ANALYSIS: Unrest fuelled by anti-Dalai Lama drive, scholar says

Mar 14, 2008, 12:33 GMT

Beijing - China's tougher rhetoric against the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, has fuelled the unrest that led to Friday's violent protests in China's Tibet Autonomous region, a leading Western scholar of Tibet said.

'The one person who could solve this problem immediately is the Dalai Lama, but the unrest has almost certainly been triggered by the Chinese renewal in 2006 of their public campaigns against him,' Robbie Barnett, director of the Modern Tibetan Studies Programme at Columbia University in New York, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Witnesses and Chinese state media said a major market, shops and vehicles were set ablaze on Friday in Lhasa, the capital of China's Tibet Autonomous Region.

Rioting in Lhasa was apparently sparked by monks trying to leave the Ramoche temple in the north of the city by forcing their way past police posted at the gate.

It later spread to the square outside the Jokhang temple, the holiest site in Lhasa, where students and other lay Tibetans joined monks in fighting the police.

Paramiliary police had been sent to keep order at important gathering places and major monasteries around Lhasa following four days of protests and skirmishes in the city this week.

'The nightmare scenario for the Chinese has always been that lay people would join in a protest started by monks or nuns, and that's why over the last three days they have put so much effort into confining protests by monks and nuns to the monasteries or the city outskirts,' Barnett said.

'But they may have overlooked the small 7th century (Ramoche) temple in the heart of Lhasa whose monks tried to set out on a march within the city this morning, and police action against those monks seems to have triggered major unrest by lay people, including rioting,' he said.

'Perhaps the saddest thing about this is that the Chinese have created a system with no Tibetan or other leaders with any local popularity or mandate, and so it's hard to see how they are going to resolve this other than by using force,' Barnett said.

The Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959 after an abortive uprising against the occupation of Tibet by Chinese troops, which began in 1951.

He heads a Tibetan 'government in exile' based in Dharamsala, India, and he remains as popular as ever among ordinary Tibetans.

Most Tibetans support his calls for greater autonomy for Tibet within China although many still favour independence.

Some younger Tibetan exiles had already indicated that they could turn to violence if a satisfactory solution was not found quickly.

Beijing accuses the Dalai Lama of promoting separatism, refuses to hold direct dialogue with him and regularly protests his contacts with world leaders.

This week's protests began on Monday, the 49th anniversary of a Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule that was crushed by troops.

In a statement to mark the anniversary, the Dalai Lama said Tibetans in China were living under 'increasing repression,' with 'gross violations of human rights, denial of religious freedom, and the politicization of religious issues.'

The London-based Free Tibet Campaign on Thursday said protests had spread to Tibetan areas outside the Tibet Autonomous Region, reporting that 400 monks joined one protest at the Lutsang monastery in Qinghai province, which lies on the north of the Tibetan plateau.

About 100 monks staged a similar protest at the Myera monastery in nearby Gansu province on Monday, it said.

'The reports of protests outside Lhasa show that Tibetans know the eyes of the world are upon them and are determined not to let the momentum drop,' Matt Whitticase of the Free Tibet Campaign said in a statement.

'Tibetans inside Tibet are aware that Tibetans in India are marching towards the Tibet border and have been emboldened by the support they are receiving from across the world,' Whitticase said.