Sources: ICT; TCHRD; TGiE; TCHRD

Details: D; S; V?

Several hundred students from Labrang Middle School in Labrang (Chinese: Xiahe) county protested on the morning of April 24, 2009, events which are clearly visible in a sequence of images made available by Voice of America and published by TCHRD.  

Initial reports suggested students were protesting against what they saw as unfair allocation of university places to Han students; later reports added that the students were also unhappy that the school had posted a propaganda article severely critical of the Dalai Lama on a student notice board.

The students were met on the outskirts of Labrang county town by a large contingent of security forces who shepherded them back towards the school before surrounding and effectively sealing it off, with students not permitted to leave nor parents permitted to enter.

Parents were allowed to be reunited with their children once reassurances had been given that they wouldn’t participate in any further protests, according to a June 30, 2009 report by TCHRD, which added that 13 students had been briefly detained by police and two students, Dolma Tashi (aka Dolta), 21, and Dolma Bum (aka Dolbum), 22, were expelled on June 19, 2009 as a consequence of the protests. According to ICT’s sources, some of the detained students were beaten by police.

ICT’s source added a detail that Party and government leaders were on route to the provincial capital, Lanzhou, to pick up an award for “preserving stability” when news of the protest broke out, forcing the officials to return to Labrang.