Word: lhasa
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...still nearly five months before the olympic torch is to be lit in Beijing, officially starting the 29th Summer Games. But diplomats in the Chinese capital believe that a high-level game of chicken has already begun - one that has now turned deadly in Lhasa, the capital of what China calls the Tibetan Autonomous Region, and in neighboring areas, according to Tibetan exiles and human-rights groups...
...Today's China may well understand that 1989 was a long time ago. In those days Beijing could literally pull the plug on CNN and Dan Rather. No longer. Security forces have been working overtime to limit the reporting of the scattered Tibetan protests - preventing foreign journalists from entering Lhasa and other protest-hit areas and even, according to one report, seizing the cameras of tourists. But the efforts have had only mixed success. While their authenticity could not be verified, gruesome photos of Tibetans apparently shot in Aba prefecture in Sichuan province were circulating on the Internet...
...China's leadership, the senior Western diplomat says, appreciates that the world is carefully gauging how it responds to the unrest. He notes that initial reports out of Lhasa had the People's Armed Police, an antiriot squad, responding to the demonstrations - not the potentially much more lethal People's Liberation Army. The government's dilemma is obvious: if Beijing insists publicly (and actually believes) it has been relatively restrained in its response to the unrest so far, what happens if the trouble in Tibet continues, or if something boils up somewhere else? A lot can happen between...
...making that land at the roof of the world one of the most important stories of the year. Chinese enterprise has transformed Tibet in recent years, bringing material benefits to Tibetans but also feeding anxieties about the erosion of their cultural freedoms. Those resentments exploded in the streets of Lhasa and other cities this month, prompting a clampdown by Chinese authorities. That has provoked talk of a partial boycott of the opening ceremonies of the Olympics in Beijing. But by seeking dialogue with the Dalai Lama, as called for by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, China's rulers...
...Perhaps most significant, some of the people most eagerly drawn to Tibetan tradition and Buddhism are, in fact, citizens of China, who have been denied any religious sustenance for more than 50 years. The last time I visited Lhasa, in 2002, I saw more and more Chinese individuals going to the Jokhang Temple at the center of town as pilgrims, seeking out Tibetan lamas for instruction, even trying to learn Tibetan, the same language that is all but banned for Tibetans. When I traveled across Japan with the Dalai Lama last November, I saw dozens of Chinese people clustering around...