From OpenDemocracy:
The charred bodies and pulped faces of Chinese migrants murdered during the riots in Lhasa on 14 March 2008 are likely to become a new and terrible image of Tibet. Just as those Tibetans who have died in ethnic violence or at the hands of the security forces, those killed in the latest struggle over Tibet’s future died what should have been unnecessary deaths.
The desperation of Tibetans living on the Tibetan plateau has been documented for several decades by scholars and journalists, as well as in repeated appeals by exiles and their leader, the Dalai Lama. Major grievances include:
* elaborate restrictions on religion
* an undisguised encouragement of Chinese migration to Tibetan towns
* the ban on criticism of most Communist Party policies
* the imposition of ethnic Chinese leaders to run the region
* the forced settlement of 100,000 nomads without prospect of future livelihood
* the obligatory moving of 250,000 farmers in 2006 from their villages to new houses along major roads, often largely at their own expense.
Read also Tibet, China, and the west: empires of the mind by Dibyesh Anand, How to think about Tibet by Donald S Lopez Jr, Tibet’s history, China’s power by George Fitzherbert, and The perils of forced modernity: China-Tibet, America-Iraq by Jeffrey N Wasserstrom.
