Countdown Beijing : Activist Games

Chinese Olympics Blogging: Comedy Sports on the Web

Jonathan Ansfield — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 11:41:55 GMT

Beijing's standout bloggers (like its natives) are an intrinsically grouchy lot. No surprise then that they’ve been griping on and on about Olympic-related hassles of late – though in many cases more offline than on.

“Achhhh, we’ve been spending half our days erasing posts,” groused the founder of one of China’s edgier blog forums, reached by phone earlier this week. Come Olympic time, he said, “I’m not even sure we’ll be operating.” He asked not to be named and declined to elaborate. “Please don’t ask me to talk about it.” (His site, incidentally, is still up.)

“I can’t really say what I want, so I’m not writing much at all,” carped a fellow blogger over an iced cappuccino a couple days later. A journalist with a large online cult following, he was planning to flee Beijing for China’s deep south to take care of some unfinished reporting during the Games. The shortage of non-Olympic-related cultural activity permitted in the months beforehand, he said, had left him with far less than usual to cover. He too declined to be named. “Please, don’t make things harder for me.”

Members of the foreign press corps arriving in town this week also are coming to grips with the reality that they won’t have completely “free and unfettered access” to the Internet during the Games, contrary to what Beijing Olympics organizers and their International Olympic Committee counterparts seemed to have promised. What a shocker. Welcome to Beijing!

The bigger surprise came Friday afternoon, when Beijing unblocked a number of sites after hashing out a new deal with the IOC (which later denied there was ever a previous “deal” sanctioning censorship). The unblocked sites include those of organizations the government has long treated as its personal nemeses: Amnesty International, Reporters Without Borders, and the BBC’s Chinese service. Meanwhile those of others deemed “subversive” enemies of the state, like Falun Gong and the Free Tibet Campaign, figure to remain off-limits.

The Great Firewall of China can actually make for a thrilling tour, once you get used to the bumps. The unacquainted visitor may learn the lessons of forbearance and a handy tip or two from Beijing’s subculture of dark-humored bloggers, mostly thirty or forty-something and male. For them, playing volleyball with Web forum monitors and Internet filterers is a daily exercise. Their sociopolitical commentary can get them into serious trouble with the law, granted, but for most the consequences seldom amount to more than getting a blog shut down, at which point they decamp to a new hosting site. Through some sick perversion of Confucian dynamics, the whole gambit cultivates in many a sense of make-do kinship with Communist Party speech police, along with an abiding awareness of what is and isn’t politically correct. This is not all that unlike the way a grounded adolescent resents the “old man”, or a p-whipped husband the “ball-and-chain”.

Officialdom is projecting some serious Olympic harmony over the Internet, at least on the surface, via the home pages of China’s major private Internet portals (QQ, Sina, Sohu, Netease), which have been carrying strikingly similar firey-hued background motifs. Many official billboards look about the same. Hmmm.

The pressures on dissent have inspired the blogosphere to new feats of linguistic gymnastics. So as to deride by indirection and escape the radar of post scrubbers (not to mention humorless patriots), bloggers are up to their old tricks again. They're trying farce, spoof and other forms of couched criticism, rearranging compound words and entire blocks of text, and in particular, coining various snide twists on the Chinese for Olympic Games, ao yun (奥运) for short.

Many of these turns of phrase have multipile interpretations. Keyword filters have not caught up with them. There’s nao yun (闹运), which could be defined as “troublesome Olympics”, the “make-trouble Olympics” or just plain “no Olympics”. And there's bi yun （避运), literally to “shun” or “avoid the Games”, is also a homophone for the Chinese for contraception, and thus a dig at the snug wrap of security over the Games. Ergo a biyuntao, or condom, is the current tourism industry slang for a "package to avoid the Games". The blogger heading South may be about to head on one.

I myself am partial to an expression that I began using on my own: ao yun (熬晕), as in 我熬晕了, which in my mind roughly translates: “I’m so sick of the Games I could faint.” My Chinese friends generally don’t seem to get at first. Maybe that's because of the tonal discrepancy with the ao yun for Olympics. More likely, it's just not that funny.

On Thursday, the acclaimed journalist Chen Feng took to blogging a series of Olympic news satire named for yet another derogatory expression for the Games, the gong wai yun （恭外运）. Literally, the coinage is an abbreviation for an “event where foreign athletes are respectfully received.” Alternately, it’s a homophone for “extrauterine pregnancy”.

Chen pegs every dead-pan installment of the Gongwaiyun Express to some breaking news item about Beijing’s preparations. The security and environmental stopgaps are favored targets of ridicule.

Here’s Gongwaiyun Express No. 1, which Chen wrote after the city urged subway passengers to leave their bags behind:

"Authorities are bolstering subway security checks to ensure security during the Gong wai yun [read: Olympics]. In order to avoid congestion caused by security checks, relevant officials have urged the public not to wear clothes when taking the subway.

A reporter asked whether the measure would cause inconvenience to the public, questioning why such a strict measure was being introduced.

A Gongwaiyun spokesmen acknowledged that this would cause the public to feel inconvenienced, but pointed out that the during the 2008 Beijing Olympic period, authorities already have been urging the public not to carry bags when taking the subway. The spokesman noted that it is commonplace as well as necessary for the public to carry bags when they go out. Since the Beijing Olympics can still urge the public not to carry bags, there is also nothing wrong with urging them not to wear clothes.

The spokesman also pointed out that not carrying bags would in reality not resolve issues of security. It is entirely possibly for terrorists to conceal bombs in the crotch of their pants. So in order to ensure that the Gongwaiyun is 100 percent safe, it is only proper for the public to sacrifice some convenience. It’s a noble act accommodate the Gongwaiyun."

Look for more kicks from the Gongwaiyun Express to come in further posts on this blog.

Meanwhile, Chen has been doing some serious thinking about Olympic developments as well. A career muckraker, he won fame for his 2003 scoop of the death of a young graphic designer named Sun Zhigang, which fueled a media uproar that led the government to abolish the 20-year-old procedure by which migrants without proper residential permits could be held in detention centers and forcibly repatriated. After stints as a senior editor at The Beijing News and Sohu.com’s news channel, he’s now with the financial news portal Hexun, where he also keeps his blog. He calls it 'Journalistic Education' (新闻性教育), itself a flick of whimsy at the Advanced Education, Communist Party chief Hu Jintao’s 2005 propaganda campaign to reinvigorate the Party ranks and reincorporate basic Party values. Versions 1.0 and 2.0 of Chen’s 'Journalistic Education' were eventually shut down. The Hexun version is 3.0.

Recently, Chen revealed over noodle stir-fry, his own Web site rubbed out a couple of his more scathing entries on the Olympics. He responded by reposting them using vertical typesetting. The classic form of printing Chinese has become a tool for Netizens to circumvent censorship, and it’s not as much trouble as it looks, Chen noted. “There are programs to do this for you.”

Chen’s post from July 13 opens:

│屋│七│　│浪│就│　│性│人│执│太│都│，│抢│太│理│桥│今│　│然│前│
│﹂│旬│　│的│因│　│？│到│法│太│要│在│没│，│了│下│天│　│后│天│
│　│老│　│自│为│　│　│底│者│，│被│桥│骗│都│。│的│新│　│来│来│
│　│太│　│由│奥│　│　│有│的│可│清│下│，│７│这│流│京│　│了│了│
│　│告│　│都│运│　│　│没│妈│以│出│有│靠│０│位│浪│报│　│抓│查│
│　│别│　│没│，│　│　│有│妈│当│去│一│捡│了│拾│户│又│　│狗│暂│
│　│桥│　│有│我│　│　│一│的│这│，│个│废│，│荒│也│刊│　│的│住│
│　│下│　│了│们│　│　│点│，│些│这│小│品│没│的│要│出│　│。│证│
│　│小│　│。│连│　│　│点│这│所│位│窝│为│偷│老│被│来│　│　│的│
│　│﹁│　│　│流│　│　│人│帮│谓│老│，│生│没│太│清│，│　│　│，│

Translation:

"The day before last they came to check temporary residency permits. Then they came to capture the dogs.

Now today The Beijing News is reporting that the vagrants under the overpasses are going to be cleared out as well. This old lady who collects scrap, she’s 70 years old, she hasn’t stolen or looted or swindled, she survives off of picking up waste, she has a tiny nest underneath an overpass, and even she has to be cleared out. This old lady could be the mother of these so-called executors of the law. Do these guys not possess one shred of humanity?

Just because of the Olympics, even our freedom to be vagrants is gone…"

Remembering 1989: Orange Olympics

Melinda Liu — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 14:14:55 GMT

Hong Kong is the one Chinese city where the Tiananmen crackdown can be mourned publicly on its anniversary. (I know some residents don't like to see Hong Kong described as a "Chinese city", but I also think they're a few years too late in their objections.) Jennifer Conrad describes the scene:

Last night, a crowd of thousands -- 48,000, according to one estimate -- gathered in Hong Kong's Victoria Park to mark the 19th anniversary of the violent suppression of pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square. The theme for the night was "One World, Universal Human Rights, One Dream and Rectify June 4 Verdict," playing on the Olympics' "One World, One Dream" theme. The organizers, the pro-democracy group Hong Kong Alliance, say on their website "We urge the Chinese government to fulfill the promise of hosting an Olympic Games honoring Human Rights."

As I walked into the park, someone thrust an orange rubber bracelet into my hand with "One World One Dream Orange Olympics" inscribed on it. The Color Orange Project was initiated by a Danish sculptor to draw attention to human rights violations in China. (They're also encouraging athletes to wear orange during the games.) Farther into the park, the crowd was filled with white candles, as attendees solemnly followed along with the program.

After living in Beijing for a few months, it was incredible to see this sort of demonstration out in the open--and proof that Hong Kong is a very different place from the rest of China. There were a few police officers around, but not the heavy presence you'd see at any gathering in Beijing--I saw about 10 during two hours of walking around the park. Not that there was any need for security. The attendees were peaceful and began cleaning up as soon as the vigil was over, even scraping spilled candle wax off the soccer field.

Olympic imagery was everywhere. The black T-shirts worn by announcers and many attendees read "One World, One Dream, Democracy, 19th Anniversary June 4th" on the back, with a rendering of the torch on the front. A poster along the sidelines had the Olympic cartoon characters depicted, among other things, as a blindfolded, sword-wielding Statue of Liberty and a lit stick of dynamite. As I walked past the booths--Tiananmen Mother's Campaign, Citizen's Radio, Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor--people seemed anxious to thrust their fliers, T-shirts and DVDs into a foreigner's hands. "Take this." "It's in English." "There's more on the table!"

