There are no photos of Tibet’s top tourist attraction from the afternoon of February 25, 2022. Typically, the Potala Palace, the 1,000-room, traditional winter residence of the Dalai Lama that was built in the 1600s, is teeming with tourists — the UNESCO World Heritage Site is the majestic backdrop of countless photos on Chinese social media networks like Weibo and WeChat. Every year, some 37 million tourists visit Lhasa, Tibet’s capital, where the palace is built into the side of a mountain, and the vast majority of visitors come from China, which has governed the Tibet Autonomous Region since 1950.

But despite its popularity, not a single image of the front of the palace exists from the afternoon of February 25, 2022. On that day, Tsewang Norbu, a 25-year-old male Tibetan singer and frequent guest on Chinese music shows, went up to the Barpokaling stupa, at the corner of the palace grounds, shouted “Free Tibet,” and set himself on fire. 

At least, that is what experts think happened. The event has disappeared from Tibet’s digital history as well as China’s. According to The Economist, the Chinese government acknowledged an incident took place, but denied it was Norbu, saying instead that it was a man who had long struggled with mental illness and “attempted suicide many times.” 

It took Tibetan journalists and researchers in India more than a week to verify what happened that day after piecing together bits of information from sources inside Tibet, Chinese social and state media, and by monitoring what was being censored or removed. Radio Free Asia broke the news on March 4, 2022. 

“Tsewang Norbu was a really popular Tibetan singer. He did this in front of the most famous monument in Tibet, where there were likely tons of tourists and Tibetans around,” says Tsela Zoksang, a Tibetan American with the non-profit Students for a Free Tibet. “The sheer speed that the authorities, with their various tools, were able to scrub the internet of every mention of Norbu is astonishing and frightening.”

China is famous for its digital censorship and control, but experts say the situation in Tibet is on another level. Consider what happened just a few months later, when another lone protester took action in Beijing. In October, Peng Lifa unfurled banners from the Sitong bridge calling for “freedom,” an end to Covid lockdowns and the removal of Xi Jinping. His protest went viral, both on Chinese social media and internationally. Although Peng is still in detention, his name and cause is well known. Perhaps more importantly, his actions had impact: The bridge signs are considered a precursor to the white paper protests that forced the Chinese Communist Party to dramatically change its Covid policies in December. 

The contrast between Norbu and Peng illuminates a dark and underappreciated truth: that China’s digital surveillance and censorship efforts have reached their full potential in Tibet. Indeed, several experts say the autonomous region has emerged as a kind of success story, with the policies there serving as a model for other areas that Beijing wants control over, such as the Uyghur regions in Xinjiang. 

Tenzin Norgay, a research analyst at the non-profit International Campaign for Tibet, says officials in Tibet and Xinjiang routinely share best practices and lessons learned with one another. In June of 2023, for instance, a delegation from Xinjiang attended a symposium in Tibet on “long-term peace and stability.” Wang Junzheng, party secretary of Tibet, reportedly stressed collaboration between the regions in “promoting social stability and rule by law.”

“At the moment, the party-state thinks that Tibet is under control, so now Xinjiang officials want to learn from authorities in Tibet about how to manage and suppress society without attracting global attention,” Norgay says.

Xinjiang has been the focus of intense media attention in recent years. Reports about internment camps and the destruction of Uyghur cultural heritage have become global issues and even U.S. policy priorities. Meanwhile, the situation in Tibet — once a hot topic of Hollywood celebrities and politicians — has faded from view.

Tibetans inside Tibet are, nowadays, so scared to talk to us. There is a sense that the government is always watching them and monitoring them, and for us, that means we can’t get first-hand information from Tibet. Self-censorship has become a huge problem.

Tenzin Dawa, an India-based Tibetan refugee and executive secretary at the Tibet Center for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD)

To appreciate the shift, experts point to the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, when images of monks, nuns and students protesting Chinese rule spread around the world. Those sympathetic to Tibet’s cause held “solidarity” protests at Olympic torch rallies in San Francisco, London, and Paris, as well as several Chinese embassies and consulates. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, even released a statement saying she was disturbed by “continuing allegations of violence against Tibetans” and called on China to “permit Tibetans to express their feelings without fear of retribution.”

Pro-Tibet protests in San Francisco during the Olympic torch relay ahead of the Beijing 2008 Olympics, April 2008. Credit: Tea Rose, Jennifer Yin via Flickr

Similarly, in 2011 and 2012, activists in Tibet began a wave of self-immolations to protest what has become a multi-year lockdown of the entire region. One dramatic video shows the self-immolation of a 35-year-old Tibetan nun named Palden Choetso. In the background, you can see Tibetans offering prayers to the Dalai Lama and a woman hanging a Tibetan scarf, a symbol of respect, on Choetso’s neck. 

“It’s one of the most powerful videos from Tibet,” says Lobsang Gyato Sither, a Tibetan living in exile in India who works with the non-profit Tibet Action Institute. “It’s hard to see, but images like that really hit and stick with people.”

