Paramilitary Police Shoot Monks And Nuns
Paramilitary police opened fire on hundreds of monks, nuns and Tibetans who tried to march on a local government office in western China yesterday to demand the return of the Dalai Lama.
Residents of Luhuo said that a monk and a farmer appeared to have been killed and about a dozen people wounded in the latest violence in Tibetan areas of China. Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, said that one officer was killed when police confronted a “lawless mob” in Luhuo.
The demonstration began at 4pm when about 200 nuns from Woge nunnery and a similar number of monks from Jueri monastery marched towards the Luhuo Third District government office. They were joined by several hundred farmers and nomads, witnesses said.
Shouting “Long Live the Dalai Lama” and “Tibet belongs to Tibetans”, they approached the office. The paramilitary People’s Armed Police appeared and ordered the crowd to turn back. Witnesses said that shots were fired and two people appeared to have died. They identified one as Congun Dengzhu, a farmer, and the second as an unknown monk.
Security was already tight in Luhuo county, as in other Tibetan communities in China. The turmoil began with a riot in Lhasa on March 15, in which Chinese officials say 19 people were killed when Tibetans rampaged through the Tibetan capital, stabbing ethnic Han Chinese and setting fire to Chinese shops and offices.
The latest demonstration, in a remote corner of a province that abuts Tibet and has a mainly Tibetan population, came after the authorities in Lhasa issued their Number Eight list of those most wanted in connection with the violence.
The new list, issued by the Tibetan Autonomous Region Public Security Bureau rather than by Lhasa city authorities, of eight people brought the number of those now being sought to 53. State-run television has been showing grainy photographs of those who are wanted, which have been taken from video footage and photographs that were taken during the riot on March 15.
The man whose picture appeared as number 52 on the list features in one of the most well-known images from that day of violence, in which a group of Tibetans can be seen setting light to a Chinese flag while a young man in Tibetan dress and carrying a machete-type knife stands in the background.
China says it has acted with restraint in response to the unrest. It said that its paramilitary had opened fire on protesters in Aba, a nearby district of Sichuan province, last week, wounding four people. Tibetans have said that several people were killed.
A police spokeswoman said that five people had been detained in Lhasa in relation to arson during the riot. She said that three Tibetan women in their twenties faced arson charges and had confessed. An investigation was still under way in the two other cases. Officials said last week that 24 people had been arrested and more than 150 had given themselves up.
At least 245 Tibetans were detained in Nepal yesterday after police used bamboo batons to break up a crowd of 500 demonstrators at a pro-Tibet rally near a United Nations office in Kathmandu, police said. Nepal recognises officially the One China policy that says Tibet and Taiwan are indivisible parts of the country.
The government-in-exile of the Dalai Lama in India said yesterday that the death toll in the clashes had risen to 130 but it gave no breakdown or details of the casualties.
Foreign journalists have been barred from approaching any Tibetan areas where unrest has been reported and the numbers are extremely difficult to verify.
Security is tight across Tibetan areas of China. Civil servants in many districts have been ordered to report to their offices every day and to take part in “patriotic education”.
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Question: What possible danger to the Chinese government could it be to give people freedom to choose the religion that they wish to exercise, even if its one they do not agree with? Answer: None; they are just a bunch of hyper-paranoid control freaks who are afraid of anything they can’t control. Shame on Bush for not speaking up more forcefully for giving both Tibetans and Chinese freedom of religion. Of course, there is that “small” matter of hundreds of billions of dollars in US Government securities being held by the Chinese government…
March 24th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
How about the US handles Tibet and China handles the Bay area up to Seattle? The Tibetans don’t deserve China and the moonbats don’t deserve America.
March 24th, 2008 at 6:29 pmYou handled that better than the fucking U.N. would’ve on their best day …
Know it’s not saying much … but it’s all I got.
About a week or so ago I passed by a report that put the dead at hundreds over there from all of this … Who knows the truth?
Anyhow, I’d say it would be a safe bet “mass graves” will be dug up in a decade or two …
March 24th, 2008 at 6:54 pmDon’t you mean, China doesn’t deserve the Tibetans? I would hate to think you’re saying China has the moral high ground.
March 24th, 2008 at 11:25 pm