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The Times - Security forces stand by as the worst riots in 50 years are fuelled by Tibetans fighting for recognition

Throughout the afternoon groups of people came out from various houses. Sometimes just one or two teenage youths armed with traditional Tibetan knives, sometimes large groups of dozens, attacked Chinese shops, most ethnic Chinese themselves having fled in the early stages of the violence, leaving their shops shuttered but not secure enough to prevent them from being broken into by the mob.

They hauled out everything they could from row after row of Chinese shops. I saw them dragging out clothing , large pieces of meat and gas canisters, all of which they heaped on to the streets and set alight, with occasional explosions as the canisters caught fire.

Within two or three hours, the main Beijing Road that runs through the middle of Lhasa was engulfed in flames with fires every few yards and one or two buildings ablaze. …

Late in the evening, two or three fire engines moved down Beijing Road accompanied by a few armoured personnel carriers.

I walked past these and saw the police quietly sitting on top of them with their automatic rifles and helmets, but even when this well protected they did not deploy on the street at this stage.

The authorities’ main concern in the evening was to stop the fires from engulfing the narrow alleyways of the old Tibetan quarter. As they put out the fires, Tibetans watched but did not attempt to stop them. Neither did the occasional police vehicle venturing up and down Beijing Road attempt to stop any of the Tibetans walking past. It seemed as the night wore on that the authorities were still waiting for a political decision to be made as to how to handle the unrest.

I saw lines of riot police in two places at the perimeter of the riot-torn area and I saw riot police walking in front of the Jokhang temple alongside one of their vehicles with helmets and riot shields, but not firearms. Beyond these limited displays of strength, the authorities watched and waited and allowed the riots to take their course.

One Chinese trader told me as she sat terrified above her shop that she had lost 200,000 yuan (£14,000) of bicycles after doing business in Lhasa for only a few weeks.

As I spoke to her in Mandarin, she begged me to keep my voice down lest the sound of the Chinese dialect excite the people outside. And we spoke in darkness in case they recognised that Chinese traders were still in the building.

The violence was fuelled by rumour. There was rumour of killings of monks and ordinary Tibetans by security forces during the day – including reports, unconfirmed, that a handful had been shot dead in front of the Jokhang Temple itself.

Hmmm. Monks again.

The Times - Tibet: Fire on the Roof
The eyes of the world are on China’s treatment of the Tibetans

The crushing of Tibet is a human rights cause about which people across the world care passionately. China’s clumsy vilification of the Dalai Lama, a great spiritual leader manifestly committed to peace and tolerance, has made bad worse.

People who will never get near the Roof of the World care about the fate of the Tibetans - and a bitter fate it has been. When Mao Zedong marched Chinese troops in after the revolution, he pledged to respect Tibetan traditions and its god-king, the Dalai Lama. He broke those undertakings, and, after crushing the Tibetan uprising of 1959, annexed nearly half the country outright, subjecting the remaining Tibetan heartland to heavy-handed military and political occupation. Tibetan suffering has been extreme. In the 1950s, collectivisation brought famines; in the 1960s, more than 6,000 Buddhist monasteries, the country’s spiritual and cultural heart, were ripped apart in the Cultural Revolution; and China has deliberately set out to destroy Tibetan identity by swamping Tibet with Han Chinese settlers, who get the best jobs and housing, and treat Tibetans like second-class citizens. They live, as the Dalai Lama said in his 49th anniversary speech this month, “in a state of constant fear, intimidation and suspicion”; and repression has got worse, not better, mocking the Dalai Lama’s unavailing efforts to reason with Beijing.

China’s instinct may be to use the Olympics to justify tough “security measures”. The last thing Beijing wants is, by acting gently, to embolden other dissidents. But if China comes near the brutality of the Burmese junta, that would give rise to disgust so strong that it could defeat the spirit of the Games, even if it did not douse the flame itself. … Already, China invites ridicule by its pathetic efforts to accuse the Dalai Lama of sabotaging the Games. Western leaders must hold China strongly to account. All heads of government should also abandon their cowardice about receiving the Dalai Lama, not just as a man of religion and Nobel laureate but as Tibet’s legitimate leader. He is due in London this May. Gordon Brown should announce forthwith that the red carpet awaits him.

Sorry, Brett. Hopefully it’ll take a few days for the Great Firewall to catch up.

Magic Kingdom Update:

Brett McS announced that as of this afternoon I am again BANNED IN CHINA!

There, China. Now it doesn’t exist!