Chinese Police Tighten Grip on Tibet's Capital
Dalai Lama Seeks Independent Investigation Into Deadly Riots

By Jill Drew
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, March 17, 2008

BEIJING, March 16 -- Chinese police tightened their hold on Tibet's capital and heavily Tibetan areas in neighboring provinces Sunday, but sporadic violence in the region continued, according to reports from the affected areas.

The Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader living in exile in India, called for an independent investigation into deadly riots Friday in Lhasa, the worst outbreak of violence in the remote mountainous region in nearly 20 years.

Speaking at a news conference in the northern Indian city of Dharmsala, the Dalai Lama rejected Chinese claims that he was to blame for the violence and suggested instead that the Chinese were committing "cultural genocide."

"The local leaders simply rely on the use of force in order to have stability and peace," he said. "This is rule of terror."

The Dalai Lama's spokesman said earlier in the day that 80 people were killed and 72 injured, mostly Tibetans, in last week's clashes.

[Tibet's governor, Champa Phuntsok, on Monday put the death toll at 13, the Associated Press reported.]

Chinese officials have said many of the dead were businesspeople.

Neither figure could be independently verified because travel to Tibet is heavily restricted even in the best of times. After protests against Chinese rule began there last Monday, local officials suspended all entry permits.

One Chinese government official in Tibet said the claim of genocide was "downright nonsense." The state-controlled New China News Agency reported that police exercised "great restraint" on Friday while mobs stoned, stabbed and clubbed them and other residents, using a "shocking degree of cruelty" that the Chinese blame on the Dalai Lama.

The government news service also reported Sunday that some shops had reopened and cars were back on the streets in Lhasa. But residents contacted by phone said that dozens of armed police officers and military vehicles were patrolling the streets and that they were too afraid to go outside.

Hong Kong Cable TV broadcast video from the city center Sunday showing mostly empty streets. Messages broadcast over loudspeakers warned residents to "discern between enemies and friends, maintain order," the Associated Press reported. Tibet officials have warned rioters to turn themselves in before midnight Monday for any chance at leniency.

The manager of a small, family-owned hotel said in a telephone interview that two Chinese guests who had left to visit a small monastery before the riots still had not returned. The manager said the guests told him by phone that they were too afraid to go out and that monks had agreed to shelter and feed them.

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.