主题：【原创】西藏暴乱真相----我和一个美对华研究问题专家的争论 -- 新长城

The city of Lhasa usually bustles at night, but that night the area of Lhasa west of Potala Square, where I was at the time, was shrouded in a ghostly silence. I took a taxi eastward but could go only as far as De'gyi Lingka Road. From there, as I walked farther eastward, I saw only empty streets and an occasional pedestrian. At the eastern edge of Potala Square, the legion of military police and their vehicles were still blocking the roadways out of the square. Walking farther along Beijing Road, for the next 50 meters or so, I saw heavy damage to stores on the north side of the road, while stores on the south side seem not to have been touched. I heard from passersby that the rioters had crossed west of Shonu Road only briefly and then turned back, apparently to avoid confrontation with the troops stationed at Potala Square. I saw bloodstains on the streets, but, to judge from their size, the bloodshed had not been great.

This was the stretch of road that included the Yichun Clothes Shop where five Han Chinese girls had died in a fire. Their charred remains were shown over and over on television throughout China in the days that followed. The damage to stores at the junction of Shonu Road was also severe, especially to the north of the crossroads, but not so much to the south. The burnt remains of a white car rested on the sidewalk at the intersection. This was also the area that contained the shop of the Han Chinese “Mr. Peng,” whose losses were shown repeatedly on China’s state television. The area to the east of Shonu Road had been hardest it by the rioting on the afternoon of March 14. Now, at shortly before midnight, the streets were empty. Only the intermittent crackle of gunfire broke the silence, as did, occasionally, a chilling scream.

The most incessant gunfire that night was in the Tibetan district of Old Lhasa. Early the next morning, March 15, this district was put under martial law. Ordinary people, whether they had identification documents or not, were not allowed to enter or leave the area, and those inside it were discouraged from going onto the streets. People who left home to buy food were sent back. Cell phones were examined for unauthorized photography. These rules were applied to Hans and Tibetans alike. Black smoke arose from the area from time to time throughout the day, and sporadic gunfire rang out as well.

These conditions remained essentially the same through the next day, March 16. For those two days, March 15 and 16, only the occasional sound of gunfire disturbed the tomblike silence. No one answered the telephone at the police department’s emergency number--or, for that matter, at the number of any government office. On those two days all government resources seemed to be devoted to a dragnet in which the local police and the People’s Armed Police looked for “violent thugs”. On March 16 some Han Chinese whose shops on Shonu Road had been smashed two days earlier wanted to go out to buy some food, but police blocked them, denied permission for their shopping trip, and confiscated a cell phone that one of them was carrying.

The real searching, though, was in the Tibetan neighborhoods. Armed police went door to door looking for suspects in the rioting and for pictures of the Dalai Lama--which were the primary grounds for making one into a suspect. A story spread that in one Tibetan home the police found a photograph of the Dalai Lama and demanded that the owner throw it onto the floor and trample it; when the man refused, police beat his hands until bones broke. Some Tibetan families made the painful decision to burn their photos of the Dalai Lama.

On the afternoon of March 16 there was an announcement that martial law would be lifted the next day. Small buses carrying people with shovels and brooms appeared on the streets of Old Lhasa. These people seemed to have been mobilized from government work units to go clean up the mess on the streets.

On March 17 martial law was officially lifted but Old Lhasa was still guarded by military police. Passersby had to show valid identification and no one could go to work without a work-unit ID. In Tibetan neighborhoods there was no real change from the martial-law regimen: armed police were still stationed at every intersection and patrols roamed even the smallest of alleyways. Tibetan parents were not allowed to accompany their children on the walk to school. Tibetans who appeared in public were subject to search of their persons and of any items that they carried. Necks, in particular, were examined to see if anyone still dared to wear a Dalai Lama pendant. If so it was confiscated. By then, though, most people had figured out not to wear pendants.

On the same day, March 17, a media barrage on television and radio and in the newspapers showed, showed and re-showed scenes of Tibetans beating up Han Chinese. Most of the Hans were plainclothes police whom angry crowds had identified and surrounded. But some of the Han victims were just ordinary citizens. We Tibetans must face this fact. We should acknowledge, too, that Tibetans smashed and set fire to shops owned by Han and Moslem Chinese. We might explain these actions by saying they were irrational outbursts that sprang from many years of frustration. But still it was wrong, and it was painful to watch.

Some of what the Chinese media showed, however, was highly misleading and, I believe, probably fabricated for the purpose of showing to the rest of China. Angry Tibetans did burn and smash Han shops, but they did not, as the media claimed, steal anything. They sometimes removed goods from shops, put them onto the street and set them afire, but they did not take anything home. If any looting by Tibetans had begun, I feel certain that other Tibetans would have stopped it, and indeed would have angrily chastised the offender for corrupting the spirit of the protest. Material loot was not the point of the riots--indeed was quite far from the point. The Chinese media's attempt to present it this way was cynical deception. The media's reference to the Tibetans on the street "violent thugs" was a further deception, because this term, in normal Chinese use, suggests that a person is willing to kill. But none of the filmed footage showed anyone being beaten to death, and, in the minds of the overwhelming majority of Tibetans, to do such a thing would violate the fundamental principles of living as a human being. If a Tibetan had begun to do such a thing, others would certainly have stopped him.

• 【原创】西藏暴乱真相----我和一个美对华研究问题专家的争论