Anti-Chinese Uprising in Tibet

Kim Sung · Post by **Kim Sung** » Sat Mar 15, 2008 9:33 am

Exile group says 30 killed in Tibet

By AUDRA ANG, Associated Press Writer

BEIJING - China ordered tourists out of Tibet's capital Saturday while troops on foot and in armored vehicles patrolled the streets and confined government workers to their offices, a day after riots that a Tibetan exile group said left at least 30 protesters dead.

The demonstrations against Chinese rule of Tibet are the largest and most violent in the region in nearly two decades. They have spread to other areas of China as well as neighboring Nepal and India.

In the western province of Gansu, police fired tear gas Saturday to disperse Buddhist monks and others staging a second day of protests in sympathy with anti-Chinese demonstrations in Lhasa, local residents said.

The protests led by Buddhist monks began Monday in Tibet on the anniversary of a failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule. They turned violent on Friday when demonstrators burned cars and shops. Witnesses said they heard gunshots on Friday and more shooting on Saturday night.

The eruption of violence comes just two weeks before China's Olympic celebrations kick off with the start of the torch relay, which passes through Tibet. China is gambling that its crackdown will not bring an international outcry over human rights violations that could lead to boycotts of the Olympics.

Beijing's hosting of the Olympics in August has already brought scrutiny of China's human rights record and its pollution problems.

But so far, the international community has reacted to the crackdown in Tibet only by calling for Chinese restraint without any threats of an Olympic boycott or other sanctions.

China's official Xinhua News Agency reported at least 10 were killed Friday when demonstrators rampaged in Lhasa, setting fire to shops and cars.

"The victims are all innocent civilians, and they have been burnt to death," Xinhua quoted an official with the regional government as saying.

The Dalai Lama's exiled Tibetan government in India said it had confirmed Chinese authorities killed at least 30 Tibetan protesters but added the toll could be as high as 100. There was no confirmation of the death toll from Chinese officials and the numbers could not be independently verified.

China maintains rigid control over Tibet, foreigners need special travel permits to get there and journalists rarely get access except under highly controlled circumstances.

Streets in Lhasa were mostly empty Saturday as a curfew remained in place, witnesses said.

China's governor in Tibet vowed to punish the rioters, while law enforcement authorities urged protesters to turn themselves in by Tuesday or face unspecified punishment

Tourists reached by phone or those who arrived Saturday in Nepal described soldiers standing in lines sealing off streets where there was rioting on Friday. Armored vehicles and trucks ferrying soldiers were seen on the streets.

"There are military blockades blocking off whole portions of the city, and the entire city is basically closed down," said a 23-year-old Western student who arrived in Lhasa on Saturday. "All the restaurants are closed, all the hotels are closed."

Plooij Frans, a Dutch tourist who left the capital Saturday morning by plane and arrived in the Nepali capital of Katmandu, said he saw about 140 trucks of soldiers drive into the city within 24 hours.

"They came down on Tibetan people really hard," said Frans, who said his group could not return to their hotel Friday and had to stay near the airport. "Every corner there were tanks. It would have been impossible to hold any protest today."

Government workers in Lhasa said Chinese authorities have been prevented from leaving their buildings.

"We've been here since yesterday. No one has been allowed to leave or come in," said a woman who works for Lhasa's Work Safety Bureau, located near the Potala Palace, the former residence of the Dalai Lama. "Armored vehicles have been driving past," she said. "Men wearing camouflage uniforms and holding batons are patrolling the streets.

Tourists were told to stay in their hotels and make plans to leave, but government staff were required to work.

Some shops were closed, said a woman who answered the telephone at the Lhasa Hotel.

"There's no conflict today. The streets look pretty quiet," said the woman who refused to give her name for fear of retribution.

Xinhua reported Saturday that Lhasa was calm, with little traffic on the roads.

"Burned cars, motorcycles and bicycles remained scattered on the main streets, and the air is tinged with smoke," the report said.

In the western Chinese province of Gansu, several hundred monks marched out of historic Labrang monastery and into the town of Xiahe in the morning, gathering hundreds of other Tibetans with them as they went, residents said.

The crowd attacked government buildings, smashing windows in the county police headquarters, before police fired tear gas to put an end to the protest, residents said. A London-based Tibetan activist group, Free Tibet Campaign, said 20 people were arrested, citing unidentified sources in Xiahe.

