CHINA:VIOLENCE FLARED up again in the Tibetan part of China after cadres cranked up study sessions among Tibetan Buddhist monks to make them more "patriotic and law-abiding".
Overseas Tibetan groups say eight people were killed following protests against the compulsory "patriotic education" campaign.
"We should strengthen patriotic education so as to guide the masses of monks to continuously display the patriotic tradition and uphold the banner of patriotism," Hao Peng, deputy head of the Chinese Communist Party in Tibet, told the Tibet Daily.
The International Campaign for Tibet reported that eight people were killed when police opened fire on protesters in the Garze prefecture of Sichuan province, southwestern China.
During the "patriotic re-education" sessions at the Tongor monastery, monks are ordered to denounce their exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, as a "splittist" and profess allegiance to the second-highest-ranking figure in Tibetan Buddhism, the Panchen Lama. The current incarnation of the Panchen Lama is a puppet installed by Beijing in place of a candidate chosen by the Dalai Lama who has been missing since he was a boy.
Things became heated after pictures of the Dalai Lama were thrown on the ground, and monks refused to comply with the cadres. Paramilitary police scoured the monastery for pictures of the Dalai Lama and arrested two monks who had hidden images of him.
Police opened fire on monks and villagers who marched in Donggu town to demand the monks' release, the Tibetan rights group said. The Xinhua news agency said a riot had taken place but did not report any deaths.
Tensions in the region remain high since last month's violence. China, which says 22 people died during the anti-Beijing riots, most of them ethnic Han Chinese, accuses the Dalai Lama and his "clique" of orchestrating the violence, a charge he has denied. Tibetan groups say up to 140 people died in the protests and subsequent clampdown.
Meanwhile, there were reports of scores of arrests in the restive northwestern province of Xinjiang. Exiled activist groups representing Muslim Uighurs say 70 people were rounded up in the Silk Road staging post of Kashgar because authorities fear Islamist groups may cause trouble when the Olympic torch passes through in June.
Beijing says it has foiled in recent months several plots in Xinjiang aimed at wrecking the Olympics and it is a potential flashpoint for trouble following last month's violence in Tibet.