China on Friday named as its new Tibet governor a military veteran who vowed to ensure stability in the Himalayan region, two years after massive unrest prompted a huge security crackdown. Padma Choling, 58, an ethnic Tibetan and a 17-year veteran of the People's Liberation Army, was promoted to replace Qiangba Puncog, who stepped down earlier in the week, Xinhua news agency reported.
Qiangba Puncog - the public face of the government crackdown on ethnic separatism in the region, which began following anti-China riots in Lhasa in March 2008 - was named head of the regional parliament, the agency said. "Stability is of overwhelming importance," Xinhua quoted Padma Choling as saying while accepting his new position.
"We will firmly oppose all attempts at secession, safeguard national unification and security, and maintain unity among different ethnic groups in Tibet." Padma Choling was earlier this month named deputy secretary of Tibet's Communist Party, the second-highest post in the region.
"Appointing a former military officer as the figurehead leader of Tibet... suggests that China now sees Tibet as a problem of military control," Robbie Barnett, a noted Tibetan scholar at Columbia University, told AFP in an email. China said 21 people were killed by "rioters" in 2008 and that security forces killed only one "insurgent".
But the Tibetan government-in-exile, headed by the Dalai Lama, claimed that more than 200 people were killed and some 1,000 hurt in the unrest and subsequent crackdown. At least 5,700 people were arrested during the period, the government has said, with many Buddhist monks given long prison terms.
Barnett said troop levels remained heavy in Lhasa's old Tibetan quarter, 21 months after the riots. Chinese troops invaded Tibet in 1950 and officially annexed the region a year later. The Dalai Lama, who fled his homeland following the 1959 uprising, has repeatedly accused Beijing of widespread rights violations there.