Tibet

One year later, footage of the crackdown

Sophie Team Observers — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 16:07:30 +0100

China has always sworn that it committed no acts of brutality in repressing the March 2008 riots in Tibet. One of our Observers for the region has published images which had not been previously seen of the Chinese police's handling of the Tibetan demonstrators.

This extract is part of a seven minute compilation published on the official website of the Tibetan government-in-exile, based in Dharamsala, India. It serves to finally offer proof of the alleged police brutality which the Tibetans say caused 222 deaths and 1,000 disappearances.

UPDATE (25 March 2009 - 10am): an unnamed government official from the Tibet Autonomous Region told the state Xinhua news agency on Tuesday night that the video was a lie. "Technology experts found that video and audio was edited to piece together different places, times and people," Xinhua quoted the official as saying.

Until now the Chinese have represented their actions as a healthy suppression of dangerous rebels. They were outraged by calls from the United Nations in November for the country to clarify its measures, accusing it of "prejudice against China" and of fabricating evidence in order to "politicise the issue". But the images captured on this video will be difficult to dismiss; unlike previous footage, this is shot at close range, and the first which shows police assaulting unarmed protesters.

You won’t see this photo on the Chinese Web

Julien — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 17:17:49 +0100

This picture was published on the blog of our Tibetan Observer, Lhadon Tethong. It shows a monk setting himself on fire on Feb. 27 near a monastery in Ngaba (or Aba), in Sichuan province. The incident occurred after Chinese authorities forbade his monastery to celebrate a traditional prayer ritual.

According to the International Campaign for Tibet, a nongovernmental organisation, the 20-year-old monk, called Tapey, walked towards policemen surrounding his monastery after having previously doused himself with petrol. He set fire to his clothes in front of the policemen. The NGO doesn’t know whether the monk survived or not but claims that the officers shot at him before quickly carrying him away. Tapey was protesting against the decision by Chinese authorities to forbid his monastery from celebrating Monlam, a prayer ritual organized after the Chinese new year.

Last year at around the same time, protesting monks from the same monastery had been brutally repressed by the police.

This photos were collected on the day of the incident by members of the International Campaign for Tibet in Dharamsala, India.

According to the International Campaign for Tibet, this photo was also taken the day the monk set himself on fire. The banner on the side of the Chinese police truck reads: "Worship the people of Ngaba".

Chinese web users give Sarkozy a roasting

Sophie Team Observers — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 09:52:49 +0100

After postponing his meeting with the Dalai Lama several times, Nicolas Sarkozy will finally meet the Tibetan spiritual leader on Saturday, Dec. 5, in Gdansk, Poland.

Relations between China and France have reached a new low as the controversial meeting with the Dalai Lama approaches. His rendezvous on Thursday with the European Parliament already stirred up trouble, with Beijing taking the event as an opportunity to warn the EU against jeopardising commercial relations with China.

For the Chinese blogosphere, the affront comes not so long after their outrage over the disruption of the Olympic torch relay in Paris. This time, bloggers are not only targeting French companies, but also enjoying poking fun at the country's president.

Richard Gere infuriates Chinese with pro-Tibet Fiat ad

Sophie Team Observers — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 10:48:54 +0200

Despite complaints from the Chinese authorities, Italian car manufacturer Fiat has refused to pull an advert which shows Buddhist actor Richard Gere gleefully playing with traditional Tibetan children.

Fiat did issue an apology to China on Monday but said that the commercial for the new Lancia Delta would remain on-air in Italy and even spread to other European countries. They denied that Richard Gere had been chosen for his free-Tibet stance and ties with the Dalai Lama, and said they did not mean to "interfere with the internal political system of any country". However the advert, which has caused outrage on YouTube where Chinese web users can watch it, is just the latest in a string of offences that have upset Chinese people over Tibet. A month ago Sharon Stone was dropped from a Christian Dior campaign after saying that the earthquake in China was bad karma for its treatment of Tibet.

First images of the convicted Tibetans

Julien — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 16:05:57 +0200

Thirty Tibetans accused of taking part in the riots last month have been convicted today with sentences ranging from three years in jail to life imprisonment. One of our Observers has sent us the first images of the trial, made public by the state press agency Xinhua, just as the sentences were handed out.

