[…] Many missionaries today […] become Tibet scholars in their own right. Most entrench themselves in local life. Much of the informal English instruction in Xining is run by missionaries as are the majority of the foreign cafés. They translate the Bible into Tibetan, distribute flash drives containing their beliefs and rework Tibetan folk songs with Christian lyrics. Some help run orphanages. Targeting the young is key. When a South Korean missionary asked Tenzin which Tibetans needed help, he suggested the elderly. According to Tenzin, the Korean replied: “Not old people — [we want] children.”

[…] Open conversion […] remains rare. Few would risk the wrath of family members by abandoning their own faith. [Columbia University's Robert] Barnett describes hearing about one case in which relatives threatened to kill a missionary who had converted their kin. As such it is impossible to know how many converts there are. Barnett says: “I think we are going to wake up one day and see these people have made serious inroads into a culture already under threat.”

Tibetans are not the only targets. Rabbi Anson Laytner wrote last month about apparent missionary work among the famous Jews of Kaifeng. From JNS:

The chief player in the endeavor to convert the Kaifeng Jews is an American Judeo-Christian named Timothy Lerner, who founded the first Jewish school set up in Kaifeng in modern times.

After studying in China in 2000, Lerner traveled to Kaifeng to open the Yiceleye (Israelite) School, instructing the Jewish descendants in Hebrew and gathering those interested for Shabbat dinners and festival celebrations.

[…] Almost immediately, suspicions were aroused among some of the Kaifeng Jews about Lerner’s intentions. Shi Lei, the first Kaifeng Jew ever to study in Israel, both at Bar Ilan University and at a Jerusalem yeshiva, was the first to sound the alarm. He blames Lerner for proselytizing the still Jewishly uneducated and somewhat naïve community.

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More than 10 people interviewed for this article said that Chinese authorities in Tibetan areas were selectively tolerant of missionaries for reasons that range from pragmatic to borderline sinister. One is that they are a boon to local economies – they open lucrative businesses and teach at local schools for next to nothing, supplementing their meagre salaries with donations from home. Authorities may also consider missionaries politically trustworthy, reluctant to undermine their spiritual missions by openly criticising regional policies.

And lastly, the government may welcome them as a powerful counterforce to Tibetan Buddhism, with its electrifying political overtones.

[…] Most missionaries in Tibet belong to nondenominational organisations which believe that Jesus Christ will return to the earth only when people from every social, cultural and linguistic group have been exposed to his teachings. These groups view mass conversion as a high form of ecclesiastical service, and as such, their tactics can be covert and transactional. Some lure young Tibetans with the promise of English lessons or professional training and coax them into conversion after making sure of their loyalty. Various Tibetans in Xining expressed disgust with this tactic. One likened it to bribery.

[…] According to [Columbia University's Robert] Barnett, Tibetan distrust of missionaries is shorthand for a much broader context – “where the whole structure of Tibetan ideas, beliefs, and cultural values is being radically undermined, year after year, by the Chinese project, by modernity and globalisation in general”.

Another vulnerable aspect of Tibetan culture is its language, particularly as expressed in place names. A group of pro-Tibetan organizations in the West is attempting to preserve these names by campaigning for their inclusion in Google Maps.

While some officials may believe that missionaries would not jeopardize their religious work with political meddling, others seem unconvinced. A set of instructions on how to deal with foreign proselytizing, leaked in December, urged “forceful measures” to prevent missionaries from “westernizing and dividing China.”

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Two Tibetan teenagers set themselves on fire in Kyangtsa region of Zoege, eastern Tibet on February 19, protesting China’s continued occupation and repressive policies in Tibet.

Rinchen, 17 and Sonam Dhargey, 18 have succumbed to their burns.

[… Kirti Monastery said in a release that] “The families of the two teenagers are in possession of their bodies and are hoping to carry out their final rites without any interference from the Chinese authorities.”

