SITUACIÓN REAL EN TIBET

A letter from Lhasa :

Conocí a varias personas en Tibet, viajeros y locales. Jam acaba de recibir esta carta y nos pidió difundirla. Está publicada en su blog (yo sólo le dí copy paste para ponerla aquí). Si alguien está interesado en leerla completa, aquí está la liga de su blog para que se la soliciten:
http://whereintheworldisjam.blogspot.com/2008/05/letter-from-lhasa.html#comments

Since last week all Tibetans who are not from Lhasa have to go back to their homeland, except students and teachers studying at government schools. The police come to your home and send you out of Lhasa if you are not from here. When the Olympic Torch is in Lhasa only local people and Chinese are allowed to be here. They did that few years ago too during the 50 year peaceful liberation celebration.

There is a big problem in jail now. There is not enough food, not enough water and not enough blankets. The prisoners have to sleep on the ground and sometimes they only get one cup of water a day and nothing else. This way they get health problems, their bodies get really weak and they die, either in prison or after they get released. The prisoners get beaten up very badly. They especially beat the kidney, liver and gall region so prisoners get internal injuries and slowly die. We know this from three friends who just got released from prison.

On March 14th in the afternoon we heard that there were demonstrations going on in front of Ramoche Temple. Later we saw four people dragging a person who was shot dead in front of the Jokhang and that was when we became really scared. Normally the government should use gas or water against protesters, but here they shoot them. So we went home as fast as possible.In the evening my wife went to pick up our child from school around 6p.m. At that time the military was already on Jiangsu Road were the school was. The military was shooting at the locals who went to pick up their children. One woman got shot in her leg and one man was hit in the head or neck and he died. Later his brother wanted to get his corpse from the hospital, but the hospital didn’t want to give it out. Finally the brother got so desperate that he threatened to burn himself and the hospital if they didn’t give his dead brother to his family. The hospital gave him his brother’s body, but just a few hours after they came home the military came and took the dead body away.When the foreign journalists were in Lhasa, I think it was from 27th to 29th of March, the military suddenly disappeared from the streets. Instead of wearing their military uniform they changed into traffic police, gatekeeper uniforms or civil dress and they were hiding inside buildings and behind corners where the journalists couldn’t see them. We were suddenly allowed to go everywhere; there were no checkpoints during these days. When the journalists were allowed to walk around by themselves, officials in normal clothes or traditional dress followed them, answered their questions and made pictures of individuals who talked to the press. We wanted to tell the press what is going on here in reality, behind this show that was made up for them, but we didn’t have any chance to get close to them without being punished for that later. When we finally heard that the Jokhang monks told them the truth we were very happy.Between 17th and 20th of April most of the monks were taken away from Sera to an unknown place. Sera Monastery normally has over 300 monks but now there is only a handful left who care for the chapels. Around midnight about fifteen to twenty military trucks came and detained the monks. We have this information from inside the monastery and also from an abutting owner. But we don’t know what is happening in Drepung and Ganden, two of the biggest monastic centres around Lhasa, but we have heard they have been arrested and taken out of Lhasa.

Lhasa, --.04.2008