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2 China intensifies war against
splittism By Willy Lam
While Beijing started last weekend to rein
in nationalistic outbursts against Western media
and governments, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
has upped the ante in its "people's war" against
separatists who are allegedly in cahoots with
"anti-China elements overseas" to undermine
Chinese rule and disrupt the Beijing Summer
Olympic Games.
As police in various cities
were issuing warnings to protesters outside
Carrefour supermarkets last Saturday and Sunday,
the Hu Jintao administration has intensified
efforts to suppress and contain "splittists" in
Tibet and Xinjiang and is using nationalistic
sentiments to help achieve its goal.
As
the nation is being swept by a tidal wave of
"patriotism" if not
xenophobia, liberal
intellectuals who had earlier implored Beijing to
consider conciliatory policies toward the two
autonomous regions no longer dare raise their
voice for fear of being labeled traitors. The CCP
leadership is also hopeful that CNN, BBC and other
Western media - having been put on the defensive
by tens of thousands of angry Chinese netizens and
demonstrators in the United States and Europe -
might think twice when reporting on the CCP's
iron-fisted tactics in China's far west regions.
With foreign media barred from Tibet and
also from swathes of neighboring provinces with
large Tibetan communities, People's Liberation
Army (PLA) soldiers and the People's Armed Police
(PAP) have stepped up arrests of monks, radical
intellectuals and other "instigators" of unrest
that mainstream Western media have picked up in
Lhasa since March 10.
Only recently did
authorities acknowledge that more than 4,000
detentions of Tibetan "troublemakers" had been
made. The exiled Tibetan movement has claimed that
at least several hundreds of other Tibetans had
simply disappeared or were unaccounted for. The
official Xinhua News Agency quoted Deputy Lhasa
police chief Jiang Zaiping as saying that while
365 Tibetans who had taken part in the March 14
"beating, smashing, looting and burning" incident
in Lhasa had surrendered themselves to
authorities, the hunt was continuing for about 90
suspects, and on April 18, 40 truckloads of PAP
reportedly went into Sara Temple and hauled off
more than 400 monks.
Given that the local
prison was already full, these monks were locked
up in a brick kiln. Sorties by PAP and police into
monasteries in Tibet, as well as in Tibetan
counties in Gansu, Qinghai and Sichuan provinces,
have reportedly uncovered large caches of
firearms, ammunition and other weapons. That the
crackdown could last much longer than expected was
clear from signs that Beijing was unlikely to
honor its pledge to re-open the Tibetan capital to
tourists, diplomats and correspondents on May 1.
PLA and PAP officers recently closed off the
highway crossing at the Nepal-Tibet border,
through which some 1,500 tourists and other
travelers had passed into the Tibet Autonomous
Region every day.
Equally, significant
party and state authorities have called for a
people's war-style crusade against
"quasi-terrorist organizations" in Tibet and
Xinjiang. Official media including Xinhua,
People's Daily and the International Herald Leader
have labeled the Dalai Lama a "terrorist". These
party mouthpieces claim that the more radical wing
of the exiled Tibetan movement, the Tibetan Youth
Congress (TYC), has links to al-Qaeda and other
terrorist groups.
The propaganda machinery
has also insinuated that the Dalai Lama and the
TYC have received support from US government
departments and non-governmental organizations
(NGOs) ranging from the US Central Intelligence
Agency to the National Endowment for Democracy.
Beijing's rhetorical volleys against
Uyghur "splittists" in Xinjiang have also
redoubled particularly after the PAP's foiling
early this month of attempts by two "terrorist"
groups to disrupt the Olympics by means that
include blowing up installations and kidnapping
tourists and athletes in cities such as Beijing
and Shanghai. Some 45 suspects were detained and
109.5 kilograms of explosives seized in operations
in January and April.
Public Security
Ministry spokesman Wu Heping claimed that one of
the Uyghur groups was connected to the East
Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), which has been
listed by the United Nations as a terrorist
organization. In his press conference, Wu hinted
that the campaign against anti-Beijing,
anti-Olympics and other destabilizing elements had
been extended to the entire nation.
"We
are facing a real terrorist threat," Wu said. "All
walks of life and the public should maintain a
high degree of vigilance." Wu gave no details on
what ordinary Chinese should do. Political and
diplomatic sources in Beijing say cadres in charge
of organization and propaganda have disseminated
the leadership's instructions about a "people's
warfare campaign against terrorism" (fankong
renminzhanzhengyundong) during ideological
indoctrination sessions in party and government
departments as well as at factories, schools and
other units. Party members and ordinary citizens
have been asked to report suspicious characters to
the police and to be on guard against
"destabilizing forces" and "anti-China elements at
home and abroad".
At a national meeting on
"the comprehensive rectification of social law and
order" this month, Politburo Standing Committee
member Zhou Yongkang urged the people to work
closely with police to turn over suspects and
thwart efforts to disrupt the Olympics. "We must
establish a law and order prevention and control
network based on the principle of joint defense by
police and the people," said Zhou, a former
Minister of Public Security.
There is
little doubt that the "people's war" to combat
separatism and protect the Olympics has been aided
by the flare-up of nationalistic sentiments. The
relatively small number of liberal party cadres as
well as dissident intellectuals who have urged a
return to the conciliatory Tibetan policy of late
party general secretary Hu Yaobang have been
effectively silenced.
In late March, 30
prominent writers, lawyers and professors wrote an
open letter calling on the CCP to start a dialogue
with the Dalai Lama and to allow UN investigators
to look into the recent riots "The CCP has used
the handy weapon called nationalism to silence
those who question the authorities' handling of
Tibet," said a Beijing-based magazine editor who
requested anonymity.
Appeals by NGOs in
and out of China to CCP authorities to release
jailed dissidents such as internationally known
AIDS activist Hu Jia have been drowned out by the
nationalistic cacophony. The same applies to a
four-month-old signature campaign that urged
Beijing to ratify the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights before the Olympics.
While more than 14,000 Chinese, including
prominent lawyers and legal scholars, had signed
the petition, nothing more has been heard about
it.
On the weekend of April 19-20,
slogan-chanting groups ranging in size from a
couple of hundred to a few thousand staged
protests outside Carrefour supermarkets in a
dozen-odd Chinese cities including Beijing and
Shanghai. The biggest rallies took place in the
inland cities of Wuhan, Xian and Hefei. During a
confrontation between protestors and police in
Dalian, Shenyang Province on Sunday, April 20,
several young demonstrators were arrested.
The nationalists' ire was focused at the
French government's alleged failure to provide
adequate protection to bearers of the
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