The 102nd self-immolation is said to have occurred on Sunday. From Phayul.com:

Namlha Tsering, 49, carried out his fiery protest at around 5:40 pm (local time) in Sangchu region of Labrang. His current condition is not known although sources say chances of his survival are minimal.

Photos received by Phayul show Namlha Tsering sitting cross-legged in the middle of a street even as high flames are rising from his body. In another photo he is seen fallen on his back with fire still leaping from his body.

[…] Chinese security personnel arrived at the scene of the protest, doused the flames and bundled him away.

The 101st reportedly took place on the same symbolic date on which the hundredth was revealed after a 10-day delay. Another Tibetan also set fire to himself that day in Kathmandu, Nepal, and later died. From Phayul.com:

A Tibetan father of three set himself on fire in Amchok region of eastern Tibet on February 13, a day observed by Tibetans as the centenary celebrations of His Holiness the 13th Dalai Lama’s Proclamation of Tibetan Independence.

Drugpa Khar, 26, set himself on fire in Amchok town in Sangchu region of Kanlho at around 1 pm (local time). He reportedly succumbed to his injuries.

[…] According to exile sources, Drugpa Khar is survived by his parents Tamding Tsering and Tamding Tso. His youngest child is one year old and the eldest is aged six.

At least six other self-immolations have taken place beside these 104, including two in Nepal and four in India. Another two possible cases within China’s borders are disputed on the grounds that they may have been accidental. Joshua Eaton has examined these and other reasons for discrepancies.

On NPR’s Talk of the Nation on Wednesday, Oxford University’s Michael Biggs, Columbia University’s Robert Barnett and the International Campaign for Tibet’s Bhuchung Tsering discussed the protests with host Neal Conan. Their conversation covers the history and potency of self-immolation protests globally, and their causes and effects within Tibet. Asked whether suicide bombings might replace suicide protests, Biggs argued that these are fundamentally different phenomena rather than points on the same spectrum. Bhuchung Tsering, though, suggested that goading Tibetans into just such an escalation may be one of the Chinese authorities’ aims, as it could be used to justify an even harsher crackdown. Perhaps the key question, however, is whether the protests might be having more of an effect than meets the eye.

CONAN: Let me turn back to Robert Barnet. Bhuchung Tsering just said that he thinks behind the scenes the Chinese government is debating this issue. Is there any evidence of that?

BARNETT: Well, I do have some evidence of that, actually. (Unintelligible) internal, you know, but we have sources, and they have been – you know, people have been sent to tell us about this. And I think it’s probably true. I think there’s been a major change in the Chinese view that whether these things are really caused by the Dalai Lama and the exiles, I think they now recognize they are caused by these mishandled, grossly mishandled religious policies and a whole raft of other policies over many years.

But the problem is not whether that change has happened. I think Bhuchung’s right. But I think the problem is whether the new leadership in China is able to push forward any change. It faces a very resistant bureaucracy. It faces a whole industry of people in security forces, in various offices, in local governments, whose whole careers depend on having a security threat, that they’re the hard men who are sent there to control it, and they’re going to go on pushing very hard for a tough policy.

[… O]ne of the questions is we don’t really know whether the new leadership is running these things yet. A lot of decisions are made at the local level. Some decisions are made by incumbents who are still there from the previous leadership. It doesn’t, as you say, fully change until March. We don’t yet know when this leadership can step forward and stamp its new ideas on the situation. Maybe it doesn’t have any new ideas. Maybe it’s going to be very careful. They can’t bring them in for another couple of years. I think all the bets are off on this. China is a black box in terms of leadership thinking.

At The Wall Street Journal, Brian Spegele and Deborah Kan also discussed the protests and the resulting crackdown:

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“Sangay Tashi, 18, set himself on fire at around 12 midnight Tuesday, November 27 in Sangkhog town,” an exiled Tibetan monk Sonam told Phayul citing contacts in the region. “He passed away at the site of his protest.”

