(TibetanReview.net, Sep11’26) – “Freedom of speech” and “truth” are no defence when China charges citizens for “spreading rumours” online. Anything not reported by the state media or officially announced is either “state secret” or “rumour”, warranting instant punishment. And so it has been when it came to information about the human tragedy on the Tibetan side of the border from the devastating Aug 26 flash floods.
There is a continuing, gaping lack of information on what happened on the Tibetan side of the border in terms of human tragedy when it was overrun by a glacier-avalanche-triggered flash flood of ice, rock, mud, and, of course, water in the morning of that day. The flash flood pulverised Gyirong Port and barrelled into Nepal through the Rasuwagadhi border port. China only provided bare figures of deaths and missing – their overall total remaining almost unchanged since day one.
The dire lack of information is attributed to two main factors: China’s “Clean Internet 2026” campaign and its perception of national security concerns with regard to any information about Tibet.
China’s “Clean Internet 2026” campaign was launched to focus on tackling cybercrime and hacking. However, it has since expanded to suppress information that differs from official narratives, allegedly because they “misleads the public and disrupts online order”, noted theguardian.com Sep 8.
The flooding disaster is an example of the increasing use by Chinese authorities of “Clean Internet 2026”, the latest version of a long-running campaign by the Ministry of Public Security that criminalises anything officials regard as false information, which includes unofficial accounts of the floods, the report said.
The move is stated to follow a well-established playbook in which authorities promote official narratives, suppress independent accounts, discourage efforts to look back at the causes of a disaster and punish those who post claims that differ from the government-approved narrative.
“The campaign serves a dual purpose. Tackling genuine problems like fraud and misinformation while tightening control over public narratives,” Tencho Gyatso from the International Campaign for Tibet, a US based Tibetan advocacy group, has said. “That dual purpose is what makes it more nuanced and challenging to criticise.”
Posts on the floods on the Chinese app WeChat were seen being constantly restricted. In one case, a user was notified by WeChat that a post about the flooding had been reported and then deleted for containing “politically sensitive content”. Another was stopped from being shared; it was stated to be “unavailable due to policy violation” and for containing“prohibited content”, the report said.
“A ‘crackdown’ is not the right word, because they don’t crack down. It’s a consistent, persistent, everyday application of a policy of public-opinion guidance,” David Bandurski, director of the China Media Project, a research group that monitors Chinese media, has said.
On Aug 30, four days after the disaster, police in Tibet reported 10 cases under the “Clean Internet 2026” campaign relating to “rumours” about the disaster. In the majority of cases there were claims that more than 1,000 people had been swept away in the floods.
Chinese authorities have so far released a death toll of 43, with 519 missing. Human rights and Tibetan advocacy groups have accused the Chinese government of concealing the true scale of the death toll.
Bandurski has said: “The [Communist] party sees itself in a global public-opinion struggle. It is wrestling with the world fighting to get its view out. This is how China sees information globally, in a very, very oppositional framework.”
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Another reason for Beijing’s information blackout on Tibet – which is turning a natural catastrophe into an invisible tragedy – is that every information about the region gets filtered through a national security lens.
Local officials and state media workers operate under a strict rule. You don’t report a higher death toll until Beijing gives the green light. Even if you walk past bodies in the mud, you keep quiet, noted geosirius.ifz.ru Sep 10.
Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at SOAS University of London, has puts it bluntly: Nobody reports anything that hasn’t cleared the very top.
This hyper-controlled environment creates a bizarre information vacuum. State broadcasters dispatch crews to Tibet, but their cameras point away from the devastation. They focus entirely on rescue staging grounds. They refuse to interview local villagers sitting right behind them, the report said.
When governments treat climate-driven natural disasters as state secrets, everyone loses. And this at a time when glacial lake outbursts and flash floods are becoming more common across the Himalayas as temperatures rise.
Scientists need accurate data from both sides of the border to model future risks. Downstream communities in Nepal rely on early warnings that depend on shared hydrology data from the Tibetan Plateau. When information stops at the border, warning systems fail, the report noted.
And so, if you’re tracking climate risks in mountain regions, expect a massive blind spot whenever disaster strikes a Chinese controlled territory. Data is politicized, the report said.