Monday 17 March 2008
Belgian Tibet protest turns violent
Mar 16 - Tibetan protestors clash violently with police outside the Chinese embassy in Brussels.
Hundreds of protestors attempting to gain access to the Chinese embassy grounds were pushed to the ground and bitten by police dogs.
The protestors attempted to break down the gate and one suceeded on gaining entry to the grounds where he waved a Tibetan flag.
Police confirmed that they had arrested five Tibetans outside the Chinese embassy.
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Tibetan riots spread, security lockdown in Lhasa
Mar 16, 2008
By Benjamin Kang Lim and Chris Buckley
BEIJING (Reuters) - Rioting erupted in a province neighboring Tibet on Sunday, two days after violent protests by Tibetans against Chinese rule in Lhasa that the region's exiled representatives said had killed 80 people.
"They've gone crazy," said a police officer in Aba county, Sichuan, one of four provinces with large Tibetan populations, her voice trembling down the telephone even as the main government building there came under siege.
The officer, who declined to be named, said a crowd of Tibetans hurled petrol bombs, burning down a police station and a market in the county's main town, and set fire to two police cars and a fire truck.
Security forces fired tear gas and arrested five people.
The Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy said on a Web site that paramilitary police shot and killed at least seven protesters. A police officer, reached by telephone, denied this.
One ethnic Tibetan resident in Aba said there were sounds like gunshots and there was widespread talk of 10 or more dead.
"Now it's very tense. There are police going around everywhere, checking and looking over people for injuries," said another resident of Aba, adding that many of the rioters were students of a Tibetan-language high school.
The new disturbances came as the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet and Nobel peace laureate who fled to India in 1959, called for an investigation into whether cultural genocide -- intentional or not -- was taking place in his homeland.
"The Tibet nation is facing serious danger. Whether China's government admits or not, there is a problem," the Dalai Lama, who is reviled by Beijing as a separatist, told reporters in Dharamsala, his base in northern India's Himalayan foothills.
Meanwhile, anti-riot troops locked down Lhasa -- a remote city high in the Himalayas barred to foreign journalists without permission and now sealed off to tourists -- to prevent a repeat of Friday's violence, the most serious in nearly two decades.
A businessman there, reached by telephone, said a tense calm had descended on the city and most people were staying indoors.
State-run China Central Television (CCTV) on Sunday said social order had "basically been restored" in Lhasa, but showed footage of deserted streets choked with debris and burnt-out buildings near the downtown Jokhang temple area.
One young girl who could not jump from a burning building with her family members had died in the flames during the Lhasa violence, CCTV said.
Shops remained closed and residents had loaded 24 trucks with debris, it said, showing pictures of people shoveling piles of ash and charred wreckage.
BLOW TO OLYMPICS
The spasm of Tibetan anger at the Chinese presence in the region came after days of peaceful protests by monks and dealt a sharp blow to Beijing's preparations for the Olympic Games in August, when China wants to showcase prosperity and unity.
The government-in-exile in Dharamsala said 80 people had died in the clashes between authorities and protesters last week, and 72 had been injured.
The official Xinhua news agency said only that 10 "innocent civilians" had died, mostly in fires lit by rioters, and that 12 policemen had been seriously injured.
Tibet is one of several potential flashpoints for the ruling Communist Party at a time of heightened attention on China.
The government is concerned about the effect of inflation and wealth gaps on social stability after years of breakneck economic growth, and this month it said it had foiled two plots by Uighur militants in the large Muslim northwestern region of Xinjiang, including an attempt to disrupt the Olympics.
Kang Xiaoguang, a political scientist at the People's University of China who has long studied social stability, said there was very little chance of the Tibetan protests sparking a chain reaction in broader China.
"I think the chances are minimal," he said of possible copycat protests. "This is a localized problem. In the Han Chinese regions there's virtually zero sympathy for the Tibetan rioters, and so virtually zero chance that this will spread."
The Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy said in an e-mail that monks of the Amdo Ngaba Kirti monastery, also in Sichuan's Aba prefecture, had raised the banned Tibetan flag and shouted pro-independence slogans after prayers on Sunday.
Chinese security forces stormed the monastery, fired tear gas and prevented the monks from taking to the streets, it said.
The report could not be independently confirmed.
