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BEIJING: With the world’s spotlight on China in the coming months,
the violence in Tibet has given Beijing its first major human rights
test in the run-up to the Olympics, observers say.
Protests in the Tibetan capital Lhasa against
Chinese rule led to clashes between demonstrators and police Friday,
which left several people dead, witnesses and officials said.
The crisis is the greatest challenge to
Beijing’s authority in the region for nearly 20 years, when an
uprising was brutally suppressed by authorities, rights group have
said.
But with just five months to go before the
Olympics, China finds itself under unprecedented international
scrutiny over its treatment of its citizens as it prepares to
showcase itself to the world.
“We can say that the Olympic Games has come
back to haunt them,” said Valarie Niquet, director of the French
Institute in International Relations based in Paris.
“In 2001, China was awarded the Games when all
the world was talking about China in extremely positive terms, for
example its economic miracle.
“But the world has changed and from now on we
expect more, but the Chinese have not realized that the world is
expecting a lot more from them.”
Corinna-Barbara Francis, a China researcher for
Amnesty International based in London, said the Olympics has only
stoked anger among many Chinese citizens.
“The Chinese people have been struck by the
incongruity between China desperately seeking the kind of global
validation from the Olympics, without granting their citizens the
kind of rights they deserve,” she told AFP.
“That incongruity has irked a lot of citizens,
from peasants and ethnic groups to lawyers.”
She added that increased repression in recent
years in an effort to stifle any dissent had meant that for many
citizens “the Olympics has just made their lives much more
miserable.”
In the past week, China has received
condemnation for its treatment of Muslim minorities in its
northwestern Xinjiang region and its detention and imminent trial of
Hu Jia, one of the country’s most active human rights campaigners.
An increasing list of criticisms include its
incessant threatening of Taiwan and its failure to support a swift
move to democracy in Hong Kong.
The most high-profile condemnation has been
China’s support for the Sudanese government, as around 200,000
people were killed in its western Darfur region, the United Nations
has said.
A US-based rights group said Friday China was
the biggest supplier of small arms to Sudan, adding Khartoum pays
for the arms out of the revenues it receives by selling oil to
China.
Beijing itself says it has played a constructive
role in mitigating the conflict.
Kate Saunders, from the International Campaign
for Tibet, said China’s severe repression of rights in Tibet
inevitably led to the recent violence.
“It shows the level of frustration that was
building up. They seem to have reached breaking point against the
policies that the Chinese have used in Tibet,” she said.
“This is a response to very hostile statements
against the Dalai Lama by the Chinese and the economic
marginalization. The two have combined.”
Friday’s unrest followed three days of
protests by hundreds of monks in Lhasa, India and elsewhere around
the world that marked the anniversary of a failed uprising against
Chinese rule in 1959.
-- AFP
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