With demonstrators already using the Olympics to draw attention to Tibetan causes and China's involvement in Sudan, here's one more set of protesters the Olympic organizers can't be happy about. The Orange Project has already raised the question on their website: Can China ban the color orange?

Everest Torch: Battling against Peak of Embarrassment

Mary Hennock — Mon, 05 May 2008 08:19:36 GMT

The Olympic flame returned to mainland China over the weekend amid the sort of carnival mood that Beijing has been longing for. Although the globe-trotting torch was borne aloft in the seaside resort of Sanya by athletes, celebrities, and the CEO of trendy Nasdaq-listed website Sohu.com, however, its sister flame in Tibet seems to be going nowhere.

The torch in Tibet remains stranded on the slopes of Everest, its exact whereabouts a mystery. Bad weather over the weekend scuppered the torch team's training ascents to adjust to the altitude, and now threatens their chances of getting to the top inside China's original May 10 deadline.

High winds last week, and then heavy snow over the weekend have pinned down Chinese mountaineers for six days now, NEWSWEEK has learned. Last Tuesday, Chinese climbers who had passed the 7,000 meter-mark were forced back down to lower ground by dangerously strong winds. Then on Friday to Sunday, the mountain was pummeled by a snowstorm, causing further delays. Should the storms clear, the climbers (now waiting at 6,500 meters) will have to plough their way through fresh snow on the upper slopes, the so-called "one meter a minute" zone where every footstep demands willpower.

Torch relay organizers have acknowledged there's a problem, and are putting a brave face on it. Shao Shiwei, deputy director of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games' media department, said on Sunday the timing of the ascent looked "uncertain", according to Reuters. "It's hard to say if there will be a long delay or not, I don't have any information," he told a news conference, promising more details once the the team gets a clearer weather forecast. That seems fair enough. Less convincingly, he suggested that any setback caused by the storms was insignificant because the torch team's preparations for an ascent were still incomplete.

"Since the training, adjustments and the route fixing are integral parts of the overall mountaineering event, I think the weather conditions will not have a great effect on the final ascent," said Shao.

This is more debatable, as the mountain's weather patterns offer only a brief chance to conquer it each year. China originally asked neighboring Nepal, to close its side of Everest to other expeditions till May 10. If that deadline is missed, it will have to persuade Nepal to extend it. This may not be the toughest diplomatic challenge as Nepal has already taken extraordinary measures to assist its economically powerful neighbour. Kathmandu has closed the Nepalese side of the mountain above 6,500 meters, impounded mountaineers' satellite phones in a tent to prevent unmonitored communications, expelled journalists and sent troops and police to patrol Everest base camp. Nepalese security personnel reportedly have orders to use lethal force against protesters, according to local media.

Even if China buys more time from Nepal, time is not limitless. Everything depends on whether the summer monsoon holds off till June or arrives early. It brings massive thunderstorms and heavy snows that "will put the mountain off-limits till autumn", according to high-altitude climatologist Dr Javier Corripio from the University of Innsbruck who forecasts the weather on the major Himalayan peaks. http://www.meteoexploration.com/mountain/forecasts.htm . Nonetheless, Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay conquered Everest on May 29 1953, so late ascents are possible.

Dr Corripio is cautiously optimistic, saying the torch bearers have a "a good chance of reaching the summit by May 10". He's predicting calmer winds, and thinks brewing thunderstorms will remain off to the south. If China's team is not fully acclimatized they may have to go slowly, in which case dangerous 50 kilometer-an -hour winds on Wednesday could prove a problem, breaking up an ascent which generally takes a fit, well-positioned team two days in good weather.

Whatever dangers the torch bearers face, mountaineers are predicting even greater risks for the expeditions stalled in their tents on the Nepalese South Face. Once the torch summits - if it summits - they will rush for the top in the few remaining climbing days. With scant chance to acclimatize, and a traffic jam at the top, there's a high risk of casualties. "It is a recipe for disaster", says Dr Corripio.

There are several hundred climbers stuck in Nepal's Everest Base Camp, and a further 200 tents altogether at Camps One and Two (the latter at 6,400 meters), according to MountEverest.net, a community site for mountaineers. It reports a Nepali police post has been set up at Camp Two, and says there's a soldier "doing the rounds each day with a sniper rifle" to keep potential protesters off China's side of the mountain. Last week, an American mountaineer was deported from Nepal after a Tibetan flag was found in his backpack. Even the Italian flag is banned, according to Silvio Mondinelli whose expedition was ordered to remove it from the top of their tents.

Journalists who visited the Nepalese Everest Base Camp have reported sightings of Chinese military in Nepalese villages lower down the Everest trail, and a recent airborne inspection by senior Chinese military guests in a Nepalese army helicopter. If true, then China has leaned heavily into Nepal's internal affairs to protect its Olympic pride and its sovereignty over Tibet from attention-grabbing stunts by protesters.

Meanwhile, China sought to placate international criticism of its handling of the March riots in Tibet by holding talks with envoys of Dalai Lama on Sunday. The talks sputtered to a halt after one day, rather than the original three days, but both sides have agreed to talk again. Neither see these discussions as more than exploratory, and many Western commentators doubt whether China has any serious intentions. The talks were preceded by more sharply critical editorials on the Dalai Lama in the Chinese media, but they took place, which is more than seemed possible a month ago. If they fail, the Dalai Lama's weakening hold over militants in the Tibetan Youth Congress is likely to slip further.

UPDATE: Prospects for an ascent continue to look grim. Chinese officials gave an upbeat press conference on Monday, but the weather does not yet appear to be lifting. Late on Monday the BBC's Jonah Fisher, one of the journalists at the Chinese base camp reported in his diary that "It is obvious from the snow and high winds we have been experiencing that it is unlikely that the climbers will be making an attempt on the summit anytime soon." There are signs, however, of cameras and extra climbing equipment being moved up the mountain.

Pilgrims Progress: Khotan's New Game

Jonathan Ansfield — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 00:03:36 GMT

Uighur jade peddlers at the bazaar in Khotan....

Before tensions imploded in Tibetan areas, Chinese officials thought the chief domestic security threat to the 2008 Summer Games would come from Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang. Many officials still think that. My recent journey to one traditional redoubt of Uighur unrest revealed growing polarization of the religious and cultural landscape, as both the economy and Islam begin to flourish. Whether the situation might devolve into the extremism Beijing evokes is another question however. Herewith some field notes I made while reporting an earlier magazine piece:

Sunday’s “big bazaar” day in Khotan, on China’s northwest frontier, where the big money’s tied up in Khotanese jade. Prices for pure nephrite from the local “White Jade River” have shot up ten-fold in just two to three years, helping this desert junction on the storied Silk Road – in the late 1990’s, a poor, dusty seedbed of violent outbursts by Muslim Uighur separatists – recoup some of its ancient luster as a nexus of trade. On a recent Sunday in April, along an arcade lined by dozens of jade shops and a vast mosque, Uighur men in skullcaps shuffled about in scrums, palms extended like beggars. They held pebbles with black beauty marks, sunbursts of orange, and creme de mint-colored ripples. The precious stones fetched offers in the hundreds of dollars from Han Chinese collectors from as far east as Suzhou.

These were only the smalltime hawkers. The leading Uighur stone merchants, who sell to Han Chinese connoisseurs, fellow Uighur compradores, and migrant lapidarists from wealthier inland regions, are amassing once-unimaginable fortunes. But to cement their status and wealth, they invest in travel in the opposite direction: to Mecca. Along the bazaar is a little Islamic bookshop built into the side of the mosque between jade shops, where the lone frill on the walls is a blown-up photo of the throngs at Mecca. The young woman behind the counter, whose parents joined in on the journey four years ago, raved that as of just the past few years, there were "so many wealthy Uighurs" in Khotan. “All the rich want to go on Haj, to become ‘Hajji’,” said Adelet, adding: “All the Hajji end up the richest.”

In the past decade, Beijing has made substantial inroads in extending trade, transport and technology links to the eight million-plus Uighurs in Xinjiang. This has been part of the government’s strategy to convert an alienated minority, who are mostly Muslim and speak a Turkic dialect, to the national faith in the Chinese market. For six decades, Uighurs by and large have considered themselves a subjugated caste – overrun politically by the Communist Party, territorially by the People’s Liberation Army army, and economically by waves of Han Chinese settlers and state companies moving in on the region’s lode of oil and minerals. Uighurs have seen their communities colonized by Chinese schools, civil service quotas, changes to the official written script and the “patriotic” religious (or not-so-religious) regime restricted to state-approved mosques, imams, and copies of the Qu’ran. Economic progress has furnished newfound opportunity and greater personal leeway. But one unintended side effect in this Central Asian outback is Beijing's contest against Islam for influence .

Islam has in fact prevailed in Khotan, the region’s most densely Uighur-populated prefecture, for nearly a millennium. Effectively purged from Uighur lives during the Cultural Revolution, when mosques were desecrated and imams denounced, the religion now marks one of two very disparate paths to success.

In Khotan, the way of the “Hajji”, as veterans of the Haj to Mecca are called, promises big dividends in terms of local commerce, community clout, and personal space to speak Uighur and practice Islam. But it comes at the expense of many job and educational opportunities, tight controls on everyday ritual, and the increasing risk of state scrutiny. Meanwhile the state-approved path offers improving education, job and welfare incentives – but at the expense of everyday Islamic practices and the mother tongue, not to mention the growing risk of being ostracized by more devout fellow Uighurs. Neither road is easy. Most Uighurs still don’t “make it” either way.

The two spheres are bound by common interests in business, stability and guanxi. But they also appear bound to clash. As Islam spreads, Communist Party authorities in China, officially godless, are working nervously to contain it.

Religious and socioeconomic frictions ignited suddenly in late March, following the mysterious death of one of the foremost Hajji jade men in Khotan. Mutallip Hajim, 38, was a jade aficionado with a network of Chinese clients nationwide, and a major patron of his Muslim Uighur community. But his dealings led to run-ins with Chinese authorities, say peddlers at the bazaar.

Two to three years ago, recounted one friend of Hajim’s family, a top communist party cadre in the prefecture fancied a jade nugget in Hajim’s shop; it's value was then appraised at around one million yuan ($125,000). The official expected a healthy discount, but Hajim informed him he would have to pay top dollar, since, as the friend put it, “the government has money”. The party boss was incensed, and snapped back: “’There’s something wrong with your head.'" Later, for reasons not fully clear, police searched Hajim's house and accused him of possessing “anti-government” Islamic texts. During his latest spell in police detention, Hajim unexpectedly died. Police told his family he'd suffered a heart attack.