Xinhua said many shops had reopened in Lhasa and cars were back on the streets as calm returned to the city.
But a businessman, reached by telephone, told Reuters: "It's dead silent. There are a few kids and people beginning to walk around, but mostly people are staying inside."
The authorities have set rioters in Lhasa an ultimatum, urging them to hand themselves in to police by Monday midnight and gain possible clemency, or face harsh punishment.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in a statement, urged Beijing to "release monks and others who have been detained solely for the peaceful expression of their views".
The Dalai Lama, who says he only wants greater autonomy for his people, said China deserved to host the Olympics but the international community had a "moral responsibility" to remind China to be a good host for the August 8-24 Games.
Monks first took to the streets of Tibet last Monday to mark the 49th anniversary of a failed uprising, and protests soon spread to adjoining regions inhabited by pockets of Tibetans.
Tibetan youths rampaged through Lhasa against Chinese: witness
Tourist recounts how he saw Tibetan anger toward the Chinese boil over into violence. Masses of rioters mainly Tibetan men in their late teens with only a few monks in the crowd. -AFP
March 17, 2008
CHENGDU - Enraged Tibetan youths embarked on a rampage of destruction against Chinese businesses in Lhasa that left parts of the once-fabled city in ruins, according to one tourist who saw the protests.
Juan Carlos Alonso, 46, a Spaniard staying on Beijing Street in the old quarter near some of Lhasa's holiest shrines, recounted how he saw Tibetan anger toward the Chinese boil over into violence.
"The purpose was to destroy everything on that main street, beginning with all the Chinese stores and restaurants," Alonso told AFP after arriving in Chengdu airport late Sunday before catching a flight home.
"The restaurant owners and those Chinese on the street had to hide," said the former employee of a German engineering firm who had a first-hand view of the onslaught in the streets of Lhasa on Friday.
"They (the Chinese) lowered the shutters, but the Tibetans kicked their way in, dragging people out, beating them with stones. There were knifes, stones, machetes, butcher knives - they were using everything that came to hand."
"Many Chinese were running for their lives," Alonso said, estimating that he had seen at least 35 ethnic Chinese covered in blood, but had not seen any dead.
Describing the masses of rioters as mainly Tibetan men in their late teens with only a few monks in the crowd, he said that in front of the Banakshol hotel where he was staying, all the stores and restaurants had been ransacked.
"There are none left, they've all been burnt," he said. Alonso, who arrived in the city on Wednesday, said the tension between Tibetan and Chinese police had been palpable before youths exploded with rage.
The unrest in Lhasa began on March 10, the 49th anniversary of a failed Tibetan uprising that led the Dalai Lama to flee into exile in India. China's atheist communist rulers have controlled the devoutly Buddhist region since 1951. "I was not afraid," continued Alonso. "I knew they weren't going after me.
It would be one thing if they said "get the Spaniard," but the Tibetans were going after the Chinese."
"One girl, they grabbed her on the street and took her towards a door before kicking and stoning her. The girl was crying out for help."
As vehicles, storefronts and restaurants burned late Friday, the Chinese military rolled in with tanks and armoured vehicles. Alonso said he and a Dutch couple he had befriended knew it was time to escape.
"There was a time (Friday night) when shots were fired. Then on Saturday morning there were shots - several bursts of them."
"With every passing moment, there were more and more soldiers. We said, 'we're leaving'."
As Alonso and his friends cut through back streets swarming with heavily armed Chinese troops, the Spaniard said parts of the ancient city were already in ruin.
Buildings and cars burned, while all manner of goods - rice, flour, meat, dresses, textiles, desks, chairs - littered the streets.
"At one point, one super aggressive Chinese military guy came up to us yelling," Alonso said. "The guy grabbed his gun, shot bang, bang, bang into the air. I thought to myself, 'He better not drop his machine gun.'"
With foreign journalists being denied entry into Lhasa, it is impossible to determine how many people were killed in the violence.
Thirteen people were killed, the chairman of Tibet's government, Qiangba Puncog, told reporters in Beijing. Exiled Tibetan groups say about 80 Tibetans were killed, and possibly many more.
"Both sides are victims here. That's the way it is when politics are involved," Alonso said.
13 civilians burned or stabbed to death in Lhasa riot
Thirteen innocent civilians were burned or stabbed to death in last Friday's Lhasa riot, said Qiangba Puncog, chairman of Tibet Autonomous Regional Government, at a news briefing in Beijing on Monday.
