“The Communist Party is like the parent to the Tibetan people, and it is always considerate about what the children need. The Central Party Committee is the real Buddha for Tibetans.”

- Zhang Qingli 张庆黎, Member of the 17th CPC Central Committee, Secretary of the CPC Tibet Autonomous Regional Committee

[Thanks to Jeremy Mates and the Level 8th Buddhist (who has a great post on the pressure to not be a Buddhist today.)]

Sad smiles in Chengdu, the “gateway to Tibet.”

China battles criticism over its handling of the Tibet crisis. As we all know by now, they blame the Dalai Lama and think he’s trying to spoil the Olympic party. They’re basically disappointed that the Western media is so interested in Tibet. Xinhua quotes some foreigners in China saying things thePparty wants you to know, and it certainly does seem the protests were not all flowers-in-the-rifle-barrel affairs. There was violence stemming from resentment at being under China’s heel.

A monk burned himself in a Burmese temple several days back.

The Sri Lankan military says they killed 29 rebels Sunday. The military is currently engaged in a strong offensive in the north and east of the country. Overall a hundred rebels were reported killed this weekend. Sri Lanka does not allow journalists into the war zone, making it impossible to verify their figures.

The Thai government takes a harder look at at the southern provinces’ pondoks and imams. And three more people were killed in the region recently, which has seen more than 3,000 insurgency-related deaths in the past four years.

Bhutan is the world’s newest democracy, having just finished its first democratic elections. Turnout was heavy (as much 80% of the population!) and the Bhutan Peace and Prosperity Party party, a pro-royalist party, secured a landslide victory, grabbing 44 of 47 parliamentary seats. The other three seats went to the rival People’s Democratic Party.

What does it mean that the king’s party won? The king, 28-year-old Jigme Keshar Namgyal Wangchuck, will remain head of state, but parliament will have broad powers, as opposed to the former absolute monarchy.

Some complain that the people did not truly understand the choice presented by the election, and a left-wing group, the United Revolutionary Front of Bhutan, has set off a series of bombs and vows to fight for “real democracy.” Neighboring Nepal has of course struggled with a Maoist insurgency for many years.

Is the Chinese media’s assertion that the Tibet protesters were mainly supporters of the Dalai Lama true? Yoichi Shimatsu gets into Tibetan internal power struggles between the Black Hats (Kagyupas) and Yellow Hats (Gelugpas).

A picture of a cute and cuddly koala (which seem to be slightly larger than I’d imagined), plus an interview with His Holiness the Dalai Lama from Dreaming of Danzan Ravjaa:

Some images of the recent casualties have been graphic and disturbing. Have you seen them? What was your reaction? We heard you wept. Yes, I cried once. One advantage of belonging to the Tibetan Buddhist culture is that at the intellectual level there is a lot of turmoil, a lot of anxiety and worries, but at the deeper, emotional level there is calm. Every night in my Buddhist practice I give and take. I take in Chinese suspicion. I give back trust and compassion. I take their negative feeling and give them positive feeling. I do that every day.

A talk by Shodo Harada Roshi from Urban Monk.

Burma’s new constitution disenfranchises monks.

The Tibet Initiative, a German rights group, says they’re trying to starve out the monasteries in Tibet. From the Buddhist Channel.

From the Precious Metal blog: China puts out its own message on Tibet, and a Thai torchbearer withdraws from the 2008 Olympic run-up because of the Tibet crackdown.

Protesters did briefly disrupt the Olympic torch-lighting ceremony:

Three pro-Tibet activists have briefly disrupted the ceremony in which the Olympic torch for the Beijing Games was lit in Greece.

The protestors breached a cordon of about 1,000 police officers at Olympia to display a flag demanding a boycott of the Olympics amid mounting controversy over China’s crackdown in Tibet.

The men, of the French human rights group Reporters Without Borders, ran up behind Liu Qi, the head of the Beijing Olympic organising committee, as he spoke before the flame was lit.

One man unfurled a black flag portraying the Olympic rings made from handcuffs. Another tried to grab the microphone from Mr Liu and shouted “freedom, freedom”.

But Jacques Rogge, the president of the International Olympic Committee, insisted there was no “momentum” for a boycott of the event which starts in the Chinese capital on August 8.

