Tibetans clash again with Chinese police

Violence erupts in second city

A Tibetan monk watched after Chinese police sealed off the road heading to Labrang Monastery in the city of Xiahe yesterday. (ANDY WONG/Associated Press)

BEIJING - Thousands of Buddhist monks and other Tibetans clashed with riot police in a second Chinese city yesterday, while authorities said they had regained control of the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, a day after a deadly protest against Chinese rule.

Conflicting reports emerged about the violence in Lhasa on Friday. Chinese authorities denied that they had fired on protesters there, but Tibetan leaders in India told news agencies yesterday that they had confirmed that 30 Tibetans had died and that they had unconfirmed reports that put the number at more than 100.

Demonstrations erupted for the second consecutive day in the city of Xiahe in Gansu Province, where an estimated 4,000 Tibetans gathered near the Labrang Monastery. Local monks had held a smaller protest Friday, but the confrontation escalated yesterday afternoon, according to witnesses and Tibetans in India who spoke with protesters by telephone.

Residents in Xiahe, reached by telephone, heard loud noises similar to gunshots or explosions. A waitress described the scene as "chaos" and said many injured people had been sent to a local hospital. Large numbers of military police and security officers fired tear gas while Tibetans hurled rocks, according to the Tibetans in India.

"Their slogans were, 'The Dalai Lama must return to Tibet' and 'Tibetans need to have human rights in Tibet,' " said Jamyang, a Tibetan in Dharamsala, India, the seat of the Tibetan government in exile, who spoke to protesters.

Officials demanded the surrender of the "lawbreakers" in Lhasa and offered leniency to people who turned themselves into the authorities by midnight tomorrow. Those who do not surrender by the deadline will be punished, they said.

Also yesterday, sympathy protests by Tibetan exiles and their supporters were staged in Nepal and India, as well as New York, Switzerland, and Australia.

The violence in Lhasa and Xiahe has created a major political and public relations challenge for the ruling Communist Party as Beijing prepares to host the Olympic Games in August. The demonstrations are the largest in Tibet since 1989, when Chinese troops used lethal force to crush an uprising by thousands of Tibetan protesters.

China's response to the demonstrations is being watched carefully by the outside world. The European Union and the United States have both called on China to act with restraint. The White House called on China to "respect Tibetan culture" and issued a renewed call for dialogue between Beijing and the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism.

The tumult also undercuts a theme promoted by China's propaganda officials - that Tibetans are a happy minority group, smoothly integrated into the country's broader ethnic fabric.

"What we see right now, what is happening in Tibet, blows the whole propaganda strategy in Tibet wide open," said Lhadon Tethong, an official with the advocacy group Students for a Free Tibet.

Yesterday, the Chinese authorities defended their response to the violence in Lhasa. "We fired no gunshots," said Qiangba Puncog, chairman of the Tibet Autonomous Regional Government, according to state media.

But Tibetan advocacy groups and witnesses in Lhasa offered contradictory accounts. The Tibetan government in exile said at least 30 Tibetans died in the protests, according to Agence France-Presse. Witnesses told Radio Free Asia, the nonprofit news agency financed by the United States government, that numerous Tibetans were dead.

A 13-year-old Tibetan boy, reached by telephone, said he watched the violence from his apartment and saw four or five Tibetans fall to the ground after military police officers fired upon them.

Foreign journalists are being restricted from traveling to Lhasa, and the precise death toll remains unknown. State media reported 10 deaths and characterized most of them as shopkeepers. The government's official news agency, Xinhua, reported that the victims had been "burned to death."

The demonstrations in Lhasa began Monday and continued through Wednesday as peaceful protests by Buddhist monks from three different monasteries. Some monks protested against religious restrictions while others demanded an end to Chinese rule and even waved the Tibetan flag. The police arrested scores of monks and then reportedly tightened security around the three monasteries so that monks could not leave.