Exile Group Says 30 Killed in Tibet
Audra Ang - The Associated Press
Beijing - China ordered tourists out of Tibet's capital Saturday while troops on foot and in armored vehicles patrolled the streets and confined government workers to their offices, a day after riots that a Tibetan exile group said left at least 30 protesters dead.
The demonstrations against Chinese rule of Tibet are the largest and most violent in the region in nearly two decades. They have spread to other areas of China as well as neighboring Nepal and India.
In the western province of Gansu, police fired tear gas Saturday to disperse Buddhist monks and others staging a second day of protests in sympathy with anti-Chinese demonstrations in Lhasa, local residents said.
The protests led by Buddhist monks began Monday in Tibet on the anniversary of a failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule. They turned violent on Friday when demonstrators burned cars and shops. Witnesses said they heard gunshots on Friday and more shooting on Saturday night.
The eruption of violence comes just two weeks before China's Olympic celebrations kick off with the start of the torch relay, which passes through Tibet. China is gambling that its crackdown will not bring an international outcry over human rights violations that could lead to boycotts of the Olympics.
Beijing's hosting of the Olympics in August has already brought scrutiny of China's human rights record and its pollution problems.
But so far, the international community has reacted to the crackdown in Tibet only by calling for Chinese restraint without any threats of an Olympic boycott or other sanctions.
China's official Xinhua News Agency reported at least 10 were killed Friday when demonstrators rampaged in Lhasa, setting fire to shops and cars.
"The victims are all innocent civilians, and they have been burnt to death," Xinhua quoted an official with the regional government as saying.
The Dalai Lama's exiled Tibetan government in India said it had confirmed Chinese authorities killed at least 30 Tibetan protesters but added the toll could be as high as 100. There was no confirmation of the death toll from Chinese officials and the numbers could not be independently verified.
China maintains rigid control over Tibet, foreigners need special travel permits to get there and journalists rarely get access except under highly controlled circumstances.
Streets in Lhasa were mostly empty Saturday as a curfew remained in place, witnesses said.
China's governor in Tibet vowed to punish the rioters, while law enforcement authorities urged protesters to turn themselves in by Tuesday or face unspecified punishment
Tourists reached by phone or those who arrived Saturday in Nepal described soldiers standing in lines sealing off streets where there was rioting on Friday. Armored vehicles and trucks ferrying soldiers were seen on the streets.
"There are military blockades blocking off whole portions of the city, and the entire city is basically closed down," said a 23-year-old Western student who arrived in Lhasa on Saturday. "All the restaurants are closed, all the hotels are closed."
Plooij Frans, a Dutch tourist who left the capital Saturday morning by plane and arrived in the Nepali capital of Katmandu, said he saw about 140 trucks of soldiers drive into the city within 24 hours.
"They came down on Tibetan people really hard," said Frans, who said his group could not return to their hotel Friday and had to stay near the airport. "Every corner there were tanks. It would have been impossible to hold any protest today."
Government workers in Lhasa said Chinese authorities have been prevented from leaving their buildings.
"We've been here since yesterday. No one has been allowed to leave or come in," said a woman who works for Lhasa's Work Safety Bureau, located near the Potala Palace, the former residence of the Dalai Lama. "Armored vehicles have been driving past," she said. "Men wearing camouflage uniforms and holding batons are patrolling the streets."
Tourists were told to stay in their hotels and make plans to leave, but government staff were required to work.
Some shops were closed, said a woman who answered the telephone at the Lhasa Hotel.
"There's no conflict today. The streets look pretty quiet," said the woman who refused to give her name for fear of retribution.
Xinhua reported Saturday that Lhasa was calm, with little traffic on the roads.
"Burned cars, motorcycles and bicycles remained scattered on the main streets, and the air is tinged with smoke," the report said.
In the western Chinese province of Gansu, several hundred monks marched out of historic Labrang monastery and into the town of Xiahe in the morning, gathering hundreds of other Tibetans with them as they went, residents said.
The crowd attacked government buildings, smashing windows in the county police headquarters, before police fired tear gas to put an end to the protest, residents said. A London-based Tibetan activist group, Free Tibet Campaign, said 20 people were arrested, citing unidentified sources in Xiahe.
"Many windows in shops and houses were smashed," said an employee at a hotel, who did not want either his or the hotel's name used for fear of retaliation. He said he did not see any Tibetans arrested or injured but said some police were hurt.
Pockets of dissent were also springing up outside China.
In Australia, media reported that police used batons and pepper spray to quell a demonstration outside the Chinese consulate in Sydney. The Australian Associated Press reported that dozens of demonstrators were at the scene and five were arrested.
Dozens of protesters in India launched a new march just days after more than 100 Tibetan exiles were arrested by authorities during a similar rally.
And in Katmandu, police broke up a protest by Tibetans and arrested 20.
On the Web:
International Campaign for Tibet: http://www.savetibet.org
Chinese official news agency: http://www.chinaview.cn/
Associated Press writers Anita Chang in Beijing, Ashwini Bhatia in Dehra, India, and Binaj Gurubacharya in Katmandu, Nepal, contributed to this story.
Chinese Forces Say They've Secured Tibet's Capital
By Jim Yardley
The New York Times
Saturday 15 March 2008
Beijing - Thousands of Buddhist monks and other Tibetans clashed with the riot police in a second Chinese city on Saturday, while the authorities said they had regained control of the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, a day after a rampaging mob ransacked shops and set fire to cars and storefronts in a deadly riot.
