Photo of the 14th Dalai Lama at Kirti Monastery

Photo of the 14th Dalai Lama at Kirti Monastery in Ngaba County, Ngaba TAP, Sichuan Province, destroyed by government authorities following a raid on the monastery in early April 2008. A Tibetan from Lhasa who is now in exile and who requested not to be named told ICT: ‘The level of unrest and continued dissent shows that these hardline policies by China in Tibet have achieved the opposite of what they were aiming for – they have united Tibetans across the plateau in their loyalty to the Dalai Lama and in preserving the integrity of their cultural identity. This has not happened before in two centuries of Tibetan history. The question now is how the Tibetans will take this forward and how it will play out politically.'”