In response, on March 23, women from Hajim’s home in nearby Qaraqash county spearheaded two separate demonstrations. At least 200 people descended on the Sunday bazaar in central Khotan, according to witnesses, many veiled in black boshiya in the style of devout Hajji women. Some distributed flyers advocating independence and protesting a ban on female head scarves in certain state workplaces, particularly schools. Chinese security forces, whose garrisons corner Khotan, cordoned off the area swiftly enough: two weeks later, many traders in the sprawling bazaar said they hadn’t even seen the gathering. Others were too nervous or “busy” to broach the subject. Radio Free Asia broke the news only ten days later. A Uighur exile group later reported that at least 70 women had been arrested in the protests.

While the gloves have come off in the struggle over Tibet, Chinese authorities have been shadow-boxing in recent weeks with alleged Islamic separatists in Xinjiang. Not long ago police officials announced they'd arrested 35 people accused of plotting to bomb hotels in Beijing and Shanghai; poison meat supplies; and kidnap Olympic athletes, foreign journalists, and other visitors during the Aug. 8-23 Games. This followed media reports in early March that authorities had foiled two other plots -- one to blow up an aircraft, botched by a Uighur woman now thought to have been carrying a Pakistani passport.

At an international security cooperation conference Friday in Beijing, Interpol secretary-general Ronald Noble said there was a "real possibility" the Games could be targeted by terrorists, or that anti-China groups might attack athletes. "Recent Tibet-related protests have introduced significant additional complications to the normal security considerations for a major international event like these Olympics," he said.

In Khotan, officials have alleged that “splittist elements” there had tried to “trick the masses into an uprising.” The demonstrations, one Xinjiang goverrnment official told the China News Service, were part of a coordinated campaign of protests planned by Hizb ut-Tahrir, a religious organization that aims to create a pan-Islamic state, or caliphate. The group is banned in Russia and some Central Asian nations.

Critics say Beijing has manipulated the U.S.-led “war on terror” and grossly inflated accounts of “movements” and militancy to justify its relentless crackdown on Muslims in Xinjiang; the sweeping charges and in turn only makes Beijing’s claims harder to assess. In the late 1990’s, Khotan was racked by incidents of arson and attacks on officials directed by ringleaders allegedly linked to Osama bin Laden. But the fleeting March protests amounted to the most visible instance of unrest in years, citizens there said. Many Uighurs interviewed said they only heard of the accused plotters of “Hizb ut”, as they termed the group, in the months before or weeks afterward, most of them via channels linked directly to the state, such as “political education” classes, warnings from state employers, or idle chatter at military bases or security companies. “If they really do exist here, you can’t see them,” commented one teacher at a Khotan technical college.

By the same token, both officials and Uighur exile leaders, in interviews, speculated that demonstrators might have been inspired by the unrest in Tibet to bring attention to their cause ahead of the Olympics. In Khotan, some Han Chinese and Uighur state employees had heard that theory or thought it plausible. But most Uighurs flatly refuted the Tibetan connection. It was also a subject they were anxious not to discuss.

Uighurs and Tibetans do however share a complex list of grievances against Beijing, including a severe ontological disconnect over their religious faith. Party and police authorities have long been quick to peg unsanctioned Islamic texts, schools, or dress, and even non-violent dissent as “religious extremism” and conflate it with terrorism and separatism – together dubbed the three “evil forces”.

Though Beijing lacks evidence of organized extremism, there is “increased religious conservatism” in pockets of Uighur society, notes Dru Gladney, an authority on China’s Muslims at Pomona College in California. The religious revival has coincided with growing numbers of well-off Uighurs going on the Haj – considered a rite every Muslim should perform at least once in life. Nationwide, a total of 10,700 Muslims belonging to the Hui and Uighur Musliim minorities made the trip in 2007, 900 more than in 2006 -- though Party authorities have maintained strict caps on the numbers since opening passage to Mecca in the 1980’s.

In Saudi Arabia, pilgrims are exposed to “new waves of Islamic thinking and teaching from the Middle East” and come back with “greatly enhanced authority," says Gladney. On their return, families and neighbors can be seen gathering roadside to honor Hajji's with a heroes’ reception. Hajjis become the equivalent of made men in the community, by the account of locals in Khotan, gracing weddings and other life-cycle events as honored guests. Although they’re not clerics, some are also treated to banquets and speaking engagements, where they disseminate sharpened political and religious views.

Historically, Uighurs have practiced a relatively temperate amalgam of Sunni Islam and Sufi mysticism imbued in folk entertainments like the twelve Muqam, a suite of epic song cycles. Notwithstanding a distinct increase in bearded men, veiled women and religious fervor, many Khotan residents contend most Hajji businessmen appear to remain just that – businessman. They know better than to dabble in politics or radical Islam. “Maybe some of the Hajji think about those things, but most are more about business,” observed Abdul, a non-religious businessman in Khotan. “Our government is always accusing people of separatism and terrorism,” echoed the Hajim family friend. “But most people are not about this at all. Most are still moderate Muslims.”

Officials are careful not to implicate the Hajji in their crackdown on the “three evil forces”. But as the ranks of Hajji and their "wannabe's" have mushroomed, Uighurs also widely contend, authorities have quietly pinched at ties to Mecca.

To start, passport controls have tightened. In some villages in Khotan, Uighurs from the prefecture say, only one or two passports are being issued a year now, often to the highest bidder.

Paying for passage to Mecca is another challenge entirely. As of 2004, the state has restricted pilgrimages by offering only expensive, officially escorted tours to Mecca—at $5,000 or more each. Authorities also have required exhaustive background checks. Starting this year, the state also extended the rule to block Uighurs who receive a government salary from going at all. Of the 10,700 pilgrims from China in 2007, only around 3,400 were from Xinjiang.

State employees were already prevented from fasting on the job during Ramadan and are strongly discouraged – if not outright forbidden, as some locals claim - from praying at mosques. As Khotan develops, the young increasingly go to state schools, where they are directed to eat during Ramadan and face Chinese language requirements that, while still considered too low to ensure proficiency, are getting tougher. Young men are not allowed into mosques before they reach the age of eighteen, an age barrier some said was enforced more consistently of late (as with young lamas in Tibetan monasteries). Young people in their twenties are also ineligible for trips to Mecca.

In the past year, returning Hajjis also have been asked to hand over passports, report Uighur activists abroad. Exiled dissident Rebiya Kadeer, president of the World Uighur Congress, says some have seen the edges of their passports shorn by authorities, making them unusable.

In the city of Khotan, whose official population was 114,000 in 2006, there are 3,000 to 5,000 veterans of the Haj, locals estimate. The city’s name in Uighur means a “place that abounds in jade”; in addition, Hajjis trade in carpets, silk, sheepskin, dried fruit and nuts -- and, increasingly, property development. They own their own buildings and factories, multiple homes and some malls, including at least one giant mosque-like structure capped by golden domes.

Hajji also support Uighur schools, mosques, orphanages, and hospitals. Non-drinking, non-smoking and comparably non-philandering, they cut a contrast not only with many Han Chinese fat cats but also with secular young Uighur dropouts, stereotypically portrayed as wasting away their days drinking, smoking hash and hustling at billiards halls. Compared to most Chinese towns, Khotan nightlife still features fewer karaoke bars and bathhouses that double as bordellos, despite an influx of Han Chinese entrepreneurs from Zhejiang and other gold-coast provinces who’ve set up grocery stores, hotels and clothing chains.

The Hajji up-and-comers are thus seen as prime catches by young Uighur women. Amangul, a long-lashed 23-year-old from a non-Hajji family, is dead-set on marrying into one. She currently sells perfumes and cosmetics at a department store stall, making no more than $275 a month. Some day soon she seeks to get hitched to a Hajji, she told me blushing, for two reasons. “It will cleanse my mind,” she said, adding, “If I become a Hajji, I’ll have money and be taken care of. If someone gets sick, I won’t have to worry, either.” Amangul pulled out a plush prayer mat that she keeps in her store, like most stall vendors around the Khotan bazaar. There she prays on the job each day.

Authorities typically keep close tabs on the more prominent Hajjis, says Gladney, though any connections to active Uighur dissidents and militants are little understood and hard to establish. In Khotan, Uighurs are generally reluctant to talk politics, period. “They will never really tell you what they have in their hearts” acknowledged the Hajim family friend. “They just tell you what they have to tell you.” Broadly speaking, those who make it to Mecca from more traditional rural areas tend to become “more deeply religious and ethnically-oriented,” explained another local Uighur businessman. The city set he knew were considerably more pragmatic, cosmopolitan, and socially engaged. One morning, descending the steps into a subterranean mall, I spied a woman in a tropically hued head scarf slipping a bill to a bearded old beggar man, a deed not so readily seen in Beijing.

The travels of Hajji even lead some rebrand their businesses. One is “Jilili Hajji Jewelry”, in Khotan’s upstart gold exchange, where chic customers in velvet burqa and polka-dotted silk headscarves hovered over counter after counter of yellow gold bling. Mr. Jilili’s wife boasted that he’s been on Haj five times (she once). Asked if it’s been good for business, she nodded with a grin and said “yes”. The question of whether Xinjiang should split was more of a challenge, as Jilili’s wife bobbed her head non-committally in response. “It’s hard to say if that would be good or bad.”

Hajji grievances are more palpable in the business of religion itself. Within the mosque bordering jade-sellers’ row is a huge open-air expanse, with knee-room enough for many hundreds of Muslim men to prostrate in prayer. At the Islamic bookshop just outside, men in cropped beards and pressed robes perused copies of the Qu’ran. Since her parents made the pilgrimage in 2004, the principle benefit to the family has been added “respect”, said Adelet. She punctuated the point with a proud flick of the chin. Her Qu’ran selection comprised pocket-size and bilingual Uighur-Arabic editions. She said that ninety percent of editions sold are in Arabic script, which is what Uighur pilgrims on the Haj would read. All had to come from state publishers, of course. Adelet said her family's store is but one of four licensed Islamic bookshops in Khotan city, and ten in the entire prefecture of two million people.

She had felt the strain of other sanctions on her faith. Adelet graduated from technical college in Chinese with plans to get into teaching. But any state school would require a younger teacher like her to shed her headscarf in class. Instead she’s determined to pursue private trade until she marries. “[The headscarf ban] is not the only reason, but you could say it’s one of them.” The increasing difficulty in getting a passport was another bone of contention. “Where you’re from, you can travel anywhere in the world you want,” Adelet complained. “We can’t go anywhere all.”

