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Tibetans Say Several Died in Latest Riots
Friday 21 March 2008 Kangding, China - Tibetans in China's tense southwestern province of Sichuan said on Friday they believed police had killed several people in anti-Chinese riots there this week, disputing official claims none died. China's official Xinhua news agency reported overnight that police shot and wounded four protesters this week in a heavily ethnic Tibetan part of the province, where protests broke out after anti-Chinese riots in neighboring Tibet a week ago. The unrest has alarmed China, keen to look its best in the run-up to the August 8-24 Olympic Games in Beijing when it hopes to show the world it has arrived as a world power. China's crackdown has drawn international criticisms, with House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi calling the situation in Tibet a challenge to the world's conscience and Germany urging Beijing to allow foreign observers in the region. China says 13 "innocent civilians" died in anti-Chinese riots last week in Tibet's capital, Lhasa, after police broke up earlier peaceful protests led by monks. Exiled Tibetans say as many as 100 Tibetans have died. Chinese mountaineers chosen to take an Olympic torch to the top of Mount Everest said their journey there through Tibet would be a show of national unity against exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama, whom Beijing accuses of instigating the unrest. "We shall go all out to ensure the smooth movement of the torch relay. We must strengthen ethnic unity while hostile forces try to drive a wedge between ethnic groups," Yin Xunping, an official with the Tibet mountaineering effort, was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua news agency. Tensions remain high in Tibet, Sichuan and other neighboring areas where the government has poured in troops. Kangding, a heavily Tibetan town in Sichuan and a gateway to the restive region, was crowded with troops, some on patrol, some loudly practicing martial arts moves in the town square. Drivers refused to travel into tense mountain towns. "I'm in this to make money, but no matter how much you pay me I won't go that way," one Kangding driver said. One ethnic Tibetan resident of Aba prefecture, where rioting began on Sunday, said he believed several died when police fired on protesters attacking officials and state buildings. "Everyone here believes that our people died, maybe 10 or more," he told Reuters, asking not to be named, fearing punishment for talking to reporters. Troops Keeping Foreigners Out Troops and anti-riot police have set up roadblocks and are keeping out foreigners. "With all the troops that have gone up there, it's under control now. They have tried for all those years to gain independence and failed. So it won't happen. Not now - it's impossible," said Ran Hongkui, a Chinese shopkeeper on the route passed by convoy of armed police heading west. China's response to the rioting has triggered international criticism and some calls to boycott the Games opening ceremony. Pelosi, who met the Dalai Lama in his exile home in the Indian town of Dharamsala, said Tibet was "a challenge to the conscience of the world". Radio Free Asia, a U.S.-funded broadcaster, said on Thursday up to 2,000 Buddhist monks and laypeople continued to protest in Huangnan Prefecture, Sichuan. The report could not be verified. Authorities said they had arrested dozens of people. The Tibet Daily Web site (www.tibetdaily.net) published pictures of the most wanted suspects, many photographed in the thick of the rioting and including two men in monks' robes. Most appeared to be young men. One looked to be wielding a sword while others were hurling rocks. State-run Tibet television continued to show footage of last week's riots, including scenes of maroon-robed monks throwing rocks at police, protesters kicking in shop fronts and plumes of black smoke from burned-out cars in the local capital Lhasa. Its newsreaders echoed Beijing's insistence that the violence was orchestrated by the "Dalai clique" agitating for independence and trying to embarrass China ahead of the Games. The 72-year-old Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet in 1959, says he is against the violence, only wants greater autonomy for his homeland and is willing to travel to Beijing for talks. The Chinese press has intensified its vilification of the Nobel Peace Prize winner, while Pelosi called for an international probe to clear the Dalai Lama's name. The Tibet Daily called him a "jackal with a human face and the heart of a beast" and accused him of "never giving up hoping to restore their corrupt, dissolute theocracy and their privileges as feudal rulers and serf masters". In a phone call with Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged China for restraint. Yang told her the Dalai Lama was to blame for the riots. "They attempted to exert pressure on the Chinese government, disturb the 2008 Beijing Olympics and sabotage China's social stability and harmony," Xinhua quoted him as saying. (Additional reporting by Chris Buckley and Lindsay Beck in Beijing; Editing by Ibon Villelabeitia) China Might Bar Tiananmen Broadcasts
