Tibet: April 2008 Archives
By BBC World News
April 28, 2008
Police in southern China have discovered a factory manufacturing Free Tibet flags, media reports say.
The factory in Guangdong had been completing overseas orders for the flag of the Tibetan government-in-exile.
Workers said they thought they were just making colourful flags and did not realise their meaning.
But then some of them saw TV images of protesters holding the emblem and they alerted the authorities, according to Hong Kong's Ming Pao newspaper.
Tibet independence
The factory owner reportedly told police the emblems had been ordered from outside China, and he did not know that they stood for an independent Tibet.
Workers who had grown suspicious checked the meaning of the flag by going online.
Thousands of flags had already been packed for shipping.
Police believe that some may already have been sent overseas, and could appear in Hong Kong during the Olympic torch relay there this week.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | via The New York Times
April 23, 2008
European business officials warned Wednesday that anti-French protests in China could spark a backlash against Chinese exports, while reports surfaced that protesters had confronted an American outside an outlet of French retailer Carrefour.
The incident with the American occurred when dozens of protesters confronted 22-year-old James Galvin, an English teacher working in the southern city of Zhuzhou, mistakenly thinking he might have been French.
Galvin was quickly whisked away by police and was not hurt in the Sunday incident, said Helen Claire Sievers, executive director of the WorldTeach program based in Cambridge, Mass.
''It was frightening for him because he didn't know what was going on,'' Sievers said.
France and high-profile French retailer Carrefour have been targeted by Chinese nationalists who felt insulted by raucous anti-China protests that accompanied the April 7 Paris leg of the Olympic torch relay.
Anger spiked this past weekend with protests at the French Embassy in Beijing and at Carrefour outlets in at least nine Chinese cities. Carrefour has denied rumors that it supports the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled Buddhist leader.
Joerg Wuttke, president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China, said a boycott of French products, as some activists are calling for, would likely hurt Chinese workers and companies, and could be met by similar action against Chinese products in Europe.
By Jill Drew and Maureen Fan | The Washington Post
April 21, 2008
China has spent billions of dollars to fulfill its commitment to stage a grand Olympics. Athletes will compete in world-class stadiums. New highways and train lines crisscross Beijing. China built the world's largest airport terminal to welcome an expected 500,000 foreign visitors. Thousands of newly planted trees and dozens of colorful "One World, One Dream" billboards line the main roads of a spruced-up capital. The security system has impressed the FBI and Interpol.
But beneath the shimmer and behind the slogan, China is under criticism for suppressing Tibetan protests, sealing off large portions of the country to foreign reporters, harassing and jailing dissidents and not doing enough to curb air pollution. It has not lived up to a pledge in its Olympic action plan, released in 2002, to "be open in every aspect," and a constitutional amendment adopted in 2004 to recognize and protect human rights has not shielded government critics from arrest.
The two realities show that when China had to build something new to fulfill expectations, it has largely delivered. But in areas that touch China's core interests, Olympic pledges come second.
"To ensure a successful Olympic Games, the government did make some technical and strategic efforts to improve the environment, human rights and press freedom. They did make some progress. But in these three areas, there's a long, long way to go," said Cheng Yizhong, an editor who tracks China's Olympic preparations.
With the Games less than four months away, the International Olympic Committee is scrambling to nail down specifics of how China will treat criticism of its actions during the event. Pressed this month, IOC President Jacques Rogge clarified that athletes would be allowed to speak freely in Beijing's Olympic venues, calling it an "absolute" human right.
"I can't help but feel cynical about all this," said David Wallechinsky, an Olympic historian, who said the IOC should have been more forceful with China earlier. "What are they going to do, take away the Games?"
France télévision - france2.com
Le 20 avril 2008
De nouvelles manifestations anti-occidentales ont eu lieu dimanche dans plusieurs ville de la République populaire.