"Many windows in shops and houses were smashed," said an employee at a hotel, who did not want either his or the hotel's name used for fear of retaliation. He said he did not see any Tibetans arrested or injured but said some police were hurt.

Pockets of dissent were also springing up outside China.

In Australia, media reported that police used batons and pepper spray to quell a demonstration outside the Chinese consulate in Sydney. The Australian Associated Press reported that dozens of demonstrators were at the scene and five were arrested.

Dozens of protesters in India launched a new march just days after more than 100 Tibetan exiles were arrested by authorities during a similar rally.

And in Katmandu, police broke up a protest by Tibetans and arrested 20.

Kim Sung · Post by **Kim Sung** » Sat Mar 15, 2008 10:03 pm

Chinese security forces swarm Tibet

By AUDRA ANG, Associated Press Writer

BEIJING - Soldiers on foot and in armored carriers swarmed Tibet's capital Saturday, enforcing a strict curfew a day after protesters burned shops and cars to vent their anger against Chinese rule. In another western city, police clashed with hundreds of Buddhist monks leading a sympathy demonstration.

The violence erupted just two weeks before China's Summer Olympic celebrations kick off with the start of the torch relay, which passes through Tibet. China is gambling that its crackdown will not draw an international outcry over human rights violations that could lead to boycotts of the Olympics.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called on China "to exercise restraint in dealing with these protests," while the State Department issued a travel alert for Americans in the region. Her statement also called for China to release monks and others jailed for protesting.

The latest unrest began Monday on the anniversary of a 1959 uprising against Chinese rule. Tibet was effectively independent for decades before communist troops entered in 1950.

Initially, the protests were led by Buddhist monks demanding the release of other detained monks. Their demands spiraled to include cries for Tibet's independence and turned violent Friday when police tried to stop a group of protesting monks. Pent-up grievances against Chinese rule came to the fore, as Tibetans directed their anger against Chinese and their shops, hotels and other businesses.

It was the fiercest challenge to Beijing's authority in nearly two decades.

China's official Xinhua News Agency reported at least 10 civilians were burned to death on Friday. The Dalai Lama's exiled Tibetan government in India said Chinese authorities killed at least 30 Tibetans and possibly as many as 100. The figures could not be independently verified.

In the Tibetan capital Lhasa on Saturday, police manned checkpoints and armored personnel carriers rattled on mostly empty streets as people stayed indoors under a curfew, witnesses said. The show of force imposed a tense quiet.

Several witnesses reported hearing occasional bursts 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.

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.

"There are military blockades blocking off whole portions of the city, and the entire city is basically closed down," said a 23-year-old Canadian student who arrived in Lhasa on Saturday and who was making plans to leave. "All the restaurants are closed, all the hotels are closed."

Even as Chinese forces appeared to reassert control in Lhasa, a second day of sympathy protests erupted in an important Tibetan town 750 miles 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.

Also Saturday, fresh demonstrations by Tibetan exiles and their supporters sprouted up in neighboring Nepal, New York, Switzerland and Australia.

The Chinese government is hoping a successful Olympics will boost its popularity at home as well as its image abroad. But Beijing's hosting of the Olympics has already attracted scrutiny of China's human rights record and its pollution problems.

So far, international criticism of the crackdown in Tibet has been mild. The U.S. and European Union called for Chinese restraint without any threats of an Olympic boycott or other sanctions.

"What is happening in Tibet and Beijing's responses to it will not affect the games very much unless the issue really gets out of control," said Xu Guoqi, a China-born historian at Kalamazoo College in Michigan.

International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge said Saturday he opposed an Olympic boycott over Tibet.

"We believe that the boycott doesn't solve anything," Rogge told reporters on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts. "On the contrary, it is penalizing innocent athletes and it is stopping the organization from something that definitely is worthwhile organizing."

China restricts access to Tibet for foreign media, making it difficult to independently verify the casualties and the scale of 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 Aug. 8-24 Olympics.

The China-installed governor of Tibet 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," Champa Phuntsok, an ethnic Tibetan, told reporters in Beijing.

In Lhasa, law-enforcement agencies issued a notice offering leniency for demonstrators who surrender before the end of Monday and threatening severe punishment for those who do not.

Neighborhood committees went door-to-door handing out the notices, telling locals defiance would be treated as a criminal act and hinting of rewards if they turned protesters in, said Robbie Barnett, a Tibet specialist at Columbia University, who talked with Lhasa residents by phone.

The calculated mix of threats and inducements underscored the difficulties the communist leadership faces in trying to quell a serious challenge to its 57-year rule in Tibet while saving the Olympics.

