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INTERNATIONAL CAMPAIGN FOR TIBET
Tibetans formed a circle around the police, but that soon the police called for backup:
“Undercover agents, not so difficult to recognize, film the whole happening. Especially
the faces. This is one method to create fear. Suddenly there is panic. Six or seven
monks are arrested and driven away. Tibetans are very scared because of the stories
about the prisons and tortures. In the meanwhile big numbers of policemen arrive.
They drive everybody apart.” 4
They were beaten and arrested, and have now been charged and imprisoned. The following
day, hundreds of Sera monks attempted to march into the city demanding
their release. They were blocked by security forces (2000 riot police according to various
reports) and confined to the monastery, which was also sealed off. Sera monastery
remains closed. Journalists from the international media who visited Lhasa for the
Olympic torch relay on June 21 reported meeting only a handful of monks at Sera,
which was virtually empty, during a strictly controlled visit organised by the Chinese
authorities. Reporting for Canada’s Globe and Mail, Geoffrey York observed that the
usual 550 monks had disappeared from sight. Only about ten were left, giving terse answers
to the media’s questions before being whisked away by security officers. It is
not clear whether the monks were detained or told to return to their home areas until
after the Olympics if they did not have the required identification cards.
On March 12, the Ganden monks also staged a protest, resulting in a confrontation
with security forces and blockading of the monastery (40 km outside the city). These
blockades were so effective that accurate reports of events during March in all three
of Lhasa’s major monasteries in Drepung, Ganden and Sera — are still unavailable.
Hundreds of monks appear to have been arrested, although some have since been released,
and those from areas of eastern Tibet outside the TAR are believed to have
been sent back to their native districts. During the blockade in the first few weeks of
protest, there were severe shortages of water and food at all three monasteries.
Meanwhile, local officials and police began house searches in the Tibetan quarter of
Lhasa, looking for unregistered monks and nuns and checking on residents with previous
political records, as well as searching for images of the Dalai Lama. Movements
of Tibet University students were restricted, and the small number of foreign NGO staff
remaining in Lhasa were warned against passing information on the situation to the
outside world. Former political prisoners and their families were particularly targeted;
the whereabouts of some of them remain unknown. Foreign and Tibetan witnesses reported
seeing a large influx of security personnel and military vehicles in the western
part of the city at this time.
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