A Silent Start to the New Year for Many Tibetans in China

Armed soldiers walk past a monk while patrolling Lhasa, Tibet, on 1 February 2009Reuters photo

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 with 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 upwards. “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 and shopkeepers to students and 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 Tibetan 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 over 200, mostly Tibetans. This businessman, like many of his compatriots, passionately declares the 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.” To mark the anniversary, many Tibetans conducted a widespread campaign of civil disobedience this Chinese New Year against authorities in heavily Tibetan areas of China proper like Qinghai, where around half of the country’s three million ethnic Tibetans live. And with a probable boycott of lunar year celebrations set to unfold inside Tibet, where the 15-day celebrations begin on February 25th according to the Tibetan lunar calendar, tension is likely to rise further. (Click here for full story)–The above piece is an excerpt from report by Simon Elegant, Time’s reporter, who recently visited Rebgong (Ch:Tongren), Malho Tibet Autonomous Prefecture, incorporated into China’s Qinghai Province.