(TibetanReview.net, Mar07’24) – China has claimed Mar 6 that there were no “mass incidents” last year in Tibet, a euphemism for protests. But it was obviously referring only to the situation in Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), which is roughly the western half of the occupied Himalayan country. It has also vowed to continue the Sinicization of Tibet and its Buddhist religion.
There were no “mass incidents” last year, Reuters Mar 6 cited a senior Tibet official as saying at a briefing on the sidelines of China’s annual parliamentary session being held in Beijing.
“Last year no serious mass incidents, political incidents, or violent terrorist acts occurred,” the report quoted Yan Jinhai, the region’s second-ranked official and government chairman, as saying during a scripted press conference where questions were selected in advance.
Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) has rejected Yan’s claim. “Yan’s statement is inaccurate and misleading. He’s forgetting the thousands of Tibetans who courageously attended a Tibetan Buddhist teaching in Tsoe (Hezuo City, presently under Gansu province) last September, despite a government ban. He’s also ignoring the more than 1,000 Tibetans China arrested over peaceful protests in Derge (Dege County, presently under Sichuan province) just last month,” ICT president Tencho Gyatso has said Mar 7.
She has also said: “Tibetans have resisted for over 65 years and will continue to resist to protect their religion, language and identity. China has failed to win over the Tibetan people. If China really wants no more protests in Tibet, it should respect Tibetans’ basic freedoms.”
Like other parts of Tibet, the TAR has a long history of protests against Chinese rule, including one which started in capital Lhasa in 2008 and which at once engulfed most of the Tibetan Plateau region. China’s massive armed repression led to massacres of Tibetans and imposition of prison-like controls and restrictions across the land. This in turn led to a spate of protest self-immolations across Tibet since 2009, with the exile Tibetan administration saying 157 of such reported protesters have been confirmed so far.
The tight security measures, including a highly intrusive surveillance network, tight information control, and strict movement restrictions still remain in place.
“We have always regarded maintaining national unity and strengthening ethnic solidarity as the focal point of Tibet work,” Reuters quoted Yan, an ethnic Tibetan with Chinese name who previously served in neighbouring Qinghai province before being transferred to Lhasa in 2020, as saying.
“We will always adhere to the principle of firmly … curbing extremism, resisting infiltration and fighting criminality,” Yan has said, adding that spoken and written Mandarin Chinese had become “comprehensively widespread” across Tibet, thanks obviously to the Sinicization drive.
He also vowed to “continue advancing the Sinicization of Tibetan Buddhism” and stressed Tibet’s “high-quality economic development” in recent years, which improved living standards for many of its 3.6 million residents, the report added.