Hundreds held in pre-emptive Tibet crackdown

Hundreds of Tibetans have been rounded up in Lhasa and armed paramilitaries are patrolling the streets in the run-up to the anniversary of a bloody riot in 2008.

The authorities are anxious to avoid a repeat of the anti-Chinese attacks that left about 20 people dead when Tibetans rampaged through the streets of the Himalayan city setting fire to shops, offices and banks.

March 10 is regarded by Tibetans as the anniversary of the start of an abortive uprising against Chinese rule in 1959 that resulted in the Dalai Lama’s flight into exile in India.

The armed police patrols that have become routine in the Tibetan heart of Lhasa since the anti-Beijing unrest that spilled over into violence in March 14, 2008, have been expanded to include cavalcades of trucks packed with paramilitaries.

One convoy comprised 14 trucks, each containing 14 helmeted men armed with semi-automatic rifles as well as two officers and a driver. The trucks drove slowly through the streets of the city in a show of force clearly intended to intimidate any Tibetans planning to mark the anniversary with renewed protests against Chinese rule.

Patrols of special police – the Chinese equivalent of Swat teams – also roamed the streets. Their distinctive black trucks and armoured vehicles then proceeded towards the Drepung monastery on the edge of the city where the unrest began on March 10, 2008 with a peaceful march by monks towards the city.

In the narrow alleys around the Jokhang temple, the holiest site in Tibetan Buddhism, in central Lhasa, additional police patrols were checking the identity cards of all Tibetans.

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