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Chinese Police Tighten Grip on Tibet's Capital
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Reports of protests and riots in two other heavily Tibetan areas of western China supported Tibetan activists' views that unrest was spreading and that the crackdown in Lhasa would not quell the deep resentment Tibetans are openly expressing about China's tactics. But it was difficult to independently confirm the reports because the Chinese government has attempted to cut off access to the restive areas.
For example, the road to Labrang Monastery in Gansu province was blocked to foreigners Sunday, the day after police reportedly fired tear gas into a crowd of 1,000 monks and other Tibetan protesters. Police checked ID cards and questioned a taxi driver carrying foreigners to Xiahe, a city near the monastery. They told the driver to take his passengers back to their starting point and then return to explain why he was driving foreigners in the area.
In neighboring Sichuan province, about 200 Tibetan protesters set fire to a police station in Aba county, the Reuters news service reported. "They've gone crazy," a police officer told Reuters. She said a crowd had thrown gasoline bombs inside the police building and set fire to a market, two police cars and a firetruck. Security forces fired tear gas and arrested five people.
At a monastery in a nearby county in Sichuan, more than 1,000 monks and others joined in a demonstration, shouting "Freedom for Tibet" and "Return of the Dalai Lama," as they attempted to march to the local government headquarters. According to the Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy, a Tibetan exile advocacy group in India, police first fired tear gas and then opened fire, killing seven people. The report could not be independently confirmed.
"This is a sign of discontentment of the Tibetan people under China," said Urgen Tenzin, executive director of the center. "The Tibetan people will continue their protest."
Images from several protests have been posted online, but access here to protest-related videos on the Web site YouTube was cut off Saturday. Chinese censors routinely block access to stories on Western news sites that they consider sensitive, but YouTube has generally been available.
BBC and CNN reports have routinely been blacked out since the protests began, but censors did not block access to the BBC's broadcast of the Dalai Lama's news conference Sunday.
Correspondent Rama Lakshmi in New Delhi and correspondent Maureen Fan and researcher Zhang Jie in Lanzhou, China, contributed to this report.
