The South China Morning Post (subscription link) is reporting that the Chinese government has ordered Tibetan monks who voluntarily provided aid and helped rescue victims of the Kyigudo earthquake in Kham last week cease their activities. Monks have been the backbone of rescue and support efforts, spending time rescue and helping Tibetans and Tibetan residential areas while official Chinese rescue resources focused on Party elites and government buildings. The SCMP quotes Woeser with more details:

Tserang Woeser, a Beijing-based Tibetan activist and blogger, said the decision to ask the monks to leave would not go down well with the deeply religious quake survivors in Yushu.

“A lot of Tibetans in Yushu trust the monks more than the rescuers sent by the government,” she said. “There are more people lining up for help at relief delivery spots set up by the monks than those set up by the PLA soldiers.”

Tserang Woeser said the heads of many monasteries based outside Yushu had received orders to pull out. “Blocks have been set up on roads leading to Yushu and monks are no longer allowed to enter Yushu,” she said.

The Chinese government seems to be more concerned with maintaining the propaganda story of the PLA and official government resources helping quake victims, as Andrew Jacobs reported last week. But Tibetans will likely see the truth as being the monks have provided the bulk of the relief, rescue, and support efforts, while the PLA was focused on saving Party elites. Little thought has been paid to the welfare of Tibetans affected by this disaster, though a great deal of attention is paid to propaganda and what the citizenry in China is shown on TV.

More importantly, as we have seen repeatedly since early 2008 (if not sooner), the Tibetans of Kham and Amdo in particular are acutely aware of the political realities of being a colony of China. From forced resettlement of nomeds into shoddy cinder block homes, most of which are now in rubble and responsible for untold death, to the violent crackdown in response to peaceful protests, to increased pressure on monasteries, there is plenty for Tibetans to be aware of. And ordering the cessation of rescue efforts lead by monks from outside of Yushu is likely going to be another potential flashpoint, as it will undoubtedly mean fewer people rescued from the rubble and a slower spread of food and medical supplies to victims.

Why is the Chinese government stopping the admirable and critical efforts by monks to save human lives? They are scared of the influence monks have over lay Tibetans. They are scared that the monks will be perceived as being the main architects of the rescue operation and provider of care in the earthquake’s aftermath.

Of course, rather than being worried about the political fallout of the monks being recognized by lay Tibetans for their great work, the Chinese government could instead provide world-class care, resources, and rescue capacity to save Tibetan lives.  Rather than deal in the abstract world of political perceptions, the Chinese government could be dealing in the real world, defined by life and death, injury and treatment, shelter and homelessness, clean water and fresh food or starvation and slow death. The answer as all too clear, though. The Chinese government just does not care about Tibetans beyond the extent to which they may create political instability for the CCP. The tragedy of this is that people will die as a result…and there’s a pretty good chance that the Chinese government won’t even count them among their official toll of the dead.

The Times of India:

Officials put the death toll from the 7.1 magnitude quake at 1,944 and the injured at 12,135. Official Xinhua news agency said out of the injured, 1,434 are in serious condition.

The official death toll started at 600 and was raised to 700 about a day after the Kyigudo quake. It stayed pegged in that general area for a while, as it is very rare for the Chinese government to revise their initial death tolls upwards. Bizarrely the worse a natural disaster is, the worse it is for the Chinese government politically. This is likewise why they moved the rating of the earthquake size from 6.9, which was confirmed by foreign scientific agencies, to 7.1, which has not been verified independently. The reasoning? Buildings that collapsed were rated to withstand quakes of 6.9 on the Richter scale, but not 7.1 While this was a natural disaster, the size of the devastation and the loss of life was exacerbated by Chinese government policies of forced relocation of Tibetan nomads into cinder block houses in cities and the shoddy construction that went into construction tens of thousands of “homes” in short order.

While the official Chinese government death toll continues to rise dramatically, the Tibetan Youth Congress has put out a statement reporting a death toll between 10,000 and 40,000.  Whatever the actual number of the dead is, I am certain that the Chinese government will not continue to upwardly revise their public assessment, and most certainly not as far as into a five-digit death toll.

