The floods and landslides devastating communities in Tibet and Nepal are a natural disaster. The information vacuum inside Tibet is not.
Hundreds of people remain missing. Families are desperately searching for loved ones. Americans are among the foreign nationals reported unaccounted for. Roads, communications, and power have been cut, while rescue teams race to reach communities across some of the most difficult terrain in the world.
But on the Tibetan side of this disaster, there is another obstacle: the Chinese Communist Party’s longstanding restrictions on access and information.
For years, Beijing has tightly controlled access to Tibet for foreign journalists, diplomats, researchers, and independent organizations. In ordinary times, these restrictions keep the world from seeing Tibet. In a disaster, they can keep the world from understanding what Tibetans need, and potentially from helping them.
That is why Beijing should open affected Tibetan areas to the outside world.
