Sunday 16 March 2008

Tibetan Rioters are not the Angels the West likes to portray

People like Richard Geere has vested interest, that's why he can't be trusted.

Peaceful protestors don't burn down buildings, loot shops and hurt innocent children and women. These Tibetans should be treated as who they are - hooligans and rioters.

7 comments:

Guanyu said...

Fears and tears in holy plateau city wracked by turmoil

16 March 2008

Dense smoke blanketed the cloud dotted blue sky, burning wreckages emitted an irritating smell and hundreds wailed over the bloodshed. A Tibetan teacher said she couldn’t believe her eyes.

“I’ve never seen such cruelty before. How can anyone do something like this?” asked Zhayung, a Tibetan teacher at the No. 1 primary school in Lhasa, her voice still shaky and her complexion tinged with fear and sheer shock.

The school she worked at was among a wide range of targets of the planned sabotage that broke out in the Tibetan capital on Friday afternoon.

Vandals carrying backpacks filled with stones and bottles of inflammable liquids smashed windows, set fire to vehicles, shops and restaurants along their path.

Some rioters held iron rods, wooden sticks and long knives, randomly assaulting passersby, sparing neither women nor children along their trail of destruction.

“Classes were cancelled,” Zhayung said. “I managed to escape from the school and hide in the building across the street, but some of my colleagues were stranded in the school for the whole night until police came to their rescue.”

For many Lhasa residents such as Zhayung, March 14 stopped being just another Friday -- it was a day when the capital was left in chaos after an outburst of beating, smashing, looting and burning, which officials say, on ample evidence, was “masterminded by the Dalai clique”.

The Tibet regional government said on Saturday at least 10 people were confirmed dead, including several from burns and gunshot wounds. Police managed to rescue more than 580 people, including three Japanese tourists, from the violent array of sabotage.

As tensions began to ease on Saturday, residents in the traditionally tranquil plateau city recalled the nightmares they went through.

‘THE MOBS WERE CRAZY’

Tubdain, a local resident, said he saw a girl in red-clothing who appeared to be a Han Chinese chased and clubbed by six people on the Duosenge Road in the downtown area. “The mobs stoned her head and batted her knees with wooden clubs,” said the 50-something Tubdain.

“Blood trickled down her face. She stumbled to the ground, crying and begging the rioters to let her go,” he said. “They seemed a bunch of insane people, growling, stabbing, smashing and burning. It was so hard to believe what I saw.”

Jin Hong, a clerk with the Bank of China outlet on Lhasas’ Beijing East Road, suffered a broken pelvis after jumping from the second-floor of the building while trying to protect a cash box.

“About 60 rioters, all young men and women, attacked the bank with rocks and axes, and later set fire to the building on Friday afternoon.

“I hid in the toilet with three colleagues, but the mobs thronged against the toilet door. I had to jump out of the window,” she said.

Liu Kun, a nurse with the General Hospital of Tibet Military Command, said Jin was in stable condition, but she was due to receive surgery in two days. The hospital was offering free treatment to all riot victims.

Not only the Han Chinese, local Tibetans were also affected by the tumultuous violence.

Rawang, a Tibetan clothes vendor in downtown Lhasa, sighed at the dreary scene, once the site of bustling commerce. “It was once a shopping haven, but now it’s all deserted, like a hell.”

His shop was burnt to the ground. “Losses were grave. These people were crazy,” he said.

Cering Yangzom, a retired Tibetan worker in Lhasa, said he planned to have tea with friends at the weekend, but the atmosphere was too tense for them to go out. “Nobody knew what the troublemakers were trying to get at,” he said.

The regional government imposed traffic bans and increased the police presence to ensure social security.

The local government said they immediately informed the citizens of the sabotage through TV, calling for them to take precautions.

Qiangba Puncog, Tibet Autonomous Regional Government chairman, who is in Beijing for the parliamentary meeting, condemned the separatist activities. “We will severely deal with those who engage themselves in activities of splitting the nation in accordance with the law,” he said.

“Their separatist plot will not succeed. It’s the common will of the Tibetan people to maintain national unity, ethnic solidarity and social harmony,” he added.

