By Phurbu Thinley
Dharamsala, December 30: As 2008 draws towards its closing stage, China’s biggest state-controlled news agency has placed the March unrest in Lhasa, which later spread out massively into other regions of Tibet, among its top news events of the year.
In its “Yearender 2008” special report, China’s Xinhua News Agency, formerly known as Red China News Agency and often dubbed as the world’s biggest propaganda agency because of its role of news agency in the system of propaganda and censorship put in place by the Chinese Communist Party, highlights the “March 14 riots in Lhasa” among its “tops ten news events of 2008”.
“At least 18 innocent civilians were killed in the riots and rioters in the Tibetan capital caused much damage to property,” the report says, replicating the official lines maintained by the Chinese Communist Government.
The report further maintains that the “unrest was organized by the supporters of the Dalai Lama and Tibetan ‘independence’ forces,” with no further substantial details.
Tibet was rocked by widespread anti-China protests, the worst in almost 20 years, in March this year.
Tibetan Government-in-exile says Chinese military crackdown has killed some 200 Tibetans and 1,000s more are missing.
Independent rights groups and observers claim the number could be even much higher.
Apparently, following the suppression of the initial peaceful protests by monks, the unrest escalated dramatically and swiftly across the Tibetan plateau, creating headlines in the international media.
The Chinese communist authorities were swift to complain of western media bias. But reporting the full story, however, became impossible when the government had chosen to close off the entire Tibetan region. Communications were blocked and, journalists and tourists were kicked out of Tibet, proving extremely difficult for any accurate independent assessment.
To deflect international scrutiny and criticism, the Communist regime even effectively crafted a rift between China and the west by covertly fueling anti-western sentiments among its masses and burgeoning netizens. This somehow defused international attention off the situation inside Tibet.
Carefully doctored images flashed out by Chinese official media and limited information sneaked out of Tibet by individuals, at their own personal risk, remained the only information available to the outside world.
Chinese government, including its tightly controlled state media routinely shirked away from providing clear and objective overview of the unrest and the subsequent military crackdown. Even months after the demonstrations were actually curbed down, China refused to allow foreign journalists, except for the few invited journalists under state management, to report independently inside Tibet.
It often takes months or even years for Tibetans to relay information, deemed sensitive by Chinese Community authorities, to the outside world.
Those who do so are at the risk of facing harsh and heavy penalty, often with the accusation of endangering China’s “state security”.
Only last month, a 41-year old Wangdu, who first disappeared in Lhasa on March 14 amidst escalating anti-China demonstration, was given a life term sentence for passing information regarding the protest to the outside world.
His family had no news of him until Nov 8, when the Lhasa Evening News carried a lengthy article detailing his conviction for several alleged crimes. The sentencing only became known to the outside world last week after English translations of the article appeared on the internet.
Wangdu, had been working in Lhasa as a HIV/Aids project officer with the Burnet Institute, a leading Australian medical non-governmental organization. The organization has also said they did not hear from or of Wangdu since March.
Six other Tibetans, who were accused of conspiring with him, received sentences of between 10 years and 15 years. They were convicted for their alleged involvement in crimes of ‘espionage’, ‘endangering State security’ and ‘illegally providing information to outside agents’.
China last month refused to answer questions from a United Nations human rights panel about the alleged torture and disappearance of dissidents, or provide official figures on the mistreatment of detainees in its prisons.
It also flatly turned down a UN Committee Against Torture’s request for a written response on its statement: “Public statements confirmed that hundreds of persons were detained in connection with the unrest that followed the March 2008 demonstration in the Tibet Autonomous Region and neighbouring Tibetan prefectures and counties in Gansu, Sichuan and Qinghai provinces.”
