China shuts Tibet to foreigners before anniversary
Wed Sep 23 04:30:49 EST 2009
Tue Sep 22 18:30:49 UTC 2009
BEIJING, Sept 22 AP - China has closed Tibet to foreign tourists and deployed soldiers armed with machine guns in the streets of Beijing - part of a raft of stringent security measures ahead of the 60th anniversary of communist rule.
Although the October 1 commemorations, including a massive military review and speech by President Hu Jintao, are centred on Beijing, the clampdown extends to the farthest reaches of the sprawling nation.
Online, blocks on sensitive political content and social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook have been expanded, and there has been a spike in email spam containing spyware sent to foreign journalists.
Communist officials across the country have been told to prevent travel to Beijing by petitioners seeking redress from central authorities and to try to resolve their complaints locally.
Security in the capital is as tight and in some ways even tighter than during last year's Beijing Olympic Games, with submachine gun-toting SWAT units mixing among the crowds in a city centre festooned with national flags and colourful dioramas.
Knife sales have been restricted, and notices in apartment lobbies urge residents to report anything suspicious.
The National Day celebration follows the most violent and sustained unrest against Chinese rule in decades in its far western regions of Xinjiang and Tibet.
Ethnic rioting in Xinjiang's capital of Urumqi killed nearly 200 people in July and the Turkic Muslim region remains on edge over a recent string of mysterious needle attacks in public places.
As in the wake of rioting in March 2008, foreign tourists have been banned from Tibet, according to local officials and people working in the travel industry. The March 14, 2008, riot in Lhasa target Chinese shops and migrants who have moved to the Himalayan region in increasing numbers since communist troops entered in 1950.
Su Tingrui, a salesman with Tibet China Travel Service, said that the company's general manager was called to a meeting on Sunday night by authorities in Tibet's capital of Lhasa - 4,000km from Beijing.
He said the ban was not issued in writing but conveyed during the meeting and will extend to October 8.
Other agents in Beijing and Lhasa said that the government had stopped giving out special permits needed to visit the region to foreigners.
Security in Tibet was intensified in the weeks leading up to the Beijing Olympics last year and then again this past February and March around sensitive political anniversaries.
Tan Lin, an official with the business administration office at the Tourism Bureau of Tibet, said foreign tourists would be banned from Tuesday onwards, but those who have already arrived would be allowed to stay.
Hu Shisheng, head of the South Asia office at China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, said the ban was motivated by government fears that overseas pro-Tibet groups could use sympathetic students or tourists to stage protests - as occurred in Beijing during the Olympics.