[…] Sangay Tashi arrived in Sangkhog town earlier that day with his friends. Before setting himself on fire, he reportedly called one of his relatives and told him that he had decided to set himself on fire for the cause of Tibet. Before his relative could carry on the conversation, Sangay Tashi hung up the phone and switched it off.

By the time Sangay Tashi’s family members arrived in Sangkhog, he had already carried out his self-immolation protest.

Sonam, an exile Tibetan living in Switzerland, told Phayul that Tsegyu set himself ablaze at around 7pm (local time) on November 7, in Tingser village of Bekar town in Driru (Ch: Biru) region of Nagchu, in an apparent protest against China’s continued occupation of Tibet.

[…] Confirming the reports, Dharamshala based rights group Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in a release today said Tsegyu received no medical treatment while in detention at a local police station in Nagchu.

“For less than two weeks, from November 7 to 18, Tsegyal received no treatment for his burns while being held at the local police station in Nagchu town,” TCHRD said citing sources. “Tsegyal died in the evening of November 18 in police custody.”

Heavy restrictions on journalists in Tibetan areas make independent verification of these reports difficult or impossible. As Kristin Jones wrote at the Committee to Protect Journalists in February, “by preventing reporters from doing their jobs, Chinese officials all but guarantee that activists are the ones reporting the news.”

The Associated Press’ Christopher Bodeen examined the protests’ tactics and escalation, and Beijing’s uncertain response.

“I think the problem will just escalate over time. The government shows no inclination to respond positively to recommendations for reform from the outside or Tibetans,” said Michael Davis, a law professor and expert on Tibet at the University of Hong Kong.

[…] The surge in self-immolations represents an awareness of the impact they are having among the Tibetan community and internationally, said Robbie Barnett, a Tibet expert at New York’s Columbia University. That would likely inspire further protests, increasing the numbers of Tibetans willing to take their lives for the sake of their community, he said.

[…] While local authorities have cracked down hard following the self-immolations and other protests, authorities in Beijing have said relatively little other than to issue routine denunciations of the Dalai Lama and his followers. That indicates they are uncertain how to respond in a way that would bolster their authority and prevent the acts of defiance snow-balling into a full-blown protest movement, Barnett said.

U.S. ambassador to China Gary Locke discussed the self-immolations with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday:

Christiane Amanpour: We want to know from your perspective whether the new leader Xi Jinping will be any different on Tibet, for instance, because there have been many burnings by ethnic Tibetans, another four reported just today in China; I know you’ve met with some ethnic Tibetans. What do you think is the prospect for any different kind of relationship, Ambassador?

Gary Locke: Well, we’re just going to have to wait and see, but obviously the United States is very concerned about the situation, the heightened tensions in the Tibetan areas, the deplorable self-immolations and of course just the policies of the Chinese government at all levels. And we’re publicly and privately constantly urging the Chinese to re-examine some of their policies that threaten the linguistic identity, cultural identity, and religious identity of the Tibetan people.

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Kalsang Kyab, 24, set himself ablaze in front of a Chinese government office in Kangtsa town, raising slogans for the long life of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Kyabje Kirti Rinpoche, the exiled head of Kirti Monastery. He passed away at the site of his protest.

The Dharamshala based Kirit Monastery in a late night release said Kalsang Kyab carried out his protest at around 6:30 pm (local time).

“Kalsang Kyab doused his body with kerosene as he walked towards the local government office building, raising slogans,” Kirit Monastery said citing sources in the region. “Upon reaching the office building, he then set himself ablaze and continued to raise slogans.”

The Chinese government’s blackout of independent media in Tibetan areas makes independent verification of reports from the region difficult or impossible. Even the number of self-immolations is uncertain: according to activist group Rangzen Alliance and writer Woeser [zh], the current total is 92. (Woeser’s tweet states 91, but predates news of the latest incident.) A post by Woeser written on August 1st and translated at High Peaks Pure Earth explains part of the discrepancy.