Indeed, that video took just one day to spread around the world. In its aftermath, members of Congress pushed for a fact-finding mission to Tibet, and the European parliament passed a resolution calling on China to respect human rights and have a dialogue with the Dalai Lama.

In recent years, however, acts like Norbu’s don’t escape the censors. There haven’t been any visible, large-scale demonstrations for Tibetan independence — either inside the country or abroad — which is, experts note, exactly what Beijing wants.

“Images, videos and personal voices are so important for human rights stories,” says Yaqiu Wang, a research director at the Washington-based Freedom House. “But given the government’s sophisticated censorship and surveillance apparatus, we don’t have the images, and that limits the ability of their plight to attract global attention.”

“Fifteen years ago, there was so much more information coming out of Tibet,” adds Gabriel Lafitte, an Australia-based author and expert on Tibet. “But, even more than Xinjiang, China has succeeded in closing down Tibet.”

THE PLAYBOOK

By many measures, Tsewang Norbu was the model member of an ethnic minority in China. His parents worked for organizations affiliated with the Communist Party and sang in state-approved musical groups, he had over half a million followers on Weibo, and his songs — in Tibetan, Mandarin and English — could be found on Chinese and global video streaming platforms. 

But ever since Tibet was occupied by the People’s Liberation Army in 1950, and especially since the Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959, Tibet has seen regular periodic protests and calls for greater autonomy or independence from Chinese rule. There were signs that Norbu may have had sympathies himself, as he avoided singing songs that overly propagandized China, and his uncle is a political prisoner.

According to Namloyak Dhungser, a Tibetan researcher at Curtin University in Australia and author of a book on self-immolations, Norbu’s act could have a long-term impact on the Free Tibet movement because it “stands out as a significant case among the new generation of Tibetans, particularly those raised under the ‘red flag.’”

It’s exceedingly difficult to know if this generational shift is happening or even why Norbu chose to do what he did. The Tibet Autonomous Region has been closed off entirely to independent media since protests against Chinese rule broke out in 2008. While journalists can travel around the rest of China, including Xinjiang, they can only visit Tibet on state-approved trips. 

The lack of reporters, however, is only the first hurdle to corroborating information about Tibet. Repression in places like Tibet and in Xinjiang is multifaceted, experts say, creating a climate of intense fear and self-censorship among sources.

There is, of course, digital censorship and high-tech surveillance, including biometric data. Dense networks of cameras and numerous police stations keep a watchful eye, and at checkpoints, Tibetans and Uyghurs are often forced to hand over their phones and install Chinese government apps that have been identified as spyware. Over the past several years, Tibetans have been arrested and punished for merely having certain data, like a picture of the Dalai Lama or an unauthorized app like WhatsApp, on their phones. And to make matters worse, entire families can be punished for the actions of an individual.

Tenzin Dawa, an India-based Tibetan refugee and executive secretary at the Tibet Center for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD), says the pervasive sense of fear limits the work she and others can do. 

“Tibetans inside Tibet are, nowadays, so scared to talk to us,” she says. “There is a sense that the government is always watching them and monitoring them, and for us, that means we can’t get first-hand information from Tibet. Self-censorship has become a huge problem.”

“Han Chinese certainly face repercussions for exercising their right to free speech,” adds Wang, at Freedom House. “But regular Tibetans and Uyghurs have been given lengthy sentences for just speaking with foreign media. It’s just not of the same order of magnitude.”

What we need is the context of what led a person [like Norbu] to take action… Many times we get fragments of information, and we can’t fully confirm it, so we just keep that information, then sometimes, months or years afterwards, we have another fragment of information coming through.

Tenzin Choeyki, a senior researcher at Tibet Watch

Those covering China from the outside, meanwhile, have some workarounds at their disposal. In a panel discussion, Liza Lin, a journalist with the Wall Street Journal, noted that after being based in Shanghai for 8 years, she noticed a difference in Chinese sources when they meet with her in Singapore, where she is now based. “They’re a bit more willing to talk here than when they are in China,” she said.

Tibet, however, is missing this release valve. For many years, Tibetans crossing into Nepal and India were a key source of information for people like Kate Saunders, a longtime Tibet activist and co-founder of Turquoise Roof, a Tibet-focused, collaborative research network. 

“In the 2000s and up to around 2009, there were thousands of new arrivals from Tibet,” she says, noting that many were coming to attend teachings of the Dalai Lama or were refugees seeking to make a new life abroad. “Talking to nomads, children, the elderly — it was the bread and butter for Tibetan organizations and media to gain an understanding of what life was like in Tibet.”

Now, however, Tibetans are increasingly unable to get passports to travel abroad, and an enhanced border control system has closed the pathways through the Himalayas that used to connect Tibet refugees with exile communities in South Asia. In 2023, only 15 Tibetan refugees arrived in India and Nepal, compared to 3,000 in 2010.

“We did not expect that China would seek to close the entire gateway to India and Nepal,” says Saunders. 

