7 days in Tibet

For everybody who worried about me: I'm safe back in Kathmandu!!!

Yesterday night we arrived back in Kathmandu after having been forced to leave Tibet after the serious and violent riots of Friday and Saturday (14th /15th March 2008).
It was a 30 hours trip by jeep back over the stunning beauty of the Tibetan high plateau. What an unbelievable discrepancy with what we had seen and experienced the night before!
On our trip back to Kathmandu we were with 12 of us, all carrying similar dark pictures and feelings and personally colored memories of the last 24 hours in Lhasa, where we stayed in a (fortunately Tibetan) hotel right in the center of the city and the riots, witnessing the most serious anti-Chinese protests since 1989.

Now, I wake up at 6.00 AM in my guesthouse in Kathmandu. I turn on the TV and sap between CNN and BBC to get the latest news about Lhasa. Yesterday night I already heard that it’s said that there are 100 people dead in Lhasa. The protests in Lhasa and other places in Tibet seem to go on and even spread to other Chinese provinces and I heard that there were different protests all over the world and much international attention for the events in Lhasa. There also was a deadline by the Chinese for the Tibetan protesters to surrender by yesterday midnight. I can’t find any news about the outcome of this deadline.

Back here, I feel somehow ‘lost’. Nobody shares my experiences of the last days, nobody around me did see what I have seen. It feels unreal being here and seeing Thamel (Kathmandu’s tourist area) waking up for just another day of fun, souvenir buying and eating pizza’s. I have to think about all the hundreds of thousands of refugees all over the world who’s life somehow is going on after having escaped from war affected area’s. Their bodies are alive but their souls might be dead, killed by what they have experienced, not able to share it with anybody else than people who have experienced the same.
Let me be clear that I don’t want - in any way - compare my experiences with theirs! They really were involved and personally ‘touched’ by the war operations. The violence they were exposed to was aimed to them and/or their relatives personally. I only have been a witness of aggression to others, looking at it from a (relatively) safe place. But still it did touch me deeply and I can partly imagine how it feels to go on living in a safe place with so many serious memories of destruction and violence, not able to share them with the people around you.

Again – as so often during the last few months – there is this feeling of contradiction and the notion of just being an ‘outstander’, an observer and not a participant in the events that are taking place around me. The notion also that the reality I see is not the effective reality, that ‘nothing’ is what is seems to be.

