In the New York Review of Books, Tibet scholar Robbie Barnett writes about the recent unrest, the Dalai Lama, and The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama by Pico Iyer:
But the anti-Chinese riot in Lhasa, ugly though it apparently was, could have been predicted: it was by no means the first display of ethnic unrest by Tibetans in Lhasa or elsewhere, and might have been expected in any city in the world that is pursuing a policy of rapid reversal of demographic balance while suppressing any form of local disagreement. The riot’s primary political significance should have been that it pointed to the long-term failure of governance of people who want to maintain their cultural identity. But it was not the last or the most telling incident. In the four days following the March 14 riot in Lhasa, Tibetans staged sixty-three protests throughout the Tibetan areas within China, and the number has since risen to ninety-six, as far as one can tell from news and unofficial reports. Chinese internal reports are said to have estimated that some 30,000 Tibetans took part.
Many of these subsequent demonstrations by Tibetans were peaceful vigils for those Tibetans who had died and none are reported to have involved attacks on Chinese civilians. But at least fifteen included major violence against state property, such as burning down rural police stations. In two incidents, according to official reports, a policeman was killed by Tibetan protesters, and in eight incidents Tibetans in the crowd were shot dead by security forces, leading to perhaps between forty and a hundred deaths outside Lhasa, according to exile reports. But more significant is the type of Tibetans involved in those later protests, according to my initial analysis of internal reports sent out by eyewitnesses within Tibet and mainly corroborated by media reports: half involved laypeople rather than monks or nuns alone; about a fifth of the incidents (mainly peaceful ones) were staged by students; and most involved largely rural communities of farmers and nomads, the historic base of Communist support.
