Posted on 03/14/2008 3:10:19 AM PDT by Hillarys Gate Cult
One of the largest markets in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, is in flames and at least one police car has been burnt as angry monks and Tibetans clash with police today.
The surge of violence follows almost a week of demonstrations by lamas from monasteries around the Tibetan capital, who have been demanding greater freedom of religion before the Olympic Games as well as independence for the deeply Buddhist Himalayan region.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
Here is the AP story
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h5Z6bJwtN_roGSIUQiQnfbf2NkhgD8VD3DIO0
>>BEIJING (AP) — Police cars were set on fire Friday in the center of Lhasa as hundreds of people joined in the latest protest by monks against Chinese rule in Tibet, a Tibetan woman said.
“The police cars were set on fire in the center of city,” said the woman, who has family in the city.
The violence was the latest in a series of protests inside and outside Tibet which have put an unwelcome spotlight on China’s policies in Tibet in the lead-up to this summer’s Olympic games in Beijing. Tibetan exiles have also held high-profile protests in northern India.
The violence comes as Buddhist monks started a hunger strike and two others attempted suicide as troops surrounded monasteries in a government crackdown on the widespread protests, a U.S-funded radio service said.
The woman said monks set the police cars on fire after a demonstration near a small temple in Lhasa was stopped by police. She said the protest was still going on.<<
And this the earlier protest across the border in India by the Tibetan exiles that also got ugly
BBC also says that mobs with some numbering in the hundreds are destroying anything that shows Chinese influence.
Tension intensifies in Lhasa
TCHRD[Friday, March 14, 2008 15:42]
Lhasa reels under extremely tense situation at the moment. The situation intensified since this morning. There is smoke every where from burning shops and vehicles. Roads leading in and out of some of the busiest streets in Lhasa have been sealed off. Despite a huge presence of Chinese armed troops, the protesters continue to stage demonstration.
According to confirmed information received by the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD), around a hundred monks from the Ramoche Temple (north of Lhasa), while on their way to the streets around 10 am this morning to stage a peaceful protest, were blocked by Chinese armed police which led to minor scuffles between the two. The monks carried forward their peaceful demonstration which eventually grew bigger with bystanders joining them. Sources confirm vehicles and shops getting burned down in the commotion.
The police have cordoned off all roads leading in and out of Lhasa with armed paramilitary forces patrolling the streets. Sources confirm gunshots being fired to disperse the protesting crowd. No deaths could be confirmed at the moment. TCHRD will continue to closely monitor the situation and issue updates as the situation progresses.
At the time of release of this update, reports are coming in of a parallel demonstration by monks of Labrang Tashikhil Monastery and the area Tibetans in Sangchu County, Kanlho “Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture” (”TAP”) Gansu Province.
Contact person: Tenzin Norgay (English) / Jampa Monlam (Chinese and Tibetan)
Tel: +91 1892 223363 / 225874 / 229225
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7296041.stm
Shops on fire amid Tibet protests
Campaigners say several hundred monks have joined protests
Fires have broken out in the Tibetan city of Lhasa, Chinese state media reports say, as rare street protests in the province appear to gather pace.
Xinhua news agency said witnesses described shops being set on fire.
Rallies by monks have continued through the week, in what campaign groups say are the largest protests against Beijing’s rule in 20 years.
An eyewitness told the BBC how security forces and monks clashed on Wednesday, with several monks being beaten.
John, a US national who left Lhasa on Thursday, said that about 300 monks had tried to leave the Sera monastery to protest.
But security forces brandishing clubs stopped them and at least one monk was beaten to the ground, he said.
Quick guide: Tibet
India detains Tibetans
Meanwhile, the police were reported to have sealed off three monasteries in the city.
Witnesses said police were at Drepung and Sera monasteries on Thursday, and the US-based International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) said a third monastery, Ganden, was also surrounded.
The ICT said it appeared that lay Tibetans had joined the monk-led protests, and claimed that at least one police car had been set on fire in the city on Friday.
US embassy officials in Beijing told the Associated Press that US citizens had reported gunfire and rioting in Lhasa.
Beijing claims sovereignty over Tibet, but many Tibetans remain loyal to their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, who fled in 1959 and currently lives in exile in India.
