TIBET:AFTER DAYS of street fighting and protests by Tibetans seeking independence, Chinese authorities yesterday moved to clear Lhasa of the last independent witnesses ahead of a midnight deadline for demonstrators to surrender.
Once midnight struck, security forces were expected to sweep the city and crack down on any dissenting voices in the Himalayan city.
Beijing's governor in Tibet promised leniency to demonstrators prepared to surrender ahead of the deadline, but Tibet independence groups said scores of people had been killed during the protests. During the course of the day, sources in Lhasa said NGOs and the few remaining foreign journalists were taken out of the city, leaving no one to inform the world of how Beijing would reinforce order in Lhasa.
Chinese authorities have blamed the Dalai Lama for the unrest, calling the demonstrators "thugs" and "hoodlums" and accusing the Dalai Lama of separatism.
The uprising against Chinese rule in Tibet has been the most significant in nearly 20 years, the biggest challenge to Beijing's international reputation since the crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in 1989.
The unrest began on March 10th as monks gathered in Tibet to mark the anniversary of the failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule in the region that sent the Dalai Lama and much of the leading Buddhist clergy into exile.
The demonstrations in Lhasa turned from peaceful protests into violent riots as ethnic Tibetans set fire to Chinese-owned businesses.
Worldwide protests against Chinese rule in Tibet continued. In Nepal, police used bamboo batons to disperse about 100 Tibetan protesters and Buddhist monks near the main UN office in Katmandu and there were 44 arrests.
In Beijing, the government shut access to video-sharing website YouTube and e-mail and other internet services was patchy, which residents attributed to the usual slowdown which accompanies the meeting of China's national parliament, the National People's Congress, as well as the fact that contentious issues being discussed by webizens all over.
The week's protests have seen the eyes of the world focus on Beijing's rule in Tibet ahead of the summer Olympics, which were supposed to showcase China's remarkable social and economic advances in the last quarter century.
Instead there are growing calls for a boycott of the games over China's treatment of Tibetans and broader concerns about its human rights record.
But a boycott still looks unlikely. Even the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, reiterated his view that a boycott of the games would be useless and yesterday EU sports ministers and the leaders of the European Olympic committees said they would not back an Olympic boycott over Tibet.
But younger Tibetan activists have no qualms about calling for a boycott.
Many among this younger generation of Tibetans, who are too young to remember the harsh crackdown that followed riots in Lhasa in the late 1980s when President Hu Jintao was Communist Party chief in Tibet, have taken to the streets during the week's disturbances, and want to stick to their course of confrontation.
US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice urged the Chinese to talk to the Dalai Lama.
"We have really urged the Chinese over several years to find a way to talk with the Dalai Lama . . . and bring his moral weight to a more sustainable and better solution of the Tibet issue," she said.
Meanwhile, in Gansu's Maqu county, which borders Sichuan, thousands of monks and lay Tibetans clashed with police yesterday, according to the Free Tibet Campaign.
One monk said he saw 100 troops being parachuted into a trouble spot from a helicopter, and across Tibet there were reports of trucks transporting hundreds of militia into the region to enforce order.The Dalai Lama's exiled Tibetan government in India has said that 80 Tibetans were killed - a claim that Beijing has denied. According to China's version of events, soldiers neither carried nor used lethal weapons. China's governor in the province Champa Phuntsok said the death toll from last week's violent demonstrations had risen to 16, with dozens of injuries. Among the dead, the Tibetan leadership said, three people jumped from a building to avoid arrest while 13 were "innocent civilians".
Ethnic Tibetan students staged a candle-lit vigil in Beijing saying it was to pray for the dead, after warning anti-Chinese rioters in the Tibetan capital to surrender. Police kept reporters well away from the peaceful protest.
It was a small, rare show of defiance in the host city of this year's Olympic Games, where Communist Party authorities are especially eager to prevent public shows of dissent.
UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon said in New York he was "increasingly concerned" about reports emerging from Tibet and urged restraint from authorities.
- (Additional reporting: Reuters)
