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China says Dalai Lama inciting unrest

PHOTO: AFP

China accused the Dalai Lama yesterday of orchestrating Tibetan riots to wreck Beijing's Olympic Games, but the exiled spiritual leader denied the charge.

The Tibetan government-in-exile said from its base in the Indian Himalayan foothill town of Dharmasala yesterday that 19 Tibetan protesters were shot dead in Gansu Province yesterday, and the "confirmed" death toll from a week of unrest had reached 99.

"This took place outside of Lhasa. Nineteen people were killed in Machu in Gansu Province. There was a protest in Machu this morning, and police fired on them," spokesman Thubten Samphel said.

In all, he said "80 people have been confirmed killed in Lhasa in the past several days and 19 killed today."

In Beijing, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) defended the security crackdown on Lhasa and other provinces where copycat rioting by Tibetans erupted over the weekend.

"There is ample fact and plenty of evidence proving this incident was organized, premeditated, masterminded and incited by the Dalai clique," he told a news conference.

PHOTO :AP

"This has all the more revealed the consistent claims by the Dalai clique that they pursue not independence but peaceful dialogue are nothing but lies," he said.

TRIAL?

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman later said that the Dalai Lama should face trial.

The Dalai Lama denied the charges yesterday.

An exiled Tibetan rights group said yesterday that 30 Tibetan protesters were arrested after staging a demonstration near Lhasa.

PHOTO :AP

A dozen Buddhist monks from the Dinka Monastery in Duilong Deqing County near Lhasa held the protest on Monday evening and were joined by local residents, the Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy said on its Web site (www.tchrd.org), citing "numerous sources and witnesses."

The report could not be confirmed because foreign media have been barred from traveling to Tibet.

Chinese authorities have said that security forces exercised restraint in response to the Lhasa burning and looting, using only non-lethal weapons, and only 13 "innocent civilians" died.

The Dalai Lama gestures while talking with media representatives yesterday in Dharamsala, India. He appealed for calm in Tibet and ``good relations'' with China, but offered to quit as head of the Tibetan government-in-exile if violence worsens. PHOTO: AFP

Wen said the protesters "wanted to incite the sabotage of the Olympic Games in order to achieve their unspeakable goal."

EUROPEAN WARNING

The president of the European Parliament said politicians should consider staying away from the Games opening ceremonies if the violence continues in Tibet.

Hans-Gert Poettering told Deutschlandfunk Radio that "all options should be kept open" about the Games, but he urged politicians who plan to attend the opening ceremonies to "consider, if [the violence] continues, whether it would be responsible to make such a trip."

He also called on China's leadership to "do everything possible to reach reconciliation in Tibet, so that the violence will stop and the Olympic Games will have a chance."

In Australia, opposition politician Andrew Bartlett called for the nation's athletes and all corporate sponsors to boycott the Games.

"The Communist regime in China is one of the worst human rights abusers in the world and by participating in the Olympics when that country is not improving its performance -- I think we've got to look at whether that makes us complicit in them," Bartlett told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio. "We can't just turn a blind eye because we all love our sport."

EXILES

Exiled Tibetans said the protests were a spontaneous outburst by a long-oppressed people aware they have the world's attention as the Games draw near.

"I know people can't believe that there isn't coordination," Lhadon Tethong, the director of Students for a Free Tibet, said in an interview at the group's office in Dharamsala. "But, it's not there."

"Tibetans inside know what's happening in the outside world," she said.
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