Religious barriers, some prohibitively costly, have only driven deeper the wedge in lifestyles between Hajji or wannabe Hajji and other Uighurs more assimilated into the Chinese mainstream -- and exacerbated tensions between them. “A lot of other Uighurs don’t take kindly to me just because I speak good Chinese,” said one 30-year-old Uighur woman at the gold exchange, who was looking to replace for a stud earring she’d lost. The woman stood out from the the stylishly covered shoppers at the jewelry bazaar because of the military fatigues she wore. She explained that she trains Uighur sharpshooters in the Chinese military. “‘You’re Uighur. You should be speaking Uighur,’” other Uighurs have often told her. “I say China is developing fast, so we have to speak Chinese.”

The woman works another part of her days as a clerk at a megamart recently opened by a Zhejiang grocery mogul. She takes her training orders from the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, the military offshoot responsible for erecting highways and other basic infrastructure and settling several million Han Chinese in Xinjiang since the dawn of the Mao era, when the population was 90 percent Uighur (now it’s 45 percent). Many shoppers in the supermarket were Han soldiers in military fatigues, as is she half the day. Her mom had been a devout Muslim, she said, “but never a separtist.” She herself was not believer, and she disparaged those who were: “Those separatists are terribly strong in Khotan right now. The Muslim extremists are getting stronger and stronger.”

One evening several weeks ago, aboard a public bus taking passengers home from work, a Uighur housewife, a teacher, and other state employees got into a heated conversation about the trouble at the bazaar several days earlier in March. Later one young woman who took part summarized the discussion for me: “’If we have a strong government then we can have a good salary and a good life and travel around the world. But if our country is not peaceful then we’ll have the same life as people from Pakistan and Iraq.’ That’s basically what they said. I also think that way.”

The young woman asked to be identified by her online alias, Music Girl. She had studied English and Chinese at a top local university, and on graduating landed a job at a state bank. The path to her courtyard home led down a sandy alley where women from a neighboring household, shrouded in black burqa and boshiya, packed into the family touring sedan. Music Girl noted the freedom to which she clung as a woman from lay family in China – again, “not like women in Pakistan”.

The Internet only came to Khotan circa 2000. Music Girl’s middle school years in the late 1990’s were marred by separatist violence and tight controls. Now her main joy in life was nights spent online, where she gabbed with “ordinary young Uighurs” like herself and tracked the latest peccadilloes of stars like Britney Spears. In her view, yes, her people remained a disadvantaged minority, "like blacks in America". But ultimately, she says, "It is just no use to complain about the government.. Only a tiny fraction of Uighurs agitated against officialdom, she maintained, and those who did were partly to blame for bringing hardship upon the rest. She blamed Hajji activities for the harsher curbs. "All the Hajji want to go to Saudi Arabia to get to Mecca. We just want to go to Europe or the United States to study more or do more business. But their every little move can impact us."

Politically, one thing Beijing and Islam share vis a vis the Uighurs is heightened support for their world views with respect to the bloody U.S.-led war in Iraq, which has been dramatized to tragic effect on Chinese Central Television. I visited another far southwestern desert outpost of Xinjiang a little over five years ago. This was after accused Uighur militants captured in Afghanistan were shipped to Guantanamo, but before “Shock and Awe”. Uighur villagers voiced there overwhelming admiration for American freedoms, and sympathy for the “war on terror” . But this time in Khotan, several of those I asked said the Iraq campaign had tilted their views against the United States. “I feel that most Uighurs’ impression of America right now is not good,” commented a twenty-something teacher named Arzigul. “They are always fighting in other places and in all these countries a lot of people are dying and their children are becoming orphans. People don’t like that.”

Both Beijing and Islam have benefited from trade contacts with the Arab world as well. At Arzigul’s school, a private vocational training center for Uighurs, the course offerings include computers, English, Chinese and math. But when I visited, the best-attended classes by far taught Arabic. There are tens of thousands of Arab businessmen based in coastal manufacturing towns like Yiwu, and “they need translators and tour guides,” said Arzigul. She wore a blue-and-brown plaid headscarve that presumably would have been forbidden at a Chinese state school. A male colleague of hers joined us in the headmaster’s office and, when prompted, recited a sample sentence from his Arabic lessons: “Khotan jade is famous the world over and has made a major contribution to Khotan’s development.”

Since the 1980’s, illegal Islamic madrassas have popped up here and there in Xinjiang’s deeply Uighur South, some propped up by Saudi funding, only to be shut down and have students rounded up. But the Arabic teacher at the training center said no religious texts could possibly be approved, and the school principal was any political or religious motives. The Arabic teacher did admit, “Every student has a different aim.” That was evidenced by a couple rows of fully veiled women in two crammed classrooms. Some do study Arabic in preparation for Haj trips.

Even as the cultural polarization grows, many educated Uighurs seem to consciously straddle two worlds as they leave Khotan for bigger Chinese cities to the east. As Hajim’s family friend, a teacher, neatly put it: “I don’t drink. I don’t smoke. But I also don’t pray.” The young man and his family recently vetoed his father’s plans to go on the Haj; he said he’d rather invest any extra savings directly on social causes than in religious attainments. But he lamented that his people as a whole are “losing our culture”, “becoming Westernized and Sinicized.” So he and his friends have grown anxious to protect the “way of our grandfathers, not religiously but culturally.” They hash over such issues on Minkaohan, a Chinese-language web forum popular with young Uighurs steeped in identity politics.

At times, flareups of dissent or violence in Xinjiang have been partly manifestations of “internal society splits” within the Uighur community or “internal debates among Muslims,” notes Gladney. Meaning they’re not solely motivated by underlying angst over Chinese rule or Han Chinese neighbors.

Five years ago or so, a generational rift started to emerge among some of the more conservative Muslims in Khotan. Young men chafed at established ways of practicing Islam, preferring a more visceral form of prayer, the family friend recounted. “For example, in the Koran, when it comes to saying ‘Amen’, the younger wanted to say it more loudly. But the older only say it inwardly.” As a result of the discord, he said, the elders started deriding the younger men as “Wahhabi.” The pejorative refers nominally to devotees of the Hanbali school of Sunni Islam, which Muslim Uighurs traditionally follow; here it was used as slang to brand the young as reprobates.

More recently, though, the older and younger generations seemed to respect and understand one another better, in this young man's view. “We are going in different directions. But we all pray to one god.”

Mutallip Hajim, the family friend went on, was a “moderate Muslim” like most - “not someone to pay lip service to Mr. Bin Laden,” he says. But with all the ethnic and religious cracks embedded in the jade market, it’s natural terrain for conflict -- especially as alluvial deposits of pure jade are diminishing fast due to overzealous mining. The Khotan government inaugurated a jade festival in 2005, which primed the price pump. Now it's struggling to protect the local

Jade is very much a Chinese obsession; most Uighurs are just the delivery men. Virtually all the collectors are Han Chinese, as are skilled engravers who’ve migrated from provinces like Henan. The average Uighur hawkers are still untrained bottom feeders, and only a small minority ascend to Hajim’s stature as a top gemstone broker. “They’re big people and we’re little little people," says Abdo, a non-Hajji shopowner on the arcade. "With those I know the relations are good. With those I don’t know, relations are bad.”

The Khotan protests were not China’s only disturbance linked to the Uighur jade trade. Also in late March, unrest reportedly broke out in the Henan province town of Shifosi, where a significant number of Uighur jade traders reside. But the circumstances remain even less clear than they were in Khotan. Paramilitary poured in by the hundreds, sealed off the town, and arrested several dozen Uighurs, the Wall Street Journal confirmed.

Even among top Uighur merchants, Hajim’s level of knowledge and clientele distinguished him within the trade. His demise was a signal to other local traders of just how ruthlessly the chips can fall when a Uighur attempts to dictate the terms of the trade. Just one day after the protests, Chinese and Uighurs say, the streets of Khotan were effectively back to normal -- except for Han-owned shops off the jade bazaar, which remain closed for fear being looted.

But two weeks later, traders gathered around the strip were still on edge. Outside the mosque, one of the largest jade shops in the bazaar was padlocked shut and sealed with police tape, which stated that it was closed down by authorities in mid-2007. The reason for the closure phantom. On being asked about it and the recent protests, a Uighur man on the sidewalk tugged at me by the sleeve, leading the way into the dark, quiet confines of his store. “I’m sorry,” he blurted. “I’m not able to speak about the protest, and I’m not able to speak about why the shop was closed, either.” He launched into a long explanation of the precariousness of the situation, which ended: “Here we do business, not politics.”

A few minutes later, he unlocked his showcase, pulled out a small jade talisman, and motioned for me to come in closer for a peek. “Just now when we were talking out there, there were secret agents,” he claimed in a whisper. “In the bazaar, there are lots of them.” His allegations were such that they could not be confirmed.

Online Call to Boycott Carrefours

Melinda Liu — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 12:07:02 GMT

It was probably just a matter of time before anti-Western protests materialized. Such is the intensity of Chinese resentment -- over perceived "bias" in Western media coverage of Tibet, over humiliating protest scenes during the Olympic torch relay in London and Paris, even over age-old grievances such as the Opium Wars -- that many expatriates have been bracing for the possibility of anti-Western demonstrations.

Over the weekend Chinese Netizens began responding to an online call to boycott supermarket chain Carrefours -- and to rally outside its branches on May 1 -- because of the chain's alleged support of the exiled Dalai Lama. In the past, nationalistic youth bent on "punishing" foreign targets trashed Western and Japanese diplomatic facilities and commercial establishments. It's not clear how many people will join the boycott; the overwhelming Chinese crowds in Carrefours branches on weekends are proof of the retail chain's local appeal. And if authorities really wanted to head off protests, they could put out the word to webmasters and Internet police that such talk is not "appropriate".

On a tangential note: over the weekend I happened to be driving past the spacious and well-manicured Police Academy north of Beijing. By chance, just as I passed the entrance gate two gigantic brand-new black Hummers with prominent police markings pulled out. Now, these are vehicles so wide they won't fit down many Beijing alleys, or hutongs.

What is it the police know that the rest of us don't? Lots, I presume. Or maybe they've just been watching too many episodes of "CSI Miami"....

New Terror Plot, Visa Clampdown

Mary Hennock — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 23:29:43 GMT

Just after the discombobulated San Francisco torch relay concluded, a new threat hit the headlines: Beijing said it had thwarted a Muslim terror plot in which terrorists planned to kidnap Olympic athletes, foreign journalists and other visitors during the August Games. And China's attempts to police its borders are getting media attention too; the visa clampdown that we'd blogged and written about earlier is really beginning to bite.

Today in a Beijing press conference Ministry of Public Security spokesman Wu Heping said 35 people had been arrested, and bomb-making materials discovered, between March 26 and April 6 in the far Western region of Xinjiang, home to some 8 million Uighur Muslims. Militant Uighurs have long been accused of "religious extremism, separatism and terrorism", by the government, though there's alot of disagreement over whether the intensity of the threat has been hyped.