Preparing the 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.

A footage

http://www.donga.com/fbin/output?f=tota ... 52&top20=1

Kim Sung · Post by **Kim Sung** » Sun Mar 16, 2008 5:35 pm

Buddhist monks in demonstration and the Chinese police (公安)

Chinese armored vehicles in a street of Lhasa

http://news.chosun.com/site/data/html_d ... 00026.html

A Tibet monk being arrested by the Nepalese police in Kathmandu

Kim Sung · Post by **Kim Sung** » Sun Mar 16, 2008 10:58 pm

YouTube access blocked in China after Tibet clips appear

BEIJING (AFP) - Access to YouTube in China was denied on Sunday after footage of recent deadly protests in Tibet appeared on the video posting site.

Attempts to call up the site met with a blank screen and an error message saying the web page could not be displayed.

The access problems came after video clips began appearing on the site showing violent unrest in the Tibetan capital Lhasa that triggered a virtual lockdown of the city by security forces.

China, which strictly controls access to information, has kept a tight lid on news out of Lhasa, with foreign journalists being denied access and foreign tourists ordered out of the city.

The only footage broadcast by state-run media so far has been a short clip showing Tibetan rioters in the city destroying Chinese shops, but nothing has been released on the resulting crackdown by police.

China's official death count puts the toll at 10, but the India-based Tibetan government-in-exile says at least 80 deaths have been confirmed.

China also has been regularly blacking out the domestic feed of CNN whenever it runs a story about the Tibet unrest.

Access to popular Chinese-language video posts such as tudou.com were operational on Sunday but a search for videos of the Tibet violence came back with no results.

In late January, China introduced new restrictions on posting online video that critics saw as an extension of the Communist Party's tight noose on the nation's media outlets.

Amid China's information clampdown, the Internet has provided a rare window into the situation, with amateur video and pictures popping up on websites around the world.

Kim Sung · Post by **Kim Sung** » Mon Mar 17, 2008 3:14 am

Some footages

Demonstration protesting Chinese oppression of Tibet I

Demonstration protesting Chinese oppression of Tibet II

CNN News

JägerMarty · Post by **JägerMarty** » Mon Mar 17, 2008 4:16 am

The Chinese treatment of the Tibetan's is a farken disgrace, just a shame nobody has ever stuck up for them

phylo_roadking · Post by **phylo_roadking** » Mon Mar 17, 2008 5:12 am

Can't help thinking they shot their bolt far too early this year....with a much better chance for worldwide media attention in only a few months' time...

Kim Sung · Post by **Kim Sung** » Mon Mar 17, 2008 6:16 am

China's human rights violation is still reaching a dangerous level.

Shocking Photos of Public Execution in China
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 45#p933545

I'm considering to personally boycott the Beijing Olympics this summer. I've already bought a lot of tickets of the Beijing Olympic Games.
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 7#p1170267

Kim Sung · Post by **Kim Sung** » Mon Mar 17, 2008 7:24 am

The Chinese government gave an ultimatum, setting a deadline on 0:00 tonight. If Tibetans don't surrender until this deadline, Chinese troops might start another Tiananmen style massacre tomorrow.

Tibetan leaders fear 'huge massacre' after Chinese deadline

New Delhi - The India-based Tibetan government-in-exile said Monday it feared the possibility of a huge massacre of Tibetans after the Chinese government's ultimatum to protestors to surrender expired at midnight Monday and urgently appealed to the international community to intervene. The Central Tibetan Administration also said in a statement that it wants the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHCR) to immediately send a fact-finding mission to Tibet to prevent further deterioration of the situation.

The Central Tibetan Administration is based in the northern Indian town of Dharamsala and is not recognized by any government.

"The current situation in Tibet is extremely serious ... we are extremely concerned that there is every possibility of a huge massacre of Tibetans taking place after the ultimatum," a statement by the government-in-exile said.

"The Central Tibetan Administration urgently appeals to the international community including the United Nations, governments, parliaments, human rights groups and Tibet support groups to effectively urge the Chinese leadership to immediately stop repression and to release all those who have been detained, and to provide immediate medical care to all those who have been injured," the statement said.

Meanwhile, Tibetan refugee groups across India held demonstrations on Monday also appealing for international intervention, as China's deadline for "surrender" neared.

