Written by "Kadfly"
Originally published on kadfly.blogspot.com
Friday, March 14, 2008
The situation has gotten much worse. A quiet morning stroll down Beijing Street turned into running away with a crowd of Tibetans as an empty PLA convoy pulled through. Maybe 100 meters further there was a massive crowd of Tibetans surrounding a narrow alleyway. As it turned out, they were throwing stones and abuse at PLA soldiers who were blockading the passage to a monastery. After a minute or two, everyone rushed the PLA blockade and burst through. The soldiers left parts of their riot gear lying around and Tibetans started breaking them.
Up until this point the entire situation was almost jovial: there was no sign of danger whatsoever (unless you were a PLA soldier). Then things started getting out of control. Shops were taken apart, buses filled with passengers were attacked, motorcyclists were stoned. We fled into the relative safety of a nearby hotel as attention began to be drawn to us and from there we saw the street and nearby stores get ripped apart and more violence. Before being ushered into a safer part of the hotel away from the street we also saw a monk (or at least someone dressed like one) direct an attack on a store or restaurant with a small Chinese flag flying from it.
Currently there are massive fires on the street outside and basically every store has been gutted. At least two deaths have been confirmed. PLA troops have moved in with huge armoured transport trucks and put out some of the fires. A new fire, however, which is taller than any building around, has just been started recently (approximately 8:30pm). At around 2am things were very, very quiet. A few loud bangs but otherwise nothing.
Here are some pictures:
And some pictures from "Willie" from Edinburgh:
Some night shots from Ben:
That's it for tonight,
K
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Harder to get photos today as there is a very heavy police/army presence just outside our hotel.
I want to make one thing clear because all of the major news outlets are ignoring a very important fact. Yes, the Chinese government bears a huge amount of blame for this situation. But the protests yesterday were NOT peaceful. The original protests from the past few days may have been, but all of the eyewitnesses in this room agree the protesters yesterday went from attacking Chinese police to attacking innocent people very, very quickly. They appeared to target Muslim and Han Chinese individuals and businesses first but many Tibetans were also caught in the crossfire.
This video from Michael from Italy is an excellent example:
This motorcyclist, who I assume the protesters identified as Han Chinese, was simply riding up Beijing Street when the video took place. He was not army, not police, not doing anything other than riding his motorcycle.
Hoping for the best,
K
Monday, March 17, 2008
My apologies for the lack of updates - I have been without access to the Internet for a number of days. Today people returned to the streets of Lhasa in droves. There are tons of Chinese police and army in the city but they are letting people wander without too much difficulty. Schools were also open today - hopefully all this means that there will not be any further escalation of the situation. Since the 14th things have quieted down dramatically - aside from a few booms and bangs we haven't been able to hear much from where we are. We have heard, however, that the authorities have been conducting night-time arrests in other parts of the city, but this is not confirmed.
Keeping low,
K