Xinjiang was home to a brief-lived East Turkestan Republic in the 1930's and 40's. Today's East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) is recognized by both Beijing and Washington D.C. as a terrorist organization with links to Al Qaeda. In an earlier plot revealed in March, Wu said, ETIM extremists had plotted to attack hotels, government offices and military targets in Shanghai, Beijing and other cities with poison, poison gas and remotely controlled bombs.

So, about those border controls. If it isn't the threat posed by alleged Muslim extremists, it might be foreign protestors out to disrupt the torch relay, as they'd done in London, Paris and San Francisco. The torch is due back in China on May 4 to tour every province (including Tibet) on its way to the Olympic stadium for the Aug 8 opening ceremony.

China's Foreign Ministry has denied changing its visa rules. But travel agents in Hong Kong say, in most cases, they can no longer supply visas for longer than 30 days, according to local media reports and the Associated Press (AP). A few travel agents who were reluctant to be identified are still offering to supply three month visas. However, multiple entry visas are no longer available, only single and double-entry ones.

The Hong Kong Association of Travel Agents has also highlighted another rule change: a ban on short-stay Mainland visas issued at the border crossing, which had allowed foreign passport-holders in Hong Kong to nip conveniently across to the mainland. The travel industry body says short-stay visas are now being processed centrally by the city's Commissioner of the Foreign Ministry, and could take several days to obtain.

In reality, the slow-motion tightening of visa rules began a full year ahead of the Games when one-year multi-entry work visas (known as F and Z visas) became mysteriously unobtainable from most visa agents in Aug 2007. As NEWSWEEK reported in February, a police crackdown on visa agents was accompanied by a rise in deportations, and ever-shorter validity periods. There were even rumours that no visas would be issued past Aug 1. Read more about that here.

The one-month visa policy is just too difficult for some. "I've got absolutely no intention of making return trips outside the country all the time," says Mariana, a Paris-based media-business consultant whose visa expires in mid-May. "I will not will be coming back to China again until everything calms down, most probably in September or October." She's already decided to give up her Beijing apartment: "It’s really not worth the hassle for me."

Anger and anxiety among long-stay or frequent business visitors who depend on multi-entry visas is growing. It's fueled by anecdotal evidence that even some holders of unexpired multi-entry visas are finding their right to re-enter the country being questioned by airport authorities.

Would any of this keep out determined protestors? Much will likely depend on the mood closer to August. China's failing PR efforts have not been impressive in recent days. The besieged torch relay was swarmed by protestors in London, cut short due to chaotic scrums in Paris, and compelled to play hide-and-seek with the public in San Francisco in order not to be overwhelmed (which sort of misses the whole point).

Meanwhile, representatives of all 205 national Olympics committees are meeting in Beijing to discuss preparations for the Games. Their draft statement circulated on Wednesday appealed to China to find "a fair and reasonable solution to the internal conflict that affects the Tibet region". Within hours the reference to Tibet had been pruned, according to a version seen by AP. The new draft resolution expresses "confidence" that China "will strive through dialogue and understanding, to find a fair and reasonable solution to the internal conflict for the benefit of the games and the athletes".

Then there's the hissy fit between Beijing officials and IOC head Jacques Rogge over his comments suggesting that improved human rights were part of the "moral engagement" expected of China as an Olympic host. No doubt Beijing wishes heightened border controls could keep out all that unsolicited advice from pesky foreigners, as well as the trouble-makers themselves.

Protests: Torch of Shame

Melinda Liu — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 01:13:43 GMT

Using words like "sabotage," "despicable" and "disgusting," Chinese authorities reacted in hurt and angry tones to the torch relay debacle of recent days. It isn't the "Journey of Harmony" they'd hoped for. Police phalanxes in London all but obscured the flame from public view; protestors were tackled and handcuffed.

In Paris 3,000 police on foot; riding bikes and motorcycles; mounted on horseback; aboard boats, wearing roller-blades, and even aloft in choppers failed to maintain order. After the flame was extinguished several times due to the crush of protestors, French torchbearers abandoned the route halfway. To the extreme embarrassment of of Beijing Games' organizers, the Olympic flame finished its French journey by bus.

It isn't over yet. Next stop: San Francisco. The flame arrives imminently in the only North American city on the relay route. Already pro-Tibet activists have draped huge banners off the Golden Gate Bridge, proclaiming "One World, One Dream, Free Tibet '08" -- a take-off on the Olympics slogan "One World, One Dream".

For now, the situation is more like one world, one nightmare -- of bad PR. International Olympic Committee head Jacques Rogge in Beijng expressed "serious concern" about recent unrest in Tibet and "deeply saddened" by the torch relay pandemonium. The Chinese government crackdown on Tibetan communities, which began March 14 in Lhasa, is just one of a number of human rights abuses being highlighted by China's international critics.

Rogge is meeting in Beijing with representatives of National Olympic Committees, some of whom are so appalled at the televised scenes of chaos that they want to scrap the international segment of torch relays in future Games. (Even China's relentless TV censors haven't blacked out all the protest scenes in news footage from London and Paris.) Already, relay routes in San Francisco and New Delhi have been shortened by authorities jittery about their ability to contain the demonstrations.

In particular, China's critics oppose plans to parade the Olympic torch through Tibetan cities -- and up Mt. Everest in early May -- despite the recent crackdown and continuing bloodshed in Tibetan communities. It looks increasingly like Tibet will have to be locked down totally to ensure safe passage for the flame. (From the start, the Everest leg of the relay was slated to be a highly restricted, invitees-only affair, due to limited facilities and the dizzying altitude).

But Chinese authorities seem determined to keep Tibet within the torch's orb. "The torch relay is a grand sporting and cultural event approved by the IOC. We want all people around the world to share it with us," said Wang Hui, a spokeswoman for the Beijing Games organizing committee (BOCOG), "We will not change our plans."

Beijing authorities blamed the protests on a small number of malcontents. And for the most part Chinese citizens were offended and hurt by the storm of criticism and protest that seemed to take relay organizers and police by surprise; the danger now is that angry Chinese may blame the torch fiasco on the West, further inflaming xenophobic sentiment. Wang Hui said "We strongly condemn the few separatists....They will be condemned by people all over the world and are doomed to failure."

The gathering storm in San Francisco didn't look so easily dismissed. The city has seen four prominent groups of activists converging in one place to denounce Beijing's human rights violations. Darfur lobby groups oppose China's support for the Khartoum regime, which is stained by the genocide in Darfur.

Newly emboldened by their successful attempts to disrupt the London and Paris relays, Reporters Without Borders activists are rallying around their iconic black banners which show the Olympics rings transformed into handcuffs. They're protesting the imprisonment of more than 100 Chinese journalists, cyber-dissidents and Netizens.

Relative neophytes on the scene are Turkic-speaking Uighurs, representing restive Muslim communities in China's remote Central Asian hinterland of Xinjiang, which has also experienced unrest in recent weeks. Exiled Uighur activist Rebiya Kadeer, now based in the U.S. after spending years in a Chinese prison, is slated to join the demonstrations in San Francisco. Not long ago she told Newsweek that Uighurs were mobilizing in sympathy with their Tibetan counterparts -- apparently in a bid to hitch Uighur protestors' wagon to the better-known cause of Tibet.

The most high-profile players are Free Tibet activists, who've now added the Golden Gate Bridge to their resume of iconic protest sites. Last year they startled Chinese authorities by abseiling off the Great Wall with a huge banner, and mounting a high-altitude demonstration at the Mt. Everest base camp. While many wish to see Tibet as an independent nation, they also hold in deep esteem the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, who insists he wants autonomy --not independence -- and protection for Tibetan culture, religion and environment.

IOC and national Olympics committees' representatives are wrestling with the mounting recognition that bringing the torch to Tibet would simply fan the flames of unrest. In order to guarantee a submissive population, authorities reportedly have intensified their strident "patriotic education" campaigns in Buddhist monasteries, requiring monks to publicly denounce the exiled Dalai Lama and even stomp on his photograph. In other words, authorities' obsession with securing the torch relay route is actually increasing their repression.

For the moment, Beijing appears to be digging in its heels and refusing to contemplate the huge loss of face it would mean for China to trim the 58-day, 137,000-mile relay through 21 countries. Like the Games themselves, the torch's odyssey was slated to symbolize Beijing's achievement of big-power status in the world, not to mention the vast reach of its latter-day empire.

Some friends thought I was over-stating the case when, just a day after violent riots in Lhasa were supressed on March 14, I posted a blog predicting the torch relay would become a huge magnet for protest. That prophecy has come true -- and the maelstrom is even worse than I'd imagined. Those desperate scenes surrounding the torch relay have besmirched not only China's international image, but that of the Olympics brand itself.

Pressuring Olympic Sponsors

Keith Naughton — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 01:58:53 GMT

With the Olympic countdown ticking, human rights activists are turning up the pressure on Olympic sponsors. There are mounting calls to boycott the August opening ceremonies, publicly condemn the violence in Tibet and Darfur, and reroute the Olympic torch relay which is scheduled to run through Tibet – including all the way to the summit of Mount Everest in early May.

Activists calling for press and religious freedoms in China have re-doubled efforts to protest during the relay, in the wake of Beijing's crackdown on Tibetan unrest beginning March 14. They've marred the Olympic torch-lighting ceremony in Athens; tangled with security along the relay route in Istanbul (where activists of China's Turkic-speaking Uighur Muslim minority denounced a recent clampdown in their communities back home); and planned demonstrations when the torch passes through London, Paris and San Francisco in coming days. Pro-Tibet activists abseiled off Westminster Bridge with a giant protest banner, in anticipation of the torch's arrival in London (which is happening about now).

Actress Mia Farrow, who along with her organization Dream for Darfur has met with nine Olympic sponsors, is calling for consumers to switch off televised commercials during the Games and watch her live on the Internet from a Sudanese refugee camp. "There is one thing China now holds more dear than unfettered access to Sudanese oil and that's the successful staging of the 2008 Olympic Games," Farrow says in a new video posted on YouTube and subtitled in Chinese. "This desire has proven to be the lone point of leverage to a country that has proven to be impervious to all criticism."

Activists hope corporate sponsors -- big names like Coke, McDonald's, Kodak and GE – are more receptive. But they're growing increasingly frustrated. Tibetan activists say they are considering staging protests outside the offices of Olympic sponsors if the firms won't help reroute the torch relay away from Tibet. "We feel it would be an abhorrent sight to have the torch paraded by the Chinese government before a cowed and beaten population," says Matt Whitticase, a spokesman for the U.K.-based Free Tibet Campaign. "China has hijacked the torch for its own propaganda purposes and we're calling on the sponsors to defend the Olympic torch."

