Posted on 04/06/2008 2:26:18 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
April 6, 2008
China struggles to quell Tibet rebels
Michael Sheridan, Far East Correspondent
A PICTURE is emerging of desperate and prolonged Tibetan resistance despite the huge scale of China’s military operation across the mountainous region that one ancient poet called “a place where snow lions dance”.
The Chinese press focused yesterday on a campaign to whip up resentment against the foreign media as reports outside China spoke of at least eight unarmed Tibetans shot dead by paramilitary police.
Scraps of evidence collected by exiles, campaigners, military analysts and daring witnesses inside Tibet all point to the conclusion that China can subdue the Tibetans but cannot win the spiritual war.
There is also new evidence this weekend in eyewitness accounts provided to The Sunday Times of the spread of unrest among Muslims in the vast province of Xinjiang, which borders Tibet.
These are the two most turbulent regions in the People’s Republic and a simultaneous crisis in both of them would present the Chinese leadership with the most serious challenge it has faced since 1989.
Piecing together official statements with accounts reaching Tibetans in exile, the size of the Tibet operation suggests that the Chinese are having to hold down dozens of villages, man hundreds of checkpoints and retain control of more than 100 important monasteries and shrines.
China has committed the key 52nd and 55th divisions of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), dressed soldiers up as paramilitary police and employed Marxist psychological warfare tactics to break the Tibetan resistance.
Most of the security forces are Han Chinese from the farmlands of eastern China, untrained for hard work at high altitudes on the Tibetan plateau.
Thousands of regular troops backed by armoured vehicles have deployed to support the police, patrolling roads in a vast area stretching from the Himalayan border with India to the provinces of southwestern China. “No military machine on earth is designed to do that permanently,” commented a foreign military attach鮊
So far China’s top leadership, the nine-man standing committee of the politburo, has thrown its support behind the PLA’s iron-fisted response. The prospect of talks with the Dalai Lama seems unlikely.
Zhou Yongkang, the security chief, and Li Changchun, the Communist party’s head propagandist, are said to have persuaded the rest of the standing committee that China can win in Tibet and in the arena of world opinion.
On the propaganda front, the farcical results of a conducted tour for journalists to a temple in Lhasa, where monks wept and pleaded for freedom, suggest that official plans to reopen Tibet to tourists on May 1 look distinctly optimistic.
In terms of what China calls “stability”, Tibet remains volatile. The fresh violence broke out near a military headquarters at Kangding which controls the passes between the Tibetan plateau and the city of Chengdu.
The state news agency conceded that a “riot” broke out in Kardze, west of Kangding, in which a government official was seriously wounded.
However, reporters for the Tibetan service of Radio Free Asia found witnesses who said that one monk and seven lay people had been shot after the police banned pictures of the Dalai Lama and tried to force people to criticise him.
According to Urgen Tenzin, director of the Indian-based Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, the number of dead could be as high as 15.
The officials had not only demanded that all photographs and posters of the Dalai Lama be destroyed but also that all monks denounce their spiritual leader. “Skirmishes” broke out when officials began room-to-room searches in a monastery. Two monks, Tsultrim Tenzin and Yeshe Nyima, were arrested when they protested at Chinese officials throwing pictures of the Dalai Lama on the floor.
This intensified the protest, with more than 300 monks and several hundred Tibetan villagers demonstrating close to where the monks were being held.
Police opened fire on a crowd of Tibetans at Nyatso Monastery in Dawu, west of Chengdu, on Saturday at midday after lay people joined monks in a religious observance. The police intervened and the situation developed into a protest. It is believed that at least five Tibetans were hit. Injured monks and civilians were unable to get medical treatment.
It was a sketch of the nightmare that unites the Chinese leadership in the fear that any show of weakness will embolden its numerous enemies. They range from all the losers in China’s economic upheaval to followers of the banned Falun Gong meditation group, Tibetans and Muslims.
The Sunday Times has obtained the first independent confirmation of the outbreak of protest in China’s restive western province of Xinjiang, which is home to the Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority. Hundreds of Muslim women, many with their babies, are still in detention after Chinese security forces broke up a protest led by mothers calling for human rights in the remote Silk Road city of Hotan.
Eyewitnesses spoke of an unprecedented scene in the grand bazaar of Hotan on March 23, when veiled women advanced holding their infants in the air, defying the paramilitary police to open fire.
“At first some people came past handing out leaflets and then a group of women in Arabian-style clothes and veils came by, some of them with their babies in their arms,” said a Han Chinese resident of the town.
“They were surrounded by the armed police, then thrown into trucks and driven away. Even those who weren’t marching were rounded up before the police cleared the streets.” Between 700 and 1,000 people, the majority of them women, had been arrested, witnesses estimated.
