Source : INDIA TODAY NEWS
The video of mammoth floodwaters swallowing an immigration centre at Gyirong Port, the main border crossing between Tibet and Nepal, as hundreds of people ran frantically, went viral soon after surfacing online. Since the devastating floods, it has been the single piece of video evidence from China-controlled Tibet, showing the scale of the destruction to the world.
However, in Tibet, Beijing’s censor was quick to respond, with the video disappearing from their social media in the blink of an eye. Only a single frame shot of the viral video has been broadcast so far by the state-run flagship news bulletin.
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It’s not a novelty that China is extremely adamant when it comes to censoring. Only visuals and information approved by the state are released on their internet. The devastation from the flash floods is not hard to understand, considering the deaths in Nepal have exceeded 500 and are highly probable to increase. And yet, China said on Friday that only five people have died so far, with 558 missing, including 260 foreigners.
That’s about it. There is no other information beyond that: zero survivor accounts, no specific details about the villages that have been impacted, and no messages from victims’ families.
It’s extremely difficult for foreign journalists to understand the ground situation. They cannot travel to Tibet without government permission, and even if videos of destruction or people’s accounts surface, it’s only a matter of mere hours to track them before they are wiped off.
Various tweets have called out the ruling Chinese Communist Party for “gagging” the citizens.
One account claimed that numerous flood disaster videos posted on WeChat were deleted and censored across the internet. Even clips of victims pleading for help are allegedly being deleted, censored and their accounts banned.
Tibetans are unable to communicate freely with foreign journalists, with Human Rights Watch saying that’s because everyone is required to install mandatory phone apps with built-in government surveillance. Several smaller Chinese media outlets, which are also state-run, did manage to get footage from the affected site that has thousands of people living nearby and published interviews with some witnesses initially. But within hours those pieces were taken down.
Thus, the only reliance currently is on state media that has so far focused on dramatic rescue efforts. These show specialist search teams scaling mountains or crossing raging rivers to get to the most-hit regions. There, however, is no information about what happened afterwards. While the world is seeing the destruction in Nepal and global headlines remain about it, China’s state broadcaster’s main bulletin on Friday was about President Xi Jinping’s new book – a selection of his “most important and fundamental works”.
Even so, Beijing has been keen to stress that the rescue operation is its national priority. They have dispatched hundreds of emergency service personnel to expedite rescue operations. Xi chaired a meeting on Friday to direct the rescue work, state media reported, with the President calling on authorities to make all efforts to search for missing persons both from China and abroad. He also sent his right-hand man, premier Li Qiang, to visit the impacted region. State-run Xinhua news agency reported Li saying that the President is “deeply concerned” about the people in the affected areas.
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SOURCE :- TIMES OF INDIA