But Coke, one of three primary sponsors of the torch relay, turned down the Tibetan activists in an April 2 letter from CEO E. Neville Isdell, portions of which were obtained by Newsweek. "It would be an inappropriate role for a sponsor to comment on the political situation of individual nations," Isdell wrote, adding that the Beijing Games organizers and the International Olympic Committee selected the torch route, not the sponsors. "We believe dropping out of the torch relay or using the event to put political pressure on China would erode the ability of the Olympic Games to make a contribution to lasting change in China and its relationship to the rest of the world." The Tibetan activists' response: "He's obviously ducking responsibility," says Whitticase.

Mia Farrow also is unhappy with Coke. This week Dream for Darfur plans to issue a report card on individual Olympic sponsors’ responses to their campaign. Farrow has already signaled her assessment, however, after a meeting with Coke executives. On her personal web site, under the headline "Coke the Cowards,” she wrote an April 2 posting that said, "Shame on Coca Cola…the biggest brand on the planet has made it sickeningly clear that selling sugar water is more important than saving lives. Friends, hit them where it hurts - drink Pepsi!!"

Coke declined comment on Farrow's criticism, but noted that it has pledged $5 million over the next three years to help rebuild communities in Sudan; commited to reinvest profits earned there; and is giving $750,000 in Darfur relief aid to the International Red Cross. Other Olympic sponsors also are highlighting their humanitarian aid to Darfur. GE has pledged $4 million to groups like UNICEF and CARE. After talking with Farrow's group, UPS funded a $100,000 sustainable agriculture project in Chad, home to many Darfur refugees. The sponsors also met with China's special envoy to Sudan in a March 7 meeting arranged by the Beijing Games organizing committee. Sponsors say they are sharing concerns about Darfur with Beijing and the IOC.

Such efforts have yet to influence changes in sponsors’ elaborate and costly Olympic promotions, however. Marketing sources estimate that sponsors have paid up to $120 million each to underwrite the games. "We do not believe the Olympic Games should be politicized and used as a platform to influence the policies of sovereign governments," says Deirdre Latour, a spokeswoman for General Electric, which owns NBC, which will televise the games. GE also provided the solar lights for the softball fields and the rainwater recycling system for the Beijing's "Bird's Nest" stadium. "The Olympics are really the only platform we have left where all these countries walk in side-by-side. We believe the Olympics are a force for good."

Sponsors point to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) as the organization where protestors should take their concerns. "We believe any issues regarding the Olympics should be left to the governing bodies," says Lynnette McIntire, a spokeswoman for UPS, which provides logistics for the Games.

That’s not enough for activists who believe they will get farther with high-profile companies that are beholden to the whims of consumers than they will with the IOC. "The sense that I get from the corporate sponsors is that the IOC has not taken a leadership role and I agree," says Jill Savitt, executive director of Dream for Darfur. "I'm not sure who told China that shooting monks is a good PR strategy... The IOC is threatening to turn the brand of the Olympics into something as hollow as the rings."

Tibetan activists have already transformed the Olympic rings into a gruesome protest statement. A flash video on www.studentsforafreetibet.org opens with the official "Share the Dream" logo of the torch relay, featuring two silhouetted runners jointly holding the torch aloft beneath a red, swirling sky while jogging atop the rings. Suddenly, one of the runners dons a police cap and uses the torch to club the other runner - complete with grisly sound effects - into a bloody pulp. A stream of blood oozes out of the prone runner and drenches the rings in red. The swirling sky twists into a question mark: "Do you share this dream?" it asks. "We don't." Images like that are just the kind of counter-programming that give Olympic sponsors nightmares.

The reporting above was conducted by Keith Naughton and Joan Raymond in Newsweek's Detroit Bureau

Muslim Unrest Reported: Perfect Storm?

Newsweek — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 04:01:27 GMT

Mark Ralston / AFP-Getty Images
A Muslim Uighur woman walks with her son past security forces in the town of Kashgar, Xinjiang Province on April 2, 2008.

Even as Chinese officials warned of Tibetan "suicide squads" mobilizing for action, we hear reports of Muslim Uighurs clashing with police in remote Xinjiang. This is serious indeed, if true. It could represent a perfect storm of trouble in the run-up to the Beijing Games.

Uighur militants had trained in Taliban training camps in Afghanistan. I remember seeing yuan currency and Chinese passports with Uighur names in the debris of one of Osama bin Laden's farms in Jalalabad right after the Taliban fell. Moreover Uighurs captured by U.S.-led troops wound up behind bars in Guantanamo Bay. (However the question of whether the banned East Turkestan Independence Movement is as an organization—as opposed to Uighur individuals—in thrall to bin Laden, as Beijing authorities allege, remains a topic of debate.)

Over the past decade, Uighurs are reported to have engaged in bombings, assassinations, and hijackings inside China to promote their separatist cause. As recently as last month, Chinese officials announced they'd foiled a terrorist plot to blow up an aircraft, an act that they said was part of a conspiracy to sabotage the Olympics. At the moment it's impossible to confirm independently the extent of reported unrest in Xinjiang. The two locations identified below are deep in Central Asia not far from the frontier with Pakistan and Afghanistan. So far the most detailed report is this dispatch from Radio Free Asia:

Carrying the Torch for Openness

Mary Hennock — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 21:31:22 GMT

China's president greeted the Monday arrival of the Olympic flame in Beijing, at the start of what looks certain to be its most controversial journey ever. The risk of the torch relay being ambushed by demonstrators along its 130-day route through 21 cities on five continents has grown since Beijing's clampdown on violent protests in Tibet.

It wouldn't have been a Chinese state occasion without a secret and a rumor. The secret was why the timing of the welcoming ceremony was changed, and the rumor was that it must be for security reasons. China's Olympic organizers say otherwise. They pointed to the early arrival of the plane carrying the torch from Greece, and Beijing's weather forecast portending fog later in the day. While it's certainly true that the ceremony went off smoothly in brilliant sunshine, and the sky clouded later, the whole episode left me wondering.

The welcome ceremony for the Olympic flame was originally planned to take place on Monday afternoon in Tiananmen Square, and journalists were asked to board a bus at noon. Then on Sunday evening, at 7.30pm, my phone rang. A pleasant but fraught official from Beijing Olympic organizing committee's media center asked me to cross town immediately to collect a further registration paper, and to turn up four hours earlier than scheduled on Monday.

We compromised, and I agreed to be there super-early in the morning. Most news organizations had a similar experience. Two French reporters told me they'd heard of the new timing at 7.30pm on Sunday night, a German reporter was notified at 8pm. Another journalist collecting documents on Sunday was given a piece of paper with the new arrangements printed on it, but was not told about them. Add to this the fact that mid-week, BOCOG's media center had seemed genuinely unsure about any of the arrangements.

As we milled around a cordoned-off space in the vastness of Tiananmen Square, I asked several BOCOG media center officials to explain the hasty time change. One said it was because the specially-chartered Air China plane carrying the flame from Greece came in earlier. "Why?" I asked, thinking about the air traffic control complications. "Ask the pilot", he said. Another pulled out his mobile phone to show me the weather forecast: "I think it's to do with the weather situation in the afternoon. Maybe there'll be fog." Finally, I asked Wang Hui, Director General of BOCOG's Information and Propaganda Department. "I don't know", she said.

Inside the square, about 4,000 performers greeted the Olympic flame with dancing and acrobatics in the presence of top Chinese leaders, foreign diplomats and Hein Verbruggen of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Giant ballons floated above us, anchored by streamers bearing the 2008 Olympic torch relay slogan "Light the Passion, Share the Dream".

The performers were mostly students and retirees from exercise clubs rather than stars. Liu Ming, a 26-year professional Peking opera performer was excited as it was "the first time I've joined this type of global event". The troupe had had a week's notice and half a dozen rehearsals. Balloon-holding students from Beijing Goods and Materials College were a little unsure about their role. "Just hold the balloons", was all the instructions they'd had. Apart from that, "they haven't told us".

Security was tight, with the square barred to pedestrians and blocked to traffic on two sides.

It was a brief ceremony. President Hu was due to arrive at 10.58, reflecting the Chinese belief that eight is lucky number (the Games start on 8/08/2008). At 11.08, a military band played the National and Olympic anthems. The retirees in their pink lycra uniforms stood tall. Brief speeches came from two top Chinese leaders and the IOC's Hein Verbruggen. "From today, the torch will carry the flame across the globe, creating anticipation and excitement for the Beijing Games wherever the relay passes", Verbruggen said. The torch was lit by touching it to the flame (kept inside a sealed lantern for air travel). BOCOG's president passed the torch to China's President Hu, who lit a cauldron and handed the torch to China's top athlete Liu Xiang, the men's 110-meters world record holder. Liu ran towards the national flag. Tinsel burst into the sky, doves and balloons flew upwards.

From the square, the torch started on the international leg of its 137,000 kilometer journey which will end in the Olympic stadium on 8 Aug. But first it was split in two, with one half of the flame traveling to Everest base camp for the 2008 Torch Relay's most ambitious moment, a televised ascent of the world's highest mountain in May. Two cameramen from China Central Television (CCTV) have been training for two years. Despite the unrest in Tibet, BOCOG insists the Tibetan portion of the torch relay will go ahead.

If the torch welcoming ceremony was an exam in how Chinese officials will deal with massive PR pressure and public scrutiny, they scored six out of ten. The arrangements seemed messy, the people involved in sorting them out mostly very helpful. Everything went smoothly in the end. To paraphrase another 2008 Olympics slogan, there was peace and friendship, but not as much harmony as there could've been. Above all, the time change remained a mystery. Were the original plans genuine or a security screen? Were journalists misled? Was there a hasty time change? Or were media managers from the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG) simply left out of the information loop?

By taking on the Olympics, Chinese officials groomed in a secretive political culture have knowingly taken on the huge challenge of dealing with the outside world in a more open way. The next 130 days of the Torch Relay will show how they do.

The Torch Relay Gauntlet Begins

Melinda Liu — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 11:09:31 GMT

It's begun. The official Olympic torch-lighting ceremony in Greece was marred by protestors waving a banner showing Olympic rings transformed into handcuffs, and rushing behind Beijing Games Organizing committee head Liu Qi as he presided over the event. Three representatives of the press-freedom group Reporters Without Borders were hustled roughly off the scene by security personnel. RSF is calling on international VIP’s to boycott the Games opening ceremony to protest China’s imprisonment of more than 100 journalists, Netizens and cyber-dissidents.

The relay will become a gauntlet of anti-Beijing protests, as my colleague Mary Hennock and I blogged about earlier. The Olympic flame is slated to pass through 20 countries and 31 Chinese provinces before arriving in Beijing for the Aug. 8 Olympics opening ceremony. Monday Free Darfur activists announced they were mobilizing demonstrations urging China to “extinguish the flames of genocide” in Darfur in San Francisco on April 9, the day the flame passes through the city.

