this policy in 1979. The monasteries were re-opened andthey were allowed to recall the surviving old monks recruited during the days ofHis Holiness and ordain new monks after the new entrants had beensecurity-vetted by the Party and the Ministry of Public Security. Side by sidewith their religious education, the new entrants were also required to attendclasses in patriotic education conducted by the local Communist Party. Thelessons in these classes denounced the Dalai Lama and praised the leadership ofthe Communist Party. While allowing the monasteries to re-open, the Chinesedrastically reduced the number of monks allowed in each monastery. The Chinesealso forced those in charge of different monasteries to ordain a certain numberof Hans as monks so that no monastery consisted exclusively of Tibetan monks.They were apparently using the Han monks to spy on their Tibetan counterparts.
The Chinese leadership was very confident that as a result of these measures andthe patriotic education campaign and the economic development in the area, ithad been able to eradicate the influence of the Dalai Lama on the monks and thelocal population. They have been totally unnerved to find that their confidencewas misplaced and that the influence of His Holiness remains as strong as ever.They have been particularly shocked to find that the monks ordained after 1979after being vetted by the Public Security Bureau are also as devoted to HisHoliness as the pre-1959 vintage of monks, who were ordained by His Holiness.Not only that. The Hans infiltrated into the monasteries as government-sponsoredmonks were totally oblivious of the goings-on inside the monasteries before theuprising broke out on March 10,2008.
In the disturbances since March 10, the old vintage of monks has remained by andlarge peaceful. While they shouted pro-Dalai Lama slogans, they avoided anyviolent confrontation with the Chinese security forces. It is the younger monksordained under the strict supervision of the Communist Party and the PublicSecurity Bureau after 1979, who have been in the forefront of the demonstrationsand violent incidents. They have been effectively networking with the localmembers of the TYC, which has reportedly set up many sleeper cells.
The Chinese authorities have been adamant that they would take the Olympic Torchto Tibet whatever be the consequences. They intend taking the torch twice. Onthe first occasion in the last week of April and the first week of May, it willbe taken to the top of the Everest. It will then be taken to other Chineseprovinces. It will be brought back to Tibet between June 19 and 21, 2008, andtaken across Lhasa and some other towns. A further escalation of violence can beexpected during these two periods.
Advertisement
B. Raman is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. ofIndia, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies,Chennai. He is also associated with the Chennai Centre For China Studies.