The Muslims were apparently emboldened by news of the uprising in Tibet, just to the south of Hotan beyond the Kunlun mountains. The demonstrations were set off by the death in police custody of a prominent local philanthropist and trader in jade, for which the city is famous.
The body of the man, 38-year-old Mutallip Hajim, was handed back to his family on March 3 by the police, who said he had died of heart trouble and ordered his immediate burial.
However, protests spread to other towns as Muslims called on the authorities to stop torture, abandon plans to restrict the veil and free political prisoners, Radio Free Asia reported.
Chinese officials said that “terrorists, splittists and religious extremists” had tried to “stage a riot” in Hotan.
Last month China claimed to have foiled a “terrorist plot” to attack the Olympic Games after raiding a militant hideout in Urumqi, the provincial capital.
Then, local warlords inside China could also rise up and the Chinese empire would be simply shattered.
China's hold on its empire has been frequently precarious. Many regions and ethnic groups had not been happy to be under its imperial government.
Now that Tibetans have risen up, it emboldened Uyghurs. As this article suggests, various dissident elements inside China would also exploit this opportunity, notably Falun Gong.
If chain reaction of unrest and uprising intensifies, Olympics would be the last thing they have to worry. However, I am not sure if these events would reach critical mass before the Olympic Games in Bejing.
Ping!
It could be a good thing. The more the news gets out, the weaker China is. (and they are going to have to feed NK to boot)
Those fun loving chi-coms, find a photo of the Dalia Lama in your home and chi-com soldiers may open fire on your trouble making sorry butt.
Hey there liberal socialist, keep up your support for the commie killing turds.
There is a parallel message/lesson here. . .as the same war MO, of course, applies to our enemies and it should be fully understood by Obama and Hillary and every frickin Lib who imagines they are showing 'strength' or worse, virtue; by their constant advisement and promises of withdrawal of our Military from Iraq.
Hillary at her weakest; has shown only strength; as has Obama, for his entire 'war-for-the-presidency'. Neither; when down; has shown weakness nor declared any intention of withdrawing. Yet, they refuse to apply the same rules of engagement - and for success - to our Military.
(By contrast; McCain demonstrates both personal strength and altruistic WILL for success; but if McCain does not realize he is in a WAR to win the Presidency; he could just lose it. His asking for a 'civilized' campaign with enemies such as are on the Left; is like expecting terrorists to abide by the Geneva Convention.)
Bush; after eight years, still did not 'get it' when it came to dealing with his political enemies - his very less-than-loyal opposition in Washington.
(For both Hillary and Obama; the 'dirty secret' surely hides here, somewhere. The 'secret' that their head-bobber supporters don't know; and that is this 'Left' knows perfectly well, the winning strategies for their collective success; versus, the losing strategies they proselytize so as to insure America's defeat.)
Moslem separatists giving the chinese rat-bastards a headache--mow there is a jihad I could get behind.
This is a nationalist rather than a religious movement. The Uighurs (basically a Turkic sub-group much as Bavarians and Alsatians are German sub-groups) don't get along with other Muslims in the Chinese empire, any more than the Czechs and the Hungarians got along within the Austro-Hungarian empire. Uighurs are Caucasian, whereas Han Chinese are Mongoloid.
If only more revolts broke out across China. Then (I know it’s a fantasy, but let me enjoy it for a moment) the ROC could begin their liberation campaign of the Mainland!
"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
Don’t know what is prolonged, but Tibet will re-open to foreign tourists again on 1 May. Buy your train ticket early—avoid the rush.
Typical sloppy journalism from useful idiot reporters spoon fed bullshit by Tibetans separatists.
The 52nd and 55th division do not even exist in the PLA Orbat and haven’t for decades. The 52nd was downsized to a brigade in 1985 and the 55th division was disbanded entirely.
When force and intimidation replace natural concord and agreement between peoples and individuals, that society is in it’s last stage of existence. That’s from China’s own history; maybe the Chicoms need to back off from the business texts and pick up some classic texts.
China has the same issues as their larger neighbor to the north, Russia.
The resistance isn't small and with over 5 million Tibetans they are going to have to stack up a lot of bodies before they are "subdued."
They don’t care how many people they kill. They are disgusting & I hate them.
Useful piece, as usual. The Uighur situation is most precarious for Beijing. Geopolitics revolves around the Silk Road passes.
One reason the USA is there, of course. A most brilliant move.
We sure do have more than our share of fools in this country, darn it. Americans used to think for themselves, at least more than they do now -
Pei-ping, lads.
We need a new ChiCom troll alert, virginia ridgerunner. ChiCom troll “gogoman” is on the prowl on this thread (see #9).
I don’t know how we handle cases where multiple ChiCom trolls - gogoman, comrage jing, and yaoyinba, all post on the same thread. Do we use only one troll alert or 3 different ones?
Hahaha, yes, arrest their women and children, that will calm the situation. /s
GoGoMan - Do you like your new photo?
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