To: Marina Sisani
Second Serious Incident in Lhasa Area:
30 Nuns and up to 50 Others "Severely Beaten"
A serious incident has taken place in the Lhasa area as monks and nuns continue to resist attempts by the authorities to impose a ban on display of photographs of the exiled Dalai Lama. This is the second major confrontation reported within a week and suggests police violence may have been more widespread than so far believed.
The latest clash with the Chinese authorities took place on Tuesday 14th May, and left up to 80 people, at least 30 of them women, with serious injuries, according to an eyewitness account from the main Lhasa hospital.
It followed a major disturbance at the monastery of Ganden, 40 km east of Lhasa, on 7th May, where two monks are believed to have been shot dead by police, according to unconfirmed reports. There are confirmed reports that at least three of the 500 monks at Ganden were shot and wounded, one of them seriously, and a fourth is in a serious condition after being beaten by police on the head. At least five other Tibetans involved in that incident are believed to have broken limbs, and there are unconfirmed reports that a number of Chinese officials were also injured.
News of the latest incident emerged when two truckloads of wounded monks and nuns were delivered to the emergency unit of the Lhasa People's Hospital No.1 at 11.30 pm on Tuesday night. Approximately 30 women and 15 men were unloaded from one of the trucks and taken into the hospital for treatment, accompanied by a police escort.
"It was 11.30 at night and two big Chinese trucks came to the emergency unit at the hospital," said Takeo Fujimoto, a Japanese tourist who was looking after his American girlfriend in the hospital that night. "They took the people out of one truck, maybe around 40-50 people, more than half of them young nuns."
"Some people were walking, some people could not walk. They were holding each other, and some were crying or screaming," said Mr Fujimoto, speaking by phone from his hotel in Kathmandu, where he arrived by plane earlier today.
The Tibetans appeared to be seriously wounded, according to Mr Fujimoto, who watched them being taken into the emergency unit. "I am one hundred per cent sure that somebody beat up them up. It was not like a car accident. Their whole faces were sore and covered with blood, and some people could not move."
The second truck was not allowed to unload its wounded at the hospital and officials told the driver to go elsewhere, but Mr Fujimoto said there were signs of seriously injured people in the vehicle. "On the other truck I saw some legs hanging out from the back of the truck. They did not move," he said. "The truck left the courtyard, I don't know where they went."
There were a few older women amongst the wounded who were accepted at the hospital and also some lay men wearing traditional Tibetan lay clothes and with long braided hair, also badly wounded, but most were monks or nuns in red robes, according to the tourist.
30 of the wounded he saw were lay women or nuns, and about 15 were monks or laymen. "More than half were young nuns, all of them very, very young, maybe teenagers, and one was a young girl who had been beaten in the face. It was unbelievable", he said.
The wounded were escorted by about five men in uniform, probably policemen. "They did not do anything except to talk to the doctors. They were just watching them," he said, noting that they appeared to be officers.
There is no information about where the beatings had taken place, but they are believed to be part of resistance by Tibetans to the order to remove Dalai Lama photographs from shrines.
There are unconfirmed reports that monks were beaten at Ramoche temple in Lhasa on Tuesday, and some sources claim that there was unrest at Sera monastery two days previously. Both institutions are within 2 km of the hospital but neither institution includes nuns. There are three nunneries near the hospital - Chubsang, Garu and Michungri - which have a long history of pro-independence activism and initial reports of unrest at Garu nunnery have been received and may be related to the incident.
There are no reports of major street incidents in Lhasa in recent weeks, and the mixture of lay people, monks and nuns amongst the wounded suggests that the incident took place at an important pilgrimage site near the Tibetan capital or at a number of locations on the same day.
The incidents are all a response to the ban, first announced in print on 5th April, on the display of Dalai Lama photographs in monasteries and temples. The incident led to the protests at Ganden monastery on 7th May, when a dispute with officials sent to impose the ban led to stones being thrown at the officials, and later to shooting by police.
Photographs of the exiled Tibetan leader have been tolerated by the Chinese authorities as objects of religious worship since 1979 and the new policy indicates a shift towards confrontation by China in its approach to the pro- independence movement in Tibet. Tibetan nationalists have staged over 170 demonstrations there since unrest re-emerged in 1987, and there are unconfirmed reports of a further 50 incidents. Although the number of nuns in Tibet is probably less than 10% of the number of monks, 73 of the protests, or one third, have been staged by nuns.
- Tourists Asked to Leave Hospital -
Mr Fujimoto, a 37 year old rug merchant from Kyushu in Japan, was on his first visit to Tibet with his girlfriend Lisa Lumbardi. The couple, who arrived in mid-April, had been intending to visit Mount Kailash in western Tibet when Ms Lumbardi became seriously ill with a combination of pneumonia and severe kidney infection.
At 2am on Wednesday morning, two hours after the wounded monks and nuns were brought in, doctors asked Ms Lumbardi to leave the hospital the next morning in order to make space for the emergency cases, although she was unable to walk at the time and was in acute pain. "It was a very unpleasant situation," said Ms Lumbardi, who was later offered a pain-killing injection, on condition she paid an extra fee.
"They said they had done everything. There was not a whole lot of conversation but it was very clear they wanted us to go," said Ms Lumbardi, age 26, who comes from Texas. Questioned about the standard of treatment, she said that the medical treatment had not been effective and described the conditions as "very dirty".
"I feel that they panicked, and that lack of space was not the reason they wanted us to go," Mr Fujimoto said, suggesting that staff did not want foreigners to see the injured monks and nuns. The hospital has 500 beds and makes a considerable income from treating foreigners. There are three other hospitals in Lhasa, including an Army hospital which is of a similar size and is little used, plus a hospital for women and children, and one for a traditional Tibetan medicine. [end]