Guanyu said...

Ethnic Han survivors: Tibetan folks saved us

16 March 2008

For many Lhasa residents, March 14 stopped being just another Friday -- it was a day when the capital was left in chaos after an outburst of beating, smashing, looting and burning.

The Tibet regional government said on Saturday at least 10 people were confirmed dead, including several from burns and gunshot wounds. But for the many ethnic Hans who were lucky enough to survive the disaster, they said it was the Tibetan folks who saved them.

Sun Pingjiang, an ethnic Han and owner of a Titan-styled accessories store near the Ramogia monastery, said he owed his life to an old Tibetan woman who saved him from bleeding to death.

“I was attacked by more than 30 people about my age when I was running from my store to my friend’s. The mobs beat and stabbed me,” said the 26-year-old.

“When I finally managed to run away, I stumbled along and knocked at every door I could for help. No one answered except a Tibetan woman in a chessboard game room,” he said.

“She seemed scared at first because I was bleeding so hard that I could barely open my eyes. Then she took me in and called the emergency number 120 when the streets calmed down,” he said.

Sun is being treated for leg and back injuries at the General Hospital of Tibet Military Command.

During Friday’s riot, many local Tibetans came to the help of the Han Chinese and, together, they braced the rioters who went on a frenzied spree of destruction.

Ma Ruixia, a Han Chinese woman who owns clothes and souvenir shops on Bargor Street in the downtown, said her establishments were attacked twice by the mob. She survived with the help of her Tibetan landlord and neighbours.

“Around 2 p.m. Friday, I heard people shouting in the yard that rioters were coming and we needed to take shelter,” she recalled.

“My Tibetan neighbours faced up to the mob and pleaded with them not to ravage my stores,” she said, “I really didn’t know what was going on out there. It was horrible.”

When the attackers nonetheless pillaged her shops, Ma and her family had to hide under beds in the backyard chambers.

Her niece, nine-year-old Wang Yurong, said she heard Tibetans shouting outside, and dared not to make a sound.

Ma’s other niece, Lu Beibei, 10, said they had to stay indoors for a whole day and only ate instant noodles. “My aunt told me it was chaos outside, and we would get killed if we went out,” the girl said.

TO STAY ON IN LHASA

Sources told Xinhua that rioters had ransacked at least 100 shops. The four-storey Landun shopping mall in the old city center, which sold children clothes, was devoured by flames instigated by the horde.

Its owner, Ye Danping, and her 20 Tibetan employees barely survived after scrambling onto the roof of the building. “Some of my local Tibetan employees have been working with me for years, and they offered to protect my commodities in store,” she said.

“My employees and I cried at what we saw and what we experienced. I was shattered when I saw years of hard work was lost to the fire.”

However, the woman who came to Lhasa 15 years ago from coastal Zhejiang Province said she would stay on in Lhasa, because she took this place as her second hometown.

“I wish the government would properly handle the incident and make Lhasa a safe place again,” she said.

Guanyu said...

How did they confirm the number of deaths? By word of mouth?

1st person says 10 deaths to 2nd person.

2nd person says 80 deaths to 3rd person.

3rd person says 1,000 deaths to 4th person... very soon all Tibetans are dead!

Tibet govt-in-exile says 80 ‘confirmed’ dead in unrest

DHARAMSHALA, India: Eighty people have died in a wave of unrest and a Chinese crackdown in Tibet, the Himalayan region’s exiled government said on Sunday.

Tibetan officials in Dharamshala, the base of exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, said the 80 “confirmed” dead included 26 people who were shot near a prison in Lhasa.

“Regarding bodies, it’s 80. We have 80 unidentified bodies,” the spokesman for the government-in-exile, Thubten Samphel, told reporters.

He said the toll had been established from “calls made from Tibet” by witnesses, and added that at least 72 people had been injured.

“At this point of time, we have 80 dead, confirmed,” Tenzin Taklha, a close aide to the Dalai Lama, also told AFP – repeating the figure that is far higher than the 10 deaths reported by Beijing.

