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Unrest at Shuttered Gateway to Tibet
By Jake Hooker
The New York Times
Wednesday 26 March 2008
Chengdu, China - In the back room of a Tibetan teahouse, three robed
monks spoke in whispers.
One monk said his home in Luhuo County had been littered with fliers calling
on Tibetans to protest. A second monk said soldiers had surrounded his monastery
in Aba County. The third dialed home. After folding shut his cellphone, he said
the police had killed one Tibetan protester and injured nine others in Serta
County.
"Tibetans are dying for no reason," said the Luhuo monk, as the
whine of a police siren drifted through an open window. "But this is happening
in remote places, and nobody knows."
From this city of 10 million people in the middle of China, all roads leading
west have been closed - except to convoys carrying soldiers and riot police
officers to subdue Tibetan antigovernment protests. Chengdu has always been
a gateway to the remote Tibetan plateau, but now it feels like a border outpost,
tense and anxious, at the eastern edge of what several Tibetans here described
as a war.
If it is a war, it is one the outside world cannot see. Police roadblocks have
closed off a mountainous region about the size of France, spanning parts of
the provinces of Sichuan, Gansu and Qinghai. Foreign journalists trying to investigate
reports of bloodshed are turned away or detained. Even in big cities like Chengdu,
Tibetans say they are wary of police retaliation. They pass along secondhand
accounts of clashes mostly on condition that their names will not appear in
print.
What seems clear is that in the isolated region west of Chengdu, the sometimes
violent protests, already the broadest and most sustained agitation against
Chinese rule in two decades, have continued despite the influx of armed security
forces. Lhasa itself is now under heel. But a vast area of highlands and placid
villages, where Tibetan life usually centers on temples and monasteries built
of wood and earth, remains a battle zone.
On Tuesday, protesters and the police clashed in Garze, a prefecture of Sichuan,
state media and a Tibetan rights group said. Some 200 monks and nuns began a
march earlier in the day that turned violent when the police sought to suppress
the crowd, the India-based Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy said.
China's Xinhua news agency said the police opened fire in self-defense
after the demonstrators attacked them with knives and stones. The rights group
said one 18-year-old monk was killed and another was critically injured, while
Xinhua said protesters killed one policeman.
In Chengdu, Tibetans gravitate to a neighborhood that is beside an ancient
Chinese temple called Wuhouci. The area is known for a teeming marketplace that
sells Tibetan Buddhist ceremonial objects, clothing and art. Usually, Tibetan
monks and traders pass through the market, buying crimson robes or printed scriptures,
but the police lockdown has left many people stranded and desperate for news
from home.
"Do you know how many died in Aba?" asked Nyima, 28, a monk from
the Garong monastery in Nyagrong County. He has lived in Chengdu for three months,
sleeping above his shop.
After the unrest in Lhasa, violent clashes between Tibetans and security forces
erupted in Aba. Officials later said the police fired in self-defense on a crowd
of Tibetans that had attacked the local police station and set it on fire. Tibetans
who have called relatives in Aba say the death toll may be more than 20; that
could not be independently confirmed.
A young Tibetan woman from Aba who sells Buddhist statues and jewelry at a
local shop said her family was safe but had also warned her that the conflict
in Aba had not yet ended. "They are fighting a war," said the woman,
whose name is Haijiang.
A Tibetan college student from Aba had also made a worried call home. His relatives
described a confrontation that began at the local Kirti monastery. The student's
family said a huge contingent of soldiers arrived with weapons. "People
got very nervous," the student said. In recent years, authorities tightened
religious restrictions, including closing down a religious school.
On March 16, protests began at Aba after a monk at Kirti declared that Tibetans
should not have to live under Chinese rule. Protesters holding images of the
Dalai Lama marched through the streets, the student said.
The police initially did not stop them. But when protesters burned a police
station, soldiers with machine guns fired into crowds, killing at least 13 Tibetans,
the student said. He said several Chinese soldiers had been killed.
"The next day, the town looked green with the soldiers," he said.
"Every day, helicopters hover over the city."
The police said Chengdu itself is secure. But the Wuhouci neighborhood is enduring
its own lockdown. Armed police officers now surround the neighborhood. White
patrol cars cruise the streets, flashing their lights as officers bark through
megaphones at vehicles to keep them moving.
Last week, the local police called a news conference to dispel rumors of a
bomb threat. Chinese shopkeepers gossiped about reports that a Tibetan man from
Aba had stabbed and killed two Han Chinese in the city. The police confirmed
that a stabbing had occurred but said a single victim had only minor injuries.
Monks and other Tibetans are meeting in quiet corners. In the back room of
the Tibetan teahouse, the three monks compared notes. One, age 40, told news
of Serta County, where he said Tibetans had taken over a government compound
and raised the Tibetan national flag.
Another monk had come to Chengdu from Aba to purchase printed Buddhist scriptures.
Now, he gathered information by telephone. Armed police officers had circled
six monasteries in Aba and arrested "many, many" monks, he said.
He was told that 23 people had died so far, even though China's state-run
media has reported only four injuries.
Two days later, one of the three monks again called his hometown of Luhuo.
"The sound of gunfire can be heard in Luhuo," the monk said. "A
lama died. A soldier died. They are fighting a war now."
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Jimmy Wang contributed reporting from Chengdu, and Jim Yardley from
Beijing.
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