Posted on 03/22/2008 2:46:20 PM PDT by charles m
What I saw was calculated targeted violence against an ethnic group, or I should say two ethnic groups, primarily ethnic Han Chinese living in Lhasa, but also members of the Muslim Hui minority in Lhasa. And the Huis in Lhasa control much of the meat industry in the city. Those two groups were singled out by ethnic Tibetans. They marked those businesses that they knew to be Tibetan owned with white traditional scarves. Those businesses were left intact. Almost every single other across a wide swathe of the city, not only in the old Tibetan quarter, but also beyond it in areas dominated by the ethnic Han Chinese. Almost every other business was either burned, looted, destroyed, smashed into, the property therein hauled out into the streets, piled up, burned. It was an extraordinary outpouring of ethnic violence of a most unpleasant nature to watch, which surprised some Tibetans watching it. So they themselves were taken aback at the extent of what they saw. And it was not just targeted against property either. Of course many ethnic Han Chinese and Huis fled as soon as this broke out. But those who were caught in the early stages of it were themselves targeted. Stones thrown at them. At one point, I saw them throwing stones at a boy of maybe around 10 years old perhaps cycling along the street. I in fact walked out in front of them and said stop. It was a remarkable explosion of simmering ethnic grievances in the city.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Q. There was an official response to this. In some reporting, info coming from Tibetan exiles, there was keenness to report it as Tiananmen.
A. Well the Chinese response to this was very interesting. Because you would expect at the first sings of any unrest in Lhasa, which is a city on a knife-edge at the best of times. That the response would be immediate and decisive. That they would cordon off whatever section of the city involved, that they would grab the people involved in the unrest. In fact what we saw, and I was watching it at the earliest stages, was complete inaction on the part of the authorities. It seemed as if they were paralyzed by indecision over how to handle this. The rioting rapidly spread from Beijing Road, this main central thoroughfare of Lhasa, into the narrow alleyways of the old Tibetan quarter. But I didn’t see any attempt in those early hours by the authorities to intervene. And I suspect again the Olympics were a factor there. That they were very worried that if they did move in decisively at that early stage of the unrest that bloodshed would ensue in their efforts to control it. And what they did instead was let the rioting run its course and it didn’t really finish as far as I saw until the middle of the day on the following day on the Saturday, March the 15th. So in effect what they did was sacrifice the livelihoods of many, many ethnic Han Chinese in the city for the sake of letting the rioters vent their anger. And then being able to move in gradually with troops with rifles that they occasionally let off with single shots, apparently warning shots, in order to scare everybody back into their homes and put an end to this.
See also these threads:
Ping me when CNN posts an eyewitness account to the genocide of Tibetians by the Han Chinese and their ChiCom overlords for the last 60 years.
This is a pure propaganda piece in response to the ChiCom’s recent protests to CNN.
Hey guys...we have a “live” one here. Thanks VR.
ChiCom troll “charles m” - member since Oct. 2007 and has a single-track posting history.
pganini - is that you?
I thought cmdjing was Pganini. Multiple account holders?
:^)
LOL....it’s either PGanini or Gogoman. It could be Comrade Jing too. All ChiCom tools think alike, in any case.
Sounds a bit like Passover.
Of course there was no rioting until the police attacked some monks protesting peacefully beating them with night sticks and kicking them.
it is pretty clear cut here that the Tibetans were rioting. I sympathize for their cause, but going around and burning other people’s property is not the right way. There’s not much difference between those Tibetans that riot and the muslims in Paris that rioted. All “conservatives” on FR that justify this kind of behavior should look at themselves in the mirror and move on to moveon.org.
All “conservatives” that can defend the ChiCom butchers might consider joining Code Pink.
The fact remains that the Chinese police in Lhasa Tibet were the first to be violent as well documented by foreign journalists and tourists.
so far there is no tourist video showing how police initiated the violence, plenty showing the opposite.
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.
KATHMANDU—Chinese authorities in Tibet today detained dozens of Tibetan monks staging a rare protest march into the regional capital, Lhasa, on a key anniversary.An authoritative source who declined to be identified told RFA’s Tibetan service as many as 300 monks set out from Drepung monastery outside Lhasa on the roughly 10-km (5-mile) walk into the city center.
Sources said the monks were marching to the Potala Palace in the heart of Lhasa to demand the release of monks detained last October shortly after the exiled Tibetan leader, the Dalai Lama, received a Congressional Gold Medal in Washington.
Police, ambulances summoned
Authorities at a checkpoint along the way stopped and detained between 50 and 60 monks, the source said. Witnesses reported seeing about 10 military vehicles, 10 police vehicles, and several ambulances at the checkpoint.
No information was immediately available on where the monks were taken or why ambulances were summoned.
Another witness reported that official vehicles then blocked off access by road to Drepung monastery, and that many monasteries in and around Lhasa were surrounded by members of the paramilitary People's Armed Police.
Tibetans crossing Nangpa Pass fired upon by border police, one year on from death of Tibetan nunA group of Tibetans - mainly monks, nuns and including two children - were fired upon by People's Armed Police (PAP) as they attempted to cross the border into Nepal and exile on October 18, according to several members of the group who have now reached Kathmandu. No Tibetans in the group were killed or injured but several of them, including three monks in their twenties from eastern Tibet, were taken into Chinese custody.
(snip)
The shooting took place just over a year after a 17-year old nun, Kelsang Namtso, was shot dead by PAP border guards on September 30, 2006, in an incident that led to widespread condemnation of China after it was captured on film by a climber. Kelsang Namtso's death follows other incidents where Tibetans had been fired upon by PAP when attempting to cross the pass into exile, in 2005 and 2002. The shooting on October 18 indicates that firing at unarmed Tibetans escaping into exile, including children, is still regarded by the Chinese authorities as 'normal border management', as Beijing informed Western governments last year.
What witnesses are saying ( Events in Lhasa and Around Tibet as the Chicoms Enforce No Freedom)
So predictable!
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