China says seven killed in Tibet
by Dan Martin
Fri Mar 14, 11:21 PM ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080315/ts_afp/chinaunresttibetrights_080315032143
BEIJING, March 15, 2008 (AFP) - China warned Saturday it would use a
firm hand to quash the biggest protests in Tibet for decades,
acknowledging seven people had been killed in unrest there just months
before the Olympic Games.
Witnesses said tanks were in the streets of the Tibetan capital Lhasa
as part of a heavy security clampdown after violent riots erupted on
Friday following days of protests against China's controversial rule
in the region.
China's top official in Tibet, a vast region formally annexed by the
country in 1951, said the protests were part of a "separatist"
movement that authorities would not allow to succeed.
"The plot of the separatists will fail. We will challenge them firmly,
according to law," the chairman of the Tibet government, Qiangba
Puncog, told re****ters in Beijing on the sidelines of China's annual
parliamentary session.
"This is very clear: This is a separatist Dalai Lama clique, inside
and outside the country."
The Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader, called on China to "stop
using force" and rejected allegations that he and his government-in-
exile in neighbouring India were behind the uprising in Lhasa.
"These protests are a manifestation of the deep-rooted resentment of
the Tibetan people," he said. "Unity and stability under brute force
is at best a tem****ary solution."
China's official Xinhua news agency re****ted that Lhasa was calm on
Saturday morning but acknowledged there had been "windows smashed,
shops robbed, and a mosque burnt down."
It said seven people were killed in the rioting, most of them were
business people and none were foreigners.
Earlier Xinhua said many police officers had been badly injured in
clashes and that rioters had wielded "backpacks filled with stones and
bottles of inflammable liquids, some holding iron bars, wooden sticks
and long knives."
An official in the city's medical emergency centre said several people
were killed in Friday's unrest and that many others were injured.
Radio Free Asia re****ted at least two people had been killed by
Chinese bullets.
A Chinese resident of Lhasa, speaking to AFP by phone who declined to
let his name be used, said there were tanks and armoured personnel
carriers in the streets on Saturday morning.
"There are many armed police, special police and People's Liberation
Army soldiers everywhere," he said.
Tibet, a mountainous region is more than twice the size of France, has
been a flashpoint issue for China's Communist leader****p ever since it
came to power in 1949.
Communist forces were sent into Tibet in 1950 to "liberate" the
region, with its official rule beginning a year later.
Tibet has taken on greater im****tance in the run-up to the Olympics in
August, which the country's leaders hope will be a chance to show off
China's rapid transformation into a modern economic power to the rest
of the world.
Tibetan rights groups have vowed to pile intense pressure on China
over its rule of the region ahead of the Games, and any perceived
rights abuses now would prove unwelcome news for the Chinese
leader****p.
Chinese censors blacked out Western media re****ts about the
developments in Tibet on Chinese television on Friday, and independent
verification of the news from the region has been difficult to
verify.
But even official Chinese accounts have indicated the protests began
Monday, when Tibetans around the world marked the anniversary of a
1959 uprising that was put down with force and led the Dalai Lama to
flee into exile.
Those protests, re****tedly begun by Buddhist monks, grew in the
following days before erupting into anti-Chinese rioting on Friday.
Chinese-owned shops, offices and restaurants were smashed and burned
by demonstrators.
The unrest also spread outside Lhasa, with monks leading a rally of up
to 4,000 people in Xiahe, Gansu province, the site of one of Tibetan
Buddhism's most im****tant monasteries, said the Free Tibet Campaign,
an activist group.
The United States, Britain and other European countries expressed
concern over the violence, with the White House calling on Beijing to
"respect Tibetan culture."
China has come under repeated international criticism over its human
rights record and its treatment of minorities, not only in Tibet but
also in the western Muslim region of Xinjiang.
Rights groups allege that Beijing encourages ethnic Chinese to move
into Tibet to culturally take over the region, a process made much
easier by the government opening a new rail line to Tibet in 2006.
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