• English Site
• > World

Military Lockdown

Chinese Troops Patrol Tibetan Towns

China has stepped up the manhunt for Tibetan protestors involved in last weeks riots. Meanwhile Beijing has admitted for the first time that its troops fired on protesters, and US Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi is calling on the world to respond.

Thousands of Chinese troops, marching on foot or riding some 80 columns of trucks, moved into Tibet late Thursday as the Beijing government tried to quell scattered protests and arrest Tibetan activists it blames for riots in Lhasa last week.

Chinese Internet portals posted photos of 21 men wanted in connection with the riots, and tourists and foreign journalists were warned to keep away. Details were vague because of the press blackout, but the Associated Press reported that a fresh protest on Thursday by Tibetan monks in the town of Zeku, in the Qinghai province, had prompted 300 Chinese soldiers to patrol the streets there. "Many ethnic Chinese dare not go out," a local woman told AP, without giving her name. "Only Tibetans do."

The picture in other Tibetan areas was similar: Helicopters, soldiers in trucks and riot police with guns and batons maintained an armed peace in the wake of the most overt, violent and (for China) embarrassing show of resistance in the 57-year history of Tibet's occupation.

The riots in Tibet last week, after an anti-Chinese protest by monks in Lhasa, led to dozens of deaths -- 99 according to Tibetan exile groups, or 16 according to the Chinese government. The violence marred China's project of presenting a peaceful face to the world in the months before the Summer Olympics in Beijing.

Chinese leaders blamed supporters of the Dalai Lama, Tibet's leader-in-exile, for sparking the riots. "They attempted to exert pressure on the Chinese government, disturb the 2008 Beijing Olympics and sabotage China's social stability and harmony," said Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, according to China's official Xinhua news agency.

But Xinhua also reported for the first time on Thursday that Chinese troops had shot protesters last Sunday in the southwestern province of Sichuan. The soldiers had wounded four people out of "self-defense," the agency said. It was the first time Beijing had acknowledged firing on demonstrators.

Show of Solidarity from a Congresswoman

While the military locked things down on Friday, Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Speaker of the US House of Representatives, appeared in India with the Dalai Lama and aimed critical remarks at Beijing.

Speaking in Dharamsala, the seat of Tibet's government-in-exile, Pelosi called on world leaders to denounce China for its heavy-handed treatment of the protesters. "If freedom loving people throughout the world do not speak out against China's oppression in China and Tibet, we have lost all moral authority to speak on behalf of human rights anywhere in the world," she told a crowd of thousands of cheering Tibetans.

On Thursday the Dalai Lama himself had called for international help. "All that can move freely in Tibet now is the Chinese military," he told reporters. "The people in Tibet are facing a catastrophe."

msm/ap