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'Uprising Day' plans muted by China clampdown
by Staff Writers
Taersi, China (AFP) March 10, 2012


As the anniversary of the Dalai Lama's flight into exile, March 10 has traditionally been a flashpoint for unrest in China's vast Tibetan-inhabited regions.

But the monks at Taersi Buddhist Monastery in the northwestern province of Qinghai have no plans to mark the day their revered spiritual leader fled Tibet following a failed uprising against China's rule in 1959.

"No, no, we have no activities planned to commemorate this day," said one monk at Taersi, home to more than 3,000 monks and one of the most influential institutions in the Dalai Lama's Gelugpa school of Tibetan Buddhism.

"Right now our monastery is under strict supervision, it is not proper to speak of such things at this time," the monk told AFP, refusing to give his name out of fear for his safety.

Chinese authorities launched a huge security clampdown ahead of the sensitive anniversary, known in Tibetan areas as "uprising day".

It comes after a year in which more than 20 Tibetans, most of them monks, have set fire to themselves to protest Beijing's rule, sparking international condemnation of what critics call religious and cultural repression.

Beijing has heaped blame for the incidents on the Dalai Lama, who lives in exile in India, accusing the 76-year-old Buddhist leader and his followers of plotting to create "turmoil" in China's Tibetan-inhabited areas.

Tibetan Buddhist clergy are under particularly close scrutiny -- the government closely monitors their activities, stationing its representatives in monasteries and nunneries in the region and organising "political re-education" classes.

Nonetheless, photographs of the Dalai Lama, often banned in China's Tibetan-inhabited regions, are on open display in some of the vast halls at Taersi, also known by its Tibetan name of Kumbum monastery.

Visitors are shown locked rooms where monks bow and pray before even more photographs of the spiritual leader.

Monks in Taersi said security surrounding the monastery has been heavy since March 2008, when deadly riots erupted in Tibet's capital, Lhasa, and spread to other areas.

But while there have been a number of self-immolations in neighbouring Sichuan province, only one has been reported in Qinghai, which has a relatively large population of other ethnic groups including the dominant Han Chinese.

"What is particularly significant I think is that there haven't been any self-immolations in the Tibetan autonomous region, which is after all an area where half of Tibetans live," said Barry Sautman, an expert on Tibetan issues.

He said there was a difference between "those areas that are multi-ethnic or urban, or quasi-urban", where most of the self-immolations had occurred, and the sparsely populated countryside where very few Han people live.

Beijing insists that Tibetans enjoy religious freedom and have benefited from improved living standards brought on by China's economic expansion.

At the Taersi monastery, there is little evidence of any ethnic tensions, and the Tibetan monks say they coexist peacefully with their Han Chinese and ethnic Mongolian counterparts.

But they are also highly aware of the debate surrounding their revered spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, in Beijing.

"We are awaiting his return to Tibet," said one.

"The government accuses him of wanting Tibetan independence, but the Dalai Lama has always said he wants more autonomy for Tibet, he wants something like the 'one country, two systems' China gave Hong Kong."

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2011 'most repressive year' for rights in China
Shanghai (AFP) March 9, 2012 - A major crackdown on dissent following protests across the Arab world made 2011 the worst year for human rights in China in a decade, a pressure group said Friday.

Long jail terms, enforced disappearances and torture of dissidents amounted to a "downward spiral" in China's record, Hong Kong-based Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) said in its annual report.

The study found more than 3,800 cases of arbitrary detention last year, as well as over 100 cases of individuals tortured specifically because of their rights activism.

"(The crackdown) marked yet another low point in the downward spiral of China's human rights records, making 2011 the most repressive year since the rights defence movement began in the early 2000s," said Renee Xia, CHRD's international director, using a term coined by Chinese activists.

The group said it was particularly alarmed by the "widespread use of extralegal detention and enforced disappearance".

"The crackdown impacted not only the individual activists, but also menacingly conveyed a warning to the ordinary Chinese citizens: anyone who challenges the government will be punished," it said.

CHRD said one of the most alarming developments last year was the use of "enforced" disappearances, in which at least two dozen activists were taken by authorities and held for long periods of time in secret locations.

The internationally renowned artist Ai Weiwei was among several dissidents to be taken to unknown locations -- known as "black jails" -- and held for months without charge during the crackdown on government critics last year.

Other high-profile cases of enforced disappearance included three well-known rights lawyers, Teng Biao, Jiang Tianyong and Tang Jitian, who were held for several months before being released.

All three were previously treated with relative tolerance and CHRD said their lengthy detentions showed the heightened crackdown last year.

China had planned to make it legal to detain criminal suspects for up to six months in secret locations as part of changes to the country's criminal law, which is being debated by lawmakers ahead of a vote expected next week.

Proposed amendments to the law included a clause that allowed police to hold people suspected of terrorism or endangering national security in secret locations without notifying their families.

But on Thursday it emerged that China has abandoned those controversial plans following a public outcry.

Other activists were given unusually long jail sentences last year for subversion -- a charge rights groups say is often used to jail government critics.

Longtime dissidents Chen Wei and Chen Xi were imprisoned for nine and 10 years respectively at the end of December for subversion.

Rights groups said both men had signed Charter 08, a bold manifesto for democracy co-authored by Liu Xiaobo, the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner who was jailed for 11 years for subversion on Christmas Day 2009.

"Lengthy prison sentences handed out in 2011, like the use of enforced disappearance against high-profile activists, appear to be intended to normalise what has previously been rare or exceptional," said CHRD.

Moves by authorities to make hundreds of millions of Internet users use their real names when registering for weibos -- microblogs similar to Twitter -- was another disturbing development aimed at silencing government critics, it said.

"This measure is probably one of the most effective yet in reining in the power of microblogs to expose rights abuses and put pressure on the authorities," it said.



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