Les rassemblements de dimanche
Plus d'un millier de personnes se sont rassemblées devant le magasin Carrefour de la ville de Xian (nord-ouest). Des attroupements similaires ont eu lieu à Harbin (nord-est) et Jinan (est), selon la même source.
Des manifestations antifrançaises avaient déjà eu lieu la veille dans cinq villes chinoises. Elles visaient principalement l'enseigne d'hypermarchés Carrefour, très présente dans le pays, pour protester contre l'attitude de la France sur le Tibet. Dans une interview publiée dans le "Journal du Dimanche", le président du directoire de Carrefour, José Luis Duran, dit prendre la situation "très au sérieux".
Selon une "source informée, citant la police", a indiqué l'agence France Presse sans plus de précision, les centaines, voire les milliers de manifestants de la ville industrielle de Wuhan (centre) étaient "très bien organisés". Mais comme pour les autres cortèges, il était difficile de mesurer les niveaux de spontanéité et d'encadrement du mouvement. Certains portaient un drapeau français maculé de croix gammées et traitant Jeanne d'Arc de "prostituée". Des manifestations de l'ampleur de celles de Wuhan sont rares en Chine et sont souvent encadrées, voire organisées, par des organisations officielles, comme la Ligue de la jeunesse communiste.
La fièvre semblait retombée dimanche matin avec le déploiement d'effectifs policiers aux abords des magasins cibles de la vindicte des manifestants. Le calme était apparemment revenu à Wuhan et Qingdao (est).
Le gouvernement chinois n'a pas condamné les appels au boycott des produits français.
>> france2.com
By BBC World News
April 19, 2008
Protesters in several Chinese cities have gathered to demand a boycott of French products and denounce campaigns for Tibetan independence.
Hundreds of people demonstrated in cities including Beijing, Wuhan, Hefei, Kunming, and Qingdao - often outside stores of the French chain Carrefour.
Passions ran high, but the protests were closely patrolled by police.
Protesters say they are angry at the scale of protests that accompanied the Olympic torch relay in Paris.
They have also denounced French President Nicolas Sarkozy's refusal to confirm whether he will attend the opening ceremony of the Games.
Pictures from the central city of Wuhan showed large crowds congregating outside a Carrefour supermarket.
'No to French goods'
The chain, which reportedly operates more than 100 outlets in China, has restated its support for Beijing's hosting of the Olympics this August, but is accused by some protesters of backing the campaign for Tibetan independence.
By RADIO FREE ASIA
17 April 2008
China is intensifying its crackdown on Tibet after the largest anti-Chinese protests there in almost 50 years. But many monks have refused to fly the Chinese flag on monastery roofs, sources in China and India say.
In addition to reports from remote Qinghai province this week that authorities have arrested Tibetan feminist and writer Jamyang Kyi, Tibetans say five other Qinghai Tibetan community leaders are in custody as well. All are residents of Machen [in Chinese, Maqin] county in Golog [Goulou] prefecture, and all are now being held in the provincial capital, Xining, sources said.
The five are Golog Dape, a popular comedian, leader of the Gangchen performance group, and animal rights activist; Dolma Kyi, a singer, activist, and founder of the folk-music company Gangchen Metok; Palchen Kyab, principal of the private Mayul Dargye school, founded with donations from Tibetan nomads; Lhundrup, Mayul Dargye's assistant principal; and Sonam Dorje, a teacher.
Golog prefecture State Security Bureau officers took the five into custody March 31 and moved them to Xining, sources said. No information on charges against them was available. "No relatives have been allowed to visit them," one source in Qinghai said.
An official at the Golog prefecture Public Security Bureau refused to comment and referred questions to her superior, who also refused to comment and hung up.
By DENIS D. GRAY Associated Press Writer | ABC News
April 17, 2008
FRIENDSHIP BRIDGE, Nepal-Tibet Border
Three lithe Chinese security men shift silently into position so they are anchored abreast exactly midway across Friendship Bridge, high above a Himalayan river gorge.
It's the only international gateway into Tibet. As a small group of foreigners approaches, the guards' unspoken message is clear: the rebellious territory behind them is off-limits.
