VENGEFUL rioters returned to the streets of the old Tibetan quarter of Lhasa
yesterday, defying the gunshots and tear gas of Chinese troops surrounding
the centre of the city. They broke into the few remaining shops untouched by
a rampage of destruction on Friday and tore them apart, wrecking interiors
and flinging debris into narrow alleys.
The main Tibetan exile group in India put the death toll in Tibet’s worst
outburst of popular violence in two decades at 30 confirmed and more than
100 unconfirmed. China said 10 people, “all of them innocent civilians”, had
been burnt to death in the mayhem.
It was impossible to verify the contending claims at first hand in Lhasa.
While gunfire was heard, no bodies could be seen on the streets within the
Chinese troop cordon.
The rioters appeared impervious to increasingly shrill calls for order issued
by the Tibet autonomous regional government, which set a deadline of
midnight on Monday for them to surrender.
By yesterday afternoon, China still had not regained control of the centre of
Lhasa and as world attention focused on its reaction to the uprising, its
leaders, gathered for a self-congratulatory meeting in Beijing, faced the
“Tiananmen dilemma” – whether to use overwhelming force.
China is conscious that with the 2008 Olympics just five months away it could
face a new public relations disaster on a par with the Tiananmen Square
massacre, in which hundreds died when the party sent in tanks to crush
pro-democracy protests in 1989.
Lhasa awoke yesterday to the hush of dawn, when Tibetans came out to walk
around and gaze at the heaps of debris in the streets. The contents of
ransacked shops spilled out, smouldering and reeking of fire.
The whole Tibetan quarter of the hallowed mountain capital appeared stunned
after what had been an orgy of wrecking and looting.
The violence was undoubtedly racial. Its prime targets were the Chinese
merchants who have flocked to Tibet by road and on a prestigious new train
across the roof of the world.
The mobs were the losers of Lhasa – the poor who seethe with resentment,
outwitted commercially by Chinese traders, out-gunned by the Chinese army
and, many fear, ultimately to be outnumbered by Chinese migrants.
The demonstrations had started as peaceful marches by Tibet’s revered Buddhist
monks. They came out of their monasteries last week to observe the 49th
anniversary of the Dalai Lama’s flight into exile.
A predictable and harsh response by the Chinese set off more protests by
monks, then ignited popular rage among the ordinary inhabitants of Lhasa.
Their explosion of hatred, when it came, was sudden and shockingly intense.
Fire engines were attacked. Any Chinese army vehicles were stoned. Cars were
ambushed, victims dragged off bicycles and beaten.
Yet for all China’s claims of a political conspiracy, there was no evidence of
organisation on the streets. Only a handful of rioters produced flags or
pictures of the Dalai Lama. A few yelled “Long live Tibet!” For most, it was
merely a moment of intoxicating, sweet revenge.
From late on Friday to Saturday afternoon there was almost a sense of
liberation and joy among Tibetans that they had been able to vent
frustrations pent up for so many years.
But the Chinese were steadily pouring troops and armoured personnel carriers
into Lhasa, building up a posture that indicated a readiness to strike.
Late yesterday the troops on the streets exchanged their batons for assault
rifles. They began to stage charges into the warren of grimy houses and
shops around the temples, chasing the stone-throwers and firing shots at
people looking on from rooftops.
Sporadic skirmishes broke out across the city as the day wore on, surreal
contrasts between pockets of violence and areas of timeless calm.
A few Chinese picked their way back into the blackened ruins of their shops,
bewailing the utter loss of their meagre livelihoods. They were not bothered
by Tibetans as they picked over the remains.
One, a member of China’s Muslim Hui minority, sat with his Han Chinese
neighbour in mutual contemplation of their ruin. “We have lost everything,”
he said in despair.
The mood in Lhasa as Saturday drew to a close was a mixture of tension,
foreboding and, among many Tibetans, sheer disbelief at the speed of events.
Tibetan exiles said at least five Tibetans had been shot dead by the Chinese
security forces and forecast mass imprisonment and torture to come.
In London, the Free Tibet campaign said it had reports that between 26 and 33
people had been killed on Friday after a bomb was thrown into crowds massed
outside the Drapchi prison in Lhasa to demand the release of all prisoners.
Reports from travellers told of a rippling wave of violence across the vast
Tibetan heartland. It extended far into the western provinces of China and
there was as yet no reckoning of the cost in lives or property of ethnic
conflict in remote towns and monasteries.
Tibetan exiles reported that the authorities had lost control of the town of
Xiahe, the site of the influential Labrang monastery in Gansu province in
the historic area of “greater Tibet”.
According to the reports, protesters attacked shops and government buildings
in Xiahe. Police broke up the demonstrations with batons and tear gas. At one
stage the demonstrators numbered 20,000 and had in effect taken over the
centre of the town, the exile groups claimed.
True or not, reports of such demoralising scenes will intensify political
pressure within the Communist party to put an end to them.
President Hu Jintao’s reputation for strength and resolve among his colleagues
derives from his decision as party secretary of Tibet to crush
demonstrations in 1988 and 1989 by martial law and severe military action.
Human rights groups say Hu’s policies led to pitiless retribution at the cost
of many lives and a slew of well-documented abuses.
The devastation and chaos in Lhasa poses a huge problem for the Chinese
government. For a regime that prizes stability above all else, it is the
ultimate challenge to legitimacy.
On one level it shatters the carefully fostered illusion that Tibetans are the
happy recipients of Chinese money and progress. On another, it has destroyed
the reputation for efficiency of the Chinese security forces by exposing
their inability to predict an uprising and their failure to protect the
Chinese inhabitants of Lhasa.
Recriminations are already rife in China about the apparent breakdown of its
much-vaunted intelligence agencies, which are widely if inaccurately
believed to monitor every dissident move.
Yesterday China opened the propaganda war at home with resounding declarations
by Qiangba Puncog, the chairman of the Tibet local government, that the
“plot” to split Tibet from China was doomed.
To win over world opinion, the state news agency Xinhua published what may be
its most vivid dispatch in living memory, from two reporters in Lhasa, Lou
Chen and Yi Ling.
The Xinhua team described seeing rioters carrying back-packs full of rocks and
bottles of inflammable liquid, iron bars, sticks and long knives – “a
sure sign that the crowd came fully prepared and meant harm”, they observed.
They told of burning cars, motorcycles and bicycles, of rock-strewn streets
where smoke hung in the air and of the impressive restraint of the security
forces.
“Policemen were ordered not to use force against the attackers,” they
reported, the officers limiting themselves to tear gas and warning shots “to
disperse the desperate crowds” who spared neither women nor children.
No Xinhua story would be complete without a quote from the relevant official,
in this case an unnamed functionary of the Tibetan government who obligingly
revealed that “the sabotage was organised, premeditated and masterminded by
the Dalai Lama”.
The Tibetan spiritual leader has, in fact, appealed for an end to violence.
But he has put the onus on China to handle the uprising with restraint and
to respond to Tibetan aspirations with a willingness to negotiate.
“For the Chinese government to blame all this on his holiness is baseless and
ridiculous,” said Tashi Tsering, representative of the Dalai Lama at the
Office of Tibet in London.
Although the actor and Tibet supporter Richard Gere has raised the prospect of
a boycott of the Olympics, Tsering said the Dalai Lama did not support one.
“If they are able to resolve the Tibetan issue before the Olympics this would
be the best present to the Chinese people and the world,” he said.
But the Chinese politburo’s concept of what constitutes a resolution of the
issue could turn out to look very different in the next 48 hours.
