Mark Ralston / AFP-Getty Images
Protest scene: Labrang's historic monastery
Here we go again. More than a dozen monks staged an unexpected protest, interrupting a government-organized media tour to the famous Tibetan Buddhist Labrang monastery in Gansu province, a scene of unrest in March. "They said in Chinese, 'We want more freedom, more human rights, and we want to see the Dalai Lama,'" reported Caroline Puel of Le Point, who was invited on the trip. Their outburst lasted about 10 minutes, during which time government officials didn't try to silence them. Then the foreign media were urged to leave, and the unscripted moment was over.
Later a senior monk told journalists the monks would not be punished but faced sanctions if authorities found that they had broken the law. A similar scene had taken place March 27, when monks in Jokhang temple disrupted an official briefing for more than two dozen international and domestic journalists invited by the government on a brief trip to Lhasa. In both cases, the fates of the monks remain unknown. (Foreign media are still barred from making independent reporting trips to Lhasa and many other Tibetan areas affected by violent protests; there have been two tightly managed press tours to such areas arranged by authorities since March 14.)
There are many paradoxes at work here. One of the most fundamental is this: Chinese constantly wonder why Tibetan monks, urban youth and town folks who in some cases have benefited so much from China's economic largesse are nonetheless so persistent about biting the hand that feeds them? The perception that Tibetans are perversely ungrateful is prevalent among Han Chinese. One bartender in Beijing, Xiao Wang, put it this way, "Without the People’s Republic they’d be primitives living under the feudal nobility of monks. What do they want?”
