Rebecca Novick of the Huffington Post has a very good report on what’s been going on inside of Tibet the last month, especially on the push to not celebrate Losar and instead be in mourning for the victims of China’s crackdown following the national uprising last year.

Simon Elegant has a more detailed piece on his recent travel to Tibet in Time. The piece begins with a testimony on Chinese surveillance and Tibetan defiance:

When asked how his New Year celebrations have been, the pilgrim — a middle-aged businessman wearing a heavy winter coat against the bitter winds that knife through the monastery’s narrow alleys — immediately glances up and then over his shoulder. It is the universal, instinctive reaction of Tibetans I talked to on a recent trip to China’s far western province of Qinghai, where ethnic Tibetans make up the majority of the population in the areas closest to the Qinghai-Tibet border. “Cameras,” he hisses, nodding upward. “The police have them everywhere.”

Pulling me into the shadow of one of the deep doorways cut into the monastery’s thick walls, he launches into a tirade that reflects the feelings of most of the Tibetans I spoke to in the region, a group ranging from nomadic herdsmen to shopkeepers to students to monks. “We didn’t celebrate anything this year, because we have nothing to celebrate,” he says grimly. “We want to respect and commemorate the people who were killed last year,” when demonstrations against Chinese rule in Lhasa, capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region, which neighbors Qinghai, turned violent. Beijing says 19 were killed, mostly innocent Chinese shopkeepers. Tibet’s government in exile, led by its spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, put the number at more than 200, mostly Tibetans. This businessman, like many of his compatriots, passionately insists that the real number is in the thousands. “We are a people living under the gun. They tried to make us celebrate the New Year, but we refused. They jail us if we display pictures of the Dalai Lama. They even force our children to study only in Chinese at school,” he tells me. “But we will never forget we are Tibetans and will always have the Dalai Lama in our hearts.”

Additionally Elegant interviews a Tibetan nomad who speaks to the extent that the Chinese government is cracking down on the boycott of Losar (Tibetan New Year) by Tibetans.

Not surprisingly, the boycott has apparently angered Chinese authorities, who sources in exile allege have been engaged in a security crackdown code named Strike Hard since Jan. 18 in an attempt to head off trouble. “They have conducted house-to-house searches. They have military in plain clothes everywhere and snipers on the roofs,” says Tsewang Rigzin, president of the Tibetan Youth Council based in Dharamsala, India. According to one nomadic herdsman I meet at the Longwu monastery in Tongren, one of the most important outside the Tibet Autonomous Region, the attempt by the authorities to force celebrations — and the Tibetan resistance that has followed — has extended even into some remote areas. The 53-year-old, dressed in a traditional fleece-lined long coat and fingering his prayer beads, recounts how security forces came in January to his village in neighboring Gansu province and tried to enforce celebrations through a system of collective responsibility. “Ten days before New Year, the police came and divided us into groups of 20 families and put one or two people in charge. They were given a few thousand yuan and told they were responsible, that they would be punished if there were no celebrations,” he explains. “Later they came and arrested nine people who they said were ringleaders in the refusal campaign, even though they had nothing to do with it.”

This testimony goes along the New York Times report of the Chinese government trying to pay Tibetans to celebrate Losar and cracking down on those who have refused.

The increased media focus on what China is doing inside of Tibet and how Tibetans are responding to the crackdown continues to in the New York Times:

The increased forces have been seen in at least four crucial areas of the vast Tibetan region: Lhasa, the capital; Xiahe, a town in Gansu Province that is home to a large and restive monastery; Tongren, a monastery town in Qinghai Province; and Lithang, a town in Sichuan Province that has been locked down this week. …
On Tuesday, the government ordered shops and hotels to shut down for three days, several residents said by telephone. A young woman, who asked not to be named for her safety, said, “Shops have all closed, and people do not dare to go out.”

Local security officers declined to comment when asked about the episode over the telephone.

The campaign for the boycott of Losar, the Tibetan New Year, has spread via text and e-mail messages and fliers. The holiday begins next Wednesday.

Last March, Tibetans angry over China’s policies in Tibet and the suppression of peaceful protests rioted in Lhasa, leading to widespread damage and the deaths of at least 18 civilians and one police officer, according to the official Xinhua news agency. Protests flared up in other regions, and exile groups said hundreds of Tibetans were killed in the ensuing crackdown.

The call for a boycott began several months ago and has gained traction among younger Tibetans as well as intellectuals and dissidents. It has been endorsed by overseas Tibetans, including the government in exile in Dharamsala, India.

“It’s deeply connected with Tibetan culture, the idea that after such a horrible year filled with death, how can we celebrate?” Woeser, a popular Tibetan blogger, said in an interview. “Instead, it should be a memorial.”

The Times goes on to report on how last spring’s national uprising is continuing to reverberate in Tibet. Recent reports from inside Tibet say that contrary to reports from China and the Tibetan Government in Exile, thousands of Tibetans were murdered by Chinese forces during the exile. Additionally thousands more languish in jail and other thousands have simply disappeared.  Those who have been released from prison are barred from returning to monasteries (if they were monks) and their is intense surveillance on Tibetans by the Chinese government.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said last week that “the situation in Tibet is stable.” But a monk from Lhasa, reached by phone, said, “There are a lot of soldiers and People’s Armed Police in the streets,” referring to China’s main paramilitary force. Like almost all the people interviewed for this article, the monk agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity for fear of government reprisals.

