Tibet Protests in 2008-2009: Profile of Known Tibetans who Died in the Protests (2010)

This report attempts to reconstruct the events that unfolded over the past couple of years in Tibet which led to the death of Tibetans under the Chinese regime following massive protests that swept across the Tibetan plateau with pertinent emphasis being put to identify the details of people who have died and were killed in the events, although it would be monumental task to find every plausible cause for a cross-section of Tibetans to rise up and criticise Chinese policies despite inevitable risks involved and imminent retribution for such activities that Beijing does not tolerate. The ingredients of the unrest that swept the Tibetan plateau were clear to all but an oblivious and unprepared Beijing government. The report attempts to focus more on the profile of the people who lost their lives in the protest demonstrations, died while in detention, under torture or for lack of timely medical attention.

The desperation of Tibetans living under the Chinese communist rule in Tibet has been documented for many years by Tibet Watchers, civil societies, scholars and journalists as well as repeated appeals by the Tibetan diaspora and their leader, the Dalai Lama. Some of the major grievances held by Tibetans are elaborate restrictions on religion and denunciation of their religious leader, an undisguised encouragement of Chinese migration to Tibetan urban areas, ban on criticism of most Communist Party policies in Tibet, economic marginalisation of native Tibetans, appointment of ethnic Chinese to run the region, forced resettlement of thousands of nomads without any prospect of sustainable future livelihood, obligatory moving of thousands of farmers from their native villages to new so called ‘socialist villages’ often at their own expense. Underpinning all of this is the deep sense of Tibetan-ness and their collective sense of themselves as a separate nation that was forcibly occupied.

China through new campaigns and flawed government policies might have succeeded in subduing the people for the time being but at the same time it has given rise to a high level of resentment against these repressive policies which served as a latent potential for resurgent protests in the past years. Beijing has had decades of unfettered control to find a way to manage Tibet and win a measure of legitimacy to govern the Tibetan people. By any measure, it has miserably failed. China has instituted increasingly hardline policies that undermine Tibetan culture and religion; the Tibetan people have been denied freedom of expression, opinion, assembly; their language has been downgraded; and their economic resources have been appropriated by the Chinese state and increasing numbers of Chinese migrants to the Tibetan plateau. All this resulted in the Tibetan people reaching a breaking point. In risking their lives to make their feelings clear, from March 10, 2008 onwards, they propelled Tibet to the top of the international news agenda and forced the international community to view Tibet as not just a mere “Shangrila” but a more serious issue, that can be settled only through political means.

Unlike the previous revolt of 1959 in Lhasa and 1969 in Nyemo and armed guerilla attacks by exiles from their base in Nepal from 60’s until 1974, the post Cultural Revolution protests in Tibet consisted mainly of street protests. The most prominent were six4 major demonstrations that took place between 27 September 19875 and March 1989… a series of smaller demonstrations from 1989 to 1996. However, the Spring protest of March 2008 which lasted for more than two years and sporadic protests as reported over the past months were one of the longest running series of protests across the entire Tibetan plateau. It can be incontrovertibly said that the events of that day and days that followed constituted the largest Tibetan uprising since 1959. The most striking element of the protests across Tibet was their spontaneous nature, and the manner in which they completely defied a repressive regime supported by heavy military forces. Unlike the September 1987 protest in Lhasa, others that followed in subsequent years, year 2008 protests erupted across all traditional Tibetan areas in the neighbouring provinces.

The two major series of protests-those of March 1989 and March 2008- led Chinese authorities to responses that were primarily military- culminating in the imposition of martial law for thirteen months in Lhasa from March 1989 under the then Chinese President Hu Jintao, who was the Party Secretary of the “Tibetan Autonomous Region” (‘TAR’) and other Tibetan areas. From March 2008 and there is no sign of letup or military being taken off till today. The protests from 1987-1989 took place following a period of relative political liberalisation after the Cultural Revolution, compared to 2008 protests, which happened in an atmosphere of already intense political repression.

While demonstrators in the late 1980s were primarily monks and some nuns, although many protests were joined by laypeople too, unrest since the spring 2008 had involved farmers, monks and nuns, nomads, university students, school children and labourers as well as intellectuals, expressing unified nationalistic sentiments, and similar slogans. The one prominent call was their wish for the return of the Dalai Lama to Tibet.

In the previous protest in Tibet way back in late 80’s and early 90’s, there had been little sign of involvement of the elite- officials, lamas, leading businessmen or intellec- tuals- in the protests. It was clear that members of these groups took active part in the 2008 protests, but initial reports of protest incidents were staged by monks of three prominent monasteries and students, including at four of the five Nationality Universities ( the special institutions designated by China for training the future elite from non-Chinese nationalities) which have Tibetan departments. It is clear that a very wide range of social groups and classes were represented in substantial ways in the unrest, and that there was a significant spread across Tibet, across space and class of support for the Dalai Lama and of belief in Tibet as a separate nation in the past. The use of mobile phones for text messaging and the internet has undoubtedly contributed to the spread of dissent across the entire plateau and to the momentum of the protests after the March 2008.

The year 2008 unrest in Tibet had a significant political impact. It paved an interna- tional perception of China as authoritarian at a moment when it seemed about to step beyond that at the Beijing Olympics in August 2008; it pushed the Tibet issue to near the top of the agenda in Sino-US and Sino-European relations, and it led to China dealing with Europe primarily through an interdiction on its handling of Tibetan issue. The unrest led to a major deployment of military or paramilitary presence on the ground in all Tibetan areas, a display of power that must have had a negative impact on local perceptions of the Chinese state.