A few hours before the first black smoke columns were darkening the sky above Lhasa, we where wandering through the impressive Jokhang temple, home of the most venerated statue in Tibet. The place breathes the deep religious devotion of the Tibetan people who are thrashing themselves in front of the temple (108 times), some of them even over a distance of hundreds of kilometers from their homes to this most sacred and important temple in Tibet (comparable to a pilgrimage to the Kaaba in Mecca). There just was peace.
Although we knew that there had something gone on the passing days (the Drepung and later also the Sera monastery were closed for visits), we could not feel what was going on obviously directly under the surface of Lhasa’s daily life. The events that followed were developing so quickly and escalating so violently that we were totally surprised. The shock of reality was penetrating my consciousness in steps. The first step was when I finally stood at the big panorama window of the coffeeshop on the 2nd floor of my hotel seeing rising a black smoke column from the narrow street near the Jokhang temple where – just half an hours ago – I was having coffee with chocolate cake together with a travel companion. Sitting there, we felt that there was something going on and went outside. We saw military trucks arriving and people running through the narrow alleys in panic. Shops were hurrying to shut down their window-doors and street vendors hasty were packing their goods. First we approached the ‘hotspot’ but when the masses started running off in panic, it got very threatening and we decided to go back to our hotel. People were gathering on the 3rd floor, behind the panorama window of the coffeebar. I also joint them. From here we saw groups of people running over the big junction in front of our hotel. More and more trucks with policemen arrived, hundreds of them, heavily armed. They spread all over the center. There was much screaming and the rattling of broken glass. The sky was more and more darkening by smoke and teargas. Indiscriminate Chinese passengers got attacked. We saw one getting knocked down of his motorbike and beaten up with a wooden stick. Vehicles were set on fire. Meaningless violence against (Chinese) shops, bicycles, billboards etc. spread fast. We heard shooting, not able to distinguish whether it was sharp ammunition or just teargas. Many of us were taking pictures and heading to the roof to have a better overview. Suddenly there was shooting. A panicking voice screamed: ‘Get down! Get down!’ One of us got badly hurt on his eye by a stone, thrown from the street below. We all got on our knees and headed back to the coffeshop. Here two breaches yawn in the big panorama window as two large spiders running over the glass front. We were not allowed to approach the window anymore but strictly requested to go to our rooms. But soon I felt locked up and went back to the coffeshop, in a safe distance from the window. Others were showing up as well. Some of the young female staffmembers were in total panic, weeping and praying with every shot or explosion they heard outside. At a certain moment the electricity went off, darkness spread in the building. A nervous westener emerges and calls us to head to the 4th floor as there would be fire downstairs. A few minutes later we were called to hide in rooms on the 3rd floor, I had missed the reason but taking by the stretched atmosphere that meanwhile had caught us all I followed up the order. As it stayed calm, I at a certain moment went out again. I had the strong desire of getting known what was going on outside and also of having more space and light than we had in the rooms. The whole building still was dark and meanwhile a sharp smoke of fire and teargas filled the whole building. We didn’t know whether there was fire in the hotel itself or the smoke just came in through the different smashed windows. We earlier had seen furious people entering buildings and were neither sure if overheated protesters had entered our hotel or not. Anyway we saw anxious Tibetan and Chinese women and men sitting in the stairways and the coffeeshop, obviously hiding in a place assumed to be safe. I was not that sure about it anymore. But there was not much time to think things over. Soon after there came the order of immediately packing our personal belongings, such as passports and money, and coming down to the reception hall. We would get evacuated. Panic spread all over. The young German girl in the room next-door shook and wept. I tried to calm her down but didn’t really succeed in doing so. In spite of the lady that kept me reminding nervously to hurry up I packed all my luggage as it was clear to me that we would not return here anymore. People were running up and down through the dark corridors and stairways. In a small group we started our way down. When we almost got to the groundfloor, there were people coming up, running, screaming: ‘Go up, go up!’ We understood that there was fire downstairs. We turned and started run upstairs again, pushing each other, not really knowing where to go to. We hardly arrived back on the 3rd floor when another order called us to head down again. This time we were pushed down dark stairways to a backside exit. We were just with a few of us, the group had split and we didn’t know where the others were. Although I was still coughing and my eyes were tearing, I felt relieved to see daylight and to be outside. Well … we were not yet allowed to leave the building but had to wait for … I actually didn’t know what for. Maybe a vehicle, maybe a police escort. The waiting anyway seemed to last for hours. Finally we were called to go back to our rooms, there was said that there was no fire and the safest place for the night would be our hotel. In spite of being disconcerted about the constantly changing decisions and interpretation of the situation and our safety there was nothing else to do than to follow up the order. So we turned back to our rooms and/or the coffeeshop on the 3rd floor. Around 6.00 PM our guide announced that there was a diner at 7.00 PM. It was great and we all relaxed a bit. After that we all gathered again in the coffeeshop on the 3rd floor trying to make out what was going on in the city. We still could hear explosions, gunfire, sirens and meanwhile there were tanks rolling through the streets below. It seemed we were in the middle of a war. Nobody could tell us whether plains and/or trains would run by tomorrow. Before going to our room to try to get some sleep, I checked the nearest emergency exits. We went to bed with all our cloths on, ready to leave at any moment.
At 6.00 AM we got up, it was silent in the hotel. There still was no electricity. I caught my flashlight and went to the big panorama window of the coffeeshop right in front of our room (3rd floor). That was the second step of consciousness of what really had happened last night. ‘Wouw!!!’ was the only thing that escaped my mouth. I run back to the room to inform my roommate and to pick up my camera. All the buildings I could see from here were completely burned out; black carcasses was all that remained. Some buildings were still on fire, others where only smoking. Fire-brigades were raced through the streets in different directions. The city still was covered by a curtain of black smoke. The streets were blocked by armed police, set up in double lines, ready to defend or attack at any moment. They only moved to let pass fire-brigades, military trucks and tanks. The sound of the rolling tanks was horrible. We didn’t see any protesters anymore, some first civilians dared to go outside and have a look, carefully watched by the police. One by one our group showed up in the coffeeshop. Short after our guide told us to get our luggage and come down to the receptionhall, we would get evacuated. Released to leave the place, we all headed down. The whole glass frontage of the hotel was smashed and there was a car lying right in front of our door, turned over and burned out completely. The shoeshop next door was damaged and plundered empty. – It took hours before there was coming a small touristbus to pick us up and a police escort to accompany us out of the city. Our guide clearly emphasized not to take out any camera. He would end up in prison for that and his company would be shut down. All of us already had taken out there foto memorycards off their camera’s avoiding to have them confiscated by the police. That didn’t seem to be exaggerated. Leaving the center by bus, there were many strict police-/military control posts, where we and our luggage got checked. Actually nobody was allowed to enter or leave the city. But the Chinese authorities wanted to get rid of all foreigners as soon as possible. Witnesses of the events were not wished. And who knows what may follow the coming hours and days?! The Tibetan touroperator wasn’t less interested in getting rid of us as he was in great danger himself, carrying full responsibility for all of us as long as we were on Tibetan territory. So he suggested to bring us to the Nepali border by jeep. When the vehicles finally arrived and we could start it was 3.00 PM. Relieved but with very mixed feelings we started our long journey back.
Well, and that’s were this report started…
OM MANI PADME HUM - I burned some oillamps this morning in a small temple near my guesthouse, praying that all this would soon coming to an end.
… and there it is again, this feeling of contradiction: I understand so well the anger of the proud and deeply religious Tibentan people who have been oppressed for such a long time. But last night I also saw violence against innocent people and meaningless devastations. Which price is worth to pay??? Where do I have to pray for???
OM MANI PADME HUM – OM MANI PADME HUM – OM MANI PADME HUM