Tibet

Fears of contagion from Tibet

China fears that the protests in Tibet could spread

THOUSANDS of Chinese troops are being deployed in the Tibetan capital Lhasa and in towns scattered across the vast plateau to contain outbreaks of anti-Chinese unrest. The riots and protests in recent days have been the most widespread in the region in decades. As China prepares to host the Olympic Games in August, Tibet is proving a far bigger challenge to the event than officials had anticipated.

As your correspondent left Lhasa on March 19th (the authorities refused to extend his week-long permit to report there) the city was under its tightest security since martial law was imposed in March 1989 to contain anti-Chinese protests. Troops were driving through the streets broadcasting messages through loudspeakers denouncing the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader.

ilitary looking vehicles had their license-plates covered or removed and many troops displayed no insignia, suggesting an attempt to cover up the use of army personnel to control the unrest. China does not want the run-up to the Olympics overshadowed by accusations of military repression in Lhasa. But the army is almost certainly playing a big part in the city’s clampdown on the ethnic violence that erupted on March 14th and 15th. The authorities say 160 rioters in Lhasa have turned themselves in to the police and 24 people have been charged with “grave crimes”. But Tibetans say they fear widespread and indiscriminate arrests.

Ethnic Han Chinese who were targeted in the violence (officials say 13 people were killed by rioters) are fearful too. Several told your correspondent that they would leave Tibet. One Han on the flight from Lhasa to the neighbouring province of Sichuan said he would normally travel in and out of Tibet by train, but he was now afraid that Tibetan terrorists might target the line. No terrorist incidents involving Tibetans have yet been reported, but China—partly in response to an alleged attempt by an ethnic Uighur woman to start a fire on board an airplane earlier this month—has stepped up airport security in recent days.

The huge security deployment in Lhasa has prevented further outbreaks of unrest there, but reports of smaller incidents in other areas of Tibet and ethnic Tibetan regions close to it have continued to emerge. The authorities admitted on March 20th that security forces had fired at protesters in the southwestern province of Sichuan four days earlier, injuring four people. A correspondent for Reuters news agency reported from the area that local residents believe several Tibetans were shot dead. Foreign reporters are now barred from Tibet and several have been turned back from ethnic Tibetan areas of surrounding provinces.

China will be nervous of relaxing its security measures given the risk that Tibetans will continue to try to take advantage of global attention focused on the Olympics to draw attention to their grievances. But officials have said that Olympic torch-carrying events scheduled to take place in Tibet in May and June will continue as planned. Tibetan activists outside China have vowed to stage protests in other countries where the Olympic flame is carried. It begins its journey from Olympia in Greece to Beijing on Monday. In Taiwan, which is preparing to hold presidential elections on March 22nd, the ruling party is attempting to exploit public disapproval of China’s actions to bolster its support. China, it is widely believed, would prefer the opposition Kuomintang party to win the presidency.

Western governments are resisting demands from pro-Tibetan groups for a boycott of the games. But China is still worried about the political fallout from Tibet’s unrest. Britain’s prime minister, Gordon Brown, has said he will met the Dalai Lama when he visits London in May. It will be the first such meeting in Britain in nine years. China was furious when Germany’s leader Angela Merkel held talks with him last September. It was even more outraged by George Bush’s high profile encounter with him in Washington, DC, in October. China fears—with some justification—that such meetings embolden dissidents in Tibet.

It is also angered by Western calls, at least public ones, for dialogue between China and the Dalai Lama. China has not held any direct discussions with him since he fled into exile during a big uprising in 1959. It has held several round of talks with his representatives in recent years. But these have got nowhere. China fears that if allowed to return the Dalai Lama could exert enormous pressure on the Communist Party because of his devoted following in Tibet. Prospects for a resumption even of indirect talks look remote in the coming months.

Before the recent outbreak of unrest in Tibet, China had calculated that the main political threat to the Olympics would come from isolated, small scale protests by activists (including Tibetans, practitioners of Falun Gong and opponents of China’s policies in Sudan) in Beijing itself. Now it is scrambling to suppress Olympic-related unrest across a broad swathe of territory. The region may be sparsely populated, but China is aware that Tibet exerts an enormous emotional pull in the West. To avoid a protest-marred games, it will have to be wary.