Dharamshala — The National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival holidays will last from Wednesday to October 8, 2025 throughout China. Several state-controlled media outlets have claimed that this extended holiday period allows Chinese citizens to enjoy eight days off to travel and relax. However, in contrast, stricter restrictions were immediately imposed in the occupied territories, particularly in Tibet, East Turkistan, and Inner Mongolia, under pretexts such as illegal driving, lack of driver's licenses, or overloading vehicles with passengers.
For instance, more than a hundred people have already been arrested in Lithang County in eastern Tibet, many of whom face prison sentences, while several others have also been detained in various areas of Nyagchukha County in eastern Tibet. At the same time, according to reliable local sources in Tibet who spoke with TPI, a larger deployment of police personnel has been reported in the form of a joint force in both counties.
According to the source, Chinese authorities are tightening restrictions on Tibetans' movement, assembly, and visits to monasteries, even arresting Tibetans in Lithang and Nyagchukha counties. “The authorities must arrest at least seven to eight Tibetans in 20 days, in accordance with their duty,” said the source close to the Chinese police. This intensive measure will be carried out between the Chinese National Day on October 1, 2025, and December 2025, under pretexts such as illegal driving, lack of driver's licenses, or overloading vehicles with passengers.
"To date, more than a hundred Tibetans have been arrested, most of whom were released after paying fines ranging from 1,000 (140.46) to 1,200 Chinese yuan ($168.55). Many of them are still in detention and some even face prison sentences. On September 25, 2025, Chinese police arrested three Tibetans who were later released after paying a fine," the source added.
"The Chinese police have also rented a large house in Lithang County to serve as a temporary detention center, which can hold more than 150 people. They have also built temporary detention centers in Thangkama Town, Magan Village, near a military camp in Nyagchukha, to detain arrested Tibetans. Currently, many police officers are deployed in our areas to monitor the movements of Tibetans," the source said, while explaining current situation in Lithang.
Another reliable source told TPI in August 2025, "the new Chinese police officers who had arrived in the Lithang area were acting ruthlessly and intimidating Tibetans for no reason. The new police officers arrested more than 30 Tibetan men from the Mola area in Lithang County and severely beat them in August 2025. The Tibetans could do nothing against these armed police officers. Later, they said that the reason was that the new Chinese police officers needed to practice beating people, so they arrested Tibetans and practiced on them on the spot without giving any reason." This is how the Chinese armed forces intimidate and harass Tibetans in Tibet, and hence Tibetans living in Tibet are like prisoners in an open-air prison.
China-Tibet: The one-thing you need to know:
Over the past 70 decades, there has been ongoing political repression, social discrimination, economic marginalization, environmental destruction, and cultural assimilation, particularly due to Chinese migration to Tibet which is fueling intense resentment among the people of occupied Tibet.
The communist-totalitarian state of China began its invasion of Tibet in 1949, reaching complete occupation of the country in 1959. Since that time, more than 1.2 million people, 20% of the nation's population of six million, have died as a direct result of China's invasion and occupation. In addition, over 99% of Tibet's six thousand religious monasteries, temples, and shrines, have been looted or decimated resulting in the destruction of hundreds of thousands of sacred Buddhist scriptures.
Until 1949, Tibet was an independent Buddhist nation in the Himalayas which had little contact with the rest of the world. It existed as a rich cultural storehouse of the Mahayana and Vajrayana teachings of Buddhism. Religion was a unifying theme among the Tibetans -- as was their own language, literature, art, and world view developed by living at high altitudes, under harsh conditions, in a balance with their environment.
