I didn't see much mention here of the 60th anniversary of the 1959 Tibetan uprising, on Sunday.
This piece in the Guardian, was an exception.
Hundreds of supporters of the 14th Dalai Lama surrounded his temple in Dharamsala in India on Sunday, home to his government in exile since 1959. Supporters elsewhere planned marches to commemorate the failed uprising and call attention to what they describe as a brutal campaign of suppression.
Chinese authorities have tightened their hold on Tibet, which Beijing claims has always been part of China. Local officials have instituted a “grid” system of security through a vast network of “convenient police stations”, checkpoints and the use of mass surveillance. Tibetans often cannot travel freely in and out of the region and their communication is often monitored.
“Tibet today is effectively run as a huge open-air prison,” said John Jones, a campaigns manager at Free Tibet, an advocacy group. “Any sign of dissent, from flying the Tibetan flag to possessing pictures of the Dalai Lama … is treated as a state security crime. The level of state control has been stepped up to the point of being suffocating.”
Local authorities have banned monasteries in Tibetan areas, a key source of education in the region, from teaching for fear of “ideological infiltration among the young”, according to a notice in Qinghai province found by Human Rights Watch. Last year a language activist named Tashi Wangchuk was sentenced to five years in prison for “inciting separatism”....
Foreigners, who need a special permit to travel to the Tibetan Autonomous Region, are banned for the month of March, a policy that has been in place since the 2008 riots. Three travel agencies told the Guardian they could not take foreigners to the region this month, while two said they could do so only if none of the travellers were journalists. Chinese officials have attributed the restrictions on foreigners and journalists to Tibet’s high altitude.
We read last week of Chinese orders for Tibetans to replace altars to prominent Buddhist figures in their homes with images of President Xi Jinping.
Clearly there's no limit to the lengths China will go to preserve their colonial rule over Tibet and Xinjiang. And why not? No one seems particularly concerned. Certainly no one on the left...
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