U.S. government-funded Radio Free Asia reported four arrests following student protests on Monday. Independent experts quoted by the similarly funded Voice of America suggested that the self-immolations have moved into a new phase in recent weeks, with activists describing this as an attempt to sway the recently installed Party leadership in Beijing.

[Columbia University's Robert] Barnett says the first phase of self-immolations began last year with monks and nuns trying to protect their monasteries from security crackdowns.

The second wave, which he says occurred for most of the past year, involved individuals in small towns sharing sympathy with those monks and nuns.

“But now in this phase we have laypeople staging these immolations in ways that are much more determined in an attempt to get a response from Chinese authorities, by having immolations in clusters, very close together, many on the same day or within a few days and many in the same place,” said Barnett.

James Leibold, a Tibet analyst for Australia’s Latrobe University in Beijing says that a broader segment of the Tibetan community is also involved in the latest protests.

[…] But Leibold says so far there is no indication that the government has changed its position on Tibet.

“Sadly, we hear the same rhetoric coming out of Beijing, and Chinese officials continually blaming a few black hands for collaborating with the Dalai Lama and the exiled Tibetan community to stir up trouble and to damage China’s ethnic unity and harmony. There’s just absolutely no will, it seems, to admit a failure of policy,” he said.

In a further broadening of the protest movement, Phayul reports that coordinated hunger strikes have broken out across Tibetan areas:

More than 60 Tibetans from different walks of life began their solidarity hunger strike in their evening of November 26 in their respective places. According to Kanyag Tsering, an exiled monk who has been closely monitoring the situation inside Tibet, the Tibetans will end their hunger strike in the morning of November 28.

The campaign is being observed in various cities across the tradition boundaries of Tibet.

“The simultaneous hunger strike is being carried out in Tibet’s capital Lhasa, Drango, Jomda, Zachukha, Tridu, Sertha, Siling, Rebkong, Kardze and Trindu in China,” Tsering told Phayul. “They have also been offering prayers for the self-immolators.”

According to the same source, the Tibetans taking part in this campaign come from different walks of like and are “highly educated.”

“The participants in the solidarity campaign include government officials, writers, monks, and businessmen.”

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Tadin Dorjee, 29, set fire to himself at the entrance of Dokarmo town office in Tsekhog around 6:30 pm (local time) on Friday. He then chanted prayers for the long life of His Holiness the Dalai Lama with folded hands. He died on the spot.

Thousands of local Tibetans offered prayers and attended his funeral that night.

The Chinese authorities have cut off Internet and phone lines following the incident

RFA has published further details of new measures reportedly introduced to deter the protests:

The India-based Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) quoted a source as saying that the notification, issued both in Tibetan and Chinese, was shown on the Malho Prefectural TV channel.

It said government aid to family members of self-immolators will be cut for three years while development funds for villages where self-immolations took place—even if projects had been approved earlier—will be cancelled for a similar period, TCHRD said in a statement.

Officials, monks and monasteries sympathetic to the self-immolators will also face action, according to the circular.

At the BBC, Martin Patience examined the prospects for change under the incoming fifth generation Chinese leadership.

But even if Xi Jinping wanted to change direction he would have to tackle a vast security and government apparatus that has been geared up to deal with the Tibet issue, says Bi Yantao, a professor at Hainan University.

[…] But he believes that both sides need to show more flexibility, describing the current situation as “deadlock.”

Robert Barnett says there are suggestions that Xi Jinping has set an internal team to review Tibet policy and believes the possibility of a change in policy cannot be ruled out.

“It will take great courage, Xi Jinping will have to overcome heavy internal resistance,” he says. “Any change is likely to seem small from an outsider’s perspective.

“But in the current situation, even a slight change would have a significant effect among at least some of the Tibetan community in Tibet.”

See more on Tibet and the wave of self-immolations at CDT, including news of the 80th and 79th cases, discussion of the challenges involved in verifying reports from the region, and the last words of several of the self-immolators.

