Friday, March 14, 2008

Well, I'm saffron crimson

Why it's always good to be cautious about outland coverage written from the capital:

BEIJING — Fires and rock-throwing protests erupted in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa on Friday as unrest against Chinese rule of the autonomous region escalated to its highest level in two decades.

Hmm. Beijing dateline, Lhasa riot -- can you guess what's coming next? (Let's not always see the same hands.)

A lockdown of three monasteries in the Lhasa area remained in effect to block saffron-robed monks from returning to the streets, as they did Monday and Tuesday.

And how did things look a few hours later?

By evening, authorities had ordered a curfew and mustered thousands of police officers with riot shields backed by armored vehicles at crucial areas around the city. Security forces threw up a cordon around another monastery after lockdowns at three others where crimson-robed monks began protest marches earlier in the week.

What could have intervened? Here's a clue sighted by the alert South Carolina bureau:

Re TIBET (Johnson) We'll move a CORRECTED version of the story momentarily to CORRECT the color of the monks' robes in graf 3 to crimson (NOT saffron).

Not naming any names or anything, but -- anybody out there make any calls to any central offices you'd like to take credit for?

2 Comments:

Blogger The Ridger, FCD said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

10:35 PM, March 14, 2008  
Blogger The Ridger, FCD said...

Yay! The world is a little brighter - one tiny corner of it anyway.

although, the funny thing? Unlike Burmese monks, Tibetan ones do wear saffron - and crimson outer robes.

10:40 PM, March 14, 2008  

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