Special to The Washington Post
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
LHASA, China -- Two elderly Tibetan women lay prostrate before the Potala Palace on a recent day, venerating the 1,000-room hilltop monument that was once the seat of an independent Tibetan government and the Dalai Lama's winter residence.
About 30 feet away, two helmeted Chinese guards observed the display of traditional Buddhist devotion. Elsewhere in the Tibetan capital, other guards barred entrance to the city's most celebrated temples. Residents moved about their business, nervous and subdued.
One month after the explosion of violence that catapulted remote Tibet into the international spotlight, protests over Chinese policies here continue to unfold in many parts of the world, undermining China's effort to make the 2008 Beijing Olympics a display of progress at home and amity abroad. But here in Lhasa, the most visible outcome has been relentless street patrols by men in People's Armed Police uniforms who carry automatic rifles, check Tibetans' identification cards at random, and guard intersections and gasoline stations.
Partly as a result, the city's economic life has started to resume in commercial areas away from the main temples and Tibetan residential quarters. Street traffic has picked up in recent days, for instance, and Han Chinese merchants -- who run most businesses here -- have reopened some of the shops that were burned out by crimson-robed monks and other Tibetan rioters on March 14.
Some businessmen have moved their salvaged wares onto sidewalk tables. Others have taken to shouting out promises of discounts to lure customers inside, where debris still crunches on the floor and the odor of smoke still fouls the air. Among the customers one recent day were off-duty Chinese security forces, seeking bargain DVDs to while away downtime in their barracks.
According to three Chinese sources, some of the security forces in People's Armed Police uniforms are in fact soldiers from the People's Liberation Army who have been ordered to disguise the extent of their deployment in Lhasa -- most likely because of concerns over international reaction. Soldiers have taped newspapers over the plates and other insignia on their vehicles and have been discreet in conversations with local residents, Chinese as well as Tibetan, these sources said.
A tourist visiting from the southern city of Shenzhen said she had been told by a friend in the army that his unit had assigned 2,000 men to patrols in Lhasa and expected the mission to last until after the Beijing Olympics in August.
Walks around Lhasa over several days showed that the security forces are most numerous around Jokhang and Ramoche temples, in the central zone, and in the residential Gama Kusang neighborhood immediately to the east. Anyone seen loitering outside the temples was told to move along by the security forces.
These areas, with temples at the center, were at the center of the rioting that killed 22 people by official count, almost all Han Chinese, and touched off a week of similar unrest among monks in Tibetan-inhabited areas of Sichuan, Gansu, Qinghai and Yunnan provinces.
Another site of anti-government unrest, Seyrat Temple, three miles north of the city center, was closed off entirely. Security forces with bayonets fixed on their automatic rifles prevented people from drawing near to the temple over the weekend, allowing passage only to those who could prove they lived in the area.
The security forces seemed relaxed, suggesting they did not feel threatened by more violence. But Tibetans in the streets avoided eye contact with the guards, then stared at them when they were not looking. Many Tibetans have never bothered to get government identity cards, residents said, making the street checks an ordeal and creating long lines at neighborhood police stations where they are issued.
The identity checks are one method to spot fugitive monks wanted for participation in the riots. More than 1,000 Tibetans have been arrested since the violence, according to Chinese authorities.
China's government-controlled press has reported that tourism is resuming in Tibet, publishing pictures of smiling Chinese getting off airplanes and trains. In fact, although Potala Palace has reopened for tours, Jokhang and the other major temples have remained closed, with armed guards preventing monks from leaving. Streets around such traditional tourist sites seemed quiet over the weekend, and a local tourist hostel had only two customers.
A Han Chinese who runs a noodle shop near the Jokhang Temple voiced fears that the situation might not improve for some time. He reopened his restaurant recently, he said, but so far has attracted few customers. "Sometimes, we just cook for ourselves," he joked.
One of the hostel customers said she had made friends on the Internet with a soldier stationed here as part of the security forces and later met him in person. Many soldiers on duty in Tibet strike up such online friendships, she said, since there is little else for them to do in their leisure time.
Since the rioting, the Beijing government has conducted one tour to Lhasa for several dozen journalists and another for a party of diplomats. Both were supervised by officials and limited in their movements.
Otherwise, the Tibet Autonomous Region has been placed off-limits to foreigners. Plans to reopen May 1 were canceled without explanation. The Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games has not said whether correspondents will be allowed to cover what was envisioned as a festive leg of the torch relay from Mount Everest to Lhasa.
As a result, most reporting from the region has been limited to assurances from government officials that all is returning to normal. An outbreak of new protests by monks at Lhasa's Drepung Monastery on Thursday, for instance, was reported by foreign human rights activists and residents here but was neither confirmed nor denied by the Chinese government.
Instead, the Communist Party's Propaganda Bureau has mounted a campaign apparently designed to link Tibet's independence advocates to terrorism sponsored by al-Qaeda. The official New China News Agency said recently that the Tibetan Youth Congress, which is part of the Dalai Lama's exile organization, has advocated terrorist tactics and forged links with Islamic separatists trained by al-Qaeda in the far western Xingjiang region.
President Hu Jintao, the Communist Party leader, also indicated that a hard line had been decided on by party propagandists in remarks Saturday to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of Australia. In a meeting with Rudd, Hu said the issue in Tibet is not human rights or cultural diversity, as presented in the West, but whether "to safeguard national unification or split the motherland."
The bloodshed last month has apparently left many of Tibet's Buddhist monks with a similarly hard attitude. The tourist from Shenzhen said she had pressed a Chinese soldier to allow entry to the Jokhang Monastery. He replied: "If you want to stay alive, you better not go in there."
But among Tibetans who have benefited from the region's swift economic progress over the last several decades, sentiments were sharply different. A 23-year-old tourist car operator said the monks' protests were futile and served mostly to slow business. A Buddhist, he also criticized the violence as a violation of religious beliefs.
"I think monks should not be doing things like that," he said.
But in some ways, a Han Chinese businessman and army veteran said, Tibetan anger is understandable. Even though Chinese rule has brought considerable material improvement to the region since Beijing took over in 1951, he said, Tibetans still consider the Han Chinese who come to run the government and open businesses as outsiders.
"Tibet is their home, and we outsiders come in and take over," he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "Of course, they are not happy about that. It's like an outsider who would come and make your home nice for you, fix it up and make it nice, but he's still an outsider."
Correspondent Edward Cody in Beijing contributed to this report.
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