The Washington Post has an article recounting several eyewitness reports from Westerners who were in Tibet when the riots erupted two weeks ago:
BEIJING, March 26 — In the moment, Canadian backpacker John Kenwood recalled, he was “young and stupid, and it was all adrenaline.” He was running, one in a mob of 200 or so, screaming, “Free Tibet!” and chasing riot police down a narrow street in downtown Lhasa in the early afternoon of March 14.
It was a heady feeling, being part of a howling pack that had forced police to turn tail and run, some dropping their shields as they fled a barrage of rocks. Then the Tibetans in the crowd slowed and began turning back, grinning and patting one another on the back.
The ebullient mood did not last long. The pack broke into smaller groups, gathering rocks and pulling out knives, looking for the next target.
“There was no more crowd to be part of. It looked like they were turning on everybody,” said Kenwood, 19, describing the scene to reporters last week when he arrived in Kathmandu, Nepal, after 10 days in the Tibetan capital. “It wasn’t about Tibet freedom anymore.”
Well, it probably was, but what Kenwood couldn’t appreciate, I would suspect, is the decades of pent up anger that Tibetans must assuredly feel after living under the Chinese boot for so long:
Interviews with nine eyewitnesses, some of whom spoke only on condition of anonymity, confirm that tensions began building in Lhasa on Monday, March 10. That’s when police blocked monks from Drepung Monastery, a few miles outside Lhasa, from marching into the city to mark the anniversary of the failed 1959 uprising that sent the Dalai Lama into exile.
When protesters shouted Tibetan independence slogans and unfurled a homemade Tibetan flag, they were quickly hustled away by police, who detained at least 15 people. The police response was fairly typical for such protests — public dissent against Chinese rule is not allowed — but this time the incidents were not quickly snuffed out.
Rather, rumors began circulating among Tibetans that some monks had been beaten. “A lot of Tibetans on Monday night were distraught by the arrest of the monks,” said Chris Johnson, a novelist who was in Lhasa on a two-week vacation.
On that Tuesday, police stopped another protest march, this one by monks from nearby Sera Monastery. By Wednesday, tourists said, the roads to the monasteries outside town had been blocked by police vehicles. One tour agent said he was told to tell his clients that “the monasteries were closed for renovation.”
The city was fairly quiet Wednesday and Thursday. But late on the morning of Friday, March 14, Rune Backs, a 35-year-old tourist from Copenhagen, saw trucks of riot police driving in circles near the Potala Palace, the onetime residence of the Dalai Lama and now one of the region’s biggest tourist attractions.
And there are those who think that this may be only the beginning:
[B]ecause of the spotlight on China as the host of the 2008 Olympics, this is the year to make a stand.
“People think it’s now or never,” said Robbie Barnett, a professor of modern Tibetan studies at Columbia University. “Presumably they thought that they could risk what they were doing and not be shot” because the world is watching.
And if people think they’ve got nothing left to lose, they’ll do almost anything.
