Something unusual and largely unprecedented took place on February 14 in Derge (Ch. Gengqing), the county seat of Dêgê County, part of the Garzê Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, in Sichuan Province. Hundreds of Tibetans gathered to protest and tried to block the entrance of the Dêgê County Government building, clashing with the police. There are also unconfirmed reports of arrests.
Derge is a Tibetan city and a renowned center of Tibetan religion and culture. It is part of Kham, one of the areas of historical Tibet that the Chinese did not include in the so-called Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) but added to another province, in this case Sichuan.
While the Tibetans of Kham would have ample reasons to protest against the destruction of their language, culture, and religion, what moved them to risk their liberty with an unauthorized demonstration was the refusal of the Chinese authorities to open a dialogue with the local population about Beijing’s hydropower stations plan.
China is building between Sichuan and Tibet the largest hydropower system in the People’s Republic and one of the largest in the world. A key part of this project is Gangtuo Power Plant, part of a 25-dams system on the Drichu (Ch. Jingsa) River, i.e., the upper stretches of the Yangtze River.
The dams are a huge multi-billion-dollar business, but apart from their controversial ecological impact, they come with a huge human cost for the local populace. Necessarily, villages are flooded and the population should be relocated. Old buildings, including monasteries and temples, are submerged and destroyed. Those who do not want to be relocated elsewhere organized the protest in Derge.
“Relocation here,” according to the words of a local villager that were reported to a “Bitter Winter” correspondent, “does not mean that you are transferred to another nice village ready to welcome you. We are told that we will have apartments but they are not ready. Meanwhile, we are parked in camps that are kept under strict surveillance to prevent protest and are very similar to reeducation camps—although we have committed no crime.”
Some villagers do not believe that the purposes of the dam project are simply about economy. In the words of one village leader that were reported to a “Bitter Winter” correspondent, “Of course it is about making money, and big money at that, but I am sure there is more. Tibetans compelled to relocate are separated from their history, from homes where their families may have lived for decades or even centuries, from all their visible cultural and religious points of reference. It is yet another way of destroying Tibetan identity in Kham.”
Thanks to the X account of exiled Tibetan Sakar Tashi, videos of the protest were released and spread internationally (although they were quickly banned from Weibo in China). The independent YouTube channel “Yesterday” by citizen journalist Lu Yuyu, now living in exile in Canada after having served time in jail in China, also offered images of the protests.
bitterwinter.org