The regional government chief cited two cases of brutality happening on that day.
In one case, a civilian was reportedly poured gasoline by rioters and burned to death alive. In another case, rioters beat a patrol policeman who fell into a swoon, and then cut a piece of flesh from his butt.
61 police injured, six seriously, in Lhasa riot
Sixty-one police were injured in last Friday's riot in Lhasa, six of them seriously wounded, said Qiangba Pungcog, chairman of the Tibet Autonomous Regional Government, at a press conference in Beijing on Monday.
Dalai’s description on Lhasa riot ridiculous
Qiangba Puncog, Tibet Autonomous Regional Government chairman, said Monday morning at a news briefing that the Dalai clique’s version on describing the latest riot in Lhasa and echoing tilted news coverage of some Western media are “ridiculous.”
They are confusing right and wrong while labeling the riot as “peaceful demonstration,” and slandering efforts of local law enforcement to keeping order as “crackdown on the peaceful demonstration,” Qiangba Puncog said.
“I’m so indignant to hear that the Dalai clique and some Westerners called the severe violence as ‘peaceful demonstration’,” the chairman said.
“It’s further more ridiculous that those people distorted the efforts of our law enforcers to keeping people safe and society order as ‘crackdown on the peaceful demonstration’,” he said.
Rioters torch 300 fires in Lhasa
Rioters in Lhasa, capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region, set fires at more than 300 locations, including residential houses and 214 shops, and smashed and burned 56 vehicles, said Qiangba Puncog, regional government chairman, at a news briefing held in Beijing on the riotous activities that occurred in Lhasa on March 14.
宁为太平犬,莫做乱世人; 越南当他们是中国人，中国当他们是越南人！
燃烧的血: 恨与爱都在我心中燃烧 —— 徐高虎
JPMorgan to buy Bear, Fed opens lending to Wall St
March 17, 2008
NEW YORK (Reuters) - JPMorgan Chase & Co set a deal to buy stricken rival Bear Stearns for a rock-bottom price, while the U.S. Federal Reserve expanded lending to securities firms for the first time since the Great Depression to prop up the financial system.
The shock news, the biggest sign yet of how devastating the credit crisis is for Wall Street, slammed the U.S. dollar to a record low against the euro, pummeled Asia stock markets and boosted gold and low-risk bonds.
The Fed also made an emergency quarter-point cut in its discount rate and agreed to finance up to $30 billion of Bear's assets as U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson pledged the U.S. government is prepared to do "what it takes" to maintain the stability of the financial system.
"The fear is how many more skeletons in the closet are still there in the global credit markets?" said David Cohen, economist at Action Economics in Singapore.
"This is another effort by the Fed to calm things down, but the cloud on the horizon is just how much more of these credit issues are still out there."
Faced with an economy that may already be mired in recession, the Fed is expected to pull another tool out of its box on Tuesday by slashing its key benchmark overnight interest rate by as much as 1- percent.
It has already cut the rate by a total of 2- percentage points to 3 percent since mid-September -- putting downward pressure on the U.S. dollar.
The Fed's latest moves were seen as an attempt to prevent others from suffering the same fate as Bear, the fifth-largest U.S. investment bank. Bear in essence faced Wall Street's version of a run on the bank as customers stopped trading with the firm and demanded their cash late last week.
On Friday, shares of rival Lehman Brothers were battered on fears it might lose investor confidence next, though a half-dozen hedge funds Reuters spoke to were trading with Lehman and Lehman insisted it was in good shape.
Bear's predicament shows how fast things can change on Wall Street.
JPMorgan is paying just $2 a share for Bear, or a total of $236 million, although the bank put a total $6 billion price tag on the deal including litigation and severance costs.
Still, the per-share payout is just one-fifteenth of Bear's stock price on Friday and miles off its record share price of $172.61 last year.
That means Bear's shareholders, including British billionaire Joseph Lewis and Bear Stearns' Chairman Jimmy Cayne, will have their holdings wiped out by the deal.
"It's scary for what it says about the value of financial assets, if a company is worth only a small percentage of book value," said Emanuel Weintraub, managing director of Integre Advisors, a New York-based money management firm.