One of Thailand's six torchbearers has withdrawn in protest. Environmentalist Narisa Chakrabongse said she now declined to take part in the relay to "send a strong message to China that the world community could not accept its actions."

Meanwhile, Chinese officials are scrambling to work out details of foreign media access to Tibet, part of a bid to reassure the international community that stability has returned in advance of the flame’s ascent of Mt. Everest in early May and its passage through Lhasa in June.

At the same time Chinese media rhetoric is becoming more and more strident--and anti-Western--in tone. Since my last blog, the official Xinhua News Agency has denounced U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for her meeting with the Dalai Lama Friday. That's when she visited Dharamsala and declared that if people don’t speak out against Beijing’s repression in Tibet “we have lost all moral authority to speak on behalf of human rights anywhere in the world.”

The senior Democratic politician's words were partly a dig at America’s Republican president George Bush, who’s remained tightlipped on Tibet. But her words were also taken very personally by Chinese authorities.

A Xinhua commentary Sunday accused Pelosi of ignoring the violence caused by Tibetan rioters. "'Human rights police' like Pelosi are habitually bad tempered and ungenerous when it comes to China, refusing to check their facts and find out the truth of the case," it said. "Her views are like so many other politicians and western media. Beneath the double standards lies their intention to serve the interest groups behind them, who want to contain or smear China.”

Beijing continued to denounce the exiled Dalai Lama as trying to “sabotage” the Games and “scheming to take the Beijing Olympics hostage to force the Chinese government to make concessions to Tibet independence,” as the party mouthpiece People's Daily put it. Chinese media also gave high-profile coverage to ethnic Chinese victims, and their gutted and torched businesses, in Lhasa. But reporting on Tibetan casualties remained sparse.

By demonizing Tibetan “separatist” rioters and their exiled spiritual leader, Beijing has played the nationalist card. It's succeeded in rallying domestic support. In doing so, though, it's also fanning the flames: anti-Tibetan sentiment is flaring among ethnic Chinese, and so are anti-Western diatribes. Chinese publications accused several Western media of “bias” against Beijing in their coverage – pinpointing several alleged examples in minute detail, such as CNN's cropping of a news photo. Now foreign media have become the target of vitriol. According to Western news reports, one foreign media organization had to move its Beijing bureau due to security threats.

The nastiness reminds me of the mood in Beijing after NATO's bopmbing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. In the aftermath, Chinese protestors trashed the American and British embassy grounds. More on that in a later blog.

Tibet's resistance music

Mary Hennock — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 20:58:10 GMT

     Anyone wondering how tight a grip the Chinese authorities held over the everyday life of Tibetans before this month's protests erupted might consider this. Even humming a song outdoors can be risky. Popular songs often contain hidden political lyrics, for instance a song about the Dalai Lama's sister, Gzunpelma. "Everyone can sing this song, even little kids in the Barkor area [the center of Lhasa's old city]", says a Lhasa resident who does not want to be named for fear of reprisals. The song first appeared about three years ago and circulated freely for a while. "At first they didn't notice it, then it was banned", she says. Now "we just sing it in the car or at home". The lyrics say, "You are our mother, you build our future", in tribute to Gzunpelma's school-building programme for refugee Tibetan children in India.
        Music is passed around surreptitiously on CDs. Tight controls on copying music at web cafes have long been in force, and all books and CDs carried by passengers on international flights into Tibet are checked. One foreign teacher tells how a friend tried to copy a CD of teaching material containing songs in English, but six web cafes refused to take the risk of copying it.
       "Music is very important to Tibetan cultural identity - there's always a requirement to sing a song when you're at a Tibetan party," says Kate Saunders of the International Campaign for Tibet. Music has become part of Tibetan resistance to Chinese rule. "Because open communication on all sorts of subject is just not possible, Tibetans will sometimes express their feelings in carefully phrased song lyrics or pop songs," says Saunders.
      For those, who've never heard Tibetan music, think of Scotch or Irish ballard singing. Much Tibetan music a has a similar sound, and get-togethers have the same song-swapping spontaneity as a good ceilidh.
     Migration across the Tibetan plateau has increased as young Tibetans and resettled nomads from small, bleak towns look for work. This has widened the range of music that's getting passed around. Amdo music from the Tibetan areas of Qinghai and Gansu provinces is particularly famous and popular, and is much heard in Lhasa these days as young men from small settlements in Qinghai have flocked there to find work. One wonders if the government crackdown means Tibetans are bursting into politically tinged song more loudly than ever -- or whether they're too afraid to sing the same tunes.

Bay of Yaks: Why China Mistrusts U.S.

Melinda Liu — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 06:16:45 GMT

Tibetan and U.S. flags are waving everywhere in Dharamsala--and Beijing’s suspicions about the U.S. are just as obvious. The reasons for such distrust include a secret CIA operation in the Himalayas that brought American military support to anti-Chinese Tibetan rebels half a century ago. The effort ended tragically for Tibetans.

Such a bloodstained and shadowy history helps explain why this sleepy Indian hill station was a-twitter Friday. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, came to town to call on the Dalai Lama, whose government-in-exile is based here. (The trip was scheduled before the Lhasa riots broke out March 10).

International reaction is much more pivotal now than it was in 1989, the last time PLA troops forcibly suppressed large numbers of Lhasa residents. If the global chorus of criticism grows, so will calls for a boycott of the Beijing Olympic Games due to be held Aug. 8-24-- something Beijing officials are desparate to prevent.

In Dharamsala, I awoke to see maroon-robed monks below my window studiously gluing American and Tibetan flags together to wave at Pelosi’s convoy. (Just a few hours earlier I’d finished filing an exclusive interview the Dalai Lama granted to Newsweek, his first to a print publication since the crackdown.) Then long lines of school-kids marched past to welcome Pelosi’s delegation of nine Democratic and Republican Congress members. She’s the most senior U.S. official ever to visit Dharamsala, and the first foreign VIP to make the pilgrimage to Dharamsala since the crackdown. Even tiny children knew about the visiting “American Spee-kah”.

Draped in a special golden-colored kattah, the ceremonial Tibetan scarf, Pelosi addressed the emotional crowd at the government-in-exile’s headquarters. She called the Chinese crackdown in Tibetan communities “a challenge to the conscience of the world”. She said Beijing’s claims that the exiled spiritual leader had instigated the unrest made “no sense” and advocated an impartial probe of events in Lhasa, which remained under lock-down and inaccessible to foreign media or international observers. (The grim mopping up continues; government media says a couple suspects from Beijing’s list of about 20 of “Tibet’s Most Wanted” had already turned themselves in, along with more than 180 other suspects.) Not to be outdone in criticizing China, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, U.S. Senator John McCain, also weighed in on Tibet during a visit to Paris, calling the crackdown “unacceptable”.

Meanwhile the Chinese Foreign Ministry pointed to more than 100 statements of support from foreign governments, which spokesman Qin Gang described as “clear proof that the international community is on the side of China.” Endorsements came from places like North Korea, Russia, Syria,Vietnam, Belarus, and Fiji (Need I say more?).

Just about the only really good international news, from Beijing’s perspective, was the opposition’s win in Taiwan’s presidential elections Saturday. Kuomintang party candidate Ma Ying-Jeou won with surprising ease – snagging 58 percent of the vote – despite predictions that the Tibet bloodletting had hurt his prospects. Identified with a more conciliatory stance towards Beijing, Ma vowed to forge closer economic ties with the mainland.

Beijing had to be relieved; Taiwan’s incumbent president Chen Shui-Bian had infuriated Chinese officials with his separatist agenda. At least one of the key players in Beijing’s quartet of top policy headaches--Taiwan, Tibet, Tiananmen and Falungong, or the “three T’s and an F” --appeared to be stepping back from the brink.

Without mentioning Pelosi by name, Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang also reiterated China’s opposition to “any encouragement and support for the secessionist schemes of the Dalai Lama clique.” And in a hard-hitting commentary Saturday, the party mouthpiece People’s Daily made a strident call to “resolutely crush the ‘Tibetan independence’ forces conspiracy and sabotaging activities.” The paper alleged that violence had been “masterminded” by the Dalai Lama’s clique with the “vicious intention” of undermining the 2008 Olympics.

Sometimes you’ve got to wonder who’s writing the briefing books that feed China’s official statements. Take this one, from a March 15 commentary for the state-run Xinhua News Agency; it called the Dalai Lama “the hand behind the cat's paws…a master terror maker.. the monk in a crimson cassock [who] has many tools of disguise.”

The commentary declared “it’s time for the international community to recheck their stance… if they do not want to be willingly misled. The Dalai Lama and his clique have never for a day refrained from violence and terror. His childhood teacher, an Austrian, was a Nazi, and it's no secret that for quite a long time after he fled to India, he kept a force, armed by his Western patron, for separatist activities.”

And who was that “Western patron”? That brings us back to the ill-fated CIA covert ops which some of us who’ve covered Tibet for decades jokingly dubbed the Bay of Yaks. Here’s an investigative article I wrote about it, published in Newsweek in August 1999. Since that pre-dates our online archives, I’m pasting the text here. It makes for a long blog entry. If you read on, however, 99 percent of you will learn things you never knew before about long-running international intrigues in Tibet:

A Secret War on the Roof of the World
Spooks, monks and the CIA's covert gamble in Tibet
By Melinda Liu

In 1958, the Dalai Lama was a 23-year-old god-king on the verge of losing his realm. The Chinese communists were closing in, and Tibet's spiritual leader was desperate. That's when he first heard that the Central Intelligence Agency was stepping up its activities in his domain. The Dalai Lama's lord chamberlain arranged a meeting for him with two CIA-trained guerrillas, so they could demonstrate their skills. The Tibetan warriors pulled out a bazooka, fired it, then took 15 minutes to reload before they fired again. His Holiness was incredulous.

"Will you shoot once and then ask the enemy to wait 15 minutes?" he asked his disciples. "Impossible." But the lord chamberlain and other advisers were enthusiastic. Although the Dalai Lama would have to flee into exile in India, freedom fighters were already battling China's Army, and they had direct radio contact with the CIA. "They gave the impression that once I arrived in India, great support would come from the United States," the Dalai Lama told NEWSWEEK in an earlier interview. "It's a sad, sad story."

