http://www.savetibet.org/news/newsitem.php?id=1264
BEIJING, March 29 -- A melee erupted in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa
on Saturday afternoon in the midst of hundreds of armed police who
have been out in force since deadly rioting rocked the city two weeks
ago.
The incident occurred as a 15-member delegation of foreign diplomats
was leaving after a tightly scripted two-day tour arranged by the
Chinese government to show that the city was back under control. The
diplomats, including officials from the U.S., Japanese and Australian
embassies, apparently did not witness it.
Although details were sketchy, re****ts indicated that armed police
began massing shortly before 2 p.m. to check the identity papers of
people in the area where the March 14 riot started, and Tibetans began
running away rather than risk arrest. Security forces surrounded
residential areas near the Ramoche and Jokhang temples while several
hundred Tibetans staged a rally, Radio Free Asia re****ted, citing
unnamed witnesses in Lhasa.
A Lhasa resident who spoke on condition of anonymity said a friend of
hers had been shopping at a government store in the area when someone
ran in about 2 p.m. saying another riot had begun. The store manager
closed the shop doors, fearing a repeat of the chaos and violence of
the March 14 riot, which left at least 19 people dead. But the manager
was forced to reopen the doors when shoppers and employees demanded to
leave. In the earlier riot, five employees huddling on the second
floor of a clothing shop were burned alive when their store went up in
flames.
The woman ran out to the street but could not get a taxi or bus to
stop. "Everybody was in a panic," her friend said she told her.
The cellphone signal in the area had apparently been cut off, so the
woman ran for nearly an hour to reach her home. She told her friend
that she did not see a protest and that the streets were empty.
The Lhasa municipal police sent a text message to residents'
cellphones Saturday evening telling them, "Currently the social order
in our city is nothing abnormal." The message said that the security
department was carrying out identity checks and that the procedures
"caused some frightened citizens whose identification [do***ents] are
not clear to run away," according to a translation provided by the
International Campaign for Tibet. Citizens were also told not to
listen to or spread "wild rumors." The same message was broadcast on
the local evening news.
Chinese officials in Lhasa and Beijing could not be reached for
immediate comment. Tibetan groups outside China said they learned
about the melee from their sources in Lhasa.
"The incident certainly shows China has not succeeded in creating
genuine stability," said Kate Saunders, spokeswoman for the Wa****ngton-
based International Campaign for Tibet. "The situation is still
volatile."
Matt Whitticase, a spokesman for the London-based Free Tibet Campaign,
said: "We understand that according to an eyewitness, it involved
hundreds of Tibetans. It was very quickly put down because there was a
heavy police presence in the area. It was a peaceful protest."
The government-in-exile of the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai
Lama, issued a statement from its base in Dharmsala, India, calling
the demonstration "massive." "Thousands joined into the protests
within no time," it said. "These protests are happening after many
days of intense suppression."
Thousands of police poured into Lhasa after the March 14 rioting, the
worst outbreak of violence there in nearly two decades.
The turmoil began March 10 when police broke up a protest led by monks
against Chinese rule in the remote Himalayan region. The monks were
marking the anniversary of a failed 1959 uprising against Chinese
communist rule, led by the Dalai Lama, who was forced to flee. A
larger protest the following day was also put down by police, who then
confined the monks to their monasteries.
The Chinese government blames the March 14 violence on forces allied
with the Dalai Lama, who denies responsibility. The Chinese have
condemned re****ts that they used excessive force against peaceful
protesters, saying that the 19 deaths were caused by the rioters. The
government said Saturday that the families of those killed will each
receive $28,500.
Police have detained more than 414 people, and 289 turned themselves
in for participating in the riot, according to Champa Phuntsok,
chairman of the Tibet Autonomous Region. Of those, 111 have been
released, he told visiting diplomats Friday night, according to the
official New China News Agency.
Lhasa's public security bureau has also issued a most-wanted list of
53 suspects, posting their images on Web sites and on TV. Champa
Phuntsok said six of the 53 had turned themselves in and four had been
arrested.
After March 14, no foreign journalists were permitted to enter the
region until the past week, when the Chinese government picked 26
foreign and Chinese journalists to tour Lhasa. During one unscripted
moment, about 30 monks, weeping and shouting, burst into a briefing
room and told the journalists that the government was lying and that
they had no religious freedoms in Tibet.
The U.S. Embassy issued a statement about the foreign diplomats' trip
to Lhasa that made no mention of a new protest. "The trip was heavily
scheduled, and neither the U.S. nor other participants were able to
deviate from the official itinerary," it read.
The U.S. official who participated in the trip, whom the statement did
not name, urged the Chinese to allow journalists and diplomats free
access to Lhasa and other Tibetan areas that have experienced
protests. The statement called the trip a step in the right direction.
Meanwhile, police in neighboring Sichuan province re****ted Saturday
that they had seized guns, explosives and knives at a monastery in Aba
county, the site of a violent March 16 protest, the New China News
Agency re****ted. In the bedrooms of some monks, police re****tedly
found "Tibet independence" banners and flags of the Tibetan government-
in-exile.
Researcher Liu Song Jie contributed to this re****t.
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