Tibet witnesses describe ‘mayhem everywhere’

A Chinese shopkeeper in Tibet’s capital came out of hiding today for the first time since mobs ransacked his herb store last week during the biggest uprising against the region’s Chinese rulers in nearly two decades.

Ma Zhonglong, 20, said he had had nothing but a few packets of instant noodles to eat since he ran for cover Friday when he saw hundreds of Tibetans smash and burn storefronts near the Jokhang Temple, the religious and geographical heart of Lhasa, the Tibetan capital.

“I went outside and saw people fighting on the street,” Ma said in a telephone interview. “I hurried back and closed the door. Through the glass window I could see the mob rushing toward me. They carried knives, stones, sticks. I ran further back into this courtyard to hide. Outside I could hear them smashing everything.”

This morning, as Ma emerged and found his store in ruins and expensive herbs looted, the Chinese government had taken control of Lhasa and ordered all rioters to turn themselves in by midnight or face serious consequences.

A calm descended on the Tibetan capital today after a week of protests that turned violent and spread to two nearby provinces. Even the Chinese capital saw demonstrations, with dozens of students at the Central University for Nationalities gathered for a candlelight vigil under the heavy security presence.

Chinese authorities, weary of bad publicity in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics in August and eager to avoid any reminder of the violent crackdown on pro-democracy student protests at Tiananmen Square in 1989, offered a portrait of official restraint during the effort to restore order.

Qiangba Puncog, the head of the Tibet regional government and who was in Beijing today attending the annual meeting of China’s parliament, denied that soldiers used lethal weapons or excess force. Rioters, he said, set fire to more than 300 homes and shops, leaving at least 13 civilians burned or stabbed to death and 61 police officers injured.

In one instance, Puncog told reporters, rioters doused a civilian with gasoline and set him on fire while others knocked out an officer and cut a piece of flesh from his buttocks.

Aides to the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, have put the death toll at 80. There was no way to independently verify the conflicting tolls because Beijing forbids foreigners from visiting Tibet without official permission.

Witnesses say Lhasa had been turned into a war zone, with both sides suffering casualties.

“I saw mayhem everywhere: Tibetans throwing rocks, setting fires, people running scared like cats and dogs,” said 27-year-old migrant worker from Sichuan province, who was told to stay home by his employer. “The Tibetans were looking for Han Chinese to kill, adults and children.

“Somebody told me they hung these Chinese schoolboys on the beams inside the Jokhang Temple, to protest, I guess,” said the migrant worker, who requested anonymity and, like other Chinese in Lhasa, was interviewed by telephone.

“It was very scary,” said a 40-year-old Chinese man who works in a car dealership with an office near the Jokhang temple. “There was fire and killing everywhere. When peace and stability is gone, ordinary people suffer.”

Authorities blamed the violence on a “small clique” of Dalai Lama supporters who the government says instigated chaos to steal China’s Olympic thunder. The Nobel laureate, who fled Tibet in 1959 following a failed uprising and runs an exile government in India, has denied any role in inciting the violence.

China’s critics blame the unrest and the underlying ethnic tension on what they call the Communist regime’s long-standing policy of cultural and economic strangulation, which they say has pushed Tibetans to the breaking point.

“Although we have seen years of investment in Tibet, the vast majority of Tibetans are severely disadvantaged both socially and economically by inadequate education and health care so that they cannot compete with the growing number of Chinese migrants coming in,” said Kate Saunders, communications director for the London-based International Campaign for Tibet.

According to Chinese officials, the newly completed Qinghai-to-Lhasa railway, billed as the highest in the world and the first to link the remote Himalayan region to the rest of China, ferried 1.5 million passengers in its first year of operation. Most of those who come to stay are Chinese entrepreneurs and migrant workers who observers say are increasingly turning the Tibetan holy land into just another Chinese city. Lhasa’s main thoroughfare running in front of the Dalai Lama’s famed winter palace is aptly named Beijing Road.

While exact figures are hard to come by, Lhasa’s urban population of about 270,000 is already between 70% and 80% Chinese, said Saunders, adding that at least 100,000 migrant workers come from nearby Sichuan province alone.

“The Sichuan dialect is now the most commonly heard in Lhasa, and there is a saying Lhasa is the backyard of Chengdu,” Saunders said, referring to the provincial capital of Sichuan.

As a result the Tibetans and Chinese keep mostly to themselves, reinforcing the ethnic divide and simmering tensions.

“It’s normal for the Tibetans to hate the Chinese. You are on their turf, of course they hate you,” said the 27-year-old migrant worker from Sichuan.

Zhaxi Duoji is a Tibetan who runs the Tibet Cafe and Inn in southwestern China’s Yunnan province. He organizes regular tours to Tibet but had to put them on hold since the disturbances began.

“I am a Tibetan and I think what is happening in Lhasa is terrible. I can say 90% of ordinary Tibetans are opposed to this kind of violence,” he said in fluent Mandarin, adding that he is a Buddhist and not a Communist Party member.

“The Chinese government’s policy on Tibet is improving,” he said. “Every country has a minority of people who want to go back to the past. That’s based on ignorance. Many Tibetans are disadvantaged because they don’t speak Mandarin, can’t express themselves and are easily taken advantage of by other people.”

It remains to be seen how hard Beijing will clamp down on the protesters after today’s midnight deadline for turning themselves in. Meanwhile, extra security has been deployed to other regions of western China with heavy Tibetan population and potential for more sympathy protests.

“I know the Communist Party will take care of everything by midnight and restore order,” said the migrant worker from Sichuan. “But then again, how can we go back to normal with so many stores on so many streets burned and destroyed?”

chingching.ni@latimes.com