Archive for March 16th, 2008
Dalai Lama: China causing ‘cultural genocide’
Dalai Lama: China causing ‘cultural genocide’
CNN International -
(CNN) — The Dalai Lama on Sunday called for an international probe of China’s treatment of Tibet, which he said is causing “cultural genocide” of his people.
China Blocks YouTube Over Tibet Videos The Associated Press
Telegraph.co.uk – Forbes – Aljazeera.net – Hindu
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Mar-15-2008
Tibetans Cite Spreading Unrest, Mounting Death Toll, as Chinese Clamp Down
Salem-News.com
Protests have meanwhile spread outside Lhasa and into the Amdo and Kham regions of China’s Qinghai and Sichuan provinces.
Tibetan monks protest outside Labrang monastery in Xiahe
Tibetan monks and laypeople, many displaying Tibetan national flags, protest outside Labrang monastery in Xiahe, Gansu province on March 14th 2008. This photo and the one at left of a burning care were submitted by an RFA listener.
(KATHMANDU, Tibet) – Chinese authorities have locked down the Tibetan capital as witnesses report spreading demonstrations in more remote areas and a climbing death toll after security forces fired on rioting protesters, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reports.
Sources in Lhasa said residents had been warned to stay indoors after the worst unrest in Tibet in two decades. Others described seeing tanks and armored personnel carriers in the streets. “Today there are army [troops] everywhere. There is no way to go and come. We are confined to our own homes,” one Tibetan man in Lhasa told RFA’s Tibetan service.
“Every Tibetan is stopped, and their IDs are checked,” another source said. “Even Tibetan government workers are checked, but the Chinese are free to move around. Many Tibetans who were arrested were taken to Toelung and other jails in different parts of Lhasa.”
China’s official Xinhua news agency said 10 “innocent civilians” had been shot or burnt to death in the street clashes in the remote capital. Other estimates, from witnesses and exiled Tibetan groups, set the death toll as high as 100. Witnesses reported seeing a number of dead bodies in and around Lhasa, but an exact toll was impossible to gather.
Authorities meanwhile offered leniency to protesters who surrender by midnight Monday.
“Today when the Tibetans were demonstrating, many Tibetans were killed. We Tibetans had no weapons to fight back. When the Tibetans were gathered in front of the Jokhang [temple], the Chinese fired at us. I personally saw more than 100 Tibetans killed when the Chinese fired at the Tibetan crowd,” one man in Lhasa told RFA’s Tibetan service late Friday.
“The Tibetans who participated in the protests were from the whole Lhasa area. When I looked back, all the Chinese shops were destroyed. I think not one Chinese shop is intact in the Barkhor area. All kinds of things were piled up on the main road and burned. Many vehicles were burned and destroyed.”
Relatives of the slain protesters “collected all the dead bodies in front of the Jokhang and offered prayers and scarves. Those family members whose relatives were among those killed took their bodies away. None of my family members was among the killed, but I was almost killed too, and many bodies looked familiar,” he said.
Protests have meanwhile spread outside Lhasa and into the Amdo and Kham regions of China’s Qinghai and Sichuan provinces.
On Saturday, an estimated 3,000 protestors gathered from areas near the Labrang monastery in Xiahe.
“The demonstrators are shouting ‘Long live the Dalai Lama!,’ ‘Release the Panchen Lama!,’ and ‘Start the Sino-Tibetan peace dialogue!,’ one source told RFA. Another said, “They marched toward local government offices and damaged several windows, and a big demonstration is going on.”
Demonstrations were also reported in Lithang and Sershul in Kham and at Samye monastery, south of Lhasa.
Original reporting in Uke, Amdo, and Kham by RFA’s Tibetan service. Tibetan service director: Jigme Ngapo. Translated by Karma Dorjee and Palden Gyal. Edited and produced in English by Sarah Jackson-Han.
For more information visit rfa.org
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/march152008/tibet_unrest_3-15-08.php
Hu faces steep challenges after re-election for another term
Reuters
Hu faces steep challenges after re-election for another term |
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AP |
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Beijing: China’s legislature re-elected Hu Jintao president yesterday, giving him a second five-year term as leader of the world’s most populous country. It also returned Hu as head of the Central Military Commission, the body overseeing the armed forces. The National People’s Congress appointed Xi Jinping, a top Communist Party leader and the son of a revolutionary, as vice-president. Xi, ranked No 6 in the party hierarchy, is widely seen as Hu’s heir apparent and has risen quickly through the party’s ranks in just six months. The congress also approved a plan to reshuffle the Cabinet by establishing five “super ministries” and a ministerial-level energy commission. Both men received virtually unanimous support from the nearly 3,000 National People’s Congress delegates, known to unfailingly carry out decisions made by the party’s top leadership. There were no other candidates for the positions, reflecting the one-party state’s stress on consensus and outer harmony. As the results were read out, each man stood and bowed from the dais of the cavernous Great Hall of the People. Neither addressed the body. International profile Under Hu, China’s economy has continued to grow rapidly while its international profile has steadily risen, a development embodied by Beijing’s hosting of the Olympic Games in August. Hu and Premier Wen Jiabao, who heads the government administration, are generally well supported among middle class urban Chinese, who see the two leaders as competent and sympathetic to their concerns over housing woes, inflation, medical care and education. In a sign of Xi’s rise to prominence, he has been placed in charge of preparations for the Olympics, an event generating enormous national pride and regarded by the leadership as a chance to show off a dynamic new China to the world. But Hu and his advisers face stiff challenges during his second term. Soaring food costs have driven inflation to its highest level in nearly 12 years. And snowstorms this winter brought many parts of China to a halt, highlighting transportation weaknesses, power infrastructure and government planning. Deadly anti-Chinese riots in Tibet this week have underscored the lack of progress in tamping down unrest among the country’s minority groups. The vice presidency, though devoid of real power, offers Xi an opportunity to nudge his profile higher. In a sign of Xi’s rise to prominence, he has been placed in charge of preparations for the Olympics, an event generating enormous national pride and regarded by the leadership as a chance to show off a dynamic new China to the world. |