Conflicting reports emerged about the violence in Lhasa on Friday. The Chinese authorities denied that they had fired on protesters there, but Tibetan leaders in India told news agencies on Saturday that they had confirmed that 30 Tibetans had died and that they had unconfirmed reports that put the number at more than 100.
Demonstrations erupted for the second consecutive day in the city of Xiahe in Gansu Province, where an estimated 4,000 Tibetans gathered near the Labrang Monastery. Local monks had held a smaller protest on Friday, but the confrontation escalated Saturday afternoon, according to witnesses and Tibetans in India who spoke with protesters by telephone.
Residents in Xiahe, reached by telephone, heard loud noises similar to gunshots or explosions. A waitress described the scene as "chaos" and said many injured people had been sent to a local hospital. Large numbers of military police and security officers fired tear gas while Tibetans hurled rocks, according to the Tibetans in India.
"Their slogans were, 'The Dalai Lama must return to Tibet' and 'Tibetans need to have human rights in Tibet,' " said Jamyang, a Tibetan in Dharamsala, India, the seat of the Tibetan government in exile, who spoke to protesters.
The violence in Lhasa and Xiahe has created a major political and public relations challenge for the ruling Communist Party as Beijing prepares to play host to the Olympic Games in August. The demonstrations are the largest in Tibet since 1989, when Chinese troops used lethal force to crush an uprising by thousands of Tibetan protesters.
China's response to this week's demonstrations is being watched carefully by the outside world. The European Union and the United States have both called on China to act with restraint. The White House called on China to "respect Tibetan culture" and issued a renewed call for dialogue between Beijing and the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism.
The tumult also undercuts a theme regularly promoted by China's propaganda officials - that Tibetans are a happy minority group, smoothly integrated into the country's broader ethnic fabric.
"What we see right now, what is happening in Tibet, blows the whole propaganda strategy in Tibet wide open," said Lhadon Tethong, an official with the advocacy group Students for a Free Tibet.
On Saturday the Chinese authorities defended their response to the violence in Lhasa. "We fired no gunshots," said Qiangba Puncog, chairman of the Tibet Autonomous Regional Government, according to state media.
But Tibetan advocacy groups and witnesses in Lhasa offered contradictory accounts. The Tibetan government in exile said at least 30 Tibetans died in the protests, according to Agence France-Presse. Witnesses told Radio Free Asia, the nonprofit news agency financed by the United States government, that numerous Tibetans were dead. A 13-year-old Tibetan boy, reached by telephone, said he watched the violence from his apartment and saw four or five Tibetans fall to the ground after military police officers fired upon them.
Foreign journalists are being restricted from traveling to Lhasa, and the precise death toll remains unknown. State media reported 10 deaths and characterized most of them as shopkeepers. The government's official news agency, Xinhua, reported that the victims had been "burned to death."
The demonstrations in Lhasa began Monday and continued through Wednesday as peaceful protests by Buddhist monks from three different monasteries. Some monks protested against religious restrictions while others demanded an end to Chinese rule and even waved the Tibetan flag. The police arrested scores of monks and then reportedly tightened security around the three monasteries so that monks could not leave.
Initially, the protests were largely ignored in the Chinese media, which was providing blanket coverage of the annual meeting of the National People's Congress, the Communist Party-controlled national legislature. When reports of violent riots began trickling out of Lhasa on Friday afternoon, the Chinese media was silent.
But with growing international concern about the protests, and reports that Chinese security forces had attacked monks, the Xinhua news agency issued a short statement blaming rioters for the violence. By Saturday morning, China's state television network, CCTV, was broadcasting video of Tibetans burning buildings as anchors read directly from a Xinhua report that blamed the Dalai Lama for the violence.
Chinese officials demanded the surrender of the "lawbreakers" in Lhasa and offered leniency to people who turned themselves into the authorities by midnight Monday. Senior officials described the unrest as "sabotage" orchestrated by the Dalai Lama and credited the military police for rescuing 580 people from banks, schools and hospitals that were set afire by rioters.
Gen. Yang Deqing of the People's Liberation Army said Chinese soldiers would not be deployed and the protests were being handled by local police officers and the country's paramilitary force, the People's Armed Police.
"We'll let the police and the military police handle the disturbance," General Yang said at the National People's Congress, where he was a delegate. "We won't be involved."
Witnesses in Lhasa on Saturday reported seeing large numbers of military police, armored vehicles and, according to a few reports, tanks.
Several residents, reached by telephone, said that an uneasy calm had settled over the city. Tibetans living in the suburbs said officers were blocking people from entering the city center. Local television broadcast instructions. Power and telephone service, suspended in some neighborhoods on Friday, were being restored on Saturday. Traffic was light on city streets, while most shops were closed.
"It is all under control now," said one resident, who identified himself as Mr. Liu and who lives near the old part of the city where the violence started. "We were notified to stay at home last night."
It is still uncertain what set off Friday's unrest. Tibetan advocates say ordinary Tibetans began rioting after military police officers attacked monks trying to protest outside a monastery in the center of the city.
The extent of the violence was evident in photographs and video shown on the Internet: fires raging from rooftops and from charred vehicles, shattered storefronts and huge crowds trolling city streets.
News agencies reported that foreign tourists are now being prohibited from entering Tibet. The United States Embassy in Beijing issued a new warning on Saturday advising American citizens about danger in Lhasa and other regions.
Huang Yuanxi and Zhang Jing contributed research from Beijing.
www.truthout.org/docs_2006/031508A.shtml