DHARAMSHALA, March 2: Calls for more stringent measures in Tibet are echoing from the power corridors of Beijing, days ahead of China’s rubber-stamp parliament, the National People’s Congress meets Monday.
Jia Qinglin, the Communist Party’s fourth-ranked leader told a meeting in Beijing that officials must “resolutely smash the Dalai Lama’s plots to sow chaos in Tibet and maintain social harmony and stability.”
“The Dalai clique is unceasingly trying to create disturbances in Tibet and Tibetan parts of Sichuan,” state television reported Jia as saying.
“We should consider both internal and external situations and firmly follow the gist of ‘making progress while maintaining stability,’ striving for a steady economic growth in Tibet and the Tibetan-inhabited areas in four provinces,” Jia added.
Analysts say China often uses the meeting of parliament as an excuse to clamp down on dissent in an effort to project the appearance of political unity.
Fears of unrest ahead of the annual parliamentary session was also reflected when China’s top official in Tibet renewed calls to tighten grip on the Internet and mobile phones.
Chen Quanguo, who was appointed the Chinese Communist Party chief of Tibet last August, urged authorities at all levels to “further increase their alertness to stability maintenance” and vowed to “completely crush hostile forces” that he said were led by the Dalai Lama.
“Mobile phones, Internet and other measures for the management of new media need to be fully implemented to maintain the public’s interests and national security,” the official Tibet Daily newspaper quoted him as saying on Wednesday.
He also asked officials to spread a message that stability meant everything for Tibet and “unstable elements should be nipped in the bud.”
As Tibet continues to remain cut off from outside world following a February official decree the renewed calls for “stability maintenance” most likely means that phone and online communications will be even more closely monitored and censored.
Since 2009, 23 Tibetans have set their bodies on fire demanding the return of His Holiness the Dalai Lama from exile and freedom in Tibet. Mass protests in Tibet have been brutally crushed as many parts of Tibet are under an undeclared martial law.
Earlier this week, an Associated Press reporter who managed to get through several checkpoints along the road leading to Ngaba, a region in eastern Tibet which has been at the centre of the self-immolation protests, said that China’s “stifling lockdown” has not only been about patrolling the streets, but also “policing the minds” of the community.
AP reported that soldiers with helmets, rifles, sticks and shields march in rows and scan license plates and faces of passengers for unwelcome visitors.
“The locals are definitely feeling very heavy-hearted, very frustrated, all day. The soldiers are everywhere,” a teacher was quoted as saying. “At every moment, people wonder what will happen to the person next to them, what the soldiers will do to them.”
“In the people’s hearts, what they probably can’t stand the most is that the authorities scold our living Buddha, the Dalai Lama. We cannot stand it when they scold him,” the teacher said. “He’s the person we are most loyal to.”
