Last update - 00:00 16/03/2008
China cracks down on Tibetan protests; at least 100 people killed in Tibet capital
By News Agencies
BEIJING - Chinese security forces swarmed Tibet's capital yesterday and tourists were ordered out as Beijing gambled that a crackdown on violent protests against Chinese rule will not bring an international boycott of this summer's Olympics.
The tough response by the Chinese authorities came after fierce protests on Friday which contradicted China's claims of stability and tarnished a carefully nurtured image of national harmony as it readies to stage the Olympic Games in August.
Official Tibetan judicial authorities gave protesters until Monday night to turn themselves in and benefit from leniency.
"Criminals who do not surrender themselves by the deadline will be sternly punished according to the law," said a notice on the Tibetan government Web site
International pressure mounted on Beijing to show restraint. Australia, the United States and Europe urged China to find a peaceful outcome, while Taiwan, which China claims as its own, predictably condemned Beijing for launching a crackdown.
Xinhua news agency said 10 "innocent civilians" had been shot or burned to death in the street clashes in the remote, mountain capital which has been sealed off. The dead included two people killed by shotguns.
Xinhua said 12 police officers had been "gravely injured" and 22 buildings and dozens of vehicles were set on fire.
A source close to the Tibetan government-in-exile, however, questioned the official death toll of 10. He said at least five Tibetan protesters had been shot dead by troops.
The Tibetan government in exile, based in northern India, said tThere have been 30 confirmed deaths until Saturday, and over 100 unconfirmed deaths."
The riots 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.
The protests, the worst since 1989 in the disputed region, have thrust China's role as Olympic host and its policy toward Tibet back into the international spotlight.
A rash of angry blog posts appeared after the deaths were confirmed. Hollywood actor Richard Gere, a Buddhist and an activist for Tibetan causes, urged an Olympics boycott.
International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge opposed a boycott, saying only the athletes would suffer.
Accounts from the remote region were fragmentary and China restricts access for foreign media, making it difficult to independently verify the casualties and the scale of the protests and suppression.
Yet the details emerging from witness accounts and government statements suggested Beijing was preparing a methodical campaign - one that if carefully modulated would minimize bloodshed and avoid wrecking Beijing's grand plans for the Olympics in August.
Signs of violence persisted yesterday. Several witnesses reported hearing occasional sounds of gunfire. One Westerner who went to a rooftop in Lhasa's old city said he saw troops with automatic rifles moving through the streets firing, though did not see anyone shot.
Even as Chinese forces appeared to reassert control in Lhasa, a second day of sympathy protests erupted in an important Tibetan town 1,200 kilometers away. Police fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of Buddhist monks and other Tibetans after they marched from the historic Labrang monastery and smashed windows in the county police headquarters in Xiahe, witnesses said.
The China-installed governor of Tibet, besieged by reporters as he entered a legislative meeting in Beijing, vowed to deal harshly with the protesters in Lhasa, but said no shots had been fired and promised that calm will be restored very soon.
"Beating, smashing, looting and burning - we absolutely condemn this sort of behavior," said Champa Phuntsok, an ethnic Tibetan.
He blamed the protests on followers of the Dalai Lama, who fled into exile in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule and is still Tibet's widely revered spiritual leader.
From Dharamsala, India, the Dalai Lama appealed to China not to use force. He said he was deeply concerned and urged Tibetans not to resort to violence.
Preparing the Chinese public for tough measures, state-run television on the evening newscast showed footage of red-robed monks battering bus signs and Tibetans in street clothes hurling rocks and smashing shop windows as smoke billowed across Lhasa.
"The plot by an extremely small number of people to damage Tibet's stability and harmony is unpopular and doomed to failure," a narrator said as the footage played.
Chinese newspapers and Internet sites, all state-controlled, ran no reports on the violence except a brief Xinhua statement vowing to reassert order - a further sign the government was managing public expectations.
Foreign tourists in Lhasa were told to leave, a hotel manager and travel guide said, with the guide adding that some were turned back at the airport.
Tibet's latest unrest began Monday, the anniversary of the 1959 uprising, with protests by Buddhist monks demanding the release of other detained monks. Sporadic, largely peaceful protests and spiraling demands - including cries for Tibet's independence - continued throughout the week until Friday when police tried to stop a group of protesting monks.