The biggest uprising in Tibet since 1959

Protests in Lhasa and other areas of Tibet started as early as 1987 but the Uprising began in earnest on 5 March 1989 when a small group of Tibetan monks, nuns and laypeople started a protest in the Barkhor area of central Lhasa. The protest grew rapidly as large numbers of Tibetans joined the protest. In an attempt to put down the protest Chinese police threw bottles at protesters. Some Tibetans responded with rocks, prompting the police to fire indiscriminately into the crowd.

The use of firearms on unarmed Tibetans ensured that the 1989 protests escalated rapidly into a full-scale uprising. The Chinese government’s method for suppressing the uprising was extremely violent: footage smuggled out of Lhasa showed Chinese soldiers furiously kicking and raining blows on protesting Tibetan monks. Yet despite the ever worsening and indiscriminate violence of the Chinese soldiers in Lhasa, protesters continued to pour into Lhasa’s central streets, defiantly chanting Tibetan freedom slogans, demanding the return of the Dalai Lama and waving Tibetan flags. Hu Jintao, then Party Secretary and now President of China, declared Martial Law on 8 March. Despite Martial Law being lifted one year later, China’s crackdown continued for a further two years as Tibetans doggedly refused to stop their protests.

Tibetans protest in 1989.

Tibetans knew the consequences of their powerful display of resistance: night-time raids on their homes, followed by beatings, arrests and lengthy prison sentences. In the overwhelming majority of cases, Tibetans were arrested for nothing more than peacefully demanding the most basic freedoms of expression and the right to practise their religion.

Also in 1989, Chinese students took to the streets in Beijing to protest against the Chinese Government and to demand greater political freedoms. The Tiananmen Square massacre of 4 June 1989 is one of the lasting symbols of Chinese Government oppression against their own people, where an estimated 5,000 lost their lives. The massacre was roundly condemned across the world, and even today the Chinese Government attempts to wipe these events off the historical record by blocking internet searches on the issue and preventing any discussion of these events aside from the revisionist Government line.
Read more about the 20th anniversary of the Tinananmen massacre here.