Death Toll Mounts in Tibetian Protests

[Lux]

Chris Buckley and Benjamin Kang Lim, Beijing
March 16, 2008

THE Tibetan capital, Lhasa, has been rocked by the fiercest pro-independence protests in two decades, scarring China's image months before the Olympics.

Chinese armoured vehicles patrolled the city yesterday as protests continued after at least 30 people were killed when anti-Chinese protests turned violent.

Tibet's Government-in-exile said it had confirmed that 30 people had died.

"This information is based on calls from Tibetans to the outside world," Thubten Samphel, a spokesman for the Government-in-exile, said from his office in India late last night.

The Government-in-exile had also received "unconfirmed reports" of as many as 100 deaths.

A witness told Radio Free Asia's Tibet service that Chinese armoured vehicles "were shooting into the crowds". Residents said Lhasa was under martial law, with protests breaking out in other provinces.

A source close to the Tibetan exile administration in India said at least five protesters were shot dead by troops, and other groups supporting Tibetan independence said many more may have died.

Protests were continuing yesterday, with reports of tear gas being fired into a crowd.

The chaos is the latest, and most violent, confrontation in a series of protests that began last Monday and represents a major challenge to the ruling Communist Party as it prepares to host the Olympic Games in August.

The Olympic torch is due to arrive in Lhasa in weeks.

China accused followers of Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, of masterminding the uprising. A spokesman for the Dalai Lama called the Chinese accusations "baseless".

The Dalai Lama called on both sides to avoid violence, appealing to the Chinese leadership to "address the long-simmering resentment of the Tibetan people through dialogue with the Tibetan people".

In Friday's violence Tibetan crowds attacked government offices, burned vehicles and shops and threw stones at police. Rioters burned police cars and shops owned by Han Chinese, witnesses said. The riots have emerged from a volatile mix of pre-Olympics protests, diplomatic friction over Tibet and local discontent with the harsh ways of the region's Communist Party leadership.

Beijing has already made clear it sees no reason to change its policies in Tibet, where many locals resent the presence of the Han Chinese, China's biggest ethnic group. Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Stephen Smith yesterday urged China to act with restraint and allow for peaceful protests in Tibet.

www.theage.com.au/news/world/death-toll-mounts-in-protests/2008/03/15/1205472159753.html

[hps]

China is a long way from perfect isn't it?

Will this damage the Olympics? It could so easily be used as a political football like our Springbok tour in 1980.

[sparrow]

It sure is a long way from perfect hps. My sympathies are with Tibet and seriously ... I wonder about the Olympics and all the free trade deals countries want to enter into with China. I think it sends the wrong message i.e. the one that says money over-rules human rights.

[hps]

Yep

Even NZ is guilty of it. Money eh?

[Lux]

Tibet Protests Spread to Other Provinces
Associated Press

TONGREN, China (AP) — Protests spread from Tibet into three neighboring
provinces Sunday as Tibetans defied a Chinese government crackdown, while
the Dalai Lama decried what he called the "cultural genocide" taking place
in his homeland.

Demonstrations widened to Tibetan communities in Sichuan, Qinghai and
Gansu provinces, forcing authorities to mobilize security forces across a
broad expanse of western China.

In Tongren, riot police sent to prevent protests set off tensions when
they took up positions outside a monastery. Dozens of monks, defying a
directive not to gather in groups, marched to a hill where they set off
fireworks and burned incense in what one monk said was a protest,
according to an Associated Press reporter at the scene.

In a sign that authorities were preparing for trouble, AP and other
foreign journalists were ordered out of the Tibetan parts of Gansu and
Qinghai provinces by police who told them it was for their "safety."

Meanwhile, police in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, searched buildings as a
Monday deadline loomed for people who took part in a violent anti-Chinese
uprising last week to surrender or face severe punishment.

Speaking from India, the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetans,
called for an international investigation into China's crackdown on
demonstrators in Lhasa, which his exiled government claims left 80 people
dead. China's state media has said 10 civilians were killed.

"Whether intentionally or unintentionally, some kind of cultural genocide
is taking place," the Dalai Lama said, referring to an influx of Chinese
migration into Tibetan areas and restrictions on Buddhist practices —
policies that have generated deep resentment among Tibetans.

Tensions also boiled over outside the county seat of Aba in Sichuan
province when armed police tried to stop Tibetan monks from protesting,
according to a witness who refused to give his name.

