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Lhasa still bruised by deadly riots

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-03-13 17:24

LHASA -- A year after the deadly violence that rocked Lhasa, Losang Tsering still bears the marks: three lost teeth and a scar on his left cheek.

"Last year was full of challenges for China, with the Lhasa riots and the (May 12) earthquake," he says over the phone. "Let bygones be bygones. Now we just hope everyone will learn to cherish today's happy life."

Losang Tsering, a surgeon at Tibet Autonomous Regional People's Hospital in Lhasa, was in an ambulance with two Han patients, a father and his dying child, when at least 10 rioters stopped them.

The doctor knew precisely what was going on. He held the child in his arms and put his own helmet on the father's head. The desperate rioters attacked him with stones and clubs, and he ended up with a broken cheekbone, cerebral concussion and loss of his front teeth.

Moved by his heroic deed, Lhasa residents -- Tibetans and Han people alike -- flooded his hospital ward, bringing bouquets, gifts and words of admiration and gratitude.

He also had the honor to be a torch bearer when the Beijing Olympic flame was relayed to Lhasa in June.

Local residents of the Tibetan ethnic group present "hada", a traditional Tibetan scarf symbolizing blessing, to a torchbearer during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games torch relay in Qinghai Lake, northwest China's Qinghai Province, on June 23, 2008. [Xinhua]

Yet a year is not enough to heal the doctor, physically or mentally.

"As the first anniversary of the riots approaches, I've been thinking how everyone should work for peace and prevent such violence from erupting again," says Losang Tsering, who is on a year-long advanced training program at Huaxi Hospital in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan Province. "I hope this sensitive month will end in peace and my family will be happily reunited in September."

Losang Tsering, 37, is a native Tibetan. "You should've been more careful" was all his wife, another medical worker in Lhasa, had to say when she saw how badly he had been injured.

"I just did my job," he said. "The Han people would have done the same to save the Tibetans."

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