According to the Chinese TV channel CCTV, the trial lasted all day and was open to the public. These photos show ten of the thirty Tibetans who were sentenced today in Lhasa. The second image is particularly interesting - a man sitting in the front row of the public benches sporting traditional Tibetan dress. Is he a pro-Beijing Tibetan? The image has been carefully chosen, perhaps to show that - just as the authorities insisted from the very beginning of the crisis - Tibetan people support the Chinese government and only a violent minority took part in the riots. We will try to find out more and update this post soon.

"Putting out the flame is really going to upset the Chinese people"

Julien — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 16:29:07 +0200

The Olympic flame had to be put out for half an hour during its tour around Paris because of havoc wreaked by mainly pro-Tibetan protesters. ChinaWolf, who set up a YouTube channel to "defend the Chinese reputation", explains to us why he thinks the protests were unacceptable.

Yahoo and MSN helping to root out Tibetan rioters

Julien — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 11:29:07 +0100

The 'most wanted' on Yahoo's homepage this morning

Yahoo! China pasted a "most wanted" poster across its homepage today in aid of the police's witch-hunt for 24 Tibetans accused of taking part in the recent riots. MSN China made the same move, although it didn't go as far as publishing the list on its homepage.

UPDATE 1 : We spotted these photos on MSN and Yahoo! on March 21st at 3.30pm (Beijing time). This article was published at 5pm. The photos have been removed from the portals between 8pm and 10pm.

UPDATE 2 (24.03.08 / 10.15am Paris time) : Following this report, Yahoo! sent us the following statement :"Contrary to media reports, Yahoo! Inc. is not displaying images on its web sites of individuals wanted by Chinese authorities in connection with the recent unrest in Tibet." In this statement, Yahoo! says that the parent company Yahoo Inc did not publish these images. The company does not deny that Yahoo! China has published the "wanted" posters. This is a common line of defence by Yahoo!, which tries to put the entire responsibility of its Chinese operations on its Chinese partner Alibaba. See bellow a printscreen of the Yahoo! China (cn.yahoo.com) home page on March 21st.

First pictures of Tibet killings

Julien — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 12:56:55 +0100

Chinese authorities have so far reported 13 dead since the beginning of the incidents while Tibetan activists say that at least one hundred people have been killed. These amateur photos, which we're the first to publish, contradict the official Chinese statement.

The photos were taken at the Kirti Monastery (in the county of Aba, Sichuan province, near Tibet) and retrieved by the Free Tibet Campaign. According to the organisation, they were taken after a demonstration of hundreds of people initiated by monks. The police are said to have used teargas, before shooting at the crowd and killing between 13 and 30 people according to eye witnesses quoted by the organisation. Please note that because there are no journalists in the area it's impossible to have this information verified.

CNN accused of bending the truth about Tibet

Julien — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 18:50:41 +0100

This image is all over Chinese discussion boards. Web-users are saying that the photo, published by CNN, proves that the American channel is manipulating information about the Tibet crisis in order to cast China in a negative light.

In comments posted on Hong Kong and Chinese discussion forums like Shanghaining and 28discuss.com, Chinese Internet users accuse CNN of editing images of the unrest in Tibet in order to omit evidence of Tibetans acting violently. The critics say that in the version of the photo published by CNN (on the left), for example, CNN intentionally cropped out the Tibetan rioters who appear to be throwing stones at a military van. CNN denies the allegation, saying the image in question was cropped because of space constraints on the CNN Web site and that the organization's coverage has been impartial (see full statement below).

"We've hardly got any photos of the repression"

Julien — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 16:32:59 +0100

Photo taken in Lhasa today

Photos of the chaos in Lhasa are slowly finding their way to us. We asked a young Tibetan activist to explain how the Chinese government is managing to restrict information from leaving the country.

UPDATE (13 March 7.30pm): We published the first amateur images of events on the Observers site. Press agencies have now distributed new photos of the events, finally managing to get their documents out of the country.