Written by Dan Southerland, Vice President of Programming and Executive Editor of Radio Free Asia (RFA), from China Brief:
The Chinese government is now locking down Tibet while attempting to placate the outside world by meeting with the Dalai Lama’s representatives. Beijing’s harsh policing of Tibet is consistent with the tough line the government has taken in previous crackdowns in both 1959 and in the late 1980s. Little seems to have changed over the decades. As in the past, Chinese government actions range from mass arrests and “patriotic education” campaigns to charges that the Dalai Lama is to blame for the recent uprising in Lhasa and Tibetan areas of western China. But several new developments make the current situation more challenging for the Chinese government than previous uprisings.
First, while Western media tend to talk about the largest uprising to take place in Tibet in nearly two decades, the protests there have actually been the largest in almost 50 years. As Tibet expert Steven Marshall has noted, the 2008 protests have spread far beyond Lhasa and the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) and into many locations in Qinghai, Gansu, and Sichuan provinces (Statement before Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs, April 23).
For a less than positive view of Radio Free Asia’s role in the early reporting on the Lhasa Riots, see “On Tibet and Propaganda: Follow the ‘Information’” from Daily Kos.