Tibetans finally fighting back against Chinese oppression. But it is too little, too late. Their peace-loving Buddhist ways are admirable, their exiled leader is a wonderful man. Unfortunately, this very way of life and having no defense is the reason they are being destroyed. To watch an entire culture be systematically wiped out by the Chinese since the 1959 invasion has been heartbreaking, Tibet not longer appears as a country on World maps. I fear this uprising will be put down quickly, the Chinese will continue their slaughter of the Tibetan people. Peace can only be accomplished through strength.
IIRC, there was an anti-China force comprised of Tibetans, sponsored together by the CIA and Indian forces.
After the bonhomie with China in the ‘70s, this rebel force came to an end.
That's an awfully familiar name. Isn't that (almost) the same name as the climber who climbed Everest with Sir Edmund Hillary?
http://www.indianexpress.com/res/web/pIe/ie/daily/19980917/26050124.html
“The funding was part of the CIA’s Cold War effort to undermine the governments of Communist countries, notably China and the Soviet Union, the daily said.
The CIA also trained Tibetan guerrillas in Nepal and at a covert site in Colorado, it said, citing declassified intelligence documents released by the State department.”
Perhaps. I looked the Sherpa climber in Wikipedia; we lost him in 1986. Interesting fellow.
BTW, my response to China is I'm not watching the Olympics at all.
The Whole World is Watching! The Whole World is Watching! The Whole World is Watching! The Whole World is Watching! The Whole World is Watching!
A shame it didn’t last. And thanks for sending me the link to the other article.
I did see a piece last night on the news regarding Islamic terrorist groups encroaching in Western China, evidently there are pletny of Muslim extremist strongholds that are stupid enough to take on the Communist Chinese. That’s a fight I wouldn’t mind watching. Not in the least.
The Tibetan people are not only put down through force, but the Chinese are encouraged to move there, thereby diluting a great civilization to the brink of non-existence.
A more evil regime you would be hard-pressed to find. One of the few countries still operating gualgs......and we do business with them as a normal trading partner.
Sad what the world has come to.
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This probably isn't the BIG one, but still, big news.
Agree that this protesting will be crushed, as was Tienanmen before it. Bad planning.
When I saw the first headline early this morning, I knew the Chinese would slaughter people. Everyone did.
They think they can vomit the commies to death?
Video now taken down. Wonder why. Maybe Chinese government got to YouTube.
Interesting. And unfortunate.
“angry monks and Tibetans clash with police”
s/b
“angry monks and other Tibetans clash with police”
Timing for something like this is never good, and the folks who put “Free Tibet” bumperstickers on their cars in the 1990s are busy destroying US military recruiting offices now.
That's what really makes the Tibetans' willingness to die for their beliefs--something that many Democrats can't understand--more amazing.
“angry monks and other Tibetans clash with police”
Everyone knows that that a one-L Lama is a Tibetan holy man,
Others may know that a 2-L LLama is an Andean pack animal,
Fewer know that a 3-L LLLama is one heck of a big fire!
“No Olympics for you!”
perhaps just as the french students were crushed prior to the actual ousting of the aristocrats, that this will spark the chinese storming of the barricades...
i suspect plenty of demonstrations when the world watches...
i do not think the communist party in china can withstand the pressure...
teeman
China has changed from a Communist government to a Fascist government over the last twenty years. Fascist governments are notoriously unstable governments - the people are able to accumulate too much wealth, which leads to individual power rather than government power. Milton Friedman believed that free markets lead to free people, and not the other way around. There are plenty of examples that prove him right.
I would not be surprised to see the whole Chinese system come crashing down soon.
I wouldn't be so fast to conclude that 'outside' terrorists were really behind those attacks. Just like the case with Russia, you can't instinctively believe what they tell you. After all, both Russia and China are major arms suppliers of terror states Iran, Syria and Venezuela. Also, Monks setting fires to cars? Sounds fishy to me there, too.
Police cars were set on fire Friday in the center of Lhasa as hundreds of people joined in the latest protest by monks against Chinese rule in Tibet, a Tibetan woman said.
This will be big news outside of China, and even within China, it will be widely seen on youtube, etc... I only caution everyone in thinking this means much - the average Chinese firmly believes the Party line that Tibet is absolutely part of China and that Tibetans have no right to complain against Chinese rule.
I’m sure if this were happening in the US, there would be a flash point coming like a *thief in the night*
You never know when enough people get mad enough to cause the flash-point.
China is now assured to never be among those to recognize Kosovo.