He added the dead included people shot outside Drapchi prison in Lhasa on Saturday and five girls. He said there were also unconfirmed reports of three killed in neighbouring Sichuan province and the suicides of five Buddhist monks.

“The majority of the people killed are Tibetans. It’s very difficult to verify these things. For example, one person counted 68 other bodies in a morgue, but it’s difficult to confirm,” Taklha said.

The violence in Tibet and a major Chinese crackdown prompted more furious protests in Dharamshala, with activists nailing hundreds of Chinese flags to the ground for people to walk on.

“China should stop the brutal crackdown and genocide inside Tibet,” said Sonam Darjee, a leader of the Tibetan Youth Congress – a pro-independence group which views the Dalai Lama’s call for greater autonomy as not going far enough.

The leader of the group, Tsewang Rigzin, said “people of Tibet are running out of patience” with what has up to now been a mostly non-violent struggle.

“We are witnessing history in Tibet. We have to continue to make history until Tibet is free. Tibet is continuing to resist the Chinese government. We are seeing a global uprising by Tibetans,” he said.

“We have to put the spotlight on China when the world is watching. We will continue our struggle until we kick China out from Tibet.”

A group of around 70 refugees also began a hunger strike in a temple and under a banner describing China as a “killer of Tibetans and enemy of mankind” and calling for a boycott of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

“Tibet is screaming, China is slaying, United Nations is sleeping,” another banner read.

“Martial law has been imposed. The Chinese are cracking down, they are arresting, shooting the people. It’s a very urgent situation,” said the outspoken leader of the Tibetan parliament, Karma Chonphel.

He added that he believed at least 1,000 Tibetans had been killed since protests began on March 10.

Aides to the Dalai Lama have denied any link to the unrest, and the administration has already appealed for United Nations intervention.

Samdhong Rinpoche, prime minister in the exiled Tibetan administration, insisted the 72-year-old Nobel laureate was an advocate of a peaceful resolution to the Tibetan question.

“He is apostle of peace, he can never ask anyone to indulge in violence,” the 64-year-old prime minister said.

China’s official Xinhua news agency on Friday, quoting the local government in Tibet, said the unrest has been “organised, premeditated and masterminded” by the Dalai Lama and his supporters.

Guanyu said...

I read in some websites many people in the West are condemning China for using force in Tibet.

Those white trashs are hypocrites because you don't see them condemning Israel in using force to kill the Hamas. You also don't see them condemning US and UK for using force in Iraq.

Why? They fear a growing China.

Anonymous said...

Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD)

14 March 2008 [Press Release]

Mobile phone pictures depict intensity of demonstration in Amdo Labrang

According to confirmed information received by the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD), thousands of Tibetan monks and laypeople converged and stage demonstration in the streets of Sangchu County, Kanlho "Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture" ("TAP"), Gansu Province. The demonstration which took place around 2pm (Beijing Time) today is currently ongoing. Mobile phone pictures depicting the intensity of the demonstration are obtained by the TCHRD.

Around 50 monks from the Labrang Tashikyil Monastery staged a demonstration carrying the banned Tibetan national flag and called for "Tibetan Independence" around 2 p.m. (Beijing Time) today afternoon. Around 500 monks from the same monastery later joined the demonstration. The demonstration eventually grew into thousands when laypeople also joined in. The police started to fire live ammunitions in the air and started to beat when the demonstrators neared the Sangchu County Public Security Bureau headquarters.

TCHRD will continue to monitor the situation and update as the situation progresses.

Anonymous said...

Biggest Tibet protests in 20 years

By Lindsey Hilsum
2008.03.14

"Protests led by Buddhist monks enter their third day, in the biggest show of defiance in Tibet for more than 20 years.

Cars and shops have been set ablaze in the Tibetan capital Lhasa amid demands for independence from China.

Reports say Chinese police have fired on protestors, leaving at least two people dead.

One witness said around 400 demonstrators had been confronted by a thousand riot police as they threw rocks and set fire to cars and buses.

The Dalai Lama has denied Chinese allegations that he had masterminded the unrest."

Anonymous said...

CIA in Tibet