Friday 21 March 2008 Beijing - China might bar live television broadcasts from Tiananmen Square during the Beijing Olympics, apparently unnerved by the recent outburst of unrest among Tibetans and fearful of protests in the heart of the Chinese capital. A ban on live broadcasts would wreck the plans of NBC and other major international networks, who have paid hundreds of millions of dollars to broadcast the Aug. 8-24 games and are counting on eye-pleasing live shots from the iconic square. The rethinking of Beijing's earlier promise to broadcasters comes as the government has poured troops into Tibetan areas wracked by anti-government protests this month and stepped up security in cities, airports and entertainment venues far from the unrest. In another sign of the government's unease, 400 American Boy Scouts who had been promised they could onto the field following a March 15 exhibition game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres were prevented from doing so by police. "It was never specifically mentioned to me it was because of Tibet that there were extra controls, but there were all these changes at the last minute," said a person involved in the Major League Baseball event who asked for anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. The communist government's resorting to heavy-handed measures runs the risk of undermining Beijing's pledge to the International Olympic Committee that the games would promote greater openness in what a generation ago was still an isolated China. If still in place by the games, they could alienate the half-million foreigners expected at the games. Like the Olympics, live broadcasts from Tiananmen Square were meant to showcase a friendly, confident China - one that had put behind it the deadly 1989 military assault on democracy demonstrators in the vast plaza that remains a defining image for many foreigners. "Tiananmen is the face of China, the face of Beijing so many broadcasters would like to do live or recorded coverage of the square," said Yosuke Fujiwara, the head of broadcast relations for the Beijing Olympic Broadcasting Co., or BOB, a joint-venture between Beijing Olympic organizers and an IOC subsidiary. BOB coordinates and provides technical services for the TV networks with rights to broadcast the Olympics, such as NBC. Earlier this week, however, officials with the Beijing Olympics Organizing Committee, or BOCOG, told executives at BOB that the live shots were canceled, according to three people familiar with the matter who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. "We learned that standup positions would be canceled," one of these people said. "No explanation was given for the change." Sun Weijia, the BOCOG official in charge of dealing with BOB, declined comment, referring the matter to press officers, three of whom also declined to comment. IOC offices were closed Friday for the Easter holiday; two spokeswomen did not immediately return e-mails and phone calls seeking comment. The decision by BOCOG may not be final. The change was relayed verbally, one person said. All three hoped that IOC President Jacques Rogge and other leading IOC officials, expected in Beijing next month for regularly scheduled meetings, may be able to prevail on BOCOG to change its mind. If the decision stands, it would be a blow to the TV networks whose money to buy the right to broadcast the games accounts for more than half the IOC's revenues. The biggest spender is NBC. It paid $2.3 billion for the rights for three Olympics from 2004 to 2008 - Athens, Turin and Beijing. NBC planned to use Tiananmen as the site of its morning "Today" show. Officials at NBC did not immediately return a telephone call seeking comment. The unrest - which broke out March 10 in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa and has since spread across western China - and the government's harsh response underscores the communist leaders' unease as the Olympics approach. With paramilitary police patrolling Beijing at night and journalists being expelled from Tibetan areas, security measures are on par with those not seen since the government mobilized police to crush the Falun Gong spiritual movement in 1999-2000. Activist groups have said for months that they planned to use the Olympics to promote their causes. But the challenge faced by China's leadership seems to grow more imminent. Aside from Tibet protests, the government said it foiled a plot this month by Muslim separatists in western China to blow up a China Southern Boeing 757. Foreign activists angry about China's support for Sudan, which is party to a civil war in Darfur, said this week they would demonstrate in Beijing during the games. After the Icelandic singer Bjork shouted "Tibet!" at the finale of a Shanghai concert this month, officials ordered tighter scrutiny of all performances. The Boy Scouts seemed to get caught in a response to both the sometimes violent Tibet protests and Bjork; police canceled all on-field entertainment for the exhibition baseball games, including the singing of the Chinese and U.S. national anthems. BOCOG officials began signaling their discomfort with live broadcasts in Tiananmen Square to the IOC a year ago but discussions went back and forth, according to the people involved. The square - overlooked by a large portrait of communist founder Mao Zedong - has been a magnet for protests for decades. AP Sports writer Steve Wade contributed to this story. NBC is owned by General Electric Co.
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