The monk said he, like thousands of other monks, had not been allowed to return to his monastery after being imprisoned for several months last year after the March uprising. Many of the main monasteries are being emptied out, he said. There are only about 400 monks now in the Drepung Monastery in Lhasa, he said, a small fraction of the number before the uprising.

The monks are still being forced to take “patriotic education” classes that have been going on in many monasteries since the March protests, he added. As a result, the monks study Chinese law rather than Buddhist scriptures and are told to denounce the Dalai Lama.

Monks no longer in the monasteries are barred from wearing their robes in public, the monk said, and the police check on the monks at home, at times hauling some off to prison. The monk said Tibetan policemen came to his home three times a month.

“They ask, ‘Where have you been?’ ” he said. “ ‘Have you been out? What are Tibetans talking about in the society? Have you met with friends who are in prison?’ ”

The monk said many Tibetans in Lhasa were talking of joining the boycott. But he said that Chinese officials were urging the Tibetans to carry on with festivities and were even offering them money to do so.

This is a truly chilling report. China is cracking down not only on Tibetans who have spoken out for independence, but the entire populace. Towns and cities are turned to prisons, as the ramped up Chinese military presence has created a climate of fear. Chinese forces are trying to buy cooperation from Tibetans, yet the desire for freedom remains unabated in Tibet.
Generally speaking I don’t like to simply quote long passages from news stories. Or at least, it’s not my preferred style of blogging. But it’s incredibly important that the few pieces of journalism about what is going on inside Tibet are shared and amplified so more people see the truth about China’s ongoing military occupation of Tibet and the continue Tibetan spirit of defiance in the face of Chinese brutality.

Free Tibet Campaign is reporting that hundreds of Tibetans in Lithang (eastern Tibet) have taken part in protests:

Tibetan monks, laypeople and nomads have staged the largest protest (1) to have taken place in Tibet since last Spring, according to reports received by Free Tibet. The protests, which involved hundreds of Tibetans. took place in Lithang county in eastern Tibet yesterday and on Sunday and were prompted by the arrest of a Tibetan who had publicly called for Tibetans not to celebrate the traditional new year holiday of Losar. At least 24 Tibetans have been reported to have been detained as a result of the protests.

The Washington Post is also covering the protests and is now reporting that all of Lithang is on lockdown by Chinese security forces. Lithang, while part of Tibet, is in Sichuan province. That is, it’s part of Tibet that China has defined outside of their definition of Tibet. That said, it’s nearly all Tibetan and as the lockdown and protests show, is an area that is distinctly not part of China.

Tim Johnson of McClatchy News also has a piece today that looks at how Tibetans inside Tibet are currently thinking about last year’s national uprising and the Chinese response.

Scratch only a little bit, and Dorje, a Tibetan nomad, lets loose with a tirade at the people he simply calls “the Chinese,” the majority Han who he says will get no respite from Tibetan frustration this year – or for generations.

“After I die,” the 53-year-old grizzled herder says, “my sons and grandsons will remember. They will hate the government.”

On the cusp of the first anniversary of a mass revolt on the Tibetan Plateau that marked the worst ethnic unrest in China in nearly two decades, many Tibetans still seethe at living under China’s thumb. Some engage in small-scale civil disobedience. Others, including monks, brazenly display photographs of the Dalai Lama, the exiled leader they revere as a God-king but that China maligns as a “beast.” Nearly all gripe about a lack of religious and political freedom.

Clearly the protests in Lithang are an instantiation of the anger that Tibetans still hold for China’s ongoing military occupation of Tibet. It’s good that major Western news outlets like the Washington Post and McClatchy are paying attention to what is happening in Tibet and how Tibetans continue to struggle for freedom.

My good friend Tom Grant is the producer for the Oscar-nominated documentary short, “The Final Inch.” He was also detained during the Beijing Olympics and sentenced to ten days in jail for filming protests by Tibet activists during the Games. He’s interviewed by TrustMovies about the film and his actions around the Olympics. I’ll be pulling for “The Final Inch” this Sunday.

If you’re in DC, all the Oscar-nominated short documentaries will be shown at the National Archives this Sunday at noon. Click here for more information on the screenings.

Tibetans inside Tibet have been working on a campaign for civil disobedience when it comes to Losar (Tibetan New Year) this year. Instead of celebrating in normal fashion, countless Tibetans will be in mourning for the thousands killed by the Chinese military in the national uprising last spring and the untold thousands more who are languishing in prison or have been disappeared.

China has closed Tibet to foreign visitors and the media – not just the T.A.R. but eastern Tibetan regions that are incorporated into Chinese provinces. Time’s China Blog reports on the closures and the Losar boycott:

Whatever the truth, it’s what the ordinary Tibetans believe–and the rage it inspires– that counts. The boycott infuriated the Chinese authorities, but more on that later when we’ll have a story about what seems to have been a wide scale act of civil disobedience. That could be repetaed [sic] in the Tibet Autonomous Region proper from February 25th onwards when the official Tibetan new year begins. (Tibetans outside the TAR don’t much choice but to celebrate according to the Chinese lunar calendar).

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Update: the government has now announced that all Tibetan areas in Qinghai, Sichuan and Gansu provinces are closed to foreigners, so it looks as though we got in just in time

China is locking down Tibet at a time when there are widely circulating plans for civil disobedience. The Chinese government is setting up the conditions for a massive crackdown with no international witnesses or media to report on their actions. That the action of cutting off 30% of the land controlled by the Chinese government from all foreign tourists and press isn’t drawing international outrage and attention is a bad statement about the willingness of the global community to criticize the Chinese government for their reprehensible behavior.