At least 1,000 Tibetan refugees gathered outside the Jantar Mantar monument in central Delhi to express their solidarity with the protestors in Tibet and handed a letter to the local UN office asking the secretary general to intervene with the Chinese government to stop the "inhuman suppression of Tibetans in Tibet" and release those arrested.

Small groups of protestors also gathered outside the Chinese embassy in Delhi and shouted anti-China slogans but were detained or dispersed by the police.

A candlelight vigil by Tibetan refugees and their supporters was scheduled to be held in India's financial hub Mumbai in the evening.

In Dharamsala, which is also the seat of Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, five Tibetan non-governmental organizations condemned the "violent crackdown' by Chinese authorities during a press briefing.

"We fear the worst for our Tibetan brothers and sisters as the Chinese authorities lock down Lhasa and deploy armed police and troops across the country," Ngawang Woebar, president of GuChuSum Ex-Political Prisoners' Movement of Tibet, said.

He said there were reports of the possibility of hundreds killed, house-to-house raids, arbitrary arrests and beatings in the streets.

"We expect only increased violence on the part of the Chinese security forces as foreign tourists and others are forced to leave," he added. He said the Chinese government had severely curtailed the flow of information from Tibet.

The Dalai Lama and thousands of Tibetans fled to India after China cracked down on the Tibetan uprising of 1959. An estimated 100,000 Tibetan refugees currently live in 35 settlements and numerous smaller communities across India, striving to keep their cultural identity alive while adapting to a foreign land.

Many of them may still dream of a free Tibet, in variance with the Dalai Lama's current vision of greater autonomy within China, though they agree that their spiritual leader has kept the issue of Tibet alive in the international arena.

"As we can see from the protests here and all over the world, the Tibetan people remain committed to achieving independence and human rights. We hope the international community will support us to end nearly 50 years of Chinese occupation," Tsewang Rigzin, president of the Tibetan Youth Congress, said.

According to an unconfirmed Indian source, more than 500 Tibetans were killed, and 10,000 injured.

http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/19252.asp

Kim Sung · Post by **Kim Sung** » Mon Mar 17, 2008 7:42 am

Armaggedon for Lhasa is coming slowly.

Reuter footage

An activist of the France Tibet association, holding Tibet's flag, reacts as he is being held by a riot police officer during a demonstration of the association's militants against the violence in Tibet, in front of the Chinese embassy in Paris, Sunday, March 16, 2008

German protesters in Berlin demanding independence for Tibet

http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mod ... 0000088536

Kim Sung · Post by **Kim Sung** » Mon Mar 17, 2008 7:52 am

An interesting point in international reactions to the Tibetan uprising is that the US government is keeping silent. USA intervenes almost all international conflicts and protests against human rights violations as a so-called police state, but it tends to keep silent toward only one country: CHINA, the second strongest economic power in real terms with the second largest military budget in the world.

Why has USA become so weak in front of China? Does USA have no means to cope with human rights violations of the future hegemonic power?

It seems that no country can stop China.

phylo_roadking · Post by **phylo_roadking** » Mon Mar 17, 2008 8:00 am

The US is one of the largest markets for American goods, and vice versa. American industrialists are investing bigtime in China at the moment. With the US already skirting round and round the edge of the whirlpool of serious economic downturn/depression it literally can't afford to say anything.

phylo_roadking · Post by **phylo_roadking** » Mon Mar 17, 2008 8:02 am

One interesting aspect of this particular crisis is that this time the rioting etc. is spreading outside Tibet into the Tibetan populations in at least three nearby Chinese provinces.

Kim Sung · Post by **Kim Sung** » Mon Mar 17, 2008 8:08 am

phylo_roadking wrote:The US is one of the largest markets for American goods, and vice versa. American industrialists are investing bigtime in China at the moment. With the US already skirting round and round the edge of the whirlpool of serious economic downturn/depression it literally can't afford to say anything.

I know. In addition, China is cooperating with USA in its 'holy' War on Terror. For political and economic reasons, USA seems to be turning deaf eyes to China's human rights violations. More importantly, there is no effective means for USA to use to take sanctions against China. And US economy is too vulnerable to China's counteraction.

phylo_roadking · Post by **phylo_roadking** » Mon Mar 17, 2008 8:30 am

The US cannot take sanctions, because without a UN resolution these would be illegal. And China as a full member of the Security Council is free to veto.

China is cooperating with the US for its own reasons on Terrorism; like the various Republics of the Former USSR, China is always at risk of Islamic fundamentalism along the Muslim populations of its more westerly provinces.