Minority roundup: Torch tension, Muslims in Tibet and letting go of the "race complex"

The Olympic torch moves today to Qinghai Lake in the Northwestern province of Qinghai, after making a one-day cameo in Lhasa. The Saturday visit to the Tibetan capital was carefully monitored in light of March’s uprising, and tight security continues in the province that was another sight of spring unrest. As the torch makes its way through China’s heavily-minority sections, several pieces of interesting news and commentary have surfaced covering the situations of various ethnic minorities in the PRC:

• The LA Times explores tensions in Tibet far more complex than just pro-China, anti-China struggles — the region also has strained relations between Tibetans and Hui Chinese, a minority ethnically identical to majority Han Chinese, but Muslim. The historic friction flared up last summer in the town of Guojia, when a Tibetan women alleged that she found a tooth in the soup she had ordered in a Muslim restaurant across town. Violence erupted against the neighborhood’s Hui restaurants, many of which have now gone out of business as proprietors flee the area for their safety.
• Blogging for China brings us a translation of a post on a Uygur forum describing one Minkaohan’s (ethnic minorities raised and educated alongside Han Chinese) discovery of his own, inevitable “racial complex,” and the importance of setting that polarizing emotion down in favor of national and local peace, cooperation and unity.
• Earlier today, we mentioned that China has released over 1,000 involved in Tibetan unrest, but The San Diego Union-Tribune reports that arrests are still occurring in other areas of Asia. Three Tibetan activists were jailed for three months in Katmandu, Nepal on Saturday, while hundreds of exiles from the region were detained for protesting inform of the city’s Chinese Embassy.

Photo from Parson Rook.