High Peaks, Pure Earth continues to be an invaluable source for translation of blog posts from inside Tibet on the earthquake and how Tibetans are responding.  This post shows how angry Tibetans are at the Chinese government for the lack of notice or preparedness for this quake striking. This passage about shoddy building construction and a lack of government preparedness following the Sichuan quake which killed hundreds is particularly cutting:

After many school dormitories collapsed during the Sichuan earthquake, how come the Yushu prefecture didn’t take any notice? Don’t you know that Yushu is on the seismic belt? The school dormitories were not renovated-isn’t it possible to reconstruct? Apart from natural disasters, where is the responsibility of the related persons? What lessons can we learn from this experience? How is it that in the Prefecture headquarters area all the people’s houses are of such poor quality that they have broken like eggs? If these houses that could not withstand earthquakes are built privately, then shouldn’t the government issue some advice or policy regarding this? Likewise, in Yushu, why is it that in the aftermath of the earthquake, there is such a big difference to be seen between the people’s houses and government offices? Why is it that during a 7.1 Richter scale earthquake, the first was shown to be so poor and the second was so strong? I saw an electricity pole that had fallen at a 45 degree angle and behind that I saw people’s houses that had totally collapsed. This was almost satirical. If people say that these people’s houses had been built a long time ago, then how do you explain the new houses that farmers and nomads have moved into which are now in ruins? This is something to turn your stomach.

People are asking for accountability, for transparency, and for regulation to help prevent future natural disasters from being compounded by governmental errors as to make them true human calamities. These are not unreasonable requests in the slightest, but the Chinese government has never shown an inclination to be responsive to peoples’ needs at times when the Chinese Communist Party might be perceived as culpable. And when such requests come from Tibetans, the normal response from the PRC government has been to deploy even more soldiers and paramilitary police. With that in mind, I can’t say the chances of Tibetans getting the kind of response they want is likely.

Josh Schrei has an important piece up at Huffington Post in response to yesterday’s earthquake in Jyekundo, Kham, Tibet. Schrei details the history of Kham and Yushu, making clear it’s a part of Tibet, occupied by Tibetans. More importantly, Josh then explains what is happening now and the potential for this earthquake to challenge political stability of Chinese control in Kham.

A tragedy is, of course, a tragedy, beyond any political and historical squabbling. But the political and historical backdrop to this horrible quake is important, as it informs how events will take shape over the days to come. As Lindsey Hilsum reported on World News Blog, the fact that this disaster took place in historic Tibet makes it not just a disaster, but an issue of extreme political sensitivity for China. This is a region that does not look favorably on Chinese rule. It is a region that saw widespread independence protests in 2008, including thetakeover a Chinese police station by Tibetan protesters mounted on horseback. And the last thing the Chinese government wants is to bring any international attention to this restive area or give the local people any further reason to protest.

Public gatherings are banned in this part of Tibet, and from all on the ground reports it is already clear that the Chinese soldiers that have been trucked in Jyekundo are there to serve two purposes. They are there to help remove victims from the rubble, and they are also there to make sure that Tibetans — homeless and freezing and distraught — do not begin to demonstrate or make political statements. Wen Jiaobao, when outlining the plan for disaster relief yesterday, made sure to mention that efforts were being made to “safeguard social stability.” In other disaster areas, this would translate as preventing looting and crime. In Jyekundo, it means preventing the locals from political agitation. As of yesterday, Tibetan monks and PLA soldiers were unified in their efforts to rescue schoolchildren from the quake’s rubble; but more monks are on the way from neighboring monasteries, and the more days go by in which Tibetans are forced by circumstance to live in miserable conditions under the watchful eye of the PLA soldiers whom they already despise, it is highly likely Jyekundo will turn into a powder keg. And that’s when China will kill the switch on any shred of media openness.

That’s the political reality now. But what of the Tibetans who lost their live in a disaster in which the world denies who they are and where the quake took place?

This amounts to a second tragedy to this tragedy — the death of the true story. Quite simply, the people of Jyekundo are not Chinese. They are Tibetan. And the Tibetans that died in Jyekundo had the right to die as Tibetans and not Chinese. They had — and have — the right to have their story told correctly and justly. It is a story of a fiercely independent people, of nomads and warriors, herders and farmers, tradesmen and monks, and artisans and craftsmen. It is a story of a people invaded — not liberated — by an occupying force and of two generations under foreign occupation. It is a story of a people who struggled to maintain their Buddhist faith and their cultural traditions during the horror and mass starvation of the cultural revolution, who picked up arms and then were silenced, and who have borne the weight and humiliation of occupation with what can only be called grace. The victims of Jyekundo were and are a distinct people. They are not Chinese, they are Tibetan, and they had a right to die with dignity, in their own land.

This is exactly correct.

A large earthquake has hit Kyegundo in Kham, which is part of Tibet. Western media sources have reported this as taking place in “northwest China” or “Qinghai,” and described the affected area as “inhabited by ethnic Tibetans” or “part of the Tibetan plateau.” This is not accurate – Kham is part of Tibet and is, as such, inhabited by Tibetans.

