Through the eyes of witnesses
Originally published by The Economist,28 July 2010
YOUR correspondent was on leave on July 22nd, when Human Rights Watch released its report on the abuses that Chinese security forces are alleged to have committed in Tibet since the massive eruption of anti-Chinese unrest there in 2008. The 73-page document describes itself as the first comprehensive examination of the ongoing crackdown. Based largely on interviews with 200-odd Tibetans who left the region as refugees or on visits, it is a valuable contribution to an under-reported story.
China is adept at ensuring that little news of such repression gets out. In the far western province of Xinjiang, where the authorities have been cracking down since an outbreak of ethnic violence in July last year, the tactic has been to sever communications links with the outside world by mobile telephone or the internet (though restrictions have been relaxed since May). On the Tibetan plateau, the authorities in some places confiscated mobile phones and computers from monks and made it all the more difficult for foreign journalists—who are rarely welcome at the best of times—to visit. By chance I was the only foreign reporter on the spot when rioting erupted in Lhasa on March 14th 2008. I was not allowed back again until nearly two years later and then only for a frustratingly brief tour.
Human Rights Watch documents killings, torture, show trials, beatings and arrests galore. Much to its credit, it does not attempt to weave in reports that come via long-term Tibetan exiles, many of which are difficult to verify. The Tibetan government-in-exile has reported more than 200 Tibetans killed by the security forces since March 2008, including at least 80 who died on March 14th that year. In support of this figure it has cited the alleged spotting of some 80 bodies piled near a Lhasa police station on the following day.
The report from Human Rights Watch appears to be more cautious. Many Tibetans may well have been killed by police gunfire across the Tibetan plateau, but the report sticks mainly to accounts that it says have been corroborated by multiple sources. In the case of Lhasa, it acknowledges “persistent rumours” that security forces systematically removed Tibetan fatalities in order to conceal their use of lethal force on March 14th and 15th. The report also quotes several witnesses who describe having seen civilians shot dead during the unrest in Lhasa. Some of them saw an incident in the southern part of the Tibetan quarter on March 14th in which several people were reported to have been killed.
These accounts shed useful light on what is still a murky picture of what happened in Lhasa on those two days. Though I had been able to move about the city with little restriction at the time I did not at any point see troops fire directly on anybody. I did not even did he hear the sound of gunfire until the 15th. But the area affected was so large that brief, scattered shootings could well have occurred around the city without my being aware. (Human Rights Watch notes that China has not yet addressed why its security forces abandoned Lhasa’s city centre to protesters and looters for several hours on March 14th.) Oddly perhaps—given that many residents have camera-enabled mobile phones, access to the internet was not specially restricted and a mood of anarchy prevailed in the Tibetan quarter—no photographs hinting at security forces’ use of lethal force have emerged.
But although the Lhasa rioting was huge in scale and in the extent of its political impact, it was only one of dozens of flare-ups across the Tibetan plateau. The Human Rights Watch report provides record of shootings and other brutality by the security forces that happened in areas where correspondents have had even greater difficulty gaining access, especially in Tibetan areas of Sichuan Province. There is no doubt that the authorities have used fear to cast a pall of silence over a vast territory. Many Tibetans were jailed in connection with the unrest; Human Rights Watch says that seven were sentenced in October and November 2008 for reporting information about the situation in Lhasa to the outside world. Their terms ranged from eight years to life. No wonder so little is known.