China clamps down for Tibetan revolt anniversary

Troops patrolled winding mountain roads, internet services were cut and motorists ran a gauntlet of checkpoints as Beijing mounted a show of force in Tibetan areas to prevent a repeat of uprisings against Chinese rule.

Tomorrow is the 50th anniversary of a failed revolt that sent Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama into exile.

A year ago, Tibetans erupted in protest – sometimes violently.

Today, checkpoints and garrisons seemed as numerous as the fortress-like Buddhist monasteries and white-domed shrines that dot the steep slopes and pastures of western China bordering Tibet.

The result was a kind of martial law, with constant tension across a third of Beijing’s territory.

In Daofu, a town in Sichuan province where Buddhist mantras are carved into the sides of 13,000ft snow-dusted mountains, the streets where nuns protested a year ago were calm.

Officials say monasteries are closed to visitors, with monks remaining inside studying Buddhist scriptures.

But while markets were bustling and many shopkeepers did brisk business, the atmosphere was steeped in watchfulness. Police cars and military trucks patrolled dusty streets where prayer flags fluttered from homes and Buddhist shrines.

“There have been thousands of police and troops here since the Lhasa riots last year. It has affected our lives,” said one resident. “Food is more expensive and harder to buy because the soldiers are eating a lot.”

Authorities have purged monasteries of suspected agitators and enforced denunciation campaigns of the Dalai Lama.

Rumours that the spiritual leader would be kidnapped by Chinese authorities sparked the uprising in Lhasa on March 10, 1959, nine years after the communist army marched into the Tibetan regional capital.

Monks in Lhasa tried to stage a commemorative march last year, drawing a blockade by police.

That set off protests that erupted into a riot against Chinese rule in Lhasa on March 14. Hundreds of shops were torched and ethnic Chinese attacked in the unrest that spread to dozens of communities before sputtering out last summer.

The Tibetan government-in-exile says 220 Tibetans died and nearly 7,000 were detained in demonstrations in Tibet and in Tibetan communities in three surrounding provinces.

Beijing says 22 people died in Lhasa, most of them Chinese civilians. It has acknowledged deaths elsewhere but not provided a tally.

The London-based Amnesty International human rights group said on Friday the region had been subjected to “a year of escalating human rights violations”.

The International Campaign for Tibet, a Washington-based group, says it has identified more than 600 people detained in the past year, and though some have been released, it says most are still in detention.

China has blamed the Dalai Lama and his exile movement for fomenting the unrest to restore a Buddhist theocracy that communist rule overturned.

Despite the Dalai Lama’s repeated insistence he wants autonomy for Tibetans - not independence – the government renewed its criticism that he was a secessionist.

“The Dalai is by no means a religious figure but a political figure,” foreign minister Yang Jiechi said in Beijing. “Our differences with him are not over religious issues, human rights, democracy or culture. It is about whether we should defend China’s unity and prevent Tibet from being separated from China’s territory.”

What is happening in Tibetan areas has become increasingly difficult to verify. Internet and mobile phone text-messaging services – some of the ways that protesters organised and kept abreast of developments last year – have been suspended for the past two weeks in Aba and Ganzi, two areas in Sichuan where violent protests broke out last year.

But Lei Yu, a spokeswoman for China Mobile Ltd, the carrier’s subsidiary in Hong Kong, blamed “system maintenance” for the shutdown.

Visitors to Lhasa in recent months have described swarms of armed police positioned across the city, some on rooftops, and blocking roads leading towards Sichuan. To the north in Gansu province, police checkpoints block the roads to Tibetan monasteries.

A Tibetan government official said the build-up of troops and police was a temporary measure against possible disturbances by Dalai Lama followers and foreign activists.