The access for foreigners to reach Tibet from neighboring provinces such as Sichuan has been blocked. From AP:
It was just after nightfall when three journalists were stopped at a police checkpoint on a winding, rutted road in Sichuan province – territory that has become out of bounds for the foreigners…
The de facto ban on news coverage is at odds with the mainland’s revised rules that are supposed to allow foreign journalists freedom to report throughout the Olympics…
Some officials said they doubted the area would be open again until the Olympics were over. “Wait until September,” one foreign-affairs official in Aba said cheerfully as his car carried two journalists away from a checkpoint late last Monday.
Please read also a post on Chinabeat blog: Tibet, 228, and Ta-pa-ni: Some lessons for us all.
As we struggle to make sense of the maelstrom of violent resistance and its suppression, not to mention cope with our own feelings as concerned observers, it might be useful to consider the following:
*Such outbreaks are invariably sparked by a complex combination of socioeconomic, ethnic, and religious factors.
*The violence is never a case of black and white; it is simply red, with aggressors and their victims far outnumbering any heroes. When tensions boil over, the initial targets tend to be symbols of authority (policemen, officials), but can also include men and women who are stigmatized and persecuted as scapegoats. However, when the empire strikes back, it uses violence on a much larger and more systematic scale, with those who end up being punished including not only the original aggressors but many innocent victims as well.
