Getting Ready for the Games

From The Times:

Chinese authorities tightened security around Tibet's main monasteries and banned visits to a sacred site on the edge of the capital, Lhasa, for fear of a fresh outburst of unrest on the Dalai Lama's birthday.

Few monks remain, however, in the province's three most important monasteries. Many have disappeared, their whereabouts a mystery. Chinese officials have deployed troops and paramilitary police around the ancient religious institutions, suspecting these sprawling hillside communities are at the heart of the unrest that has swept the region since early March.

Dozens, possibly several hundred, have been arrested or are detained and under investigation for their roles in the anti-Chinese demonstrations and riots that hit Lhasa on March 14. This, however, does not account for the empty halls in the three great monasteries, Drepung, Sera and Ganden, that lie near the city. Several hundred monks are believed to have been living in each of them before the violence erupted.

Now Tibetan sources have revealed that most of the monks, more than 1,000 in total, have been transferred to many prisons and detention centres in and around the city of Golmud in neighbouring Qinghai province. The detained monks are all young ethnic Tibetans from surrounding regions who had made their way to Lhasa, their spiritual capital, to study and pray in the most prestigious spiritual centres on the Roof of the World.

Their detention is part of a policy to rid the monasteries of any monks not registered as formal residents of the administrative region, known as the Tibetan Autonomous Region.

Family members say that the monks have been told they will be incarcerated in Golmud only until the end of the Olympic Games in Beijing. The policy is part of a campaign by the Chinese Government to ensure that the Games, opening on August 8 and lasting for two weeks, pass off without a hitch and without protests from the restive Tibetans, they told The Times.

“After that they have been told that they will be allowed to leave, because they are not guilty of a crime,” one man whose brother is among the detained said. “But they will be ordered to return to their home villages and will not be permitted to go back to the monasteries in Lhasa.”

On being awarded the Games for 2008, the representative of the Beijing Candidate Committee said: “By entrusting the holding of the Olympic Games to Beijing, you will contribute to the development of human rights". Sadly, but predictably, he's been proved wrong.