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Sunday’s incident was the first of its kind in the Tibetan capital, which has been under tight security since deadly anti-Chinese government riots broke out there in 2008.

Residents of Lhasa said the city was under even tighter security than usual following Sunday’s protest, with police and paramilitary officers out in force.

One resident contacted by AFP on Monday said police were carrying out identity checks in the streets and that mobile telephone signals had been blocked.

Free Tibet, a London-based campaign group, also said it had received reports that Tibetan residents in Lhasa had been arbitrarily detained in the wake of the protest.

According to Voice of America, the latest wave of self-immolations comes after Chinese officials banned members of the Party, government officials and students from observing Tibetan Buddhism’s holy month of Saka Dawa.  Reuters also reported that China has labeled the self-immolators “terrorists” and blamed the Dalai Lama for the incident. NPR’s Renee Montagne spoke on Thursday with Tibet expert Robert Barnett of Columbia University, who tweeted on Sunday that “Lhasa is boiling.” He called the self-immolations in Lhasa a “huge symbolic setback for China” and said it is difficult to predict how the incoming generation of Chinese leaders will address the situation in Tibet:

MONTAGNE: Looking ahead, and given that China will have a new set of leaders at the end of this year, what do you think will happen? Do you think that China will crack down harder on Tibetans?

BARNETT: We can be sure that in Lhasa, in Tibet, Tibetans will have a much harder time now. There will be a crackdown. There are already military on every street corner of the Tibetan culture(ph) of Lhasa. That’s been like that for several years. That’s going to increase. And Tibetans – a lot will be arrested, and so on. But I think in Beijing, so much of Chinese politics is a black box. We just don’t know what’s happened behind the scenes, especially at the higher levels. But a few months ago, in February, the Chinese prime minister, the premiere, Wen Jiabao, said that the people who immolate in Tibet are innocent.

That means that the top leadership in China has defined the immolators as not being criminals. They’re people who are regarded as – who misunderstand the situation, or something like that. So there’s a little chink of light there.

They’re still being accused of being manipulated by enemy forces led by the Dalai Lama and his followers. But we can see that there is some sign of thinking, some sign of a possible opening that could be used by moderates in Beijing if they were to get the ear of the top leadership.

Meanwhile, The Guardian’s Tania Branigan reports the passing of the Tibetan woman who set fire to herself in Aba County, a Tibetan region of Sichuan where many of the recent self-immolations have taken place. See also previous CDT coverage of Tibet protests and the ongoing wave of self-immolation in Tibetan regions of China.

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“The security forces arrived immediately and put out the fire and all the tourists in the area were cordoned off from the site. Within 15 minutes, the area was cleaned and not a trace of the incident was left at the site,” an eyewitness told RFA.

“The flames were huge and witnesses are presuming that they [the two] were dead in the fire,” one Tibetan source living in exile said, citing contacts in the region.

“Lhasa city is now filled with police and para-military forces and the situation is very tense,” the source said.

While there have been 35 self-immolations in Tibetan areas since March 2009, this would be only the second within the Tibetan Autonomous Region itself, and the first to take place in the capital. Columbia University Tibetologist Robert Barnett commented on the incident on Twitter:

“Lhasa is boiling”, reports eyewitness in the city after double-self-immolation there this afternoon. Exiles are reporting mass arrests.

— Robert Barnett (@RobbieBarnett) May 27, 2012

This is the 1st ever immolation protest in the Tibetan capital, + only 2nd protest in Lhasa in 4 yrs. V serious development. @samuel_wade

— Robert Barnett (@RobbieBarnett) May 27, 2012

News of the incident is so far scarce, with state media silent [Update: see below] and foreign reporters barred from the region. In addition, phone lines in the region were quickly blocked, according to exile news site Phayul. As Kristin Jones wrote for the Committee to Protect Journalists in February, the government’s media exclusion policy “all but guarantee[s] that activists are the ones reporting the news.”