World Focus on Burma 16 Mar 08)
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Myanmar Refuses Access to UN
AHN -
Yangon, Myanmar (AHN) – A United Nations-appointed rights expert said Saturday that Myanmar has refused him entry to the country contrary to earlier reports … -
Seeking Recognition for a War’s Lost Laborers
New York Times, United States -
The Japanese pressed at least 200000 Asians into labor building a railway to link Thailand and Burma in World War II. By THOMAS FULLER KANCHANABURI, …
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Up the garden path
Daily News & Analysis, India -
Native to Burma, it was brought to India by Lady Amherst, wife of the governor of Myanmar. A group of children from a city NGO builds a chain around the … -
Exim bank to complete Burma loan
Bangkok Post, Thailand -
The loan was signed between the Export-Import Bank of Thailand and the Myanmar Foreign Trade Bank in June 2004, when then premier Thaksin Shinawatra was in … -
‘Rebels kill six Indian soldiers’
BBC News, UK -
Minou is located in Chandel district on the north-eastern state of Manipur’s border with Burma. “Two of the seven quarters in the Assam Rifles were burnt …
Tibetans clash with Chinese police in second city
By Jim Yardley
Sunday, March 16, 2008
BEIJING: Thousands of Buddhist monks and other Tibetans clashed with the riot police in a second Chinese city on Saturday, while the authorities said they had regained control of the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, a day after a rampaging mob ransacked shops and set fire to cars and storefronts in a deadly riot.
Conflicting reports emerged about the violence in Lhasa on Friday. The Chinese authorities denied that they had fired on protesters there, but Tibetan leaders in India told news agencies on Saturday 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 held a smaller protest on Friday, but the confrontation escalated Saturday 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 wounded people had been sent to a local hospital. Large numbers of security and military police 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.
The violence in Lhasa and Xiahe has created a major political and public relations challenge for the ruling Communist Party as Beijing prepares to play host to 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.
The outside world is carefully watching China‘s response to the week’s demonstrations. 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 president of the International Olympic Committee, Jacques Rogge, rejected calls for a boycott of the Games to protest the crackdown.
“We believe that the boycott doesn’t solve anything,” he said Saturday on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts, The Associated Press reported. “On the contrary. It is penalizing innocent athletes and it is stopping the organization from something that definitely is worthwhile organizing.”
The tumult also undercuts a theme regularly 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 New York-based advocacy group Students for a Free Tibet.
On Saturday 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 the state news media.
But Tibetan advocacy groups and witnesses in Lhasa offered accounts contradicting that of the Chinese. 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 shot at them.
Foreign journalists are being restricted from traveling to Lhasa, and the precise death toll remains unknown. The state news 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 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.
Initially, the protests were largely ignored in the Chinese news media, which were providing blanket coverage of the annual meeting of the National People’s Congress, the Communist Party-controlled national legislature.
But with growing international concern about the protests, and reports that Chinese security forces had attacked monks, the Xinhua news agency issued a short statement blaming rioters for the violence. By Saturday morning, China’s state television network, CCTV, was broadcasting video of Tibetans burning buildings as anchors read directly from a Xinhua report that blamed the Dalai Lama for the violence.
Chinese officials demanded the surrender of the “lawbreakers” in Lhasa and offered leniency to people who turned themselves into the authorities by midnight Monday. Senior officials described the unrest as “sabotage” orchestrated by the Dalai Lama and credited the military police for rescuing 580 people from banks, schools and hospitals that were set afire by rioters.
General Yang Deqing of the Chinese Army said soldiers would not be deployed and the protests were being handled by local police officers and the country’s paramilitary force, the People’s Armed Police.
“We’ll let the police and the military police handle the disturbance,” Yang said at the National People’s Congress, where he was a delegate. “We won’t be involved.”
Witnesses in Lhasa on Saturday reported seeing large numbers of military police, armored vehicles and, according to a few reports, tanks.
Several residents, reached by telephone, said that an uneasy calm had settled over the city. Tibetans living in the suburbs said officers were blocking people from entering the city center. Local television broadcast instructions. Power and telephone service, suspended in some neighborhoods on Friday, were being restored Saturday. Traffic was light on city streets, while most shops were closed.
“It is all under control now,” said one resident, who identified himself as Liu and who lives near the old part of the city where the violence started. “We were notified to stay at home last night.”
It is still uncertain what set off Friday’s unrest. Tibetan advocates say ordinary Tibetans began rioting after military police officers attacked monks trying to protest outside a monastery in the center of the city.
The extent of the violence was evident in photographs and video shown on the Internet: fires raging from rooftops and from charred vehicles, shattered storefronts and huge crowds trolling city streets.
News agencies reported Saturday that foreign tourists were being prohibited from entering Tibet. The United States Embassy in Beijing issued a new warning on Saturday advising American citizens about danger in Lhasa and other places.
