Posted on 03/20/2008 5:18:08 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
TONGREN, China - A Tibetan monk crouched in the quiet courtyard of a nearly deserted monastery and bitterly recalled the words he and his fellow monks have been forced to recite every year at government-organized classes: "I love this country."
The "patriotic education classes" have been imposed on the monks for the past decade, but the young monk in the centuries-old Rongwo monastery still can speak his own mind to a journalist.
"We want freedom," he said. "We want the Dalai Lama to come back to his land."
The monastery is located in the valley town of Tongren, in Qinghai province, about 600 miles north of Lhasa, where anti-government protests last week were put down by riot police. The town is a mix of Tibetans and ethnic Chinese.
Just inside the monastery's main entrance, Tibetan pilgrims walked in quick circles around a prayer room that displays, among sacred objects, a large photo of the Dalai Lama. Outside, unmarked police vans were parked in a vast gravel lot.
The abbot of the monastery ordered the monks not to protest, saying that joining the Tibetan uprising would only hurt them.
When asked whether he agreed, a tortured expression crossed the face of the young monk, and he pressed a thumb to his lips in thought. Finally he said: "If I don't agree, there is nothing I can do."
The monk, like many other residents of this region, was fearful of giving his name to a foreign journalist.
His friend, another monk, spoke only Tibetan and communicated by bringing journalists into his cramped bedroom, where he pointed to a large color photo of the Dalai Lama taped to a wall.
What the monks wouldn't say, a Buddhist nun from Taiwan would.
"There is no religious freedom here," said Shi Chuan, who had spent the past month visiting the monks in Rongwo. "They have no way to express themselves. It's like they have their hands tied."
She said police treated her aggressively until they realized she was a foreigner.
Caught between their abbot's orders and their desire to join other Tibetans in protest, about 100 monks climbed a hillside above the monastery on March 16. There they burned incense and set off fireworks, while riot police massed outside the more than 700-year-old monastery, businesses closed and Tibetans ducked indoors. The night was peaceful, though.
In the morning, shops opened as normal and children walked to school past groups of armed police taking their morning jog down the main streets. Dozens of riot police lounged in a hotel lobby at breakfast before going out to patrol, passing strolling Tibetans in traditional dress. The monastery remained quiet.
The Chinese government has scrambled to shut down China's Tibetan areas since the unrest in Lhasa. Authorities have shipped in truckloads of armed police, set up blockades to keep out foreigners and turned Tibetan communities across remote western China into armed camps, with the monasteries at their center.
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Just outside the rings of riot police, life appears to go on as usual, at least at first glance. But Tibetans and non-Tibetans alike quietly share news of the uprising. One taxi driver furtively showed off cell phone photos his family had sent him from the protest in Lhasa.
In the heavily Tibetan southeastern corner of Qinghai province, tucked among at least three regions of reported protests, Tibetans in thick coats bounced by on motorcycles over gravel-strewn roads, waving. They huddled in cafes over plates piled with dumplings, their sunburned faces creasing when they smiled.
The dry, rolling grasslands more than 1,000 miles from Beijing gave the feeling of calm.
But a couple of hours down the road, several cars filled with police burst out of the darkness when a group of foreign journalists set off to walk around a checkpoint in one of the most heated areas of the Tibetan uprising, southern Gansu province.
"What did you see?" the officers angrily shouted. One officer did not put away his automatic rifle until the one ethnic Chinese journalist convinced him that he was a foreigner.
The lights of Luqu, a monastery town where there had been protests, were clearly visible down the road. The journalists were pushed into a police van and driven out of the Tibetan prefecture through its capital, where squads of riot police marched through the city square and hundreds more lined the empty streets.
The journalists were taken to a city outside the Tibetan region. When they stopped at the same checkpoint two of them had been escorted past less than 36 hours before, one young Chinese official smiled and said in English, "Ah, old friends."
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In one town along the eastern edge of the Tibetan plateau, where snow fell from the gray sky and yaks grazed near frozen streams, a police checkpoint had been set up on one lonely road heading south from Tongren. Such checkpoints are common since the current Tibetan uprising began, and the mood was tense.
The driver was stopped, inspected and lightly punished — with a 30-minute stop beside the road. His passengers — foreign journalists — crouched in the back seat with jackets over their heads.
The officers weren't checking passports; they were checking to see if the driver had his seat belt buckled.
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Between the periods of being controlled by the Chinese government and then largely ignored, Tibetans have learned to keep their frustrations on simmer. Drivers taped photos of important Buddhist lamas to the inside roofs of their cars. One driver proudly showed off a tiny glass ornament hanging from his rearview mirror with a faint engraved image of the Dalai Lama, a banned icon in China.