Update: Xinhua has confirmed the incident:

Dargye, from Aba county in the Tibetan area of southwest China’s Sichuan province, and Tobgye Tseten, from Xiahe county in a Tibetan community of the country’s northwestern Gansu province, attempted the self-immolations at 2:16 p.m. on Pargor Street in the heart of Lhasa, the publicity department of Tibet’s regional committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) said in a press release early Monday.

It said police on patrol put out the flames in two minutes and sent the men to hospital. Tobgye Tseten died and Dargye survived with injuries ….

Downtown Lhasa is particularly crowded these days as Tibetans celebrate the Saga Dawa, which falls on the 15th day of the 4th month in the Tibetan calendar and marks the anniversary of Buddha’s birth, enlightenment and death ….

A senior official in Tibet condemned the Lhasa self-immolations on Sunday, saying they were separatist attempts.

The New Yorker recently featured a history of self-immolation and its status as “the paramount form of protest”, following a series of cases this year across North Africa and the Middle East, and one in Norway, as well as those in Tibetan areas.

The recent Tibetan self-immolations remind us that the practice’s longest history is in China, where, beginning in the fourth century A.D., Buddhist monks took to sitting in pyres to propitiate ganying, the force that binds the corporeal and ethereal. “I have been weary of this physical frame for many a long day,” the monk Daodu said before melting to death. His forebear Fayu started the trend of swallowing incense chips beforehand, perhaps to lubricate his soul’s passage, perhaps to improve the odor of the proceedings. Soon enough, self-burnings became public performances. Officials attended. Crowds wept in admiration. And as the orders took on political power, so did self-immolation. Monks burned themselves to protest declining patronage from the ruling classes or to lament invasions. As the Quing dynasty disintegrated, on the eve of the First World War, there was a wave of self-immolations in protest of the decline of… well, of the world, so it seemed.

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“So what would you like to ask premier Wen this year?” he says.

I tell him that I haven’t prepared any questions this year because the whole thing is rigged and I will never have an opportunity to ask one.

He giggles: “But what if you did have a chance …?”

“Well I won’t”, I say… and we go on like this for a while.

I point out to him that every year there’s one question from Russia, “how would you characterise China-Russia relations at the moment?”; one from India, “how would you characterise China-India relations at the moment?”; one from Japan, “how would you”…and so on; one from Taiwan, one from the US, one from Europe and never one from Australia.

He giggles: “But what if you could? Would you ask about Tibet? What would ask about Tibet?”

Via Robert Barnett.

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“Everyone is equal before the law. No matter whether you are a monk or a nun, you are a citizen first,” Liu was quoted as saying. “There are no monasteries outside the law, nor are there individuals outside the law.”

In an apparent reference to the self-immolations, Liu said that according to Buddhist teachings, life is precious and “there should be no reason to destroy an innocent life.”

He told senior clerics to teach the younger monks to “cherish all living things, cherish their health and cherish their lives.”

In an interview at Asia Society, Columbia University’s Robert Barnett examines the argument that protest by self-immolation is an “un-Buddhist” act:

Is there any tradition to this particular kind of protest in Buddhist culture?

The Chinese press has been arguing that these protests violate Buddhist principles and rules, but in fact they resonate strongly with Buddhist tradition. Suicide is shunned in Buddhism if carried out for personal reasons, but self-sacrifice for a noble cause is highly regarded. There are many stories about the Buddha doing this in former lives, most famously one in which he sacrifices himself by giving his body to a dying tigress so she can feed her cubs. So an act that is done for the good of the community is considered noble, and especially so if it is done by a member of the clergy.

It is because these acts have been done by monks, nuns or former monks, that it has been so hard for the Chinese government to discredit the protestors — it would be very different if lay people had been involved. The government had almost total success in discrediting five Chinese people, said by the government to be adherents of the Falun Gong sect, who staged a mass self-immolation in Beijing in 2001: the event was presented as proof that these people had been brainwashed and manipulated by the Falun Gong. But despite some tentative attempts by the Chinese press to do this with the Tibetan monks and nuns, these efforts have failed, largely because they are so widely respected within the Tibetan community.

