I should have gone to Tibet last summer. Or in February. Even over May holiday or whenever there was a chance to fit it in.

Now it’s going to be much, much harder to get a worthwhile trip. China is tightening restrictions on foreign tourists in response to protests at Mt. Everest base camp a few weeks ago, the Times Online reports (h/t Granite Studio).

The new rules came into effect after the week-long May Day holiday, according to an official with the state-run China Travel Service in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital.

She said: “We can’t let foreign tourists just go anywhere by themselves. In the past they could be left alone to travel independently as they wanted for a few days. Now this is not allowed any more.”

The restrictions will also stop foreigners applying for a permit to enter the region from the office of the Tibetan travel bureau in the southwestern city of Chengdu, from where there are direct flights to Lhasa. All travel must now be approved by the head office in Lhasa, which operates under police supervision.

The Free Tibet folks, all Americans, were detained and expelled from the country, according to the story.

I have to ask the protesters: What was actually accomplished with this stunt?

Having graduated from UC Santa Cruz, I’ve seen more than my quota of protests, rallies, demonstrations, sit-ins and walk-outs. I’ve got up and stood up. Hell, I even organized a few noise-making events back in the day. One of the things more astute organizers always stressed to me was the need for clear targets. Targets aren’t people you take out, they’re the ones who can give you what you want. In this case, that means Beijing, as Davesgonechina pointed out in his post last month, Free advice for the Free Tibet crowd. Right now, it’s hard to say who the target is.

So now I don’t know when I’ll make it out west. Maybe next year, if things have relaxed a bit.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 17th, 2007 at 12:40 pm and is filed under roadside blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.