After anti-government riots erupted March 14, Beijing closed off Tibet to foreign and domestic tourists and cracked down on Tibetans trying to escape. And China's security apparatus doesn't stop at the border.
Chinese security police in athletic wear can be seen lounging in tea shops and strolling the sole street in the border town of Liping. They shadow three Associated Press journalists from the moment they arrive, ordering them not to take photographs -- on Nepalese territory.
And in the capital Katmandu, Tibetan exiles say China is pressuring the Nepalese government to crush anti-Chinese activities by the world's second-largest Tibetan exile community.
"The Chinese asked us unofficially to cooperate on securing the border. They are far stricter now," said one Nepali immigration official, requesting anonymity since he was not authorized to speak to the press. "Even an Austrian lady who was studying Chinese in Lhasa (Tibet's capital) was not allowed to enter."
Before the current unrest, some 1,500 foreigners a month would make the rough, four-hour car journey on a Chinese-built road from Katmandu to the border and then on to Lhasa.
Now, Chinese authorities have reversed an earlier decision to reopen Tibet to tourism on May 1, tour operators in Beijing said last week. There has been no official indication of when the border would reopen. The International Campaign for Tibet, a U.S.-based activist group, says it has information the region may remain sealed until after the Beijing Olympics in August.
By RADIO FREE ASIA
April 15, 2008
Chinese authorities in Tibet have arrested a leading Tibetan writer, television producer, and performer in the midst of a major crackdown on anti-Chinese protests in the region.
Plainclothes state security officers escorted Jamyang Kyi, who has travelled widely and performed and lectured in the United States, from her office at state-owned Qinghai TV on April 1, an authoritative source told RFA's Tibetan service. "She never returned," a source in Siling [in Chinese, Xining] said. "People were speculating that she was detained in a guesthouse for interrogation."
Another authoritative source in Beijing said she had been formally arrested by the Xining Public Security Bureau, although the charges against her were unknown. In China, a formal arrest almost always precedes a conviction. "Security people went to Jamyang Kyi's house to search her computer, her mailing list, and contact numbers and took all these away," another source in Xining said.
Television producer, musician, activist, blogger
Jamyang Kyi, in her 40s, has worked as a producer in the Tibetan-language section of state-run Qinghai TV for two decades. She is well-known among Tibetans as an activist on women's issues, and she toured the United States to sing and lecture in 2006.
By Matthew Forney | International Herald Tribune
April 15, 2008
Many sympathetic Westerners view Chinese society along the lines of what they saw in the waning days of the Soviet Union: a repressive government backed by old hard-liners losing its grip to a new generation of well-educated, liberal-leaning sophisticates.
This outlook is naïve. Educated young Chinese, far from being embarrassed or upset by their government's human-rights record, rank among the most patriotic, establishment-supporting people you'll meet.
As is clear to anyone who lives here, most young ethnic Chinese strongly support their government's suppression of the recent Tibetan uprising. One Chinese friend who has a degree from a European university described the conflict to me as "a clash between the commercial world and an old aboriginal society." She even praised her government for treating Tibetans better than New World settlers treated American Indians.
It's a rare person in China who considers the desires of the Tibetans themselves. "Young Chinese have no sympathy for Tibet," a Beijing human-rights lawyer, Teng Biao, told me. Teng, a Han Chinese who has offered to defend Tibetan monks caught up in police dragnets, feels very alone these days. Most people in their 20s, he says, "believe the Dalai Lama is trying to split China."
Educated young people are usually the best positioned in society to bridge cultures, so it's important to examine the thinking of those in China.
The most striking thing is that, almost without exception, they feel rightfully proud of their country's accomplishments in the three decades since economic reforms began. And their pride and patriotism often find expression in an unquestioning support of their government, especially regarding Tibet.
The most obvious explanation for this is the education system, which can accurately be described as indoctrination. Textbooks dwell on China's humiliations at the hands of foreign powers in the 19th century as if they took place yesterday, yet skim over the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and '70s as if it were ancient history.