Without human sources, says Maya Wang, associate director in the Asia division at Human Rights Watch, getting reliable information is exceedingly difficult. “If it was a video game, China is already, like, level 156 — really, really hard,” she says. “But Tibet and Xinjiang are double that.”

ONLY OSINT

Like many second and third generation Tibetans-in-exile, Tenzing Dhamdul grew up in India with few links to his family across the border. But the 28-year-old is part of a new generation of Tibetans who are using Open Source Intelligence, or OSINT, to uncover information about human rights or policies in Tibet.

“OSINT is a way to try to understand what Tibetans inside Tibet are experiencing and feeling,” says Dhamdul, who works as a research associate at the New Delhi-based Foundation for Non-violent Alternatives. “It is gradually becoming more prominent among the Tibetan community.”

Working with two other Tibetan refugees, Dhamdul’s first project analyzed Chinese documents, online maps and social media to identify how the government had changed the names of villages in parts of India claimed as “South Tibet” by China. While not a particularly complex task, the project provided insight into Beijing’s attempts to strengthen its claim over disputed Indian territory and led to a flurry of reactions from the Indian government. 

For Dhamdul, the OSINT process is especially valuable since its strategies can be easily replicated elsewhere. “We can work together with people who are like us Tibetans — oppressed by the current communist regime of the PRC — be it the Uyghurs, the Taiwanese or Hong Kongers,” he says.

Indeed, a recent RAND Europe report on detention centers in Tibet followed in the footsteps of a Xinjiang report. Using light data, RAND estimated the size and scale of the detention centers as well as how they’ve evolved over time. The analysis uncovered patterns of growth in night-time lightning, suggesting a shift towards longer detentions and imprisonments.

“Our organization had previously analyzed the evolution of detention centers in Xinjiang using geospatial data and night-time lighting measurements, so we decided to see if this method would also make sense in the Tibetan context, and it did,” a RAND Europe researcher said by email. (The researcher asked to remain anonymous due to the report’s sensitivity.)

Turquoise Roof, Saunders’s initiative, also uses OSINT research. So far, they’ve released reports on lithium mining, hydropower dam development, and spyware, all without interviewing or relying on anyone in Tibet. For example, for lithium, they used satellite data to locate mines and processing centers and analyze how they’d expanded over time. They then scoured Chinese government files, business documents, scientific research and trade data to estimate the scale of production, identify the Chinese companies involved and the links to major automakers like Tesla and BYD.

“We decided we have to work to lessen dependence on dangerous means of talking to Tibetans inside Tibet,” says Saunders. 

This approach has its limitations, however. In some of OSINT’s most successful use cases, groups like Bellingcat and the HALO Trust have combined open source data with data gathered by anonymous sources on the ground, often sent via secure communication platforms like Signal. In Russia, for example, this approach allowed for the tracking of illegal ghost ships exporting grain from occupied Ukraine. It’s a tactic that isn’t possible in Tibet or Xinjiang.

This erasure underscores the links between political and technological dictatorships. When these forces converge, the consequences for human society are dire.

Namloyak Dhungser, a Tibetan researcher at Curtin University in Australia

“It’s difficult to triangulate information,” says Saunders. “Everybody thinks you can learn everything through technological means, but that’s one of the findings of Turquoise Roof. We still need Tibetans inside Tibet, with deep knowledge on the ground.”

Moreover, while these OSINT reports do get media coverage, it hardly compares to the human interest stories, images and videos that used to come out of Tibet. 

OSINT “has to be combined with a human being,” notes Tenzin Choeyki, a senior researcher at Tibet Watch. “What we need is the context of what led a person [like Norbu] to take action — that can’t be filled in by OSINT.”

Norbu’s youth, celebrity status and choice of location made his act stand out among the 160 known self-immolations in Tibet. It may have also played a role in his story coming to light in just a week. But Choeyki says it’s a reminder of how little we still know about what is happening in Tibet. 

“Many times we get fragments of information, and we can’t fully confirm it, so we just keep that information, then sometimes, months or years afterwards, we have another fragment of information coming through,” says Choeyki.

In September of 2015, for instance, another young Tibetan man, Shurmo, self-immolated in a remote village. It took an astounding five years before Tibet Watch could verify and share what happened, and even then, there’s a lot that remains unknown about Shurmo, including what happened to his body and his family. There are no photos of Shurmo or of his act. 

“It’s deeply unsettling that, in our digital age, these events can be swiftly erased from public memory, leaving no trace of their sacrifice in images or videos,” says Dhungser, at Curtin University. 

It also brings up other questions: Are there others like Shurmo or Norbu? Just how far behind are we in terms of understanding what is happening in Tibet? When, if ever, will the CCP feel its job is done? 

“This erasure underscores the links between political and technological dictatorships,” says Dhungser. “When these forces converge, the consequences for human society are dire.”

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Liza Lin left China because she was denied a visa. She left on her own accord. Her quote was also incorrectly presented as a statement made directly to our reporter. The quote was actually from a panel discussion held by the National Press Foundation. We regret the error and have updated the article to reflect the correct context.

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