Chinese officials increase security on anniversary of Tibetan revolt

March 11, 2009 at 12:00a.m.

YA’AN, China (AP) — Swarms of police and stepped-up security checks in Tibet and other parts of western China apparently stifled any large-scale protests to mark Tuesday’s 50th anniversary of a failed Tibetan revolt against Chinese rule.

In the Tibetan capital of Lhasa — where the abortive uprising began in 1959 and violent protests recurred last year — riot and paramilitary police patrolled the streets with automatic rifles. Residents said police were stationed throughout the city. Tibetans in other communities said police checked hotel registrations and asked Tibetans to show their identity cards.

“Even though it seems relatively quiet, we can feel that the security is very tight now,” said an employee at the Shannan Yulong Holiday Hotel in Tsedang, Tibet’s third-largest city. The employee, who declined to give a name for fear of government reprisal, said police checked the hotel’s registration records every day.

China’s authoritarian government has sought in recent weeks to head off trouble ahead of the anniversary, increasing an already heavy paramilitary presence, locking down its Tibetan areas, and barring foreigners to keep information from seeping out of the region.

The Dalai Lama, the revered leader of Tibetan Buddhists who fled to exile as the 1959 uprising collapsed, said the current crackdown added to decades of repression and misery for Tibetans, turning their homeland into “hell on earth.”

“Even today, Tibetans in Tibet live in constant fear, and the Chinese authorities remain constantly suspicious of them,” the Dalai Lama said in an anniversary speech from the headquarters of his government-in-exile across the Himalayas in Dharmsala, India.