Students learn the neat calculation that Chairman Mao's tyranny was "30 percent wrong," then the subject is declared closed. The uprising in Tibet in the late 1950s, and the invasion that quashed it, are discussed just long enough to lay blame on the "Dalai clique," a pejorative reference to the circle of advisers around Tibet's spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.
Then there's life experience - or the lack of it - that might otherwise help young Chinese to gain a perspective outside the government's viewpoint. Young urban Chinese study hard, and that's pretty much it. Volunteer work, sports, debate teams, musical skills and other extracurricular activities don't factor into college admission, so few participate. And the government's control of society means there aren't many non-state-run groups to join anyway.
By Scott Pitoniak | Rochester Democrat and Chronicle
April 13, 2008
I couldn't help but feel a tinge of sadness recently as I watched London police wrestle with a man trying to put out the Olympic torch with a fire extinguisher.
I remembered the exhilaration I experienced when I carried the torch during the 2002 relay. I recalled how, during my fling with flame, spectators became excited, animated, transfixed the instant they saw the torch; how they snapped pictures, waved miniature flags, applauded, shouted encouragement and shed tears of joy.
Olympic torch relays, like the Olympics themselves, are supposed to be about uniting people and celebrating the world's similarities and differences.
But this so-called "Journey of Harmony" has been anything but. And while it hurts to watch, I understand completely the protesters' perspective.
China was hoping to use the torch relay and the Olympics as a showcase for its "arrival."
But Beijing had to be naïve to think the world would look away from the crackdowns in Tibet, the subsidizing of the Darfur genocide in the Sudan, and the imprisoning of journalists who had the courage to report the truth about the oppression of a Communist regime.
And one can't help but wonder what the International Olympic Committee was thinking when it awarded the games to China in the first place in 2001. Did IOC officials truly believe that Beijing was sincere in its assurances that China would suddenly change its long-time repressive ways and live up to the standard for human rights spelled out in the Olympic charter?
As we watch torchbearers surrounded by members of China's tracksuit-clad Sacred Torch Guard Team, we are reminded that little has changed. The team is supposed to protect the torch, but its members have gone out of their way to attack protesters and even bully the torchbearers themselves.
Sebastian Coe, a two-time medalist and chairman of the 2012 London Games, described them as "thugs" after they tried to push him. Another torchbearer had a Tibetan flag headband snatched from his head.
By Howard W. French | International Herald Tribune
April 10, 2008
I had hardly finished writing a news article on repression in Xinjiang last week when word reached me of the violent suppression of yet another protest by Tibetan monks in western Sichuan Province.
There were conflicting reports. Some said eight Tibetans had been killed, some of them ordinary bystanders. Other reports put the number as high as 15.
The Tibetans were not the only casualties, though, in the unfolding story of disaffection, protest and repression in China's western region. In a bitterly ironic way, the plight of Xinjiang's Uighurs had been obscured by the news of yet more brutality against Tibetans.
The news out of China in recent weeks has involved multiple, interlocking tragedies, with a cast of victims much larger and more complex than the easily digestible narrative people in the West are accustomed to thinking about, a tale of put-upon Tibetans and imposing Chinese.
The onrush of Western sympathy for the cause of Tibet is well-intentioned but often naïve. The way the Tibet story has been reduced to a binary matter, almost literally of Tibetan saints and Han Chinese sinners, is problematic on many levels, not least because of hypocrisy implicit in the West's selective outrage.
Moreover, our many oversimplifications and perceived double standards fuel nationalist outrage in China and provide ready ammunition for ripostes by propagandists, whose task is to drum up popular support for the government as it digs deeper into the very positions that protesters seek to overturn.
Unfortunately for conventional Chinese opinion, the first instance of hypocrisy that needs to be dealt with involves the plight of the Uighurs, whose situation very nearly mirrors that of the Tibetans, the distinction being that Tibetans have become lovable because of popular notions about Buddhism and because of the way Hollywood has romanticized Tibet and its saffron-robed monks and supported the Dalai Lama.