The interview as a whole is highly recommended reading. For another perspective on self-immolation’s compatibility with Buddhism, via Kelley Currie, a 1965 letter from Thich Nhat Nanh to Martin Luther King.

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The banner reads “Tibetans and Han are One Family”. Shanghaiist’s Kenneth Tan points out a satirically photoshopped image of an identical vehicle outside Hong Kong’s Sogo department store in, supposedly, 2015, its banner reading “China and Hong Kong are One Family”.

If a declaration of fraternity hanging from the side of an armoured vehicle isn’t ironic enough, the blog Mountain Phoenix over Tibet notes (in a different context) the historical background of the name “Kangding” 康定. It replaced “Dajianlu” 打箭炉 (based on the Tibetan “Dartsedo”) in the early twentieth century, and is widely held to refer to the stabilisation or pacification of Kham (eastern Tibet).

A friend, who hails from Kardze town, tells me the name is a contraction of the Tibetan karpo (“white”) and dzebo (“graceful”) – actually a rather unlikely and funny name for a macho Khampa place. It sounds more like a name for a Tibetan cosmetics line: “Fair & Lovely”!

The town Kardze, however, is not the capital of the Prefecture Kardze. That privilege goes to Dartse(m)do, a formerly important trading-town on the old Sino-Tibetan border. But in present-day Tibet, folks who hail from Dartsedo would tell you they are from Kangding.

How Dartsedowas can be so brainless and voluntarily use that dreadful Chinese name is a mystery only they are able to penetrate. Doesn’t it mean “subjugation of Kham”? Arrog Khampa, what happened to your famous pride? Linguistics is a political battlefield, if you still haven’t noticed. Why do you shoot yourself in the foot?

The BBC’s Michael Bristow describes the extensive security operation currently in place in the area, following a series of self-immolations:

A BBC team was stopped and held at the roadblock [on the way to Kangding]. “Foreigners are not allowed into Tibetan areas,” said one security man.

We were then escorted back into Ya’an, where we were questioned at government offices by an official, surnamed Ma, who veered from friendly to threatening.

“You need to make a confession and sign a statement saying you will not go back into Tibetan areas,” he barked at one point ….

Robert Barnett, of New York’s Columbia University, said this region of western Sichuan, historically known to Tibetans as Kham, was relatively peaceful until a few years ago.

“We are talking about an area where China had a working relationship with Tibetans,” said Mr Barnett.

But he said trust started to disappear just over a decade ago when the central government began introducing hardline policies that were already in place in Tibet proper.

Kristin Jones at the Committee to Protect Journalists suggests that the policy of denying media access may be counterproductive:

Placing travel restrictions on journalists may have one unintended effect. It means that when it comes to unofficial news from China, activists and advocacy groups play a vital role in collecting and disseminating information.

Chinese authorities are hard on activists–even harder than they are on journalists. But by preventing reporters from doing their jobs, Chinese officials all but guarantee that activists are the ones reporting the news.

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After all, it’s the Dalai Lama who persuaded the vast majority of Tibetans to accept autonomy within China instead of independence. He stopped the exiles from using violence, spoke out against calls for boycotts against Beijing, and convinced them to accept a democratic constitution and the separation of politics from religion.

Still, the Dalai Lama has held out on two issues: an insistence that Tibet was historically independent, and a claim that “meaningful autonomy”"allowing Tibetans to run their own cultural and economic affairs”should apply to all Tibetan-inhabited areas. Beijing says these demands are insurmountable. But if negotiations ever take place, even these could be reworked into language that would satisfy both sides. [Full text]

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Dalai Lama, Robert Barnett, Tibet Dialogue, Tibet independence
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