The witness said a policeman had been killed and three or four police vans
had been set on fire. Eight bodies were brought to a nearby monastery
while others reported that up to 30 protesters had been shot, according to
activist groups the Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy and the
London-based Free Tibet Campaign. The claims could not be confirmed.

Sunday's demonstrations follow nearly a week of protests in Lhasa that
escalated into violence Friday, with Tibetans attacking Chinese and
torching their shops, in the longest and fiercest challenge to Chinese
rule in nearly two decades.

Complicating Beijing's task, the spreading protests fall two weeks before
China's celebrations for the Beijing Olympics kick off with the start of
the torch relay, which will pass through Tibet.

Though many were small in scale, the widening Tibetan protests are forcing
Beijing to pursue suppression while on the run, from town to town and
province to province across its vast western region. Sunday's lockdown in
Tongren required police imported from other towns, the locals said.

The Chinese government attempted to control what the public saw and heard
about protests that erupted Friday. Access to YouTube.com, usually readily
available in China, was blocked after videos appeared on the site Saturday
showing foreign news reports about the Lhasa demonstrations, montages of
photos, and scenes from Tibet-related protests abroad.

Television news reports by CNN and the BBC were periodically cut during
the day, and the screens went black during a live speech by the Dalai Lama
carried on the networks.

China's communist government had hoped Beijing's hosting of the Aug. 8-24
Olympics would boost its popularity at home as well as its image abroad.
Instead the event already has attracted the scrutiny of China's human
rights record.

Thubten Samphel, a spokesman for the Dalai Lama's government, said
multiple people inside Tibet had counted at least 80 corpses since the
violence broke out Friday. He did not know how many of the bodies were
protesters. The figures could not be independently verified because China
restricts foreign media access to Tibet.

In Lhasa, hundreds of armed police and soldiers patrolled the streets on
Sunday. Hong Kong Cable TV reported some 200 military vehicles, carrying
40 to 60 armed soldiers each, drove into the city center.

Footage showed the streets were mostly empty other than the security
forces. Messages on loudspeakers warned residents to "discern between
enemies and friends, maintain order" and "have a clear stand to oppose
violence, maintain stability."

James Miles, a BBC correspondent in Lhasa, said troops carrying automatic
rifles were "letting off the occasional shot." He said people were scared
to come out of their homes for fear of being hit by a bullet.

Westerners who were told to leave Lhasa and arrived by plane in the city
of Chengdu said they heard gunshots and explosions throughout Saturday and
overnight.

"The worst day was yesterday. It was completely chaotic. There was running
and screaming in the street," said Gerald Scott Flint, director of the
medical aid group Volunteer Medics Worldwide, who had been in Lhasa four
days. Flint said he could see fires burning six or more blocks away.

Tashi Wangdi, president of the Office of Tibet that represents the Dalai
Lama in New York, called the departure of tourists worrisome.

"I think there will be total blackout of information to the outside
world," he said. "Our worry is they will be more brutal and will use more
force now."

The unrest in Tibet began March 10 on the anniversary of a 1959 uprising
against Chinese rule of the region. Tibet was effectively independent for
decades before communist troops entered in 1950.

The Tibetan communities living far outside what China calls modern Tibet
are parts of former provinces of past Tibetan kingdoms, and many
inhabitants still revere the Dalai Lama.

"We want freedom. We want the Dalai Lama to come back to this land," said
a monk from Rongwo in Tongren. The monks display his pictures, though they
have been ordered to remove them.

Inspired by the protests in Lhasa, monks and Tibetans in the town of Xiahe
in Gansu province staged two days of protests, one peaceful in which they
raised Tibetan national flags, the other in which government offices were
smashed and police tear-gassed the crowd of more than 1,000.

Authorities clamped a curfew on Xiahe overnight. Patrols of riot police,
in black uniforms, helmets and flak jackets, and armed police in green
uniforms carrying batons marched through the town Sunday in groups of 10
and 20.

Smaller protests were reported in two other nearby towns, witnesses said,
in both cases drawing truckloads of armed police.

In the Gansu provincial capital of Lanzhou, more than 100 Tibetan students
staged a sit-down protest on a playing field at Northwest Minorities
University, according to the activist group Free Tibet.

16 March 08
ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h5Z6bJwtN_roGSIUQiQnfbf2NkhgD8VEOAD80