100 arrests after Lhasa is brought back under control
· Thousands of troops re****ted searching city house to house
· In clashes elsewhere, horseback raid on government offices
" Jonathan Watts in Chengdu and Tania Branigan in Beijing
" The Guardian,
" Wednesday March 19 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/19/tibet.china
The Tibetan regional government claimed this morning that more than
one hundred rioters had surrendered to police, as China sought to
underscore its control of the restive region.
The government promised "leniency" for anyone who handed themselves in
before midnight on Monday, and warned that others would be treated
harshly. But it made no comment on the result of the ultimatum until
early this morning, when it said 105 offenders had handed themselves
in.
The announcement followed re****ts from witnesses in Lhasa of
door-to-door searches and arrests by paramilitary police, and is the
first acknowledgement by the authorities that protesters are held in
custody.
Sophie Richardson of Human Rights Watch, based in New York, said it
was not clear if those in custody had surrendered voluntarily. She
said: "Claims of leniency are hard to believe, given what we know of
the treatment in custody of people previously - particularly anyone
who has challenged the government publicly. The greater problem is
that there is no way to verify what the government is saying."
Earlier, China's prime minister, Wen Jiabao, accused Tibetan
protesters of trying to sabotage the Olympic games, as western
journalists re****ted seeing horsemen lead a bloody attack on
government offices in another turbulent province.
Against a background of rising ethnic tension, in some cities as well
as in the countryside, Wen blamed the Dalai Lama "clique" for
masterminding the riots, which went through Lhasa on Friday and have
since spread to at least three provinces neighbouring Tibet.
"By staging that incident they want to undermine the Beijing Olympic
games, and they also try to serve their hidden agenda," the premier
said at his annual press conference.
Riot police are spread across swaths of Tibet, Sichuan, Gansu and
Qinghai trying to quell the unrest, which comes fewer than six months
before the opening ceremony and weeks before the Olympic torch relay
is due to pass through the Himalayas.
Re****ts of fresh uprisings continue to emerge. Although more than 30
foreign journalists have been turned away or detained to prevent them
reaching areas of unrest, two Canadian TV re****ters sneaked past 10
police roadblocks to film a riot yesterday near Hezuo in Gansu.
Dozens of Tibetan horsemen galloped down from the mountain slopes to
lead the protest, according to Steve Chao and Sean Chang of CTV News.
The horsemen rode around Bora monastery, whipping up a crowd, with
chants of "Free Tibet" and "End Oppression".
Monks and motorbike riders joined the throng, which, more than a
thousand strong, attempted to storm the government office. They ripped
up a Chinese flag and replaced it with a Tibetan flag, before cla****ng
with paramilitary police, who repelled them with batons, ****elds and
teargas.
"I personally saw one person bleeding from a gash in the head, and
what looked like a broken forearm," said Chao, who re****ted 70
trucksof armed riot police moving in as he left.
The death toll remains uncertain. The government says 16 people,
mostly civilians, have been killed by rioters. Tibetan exile groups
say more than 80 Tibetans have been shot or beaten to death by
paramilitary police. Neither side has provided evidence, though the
Free Tibet campaign has distributed photographs of what it claims are
some of the dead. None of the claims has been independently verified.
Lhasa is now patrolled by thousands of armed police. "This is
effectively martial law," said James Miles, a correspondent with the
Economist who has been in the city for the past week. "Although the
government says there are no troops here, I bet my bottom dollar that
is what they are. Some are in military vehicles with the licence
plates obscured or taken off ... There are thousands of them. They're
absolutely everywhere. It is reminiscent of the level of security in
the aftermath of Tiananmen in 1989."
Residents said the city was quiet compared with the violence of last
week, although a dozen monks in Dinka monastery, outside the city,
staged a small protest, according to the Tibetan Centre for Human
Rights and Democracy.
The unrest appears to be spreading, albeit on a smaller scale, to
urban centres. In Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province, riot police
moved into the city's Tibetan district after a stabbing re****ted to be
ethnically motivated.
Last night there were public security cars on every intersection, a
hundred riot police around Wuho Temple, and busloads of reinforcements
in side roads.
"I saw a Tibetan man running away with a bloody knife in his hand. I
saw a Chinese man on his bike, bleeding with a wound," said a chef,
who gave his name as Wang. "Relations are normally pretty good between
the Tibetans and the Chinese here, but now ... I am worried about the
stability of my country."
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