The Chinese Saga of Olympic Shame Deepens -- Tibetan riots spread
outside region
International Herald Tribune
Tibetan riots spread outside region
The Associated Press
Sunday, March 16, 2008
BEIJING: Violence spilled over from Tibet into neighboring provinces
Sunday as Tibetans defied a Chinese government crackdown and the Dalai
Lama warned that the area faced "cultural genocide" and appealed to the
world for help.
The violent protests brought more negative publicity for China, which
will play host to the Olympics Games in Beijing in August.
Demonstrations were re****ted in Sichuan, Qinghai and Gansu Provinces.
All are home to Tibetan populations.
The demonstrations followed five days of protests in Lhasa, the capital
of Tibet, that escalated into violence Friday, with Buddhist monks and
others burning police cars and shops in the fiercest challenge to
Beijing's rule in nearly two decades.
"Whether intentionally or unintentionally, some kind of cultural
genocide is taking place," the Dalai Lama said at a news conference in
India, referring to Beijing's policy of encouraging China's ethnic Han
majority to migrate to the region, as well as restrictions on Buddhist
temples and re-education programs for monks.
He said in Dharmsala, the north Indian town where Tibet's self-declared
government in exile is based, that an international body should
investigate the government's crackdown on the protests in Lhasa.
In a later interview with the BBC, the Dalai Lama said he feared the
situation could easily worsen. "It's possible, it's very possible," he
said. "It's really desperate. Things become tense as the Tibetan side is
determined, the Chinese side also equally determined. So that means the
result is killing, most often."
Thubten Samphel, a spokesman for the Dalai Lama's government, said
several witnesses inside Tibet had counted at least 80 bodies since the
violence broke out Friday. He did not know how many of the bodies were
protesters. Xinhua, China's state-run press agency, has said at least 10
civilians were burned to death Friday. The figures could not be
independently verified because China restricts foreign access to Tibet.
Tibet is one of several potential flash points for the ruling Communist
Party at a time of heightened attention on China. The government is
concerned about the effect of inflation and wealth gaps on social
stability after years of breakneck economic growth, and this month it
said it had foiled two terrorist plots prepared by the largely Muslim
Uighur minority in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, including an
attempt to disrupt the Olympics.
The Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy said at least seven
people had been fatally shot in Aba County in Sichuan Province. There
was no way of immediately confirming the claim.
Hong Kong Cable TV said about 200 military vehicles, each carrying
dozens of soldiers, drove into the center of Lhasa on Sunday. The
footage showed streets that were mostly empty except for armored and
military vehicles patrolling and soldiers searching buildings.
Loudspeakers on the streets repeatedly broadcast slogans urging
residents to "discern between enemies and friends, maintain order."
Xinhua said most shops in Lhasa's Old Town, where the worst of the
violence took place, were still closed Sunday. It said some shops in
other parts of the town had reopened.
Residents of Lhasa contacted by telephone earlier said they were too
scared to leave their homes because of the security clampdown.
"We don't dare go out, not for anything. There's too much trouble," one
woman said.
A woman in contact with a business executive in Lhasa said the streets
were teeming with armed police officers in riot gear Sunday after word
of renewed clashes overnight, when Hui Muslim Chinese attacked Tibetans
in revenge for wrecked homes and property.
"The Tibetans were starting to fight back, but then the troops stepped
in and restored order," she said. The re****t of fresh fighting also
could not be verified.
An American tourist, Chelsea Hockett, 19, who arrived from Chengdu on a
flight from Lhasa, told Reuters that there had been "a lot of shooting."
"No one can leave the hotels," she said. "It was really bad."
In Qinghai Province, 100 monks defied a directive confining them to
Rongwo Monastery in Tongren by climbing a hill behind the monastery,
where they set off fireworks and burned incense.
In Gansu Province, more than 100 students protested at a university in
Lanzhou, said Matt Whitticase of the activist group Free Tibet.
Witnesses said a curfew was imposed in Xiahe City in the province
Sunday, a day after the police fired tear gas at 1,000 protesters,
including Buddhist monks and ordinary citizens who had marched from the
historic Labrang Monastery.
India called for dialogue and an end to the violence. Home to the Dalai
Lama, 72, who fled over the Himalayas into exile after a failed uprising
in 1959, India is dealing carefully with its giant neighbor, with which
it is expanding diplomatic and trade ties after decades of rivalry,
including a brief war in 1962.
Large communities of ethnic Tibetans live far outside modern Tibet in
areas that were the Himalayan region's eastern and northeastern
provinces of Amdo and Kham until the Communist takeover in 1951. Those
areas were later split off by Beijing to become the Chinese province of
Qinghai and part of Sichuan Province.
The violence Friday erupted just two weeks before China's Olympic
celebrations kick off with the start of the torch relay, which will pass
through Tibet.
The government hopes that by holding the Olympics, its popularity at
home and its image abroad will improve. But the event has attracted
scrutiny of China's human rights record and its pollution problems.
International criticism of the crackdown in Tibet has so far been mild,
with no threats of an Olympic boycott or other sanctions.
In Paris, however, police used tear gas to repel hundreds of pro-Tibet
protesters gathered outside the Chinese Embassy. One protester managed
to climb the front of the embassy building and take down the red Chinese
flag that hangs there. The man tried to hang a Tibetan flag in its
place, but a police officer prevented him from doing so by snapping the
flag pole.
The unrest in Tibet began March 10, the anniversary of the 1959 uprising
against Chinese rule.
Tibet was effectively independent for decades before Communist troops
entered in 1950.
The protests by Buddhist monks spiraled to include cries for Tibet's
independence and turned violent when the police intervened. Pent-up
grievances against Chinese rule came to the fore as Tibetans directed
their anger against Chinese and their shops, hotels and other
businesses. Security officials, speaking on the sidelines of China's
annual session of Parliament in Beijing, defended the Tibet crackdown
and said there was no cause for alarm.
The Dalai Lama said Sunday that he would not instruct his followers
inside Tibet to surrender before the Chinese authorities, and described
feeling "helpless" in preventing what he feared could be an imminent
bloodbath.
"I do feel helpless," he said at the emotionally charged news conference
in what has served as the headquarters of the Tibetan government in
exile for nearly 40 years. "I feel very sad, very serious, very anxious.
Cannot do anything."
His aides said they believed that 80 people had been killed on March 13
and 14 in and around the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, including 26 just
outside a prison called Drapchi. Tibetan exiles in India said they had
also received news that at least two Buddhist monks had set themselves
on fire as acts of protest; that claim could not be independently
confirmed.
The Dalai Lama called for an independent international inquiry into the
latest violence. He endorsed the right to peaceful protest, called
violence an "act of suicide" and accused Beijing of carrying out "a rule
of terror."
Asked if he could stop Tibetan protesters from flouting Beijing's
deadline to surrender by midnight Monday, the Dalai Lama replied
swiftly: "I have no such power." He added, "Now we really need miracle
power," and then laughed, starkly. "But miracle seems unrealistic."
International Herald Tribune
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