Ethnic Unrest Flares  Posted by: Dexter Roberts on March 14,
2008  Despite Beijing’s efforts to tighten control over dissent
in the run-up to the 2008 Olympics, ethnic tensions involving
independence-minded Tibetans and also Muslim Uighurs are flaring
up dramatically.  Over the past days hundreds of Tibetan
Buddhist monks have protested in Lhasa against Chinese rule, the
biggest unrest in the remote capital in twenty years. And
Beijing has announced that it quashed a plot by Muslim Uighurs
from the far western region of Xinjiang, to disrupt the upcoming
Olympics Games as well as an attempted terrorist act by a
19-year-old Uighur woman on a domestic Chinese airline. Xinjiang
of course, like Tibet, has a long history of resisting Chinese
control.  Beijing’s response has been rapid and typically heavy-
handed. Chinese security forces reportedly have surrounded three
key monasteries in Lhasa (where many of protesting monks come
from), after firing teargas on the protesters earlier. And
Beijing authorities announce