The Chinese are barbarians ... ping.
The bottom line here is that the UN is only useful to tyrants and has ever been so.
Yep. Well-said.
Not "finally." In 1959 the streets swelled with largely unarmed protesters and 89,000 were killed in what became known as the Lhasa uprising. From the beginning Tibet resisted with its own army, poorly equipped and poorly trained, against Chinese troops armed with machine guns, grenades and airplanes armed with machine guns and bombs. Weak Tibetans in the government hoped to appease the Chinese and betrayed the troops who fought to their deaths almost to the man.
In eastern Tibet Khampa warriors fought a guerrilla war for many years, some armed and trained by the CIA, some armed through smuggling over the Nepalese and Bhutanese borders. Even in the '90s word through the grapevine was that they continued to fight. They rode their horses into machine gun fire, often actually succeeding in their charges from the sheer audacity of it and from the fact that Chinese troops had difficulty at elevations of 14,000 ft and better.
But in the early days Chinese bombers leveled virtually every monastery in eastern Tibet. Those monasteries served not only as the spiritual centers for the people they were essentially the only "urban" centers for trading, government and social intercourse with neighboring areas for the nomadic herders of Amdo and Khams. They still exist and they still resist fifty years later.
Similar resistance occurred in the wild regions of western Tibet. Lhasa was always truly the only urban, cultural, and agricultural center of Tibet. Relative to the outlying regions in the east and west they were citified. Soft in body and political outlook. City folk not warriors. Yet that is where the Lhasa uprising occurred and where today's protests are happening.
With all due respect to you when you say that Tibetan Buddhists are peace-loving I would agree. I would say the same about Americans though. The Buddhist view is not a pacifist POV it is a view of non-aggression. Their primary deficit is not in an unwillingness to fight it was in their unpreparedness to fight a modern aggressor at the outset and having been overwhelmed by the initial sucker punch they have been on of the mat ever since.
To watch an entire culture be systematically wiped out by the Chinese since the 1959...
The initial invasion was in 1950.
I fear this uprising will be put down quickly, the Chinese will continue their slaughter of the Tibetan people. Peace can only be accomplished through strength.
You bet it will. As the Chinese always have. Between 1950 and 1959 nearly half the Tibetan people, around 1.5 million, were killed. The Tibetans have no strength other than what is in their hearts. The U.S. abandoned efforts, through the CIA, to help them under JFK because it was a political liability during the cold war in SE Asia at the time.
The leftist press in Europe and the U.S. allowed itself to be spoon-fed propaganda from Beijing in the fifties and sixties. For all the blathering feel-good nonsense the Free Tibet crowd in Hollyweird puts out the press generally remains a stooge of the PRC...willingly so. (Big surprise there eh? They're selling us out now to China, Islam and Reconquista.)
Through his brother the Dalai Lama tried to arm the Khampas early on but the western press and western politicians kept that effort underground through criticism born of fear of offending Beijing.
Tibet has never had support in the west where it might count. No one has ever stood up in the UN and demanded any concession from China on their brutal policies there. Has anyone ever stood up to China on anything in any real way? I'm afraid our best effort was in Vietnam. We should have listened to MacArthur.
Please don't take my post as argumentative or critical. I know you meant the best and have empathy and compassion in your heart.
Thank you, MarMema. It is disgusting. The UN and the powers-that-be support independence where it has no justification; Kosovo, palestine. They have no time to hear the claims of Tibet, Taiwan, (OK, we have supported Taiwan in the U.S.) or anyone who doesn’t serve some political interest other than their own rightful claims. I have no doubt that Atzlan will be the new darling of bleeding hearts and tyrants throughout the world.
This is the real government (dictatorship) of Red China in action that Washington continues bolstering through ‘free trade’.
Barbarians & as Sassy says heathens. I am not sure where she got that one but I am not disagreeing with her.
Me either. It is a sad thing to see for idealists like me, but you are right on the money. The Tibetans and Serbs get thrown under the bus if they don't serve our interests.
I never knew that many were killed in Lhasa.
I really fell in love with these people after watching the movie “Seven Years in Tibet”, and then reading the actual novel it was based on.
How sad to hear that so many died in the fight to keep their country.
Wow. I didn't know but at least the Serbs won't feel so lonely.
Well there is no doubt the Chinese are using lead poison on the Tibetens,from an AK 47 no doubt.
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