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Tibetan New Year turns into silent battleground

By Lucy Hornby | Reuters

As Chinese celebrate the beginning of the Year of the Ox with fireworks and family feasts, a silent but stubborn struggle is being waged over a similar Tibetan holiday.

In the fallout of a brief but widespread uprising by Tibetans last March, the celebration of the Tibetan new year, or Losar, has taken on a new sensitivity. It is also a sign that tensions between China and one of its most distinct ethnic groups continue to simmer, despite months of apparent calm.

The traditional Tibetan new year will fall during the new moon in February this year, exactly one month after the Han Chinese celebration. The Chinese Year of the Ox began on Monday.

This year, some Tibetans, including exiles and intellectuals, are refraining from celebrating as a quiet protest gesture, and have urged others to do the same in heated exchanges on the Internet. Meanwhile, some communities that usually celebrate at the same time as Chinese have delayed their holiday to coincide with the Tibetan calendar.

“I’m going home to visit my parents this year, since they are old. But we won’t have any outside celebrations, no firecrackers or anything,” said a Tibetan peddler in Beijing whose hometown of Nagchu, north of Lhasa, marks the new year next month.

“That’s because of the (Sichuan) earthquake in May, and also because of the March events.”

Chinese authorities also seem concerned about the holiday.

In Xiahe, Gansu province, where monks at the influential Labrang monastery were active in the March demonstrations, police informed hotel owners that the town would be closed to foreigners for one month beginning last Sunday, which was New Year’s Eve according to the Chinese calendar.

In Gardze, in the grasslands of Sichuan province, foreigners are welcome but celebrations have been delayed from the usual Chinese new year schedule, a guest-house owner said.

“We’ve cancelled the fireworks. Everything is delayed until the Tibetan new year because we’re all busy right now,” he said.

In other communities, celebrations are normal, Western travellers and Tibetans said.

In the mountains of Ngaba prefecture, also in Sichuan province, devotees circled a mountain on Monday, New Year’s Day, and planned performances and worship at the monastery as usual.

“Of course we’ll celebrate the new year, the Tibetan one. Everyone looks forward to that,” said another Tibetan in Beijing, regretting that he won’t make it home to his family in Nyingchi, east of Lhasa, next month.

Copyright © 2009 Reuters

Published in Reuters website