It’s being reported that the earthquake has  claimed 400 lives and injured 10,000 people. The entire surrounding county only has a population of around 90,000 and Xinhua is reporting that 85% of homes have collapsed. The devastation must be unimaginable.

High Peaks Pure Earth has compiled and translated some early response from the Tibetan internet, including blogs and social media platforms.  Included in the clips is a poem from a Tibetan netizen in response to the earthquake.

My Loved Ones

Dears, my only relatives
You are my everything, in this world, my everything
It’s only because of you that I live
It’s only because of you that I can feel joy, sorrow
Before I get there, you mustn’t leave me
Before I rescue the lost lambs
You mustn’t abandon me
You are all my guardian spirits — my everything
I will always serve and revere you
Dears
Promise me, you won’t leave me so soon
Promise me, you won’t leave me alone
Promise me, that I will still be able to see your bright smiles in my dreams
Promise me, your hands will stay warm like the sun’s rays
I will always pray for you, my brethren, my loved ones.
You all must stay alive.

One thing that is deeply worrying is that many of the casualties seem to be connected to the concrete block residences and buildings the Chinese government has built and forcibly moved Tibetan nomads into. Free Tibet Campaign in the UK has a statement out that suggests traditional Tibetan wooden homes may have fared better during the quake, though I think it’s likely too early to tell these things.

These concrete buildings and homes have been part of a long-standing Chinese government policy to forcibly move Tibetan nomads and herders into set places and non-traditional Tibetan houses. It’d be a cruel twist if the homes that the Chinese government forced Tibetan nomads into against their will became literal death traps in this disaster.

Another day, another shining instance of the Chinese government’s take on the freedom of the press.

In what appears to be a coordinated assault, the e-mail accounts of more than a dozen rights activists, academics and journalists who cover China have been compromised by unknown intruders. A Chinese human rights organization also said that hackers disabled its Web site for a fifth straight day.

The infiltrations, which involved Yahoo e-mail accounts, appeared to be aimed at people who write about China and Taiwan, rendering their accounts inaccessible, according to those who were affected. In the case of this reporter, hackers altered e-mail settings so that all correspondence was surreptitiously forwarded to another e-mail address.

…

Kathleen McLaughlin, an American freelance journalist in Beijing who sits on the board of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China, said the group has confirmed that 10 journalists, including herself, had their accounts compromised.

Like the others, said she received a message from Yahoo on Thursday indicating that her account had been disabled because, according to an automated message, “we have detected an issue with your account.”

It’s additionally a puzzle that anyone inside China, Hong Kong or Taiwan would use Yahoo or MSN for their email services. Yahoo has shown a repeated predilection to share user data with the Chinese government. Their comfort in helping totalitarian states crack down on the press and people who share different ideas from the Chinese government should trouble anyone who, like me, thinks American companies should not be allowed to aid in repression by foreign regimes.

Today is the fifty-first anniversary of the March 10th, 1959 uprising by Tibetans in Lhasa against China’s military occupation that allowed the Dalai Lama to escape capture and flee into exile. It’s appropriate, then, to share this post from High Peaks, Pure Earth, one of the best English language blogs covering what is happening inside Tibet via the Tibetan blogosphere. High Peaks, Pure Earth has a post up on the Tibetan hip-hop group Yudrug. The go by the English name Green Dragon, too, but Yudrug really means a type of horse popular in the part of Tibet where they are from. High Peaks, Pure Earth write:

The group however do appear to be very professional, as can be seen in their meticulously edited video and good sound quality. In the past, they have given due credit to the song composers, even crediting well-known Nepal based exile Tibetan singer Tsering Gyurmey for a cover of his song “Dream” that they recorded.

This bold new style of musical expression heard in “New Generation” has been quite controversial in Tibetan cyberspace with Tibetan bloggers praising Yudrug for their outspoken lyrics but some also criticising Yudrug for adopting a style that is seen as “too western”. Whatever your musical taste may be, the song is undeniably powerful and energetic with a rousing chorus:

The new generation has a resource called youth
The new generation has a pride called confidence
The new generation has an appearance called playfulness
The new generation has a temptation called freedom

I first watched the video for this song a few weeks ago with some Tibetan friends in New York. While it was incredible both from its level of polish, it was also remarkable to hear parts of it translated. It was defiant and proud and unapologetically Tibetan. Now, I see the full lyrics translated. They close with these lines:

Our story has not ended here
It’s just the beginning
We never fall asleep but are awake forever

Get used to dreaming
Get used to unlawful damage and uprisings
Get used to this way of living
Get used to moving forward

It is impossible to not see this short song, this music video as a tremendous body blow to the hopes of the Chinese government that the Tibetan desire for freedom may one day die with His Holiness the Dalai Lama.