How the CIA took the Dalai Lama's disciples under its wing is one of the most exotic episodes in the annals of Western intelligence. The intimate details of Operation ST CIRCUS are only just now emerging, as retired spooks publish memoirs and graying guerrillas publicly contemplate the violent karma of their past. Tibetan veterans still fondly recall training secretly in Colorado with Americans they knew as "Mr. Ken" or "Mr. Mac," then parachuting into Tibet out of the silver C-130s they called "sky ships." Their operations scored spectacular intelligence coups--including, NEWSWEEK has learned, early hints that China was developing the atomic bomb.

Yet the Dalai Lama, a devout pacifist, was reluctant to cooperate with the CIA from the start. Washington's bureaucratic spymasters never really understood these maroon-robed idealists from the roof of the world. Some spies had an ethos that rarely allowed them to see beyond the next intelligence bonanza; the Tibetans were fighting for their eternal freedom. The spies and the monks did share common goals, especially the defeat of the communist Chinese. But looking back now--when Beijing's grip on Tibet is as tight as ever--many Tibetans and some ex-CIA operatives believe that this story was always destined to be a tragedy. "What began as a pure Tibetan resistance looked quite different when the CIA came in, making it easy for China to discredit it as 'Western imperialist activities'," says the Dalai Lama. "And the U.S. help was very, very limited."

The covert war began as far back as 1956, three years before the Dalai Lama, disguised as a bodyguard, mounted a horse and fled to India after a failed Tibetan uprising. Chinese commissars had annexed the Tibetan areas of Kham and Amdo. Then they told the Tibetan Khampas, a mountain people famous for horsemanship and sharpshooting, to surrender their guns. The Khampas resisted, and with advice from the Dalai Lama's elder brother, Gyalo Thondup, they turned to the CIA for help. Gyalo Thondup now says he didn't inform his exalted sibling about all of his intelligence connections at the time: "This was very dirty business."

U.S. officials were entralled by the fierce Khampas, many of whom wore pictures of the Dalai Lama in tiny silver amulets around their necks, charms they believed could ward off bullets. CIA agents saw them as "can-do guys," says John Kenneth Knaus, who handled Tibetan matters at the CIA from 1958 to 1965. "We romanticized them... They were orphans seeking to be adopted." Under a full moon in October 1957, the first two-man team of CIA-trained Tibetans took off from a grass airstrip in East Pakistan. They rode in a B-17 "sanitized" of all markings. The parachutists were Athar Norbu and another Tibetan named Lhotse--"Tom" and "Lou" to their handlers. They were equipped with dried beef and radios, signal mirrors and submachine guns. They landed smack on target, 60 miles from Lhasa, and quickly hooked up with a local resistance leader and several thousand guerrillas. But many of the fighters were surrounded and starving only a few months later. "We kept hoping the CIA would drop us some weapons, but they never came," recalls one survivor. "I went 15 days without food--even shoe leather tasted delicious."

The CIA didn't give up. Beginning in 1958, American operatives trained about 300 Tibetans at Camp Hale in Colorado. The trainees were schooled in spy photography and sabotage, Morse code and mine-laying. Between 1957 and 1960, the CIA dropped more than 400 tons of cargo to the resistance. Yet nine out of 10 guerrillas who fought in Tibet were killed by the Chinese or committed suicide to evade capture, according to an article by aerospace historian William Leary in the Smithsonian's Air & Space Magazine. One veteran guerrilla said the parachute drops were like "throwing meat into a tiger's mouth."

Under the Kennedy administration, the CIA moved the covert program to Mustang, a remote kingdom in Nepal surrounded by China on three sides. The guerrillas ran hit-and-run operations into Tibet. In one of several key raids into Tibet during the early '60s, commandos ambushed a military convoy and made off with a bulging stash of bloodstained documents. Among the captured "work papers" were Beijing's plans to move many more troops into Tibet, and documents that provided the first concrete evidence of the Sino-Soviet rift. "It was one of the single greatest intelligence hauls in history," says Knaus, who recently published a book on Tibet called "Orphans of the Cold War." The Tibetans provided human intelligence and other important "insights into China's... early efforts to develop a nuclear weapons capability," a former U.S. operative told NEWSWEEK.

By the mid-'60s, the Tibet operation was costing Washington $1.7 million a year, according to intelligence documents. That included $500,000 to support 2,100 guerrillas based in Nepal and $180,000 worth of "subsidy to the Dalai Lama." But it was at this time also that Washington became disillusioned with the operation, which had no hope of reversing the Chinese occupation, and scaled back. After the United States cut its support, Beijing pressured Nepal to close the Mustang camps. From his exile in Dharmsala, the Dalai Lama wanted it to end. In July 1974 he sent a 20-minute-long recorded message asking the fighters, now led by a CIA-trained Khampa named Wangdu, to surrender their weapons to local Nepalese authorities. Wangdu and a handful of bodyguards tried to escape and made their last stand against Nepalese soldiers only 20 miles from the Indian border. At nearly 18,000 feet, where the air is thin and a man can see forever, all but one died in a barrage of gunfire.

Wangdu's death marked the end of the CIA-trained guerrilla movement, but Chinese authorities have long memories. They heatedly opposed the Kosovo war, for instance, because they fear future U.S. intervention in their own separatist hot spots. As they fret about Taiwan, Xinjiang and, yes, even Tibet, they can't help but recall the secret war they fought four decades ago over the high Himalayas.

With Tony Clifton in New Delhi and Patricia Roberts and Thomas Laird in Katmandu

Horseback Protestors: Tibetan Riders of the Storm

Melinda Liu — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 19:59:29 GMT

Of all the unforgettable Tibet images to emerge this week, the wild-haired Tibetan horsemen twirling tether ropes and galloping on cobby little ponies to lay seige to a government building in some podunk corner of Gansu province keeps running through my mind.

Click here to see the video

A couple hundred protestors, led by dozens of Tibetan riders shouting in high-pitched voices, tried to take over a government building but were repelled by volleys of tear gas fired by 100-some police holed up inside. They galloped off to a nearby school, tore down the Chinese flag and shredded it, then raised the banned former Tibetan national flag.

The footage was captured by CTV, then went viral on Youtube. In other areas, foreign journalists who managed to infiltrate Tibetan monasteries found a sort of Uprising by Cellphone going on (see the evocative account from Tongren, by my colleague Jonathan Ansfield). But the Canadian TV correspondent popped up in the middle of a throwback scene that could have been lifted out of the failed Tibetan revolt of 1959.

Virtually every rural Tibetan town has horsemen like this -- though, of course, they're not normally on the warpath. When I catch my breath I'll blog on the legendary Litang horse festival where amazingly athletic horseback riders race each other and perform dangerous acrobatics on a big flat field--actually an old World War II-era grass airstrip -- decked out in festival finery, firing fake rifles and arrows. (It's life-threatening stuff; one year I saw a rider badly trampled after he fell from his horse while doing a backbend from his saddle, dragging his robes' long sleeves on the ground behind him.) Events of the past week give these popular Tibetan horse festivals a whole new context.

Torch Relay: Fuel to the Flame?

Mary Hennock — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 21:45:13 GMT

Less than a week after Lhasa burned, the Beijing Olympics organising committee (BOCOG) is holding firm to its plans to take the Olympic flame to Tibet. Carrying the torch to the summit of Everest will be "the highlight" of the 2008 torch relay, top official Jiang Xiaoyu told reporters. The flame is due to start its journey on Monday at Olympia in Greece; the official slogan, settled long ago, is "Journey of Harmony". Tibetan activists and exiles who have rallied outside Chinese embassies this week seem unlikely to heed this message. After the last few days, however, BOCOG must long for the time when the sight of a 'Free Tibet' T-shirt on camera was its worst nightmare.

The ascent of Everest will be a "great feat in Olympic history", said BOCOG executive vice president Jiang Xiaoyu. As he described the logistics, it became clear that summiting Everest is set to be the grandest moment in the long pre-Olympic drumroll, short of the opening ceremony itself. The flame will be divided so that one torch can continue around China while the other is carried to Everest. Weather conditions cloud the timing, but on the day the torch ascends the peak BOCOG will suspend the other leg of the relay in line with International Olympic Committee (IOC) rules. The waiting and watching will create a perfect format for breathless media attention. The flame will then go to Lhasa to await its other half. Their reunion will be another media moment. There will be plentiful references to the torch relay's official "message of friendship, peace and harmony". It must have seemed like a good idea at the time.

BOCOG says it has no plans to change any of this. Climbing Everest "is a commitment we made when bidding", said Jiang. Asked about the recent pro-independence marches and ethnic riots he said: "These disturbances are totally against the spirit of the Olympic Games. They are a challenge to the Olympic Charter...These so-called activities will not win the hearts and minds of the people, and so they are doomed to failure".

Like everything about China's Olympic plans, the 2008 Beijing Olympics torch relay is on the grandest possible scale. It will be the longest ever, traveling through 19 countries in five continents. Then when it reaches China, it will go to all 31 provinces and ascend the world's highest mountain. There is little room for flexibility in plans as bombastic as these. Activists opposed to China's policies towards Tibet, Darfur and a medley of other issues were always going to have plentiful chances to protest. There is now the risk of Tibetan monks attempting more pro-independence protests, and sparking more riots.

To stabilize the region, China is pouring in troops and carrying out a wave of arrests. "I have seen one convoy of at least 200 trucks with 30 military personnel on top of each, so that was around 6,000 troops there which I could see moving on one day," German journalist Georg Blume told the BBC before being expelled from Lhasa on Thursday. Military conveys have also been spotted in provinces bordering Tibet.

The official Tibet Daily said 24 people have been arrested in Lhasa and charged with "endangering national security as well as beating, smashing, looting, arson and other grave crimes". China's Xinhua news agency that 105 people had voluntarily surrendered themselves. Tibet solidarity campaigns tell a different story, saying several hundred people are being detained each day. "The security personnel seem to be quite overstretched. They’re handcuffing people, and leaving them face down on the corner till they can come back and collect them," says Kate Saunders of the International Campaign for Tibet.

The Dalai Lama, who spoke to NEWSWEEK in an exclusive interview today, has said he is "always ready to meet our Chinese leaders" to talk about the future of Tibet. Talks between the two sides broke down in 2004 and seem unlikely to reopen soon. China's Premier Wen Jiabao denounced the "hypocritical lies" of "the Dalai clique" on Tuesday, saying they had formented violence and were insincere about wanting peaceful dialogue not independence.

What happens next in Tibet depends partly on how much control the Dalai Lama has over his followers there. Earlier this week, he reiterated that he might resign as head-of-state in his government in exile if Tibetans continue to seek violent solutions. According to some Tibet-watchers, his hold is weakening as some followers have become frustrated by his willingness to negotiate for less than full independence. "A large part of the movement disagree with his position.... [and] are pushing for independence and are very frustrated with his middle path approach."says ICT's Saunders.

The Olympic flame is due to reach Tibet in May.