(Danny Fisher has BBC footage of this.) The torch is due to arrive March 31st in Beijing. Chinese officials vow tight security will be in place for that day and the entire games, due to begin in August.

And Rediff News asks, Whodunit?

A scenario in which the Dalai Lama wantonly stokes the dormant embers of decades into a conflagration against China seems utterly implausible.

. . .

There is absolutely no chance of China agreeing to bring within the purview of the talks demands such as independence, self-determination or referendum in the light of its stand on Tibet. It is too late in the day to go back on the endorsement, open and tacit, by the international community of the fact that Tibet is a part of Chinese territory and the recognition given to its sovereign rights as such for over five decades.

Well, monks may need some visualization training to help with on-the-street situations in China (and Burma):

One of the five precepts for living a Buddhist lifestyle is that followers “do not kill,” but that doesn’t seem to extend to the world of video games.

“I never thought I’d see a monk pull out his knife and hack someone to death because he’d run out of ammo!” remarked trekker Chris Lynch to Multiplayer in an e-mail exchange. “The monks I saw were mostly teenagers, dressed in dark maroon robes, but otherwise pretty much the same as boys everywhere. They were quieter, but not in an intense, competitive way — they were having a lot of fun shooting each other, and chatting among themselves while they did.”

Apparently the old koan was wrong.

Will Tibet unrest deter foreign investment in the region? The Wall Street Journal dryly observes:

Even before this month’s riots in Tibet, foreign investors found reasons to bypass what is a tiny market in the Himalayas with a big public-relations problem.

Tibet differs in many ways from the rest of China, with its lower income, population and education levels, as well as the open landscape and the colorful dress of its people. One stark disparity is Tibet’s inability to attract foreign investment, which some analysts say is likely to worsen and contribute to the simmering unrest.

The Olympic flame is lit in Greece, and the death toll in Tibet stands at 130, says the Melbourne Herald Sun. Worries that the “unrest” in Tibet might overshadow the glorious festivity marking the beginning of the Olympic season (when the ancient Greek city-states would suspend their various wars) seem to be justified.

So how is China handling the world spotlight?

There was never much doubt that China’s critics would come together to air their grievances - the nation’s first Olympic Games this summer provided too tempting a global spotlight.

What remained largely up to speculation, until now, was how the government would react to internal dissent and outside criticism.

The military crackdown on Tibetan protesters in three provinces has shown that, if nothing else, China does not intend to appear weak before its critics.

The violence has injured at least 623 people, and China says 22 people have been killed, denying claims by Tibetan exile groups that 99 have died. The official Xinhua news agency said 194 people have surrendered for their role in riots in Tibet’s capital, Lhasa, which began on the March 10 anniversary of the 1959 uprising in Tibet against Communist rule.

And were China’s security forces brutally efficient as things got out of hand in Lhasa? Seems not (though they’re on their game now):

In the chaotic hours after Lhasa erupted March 14, Tibetans rampaged through the city’s old quarter, waving steel scabbards and burning or looting Chinese shops. Clothes, souvenirs and other tourist trinkets were dumped outside and set afire as thick gray smoke darkened the midday sky. Tibetan fury, uncorked, boiled over.

A woman recently surveyed the damage in Lhasa from the rioting in that Tibetan city. This photo was taken by a tourist who requested anonymity.

Foreigners and Lhasa residents who witnessed the violence were stunned by what they saw, and by what they did not see: the police. Riot police officers fled after an initial skirmish and then were often nowhere to be found. Some Chinese shopkeepers begged for protection.

“The whole day I didn’t see a single police officer or soldier,” said an American woman who spent hours navigating the riot scene. “The Tibetans were just running free.”

Lhasa is now occupied by thousands of paramilitary police officers and troops of the People’s Liberation Army. But witnesses say that for almost 24 hours, the paramilitary police seemed unexpectedly paralyzed or unprepared, despite days of rising tensions with Tibetan monks.

The absence of police officers emboldened the Tibetan crowds, which terrorized Chinese residents, toppled fire trucks and hurled stones into Chinese-owned shops. In turn, escalating violence touched off a sweeping crackdown and provided fodder for a propaganda-fueled nationalist backlash against Tibetans across the rest of China that is still under way.