Natives of Xinjiang, by contrast, are Muslim, and geopolitics and popular culture have combined in ways that have been deeply prejudicial to the Uighurs, who have no celebrity sponsors or young Western sympathizers eager to identify with their culture or support their cause.
The biggest and least obvious victims in this crisis, however, are the Chinese themselves. This has nothing to do with the ritualized self-pity combined with zealous nationalism and occasionally vicious hate speech that one encounters from Chinese all over the Internet these days. Here, we speak of people who insist that any criticism of China is really motivated by deep-seated Western contempt for the Chinese people themselves, or of the strident Chinese voices that say that people in the West have no standing to criticize them because Westerners have plenty of awful things to answer for themselves.
Yes, it is true, the Americans massacred the Indians and the Europeans conducted a centuries-long Atlantic slave trade. One could go on and on compiling a list of sins. But surely it does neither China nor its image any good to say don't criticize us because of your past - or worse, it doesn't matter if we do bad things because you've done bad aplenty, too.
On one issue after another, many Chinese fashion themselves as victims in these terms, or cut themselves unlimited moral slack, doing themselves neither honor nor good. It often goes like: How dare you criticize us as undemocratic, since it took you hundreds of years of development to become democratic; or how dare you say anything about our pollution, because you've been the biggest polluters in the past.
Arguments like those are effective in China largely for one reason, because the state, which has so tightly controlled the narrative in China through the strict filtering of information and education, has pulled off a feat of monumental political manipulation, persuading China's great Han majority that any criticism of its government is a deliberate slight against the Chinese people.
One may spare a thought for China for having arrived rather late to the party of modernization, when things like environmental standards and democratic participation and human rights and openness are standard expectations, but demands for them won't go away, including increasingly from China's own people.
The reason the people of China are the biggest victims in the ugly spectacle of the last few weeks is that the Chinese government sold them on the Olympics as a measure of their standing and stature in the world. It did so, moreover, as if hypnotized by its own peculiar and stilted rhetoric, which demands that the world applaud its achievements with no pause for questions or thought.
That, after all, is the meaning of Beijing's insistence that politics have no place in the Olympics, even as the country uses the Games to bolster its domestic standing and to make an unsubtle statement to the world: We are successful and grand. Behold and admire us. We have arrived.
One hopes that the Chinese public, smart, increasingly sophisticated and more and more exposed to the kind of reality checks that come from contact with others, can figure out the trick that is being played on them. A criticism of an action of their government is in no way a criticism of them.
Go to any auto show and see for yourself. Whenever a shiny new model is rolled out and the manufacturer hands out glossy promotional brochures, the normal reaction of those in attendance is to kick the tires for themselves.
Beijing showed the world last week what happens to its own citizens who dare hold up a mirror to the system and assess things for themselves: The activist, Hu Jia, was imprisoned for daring to write. When you come to the Olympic Games in Beijing, you will see skyscrapers, spacious streets, modern stadiums and enthusiastic people. You will see the truth, but not the whole truth, just as you see only the tip of an iceberg.
The greatest insult an outsider could pay to the Chinese people would be failing to understand what lies beneath.
Note: Bold emphasis of text by Truth About China; not by the author of this outstanding "Letter from China".
By RADIO FREE ASIA
April 04, 2008
Paramilitary police in China's southwestern Sichuan province fired on a crowd of Tibetan protesters demanding the release of two detained monks, killing and wounding an unknown number of people, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reports.
At about 8 p.m. April 3, paramilitary People's Armed Police fired on a crowd of several hundred monks from the Tongkor monastery in Kardze (in Chinese, Ganzi) and several hundred residents, witnesses told RFA's Tibetan service.
