China’s crackdown in Lhasa resurrects ghost of Tiananmen
Saibal Dasgupta, The Times of India
March 15, 2008

If there’s one thing China would have wanted to avoid in an Olympics year, it’s memories of Tiananmen Square. But those very images were reignited on the streets of Lhasa as Red Army tanks rolled out to crush Tibetan protesters on Saturday. While the official Chinese media claimed only ten people had died in Friday’s violence, Tibetan activists said the toll could be anywhere between 30 and 100.

Elsewhere in China, as in the central province of Gansu where the revered Labrang monastery is located, normally peaceful monks turned the streets into a sea of maroon and similar protests, with their epicentre near Lhasa’s Potala Palace, were reported from areas with large Tibetan settlements.

The official tourist bureau told TOI that tourists to the Roof of the World had been forbidden from entering the city from Friday.

The protests began on Monday to coincide with the 49th anniversary of the 1959 uprising against Chinese rule. They were initially led by Buddhist monks but have since escalated to include masses of ordinary Tibetans who have been complaining of Beijing’s heavy-handed rule and the massive influx of Chinese migrants.

According to sources in the Tibetan capital, the tension between the two ethnic groups erupted into full-fledged riots on Friday as the Tibetan monks’ were joined by the common people in their peaceful demonstrations. Although they said many people had died in the Han-Tibetan clashes, it could not be immediately confirmed how many had died in group riots and how many were victims of police action.