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China's script fails to hide ethnic strains | | | By Geoff Dyer in Lhasa
| Tuesday, April 01, 2008 | | [img=130,130 src=]http://bbs.m4.cn/[/img] | When the Chinese government invited a small group of reporters to visit the Tibetan capital this week, it wanted to demonstrate that political harmony had returned to the city.
After four days of protests in Lhasa which ended in a riot on March 14, together with copycat demonstrations in dozens of other Tibetan towns, the authorities wanted to show calm had been restored and the region was not engulfed in anti- Chinese sentiment.
“All ethnic groups will unite as one to crack down on these criminal activities,” said Baima Chilin, vice-chairman of the Tibetan government. Anyone suggesting there was an ethnic basis to riots was “trying to instigate tension between different ethnic groups”.
In a tightly-controlled agenda, with only limited room for journalists to do their own reporting, the strategy was clear – to focus solely on the March 14 riot, where most victims were Han Chinese, and to blame “criminal elements” collaborating with the Dalai Lama for the disturbances.
Yong Hongtao, a Han Chinese migrant from Hunan province, showed off the scars on his hands that he said he had received in a skirmish with knife-wielding rioters. “The question you have to ask is why the Dalai Lama is supporting these terrorists,” he said.
A day-and-a-half of interviews about the riot, many arranged by the authorities, ended up revealing a very different story – of a city whose political fabric is under huge strain. As well as widespread resentment of the authorities among Tibetans, there were clear signs of ethnic tensions between the Tibetan population and both Han Chinese and Hui Muslims. There were even hints of political conflict within the Tibetan population.
The absence of harmony was sometimes apparent when the invited guests did not stick to the script – as when 30 monks stormed an interview in the Jokhang Temple shouting slogans about a free Tibet and immediately exposing the fierce resentment that still appears to be coursing through the city's monasteries.
Or there were the unconvincing occasions when the official script was followed too neatly, leaving the impression of an event heavily stage-managed. Ciji, a Tibetan nurse spoke to reporters standing beside an ambulance attacked by rioters which – 10 days later – still had broken windows and rocks inside to prove it. When asked what she thought of the monk-led protests, she shot back: “Marxism is my religion.”
Most of all, many of the interviewees arranged by the authorities confirmed that rather than being the random acts of conventional criminals, the riot involved a large degree of calculation with targets chosen along ethnic or political lines.
At a relief centre where dozens of families whose homes were destroyed by the rioters were staying, several people from the Hui Muslim community, which is prominent in commerce in the old Tibetan quarter, said that they had been deliberately picked on.
Ma Shichang, a Hui who lived near the Jokhang temple and had a small business making noodles, said that he and his son had a lucky escape when their house was burnt down. As his home was razed, he said a crowd of 200, mostly Tibetans, gathered and “many people kept saying that we Hui seemed to be making all the money”.
A number of other targets were chosen because of their links to the Chinese state. The Bank of China branch on Beijing Road was razed, with the only remaining trace a placard announcing the bank's sponsorship of the 2008 Olympics. Yang Zhen, the deputy manager, said she thought the bank had been targeted as a way of attacking the Olympics. The offices of the Xinhua news agency were also severely damaged.
There were also indications that the rioters might have chosen a few predominantly Tibetan targets which had close ties to the Chinese state. Rioters gutted a building at a school whose pupils are 85 per cent Tibetan, but where the dominant language is Chinese. A hotel founded with the help of a government foundation was also torched.
However, given the reluctance of most of the city's Tibetan population to discuss the riot or broader political issues, few strong conclusions can be drawn about the motivations for these attacks.
While Baima Chilin tried to paint a picture of political accord in Lhasa, his own figures indicated the high level of anger among the Tibetan population – of the 414 people arrested for taking part in the four days of disturbances, he admitted, the vast majority were Tibetans.
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