INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Tumult In Tibet
The biggest demonstrations in Tibet in twenty years have focused the world's attention on the Chinese government's rule over that country. On March 10, protests began in Lhasa, the capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region, to mark the 49th anniversary of the failed Tibetan revolt against the Chinese Communist occupation and the Dalai Lama's flight into exile. On March 14, after police surrounded Lhasa's principal monasteries and arrested scores of Buddhist monks, the demonstrations soon escalated into random acts of violence against non-ethnic Tibetan residents, such as Han Chinese and Muslims. Witnesses said Tibetan rioters "set fire to large numbers of Han-owned businesses as well as a mosque." Qin Gang, a spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry, initially tried to downplay the unrest as "a few monks in Lhasa [making] some disturbances." Despite strict controls over the flow of information out of Tibet and the surrounding areas, even the Chinese government could no longer deny the violence spilling over into surrounding areas. Riots spread to the neighboring province of Gansu on March 18, with demonstrators trying to storm a government office as "roughly 100 armed troops repelled the protesters with tear gas." Tibet's government-in-exile has said 140 people were killed in the unrest, while China has claimed a total of 20 deaths, 19 of them in Lhasa. The Chinese government "accused the Dalai Lama of orchestrating Tibetan riots to wreck Beijing's Olympic Games." On March 20, speaking in Dharamsala, the town in northern India that is the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile, the Dalai Lama called for calm and said that he was prepared to meet with Chinese leaders, but China has denied any such possibility. The Dalai Lama has stated that he wants autonomy, not independence, for Tibet.
Tumult In Tibet
The biggest demonstrations in Tibet in twenty years have focused the world's attention on the Chinese government's rule over that country. On March 10, protests began in Lhasa, the capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region, to mark the 49th anniversary of the failed Tibetan revolt against the Chinese Communist occupation and the Dalai Lama's flight into exile. On March 14, after police surrounded Lhasa's principal monasteries and arrested scores of Buddhist monks, the demonstrations soon escalated into random acts of violence against non-ethnic Tibetan residents, such as Han Chinese and Muslims. Witnesses said Tibetan rioters "set fire to large numbers of Han-owned businesses as well as a mosque." Qin Gang, a spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry, initially tried to downplay the unrest as "a few monks in Lhasa [making] some disturbances." Despite strict controls over the flow of information out of Tibet and the surrounding areas, even the Chinese government could no longer deny the violence spilling over into surrounding areas. Riots spread to the neighboring province of Gansu on March 18, with demonstrators trying to storm a government office as "roughly 100 armed troops repelled the protesters with tear gas." Tibet's government-in-exile has said 140 people were killed in the unrest, while China has claimed a total of 20 deaths, 19 of them in Lhasa. The Chinese government "accused the Dalai Lama of orchestrating Tibetan riots to wreck Beijing's Olympic Games." On March 20, speaking in Dharamsala, the town in northern India that is the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile, the Dalai Lama called for calm and said that he was prepared to meet with Chinese leaders, but China has denied any such possibility. The Dalai Lama has stated that he wants autonomy, not independence, for Tibet.
HISTORY OF CONFLICT: Writer Wen Lao suggests that the Chinese government has been troubled by the "Kosovo precedent" and fears what may result from any agitation by Tibetans for independence. Tibet's relationship with China goes back at least to the 7th century. Chinese Communist forces invaded and occupied it in 1950, and forced the Tibetan government to accept a treaty ratifying Chinese control of the country in 1951. The Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959. China's current president, Hu Jintao, served as Communist Party Secretary of the Tibet Autonomous Region from 1989 through 1992, overseeing a police crackdown and imposing martial law in response to a series of demonstrations in 1989 that called for democratic reform. Though the Chinese government considers Tibet to be part of China, Tibetans have resisted cultural and political assimilation. China has defended its rule over Tibet as a beneficial "civilizing mission" and has accused the Dalai Lama of having run a primitive, feudal society before the Chinese "liberation." Activists and scholars have noted the effort by the Chinese government to bring ethnic Chinese in to Tibet to change the demographic character of the region, a process accelerated by the completion of a Beijing-Llasa railway. The Dalai Lama has accused the Chinese government of attempting to erase Tibetan history through a campaign of "cultural genocide." Tibetan human rights groups have also documented Chinese exploitation of Tibet's natural resources and damage to its environment, noting that China has been "building large-scale infrastructure projects" that are "destroying the fragile Tibetan grasslands and displacing pastoral nomads."
SPOTLIGHT ON BEIJING OLYMPICS: Human rights activists have long made it known that they intended to use the Beijing Olympics to draw global attention to the Chinese government's record of human rights abuses. On Feb. 12, the Beijing Olympics suffered a public relations hit when director Steven Spielberg withdrew from his role as artistic adviser to the games in protest against China's backing for Sudan's policy in Darfur. Despite heavy security, protesters broke through a police cordon at the March 24 torch-lighting ceremony in Olympia, Greece, unfurling "a banner showing the Olympic rings as handcuffs to protest human rights abuses in China" during Beijing Games chief Liu Qi's speech before being arrested by Greek police. Pro-Tibetan protesters also tried to stop the torch's relay as it was carried from the site. Activists have also called upon individual athletes to stage protests during the games. Human rights activist Wei Jingsheng wrote in the Washington Post that "if the IOC doesn't move to put pressure on Beijing consistent with its obligations" to improve human rights, "it risks this Olympics being remembered like the 1936 Games in Berlin," a massive public relations boost for an oppressive regime.
HUMAN RIGHTS PROMOTION: Though the U.S. State Department's recent report did not name China among the world's worst human rights offenders, it did state that the Chinese "government's human rights record remained poor," and specifically mentioned China's Tibet policy. On March 21, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), one of the fiercest congressional critics of China, was greeted by cheering Tibetans as she arrived to meet the Dalai Lama in Dharmsala. Pelosi "called on the world to denounce China's crackdown of anti-government protests in Tibet." Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) called the Tibetan crackdown "needless [and] inhumane." In response to criticisms from the United States, the Chinese government accused the country of human rights hypocrisy, calling the invasion of Iraq the "greatest humanitarian disaster" of the modern era. In a report released by the state Xinhua news agency, China stated that America's "arrogant critique on the human rights practices of other countries are always accompanied by a deliberate ignoring of serious human rights problems on its own territory. ... 'Secret prison' and 'torturing prisoners' have become synonymous with America." China's response indicates the extent to which Bush administration policies have seriously undermined one of America's greatest weapons, its moral credibility.