APOCALYPSE NOW
Bear Stearns, which has more than 14,000 employees, trades interest-rate swaps, credit default swaps, and other derivatives with dozens of banks globally. If Bear Stearns went bankrupt, its trading partners could face big losses and stop lending, paralyzing the global financial system.
"It wouldn't just be Bear's problem, it would be everyone's problem," said Marino Marin, an investment banker at Gruppo, Levey & Co who has restructured banks in the past but is not involved in this deal. "It would be apocalyptic."
That's why policymakers moved swiftly on Sunday.
The Fed cut its discount rate to 3.25 percent from 3.5 percent and unveiled a new lending facility at the discount rate for primary dealers -- big Wall Street firms with which it deals directly in financial markets.
"Desperate times need desperate measures. The Federal Reserve is doing what it takes to restore stability and it means cutting the discount rate on a Sunday night in the U.S., then so be it," said Craig James, the chief equities economist at CommSec in Sydney.
Bear Stearns, one of 20 primary dealers, had been unable to borrow directly from the window, because it had previously been open only to deposit-accepting banks.
JPMorgan wrapped up the deal in record time. It said the boards of the two companies had unanimously approved the deal that gives Bear shareholders 0.05473 shares of JPMorgan Chase for every share.
For JPMorgan and its CEO Jamie Dimon, the deal may turn out to be a rare opportunity, some analysts said.
"JPM is getting the number three prime broker, a solid merchant banking portfolio, a good high net worth business and a mortgage servicing business for well below its market value. But BSC has no choice but to sell," said Bernstein Research analyst Brad Hintz.
Dimon is known as a details man, a whiz at numbers and has a track record of fixing up major banks. By working with the authorities to rescue a financial institution, he is following a JPMorgan tradition begun by J.P. Morgan himself in 1907, when he rescued the New York Stock Exchange and other institutions.
The potential downside: Bear Stearns has hard-to-value mortgage bonds and credit derivatives on its books. It may also face legal liability from soured subprime mortgage bonds and other instruments it sold, analysts said.
CRISIS OF CONFIDENCE
Investors lost confidence in Bear in recent weeks because it is the smallest of the major investment banks and was known as as an aggressive trader in credit and mortgage markets.
Bear generates a much bigger percentage of its revenue from the U.S. fixed income markets than its competitors, giving it few other businesses to lean on amid the global credit crisis.
Much like to depositors lining up to pull money from bailed-out British bank Northern Rock, many traders stopped doing business with Bear because they feared the firm might go bust. That drained Bear's cash and made a collapse all the more likely.
Following previous crises, famous firms such as Kidder Peabody, Salomon Brothers and First Boston were forced to seek buyers with robust balance sheets.
JPMorgan, which will guarantee Bear's trading obligations and provide management oversight, expected to close the deal by the end of the second quarter as it already got fast-track approvals from the Fed and other federal regulators.
"This deal had to happen, and JPMorgan is the best candidate for this because their capital position is stronger and their sources of funding are stronger," Weintraub said. "I do think this is the best possible scenario for financial markets."
Dalai Lama says will quit if violence out of control
March 18, 2008
DHARAMSALA, India (Reuters) - The Dalai Lama said on Tuesday he would resign as Tibetan leader if the situation went out of control in Tibet, and he denied accusations from China that he was inciting violence.
“If things become out of control then my only option is to completely resign,” Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, told a news conference at his base of Dharamsala in northern India.
On Tuesday, China’s premier Wen Jiabao accused the Dalai Lama of orchestrating riots in which dozens may have died and said his followers were trying to “incite sabotage” of Beijing’s August Olympic Games.
The Dalai Lama, who fled into exile in India in 1959, denied Chinese accusations he was inciting the rioting.
“Investigate thoroughly, so if you want to start investigating from here you are most welcome,” he said.
“Check our various offices ...They can examine my pulse, my urine, my stool, everything.”
The Nobel peace laureate says he wants autonomy for Tibet within China but not outright independence.
Monk-led anti-China protests in Lhasa, the biggest in almost two decades, turned ugly on Friday, weighing uncomfortably on the Communist leadership anxious to polish its image in the build-up to the Olympic Games.
India hosts the Dalai Lama in the India city of Dharamsala, seat of the self-proclaimed Tibetan government-in-exile and the scene of daily protests in the past week.
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