One taxi driver in a largely Muslim city in neighboring Gansu province showed off cell phone photos that his relatives in Lhasa had sent him.
The driver nervously clicked through images of charred and overturned cars and people running through the smoky streets, and he worried that local police might see him showing the images to a foreigner.
"Those Tibetans are causing a lot of trouble," the driver, a Muslim, said as he drove slowly at dusk through a once-bustling Tibetan area of town, now silent.
Despite the government's efforts to clamp down on news reports and cast the uprising as being caused by a tiny "Dalai clique," he knew exactly why the violence had occurred.
"They want freedom," he said.
He’s too material to return home. The man’s a hypocrite.
Please share more. source?
FREEDOM !!
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Tibet would be better a better neighbor free than some of the Muslim -stans.
Whether Tibet could then withstand a Muslim insurgency, I don’t know.
Both China and Tibet have Muslim populations and have for years.
Is the only reason Tibet doesn’t have the problem China has in the Tang Shien area because of Chinese presence there?
could be, the chinese are a bit of control freaks and don’t take to any form of dissent to kindly.
Hello all,
A few of you have been asking about the situation in Tibet. First, we are in Bhutan right now so we have been following the situation mainly through the news and through contacting friends in India and Tibet. While we were in India it was very clear that Tibetans were preparing quite a few demonstrations in the light of the Olympic Games. The feeling was that this is their last chance to do something for the Tibet cause since the whole world have their eyes on China. On March 10th, celebrating the 49th anniversary of the occupation of Tibet and the flight of H.H. the Dalai Lama to India) the exile community had planned a Peace March that would go from Dharamsala to Delhi and from there to the Tibet border to protest for the Chinese Occupation of Tibet (incidentally, it was also two weeks before China’s intended start of the Olympic festivities, including carrying the Olympic flame through Tibet). This march was echoed (although we still don’t know if there was communication between the Exile and Tibetans in Tibet so it would coincide) by a march of monks from the main monasteries surrounding Lhasa (Drepung and Sera mainly) into the capital. While the march in Dharamsala was stopped by the Indian police without any significant violence, the one in Tibet sparked protests all over the city, which led to a large amount of Tibetan gathering on the Barkhor (the area surrounding the sacred Jonang temple). Once there the crowd confronted the police (burning police cars, etc.) and burned quite a few of the Chinese businesses in the area. The ensuing repression only fueled more anger and has had Tibetans protesting not only in Lhasa but in other parts of Tibet (Labrang Monastery and Ngaba in Amdo especially). The number of deaths is still not clear, but it can be significant (while 10 is the official Chinese count, more than a 100 is claimed by the exile government in Lhasa alone). Somebody we know in Amdo, married to a Tibetan, just send me the following e-mail regarding the situation in Ngaba:
My wife & I have been calling into Ngaba every day this week for the latest news. Things are bad & are not being reported. There were 20 protesters executed at gunpoint in public yesterday in Ngaba & probably about 30 more (including a good friend of mine) who were shot in random fire & who are wounded but can't go to the hospital because they don't want the officials to know who they are. There are riots in the streets & cars are being burned & turned upside-down in revolt. Its also happening in Labrang. We have not heard anything from Ganze or other places in Kham as of yet. Of course Lhasa remains the worst with probably more than 100 people killed. That's pretty much what we know at the moment, but I'm sure there is more to the story... phones & the internet are interrupted due to regular & prolonged power outings.
It is difficult to say what is going to happen in the next days, weeks. The only guide we have for a situation like this was the way the Chinese government cracked down in the late 80’s after a series of similar protests in Lhasa, and the way the Chinese government dealt with Tiananmen. A few things have changed though. The first one is that, in a way, now “everybody is a reporter” (cell phones with cameras have revolutionized communication!). Although China has not allowed (surprise surprise) international media to report what’s going on on the ground, many people with phones and have been able to send pictures and videos that showed the gravity of the situation. The second one, of course, is the Olympic Games and the international media exposure that the country has forced upon itself (China received the Olympic bid with the understanding that they would improve both human rights and allow international media greater access to reporting in China before and during the Olympic games). This was supposed to be the coming out party of China on the international stage… and Tibetans knew that; therefore, the demonstrations.
It’s going to be interesting to see how the events will unfold in the next days, but we should keep all of our Tibetans friends in our thoughts and our prayers.
Take care and thanks for your concern,
Manu and Pam
Thank you for sharing that.
Prayers for those who seek freedom in Tibet and around the globe.
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