Restive, remote Tibetan region under military lockdown

GARZE PREFECTURE, China (AFP) — Armed soldiers line the roads throughout these remote foothills of the Himalayas, travellers’ identifications are checked, and Tibetan monks talk warily of their communist Chinese rulers.

Garze prefecture, a rugged area that has historically been one of China’s most volatile Tibetan regions, hit the headlines again last week after the Dalai Lama accused soldiers of firing on a crowd there during the Olympics.

Swathes of the region in southwest China’s Sichuan province are under strict military lockdown, although locals say this has been the norm since unrest erupted in Tibetan-populated regions of the country in March.

“We are living under Chinese socialism,” one Buddhist monk at a temple in Kangding, the capital of Garze prefecture, told AFP when asked about government claims that “stability and harmony” had returned to the area.

“If the authorities say ’stability and harmony’ have returned, then it has returned, because whatever they say goes.”

His sarcastic remark followed allegations from the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, that soldiers opened fire on a crowd in Garze town, which is in a remote pocket of the prefecture of the same name, on August 18.

The Dalai Lama said there were casualties but it was impossible to get any more information from the town due to the military lockdown.

The spiritual leader also accused China of expanding its crackdown across the Tibetan plateau, which takes in Tibet as well as Tibetan-populated areas of western Chinese provinces such as Garze.

Tibetan monks were heavily involved in the protests that began to mark the anniversary of a 1959 uprising against Chinese rule, and China’s forces have focused special attention on monasteries in their bid to crush any opposition.

More than 400 Tibetans have died in the crackdown in Lhasa alone, according to the Dalai Lama. However Chinese authorities have reported killing just one “insurgent” and blamed Tibetan “rioters” for the deaths of 21 people.

The 1989 Nobel Peace Prize winner said it looked as though Chinese security forces were planning to maintain their heavy presence for many years, as there had been a “frenzy” of building new military camps in Tibetan populated areas.

“A project of long-term brutal repression is under way,” he said.

In and around Kangding, an AFP reporter saw armed soldiers and police officers guarding roads, and military trucks rumbling along mountainous roads.

In the Anjue Temple in Kangding, which belongs to the Dalai Lama’s Gelugpa sect, the premises were largely quiet as plainclothes police kept watch and dozens of police cars sat in the parking lot of two nearby hotels.

AFP journalists could not get much closer to Garze town from Kangding, about 300 kilometres (180 miles) away, due to the poor conditions of roads and drivers refusing to take foreigners there.

Garze prefecture is a mountainous area covering 150,000 square kilometres (60,000 square miles), nearly four time the size of the Netherlands.

One Han Chinese traveller who was in Garze town a week ago told AFP the situation there was very tense.

“It looks like the military is preparing to stay in the area for a long time,” he said, as he recalled one encounter with security forces at a temple.

“We were forced off the bus at gunpoint and had to register before we were put back on the bus and sent away,” he said, asking not to be named.

The military and police were checking identification papers of all travellers on roads leading to the temples, according to the man.

Garze is part of the Kham region of what Tibetans consider their homeland, which also covers some of neighbouring Yunnan and Qinghai provinces, as well as the eastern part of Tibet.

Gabriel Lafitte, an Australian who advises the Tibetan government-in-exile, said Kham had a strong reputation of independence from any regime, be it Beijing or Lhasa before that.

During the Qing dynasty, in the 18th century, he said, the Kham Tibetans fought viciously against the emperor’s armies, and it took them 50 years to subdue the Khampas, as they are known.

“While they have a strong reputation as warriors, they have an equal reputation for being the most devout, which has earned them trouble with Chinese authorities,” Lafitte said.