Tibetan Citizens’ Resentment of Chinese Occupation Readily Evident

An elderly monk slips out of earshot of the Chinese soldiers nearby and whispers to a Western tour group: “Chinese soldiers killed many people and arrested many. Always remember Tibet.”

As the group proceeds on its sightseeing, an 88-year-old Tibetan approaches and says many people are in prison.

“Please help us,” he says. “Tell the people of your countries to help us bring the Dalai Lama back.”

The Dalai Lama, the Tibetans’ spiritual leader, fled into exile with tens of thousands of others after an anti-Chinese uprising was crushed in 1959.

Last March, the Chinese authorities declared martial law after another anti-Chinese outburst and Lhasa today is a city controlled by Chinese arms and divided by suspicion and hatred.

The antagonisms are clearly evident, even to the tourists who come to see the exquisite Buddhist monasteries and temples and the rugged mountains set against the cobalt-blue Himalayan sky.

A driver, told by a soldier that the Chinese had banned unauthorized vehicles from entering a monastery compound, shouts back: “What do you mean Chinese? This is Tibet.”

A 72-year-old farm woman, her white hair braided down her back, says that before the Chinese came in 1950 “we were free and happy. Now we are not happy. We hear bad things about the government.”

Asked about the Dalai Lama, the woman cries and says, “I pray each day for his return.”

Western and Tibetan sources said people gathered in the central square in mid-October after word reached them that the Dalai Lama had won the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize. They celebrated with the ritual throwing of “tsampa,” a Tibetan food made of flour and roasted barley.

The next day police, apparently fearing trouble, banned foreign tourists from the square. But they made no arrests as they did in September, when several nuns were detained for calling for Tibetan independence during a religious festival.

Lhasa, a city of 160,000 at an altitude of 11,772 feet, has been under martial law since March 8, when troops were called in to quell the fourth major pro-independence, anti-Chinese uprising since autumn, 1987.

An estimated 20 to 30 people were killed in the March rioting, and hundreds are believed to have been arrested.

The military has a far more dominant presence in Lhasa than in Beijing, China’s capital, which has been under martial law since May 20 because of the pro-democracy demonstrations.

Tourists coming to Lhasa see the effects of martial law as soon as they arrive.

At the airport, armed guards check the travel permits of all foreigners. This tour group saw soldiers all along the airport road, including one taking shots at birds with his AK-47 rifle.

Silver metal sentry boxes with armed soldiers have been set up on streets leading to Lhasa’s central square, the Barkhor, the flash point of previous demonstrations. Soldiers were on guard at all lanes leading off the Barkhor bazaar, which circles the Jokhang Temple, Tibet’s holiest place of worship.

One group of a dozen soldiers drilled in the square outside the Jokhang Temple, on several instances crouching in formation and aiming their rifles in the direction of the shrine, where worshipers prostrate themselves and hawkers sell photographs of the Dalai Lama.

Buddhist monks, the leaders of the pro-independence uprisings, are kept under close surveillance. Military checkpoints stop all people coming in and out of the main monasteries. A monk at the Sera monastery said its monks couldn’t leave the compound for three months after the March demonstrations.

At the Drepung monastery, a monk said the monks there celebrated the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the Dalai Lama by reading scriptures because they couldn’t go to the city.

“We’re surrounded by military,” he said. “We’ve been fighting the Chinese for two years now but we are afraid. They have weapons, we don’t.”

Monks who had been imprisoned for rioting said they had been kicked, beaten and hit with electric prods.

A monk at the Jokhang Temple said its monks also had to undergo long hours of political sessions in which officials read documents and warned them against further demonstrations.

“It’s terrible. It’s not interesting,” he said.

The numbers of Tibetan religious pilgrims and foreign tourists are down because of restrictions on entering Lhasa. Foreign tourists, who can now visit Lhasa in organized groups of three or more, are not allowed to enter residential neighborhoods or go out on the streets without a guide.

Tourists arriving at the airport are handed a notice in ungrammatical English warning that they “shall not spread the words which is harmful to our national dignity, sovereignty, territorial integrity or interference in our internal affairs, shall not distribute the books, periodicals, pictures, audio and video products and other propaganda articles which is harmful” to the country.

The Holiday Inn Lhasa Hotel is only about 10% occupied these days, and many small hotels catering to young backpackers, who have disappeared with the ban on individual travel, have shut down.

Tourism, which brought 43,000 people to the remote mountain region in 1987, had been seen by the Chinese as one way to lift Tibet out of poverty and thus reduce anti-Chinese sentiments.

The Chinese Communists in Beijing, which claims Tibet has been an inalienable part of China for 700 years, sent the army into Tibet in 1950 and made it part of China.

Tibetan resentment against rule by the Chinese Han majority heightened during Mao Tse-tung’s 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, when radical Red Guards rampaged through Buddhist temples, destroying scriptures and religious statues and throwing monks into prison.

BACKGROUND The Chinese Communists in Beijing, which claims Tibet has been an inalienable part of China for 700 years, sent the army into Tibet in 1950 and made it part of China.