The witnesses, who declined to be identified, said they believed 15 people were killed and dozens injured, with scores more unaccounted for as of April 4. Phone communication with the region was cut off after the shooting and no further information was available.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | The New York Times
April 07, 2008
Western reporters in China have received harassing phone calls, e-mails and text messages, some with death threats, supposedly from ordinary Chinese complaining about alleged bias in coverage of recent anti-Chinese protests in Tibet.
The harassment began two weeks ago and was largely targeted at foreign television broadcasters, CNN in particular. But the campaign broadened in recent days after the mobile phone numbers and other contact information for reporters from The Associated Press, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today were posted on several Web sites, including a military affairs chat site.
''The Chinese people don't welcome you American running dog. Your reports twist the facts and will suffer the curse of heaven,'' said one e-mail received by the AP. One text message said: ''One of these days I'm going to kill you.''
Those sending the messages and making the calls say they are ordinary Chinese, a claim that could not be verified.
Spokesmen for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the government's State Council Information Office and the national police ministry did not respond to telephone calls and faxed questions Monday seeking comment about the threats.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | The New York Times
02 April 2008
China has intensified its jamming of a Tibetan exile radio network's news broadcasts into Tibet during a crackdown on anti-government protests there, the network charged Wednesday.
The Chinese use radio stations inside Tibet to block the shortwave frequency used by the Voice of Tibet, said Oystein Alme, a Norwegian who runs the nonprofit foundation's business office in Oslo. The jamming signals contain music, drumming and noise.
Most of the Voice of Tibet's 13 staff members work at its main editorial office in Dharamsala, India, with Alme handling administration and funding in Oslo. The network started broadcasting in 1996, and has daily evening newscasts about Tibet in Tibetan and Mandarin Chinese. The station says its mission is ''to provide a channel for unbiased information and news to the Tibetans living under Chinese oppression in Tibet.''
Alme said the Chinese government started jamming its broadcasts almost as soon as they began but now is using two or three signals instead of one to make sure that the signal can't be heard.
''They have been stepping it up in connection with the demonstrations,'' Alme told The Associated Press. ''There has been enormous focus on journalists not getting free access to Tibet. The other side of the coin is that information from the outside is not getting into Tibet.''
The Chinese Foreign Ministry in Beijing had no immediate comment.
Tibetans have been protesting and rioting in Tibet and nearby provinces in the longest challenge to China's rule in the Himalayan region since 1989. The crackdown by Chinese authorities has focused international attention on the country's human-rights record in the run-up to the Beijing Games in August.
The jamming also affects those trying to listen in India, Nepal and Europe, Alme said.
By RADIO FREE ASIA
01 April 2008
Several hundred ethnic Uyghurs have staged protests in China's remote and restive Xinjiang region following the death in custody of a prominent Uyghur businessman and philanthropist.
Witnesses report protests at two locations in Khotan prefecture--in Khotan city March 23-24 and Qaraqash county March 23, RFA's Uyghur service reports. Several hundred protesters were taken into custody, numerous sources said, and security remains tight.
Numerous sources said the demonstrations followed the death in custody of a wealthy Uyghur jade trader and philanthropist, Mutallip Hajim, 38. Police returned his body to relatives March 3 after two months in custody, saying he had died in hospital of heart trouble. According to an authoritative source, police instructed the family to bury him immediately and inform no one of his death.
By UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
March 29, 2008
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has become the first world leader to announce she will not be at the Summer Olympics in Beijing, a German official confirmed.
Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in addition to confirming Merkel's decision, said he and Interior Minister Wolfgang Schauble will avoid the opening ceremony, The Guardian reported.
The crackdown on protests in Tibet and the Chinese government's claim that the Dalai Lama instigated rioting there have brought renewed attention to the lack of democracy in China, the newspaper said.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Thursday he would stay away from Beijing. Czech President Vaclav Klaus, who had previously said he would attend the games, followed suit almost immediately.
Foreign ministers from the 27 EU member states were expected to discuss the Olympics and Tibet in Slovakia Saturday, attempting to work out a common position.
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